City of Stairs

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “Did you?” asked Shara around a mouthful of potato.

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you break?”

  Vinya laughed. “I created this process, dear. I’ve never had to sit through it. So tell me—how did you do it?”

  Shara sloshed down tea. “Do what, Auntie?”

  “Why, keep going. You didn’t break down after six days of psychological torture.”

  Shara paused, the tines of her fork stuck in a chicken breast.

  “You don’t want to tell me?” asked Vinya.

  “It’s … embarrassing.”

  “I’m your aunt, dearest.”

  “You’re also my commanding officer.”

  “Oh …” She waved a hand. “Not tonight. Tonight’s our last night together for a long while.”

  “A long while?”

  “Well. Not that long, dear. So—how?”

  “I thought …” Shara swallowed. “I thought about my parents.” Vinya’s mouth flexed. “Ah.”

  “I thought about what they must have gone through when they died. I’ve read the stories; I know that the Plague is an … a hard way to go.” Vinya nodded sadly. “Yes. It is. I saw.”

  “And I thought about them, and about what all of Saypur must have gone through under the Continent … All the slavery, and the abuse, and the misery. And suddenly it was so easy to sit through it. The music, no sleep, no water, no food, the questions, over and over … Nothing they could ever do to me would be like that. Nothing.”

  Vinya smiled and took off her glasses. “You are, I think, the most ferocious patriot I have ever seen. I am so proud of you, my dear. Especially because, well … We were worried, for a bit.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, my dear … I always knew you had a fancy for history. That was always your forte at Fadhuri. Especially Continental history. And then when you came to us, and we gave you access to the classified material, where we keep the things we don’t even allow them to teach at Fadhuri … Why, you spent hours in there memorizing all those moldy old texts! This fascination, in government, is considered a little … unhealthy.”

  “But they explained so much!” said Shara. “I had only been taught pieces of things at Fadhuri. So much had been missing, but then there it all was, right on the shelves!”

  “What we should concern ourselves with,” said Vinya, “is the present. But more so, Shara, I admit I was worried that you were tainted by that boy you used to dally about with at school.”

  Shara’s face soured. “Don’t talk to me about him,” she snapped. “He’s dead to me. He was worthless and deceitful, as is the rest of the damnable Continent, I bet.”

  “I know, I know,” said Vinya. “You have gone through a lot. I knew when you came out of school you wanted to change the world, for it to live up to all your dreams of how Saypur should be.” She smiles sadly. “And I know that that is probably why you investigated Rajandra in the first place.”

  Shara looked at her, startled. “Auntie … I—I don’t want to ta—”

  “Don’t fear the past, darling. You must accept what you did. You suspected Rajandra Adesh of wrongdoing. You thought he was misusing funds from the National Party. And you were right. He was misusing party funds. He was wildly, wildly corrupt. That’s true. And I think by exposing him, you wished to impress me, impress us all. But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it’s not corruption at all—it’s law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law. Such was the case here. Do you understand?”

  Shara bowed her head.

  “You have ruined the career of the man everyone thought would inherit the prime minister’s seat. You have destroyed a ruling party’s leadership. Your investigation even pushed the party treasurer to attempt suicide. The poor bastard couldn’t even competently pull off his own suicide—he tried to hang himself in his office, but wound up ripping the water pipes clear out of the ceiling.” Vinya tuts. “You are a Komayd, dear, and that will protect us, some. But this will have repercussions for years.”

  “I’m so sorry, Auntie,” says Shara.

  “I know. Listen—the world is full of corruption and inequality,” says Vinya. “You were raised a patriot, to love Saypur and to believe that its virtues must be extended to all the world—but this is not your job. Your job in the Ministry is not to stop corruption and inequality: rather, these are tools in your bag to be used to aid Saypur in every way possible. Your job is to make sure the past never happens again, that we never see such poverty and powerlessness again. Corruption and inequality are useful things: if they benefit us, we must own them fully. Do you see?”

