City of Stairs

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “I have found nothing missing,” he grumbles. “The shelves are quite full. Over full, even.”

  “Me neither,” says Mulaghesh’s voice from the next aisle. “You don’t want us to climb the ladders, do you?”

  “Does it look like the ladders have been moved?” asks Shara. “Look at the dust.”

  A pause. “No.”

  “Then it would have been something on the first few shelves.”

  Shara directs her own attention to the lowest shelves of her remaining aisles and continues her search.

  Four brass oil lamps. A blank, polished wooden board. Children’s dolls. A spinning wheel whose wheel is slowly rotating, though there seems to be no flax, and certainly no spinner.

  Then, in the final spot, just ahead …

  Nothing.

  Maybe nothing. Nothing that she can see, at least.

  Shara thinks, Something missing?

  She strides toward the empty space. Her eyes are so used to seeing random material in the corner of her vision that she does not pay much attention to what’s below her. But as she nears the blank space on the shelf, she thinks, briefly, Did I see something shining on the ground?

  A wire, maybe?

  Something catches at her ankle; pulls, breaks—a tinny ping!

  There is a tinkle of metal from the next aisle over; a tiny steel key goes skittering across the boards.

  Immediately Sigrud roars, “Down! Now!”

  A puff of black smoke across the aisle to her right.

  Then a wild blossom of orange flames, and a concussive blast.

  A wave of heat batters her right side. Shara is lifted off the ground. She crashes into the shelves next to her, sending ancient treasures flying: a leather bag tumbles through the air, vomiting an endless stream of golden coins; a streamer of pale ribbon strikes the ground and turns to leaves.

  Dust and metal and old wood spin around her. She falls to the ground, paws at a shelf, but cannot stand.

  A fire rages to her right. Smoke coils and curls up on the ceiling, like a black cat finding sanctuary in a sunbeam.

  On her left, the statue of Taalhavras crashes off the shelf. Sigrud awkwardly clambers through to kneel beside her.

  “Are you all right?” he asks. He touches the side of her head. “You have lost some hair.…”

  “What damned miracle,” she pants, “was that?”

  “No miracle,” he says. He looks back at the spreading fire. “A mine. Incendiary, I think, or it did not ignite properly.”

  “What the hells is going on over there?” shouts Mulaghesh’s voice.

  Somewhere in the darkness many tiny voices chitter.

  Flames rush across the dust on the floor, hop onto one shelf, burrow into the blanket-wrapped corpse.

  “We need to leave,” says Sigrud. “This place, so dry and old—it will burn down in moments.”

  Shara looks out at the growing flames. The top of the shelf on her right is almost completely ablaze. “There was a blank space,” she murmurs, “on that shelf ahead. Something has been stolen.” She tries to point; her finger drunkenly wanders to the ground.

  “We need to leave,” says Sigrud again.

  There are pops out in the darkness. Something screeches in the fire.

  “What in shitting hells is going on over there?” bellows Mulaghesh.

  Shara looks at Sigrud. She nods.

  He effortlessly hauls her up onto one of his shoulders. “We are leaving!” he shouts to Mulaghesh.

  Sigrud sprints down the aisle, turns right, and makes a beeline for the stone door frame.

  A ruby-red glow filters through the forest of towering shelves.

  Decades, thinks Shara. Centuries. More.

  Gone. All gone.

  * * *

  Sigrud sets Shara down when they’re back in the Seat of the World.

  She coughs, then weakly asks, “How bad am I?”

  He asks her to wiggle her fingers and toes. She does so. “Good,” he says. “Mostly. Lost a lot of an eyebrow. Some hair. And your face is red. But not burned—not seriously. You are lucky.” He looks up at the inferno raging on the other side of the stone door frame. “I do not think whoever set that trap knew what they were doing. But when I heard it …” He shakes his head. “Only one thing in the world sounds like that.”

  Mulaghesh leans on one of her soldiers and, in between hacks, attempts to light another cigarillo. “So the sons of bitches mined the Warehouse? Just in case we followed?”

  A broiling heat comes pouring through the stone door frame.

