City of Stairs

TO DO WHAT HE DOES BEST

The house of Votrov is one of the most modern homes in all of Bulikov, but you could never tell by looking at it: it is a massive, bulky, squat affair of dark gray stone and fragile buttresses. Tiny windows dot its bulging sides like pinpricks, some filled with the narrow flicker of candle flame. On the south side, away from the prevailing northern wind, it features massive, gaping balconies arranged in what appears to be a stack, each balcony slightly smaller than the one below it, ending at a tiny crow’s nest at the top. To Shara, who grew up seeing the slender, simplistic wood structures of Saypur, it is a primitive, savage thing, not resembling a domicile as much as a malformed, aquatic polyp. Yet in Bulikov it is quite new, for unlike so many homes of the old families, this house was built specifically to accommodate the cold, wintry climate. Which, one must remember, is a somewhat recent development.

To acknowledge things have changed, thinks Shara as her car approaches, is akin to death for these people.

Her stomach flutters. Could he really be inside? She never knew about his home before, and to see it now, to realize it is real and that he had a life beyond her, strangely disturbs her.

Be quiet, she says to the mutterings in her mind, yet somehow this only makes them louder.

A huge line of automobiles and carriages inches forward to the Votrov manor entrance. Shara watches the rich and celebrated citizens of Bulikov emerge from their various methods of transport, one lapel flipped up to shield their faces from the frosty air before hurrying inside. After nearly half an hour, Pitry, tutting and wincing, pulls the car through the estate gates and up to the door.

The valet receives her with a look as cool as the night wind. She hands him her official invitation. He takes it, offers a curt nod, and gestures with one white-gloved hand to the door, which he is pointedly not holding open.

With a chorus of squeaks from the car’s shocks, Sigrud emerges and mounts the bottom step; the valet twitches almost imperceptibly, bows low to Shara, and opens the door.

She steps over the boundaries. How many parties have I been to in my life, thinks Shara, with warlords and generals and proud murderers? And yet this one I dread more than any of those.

In stark contrast to the exterior, the interior is stunningly lavish: hundreds of gas flames line the entry hall, each filtering through tinted chimneys to provide a flickering, golden hue; a staggeringly complicated chandelier of crystal slabs appears to drip down from the rounded ceiling, giving one the impression of a massive, glowing stalactite; and at the center of the room, two huge hearths are filled with roaring fires, and between them a set of curling stairs twists upward to ascend the vaults of the home.

A voice not dissimilar to Auntie Vinya’s says, You could have lived here with him if not for your pride.

He did not love me, she says back, and I did not love him.

Shara is not stupid enough to convince herself these are truths; but neither, she knows, are they wholly lies.

“The reason it’s so big,” says a voice, “is because he owns all the damn builders, of course.”

Mulaghesh stands at attention before a pillar. Just looking at her posture makes Shara’s back hurt. Mulaghesh is dressed in her uniform, which is pressed, polished, spotless. Her hair is tied back in a brutal bun, and her knee-high black boots boast a mirror shine. Her left breast is covered in medals; her right handles the considerable overflow. Overall, she does not look well dressed, but rather carefully assembled. Shara is almost tempted to search the seams of her coat for rivets.

“The original home vanished in the Blink,” says Mulaghesh. “Or so I’m told.”

“Hello, Governor. You look quite … impressive.”

Mulaghesh nods, but does not take her eyes off the socialites milling before the fires. “I don’t like for these people to forget what I am,” she says. “Despite all diplomatic pretenses, we are a military presence in their city.”

Once a soldier, thinks Shara, always a soldier. Beside the hearth on the right is a plinth with five short statues standing on it. “And those would be the reason for the occasion?” asks Shara.

“They would be,” says Mulaghesh. She and Shara wander toward them. “It’s an art auction, benefiting the New Bulikov party and a number of other vaguely worthy causes. Votrov’s become well known as an art fan. Pretty controversial stuff, too.”

Shara can see why: while none of the stone figures are nude to the extent that they’d show anything one would actually wish to see, they come very close, with the fold of a robe or the neck of a guitar in just the right place to shield things from view. There are three female statues, two male, but none are particularly physically lovely: they are bulky creatures, with wide hips and shoulders and fat thighs.

Shara squints as she reads the plate at the bottom of the plinth. “Peasants in Repose,” she says.

“Yes,” says Mulaghesh. “Two things Bulikov doesn’t like to think about: nudity and the poor. Especially the nudity, though.”

“I am familiar with this city’s stance on sexuality.”

“Not so much a stance as a glower, though,” says Mulaghesh. She picks up a horn-flute of ale from a passing footman and quaffs it. “I can’t even talk about it with them.”

“Yes, I wouldn’t expect you could. Their disgust for our more … liberal marital arrangements is well known,” says Shara.

Mulaghesh snorts. “It didn’t seem liberal when I was married.”

As nearly all Saypuris were treated as chattel under the Continental Empire, many were forced into marriage or divorced on the whims of whichever Continental company or individual owned them. After the Kaj overthrew the Continent, Saypur’s laws on marriage and personal freedom were greatly influenced by these traumas: in Saypur, two consenting spouses enter into a six-year contract, which at its end they can either renew or allow to expire. Many Saypuris have two, three, or even more spouses in their lifetimes; and while homosexual marriage is not formally recognized in Saypur, neither does Saypur’s vehement observance of personal freedom allow the state to forbid it.

Shara observes the scandalous protuberance underneath one statue’s robe. “So one could categorize this work as countercultural.”

“Or as pissing in the eyes of the powerful, yeah.”

“A crass way of putting it,” says a voice. A tall, slender young woman dressed in a menagerie of furs walks to stand just behind them. She is terribly young, not much older than twenty, with dark hair and high, sharp cheekbones. She manages to look both very Continental and yet also very urbane, two characteristics that often conflict. “I would instead say that it is embracing the new.”

Mulaghesh raises her horn-flute in a sardonic toast. “That I shall drink to. May its feet find earth, and may it run fast and far.”

“You do not sound like you think it likely, Governor.”

Mulaghesh grunts into her ale.

The young woman does not appear surprised, yet she says, “I always find it disheartening that you are so doubtful of our efforts, Governor. I would hope that, as a representative of your nation, you’d lend us support.”

“I am not in a position to lend anything, especially support. Nor am I in a position to officially say much. But I am compelled to listen to your City Fathers quite frequently, Miss Ivanya. And I am not sure your ideas, ambitious as they are, are on fertile ground.”