  Shara thought of Vohannes then: You paint your world in such drab cynicisms.…

  “Do you see?” asked Vinya again.

  “I see,” said Shara.

  “I know you love Saypur,” said Vinya. “I know you love this country like you loved your parents, and you wish to honor their memory, and the memory of every other Saypuri who died in struggle. But you will serve Saypur in the shadows, and Saypur will ask you to betray its virtues in order to keep it safe.”

  “And then …”

  “Then what?”

  “Then, when I’m done … I can come home?”

  Vinya smiled. “Of course you can. I’m sure your service will only last a handful of months! We’ll see each other again very soon. Now eat up, and get some rest. Your ship leaves in the morning. Oh. It is so good to see my niece working for me!”

  How she smiled when she said that.

  * * *

  In the morning, thinks Shara. Nearly sixteen years ago …

  In those sixteen years, Shara has taken more cases and done more work than nearly any operative in the world, let alone on the Continent. But though Shara Komayd was once a vigorous patriot, her fervor has leached out of her with each death and each betrayal, until her passion to feed Saypur shrank to a passion to merely protect Saypur, which then shrank further into the mere longing to see her home country once more before she dies: a prospect she sometimes thinks very unlikely.

  Repetition, conditioning, fervor, and faith, she muses as she sips tea in the alleyway. All come to so little. Perhaps this is what it’s like to lose one’s religion.

  And, more, she has begun to question whether she is really in exile. She wonders: as disastrous as it was, could the National Party scandal still be on everyone’s minds? Is that really why she is being kept away? She wishes she had been smart enough to establish a few connections to Parliament while she was still in Saypur. (Though it’s true, she remembers, that all her experiences with the Divine make her about as dangerous and illicit as the Unmentionable Warehouse itself. There are many reasons, it feels, why her homeland could reject her.)

  “Ambassador Thivani?”

  She looks over her shoulder. Pitry stands at the mouth of the alley with the car parked just beyond; she must have been so lost in her memories that she didn’t even hear him arrive. “Pitry? What are you doing here? Why aren’t you working on Wiclov’s finances?”

  “Message from Sigrud,” he says. “Mrs. Torskeny’s been moved. He says Wiclov and one other man have escorted her from her home. He’s given me an address, not much more.”

  There is a clanking flurry as Shara packs all of her materials. She walks down the alley, grabs the silver coin, and jumps in the backseat.

  They’ve already driven a quarter of a mile before she notices the silver coin has lost some of its luster. She holds it up to the windows to catch some light.

  Her eyes open in surprise. Then she smiles.

  The coin is no longer silver at all: it has been completely transmuted into lead.

  * * *

  Shara and Pitry enter a quarter of Bulikov decimated by the Blink: she watches, fascinated, as truncated buildings and tapering streets pass by. As they drive down one block, a laundry on one corner stretches, twists, and contorts itself until it is half of a bank on the next corner. One set of quaint home fronts feature unusually large and warp
ed front doors that would not, one would imagine, have ever been fashioned with humans in mind. They must have simply appeared overnight, thinks Shara.

  “Any progress with Wiclov’s history?” she asks.

  “We think so,” says Pitry. “You were right about the loomworks. He is the confirmed owner of three of them in eastern Bulikov. But we noticed that at the same time Wiclov started buying the loomworks, he also started purchasing materials from a Saypuri company: Vidashi Incorporated.”

  “Vidashi …” The name is only vaguely familiar to her. “Wait.… The ore refinery?”

  “Yep,” says Pitry. He wheels the car around a winding curve. “It seems Wiclov has been buying very small increments of steel from them. Every month, like clockwork. Very arbitrary amounts, too—within one thousand five hundred pounds and one thousand nine hundred pounds every time. We’re not sure wh—”

  Shara sits forward. “It’s the weight check.”

  “What?”