  At every moment, thinks Shara, they’ve been one step ahead of me.

  “Let’s cave that damn tunnel in,” says Shara, “and be done with this damned place.”

  * * *

  In the darkness of the Warehouse, legends and treasures wither and die in the flames. Thousands of books turn to curling ash. Paintings are eaten by flame from the inside out. Wax pools on the floor, running down from the many candles stacked across the shelves, and makes a twisted rainbow across the wooden slats. In some of the deeper shadows, invisible voices sob in grief.

  Yet not all the items meet destruction.

  A large clay jug sits on a shelf, bathing in heat. Upon its glazed surface are many delicate black brushstrokes: sigils of power, of containment, of tethering.

  In the raging heat, the ink bubbles, cracks, and fades. The wax seal around its cork runs and drips down its side.

  Something within the bottle begins growling, slowly realizing its prison is fading away.

  The jug begins to tip back and forth. It plummets off its shelf to shatter on the ground.

  The jug erupts in darkness. Its contents expand rapidly, sending shelves toppling like dominoes. The jug’s prisoner keeps growing until its top nearly touches the ceiling of the Warehouse.

  One yellow eye takes in the flames, the smoke, the burning shelves.

  A high-pitched voice shrieks in victorious rage: Free! Free at last! Free at last!

  I am gentle with you, my children, for I love you.

  But love and gentleness do not breed purity: purity is earned through hardship and punishment and edification. So I have made these holy beings to help you find your way, and teach you the lessons I cannot bear to:

  Ukma, sky-strider and wall-walker, watcher and whisperer. He will see the weaknesses in you that you cannot, and he will make you fight them until you rise above yourself.

  Usina, traveler and wanderer, window-creeper and ash-woman. Beware the poor wretch you mistreat, for it may be Usina, and her vengeance is long and painful.

  And for those who cannot be purified, who will not repent, who will not know the shame that lives in all our hearts, there is Urav, sea-beast and river-swimmer, he of many teeth and the one bright eye, dweller of dark places. For those sinners who are blind to light, they will spend eternity within his belly, burning under his scornful gaze, until they understand and know my righteousness, my forgiveness, and my love.

  —THE KOLKASHTAVA, BOOK THREE

  YOU WILL KNOW PAIN

  Vod Drinsky sits on the banks of the Solda and tries to convince himself he is not as drunk as he feels. He has had most of a jug of plum wine, and he tells himself that if he was quite drunk then the wine would start to taste thick and sour, but so far the wine continues to taste quite terribly beautiful and sweet to his tongue. And he needs the wine to survive in the cold—why, look at how his breath frosts! Look at the huge ice floes in the Solda, the way the black water bubbles against the spots as thin and clear as glass! A cold night this is, so he thinks he should be forgiven his indulgence, yes?

  He looks east, toward the walls of Bulikov, huge white cliffs glimmering in the moonlight. He glowers at them and says, “I should!” A belch. “I should be forgiven.”

  As he watches, he realizes there is a queer, flickering orange light up the hill behind him.

  A fire. One of the warehouses in the complex up there is burning, it seems.

  “Oh,
dear.” He scratches his head. Should he call someone? That seems, at the moment, to be a difficult prospect, so he takes another swig of wine, and sighs and says again, “Oh, dear.”

  A dark shadow appears at the chain-link fence around the warehouse complex. Something low and huge.

  A long, stridulous shriek. The dark shape surges against the chain link fence; the woven wires stretch and snap like harp strings.

  Something big comes rushing down the hillside. Vod assumes it is a bear. It must be a bear, because only a bear could be so big, so loud, panting and growling.… Yet it sounds much, much larger than a bear.

  It comes to the tree line and leaps.

  Vod’s drunken eyes only see it for an instant. It is smoking—perhaps an escapee of the fire above. But through the smoke, he thinks he sees something thick and bulbous, something with many claws and tendrils gleaming in the moonlight.

  It strikes the river ice with a huge crack and plummets through into the dark waters below. Vod sees something shifting under the ice: now the thing looks long and flowing, like a beautiful, mossy flower blossom. With a graceful pump, it propels itself against the river current and toward the white walls of Bulikov. As it turns over, he sees a soft yellow light burning on its surface, a gentle phosphorescence that deeply disturbs him.