“Things are changing,” says the young woman.

“That is so,” says Mulaghesh. She stares balefully into the fire. “But not as much as you imagine.”

The young woman sighs and turns to Shara. “I hope the governor has not saddled you with too much gloom. I would prefer if your first social event in Bulikov would have a lighter mood to it. You are our new cultural ambassador, are you not?”

“I am,” says Shara. She bows politely. “Shara Thivani, cultural ambassador, second-class, and acting chief of the Saypuri Embassy.”

“I am Ivanya Restroyka, assistant curator to the studio that donated the pieces. It is a genuine pleasure to have you here with us, but I must warn you that not everyone here will greet you so warmly—fusty old attitudes are sometimes so hard to shrug off. Yet I hope that at the end of the night, you will count me a friend.”

“That is extremely kind of you to say,” says Shara. “Thank you.”

“Come, allow me to introduce you to everyone,” says Ivanya. “After all, I am sure that the governor will not wish to sully herself with such social responsibilities.”

Mulaghesh picks up another ale. “It’s your funeral, Ambassador,” she says. “But watch that one. She has a taste for trouble.”

“I merely have good taste,” says Ivanya, smiling beatifically.

It immediately becomes clear that despite her youth, Miss Ivanya Restroyka is a seasoned socialite: she carves through groups of the glamorous and the powerful like a shark through a school of fish. Within an hour Shara has bowed before or shook the hand of nearly every luminary at the reception. “I wished to be an artist,” Ivanya confides to Shara. “But it simply didn’t turn out that way. I didn’t have the … I’m not sure. The imagination, I suppose, or the ambition, or both. You have to be a bit outside things to make something new, but I was always very much inside things.”

A small hubbub breaks out before one of the hearths. “What could that be?” says Ivanya, but Shara can already see: Sigrud stands with one foot up on the hearth, reaching into the fire to pull out a small, flaming coal. Even from here she can hear it sizzle as it touches his fingertips, but his face registers no pain as he lifts it to his pipe, sucks twice, exhales a plume of smoke, and tosses the coal back. Then he skulks away to a shadowed corner where he crosses his arms, leans up against a wall, and glowers.

“Who is that creature?” asks Ivanya.

Shara coughs. “That is my secretary. Sigrud.”

“You have a Dreyling as your secretary?”

“Yes.”

“But aren’t they savages?”

“We are all products of our circumstances.”

Ivanya laughs. “Oh, Ambassador … You are so much more provocative than I could have ever hoped. This will be a grand friendship. Ah! What perfect timing!” She breaks off from Shara and trots away to a tall, bearded gentleman slowly descending the stairs, picking his way down with a white cane. His right hip bothers him: every other step, his right hand snaps down to steady it, but he maintains a regal posture, dressed in a trim, somewhat conservative white dinner jacket and sporting an ornate gold sash. “And there’s my darling. It took so long for you to come down! I thought it was women who took forever to get dressed, not men.”

“I am going to put in some sort of pulley-lift in this damn house,” he says. “These stairs will kill me, I’m sure of it.”

She drapes herself around his shoulders. “You sound like an old man.”

“I feel like an old man.”

“But do you kiss like one?” Ivanya pulls him in, though he resists a little before indulging her. Someone in the crowd gives a soft whoop! “No,” she concludes. “Not yet. Will I have to check every day, darling?”

“You will have to make an appointment, if so. I’m terribly busy, you see. Now. Who do we have sponging off me tonight?” he asks merrily.

He looks up at the crowd. The firelight washes over his face.

Shara’s heart goes cold: she assumed the man was old, but he is not. In fact, he’s hardly aged a day.

His hair is longer, and though it is streaked with gray at the temples it still has that odd reddish hue to it. His beard is bright copper-red, but it is short and closely cropped, rather than the mountainous ball of fluff popular among wealthy Continentals. Shara can still see the strong jaw, the ever-present smirk, and though his eyes have lost a bit of their wild gleam, they are still the same bright, penetrating blue she remembers so well.

The dilettantes and socialites gently descend on him. “Oh, goodness,” he says. “Such a crush. I hope you brought your pocket-books.…” He laughs as he greets them. Though he could only know a handful of them, he treats them as his oldest friends.

Shara watches, fascinated, horrified, terrified. How little he has changed, really, she thinks.

And she is surprised to find that she hates him for this. It is so terribly, unbearably rude for him to pass through all these years and come out the same person on the other side.

“Have you seen the pieces?” Ivanya asks him. “You must see them when you can, darling. They’re so delightfully abominable. I adore them. I can’t wait to hear what the papers will say.”

“Probably many impolite things,” he says.

“Oh, of course, naturally. Huffing and puffing. As one should hope. Rivegny from the foundry is here—you wanted him to attend for some time, didn’t you? Well, he finally showed up. I thought he’d be a rough sort of fellow, being a fellow captain of industry, but he’s quite svelte, I think. You must talk to him. I will get you an envelope for the check. Oh, and we have the new cultural ambassador here, and do you know she has a North-man as her assistant? As in a secretary? And he’s here, darling. He reached into the fire with his hands and it was just absurd! I can’t stop laughing, I mean, the night is going so well.”

He looks up again, glances around the room, amused. And, at first, he looks past her. Shara reels from this slight as one would from a sound blow.

But then a light goes on in his eyes, and he slowly drags his gaze back to her.

Within a matter of seconds, his face does many things: first she sees confusion, then recognition, then disbelief, and anger. But after this medley of expressions, his delicate features settle into an expression she finds quite familiar: a smirk of the most cocksure, arrogant sort.

“New ambassador?” he says.

Shara adjusts her glasses. “Oh, dear.”

Sigrud stares into the fire, massaging the palm of his gloved hand with one thumb. He recalls a saying from his homeland: Envy the fire, for it is either going or not. Fires do not feel happy, sad, angry. They burn, or they do not burn.

It took Sigrud several years to understand this saying, but it took many more for him to learn to be like the fire: merely alive, and no more.

He watches Shara and the man with the cane circle one another in the crowd. See how they stand, faces almost averted, but never quite completely: always they can watch one another, peering over someone’s shoulder or glancing to the side to catch the other’s feigned ignorance.

They watch without watching. It is, he thinks, a clumsy dance.