  “The weight check! The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has automatic background checks on purchasers of large quantities of materials! Oil, wood, stone, metal … We want to know who we’re selling to, if they buy large enough amounts. And for steel, the weight check amount must be—”

  “Two thousand pounds,” realizes Pitry. “So the Ministry has never checked on him.”

  The drugged boy in the jail cell confessed that they’d gone after Vohannes for his “metal.” Which leads Shara to wonder—why try to kidnap Vohannes if you’re already purchasing steel through legitimate means?

  Unless I spooked them, she thinks. I wanted to stir up the hornets’ nest, didn’t I? They must not have acquired enough steel for whatever it is that they’re making.… So when Pangyui was killed, and a Ministry operative arrived, they got nervous, and desperate.

  She stares out the window, her mind racing. What could they possibly be building? What use could someone have for so much steel?

  She keeps thinking on it until she sees something peeking over the rooftops at her: a huge, black tower, a ten-story stripe of ebony against the gray night sky.

  Her heart twitches.

  Oh, no, thinks Shara. They can’t be taking her there. Not there …

  She has not been to see this place yet. It seems unreal to believe it still exists.

  Of all the things the Kaj threw down, why did he leave that still standing?

  * * *

  Pitry parks in an alley. The darkness in an old doorway trembles; Sigrud emerges from the shadows and paces across the street.

  “Please do not tell me they went in there,” says Shara as she climbs out.

  “Into where?” asks Sigrud.

  “The bell tower.”

  Sigrud stops, bemused. “Why do you ask?”

  Shara sighs and readjusts her glasses. “Show me,” she says.

  The streets of Bulikov are almost impenetrably dark at night in quarters most affected by the Blink: no one has been able to lay gas lines here, as the disturbances reach deep down into the earth. One construction company made a valiant attempt, only to discover a sheet of iron three feet thick, forty feet tall, and (they estimated) a quarter-mile long simply suspended in the loam below the streets. No one could logically explain its existence: eventually, like so many aberrations, they assumed it was one of the unintended and inexplicable consequences of the Blink. Though the iron sheet could be dealt with, the company withdrew its bid, perhaps out of concern about what else might be buried below Bulikov.

  At the center of this damaged neighborhood is a wide, empty park. Sapling firs grow in the damp soil: recent transplants, as all the natural vegetation in Bulikov died when the climate abruptly changed. Behind these is a long building with one huge tower at the north end, a belfry with a very curious, skeletal structure at the top: a metal globe-like frame that appears to have once held a carillon, but is now empty. The base of the structure is rambling clay walls with a flat roof to which time has not been kind: the roof dips and curves like a field marred by a glacier.

  “They went in there?” asks Shara.

  “No,” says Sigrud. He points to a long, dismal-looking municipal structure at the edge of the park. “Wiclov and one other man took her in there. Just adjacent to it. Why do you worry so?”

  “Because that”—Shara nods at the bell tower—“is the oldest structure in Bulikov, after the walls. It was at the center of Bulikov, originally, though the lopsided effects of the Blink considerably changed that. The Center of the Seat of the World. Normally just called the Seat of the World, though outsiders called Bulikov the same.”

  “A temple?”

  “Something like that. Supposedly it was like Saypur’s Parliament House, but for the Divinities. Though I always imagined it would look much grander—it is quite shabby, I must say, and I remember reading it had amazing stained glass—but I’m told the Blink did not leave it unscathed. Apparently the tower was originally much, much taller. Each Divinity had a bell housed there, and the ringing of each bell had different … effects.”

  “Such as?”

  She shrugs. “No one knows. Which is why I’m reluctant to be here. So it was Wiclov who came?”

  “Wiclov and one attendant. They came and took Torskeny to that little building. Then, forty minutes ago, Wiclov and his attendant departed. No sign of Torskeny.”

  “That’s rather bold of them to operate in the open. Where did they go afterward?”

  Sigrud’s face darkens.

