City of Stairs

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  As they talked—innocuously enough—she sidled over to the bed. Felt the sheets.

  How damp they’d been, and in one spot—right where the hips and waist would be, were you to lie upon it—just positively drenched.

  How young Rooshni had hurried, as if the building were burning down.…

  She did not confront him then. But she began to watch. (This is what I’ve always been, she’d think, much later. Someone who does not intervene in her own life, but only watches, and works behind the scenes.) She watched how Vo seemed to spend so much time with young men, the way he embraced them. She watched the way he watched them, the way his posture grew more languid, relaxed around them.

  Does he even know it? she wondered then. Do I?

  And one day she could bear it no more, and she quietly walked into his apartments while he and—she cannot even remember the boy’s name now, Roy something or other—moved so slowly and so gently against one another in the very bed where Vo had whispered how much he loved her in her ear not more than two days before.

  The look on their faces when she cleared her throat. The boy, hustling out the door. Vo, screaming in rage at her, while she stood silent.

  He’d wanted her to scream back at him. She could tell. But she would not give him that. This was not a fight. She was not complicit in what he’d done. She could not imagine a purer betrayal.

  The worst of it was how much the boy had looked like her. Shara had never and would never possess a particularly feminine form: she had, she thought, a boy’s body, all shoulders and no hips, and certainly no breasts. Was I just a substitute? she thought afterward. A way to fabricate forbidden love without ever doing anything forbidden? And if so, she was still inadequate, unable to capture the essence of the real thing.

  He begged her to say something, to respond to him, to fight back. But she did not. She walked out of his apartment and, more or less, out of his life for the remainder of their school careers.

  (She is still somewhat proud of this: how tranquil she was, how cold, how maintained. And yet she is also ashamed: Was she so shocked, so cowardly, so withdrawn that she could not even allow herself to shout at him?)

  She threw herself into schoolwork, suddenly inflamed with a sense of patriotic discipline. He approached her after his graduation, months later, packed and ready for the train trip to the docks, and on to Bulikov. He begged her to come with him, begged her to help him be the man he so dearly wished to be. He tried to bribe her, spin a storybook lie, told her she could be a princess back in his home, if she wished. And Shara, all ice, all cold steel, had hurt him as best she could—What I think you truly want, my dear child, is a prince. But you can’t have such a thing at home, can you? They’d kill you for that—before she shut the door in his face.

  One day you’ll know, her Auntie Vinya told her. And understand. You’ll figure yourself out. And things will be all right.

  One of the few times, Shara often reflects, that Auntie Vinya was quite terribly and completely wrong.

  When I entered the hills near Jukoshtan I felt quite terribly afraid. The moon was yellow-brown, like a tea stain. The hills were stark and white, with short, twisted trees. And the ground was so uneven that it always forced you down, walking the floors of the valleys, lost in darkness. Or so it felt.

  Sometimes I saw firelight flickering on the trunks of the twisted trees. There were cries in the dark: animals, or people pretending to be animals, or animals pretending to be people. Sometimes there were voices. “Come with us!” they whispered. “Come join our dance!”

  “No,” I said. “I am on an errand. I have a Burden. I must deliver my Burden to Jukov himself, and no one else.” And they laughed.

  How I wished I was back in Taalvashtan. How I wished I was home. I wished I had never taken this Burden from Saint Threvski. And yet, I was also curious—I do not know if it was the voices on the winds, or the sniggers from the trembling trees, or the light of the yellow moon, but Jukoshtan was a place of hidden things, of constant mystery, and I secretly wished to see more.

  I turned a corner and came to a valley filled with small skin huts. A bonfire roared in their center. People danced around the fire, shrieking and singing. I shrank up against a tree and watched, horrified, as people copulated frenziedly on the sandy ground.

  I heard someone step behind me. I turned, and saw an old man was standing on the path behind me, dressed in regal robes. His hair was braided and tied up to stand upon his head, as many respectful Taalvashtani gentlemen did then.