The man with the cane keeps checking his watch: perhaps, Sigrud thinks, to avoid appearing too eager. After he’s made a good show of pumping the crowd, he grabs a footman and whispers into his ear. The footman orbits the crowd a handful of times before closing in on Shara, to whom he delivers a small white card. Shara, smiling, tucks it away, and after severing herself from the talkative young girl in the furs, slinks upstairs.

Sigrud turns back to the fire. Lovers, certainly. Their movements sing of past caresses. He is amused: though small and quiet, Shara Komayd is as much a weapon as he is. But he realizes this surprise is silly. All creatures in this world have a little love in their lives, however short.

He remembers the whaling ship Svordyaaling. The deck slick with blood and fat as the crew peeled away the skin of a dead whale as one peels an apple. The reeking, bleeding thing clutched to the side of the ship, trailed by churning clouds of gulls. On the days after a kill, after the chase, after the foreman hacked at the beast’s lungs with a halberd until its blowhole sprayed blood, after they dragged it back to the ship across the ocean … On those days down belowdecks Sigrud would pull a locket from his jacket, and he would hold it in his hands, and open it and peer at it by candlelight.…

Sigrud looks at his gloved, aching hand. He cannot recall what the locket looks like, nor can he recall the portrait inside. He thinks he remembers at least the feel of the locket in his hand. But perhaps he is imagining things.

“You seem occupied,” says a voice. A middle-aged woman, obviously wealthy and established, sits next to him by the fire. “Perhaps a drink?” She holds out a goblet of wine.

Sigrud shrugs, takes it, downs it in one gulp. The gold bracelet on his left wrist tinkles as it falls against the buttons on his sleeve. She watches, excited, curious.

“What a remarkable guest you are,” says the woman. “I doubt if Votrov has ever had someone like you under his roof.”

Sigrud puffs at his pipe and watches the fire.

“So what would you be here for?” she asks.

He takes another long puff of his pipe. He considers it. “Trouble,” he says.

Someone has made a ribald joke: a cross section of the crowd bursts into laughter, and some of the more delicate members turn away, offended.

The clink of glassware, the mutter of laughter. Cheers ring out in some distant cavity of this warped house. How hollow and horrible the wild noise of a party sounds, thinks Shara, when filtering through yards of stone.

The spiral staircase keeps going up. She wonders if she will find him waiting at the top; if he is, she feels it would be wise to tip backward, and tumble down these steps, rather than try to speak to him.

She gets control of herself and climbs the stairs to what is ostensibly the library, but it is far too large to be one room. One wall boasts a massive family portrait. Not once in their two-year relationship did Vohannes ever mention his parents—which now strikes her as odd—yet they look much like she imagined: proud, regal, stern. Father Votrov is dressed in an almost militaristic uniform, with lots of medals and ribbons; Mama Votrov wears a plush, pink ballroom gown. The sort of people who intermittently review their children, she thinks, rather than raise them. But what surprises her more is that standing next to what looks like an eleven-year-old Vohannes is a second boy, slightly older, with darker eyes and paler skin. The two look so alike they could only be brothers, but Vohannes never mentioned him.

The wind rises; the candle flames dance. She licks her fingers, tests the air, and finds the source of the draft in a nearby window. She walks to it.

The lights of Bulikov stretch out below her like a sea of blue-white stars. The moon is weak tonight, but she can see strange, alien forms out among the rooftops: a half-collapsed temple, the ruined skeleton of an estate, the curlicue twist of tottering stairs.

She looks down. Three tin-hatted guards patrol the walls of the house of Votrov, with bolt-shots in their hands. This is interesting: she didn’t see any guards when they arrived out front.

The click of a door handle. She turns and watches as someone fumbles the two side doors open, and the tip of a white cane pokes through.

Now is your last chance to run! says a voice in her mind. She is ashamed that she doesn’t wholly dismiss it outright.

He enters, limping. His white coat is honey-golden in the light of the lamps. He half looks at her—he avoids eye contact—and walks to a drink trolley and pours himself something. Then he begins to hobble over.

“This room,” he says, “is far too large. Do you not agree?”

“That would depend on what it’s used for.” She is not sure what to do with her hands, her body: how many dignitaries she has met before, how many nobles, yet now such awkwardness comes plummeting down on her? “I’m sorry to take you away from your party.”

“Oh, that. I’ve seen it before. Know how it ends.” He grins at her. It is still a blinding smile. “I am not, as they say, on tenterhooks about the whole thing. Enjoying the view?”

“It’s quite … splendid.”

“That’s one word for it.” He joins her at the window. “My father would talk endlessly about the view around here. About what used to be there, I mean. He’d point and say, ‘There, at that corner, that was where we had the Talon of Kivrey! And there, across the park, that was Ahanas’s Well, and the line of people would stretch down the street!’ I was impressed, enamored, until I figured out the timeline and realized dear Papa had not been alive to see any of this. That was all long before his time. He hadn’t really known. He’d just been guessing. And now, I don’t really care to know what he meant, or what all those old things were.”

Shara nods stiffly.

Vohannes glances sidelong at her. “Well, go on.”

“Go on with what?”

“Go on and tell me. I know you’re bursting at the seams to.”

“Well …” She coughs. “If you really want to know … The Talon of Kivrey was a tall metal monument with a small door in the front: visitors would walk in through the door and find something waiting for them, something that would change their lives. Sometimes it would change their lives for the good—a bundle of medicine to bring home to a sick relative—or sometimes it would change their lives for the worse: a bag of coins, and the address of a prostitute who would later bring them to ruin.”

“Interesting.”

“It was probably a testament to the Divinity Jukov’s strange sense of humor: a long, ongoing joke on everyone, in other words.”

“I see. And the well?”

“Oh, just healing waters. The Divinity Ahanas had them all over the Continent.”

He shakes his head, smiling. “Still an insufferable know-it-all.”

She gives him a taut, bitter grin. “And you’re still so smugly, blithely ignorant.”

“Is it ignorance if you don’t care to know it?”

“Yes. That is almost the definition of ignorance, actually.”

He looks her up and down. “You know, you don’t look anything like I expected you to.”

Shara is too affronted for words.

“I thought you’d be all in jackboots and military gray, Shara,” he says. “Like Mulaghesh down there, but louder.”

“Was I such a terror?”

“You were a bright, blessed little fascist,” says Vo. “Or at least a savage little patriot, as many children of Saypur are. And I’d expect you to come in here the conquering hero, rather than slip in through the backdoor, like a little mouse.”

“Oh, shut up, Vo.”

