City of Stairs

WHAT IS SOWN

Shara lies in the tub of warm water in the dark room, trying not to think. Sheer white undergarments cling and suck to her flesh. Her eyes are wrapped with bandages to keep the light out, yet still she sees bursts of colored light and colorful words, and her head still thrums and bangs with a monstrous migraine. She is not so sure she wouldn’t have preferred simply dying from the philosopher’s stones: to deal with a hangover this hellish and psychedelic is something she did not anticipate.

She knows she is lucky to receive any care at all. The hospitals of Bulikov are overwhelmed with the injured and the maimed. It is only here, in the hospital at the governor’s quarters, that Shara and her comrades could be looked after.

She hears a door open, and someone enters in soft shoes.

Shara sits up and hoarsely asks, “How many?”

The person slowly sits in the chair beside the tub.

“How many?” she says again.

Pitry’s voice says, “We’re over two thousand now.”

Shara shuts her eyes behind the bandages. She feels hot tears on her cheeks.

“General Noor informs us that this is, despite everything, actually a good thing. So much of Bulikov was destroyed—well, the amount of Bulikov that was there before all the buildings from Old Bulikov appeared, I mean. But then, well, almost all of those new buildings were destroyed when you killed Kolkan.”

“It wasn’t Kolkan,” says Shara hoarsely. “But kindly get to the point.”

“Well, erm, General Noor says that two thousand casualties is a low figure, considering the amount of destruction. He thinks you distracted Kolk— Ah, he thinks you distracted the Divinity, slowed it down, which gave the city time to evacuate. And many of the people, as I understand it, had been transformed into some kind of birds. And a few hours after the Divinity died, they all started turning back into people—confused, cold, and, erm, totally nude.”

“You don’t say.”

“Yes. The hills around Bulikov were suddenly filled with hundreds of naked people. Hypothermia became a concern, though we’ve gathered and clothed and treated them as best they could. Noor has asked if you could possibly explain this.”

“It was a trick that Jukov used to do, worked on a mass scale,” says Shara. “When he wanted to hide someone, he turned them into a flock of starlings. I expect that, in order to save people from the fate Kolkan had forced them into, Jukov simply extended this protection to them: rather than see harm, they took to the skies as flocks of birds. How did so many die?”

Pitry coughs. “Most perished when the buildings collapsed, but many casualties occurred during the evacuation.… Apparently it was more of a stampede.”

What a neutered word is “casualties,” thinks Shara. And how pleasant it must be, to sit behind a desk and pare a lost life down to a statistic.

“It’s all a tragedy, Pitry,” says Shara. “A horrible, monstrous tragedy.”

“Well, yes, but … it was their god, wasn’t it? Doing what they asked of it?”

“No,” says Shara. Then she adds, “And yes.”

“General Noor is aware that your recovery might be more, ah, mental than physical … but he has asked me to see if I can retrieve clarification on this.”

“You’ve been promoted, Pitry. Congratulations.”

Pitry coughs again, uncomfortable. “Somewhat, yes. I am assisting the regional governor’s office now. Mostly because almost all of the embassy and polis governor’s staff is … indisposed.”

“You behaved quite admirably during the fight. You deserve it. How is Mulaghesh?”

“She’s stable. The arm … could not be saved. It had been quite crushed. It was, at least, not her good arm.”

Shara groans.

“Mulaghesh takes it in stride, however. She insists on smoking in the hospital, something that has upset everyone. But she will not listen. Sigrud, however …”

Shara tenses up. Please, she thinks. Not him, too.

“He has stupefied all the doctors.”

“How so?”

“Well, by being alive, first of all,” says Pitry. “And while removing the glass—a full three pounds of glass—and shrapnel from his wounds, they discovered …” The crackle of paper as he pulls out a list. “… four bolt tips, one bullet, five darts—some kind of exotic, tribal things …” From Qivos, thinks Shara. I told him to get a doctor that time. “… and six teeth that appear to be from some kind of shark. The doctors concluded that most of these were from injuries or altercations that took place, ah, well before this battle.”

“That sounds about right. But he will survive?”

“He will. He will probably need to stay in the hospital for some time, but—yes. He looks to make a full recovery, despite everything, unbelievably. And he seems quite … merry.”

“Merry? Sigrud?”

“Ahm, yes. He asked me how I was; then he gave me some money and told me to procure”—Pitry coughs once more—“uh, a woman of the evening.”

Shara shakes her head. My, my. You leave the world for a handful of days and hear rumors of everything changing.

“I am sorry to ask,” says Pitry, “but General Noor has been quite insistent with me on the matter of, erm, the issue of the Divinity, or Divinities, or …”

She does not answer. She slowly sits back in the bath.

“Even if you have no concrete conclusions … Even if you have only guesses about what happened, I’m sure he will be happy to consider those.”

Shara sighs and lets the warm water slosh into her ears. Let it wash away my memories, she thinks. Wash it all away. She summarizes her conclusions about Jukov hiding in the pane of glass with Kolkan. “I suspect it was also Jukov himself who sank the Seat of the World through Divine means, to secure his hiding place. But just before he did so, he sent out a familiar—perhaps a mhovost disguised as himself—to go to the Kaj, and surrender. This was what the Kaj executed, and when he did, Jukov essentially pulled the strings on many of his Divine creations, allowing all he built to fall to ruin … all so no one would believe he was still alive.”

“Why would he do all this?”

“Revenge, I expect,” says Shara. “He could be a very merry Divinity, unless you crossed him. Then he was wildly vindictive. Jukov knew that the Kaj had a weapon against which he had no power, so I believe he opted to wait and return once the threat had passed. I am not sure how he planned to do that. Perhaps he arranged some sort of method of contacting anyone who looked for a Divinity hard enough—that would explain how he reached Volka Votrov, at least. That is just a guess, as I said. But I doubt if Jukov expected the side effects of submitting to imprisonment with Kolkan.”

“Being fused together?”

“Yes. The warped thing I met told me the prison was made for only Kolkan. To stay there, Jukov was slowly but surely melded with Kolkan, perhaps absorbed by him. They were two diametrically opposed Divinities—chaos and order, lust and discipline.… It was Jukov, after all, who convinced the other Divinities to imprison Kolkan in the first place. The end result was the mad, confused thing that begged me to kill it.”

“Noor wishes me to confirm that no more Divinities will be appearing.”

“I can confirm only that no one knows the whereabouts of Olvos, who is now the last surviving Divinity. But no one has seen her for nearly a thousand years, and I doubt if she’d ever be a threat. Olvos has shown no interest in worldly matters since her disappearance, which was well before the Kaj was ever born.”

“And … we also wish to confirm that the powers you experienced using the philosopher’s stones cannot be duplicated.”

“That I cannot say for sure.… But probably. More and more, the Continent is less Divine, which means that the philosopher’s stones allow access to less and less power.”