  He apologized for startling me. I asked him his business, and he said he was a trader from Bulikov. I could tell he thought me the same, from my Burden.

  “A savage bunch, are they not?” he asked.

  I told him I could not understand how they lived this way.

  “They believe themselves free,” he said. “But in truth, they are enslaved to their desires.”

  He told me his tent was nearby, and well hidden, and he offered me shelter in this strange place. He seemed a kind old thing, and I accepted, and followed him through the bent trees.

  As he walked he said, “I sometimes wish I was younger. For I am old, and not only am I frail of flesh, but I am bound by the many things I have been taught over the years. Sometimes I wish I had the courage to be so young, so loud, so unfettered and so unburdened.”

  I told him he should be proud of himself to have lived to such an age without indulging in corrupt impulses.

  “I am surprised,” he said. “A creature as young as you, and you are wholly uninterested in such forbidden wildness?”

  I told him I was repulsed by it—a lie, I knew.

  “Do you not wonder if slavery to one’s desires could, just a little, make you free?”

  I felt myself sweating. My Burden felt so heavy around my neck. I admitted that my thoughts sometimes strayed to forbidden places. And that tonight, they seemed to stray to such places more frequently.

  He turned sharply below the dark canopy of trees. I could no longer see him, but I followed his voice.

  “Jukoshtan, the city itself, is also a forbidden place, in a way,” said his voice from ahead. “Did you know that?”

  I passed the old man’s robes, lying on the sandy ground—discarded, it seemed, as he walked.

  A flock of brown starlings took flight from the trees ahead, soaring up into the night sky.

  “It moves, shifts,” said his voice. “It dances through the hills.”

  I passed a wig, hanging from a tree—the old man’s braided hair.

  “It is never where one expects it to be,” said his voice.

  I passed a flap of cloth hanging from a bush. Yet it was not cloth, but a mask—a mask of the old man’s face.

  His voice floated through the trees: “Much like Jukov himself.”

  I entered a clearing. In the center was a low, long tent of animal skins. On the branch of every tree in the clearing sat a small brown starling, and each watched me with dark, cold eyes.

  I could see footprints leading up to the tent’s entrance. I followed them and stood before it.

  “Come inside,” whispered a voice, excited, “and lay down your Burden!”

  I hesitated. Temptation spoke to me. And I listened.

  As the starlings watched, I took off my robes and stepped out of my sandals. I shivered, naked, as I felt the cool wind on my skin. Then I stepped inside.

  This was how I came to know Jukov, Sky-Dancer, Face-Peddler, Lord of Song, Shepherd of Starlings. And before he ever touched me, I think I already loved him.

  —MEMOIRS OF SAINT KIVREY, PRIEST AND 78TH WIFE-HUSBAND OF JUKOV, C. 982

  SURVIVORS

  Mulaghesh runs.

  She runs over the frozen hills, through muddy roads, around dank forests. She runs though her breath burns in her chest and her legs protest with each step.

  At forty-eight, she knows she is about to be beyond the age when she can do this to herself. So I had better get my licks in now, she thinks, if I rea
lly want to do this. She likes running because it is the purest combat sport possible—the only thing you’re fighting is yourself, with every step. And it’s been so long since she really fought anyone (her still-dark eye aches a little with each footfall) that maybe this is the only kind of fighting she can do anymore.

  It has been nearly a week since she last saw Shara Komayd, but Mulaghesh cannot stop thinking about what the “ambassador” told her. By the seas, I hope that girl’s wrong, she thinks. The thought saps her of her strength—the next hill feels so much harder than the last—yet she cannot stop thinking about it.

  One of the gods is alive. Maybe they never really left at all.

  Mulaghesh, like everyone in the military—everyone in Saypur—grew up wanting to be the Kaj. Yet now that she just might get her opportunity, the idea terrifies her. Every child of Saypur grew up with the Divinities pacing just past the border of their nightmares: huge, dark unmentionables swimming in the deeps of history.… Shara talks about them as if they were politicians or generals, but to Mulaghesh and the rest of Saypur, they will always be the bogeyman’s bogeyman, beings so dreaded that merely mentioning their names feels like an illicit and terrible act.