He laughs. “How remarkable it is that we so quickly fall into our old patterns after so many years apart! Tell me—should I arrest you for violating the WR? I noticed you mentioned a few forbidden names.…”

“I think there’s a clause in there,” says Shara, “specifying that any ground the ambassador walks on is considered Saypuri soil. Do you know, your asinine little speech was probably the longest I’ve ever heard you talk about your family?”

“Is it?”

“You never talked about them at all while we were at school.” Shara nods toward the painting on the wall. “You definitely never told me you’ve got a brother. He looks almost exactly like you.”

Vohannes’s grin grows fixed. “Had a brother,” he says. “And I probably didn’t tell you because he wasn’t a very good one. He taught me Tovos Va—so I suppose we should thank him for having brought us together.” Shara tries to scan his comment for irony, and comes up inconclusive. “He died before I ever went to school. He didn’t die with my parents, not during the Plague Years, but … after.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Really? I wasn’t, not much. Like I said, he was not a very good brother.”

“Your family did leave you a magnificent home. You never talked about that, either.”

“That’s because it didn’t exist yet.” He raps the stone floor with his cane. “I tore the old Votrov manor down the second I came back from school, and had this one built. All my various legal guardians—the old trolls followed me around like ducklings after mama, honestly—all of them were horrified, just horrified. But it wasn’t even the real Votrov manor! Not the centuries-old one everyone talked about, at least. No one knows where the hells that is anymore, just like the rest of Bulikov. We all just pretended that house had always been the house, and nothing ever happened—no Blink, no Great War, nothing. I regret including all these stairs, though.” He winces and touches his hip.

“That’s how you injured yourself?”

He allows a pained nod.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Is it bad?”

“When it’s wet out, yes. But be honest with me.” He spreads his arms and turns his head so light catches the side of his face. “Beyond that, how cruel has time’s blade been to me? Am I still the beauty you fell head over heels for at first sight? I am, admit it.”

Shara resists the urge to push him out the window. “You are a horrific ass, Vo. That hasn’t changed.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. I won’t let you pull your polite little mouse role with me, Shara. The edges on the girl I knew could never be sanded down.”

“Perhaps you didn’t know me as well as you thought,” says Shara. “Do you wonder if your parents would approve of the house, as well as your little party?”

He grins broadly at her. “I expect they’d approve of them just as much as they’d approve of me having a discussion with a Saypuri intelligence officer.”

Someone downstairs crows laughter. There is the tinkle of broken glass, and a sympathetic Awww from the crowd.

Shara thinks, And so we come to it.

“I am happy to see you’re not surprised,” says Vohannes. “You didn’t seem to be hiding it, anyway. There is no way that Ashara Komayd, top of her class at Fadhuri, niece of the minister of foreign affairs, great-granddaughter of the damnable Kaj, could rise only to the lowly position of cultural ambassador.”

She smiles mirthlessly at his flattery.

“And though ‘Ashara’ is a name as common as water,” he says, “ ‘Komayd,’ well … You’d have to get rid of that right quick. Hence the ‘Thivani.’ ”

“I could have married,” says Shara, “and taken my husband’s name.”

“You are not married,” says Vohannes dismissively. He tosses the rest of his drink out the window. “I know married women. There are signals and signs, none of which you possess. Aren’t you worried someone will recognize you?”

“Who?” says Shara. “No one from Fadhuri is on the Continent besides you and me. All the politicos my family ran with are back in Ghaladesh. There’s just Continentals and the military over here, and none of them know my face.”

“And if someone went hunting for Ashara Komayd?”

“Then they’d discover records indicating she retired from the public eye to teach at a small school in Tohmay, in the south of Saypur—a school that I think closed down about four years ago.”

“Clever. So. The only possible reason someone of your level, whatever it is, would come to be in Bulikov now … Well, it’d have to be Pangyui, wouldn’t it? But I’ve no idea why you’ve come to me. I avoided the man like the plague. Too many political consequences.”

Shara says, “The Restorationists.”

Vohannes nods slowly. “Ah. I see … How very political of you. Who better to tell you about them than one of the people they hate most in the world?” Vohannes considers it. “Let us discuss this somewhere else,” he says. “Somewhere with less of an echo.”

Morotka, the Votrov valet, stamps his feet in the cold. It is remarkably stupid that he’s out here. The party started, what, one hour ago? Less? Yet as house valet, it’s Morotka’s duty to hold the door for all guests, call the cars up, and get them settled. And so many of these foolish people enjoy dropping in, being seen, making an appearance, whatever you’d like to call it, so they leave quite quickly. Mr. Votrov is canny enough to know that these people, regretfully, are usually more important than most, and require unusual glad-handing. But could they not make their appearance just long enough to allow Morotka a swig of plum wine, a pinch of snuff, and a few seconds with his feet by the fire? No, no, of course not, so he stamps his feet in the cold and wonders if kitchen duty would better serve him. He doesn’t mind carrots and potatoes. He could live with that.

There is a clunking to the west, like a can rolling along the street. Curious, he peers out. He sees one guard on the west manor wall—but shouldn’t there be two? Mr. Votrov prefers that his guests do not see the ugly necessities his rather radical positions require, but usually once the reception begins, it’s security as normal.

Morotka grunts. Perhaps the fool is wise enough, he thinks, to shirk outdoors duty when he can. Yet then he squints. Is there something on the wall? Something moving very slowly toward the remaining guard?

Headlights flare at the end of the drive. A car coughs to life and trundles toward the house.

“Oh, no,” says Morotka. He steps out and waves his arm. “No, no, no. What are you doing?”

The car continues toward him. As it wheels around the drive, Morotka shouts, “You come when you’re called, all right? I haven’t flagged you yet. I don’t care what your master says, you come when you’re called.”

As the car pulls up before him, Morotka sees movement on the manor wall out of the corner of his eye: a dark figure peeps up, points something at the remaining guard. There is a click, and the guard goes stiff and tumbles backward, his tin hat bouncing off the wall to clatter and clunk to the street below.

There is the glimmer of a bolt-point in the window of the car. A voice says, “But we have been called.”

Then a harsh click, and the car seems to fall away.

Sigrud stares into the fire, lost in his memories.

The blood in the water, the halberd in his hands. The monstrous shadow in the sea, thrashing, moaning, spouting gore. How he thought those days hellish, but he’d not known hell yet.

The leather of his gloved hand squeaks as he clenches his fist.

“Are you all right?” asks his companion. The woman examines him. “Would you need another glass of wine?” She gestures to a footman.