“Is that all it took back in the Continent’s heyday? Take a handful of those pills, and attain godlike powers?”

Shara smirks. “In case you have forgotten, the Divinity almost crushed me like a bug once I got its attention. My powers were definitely not godlike. But that is how things used to work here: there are records of priests and acolytes taking copious quantities of philosopher’s stones and performing astounding miracles—and frequently dying shortly thereafter.” She rubs her head. “Frankly, I almost envy them.”

Pitry is silent for a few moments. Then: “The papers in Ghaladesh … They think you are a h—”

“Don’t,” says Shara.

“But you are being cele—”

“I don’t want to hear it. They don’t know what it means. They should be mourning. It might have been mostly Continentals who died, yes. It might have been Continentals who—confused, misled—freed their Continental god and asked it to attack us. But I was asked many times if we could help the Continent in any way before this catastrophe. I think it was already too late when I heard those pleas. But I was warned that this would happen, and I chose to listen to policy instead.”

“Noor is committed to helping the survivors, Chief Diplomat. Saypur will help Bulikov survive.”

“Survive,” says Shara, sinking down. “Survive and do what?”

Water fills her ears and washes over her face, yet among the sloshing and bubbles she imagines she hears the voice of Efrem Pangyui—one death among thousands, yes, but one she feels will plague her until her last days.

Three days later Shara tours the recovery efforts with General Noor’s executive committee. The armored car bustles and bangs over the broken roads of the city, not helping Shara’s headache, which has only faintly receded. She is forced to wear dark glasses, as the sight of sunlight still pains her—doctors have informed her that this damage may be permanent. She finds this somehow quite easy to accept: I have looked upon things not meant to be seen, and I have not escaped unscathed.

“I assure you, this is not necessary,” says General Noor, bristling with disapproval. “We have matters well in hand. And you should be in recovery, Chief Diplomat Komayd.”

“It is my duty as chief diplomat of Bulikov,” she says, “to concern myself with the welfare of my assigned city. I will go where I wish. And I have some personal matters to attend to.”

What she sees wounds her heart: parents and children covered in bandages, field clinics packed to bursting with patients, shanty houses, rows and rows of wooden coffins, some of them very small.…

And Vo, lost amidst the carnage.

If I had discovered Volka sooner, thinks Shara, this might have never happened.

“It’s like the Blink,” she says. “It’s like how things were after the Blink.”

“We did tell you,” says Noor quietly at one field tent, “that you would not like what you saw.”

“I knew I would not like what I saw,” says Shara. “But it is my responsibility to see it.”

“It is not all gloom. We have had some local help,” Noor gestures to a section of a field clinic staffed by bald, barefoot Continentals in pale orange robes. “These people have swarmed our offices, and more or less taken over in some cases. They are an invaluable gift, I must say. They relieve us as we await more aid from Ghaladesh.”

One of the Olvoshtani monks—a short, thickset woman—turns to Shara and bows deeply.

Shara bows back. She finds that she is weeping.

“Chief Diplomat,” says Noor, startled. “Are you …? Would you like us to take you back?”

“No, no,” says Shara. “No, it’s quite all right.” She walks to the Olvoshtani monk, bows again, and says, “Thank you so much for all you do.”

“It is nothing,” says the monk. She smiles kindly. Her eyes are wide and strangely red-brown, the color of an ember. “Please don’t weep. Why do you weep so?”

“I just … It is so good of you come unasked-for.”

“But we were asked,” says the monk. “Suffering asks for us. We have to come. Please, don’t cry so.” She takes Shara’s hand.

Something dry and square brushes up against Shara’s palm: A note?

“Thank you anyway,” says Shara. “Thank you so much.”

The monk bows again, and Shara rejoins Noor’s staff in her tour. When she is alone, she quickly reaches into her pocket and takes out the note the monk gave her:

Shara walks to a fire burning in a campsite and sets the note alight.

The air in the countryside outside of Bulikov is cold, but it is not as cold as it was. Shara watches as her breath makes only a small cloud of frost, and she realizes spring is coming. The seasons ignore even the death of a Divinity.

The hills beyond the walls of the governor’s quarters are given soft shape by the stars above. The moon is a white smudge behind the clouds; the road a bone-colored ribbon.

There is a footfall from the darkness. Shara looks up and confirms no guards are posted. “Are you there?” she asks.

An answering whisper: “This way.” At the edge of the forest, a gleam of candlelight flickers and is quickly hidden.

Shara walks toward where she saw the candlelight. Someone throws back a hood, revealing the sheen of a bald pate. As she nears she can make out the face of the female monk from the clinic.

“Who are you?” asks Shara.

“A friend,” the monk says. She gestures to Shara to come closer. “Thank you for coming. Are you alone?”

“I am.”

“Good. I will take you the rest of the way. Please, follow me closely. Very few have taken this road; it can be somewhat dangerous.”

“Who are you taking me to?”

“To another friend. There are still many questions you have—I could see it in you. I know someone who might be able to answer some of them.” She turns and leads Shara into the forest.

Spokes of moonlight slide over the monk’s shoulders as they walk. “Can you tell me anything more?”

“I could tell you much more,” says the monk. “But it would do you no good.”

Shara, irritated, contents herself to follow.

The road bends and winds and turns. She questions the wisdom of meeting outside the governor’s quarters; then she notes that she never noticed the forest here was quite so large.…

The terrain slopes up. Shara and the monk make a careful passage across rocky trenches, white stone creek beds, through copses of pines.

Shara thinks, When did they plant pines out here?

Her labored breath creates huge clouds of frost. They crest a stony hill, and she looks out on a snow-laden, ivory landscape. But I thought it was getting warmer.… “What is this place?”

The monk gestures forward without looking back. Her bare feet make tiny tracks in the snow.

They tread down over the frozen hills, across a frozen river. The world is alabaster, colorless, curls and slashes of moonlight and ice on a background of black. But ahead, a bright red fire flickers in a copse of pine trees.

I know this, Shara thinks. I’ve read about this.

They enter the copse of trees. Logs are laid by the bonfire to serve as seats, and a stone shelf leans against the trunk of a tree, bearing small stone cups and a crude tin kettle. Shara expects someone to greet them, perhaps stepping out from behind a tree, but there is no one.

“Where are they?” asks Shara. “Where is the friend you brought me to meet?”

The monk walks to the stone shelf and pours two cups.

“Are they not here yet?” asks Shara.

“They are here,” says the monk. She takes off her robe. Her back is naked: below her robe she wears nothing but a skirt of furs.

She turns and hands Shara one of the cups: it is warm, as if it has been sitting on an open flame. But it was only ever held in her hand, thinks Shara.

“Drink,” says the monk. “Warm yourself.”

Shara does not. She stares at the woman suspiciously.

“Do you not trust me?” asks the monk.