  “Let me guess,” says Shara. “They took a series of turns throughout the streets, and then they suddenly—”

  “Vanished,” says Sigrud. “Yes. This is the third time. Yet I have remembered”—he taps the side of his head hard enough for it to make a noise—“each place where these people have disappeared. The only pattern I see is that they are all within this quarter, and the one to the west.”

  “The ones most damaged by the Blink,” says Shara. “Which supports a theory I’ve just now halfway confirmed.” She runs a hand over the scarred brick wall behind them. “They are exploiting some damage or effect of the Blink for their own ends.”

  “How are you so sure?”

  “A piece of silver,” says Shara, “changed into lead not more than an hour ago as it passed through the alley where the surviving attacker disappeared. This sort of thing was only ever witnessed immediately after the Blink.”

  “How are you so sure it wasn’t a miracle?”

  “Because I used all the tricks I knew of to look for miracles,” says Shara, “and found none. No Divine workings at all, leaving only the Blink as a possible cause. It is worth noting, though, that no one has ever been able to adequately study the Blink. The Continent protects its damages like a bitter old woman does grudges. I plan to do so, when we have time—for now, let’s investigate what we have.”

  When they near the municipal building, Shara hangs back to allow Sigrud to inspect. He stalks around it, then shakes his head and gestures to her to come. “Nothing,” he says as she joins him. “Door is unlocked. No one in the windows, from what I can see. But much of the building has no windows.”

  “What is this place?”

  “Something the city had built. Think it might have been intended for development—make the neighborhood into something better. But then they gave up, maybe.”

  I would have, too, thinks Shara.

  Sigrud goes to the door and pulls out his black knife. He peers inside, then silently enters. Shara waits a beat and follows.

  The interior of the building is almost completely devoid of furniture and ornamentation. The rooms continue on through the building’s length, connected by a series of small doors. The building’s most remarkable attribute is that unlike nearly every structure nearby, this one has gas: little blue jets flick along the ceiling, allowing the barest illumination. “They left the lights on,” mutters Shara, but Sigrud holds a finger to his lips. He cocks his head, listening, and makes a queer face, like he’s hearing an upsetting noise.

&nb
sp; “Someone’s here?” asks Shara softly.

  “Cannot quite say.”

  Sigrud stalks forward into the building, peering into each room before Shara follows. Each room is like the one before it: small, bland, empty. Mrs. Torskeny is nowhere to be found. The doorways, Shara notes, all line up, more or less: look through one door, and you look through all.…

  Except the door at the very end, which is shut, and its keyhole flickers with a faint yellow light.

  I like this less and less, thinks Shara.

  Again, Sigrud stops. “I hear it again. It is … laughing,” he says finally.

  “Laughing?”

  “Yes. A child. Very … quiet.”

  “From where?”

  He points at the closed door.

  “And you can hear nothing more?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Well,” says Shara. “Let’s proceed.”

  As she expects, all the rooms leading up to the closed door are empty. And as they near, she hears it, too: laughter, faint and soft, as if behind that door a child is having a merry game.

  “I smell something,” says Sigrud. “Salt, and dust …”

  “How is that remarkable?”

  “I smell them in remarkable quantities.” He points at the door again, then squats to peer through the keyhole. His squinted eye is spotlit; his eyelid trembles as he strains to see.

  “Do you see anything?”

  “I see … a ring, on the floor. Made of white powder. Many candles. Many. And clothes.”

  “Clothes?”

  “A pile of clothes on the floor.” He adds: “Women’s clothes.”

  Shara taps him on the shoulder, and she takes his place at the keyhole. The light pouring through the keyhole is staggering: candelabras line the walls in a circle, each holding five, ten, twenty candles. The very room is alive with fire: she can feel the heat on her cheek in a concentrated beam. As her eye adjusts, she sees there is a wide circle of something white on the floor—Salt? Dust?—and at the edge of her vision she thinks she can see a pile of clothes, just on the opposite side of the white circle.

  Her heart sinks when she sees that the dark blue cloth is almost the exact shade Mrs. Torskeny was wearing when she last saw her.