Yet then Sigrud hears it, terribly faintly, but there: a very soft click, out at the front of the house. And he knows that sound very well.

At last. A distraction.

“Here,” says the woman. She turns back around with another goblet. “Here you g—”

But she can only stare at the empty seat beside her.

“The enemy of old Bulikov,” says Vohannes, “is not Saypur, and it is not me, or the New Bulikov movement. It’s time.” They sit on a bed in one of the guest rooms. It is, like most of this floor, decorated in deep, warm reds and gold gilt. The estate grounds end just outside the window, and the walls gently curve around the house below. “There’s a tremendous age gap in Bulikov, you see: after the Great War and the Blink, it took so long for life to return to normal. So there’s a dying portion of the population that still remembers the old ways, and devoutly clings to them, and there’s a growing new portion of the population that never knew anything about them, and doesn’t care. They just know they’re poor, and they don’t have to be.”

“The New Bulikov movement,” says Shara.

Vohannes waves a hand at her. “That’s just a name. What we’re seeing is much bigger than politics. It’s a generational shift, and I am definitely not its creator: I’m just riding the wave.”

“And the Restorationists hate you for it.”

“Like I said, they’re fighting history. And everyone loses that fight.”

“Have they threatened you in any way, Vo?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then why the guards out front?”

He pulls a face. “Hmph. I prefer to be discreet about that.… But trust you to see. They have never threatened me directly, no. But there’s lots of political talk that teeters toward the violent side. The biggest offender being Ernst Wiclov, who is, more or less, the biggest player in the Restoration game. Another City Father. Rather dogmatic fellow. Throws a lot of money around. I suppose you could say he’s my political opponent. I never engage him—I don’t really need to—but he depicts me less as a political opponent, and more like a demon shat straight out of hell.”

“He sounds like a very wise man.”

“Don’t try to be cute. You’re terribly bad at it.”

“And this Wiclov,” says Shara, “would he …?”

“Would he have been one of the biggest agitators behind the protests against Pangyui?” Vohannes smiles savagely, a surprisingly ugly expression. “Oh, yes. I’ve no doubt he’s neck-deep in all this, and I’d not weep to see you sic your dogs on him. The man is a reeking bag of goat shit with a beard.”

“There are two other City Fathers aligned with the New Bulikov movement,” she says, “but none attract near as much hate as you.”

“Ah, well,” says Vohannes, “I’ve become a bit of an iconic figure. I have always had a taste for fashion and architecture, you know that.… And part of it is that it’s fun to rile them up. I indulge in a bit of decadence right in the open, and offend their fusty old values of modesty and repression, and they let loose a string of hateful screeds that wins me however many new voters.” A dainty puff of his cigarette. “It’s win-win, from my perspective. They also mistrust my background, though.… Considering my education, they believe me half-Saypuri.” Then a guilty look: “But I do have … a few projects of my own that may cause friction.”

“Such as?”

“Well … Saypur is the largest buyer of weapons in the world, of course. But all those soldiers are stuck using bolt-shots rather than rifles, just mechanized bows and arrows. The issue, as you may know, is one of saltpeter: Saypur and her supporting nations have almost none of it, and you can’t make gunpowder without it. The Continent, however, has saltpeter aplenty.…”

“So you want to make munitions for Saypur?” she asks, astonished. What she does not say is: How have I not heard about this?

He shrugs. “My family made bricks. Mining isn’t that much different.”

“But, Vo, that’s … Are you an idiot?”

“An idiot?”

“Yes! That’s far, far more dangerous than any political shenanigans you’ve got planned! Collaborating with Saypur in basic trade is controversial enough, but making weapons … I’m surprised no one in Bulikov has murdered you yet!”

“Yes, well, it’s not publicly announced yet.… The nation of Saypur moves slowly on deals like this, it seems.”

“So you genuinely wish to become a war profiteer?”

“What I wish,” says Vohannes forcefully, “is to bring industry and prosperity to Bulikov. Saypur’s industry is war. It’s the largest industry in the world. Bulikov is terribly poor—we hardly have a decent port besides Ahanashtan, whereas Ghaladesh’s shipyards belch out another dreadnought every other month—but we have a resource of use to that great and terrible industry. I can’t change the damned geopolitical circumstances, Shara. I just deal with them.”

Shara laughs in disbelief. “My, my … I’ve dealt with many petty bandit kings and warlords before, but never would I have thought to count Vohannes Votrov among them.”

Vohannes pulls himself up into a regal pose. “I am doing what I must to help my people.”

“Oh, goodness, Vo,” she sighs. “Please dispense with your rhetoric. I’ve heard enough speeches.”

“It’s not rhetoric. And it’s not a speech, Shara! I have tried to involve Saypur and her trading partners before, but Saypur does not lend us its favor—it wants to keep things the way they are, with Saypur completely in control of everything. It doesn’t want to see wealth in Bulikov any more than it wants us chanting the rites of the Divinities. If I must nakedly prostitute myself to bring aid to my city, to my country, I will gladly do so.”

He hasn’t changed any at all, really, she thinks, torn between amusement and shock. He’s still the noble idealist, in his own perverse way.…

“Vo, listen,” says Shara. “I have worked with people who did the same thing you’re doing now. If I have seen one of them, I’ve seen a hundred. And most of them now feed worms, or fish, or birds, or the very deep roots of trees.”

“So. You worry for my safety.”

“Yes! Of course I do! This is not a game I wish to see you in!”

“Your game, you mean,” he says.

“Yes! I’m mostly confused why you aren’t happy where you are!”

“And where am I?”

“Well, it seems to me you’ve got vast wealth, a promising political future, and an adoring mistress!”

“Fiancée, actually,” he says, with a touch of indifference.

Something inside Shara splits open. Ice floods into her belly.

“Ah,” she says.

I shouldn’t care this much, she thinks. I am a professional, damn it all. What a stupid, stupid thing to feel.…

“Yes. Wasn’t wearing her ring today. Got a rock on it like a whiskey tumbler.” He holds up a massive imaginary stone. “She says it’s conventional. Gaudy. Which it is, but. We haven’t set a date yet. Neither of us are the planning type.” He looks down at his hands. “Sorry. Probably not a fun thing to, ah”—he coughs—“to talk about.”

“I always knew you’d go on to do great things, Vo,” she says, “but to be honest I would have never pegged you as the marrying type. I mean …”

The silence stretches on.