“I don’t know you.”

The monk smiles. “Are you so sure?” The firelight catches her eyes, which glint like bright orange jewels. Even when she steps away from the fire, her face appears lit by a warm, fluttering light.

A light in the dark.

No, thinks Shara. No. No, it can’t be.

“Olvos?” she whispers.

“Such a wise girl,” the monk says, and sits.

“How …?” says Shara. “How …?”

“You still have not drunk,” says Olvos. “You should try it. It’s good.”

Shara, mystified, drinks from the stone cup and finds the Divinity is correct: the concoction is warm and spicy and feels like it puts a small, soft ember in her belly. Then she realizes it’s familiar: “Wait.… Is this tea?”

“Yes. Sirlang, from Saypur. I’ve come to be rather fond of it, myself. Though it can be an utter bitch to get the good stuff.”

Shara gapes at her, the cup, the fire, the woods behind her. She manages, “But I … I thought you were gone.”

“I am gone,” says Olvos. “Look behind you again, around you. Do you see Bulikov? No. I am gone, and happy to be gone. It’s pretty pleasant to be here, alone with my thoughts, away from all that noise.” Shara is silent as she thinks, After all this, have I walked right into a trap?

“You’re now wondering,” says Olvos, “if I have brought you here to exact revenge on you.”

Shara cannot hide her alarm.

“Well, I am gone, but I am still a Divinity. And this is my place.” Olvos pats the log she sits on. “I can never lose this. And those who join me here, their hearts cannot be hidden from me. You wonder, Shara Komayd, great-granddaughter of Avshakta si Komayd, the last Kaj of Saypur, if I have lured you away from the Continent to get you on your own and destroy you—to destroy you for your family’s crimes, for your crimes, for the countless destruction your wars and laws have incurred.” Olvos’s eyes gleam bright, like rings of fire half hidden below her lids; then the fire in her eyes dims. “But that, as they say, would be stupid. A very stupid, silly, useless thing to do. And I am a bit disappointed you would expect such things from me. After all, I left the world when the Continent chose to begin its empire. Not just because it was wrong, but because it was a very shortsighted decision: time has a way of returning all heedlessness to those who commit it … even if they are Divine.”

Shara is still trying to come to grips with the reality of what is happening, yet Olvos is so profoundly unlike anything she expected a god to be that she is not sure what to think: Olvos’s manner is like that of a fishwife or a seamstress rather than a Divinity. “That’s why you left the Continent? Because you disagreed with the Great Expansion?”

Olvos produces a long, skinny pipe. She holds its bowl directly into the fire, puffs at it, and watches Shara as if wondering what sort of company she’ll be. “You read Mr. Pangyui’s notes, didn’t you?”

“Y-yes? How did y—”

“Then you know he suspected that the minds of the Divine were not always their own, one could say.”

“He thought that … that there was some kind of subconscious vote taking place.”

“A crude term for it,” says Olvos. “But not wholly inaccurate. We are—or were—Divinities, Shara Komayd: we draw power from the hearts and minds and beliefs of a people. But that which you draw power from, you are also powerless before.” Olvos uses the end of her pipe to draw a half-circle in the mud. “A people believe in a god”—she completes the circle—“and the god tells them what to believe. It’s a cycle, like water flowing into the ocean, then up to the skies, and into rain, which falls and flows into the ocean. But it is different in that ideas have weight. They have momentum. Once an idea starts, it spreads and grows and gets heavier and heavier until it can’t be resisted, even by the Divine.” Olvos stares into the fire, rubbing the mud off of her pipe with her thumb and forefinger.

“Ideas like what?” asks Shara.

“I first noticed it during the Night of the Convening. I felt ideas and thoughts and compulsions in me that were not my own. I did things not because I wanted to do them, but because I felt I had to—like I was a character in a story someone else was writing. That night I chose, like all the other Divinities, to unite, form Bulikov, and live in what we thought was peace.… But I was profoundly troubled by this experience.”

“Then how could you leave?” asks Shara. “If you were tied or tethered to the wishes of your people, how could they let you abandon the world?”

Olvos gives Shara a scornful look: Can’t you put this together yourself?

“Unless,” Shara says, “your people asked you to leave.…”

“That they did.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Well, I thought I had done a pretty good job with them,” says Olvos, with a touch of pride. She glances at Shara’s cup. “Did you drink all of that already?”

“Erm … Yes?”

“My goodness.” She shakes her head, tutting, and pours Shara another cup. “That should have been enough to bring a horse back from the dead. Anyway … If you do these things well—and you, as a bit of a politician, probably understand—they sort of start to perpetuate themselves. I learned very early on not to speak to my folk from on high, but to get down with them, beside them, showing them how to act rather than telling them. And I suggested that they should do the same with one another: that they didn’t need a book of rules to tell them what to do and what not to do, but experience and action. But when I started to feel this … this momentum inside of me—these ideas that pushed and pulled at me, threatening to pull me with them and pull everyone else with me—I consulted with my closest followers, and they just”—Olvos is grinning with gleeful incredulity—“they just said they didn’t really need me anymore.”

“You’re joking.”

“No,” says Olvos. “Humanity’s relationship with the Divine is one of mutual give and take, and we mutually opted to part ways. But this perpetuation—setting up a way of thinking, and just letting it run—it doesn’t always yield good results.” She shakes her head. “Poor Kolkan … He never really understood himself, or his people.”

“He spoke to me,” says Shara. “He told me he had depended on you, in a way.”

“Yes,” says Olvos sadly. “Kolkan and I were the first two Divinities. We were the first to really figure out how it all worked, I suppose. But Kolkan always had a little more trouble running his show. He tended to let his people tell him what to do, and I watched from afar as he sat down and listened to them.… Like I told them all when I left, it just wasn’t going to end up well.”

“So you don’t think Kolkan was wholly responsible for what he did?”

Olvos sniffs. “Humans are strange, Shara Komayd. They value punishment because they think it means their actions are important—that they are important. You don’t get punished for doing something unimportant, after all. Just look at the Kolkashtanis—they think the whole world was set up to shame and humiliate and punish and tempt them.… It’s all about them, them, them, them! The world is full of bad things, hurtful things, but it’s still all about them! And Kolkan just gave them what they wanted.”

“That’s … madness.”

“No, it’s vanity. And I have watched from the sidelines as this same vanity guided the Divinities onto paths that would bring ruin upon them and their people—vanity I predicted, and warned them about, but that they chose to ignore. This vanity is not new, Miss Komayd. And it has not stopped because we Divinities are gone. It has simply migrated.”

“Migrated to Saypur, you mean?”

Olvos bobs her head from side to side—not quite a yes, not quite a no. “But we now find ourselves at a turning point in history, when we can either listen to our vanity, and continue down the path we’re on … or choose a new path altogether.”

“So you have come to me to try and change this?” asks Shara.