  The creature disappears downriver. He looks at the broken ice: it is at least two feet thick. Suggesting, then, that whatever leaped in was quite, quite heavy.…

  Vod lifts his jug, sniffs at it, and peers into its mouth, unsure if he wishes to buy this brand again.

  * * *

  Fivrei and Sohvrena sit under the Solda Bridge in a tiny shanty, nursing a weak lamp. It is an unusual time to fish on the Solda, but the two men know a secret few do: directly under the bridge, where the Solda is widest and deepest, dozens of trout congregate, presumably, as Fivrei claims, seeking food and warmth. “As far away from the wind as they can get,” he says each time he drops his black line into his tiny hole.

  “And they,” grumbles Sohvrena, “are wise.”

  “Do you complain? How many did you catch last night?”

  Sohvrena holds his mittened hands closer to the fire in the suspended brazier. “Six,” he admits.

  “And the night before that?”

  “Eight. But I must weigh the amount of fish I catch against the toes I lose.”

  “Pah,” says Fivrei. “A real fisherman must be made of sterner stuff. This is man’s work. It calls for a man.”

  But a man’s other work, thinks Sohvrena, lies in the soft, warm arms of a woman. Could he be unmanly for wishing he were there, rather than here?

  A soft tapping fills the shanty.

  “A catch?” asks Sohvrena.

  Fivrei inspects his tip-up, which is suspended over the six-inch hole in the ice; the white flag on the black line quivers slightly. “No,” he says. “Perhaps they play with it.”

  Then high-pitched squeaks join the tapping, like someone rubbing their hands against a pane of glass. Before Sohvrena can remark upon it, the flag on his own tip-up starts to dance. “The same here,” he says. “Not a catch, but it … moves.”

  Fivrei tugs his black line. “Maybe I am wro— Wait.” He tugs the line again. “It is caught on something.”

  Sohvrena watches the flag twitch on Fivrei’s tip-up. “Are you sure it’s not a catch?” asks Sohvrena.

  “It does not give. It’s like it’s caught on a rock. What is that intolerable squeaking?”

  “Maybe the wind?” Sohvrena, curious, tugs at his own line. It too does not give. “Mine is the same. Both of our lines are caught on something?” He shakes his head. “We had nothing on our lines a few minutes ago.”

  “Maybe flotsam is being washed downstream, and our lines are caught.”

  “Then why don’t our lines just break?” Sohvrena inspects the ice below them. Perhaps he is imagining things, but he imagines a soft yellow glow filtering through the frost in one spot.

  “What is that?” he says, pointing.

  Fivrei does a double take, and stares at the yellow light. “What is that?”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  The two men look at it, then at each other.

  The fire in the brazier has melted away some snow on the ice; they stand and begin to clear away more with their feet, until the ice becomes more transparent.

  Fivrei gapes. “What on …? By the heavens, what is …?”

  Something is stuck to the opposite side of the ice, directly underneath them. Sohvrena is reminded of a starfish he once saw, brought back from the coast, but vastly huger, nearly thirty feet in diameter, and with many, many more arms, some of them wide, some of them thin and delicate. And in the center, a bright, glowing light, and a many-toothed mouth that sucks against the ice, its black gums squeaking.

  The taps and pops increase. Sohvrena looks up at the ends of the beast’s arms and sees many tiny claws scraping at the ice around them in a perfect circle.

  “Oh, no,” says Sohvrena.

  The light blinks twice. Sohvrena thinks, An eye. It’s an eye.

  With a great crack, the ice gives way below them, and a mouth ringed with a thousand teeth silently opens.

  * * *

  The Vohskoveney Tea Shop always does a roaring trade whenever the weather dips; Magya Vohskoveney herself understands that it is not necessarily the quality of the tea that draws in customers—since she herself holds the opinion that her tea brewers are untalented clods—but between the endless flow of steaming water, the bubbling cauldrons, and the dozens of little gas lamps lit throughout her establishment, Magya’s tea shop is always churning with a sweltering humidity that would seem suffocating in normal weather, yet is downright inviting in the brutal dark of winter.