Finally, he nods. “Yes,” he says delicately. “But. Certain practices, while acceptable abroad, are not … quite so tolerated here. Once a Kolkashtani, always a Kolkashtani …” He sighs and begins to rub his hip. “I need your help, Shara. Bulikov is a ruin of a city, yes, but it could be great. Saypur holds all the purse strings in the world—and I only need them loosened a fraction. Ask me something, ask me for anything, and I’ll do it.”

Never has the reality of my job, she thinks, seemed so unreal and so preposterous.

But before she can answer, the screams start echoing up from the floors below.

“What is that?” says Vohannes, but Shara is already at the window. She is just able to make out the form of two bodies resting in the shadow below the manor walls.

“Hm,” says Shara.

They kick the doors in and burst into the room in unison. It’s perfect, really: a beautiful, deadly choreography, gray cloth rippling as they descend on the decadent partygoers. Cheyschek’s mask is slipping a little—the left corner of his eye is now blind—but besides this he feels glorious, resplendent, chosen.

See these traitors and sinners quail and shriek. See them run. Look upon me, and fear me.

One of his compatriots kicks over the bar. Bottles shatter; fumes of alcohol flood the hall. Cheyschek and his brothers in arms scream at the people to get down, down, get down on the ground. Cheyschek points the bolt-shot at the one man who looks like he has some spine and howls in the man’s face and throws him to the floor.

To be a tool of the Divine, thinks Cheyschek, is thrilling and righteous.

A woman shrieks. Cheyschek screams at her to shut up.

It is over fast and easy. Which is expected from this soft, cultured sort. The polis governor, as expected, is here, though they have strict orders not to touch her. But why, why? he thinks. Why forgive the one person who’s approved so many unjust punishments?

When the hostages are cowed, Cheyschek’s leader (none of them know each other’s name—they need no names, for they are all one) paces among the partygoers, grabbing them by the hair to pull up their heads and view their faces.

After some seconds, he says, “Not here.”

“Are you sure?” Cheyschek asks.

“I know who I am looking for.” He looks among the crowd of hostages, picks one elderly woman, and lowers his bolt-shot until the bolt point hovers just before her left eye. “Where?”

She begins to weep.

“Where?”

“I don’t know what you mean!”

“Someone special is missing from here, yes?” he asks sardonically. “And where could that person be?”

The old woman, ashamed, points at the stairs.

“You wouldn’t be lying to me?” he says.

“No!” she cries. “Votrov and the woman, they went upstairs!”

“The woman?” He pauses. “So he’s not alone? You’re sure?”

“Yes. And …” She looks around.

“What? What is it?”

“The one in the red coat … I don’t see him anymore.”

“Who?” When she does not answer, he grabs a fistful of her hair and shakes her head. “Who do you mean?” he bellows.

She begins sobbing now, pushed beyond answering.

Their leader lets her go. He points at three of them, says, “Stay here. Watch them. Kill anyone who moves.” Then he points to Cheyschek and the other four. “The rest of you, upstairs with me.”

They mount the stairs silently, rushing up like wolves through mountain forests. Cheyschek is trembling with joy, excitement, rage. Such a righteous thing, to bring pain shrieking down on them out of the cold night, on the traitors and sinners and the filthy ignorant. He had expected to find them, perhaps, in the throes of some pornographic rite, their blood polluted by foreign liquors, the air stinking with incense as they shamed themselves willingly. Cheyschek has heard, for example, of places near Qivos where—with the full allowance of Saypur, of course—women walk the streets in dresses cut so short so that you can see their … their …

He colors just to think of it.

To imagine such a thing is sinful. It must be excised from the mind and the spirit.

Their leader raises a gloved hand when they hit the second floor. They stop. He swings his masked face around, peering through the tiny black eyeholes. Then he signals to them, pointing, and Cheyschek and two others fan out to search the floor while their leader and the others go upstairs.

Cheyschek sweeps the hallways, checks the rooms, but finds nothing. For such a large house, Votrov keeps it terribly empty. Another damning indication of the man’s excesses, thinks Cheyschek. He even misuses his country’s stone!

He comes to a corner, knocks twice on the wall. He listens, and hears a second knock-knock, then a third from farther in the house. He nods, satisfied that his compatriots are close, and keeps patrolling.

He looks out the windows. Nothing. Looks in the rooms. Nothing but empty beds. Perhaps Votrov keeps his lovers here, one in each room, Cheyschek thinks, feeling scandalized and unclean.

Focus. Check in again. He knocks once more. He hears one knock-knock from somewhere else in the house, and then …

Nothing.

He pauses. Listens. Knocks again. Once more, there’s a second echoing knock, but no third.

Perhaps he is too far away to hear me. But Cheyschek knows his instructions, and he begins to backtrack, following the halls back to the stairs.

Once he reaches the stairs, he knocks twice on the walls again, and listens.

This time, nothing—no second or third knock.

He fights the growing panic in his chest and knocks again.

Nothing. He stares around, wondering what could be going on, and it is then that he sees:

There is someone sitting in the darkened second-floor foyer, sprawled back in a white overstuffed chair.

Cheyschek raises his bolt-shot. The person does not move. They do not seem to have noticed him. Cheyschek retreats to the wall, paces along the edge of the shadows with the sight of the bolt-shot on the person at all times …

Yet when he nears, he sees they are dressed in gray cloth, and there is a gray mask in their lap.

Cheyschek lowers the bolt-shot.

It is one of his comrades. Yet the man’s mask is removed, and they were ordered to never remove their masks.

Cheyschek takes two more steps forward, and stops. There is a stripe of red and purple flesh running across the man’s exposed neck, and he stares up at the ceiling with what can only be the eyes of the dead.

Cheyschek feels sick. He looks around for help, wishing to knock, to call for someone, but there is someone or something in the halls with them, and he does not want to give away his location.

This can’t be happening. They were all supposed to be socialites, artists.…

Then he freezes.

Is there a gagging sound coming from the northern hallway?

He readies his bolt-shot. His pulse pounds upon his ears. He stalks forward, rounds the corner, and sees …

One of his compatriots is standing in a doorway along the side of the hall, almost out of sight. His compatriot trembles slightly, jerking his shoulders with his hands at his sides, and there is something on his mask, something large and white-pink and rippled that extends outward, into the doorway, where Cheyschek cannot see.

As Cheyschek nears, he sees that the something on his compatriot’s face is actually somethings: a pair of huge hands grasps the sides of the man’s head, yet the thumbs have been shoved deep into the man’s eye sockets, all the way up to the second knuckle.