“Well,” says Olvos, “you weren’t exactly my first choice.…”

Something in the fire pops; sparks go dancing to hiss in the mud.

“You approached Efrem, didn’t you?” says Shara.

“I did,” says Olvos.

“You met him on the river while he was sketching, and spoke to him.”

“I did a lot more than that,” admits Olvos. “I do intervene now and again, Shara Komayd. Well, maybe not intervene—‘nudge’ might be a better term for it. For Efrem, I helped guide his research, prod him in the directions he would find most useful, checked in on him now and again.”

“He would have loved to talk to you as I am now.”

“I’ve no doubt. He was such a bright, compassionate creature, I hoped he would find a way to divert all the discontent that was building. But it seems I was wrong. Such old rage can only be exorcised through violence, perhaps. Though I still hope we can disprove this, eventually.”

Shara drinks the rest of her tea and remembers something that troubled her when she first read his journal. “Was it you who placed the journal from the Kaj’s soldier on his desk? Because I knew Efrem, and he would never overlook or miss something so important.”

Olvos nods, her face distressed. “I did. And that might have been my biggest oversight. I had hoped he would understand the grave sensitivity of those letters. But he did not. He felt that information should be shared with everyone.… He did not keep any one specific truth—just the truth as he saw it. It was his greatest virtue, and it was his undoing.”

“But … but what could have been so important in those letters?” asks Shara. “The black lead?”

Olvos sets her pipe down. “No, no. Well, a little … Let me ask you—do you not wonder, Miss Shara Komayd, how your great-grandfather managed to produce the black lead?”

“He experimented on his household’s djinnifrit—didn’t he?”

“He did,” Olvos says grimly. “That is true. But even so, the odds that he would ever produce such a material are extremely unlikely, are they not?”

Shara’s brain rifles through everything she has memorized, but finds nothing.

“Would you not say,” Olvos asks slowly, “that the creation of the black lead was nothing short of miraculous?”

The word dislodges a stone in her mind that tumbles into her sea of thoughts.

Efrem’s writings: We do not know much about the Kaj. We do not even know who his mother was.

“And not everyone was capable of the miraculous,” says Olvos.

A soft wind dances through the copse of trees, and the coals flare bright.

Efrem’s journal: Djinnifrit servants prepared their masters’ beds, served them food, wine.… I cannot imagine what everyone would say if it was revealed that the Kaj had been pampered in such a way.

A log lazily rolls over in the fire like a whale in the sea.

And when she saw Jukov: My own progeny, my own Blessed child rises up against us and slaughters us like sheep!

Snowflakes twirl down and die silently as they near the fire.

“The Blessed were legends and heroes, Shara Komayd,” says Olvos quietly. “Offspring of the Divine and mortals whom the world went out of its way to accommodate.”

Shara’s head spins. “You … You aren’t saying that …”

“I suppose no one guessed who his mother was,” remarks Olvos thoughtfully, “because no one would have ever believed it.”

“Her name was Lisha,” says Olvos quietly. “As the offspring of a Divinity, she was moderately powerful in her own right. But she was a sweet creature: softhearted, quiet, not too terribly bright but eager to help … and also very eager to help her father.” She sucks at her pipe. “Jukov’s priests wanted to shore up support among Saypur, for it was Saypur’s corn and grapes that kept Jukoshtan afloat. So he offered to rent”—the word makes her face wrinkle in disgust—“his daughter to the Saypuri who would best facilitate their needs, for a time. It was not meant to be anything sexual: it was meant to be purely servitude. But then, something happened that Jukov did not expect: she and the man who eventually won her servitude fell in love.

“They kept it a secret. She stayed on as his … his maid.” Shara senses a cold rage surfacing in Olvos. “And when she bore a child, the nature of its parentage was so dangerous and so terrible that even the child could not know.”

Shara feels ill. “The Kaj,” she whispers.

“Yes. His father died when he was young. He was never told that the Divine servant in the house was his mother. Because, I think, he grew up hating the Divine; and his mother—being sweet, softhearted, and not too bright—did not wish to upset him. Then Mahlideshi happened.” Something falls into the snow and hisses: Shara sees it was a hot teardrop falling from Olvos’s cheek. “And Avshakta si Komayd decided something must be done.”

Olvos tries to speak again, but cannot.

“So he tortured his own mother,” Shara says, “in order to find out what could kill the Divine.”

Olvos manages a nod.

“And though he didn’t know it, because he was Blessed, he was able to actually produce something, and with it, overthrow the Continent.”

“After killing his despicable little household servant, of course.”

Shara shuts her eyes. The awfulness of it all is almost too much for her.

“I have lived with this burden for so long,” Olvos says. “I could only ever hint and suggest it to Mr. Pangyui—I have never actually told anyone. But it’s good, I think, to speak it aloud. It’s good to tell someone what happened to my daughter.”

“Your daughter? You mean you and Jukov …”

“He could be a very charming man,” admits Olvos, “and though I could tell there was an awful madness in him, still I was drawn in.”

“I sympathize,” says Shara.

“Clever Jukov figured it all out when the Kaj invaded. He understood that he had, through his own pride and arrogance, fathered the death of the Continent and the other Divinities. Before he hid himself with Kolkan, his last bitter act was to use a familiar to tell this fearsome invader the truth of his parentage.”

“I see,” says Shara. “The Kaj fell into a deep depression after killing Jukov, and practically drank himself to death.”

“Bitterness begets bitterness,” Olvos says. “Shame begets shame.”

“ ‘What is reaped is what is sown,’ ” Shara says, “ ‘and what is sown is what is reaped.’ ”

Olvos smiles. “You flatter me with my own words.” The smile dissolves. “I have lived with this knowledge for so long.… And for all those years, I knew that the balance of power in this world, this brave new land of politics and machinery, was predicated purely on lies. Saypur and the Continent hate one another, completely oblivious that each is now the product of the other. They are not separate—they are intertwined. When Efrem came, I decided it was time this secret got out. But you do understand what this means … for you.”

Shara is terribly aware of her breathing. She can feel her pulse in her forehead and behind her ears. “Yes,” she says weakly. “It means me, and my … my family …”

The fire is so hot her eyes feel like they simmer.

“… We have a trace of the Divine in us.”

“Yes.”

“We are … We are the very things our country fears.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why Kolkan and Jukov thought I was you.”

“Probably, yes.”

Shara is weeping: not in sorrow, but in rage. “And so … So is nothing I did true?”

“True?”

“The world shifts to accommodate the Blessed, doesn’t it? It helps them achieve great things, not because of how they are doing it, but because of who they are. Did nothing I did really … count?”

Olvos puffs at her pipe. “You forget, of course,” she says, “that the nature of the Blessed becomes diluted through the generations. Often very, very quickly.” She looks Shara up and down, her eyes glimmering. “Do you feel that you have had an easy life, Miss Komayd?”