  Give me a real war any day, she thinks. Something with trenches and bolts. Something human. Something that bleeds. As a veteran of the Summer of Black Rivers, Mulaghesh must see the irony in wishing for those awful days of mud and thunder, and the struggle in the dark. A glorious war, as all Saypuris agree, but one Mulaghesh hopes she’ll never see again.

  Still. Better that than this.

  How confident that young girl is. Has she read so much? Or is that what it’s like to be a descendant of the Kaj?

  Yet Mulaghesh remembers how the day after, young Shara Komayd trembled under her blanket, trying to concentrate on holding a cup of tea.…

  By the seas, she thinks, I hope that girl’s wrong.

  She trots back into her quarters to find a small stack of papers on her desk. There is a note in the seat of her chair from one of her lieutenants:

  PULLED THE RECORDS. HERE ARE THE PAGES CHECKED OUT THAT MONTH. TOOK A WHILE. MIGHT WANT TO GIVE THE KIDS A DAY OFF … ONLY A SUGGESTION.

  She examines the papers: it is twenty pages from the list of items in the Unmentionable Warehouse.

  Mulaghesh has never looked at this list—she never wanted to—but she casts an eye over a page now, reviewing notes written decades ago by the now-dead Saypuri soldiers who locked all these things away:

  368. Shelf C5-158. Glass of Kivrey: Small marble bead that supposedly contains the sleeping body of Saint Kivrey, a Jukoshtani priest who changed gender every night as part of one of Jukov’s miracles. Miraculous nature—undetermined.

  369. Shelf C5-159. Small iron key: Name is unknown, but when used on any door the door sometimes opens onto an unidentified tropical forest. Pattern has yet to be determined. Still miraculous.

  370. Shelf C5-160. Bust of Ahanas: Once cried tears that possessed some healing properties. Users of the tears also had a tendency to levitate. No longer miraculous.

  371. Shelf C5-161. Nine stone cups: if left in a place where they receive sun, these cups would refill with goat’s milk every dawn. No longer miraculous.

  372. Shelf C5-162. Ear of Jukov: an engraved, stone door frame that contains no door. Iron wheels on the base. Speculated that it has a twin, and no matter where the other Ear is, if the doors are operated in the correct manner one can pass through one door and come out the other. We speculate that the twin has been destroyed. No longer miraculous.

  373. Shelf C5-163. Edicts of Kolkan, books 783 to 797: fifteen tomes mostly dictating Kolkan’s attitudes on dancing. Total weight: 378 pounds. Not miraculous, but content is definitely dangerous.

  374. Shelf C5-164. Glass sphere. Contained a small pond and overhanging tree Ahanas was fond of visiting when she felt troubled. No longer miraculous.

  Twenty pages. Nearly two hundred items of a miraculous nature, many of them terribly dangerous.

  “Oh, boy,” says Mulaghesh. She sits down, suddenly feeling quite terribly old.

  * * *

  Shara’s bag clinks and clanks, rattles and thumps as she walks down the alley. It took her most of the day to assemble the bag—pieces of silver, pearl, bags of daisy petals, pieces of blown glass—and though she packed it quite well, there’s so much in it that she sounds like a one-man band seeking a corner to play at. She’s grateful when she comes to the alley so she can stop.

  She gauges the alley carefully. It is, like most alleys, a forgotten little strip of interstitial stone, but this one bends around the rounded wall of the west building, which is not more than three blocks from the House of Votrov.

  She looks at the ground, where a twisting trail of tire marks on the stone takes on the look of sloppy brushwork. They turned here, at the corner, thinks Shara, and went down the alley. She paces a few steps down, over an exposed pipe, around a pile of refuse. The black rubber is fainter here, but some streaks can still be seen. Over this bump, over the pipe—she looks up, spots a demolished waste bin and a smattering of broken glass—tipped over the trash cans, and …

  The tire marks end.

  “He stopped,” she murmurs, “got out, and …”

  And what? How does a man simply disappear into thin air?