His compatriot gags, gurgles. Blood spurts around the thumbs, painting the wrists, the walls, the floor.

Cheyschek sees now.

There is a giant man standing in the shadows of the doorway, and he is murdering Cheyschek’s compatriot with his bare hands.

The giant looks up, his one eye burning with a pale fire.

Cheyschek screams, and blindly fires the bolt-shot. The giant man recoils, drops Cheyschek’s compatriot, and falls backward. Then the giant lies in the hallway, completely still.

Cheyschek, weeping freely, runs to his compatriot and rips his mask off. When he sees what is below his screams turn to howls.

He holds his dead compatriot in his arms. See what befalls the honored sons of my country, he wishes to say. See what happens to the righteous in such sullied times. But he does not have the control for the words.

“At least I killed him,” he says to his dead friend, sobbing. “Please let that be enough. Please. At least I killed the man who did this to yo—”

There is an irritated grunt. Cheyschek, startled, stops and looks around.

With a curious determination, the big man slowly sits up and looks down at his hands in his lap.

He opens his left hand. Inside it, glimmering in the light of the gas lamps, is Cheyschek’s bolt—which was apparently snatched out of midair before it could ever find its mark.

The big man looks at the bolt with bemusement, as one would the strange toy of a child. Then he looks up at Cheyschek, and his one eye is filled with a cold, gray-blue calm, like the heart of an iceberg.

Cheyschek fumbles to reload the bolt-shot. There is a flurry of movement. Cheyschek feels fingers around his throat, blood battering the backs of his eyes, the floor lifting away, and the last thing he sees is a glass window flying at him, breaking around him, before he is embraced by the cold night and, almost directly after, the street below.

Shara is ready when the two men burst into the room: she is sitting perfectly still on the bed, hands raised. Vohannes, however, does not follow the advice she just gave him, but leaps to his feet, cane thrust forward like a rapier, damning them for this and that.

“Hands in the air!” shouts one of the men.

“Clearly I have done that,” says Shara.

“Get down on the ground!” bellows the other. They are dressed, she notes, in gray robes that have been tied tight around the joints and neck: it has the look of ceremonial wear, and they have strange, flat gray masks upon their faces.

“We will all sit down,” says Shara.

Vohannes is nothing so placid: “I will fuck the mouths of all your ancestors before I listen to one word you vandals have to say!”

“Vo,” says Shara calmly.

“Get down! Down!” the second attacker shouts. “Do it! Now!”

“Grab him!” says the first.

“Listen,” says Shara.

“Get fucked!” shouts Vohannes. He stabs at one of the men with his cane.

The man grunts. “Stop that!”

“Get down, damn you!” shouts the other attacker.

But Vohannes is already moving for another strike. One of the masked men grabs his cane: there is a brief struggle, Vohannes lets go of his cane, and both of them stumble back.

The attacker’s bolt-shot clicks, and Shara ducks slightly to the left as the bolt soars out, parting the air just where her neck was, before burying itself deep in the headboard of the bed.

The three men, startled, stare at her and the quivering bolt behind her.

Shara clears her throat. “Listen,” she says to the two attackers. “Listen to me now. You have made a terrible mistake.”

“Shut up and get down on the ground!” shouts one of them.

“You need to lay down your weapons,” says Shara, voice as smooth as fresh milk. “And surrender quietly.”

“Filthy shally,” growls one of them. “Shut up, and get down.”

“Why you—” Vohannes struggles to stand.

“Stop, Vo,” she says.

“Why?”

“We aren’t in danger.”

“Shut up!” shouts one of the attackers.

“They almost shot you in the face!” says Vohannes.

“Well, we are in some danger,” she admits. “But we just … We just need to wait.”

The two attackers, she notes, are growing increasingly uncertain, so when Vohannes says, “For what?” they look a little relieved he asked.

“For Sigrud.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“We just have to wait,” says Shara, “for him to do what he does best.” She says to the attackers, “I will help my friend up now. I am unarmed. Please do not hurt me.” She reaches down and helps Vohannes up to sit on the bed.

“Who is … Sigrud?” asks Vohannes.

There is a horrific scream from nearby, and a burst of breaking glass. Then silence.

“That is Sigrud,” says Shara.

The two masked men look at each other. Though she cannot see their faces, she can tell they are disturbed.

“You need to put down your weapons,” says Shara. “And wait here with us. If you do, you might survive. Be reasonable about this.”

One of the masked men, apparently the leader, says, “It’s a mind game. A filthy shally mind game. Don’t listen to her. It’s the butler making noises. Go check it out. And if you see anyone, kill them, and do so with a clean conscience.” The second masked man, still shaken, nods and begins to walk out the door. The leader grabs his shoulder, says, “Only a mind game. We will be rewarded,” and pats him on the back before sending him on the way.

“You just sent him to his death,” says Shara.

“Shut up,” snaps the leader. He’s breathing hard now.

“The rest of your men are dead, or dying. You need to surrender.”

“That’s what you all always say, isn’t it? Surrender, surrender, always surrender. We’re done surrendering. We can’t give you any more.”

“I ask nothing of you,” says Shara.

“If you ask me to lay down my weapon, to lay down my freedom, then you ask everything of me.”

“This is not war. This is a time of peace.”

“Your peace. Peace for things like him,” he says with disgust, gesturing to Vohannes.

“Hey …” says Vohannes.

“You embrace sinners, cowards, blasphemers,” says the leader. “People who have turned their backs on their history, on everything that we are. This is how you wage your war on us.”

“We,” says Shara forcefully. “Are not. At war.”

The leader leans in and whispers, “The minute a shally steps within the Divine City, I am at war with them.”

Shara is silent. The leader stands up, listens. There is nothing to hear.

“Your friend is dead,” says Shara.

“Shut up,” says the leader. He reaches over his shoulder and pulls out a short, thin sword. “Stand up. I’ll get you out of here myself.”

Shara, supporting Vohannes’s limping weight, walks out of the guest room and down the hall while the leader stalks behind them.

After a few seconds, she stops.

“Keep going,” barks the leader.

“Can you not see ahead of you?” asks Shara.

He steps around them and sees there is something lying in the hallway.

“No,” he whispers, and walks to it.

It is a crumpled, masked body lying in a copious pool of blood. Though it is hard to see through the soaking gray cloth, his neck appears to be slashed wide open. The leader kneels and gently reaches up behind the mask to touch the man’s brow. He whispers something. After a moment, he stands back up, and the hand holding the sword is trembling.