Shara wipes her eyes. “N-no.”

“Have you gotten everything you wanted?”

She remembers Vo falling to the ground, pale and still. “No.”

“Do you think,” asks Olvos, “that this will change anytime soon?” Shara shakes her head. If anything, she thinks, I am willing to bet my life is about to get much, much worse.

“You are not Blessed, Shara Komayd,” says Olvos. “Though you are distantly related to me, to Jukov, to the Divine, the world treats you as it does anyone else—with utter indifference. Consider yourself fortunate. Your other relatives, though … That might be different.”

A cold wind tickles Shara’s neck.

Another snap from the fire, and sparks go dancing.

“I see,” she says.

Olvos is watching her from behind hooded eyes, appraising her. “I have told you quite a bit, Shara Komayd, information few else know or dream of. I wonder—what do you plan to do with it?”

Rage and pity and grief and sorrow twine around in Shara’s mind, looping and curling like fireworks, and somewhere underneath all their chaotic designs—all their frenzied, fruitless spins and chases—an idea comes bubbling up.

Olvos nods. “Good. Perhaps I was wiser than I thought. The Divine do not always know themselves: maybe we are but tools in the hands of fate like any other mortal … and perhaps my selection of Efrem was meant solely to bring you here, to me.”

Shara is breathing slowly. “I think,” she says, “that I would like to go back to my quarters now.”

“Good,” says Olvos. She uses her pipe to point between two trees. “If you walk through that gap, you will find yourself in your bedroom. You may leave whenever you wish.”

Shara stands and looks down at Olvos, feeling torn. “Will I ever see you again?”

“Do you wish to see me again?”

“I … I think I would enjoy that, actually.”

“Well … I think both you and I know that if you make the choices I expect you will make, and if you are successful, your path will take you far away from these shores. I do not wish to leave this place—I don’t tell my followers what to do, but it’s nice to keep an eye on them.” She taps her pipe against her finger. “But if you were ever to return, I might make myself available for a visit.”

“Good,” says Shara. “I have just one more question.”

“Yes?”

“Where did you come from?”

“Me?”

“You and the other Divinities—all of you. Where did you come from? Do you exist simply because people believe you exist? Or are you something … else?”

Olvos considers the question, grave and sad. “That is … complicated.” She sucks her teeth. “Divinities have the very odd ability to overwrite reality. Did you know that?”

“Of course.”

“But not just your reality. Not just the reality of your people—but the reality of us, our own. Each time people believed I came from somewhere new, I came from that place—and it was like I’d never come from any other place, and I never knew what I was before.” She takes a breath. “I am Olvos. I pulled the burning, golden coal of the world from the fires of my own heart. I fashioned the stars from my own teardrops when I mourned for the sun during the very first night. And I was born when all the dark of the world became too heavy, and scraped against itself, and made a spark—and that spark was me. This is all I know. I do not know what I was before I knew these things. I have looked, and tried to understand my origins—but history, as you may know, is much like a spiral staircase that gives the illusion of going up, but never quite goes anywhere.”

“But why did Saypuris never have a Divinity of their own? Were we simply unlucky?”

“You saw what happened, Shara,” says Olvos. “And you know your history. Are you so sure Saypur was unlucky to lack a Divinity?” She stands and kisses Shara on the brow. Her lips are so warm they almost burn. “I would tell you to go with luck, my child,” she says. “But I think you will choose to make your own.”

Shara steps away from the firelight and through the two trees.

She turns back to say good-bye but sees only the blank wall of her bedroom over her shoulder. She turns around, confused, and is met by her bed.

She sits down upon the bed and thinks.

“Turyin,” whispers Shara. “Turyin!”

Mulaghesh grunts and cracks an eye. “By the seas,” she says croakily. “I’m happy you visited, but did it have to be at two in the morning?”

Mulaghesh is not the hale and hearty woman Shara knew mere days ago: she has lost a lot of weight during her stay in the hospital, and both of her eyes are still blackened. Her left arm ends just below the elbow in rings of tight white bandages. She sees Shara staring. “I hope this”—she raises her wounded arm—“won’t keep me from swimming in Javrat. But at least I still have my drinking hand.”

“You’re all right?”

“I’m all right. How are you, girl? You look … alive. That’s good. The black glasses are, uh, interesting looking, I guess.…”

“I am alive,” says Shara. “And, Turyin, I wish that … that for you, this had never—”

“Save it,” says Mulaghesh. “I’ve given the very speech you’re giving. But when I gave it, it was to boys and girls I knew weren’t going to live. I’m alive. And I’m grateful for it. And you are not to blame. But it does give me a damn good excuse to transfer out.”

Shara smiles weakly.

“I am still getting transferred, right? Javrat’s still happening—right?”

“There is a good chance, yes,” says Shara.

“That sounds like the out clause of a contract. And I don’t remember signing a contract. I remember saying, ‘If I do this, I get stationed in Javrat,’ and I remember you saying, ‘Okay.’ Do you remember differently?”

“I have called in some favors with some middle managers in the Ministry,” says Shara.

“There’s an ‘and’ or a ‘but’ coming.…”

“True.” Shara pushes her glasses up on her nose. “And I am taking a train to Ahanashtan in two hours, and sailing home to Ghaladesh tomorrow.”

“Okay?” says Mulaghesh, suspicious.

“If I disappear—I will be blunt here, and say that if I am secretly murdered—during that trip, or when I arrive in Saypur, then you will be stationed in Javrat within a matter of months.”

“If you’re what?”

“If, however, I survive my trip,” continues Shara, “then much about the current predicament will change.”

“Like what?”

“Like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

“How will that change?”

“Well, for starters, it will probably cease to exist.”

Someone coughs somewhere in the hospital.

“Are you sure that you didn’t catch a bump on the head during—”

“I think you and I had the same job, Turyin,” says Shara. “You weren’t to intervene in Bulikovian affairs—things were supposed to stay the same. I intervened in Continental affairs constantly, but to keep things the way they are—with the Continent desperately poor, and all commerce directed to Saypur. ‘To leave the Continent to the Continent,’ ” Shara says from memory. “Which is to say, poor, savage, and irrelevant.”

“You don’t have to quote the policy to me. I wasted two decades of my life enforcing it. So what are you saying you want to do?”

“I wish to change this. And if I am to change this,” Shara says, “then I will need allies on the Continent.”

“Aw, shit.”

“Especially here in Bulikov.”

“Aw, shit.”

“Because if I need anyone backing me up,” says Shara, “I want it to be General Turyin Mulaghesh.”

“I’m a governor first and foremost, but my military rank is colonel.”

“If I survive, and do what I plan,” says Shara, “it won’t be.”

Mulaghesh blinks and laughs hollowly. “You want me to play Sagresha to your Kaj? I told you, I’m not interested in promotion. I’m out of the game.”