  Shara does not bother, as Sigrud did on the night of Vohannes’s party, to check the stones and walls of this place. Instead, she takes out a piece of yellow chalk and draws a line across the alley floor. Somewhere at this line, she thinks, there is a door. But how to find it?

  She sets her bag down. Her first trick is an old and simple one: she takes out a jar, fills it with daisy petals—Sacred to Ahanas, thinks Shara, for their willful recurrence—shakes the jar, and dumps out the petals. Then she takes a bit of graveyard mud, smears it across the glass bottom of the jar, wipes it clean, and applies the mouth of the jar to her eye, like a telescope.

  The alley looks the exact same through the lens of the jar. However, she can see a bit of the walls of Bulikov in the distance—and these glow with a blue-green phosphorescence bright enough to light up the evening sky.

  She takes the jar away. Of course, now the walls do not glow: they are transparent as always. But viewed through a lens that discerns works of the Divine, they naturally stand out.

  Yet this means that whatever door the attackers disappeared through, it was not made by the Divine, unlike the walls of Bulikov.

  Which should be impossible, thinks Shara. Anything capable of making someone disappear should be Divine in nature.

  She begins to pace the alley. For the past four nights, Shara has been visiting this place and the one other spot where Sigrud witnessed a disappearance; in these spots she performs select tests and experiments, mostly in vain. She has nothing else to do: Sigrud watches Mrs. Torskeny in her apartment. Pitry, Nidayin, and a select few other embassy staff members are combing through the year’s worth of investments Wiclov has made. Shara wishes she were there, overseeing them, but her knowledge of the Divine makes her more suited to this task.

  And, strangely, Wiclov has not been seen in Bulikov since spiriting away Mrs. Torskeny. “He is in his country estate near Jukoshtan,” his office informed them, “on family business.”

  So many disappearances, thinks Shara as she returns to her bag. And so precious few answers.… Though she does have what could be a treasure trove of answers waiting in Vohannes’s white suitcase in her office—yet she is not willing to risk Vinya’s wrath just yet. At least not when another tantalizing puzzle lies before her.

  Shara tries a multitude of other tricks: she casts poppy seeds on the ground, but they fail to align in any one direction, indicating a Divine breach in the world. She writes a third of a hymn of Voortya on a parchment and carries it down the alley: were it to pass through a holy domain of Voortya, the hymn would be instantly completed, in Voortya’s savage handwriting. (This failure does not surprise her: none of Voortya’s miracles, however slight, have
worked since the Night of the Red Sands.)

  Another trick.

  How did you disappear?

  Another.

  How did you do it?

  And another.

  How?

  She performs one final test, rolling a silver coin down the alley—if it encounters some Divine obstacle, placed here intentionally or not, it should stop and fall flat, as if magnetically drawn to the ground—but it does not, and plinks ahead before spinning round and tottering to a stop.

  She sighs, reaches back into her bag, and takes out her bottle of tea. She sips it. It is stale and musky, having been stored for too long in a place too damp.

  She sighs again, clears some space on the ground, and sits in the alley with her back against the wall, remembering the last day of her training, the last hour she spent on Saypur’s soil, the last time she had really good tea.

  * * *

  “How did you do it?” asked Auntie Vinya. “Tell me. How?”

  Young Shara Komayd—exhausted, dehydrated, and starving—gave her aunt a puzzled look as she stuffed food into her mouth. The rest of the mess hall at the training facility was empty, causing the sounds of her chewing to echo.

  “You stuck to your story, no matter how they badgered and questioned you,” said Vinya. “Every answer right. Every single one, for all six days. Do you know how often that’s happened? Why, I think you might be only the second or third in the Ministry’s history.” She peered at her nineteen-year-old niece over her half-moon glasses, obviously pleased. “Most of them break down on the third day, you know, after no sleep. The music gets to them—the same bass line, over and over. It shakes something loose. And when they get asked a question, they finally give the wrong answer. But you sat through it as if you heard nothing at all.”