“Keep moving,” he says hoarsely, and Shara can tell he is weeping.

They walk on. At first, the house seems terribly silent. But before they reach the stairs they hear the sounds of a struggle—wood snapping, the tinkle of breaking plates, and a rough shout—before seeing an open door to a large room on their left, with many shadows dancing on the threshold.

“The ballroom,” mutters Vohannes.

The leader walks forward quickly, sword held out front; then he braces himself and wheels into the room.

Shara, dragging Vohannes, follows and looks in, though she already knows what she will see.

The ballroom is quite ornate, or at least it was. One masked attacker is kneeling on the floor, clutching his wrist and shrieking: his hand has been completely amputated, and blood spurts out to fan across the wooden floor. Another masked attacker sits in the corner, quite dead, with the handle of a short, black-bladed knife buried in his neck. In the center of the room the dining table has been kicked over, and behind this barricade stands Sigrud, covered in sweat and blood, with one frantic and miserable masked attacker in a headlock under his left arm. With his right hand Sigrud holds the remains of the ballroom chandelier—which has apparently been ripped out of the ceiling—and he is using it to fend off another attacker, who attempts to engage him with a sword. But though it is hard to tell through all the glimmering crystals flying through the air, the attacker appears to be steadily losing, stumbling back with every blow, in between which Sigrud, using the fist holding the chandelier, manages to pummel the face of the unhappy man in his headlock.

The leader of the attackers stands agog at this sight for a moment, before holding his sword high, screaming at the top of his lungs, and rushing in, bounding over the table.

Sigrud gives him an irritated glance—What now?—and lifts up the headlocked man just in time for the man’s back to receive the point of the leader’s sword.

Both masked men gag in shock. Sigrud swings the chandelier around so that it hooks the blade of the free attacker, shoves the man to the floor, and releases the chandelier.

The leader lets go of the hilt of his sword, pulls out a short knife, and with an anguished scream, dives at Sigrud.

Sigrud releases the headlock on the dead (or dying) man, grabs the leader’s wrist before the knife can strike home, head-butts the leader soundly, and then—to the vocal horror of Vohannes—opens his mouth wide, lunges forward, and tears out most of the man’s throat with his teeth.

The gush of blood is positively tidal. Shara feels a little disgusted at herself for thinking only, This will definitely make the papers.

Sigrud, now totally anointed with crimson, drops the leader, grabs the sword sticking out of the dead man’s back, and seemingly without a thought hurls it like a javelin at the shrieking attacker with the severed wrist. The point of the blade catches the man just under the joint of his jawbone. He collapses immediately. The sword wobbles, and though it is buried deep enough in the man’s skull that it does not fall out, the wobbling is accompanied by an unpleasant cracking noise.

Sigrud turns to the groaning man trapped under the remains of the chandelier.

“No,” says Shara.

He turns to look at her. His one eye is alight with a cold rage.

“We need one alive.”

“They shot me,” he says, and holds up a bleeding palm. “With an arrow.”

“We need one alive, Sigrud.”

“They shot me,” he says again, incensed, “with an arrow.”

“There must be more downstairs,” says Shara. “The hostages, Sigrud. Think. Take care of them—carefully.”

Sigrud makes a face like a child who has just been given onerous chores. He walks to the man with the knife in his neck, pulls it out, and stalks out of the room.

Vohannes stares around his ruined ballroom. “This?” he says. “This is what your man does best?”

Shara approaches the masked man struggling to lift the chandelier and begins to disarm him. “We all have our talents.”

Sigrud spots no masked attackers guarding the hostages when he runs down the stairs. “Oh, thank goodness you came, we—” says one woman, before seeing fully seeing him. Then she begins shrieking.

Mulaghesh is not half so fazed. She clears her throat from beside a pillar in the foyer: the polis governor is hunched over a robed figure and appears to be calmly garroting him with a festively colored ribbon. Mulaghesh looks at him, her left eye blooming dark from what must have been a terrific blow, and says, “Two more. Out the door.”

When Sigrud makes it outside the car is already trundling away, but is not gaining much speed yet. His boots thud as he sprints across the cobblestones. He hears one of the men inside it cry, “Go! Go! Hurry!”

The answer: “I am! I’m trying!”

The car shifts into a higher gear, but just before it can pull away, Sigrud leaps forward and grabs onto the back door.

“Shit!” shrieks one of the men. “Oh, gods!”

Sigrud’s hands are so slick with blood that he almost loses his hold. He wedges a foot into the running board, then reaches up with his right hand and stabs his black knife into the roof of the car.

“Shoot him, damn you!” cries a voice.

A bolt-shot appears in the window. Sigrud leans to the side. The bolt slices through the glass of the window, missing him by inches, but does not shatter the window. Sigrud punches through the window with his left hand, grabs the man who fired at him by the collar, and repeatedly slams him against the door and roof of the car.

The driver, now totally panicked, begins swerving throughout the street. Sigrud can see coffeehouse patrons, restaurant attendees, and horse-and-cart drivers stare in amazement as they fly by. A small child points and laughs, delighted.

Sigrud can feel it when the man goes unconscious, and he begins to haul the man out of the broken window with one arm, intending to hurl him from the car. But then the car makes a hard turn.…

He looks up. The corner of a building flies at them. Sigrud immediately sees that the driver intends to scrape the car along the building’s side, scraping off Sigrud as well.

Sigrud considers climbing onto the roof of the car, judges that he doesn’t have enough time, pulls his knife free, and dives away.

It is a painful landing, but not as painful as what happens to the unconscious man dangling out the broken window of the car: there is a wet smack, and something goes tumbling across the stony streets. Sigrud can hear the driver begin to scream in horror, and what’s left of the passenger slips out the window to roll into the gutter.

The car makes a wide turn and roars down an alley. Sigrud, now quite frustrated, gets to his feet and sprints after it.

He turns down the alley. The car has come to a stop several yards down. He runs to the car and flings open the driver’s-side door to see …

Nothing. The car is empty.

He looks around. The alley ends in the blank side of a building, yet before that there is nothing: no windows, no ladders, no sluice gates or manhole covers or doors.

Sigrud grunts, sticks his knife back in its sheath, and slowly walks the alley, feeling the walls. None of them give. It’s like the driver simply disappeared.

He sighs and scratches his cheek. “Not again.”