“And I’m going to change the game entirely,” says Shara.

“Oh, by the seas … Are you serious about this?”

Shara takes a deep breath. “I am, actually. I am not sure how many radical changes I can make—but I plan to try and make as many as I can. The Ministry failed Bulikov last week. It failed you, Turyin. It failed, and thousands are dead.”

“You … You really think you can? Do you really think you aren’t being, like”—Mulaghesh laughs—“well, wildly fucking naïve about this?”

Shara shrugs. “I killed a god last week. A ministry should be a small task, shouldn’t it?”

“That’s a pretty good point, I suppose.”

“Will you help me, Turyin? You and I were meant to be servants, and for years we chiefly served policy. I am offering what I think is our first real chance to serve.”

“Aw, shit …” Mulaghesh strokes the scars on her jaw with her right hand and contemplates it. “Well. I must admit all this is somewhat interesting.”

“I hoped you would think so.”

“And last I checked, the pay grade for a general is almost twice that of a colonel.…”

Shara smiles. “Enough to afford frequent vacations in Javrat.”

Shara creeps down the hospital hall toward Sigrud’s room.

Is this how governments are made? Forcing decisions on wounded people in the middle of the night?

She halts when she enters the ward, and looks out on the sea of beds—each with a pale white burden, some with arms and legs propped up, others eclipsed in bandages—and wonders which of her choices put them in those beds, and how things could have been different.

Sigrud’s voice seeps through the wall beside her: “I can hear you, Shara. If you want to come in, come in.”

Shara opens the door and steps inside. Sigrud is a mountain of stitches, bandages, tubes; liquids pour into him and out of him, draining into various sacks; a thick set of stitches marches from his left eyebrow up into his scalp; his left nostril has been split, and his left cheek is a red mass. Otherwise, he is still most definitely Sigrud.

“How did you know it was me?” she asks.

“Your footfalls,” he says, “are so small, like a little cat’s.”

“I will take that as a compliment.” She sits down beside his bed. “How are you?”

“Why haven’t you visited?”

“Why do you care?”

“You think I wouldn’t?”

“The Sigrud I knew and employed for ten years was never one for caring about much. Don’t tell me your brush with death has given you a new perspective on life—you’ve brushed it many times, often right in front of me, and it never seemed to affect you before.”

“Someone,” says Sigrud, “has been telling you tales about me.” He thinks. “You know, I’m not sure what it is. When I jumped off that ship, I didn’t think I would have a future at all. I thought I would be dead. But for the first time, I felt … good. I felt that the world I was leaving was good. Not great, but good. And now I am alive in what could be a good world.” He shrugs. “Perhaps I only wish to sail again.”

She smiles. “How has this affected any plans for your future?”

“Why do you ask?”

“The reason I ask is that, if my plans go accordingly, I will no longer be a ground-level operative. I will return to Ghaladesh and take up a desk job. And I will no longer need your services.”

“Am I to be abandoned? You leave me here to rot, in this bed?”

“No. This desk job in particular will be very, very important. There is no title for it yet—if all this works out, I shall probably have to make one for it. But I will need all the overseas support I can get. I believe I will have a strong ally in Bulikov, but I will need more.”

“More being …”

“If, say, the North Seas are suddenly tamed …”

Sigrud’s look of confusion contorts to one of considerable alarm. “No.”

“If, say, a personage most Dreylings thought to be dead suddenly returned …”

“No!”

“If the legitimacy of the coup that killed King Harkvald was utterly undermined, and the rampant piracy were to end …”

Sigrud drums his fingers on his arms and fumes in silence.

Something drains out of one of his tubes with a quiet ploink.

“You won’t even consider it?” asks Shara.

“Even when my father was alive,” says Sigrud, “I did not relish the idea of … governing.”

“Well, I’m not asking you to. I have never really approved of monarchies, anyway. What I am asking,” says Shara, sternly and slowly, “is that if you, Dauvkind, lost prince of the Dreyling shores …” Sigrud rolls his eye.

“… were to return to the pirate states of the Dreyling Republics, and had the full and total support of Saypur …” She can tell that Sigrud is now listening. “… could that not begin some kind of reform? Would that not offer some promise for the Dreyling people?”

Sigrud is silent for a long time. “I know”—he digs deep in the bandages on his arm and scratches—“that you would never ask me such a thing in jest.”

“I’m not. It may never even happen. I am returning to Saypur, but … there is a chance I might not survive.”

“Then you will need me with you, of course!”

“No,” says Shara. “I won’t. Partially because I am confident I will succeed. But I also wish for your life to be your own, Sigrud. I want you to wait here, and get healthy, no matter what happens. And if nothing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs changes, then you should know that I am dead.”

“Shara—”

“And if that is the case”—she takes out a small slip of paper and places it in his hand—“then here is the village where your wife and daughters are hidden.”

Sigrud blinks, astonished.

“If I am dead, I want you to go home to them, Sigrud,” says Shara. “You said the father and the husband they knew was dead, that the fire of life in you had gone out. But I think that is a foolish and vain thing to think. I think that you, Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, are afraid. You are afraid that your children have grown, that your family will not know you, or want you.”

“Shara …”

“If there was anything I’ve wanted throughout my life, Sigrud, it was to know my parents. It was to know the people I wished so hard to live up to. I will not ever have that chance, but your children might. And I think they will be overjoyed with who comes home.” Sigrud stares at the slip of paper in his hands. “I was not at all prepared,” he grumbles, “for such an assault.”

“I have never really had to persuade you before,” says Shara. “Now you know why I’m good at what I do.”

“This nonsense with the Dauvkind …” says Sigrud. “It is all just a children’s tale! They believe the son of King Harkvald to be a, a fairy prince! They say he will come riding out of the sea on a wave, playing the flute. A flute! Can you imagine? They will not expect … expect me.”

“After all the battles you’ve fought, this one gives you pause?”

“Killing is one thing,” says Sigrud. “Politics is another.”

Shara pats his hand. “I will make sure you have someone to help you. And it will not all be politics. Many of the pirate kings, I expect, will be quite reluctant to leave. Despite what you may fear, Sigrud, I expect your service is far from over.” She checks her watch. “I’m late. My train leaves in an hour, and I must prepare for my final interview.”

“Who else must you browbeat into doing your bidding?”

“Oh, this won’t be browbeating,” says Shara grimly as she stands. “This will just be simple threats.”

Sigrud carefully stows away the slip of paper. “Will I see you again soon?”

“Probably.” She smiles, takes his hand, and kisses one scarred knuckle. “If we do a good job, we may meet as equals on the world stage.”

“No matter what happens, to either of us,” says Sigrud, “you have always been a very good friend to me, Shara Komayd. I have known very few good people. But I think that you are one of them.”

“Even if sometimes I almost got you killed?”