  The tea trade has rocketed on the Continent in the past decades: what was previously considered a distasteful Saypuri eccentricity has become much more appealing as the climate on the Continent grows colder and colder with each year. And there is the additional factor that Magya has discovered a mostly forgotten old bit of folk herbalism: teas brewed with a handful of poppy fruit tend to feel so much more … relaxing than other types of tea. And after implementing this secret recipe, Magya’s trade has quintupled.

  Magya squints at the crowd from the kitchen door. Her customers cling to tables like refugees seeking shelter. Their hair curls and coils and glistens in the heat. The brass lamps cast prisms of ocher light on the soaking wood walls. The west windows, which normally look out on a scenic stretch of river, are so fogged over they look like toast with too much cream.

  One man at the bar paws his cup limply, blinking owlishly; Magya stops a waiter, nods at the man, says, “Too much,” and sends the boy on his way.

  “A good trade, for the hour,” says one of her servers, stopping to mop his brow.

  “Too good, in fact,” says Magya. “Everything is full but the second-floor balcony.”

  “How is that too good?”

  “We shan’t let greed overcome wisdom, my love.” Magya taps her chin, thinking. “No special batches for the next week.”

  Her server attempts to control his astonishment. “None?”

  “None. I’d prefer not to arouse any suspicion.”

  “But what will we say when people complain about the … the quality of the tea?”

  “We will say,” Magya answers, “that we have been forced to use a new type of barrel that’s affected the flavor. I don’t know, some Saypuri trade rule. They’ll believe that. And we’ll tell them we shall be rectifying the situation shortly.”

  Her server is rudely hailed by a couple at the bar, a middle-aged man with an arm thrown around a very giddy and curvy young woman. In my grandmother’s day, thinks Magya, such a public display would get you flogged. How times have changed.… “Go on,” she says. “Give them something to fill their mouths, and shut them up.”

  Her server departs. Magya’s eye, always seeking trouble, finds something concerning on the upper balcony: one o
f the lights in her lamps has begun to flicker.

  She grunts, climbs the steps, and sees she is wrong: the lamp is not flickering, but it is jumping on its chain, hopping up and swishing about like a fish on a line.

  “What in the world …?” Magya looks up the chain to the beam it is attached to.

  She watches, awed, as the beam actually buckles up, as if something on the roof is pulling at it. There are even cracks in the plaster of the roof, which spread like fractures in ice bearing too much weight.

  Magya’s first instinct is to look to the window, but she remembers that the windows are opaque with condensation.… Yet she sees she is mistaken again: something has partially wiped the condensation away from the outside of the west windows.

  But what could do that, thinks Magya, as we’re on the river, thirty feet up?

  She goes to the window, wipes away the inside moisture, and peers through the blurry glass.

  The first thing she sees is a single yellow light at the river shore below.

  The second thing she sees is something large, black, and glistening stuck to the wall of the shop, like a tree root covered in tar, yet it is uncoiling, adhering itself to more and more of the wall.

  And the third thing she sees is right in front of her: what appears to be a long, slender black finger rises up on the other side of the window, and the dark claw at its end reaches forward and delicately taps the glass once.

  “What …?” says Magya.

  Then a burst of thunder, a rain of plaster dust and wood shards, and the treasured humidity of the Vohskoveney Tea Shop goes ballooning up into the winter night sky in a roiling rush as its ceiling and upper wall are completely torn off.

  Magya blinks as the wind assails her. Most of her patrons are too stunned to scream, but some manage to find their throats. The lower wall follows suit, crumbing out onto the frozen river, pulling the second-floor balcony—and Magya Vohskoveney—with it.

  As Magya falls, she sees the same fate has befallen many of her customers. We shall be dashed on the ice, she thinks madly, like a handful of eggs. But in those unending seconds as she tumbles over and over, she sees the ice is not there: there is only the yellow light, the churning of many tentacles, and a quivering, many-toothed mouth juddering open.