“Being killed … Pah.” His one eye glitters in the gaslight. “What is that to good friends?”

The walls of Bulikov are peach colored with the light of the dawn. They swell before her, rising out of the violet countryside as the train speeds by. Are the walls alabaster in daylight? she thinks. Bone? What word best describes them? What shall I write? What shall I tell everyone?

The train wheels squall and sputter. She touches the window, the ghost of her face caught in its glass.

I must not forget. I must not forget.

She will not go into Bulikov: the train takes a straight track from the governor’s quarters to Ahanashtan. She will not see the collapsing temple of the Seat of the World. She will not see the cranes around the Solda Bridge. She will not get to see the construction teams hauling the ancient white stone out of the rubble, the stone of the Divine City, nor will she get to see what they will do with it. She will not get to see the armadas of pigeons wheeling through the spokes of smoke as the day begins. She will not get to watch as the mats in the market are rolled out, as the wares are put on show, as merchants wade through the streets crying prices, carrying on as if nothing has happened.

I will not see you, she tells the city, but I will remember you.

The walls continue to swell; then, as she passes, they shrink behind her.

When I come back to you, she thinks, if I come back to you, will I know you? Will you be the city of my memory? Or will you be a stranger?

She could ask the same of Ghaladesh: the city of her birth, of her life, a city she has not seen in sixteen years. Will I know it? Will it know me?

The walls have shrunk to a tiny cylinder of peach-white, a can floating on black waves.

The past may be the past, she tells them, but I will remember.

Shara waits for over two hours. So far the movements of the ship are smooth and easy, but very shortly they’ll enter the deep sea, where the waves will be much less kind.

Shara’s cabin is as spacious as the merchant’s vessel could allow, and she has promised a worthy fee from the Ministry when she finally returns to Ghaladesh. Penny for pound, she muses, I am probably the most profitable cargo this ship has ever carried.

She stares into the porthole in her cabin wall. The South Seas are on the other side, but in the window’s reflection is a large, dark office, and a big teak desk.

Aunt Vinya finally arrives, looking harried and harassed. She violently rifles through her desk, tearing open drawers, slamming cupboards. “Where is it?” she mutters. “Where is it! These questions, these damn questions!” She picks up a stack of papers, flips through them, and angrily throws them in her trash can.

“It looks,” Shara says, “like you’ve had a few rough meetings.”

Vinya’s head snaps up, and she stares at Shara in the window. “You …”

“Me.”

“What are you doing?” Vinya snaps. “I should have you arrested for this! Performing a miracle on the Continent is a treasonous act!”

“Well, then, it’s probably a very good thing that I’m not on the Continent anymore.”

“You what?”

“This is obviously not my office.” She gestures to the room behind her. “You look at me in the cabin of a vessel in the South Seas, bound, of course, for Ghaladesh.”

Vinya’s mouth opens and shuts, but no words escape.

“I am coming home, Aunt Vinya,” says Shara. “You cannot keep me away any longer.”

“I … I damn well can! If you come home I’ll have you imprisoned! I can have you exiled! You are disobeying the orders of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in essence you are committing treason! I don’t … I don’t care how damn famous you are now, you’ve no idea what sort of powers I’m allowed, with no questions asked!”

“What sort of powers would those be, Auntie?”

“Powers to eliminate threats to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, without question, without disclosure, without testimony to any damnable oversight committees!”

“And would this be,” Shara asks slowly, “what happened to Dr. Pangyui?”

Vinya’s righteous fury evaporates. Her shoulders sink as if her spine has vanished. “Wh-what?”

“You may wish,” says Shara, “to take a seat.”

But Vinya is too shocked to move.

“As you wish,” says Shara. “I will keep this short. Let’s say I have a feeling that somewhere in all the cables and transmissions and orders that have come out of the Ministry—in all the inscrutable, impenetrable, classified, technically nonexistent communications—there is a message to some unquestioning thug on the Continent informing him or her of a national threat, that threat being Dr. Efrem Pangyui at Bulikov University, and that he or she is authorized to eliminate this threat with utmost discretion, and to search for and destroy any sensitive material in his office and library.” Shara adjusts her glasses. “Would that be right?”

Vinya has gone terribly pale.

“You want to shut down this conversation altogether, don’t you, Auntie?” says Shara. “But you want to know what I know and how I know it. You want to know if I know, for example, that the reason Dr. Efrem Pangyui was labeled a threat was one very personal to you.”

Shara waits, but Vinya does not move or speak. Shara thinks she can see something trembling in her aunt’s cheek.

“I do,” says Shara. “I do know, Auntie. I know that you are Blessed, Vinya. I know that you are a descendant of the very thing that haunts Saypur’s nightmares.”

Vinya blinks. Teardrops spill down her cheeks.

“Efrem Pangyui deduced the Kaj’s parentage in Bulikov,” says Shara. “And he, being the dutiful and honorable historian of Saypur, sent back a report without realizing he was signing his own death warrant—for him, the truth was the truth, and hiding it never occurred to him.”

Vinya, who has resisted upper-middle age for nearly fifteen years, sits in her chair with the slow movements of an old woman.

“And you hated hearing this, of course,” says Shara. “Just as the Kaj hated it when he learned it himself. Efrem, obviously, had no plans to keep quiet about it—he was a historian, not a spy. So you reacted as you would to any national threat, and had him, as you say, eliminated.”

Vinya swallows.

“That’s right, isn’t it, Auntie Vinya?”

Vinya struggles for nearly half a minute. Then, a quiet, “I … I just wanted it to be gone. I wanted to believe … to believe I had never heard it.”

Sea spray spackles the hull outside. Someone on the deck above makes a joke, which is followed by wicked laughter.

“Why?” says Shara. “Why did you let me stay in Bulikov at all? You knew there was a chance I’d find out. Why didn’t you pull rank and reassign me straightaway?”

“Because … I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of you,” Vinya confesses.

“Of me?”

“Yes,” she says. “I’ve always been afraid of you, Shara. Ever since you were a child. Saypur has always been inclined to like you more than me, because of who your parents were. And I have many enemies. It would be an easy thing, to oust me simply by supporting you.”

“And that is why you let me stay in Bulikov?”

“I knew that if I made you leave, you would become suspicious!” says Vinya. “You get attached to people so. If I denied you what you wanted, I feared you’d become more determined. And I thought we had destroyed all of Efrem’s notes. One week to mourn your friend, then you’d leave Bulikov, move on to the next little case, and all of this would go away.”

“But then Volka’s men attacked the Votrov estate,” says Shara, “and everything changed.”

Vinya shakes her head. “You don’t know what it was like, hearing his report,” she says. “Hearing that not only am I descended from … from monsters, but that everything I had ever accomplished was suddenly just … suddenly illegitimate! Like I’d been given everything, rather than earning it! It was sickening, infuriating, insulting.… Don’t you understand what that’s like? That I—that we—have some trace of the Divine in us?”

Shara shrugs. “I was raised to think of the Kaj more or less as a god,” she says. “A savior whose memory I spent years trying to please. Honestly, it changes little for me, personally.”

“But nothing that has been made is real! There is nothing but lies. The Kaj is a lie. Saypur is a lie. The Ministry …”

“Yes,” says Shara. “The Ministry as well.”

Vinya wipes her eyes. “How I detest weeping. There is nothing so undignified.” She glares at Shara through the porthole. “What will you do?”

Shara wonders how to phrase this. “The Blessed do seem to meet such tragic ends,” she says. “The Kaj killed almost all of them during the Great War. Then the Kaj himself died alone and miserable on the Continent. And now you …”

“You wouldn’t,” whispers Vinya.

“I wouldn’t,” admits Shara. “And I can’t. You possess much more lethal force than I do, Auntie. Killing me, of course, during the height of my public profile, would naturally earn much scrutiny—scrutiny I doubt even you could afford. So I will give you a choice: step down, and give the reins to me.”

“To … to you?”

“Yes.”

“Give … Give you control over all the generals across all the nations? Give you control of all our intelligence, all of our operations!”

“Yes,” says Shara mildly. “I will have it, or neither of us will. Because if you do not step down, Auntie, I will leak our awful family secret.”

Vinya looks like she is about to be sick.

“I understand my stock has risen in Ghaladesh these days,” Shara says, with a quaint pout of modesty. “I am, after all, the only person since the Kaj to have killed a Divinity—two Divinities, technically, to the Kaj’s three. This, after Urav. They haven’t ever crowned another Kaj since Avshakta, but I don’t doubt that a few people in Saypur are discussing it. I believe that when I speak, I will be listened to. And as such, I believe your time in the Ministry is over, Auntie.”

Vinya is rubbing her face and rocking back and forth in her chair. “Why …?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this to me?”

“I do not do it to you, Auntie Vinya. You flatter yourself by imagining so. Things are changing. History itself was resurrected in Bulikov four days ago, and it rejected the present just as the present rejected it in turn. And we now have a new path we could take. We can keep the world as it is—unbalanced, with one nation holding all power …”

“Or?”

“Or we can begin to work with the Continent,” says Shara, “and create an equal to keep us in check.”

Vinya is aghast. “You wish to … to elevate the Continent?”

“Yes.” Shara adjusts her glasses. “In fact, I plan to spend billions on rebuilding their nation.”

“But … but they are Continentals!”

“They are people,” says Shara. “They have asked me for help. And I will give it.”

Vinya massages her temples. “You … you …”

“I also intend,” Shara continues, “to dissolve the WR, and declassify all the Continent’s history.”

Auntie Vinya slumps forward and goes white as custard.

“I don’t think we can build much of a future,” says Shara, “without knowing the truth of the past. It’s time to be honest about what the world really was, and what it is now.”

“I am going to be sick,” says Vinya. “You would give them back the knowledge of their gods?”

“Their gods are dead,” says Shara. “Those days are gone. That I know. It is time for all of us to move forward. In time, I hope to even reveal the nature of the Kaj’s parentage—though that might be decades away.”

“Shara … Dear …”

“Here is how the narrative will go, Auntie,” says Shara. “It will be said that things are different now—true enough—and that the old ways and the old warriors who keep to them must adapt, or go. You can go graciously and quietly: ceding authority to the new generation, after I’m just coming off of an incomparable victory. You might even be lauded for your foresight, as you chose to keep me in Bulikov—that would be a nice touch. And I can make sure that you land on your feet, winding up the head of a research institute or prominent school that can take good care of you. Or, I can dislodge you. You’ve said before you have enemies in Ghaladesh, Auntie. I now have a very big dagger I can give them, which they will then promptly plant in your back.”

Vinya gapes at her. “You … You really …”

“I will arrive in two days, Auntie,” says Shara. “Think about it.”

She wipes the porthole glass with two fingers, and her aunt vanishes.

Sunlight bounds out of the clouds, across the waves, ripples over the deck. Far above the ship, gulls float and dip gracefully from current to current, dodging through the air. Shara grips the ceramic canister a little tighter as the ship bobs to the port side: she has never been an accomplished sailor—something the crew members quickly deduced, and are wary of—and she is thankful the sea is calm today.

“Anytime soon, Captain?” she asks.

The captain breaks away from a conversation with his midshipman. “I could give you an exact time,” he says, “if you were to give me an exact point.”

“I have given you that, Captain.”

“The, quote, ‘point equidistant between Saypur and the Continent’ ain’t exactly as exact as you think, if you pardon my saying so, Chief Diplomat.”

“I don’t need for it to be too exact,” Shara says. “Just how long until we’re close?”

The captain tips his head from side to side. “A half-hour or so. On such calm waters, and with such a benevolent wind, maybe less. Why do you want to know, anyway?”

Shara turns away and walks to the stern of the ship with the canister under her arm. She watches the churning ocean behind them and the wake of their passage. The stripe of curiously smooth water stretches out for miles: after that, the rise and bob of the waves devour it until it is gone.

She stares at the sea for a long time. The wind caresses her hair and her coat. Her glasses are bedecked with crystalline jewels of sea spray. The air alternates between a pleasant warmth and a pleasant coolness.

“It has been a very long journey, hasn’t it, Vo?” she says to the ceramic canister. “But looking back, it seems like it was all over in only a moment.”

A gull dips low and calls to her, perhaps asking for something.

They did not want to cremate him, of course: cremation was heretical on the Continent. But she refused to let him be buried in the Votrov tomb, to lie among the people who had made his life a hell, so she took him with her, the contents of his self baked and boiled down and funneled into a little canister, freed of all pain, of all memory, of all the tortures his country and his god had put him through.

She will not cry. She has decided this. There is nothing to cry over: there is simply what happened.

“Birthing pains,” she says aloud. “That’s what our lives were, weren’t they? The wheels of time shift and clank against one another, and birth a new age.”

Cold wind slaps against her cheeks.

“But there are pains before, violent contractions. Unfortunate that it had to be us, but …”

The captain calls that they are near, or near enough.

“… a butterfly must emerge from its chrysalis sometime …”

She begins to unscrew the top of the canister. Her heart beats faster.

“… and forget it ever was a caterpillar.”

Another plaintive cry from the gulls.

She turns over the canister; a cloud of delicate ash comes twisting out, twirling through the winds to settle over the stripe of calm seas behind the ship.

She drops the canister overboard. It sinks almost instantly beneath the dark waves.

She watches the waves, wondering what they know, what they remember.

Time renders all people and all things silent, she thinks. But I will speak of you, of all of you, for all the time I have.

Then she turns and walks to the bow of the ship, to look ahead into the sun and the wind and the bright new waves, and to wait for sight of home.