City of Stairs

Chapter 8

Shara checks the clock for the sixth time and confirms that, yes, it is still 3:30 in the afternoon. She sighs.

This day has been spectacularly ill-timed. Sigrud was bailed out just as the workday started, which meant that when he arrived to pick up the university maid, she’d already gone to work—and though there are many powers Shara can exercise in her duties for the Ministry, walking into a woman’s workplace, picking her up, and walking out with her is something she can’t quite pull off.

She guesses it is still about an hour and a half until the maid returns to her apartments. Shara mutters to Pitry that she’s going for a walk around the corner, and he protests, but one glance from her quiets him. Still, she wears a coat with a hood, so she’s not immediately identifiable as Saypuri.

The staggered streets and alleys unscroll before her, damp gray walls and gleaming stones and khaki ice slurry. Her nose grows raw and brittle, her toes numb. She thought the walk would clear her head, but all the suspicions and paranoia cling to her like fog.

Then she glances up, sees the man standing in the street ahead of her, and stops.

He wears only a pale orange robe: he has no shoes, no hat—in fact, he is completely bald—and no gloves. His arms are even bare, and, like his face, they are deeply tanned.

She stares at him. No … It can’t be. That’s illegal, isn’t it?

The icy wind rises. The robed man takes no notice: he sees her watching and smiles placidly. “Looking for something?” His voice is deep and cheery. “Or would you be here for warmth?” He points up. A sign above him reads: DROVSKANI STREET WARMING SHELTER.

“I’m … not sure,” says Shara.

“Oh. Would you perhaps be here to make a donation?”

She considers it, and finds he intrigues her. “Possibly.”

“Excellent!” he cries. “This way, then, and I will show you all the good work we do here. So thoughtful and kind to give to us, on such a bitter day.”

Shara follows him. “Yes …”

“People rarely wish to even go out of doors, let alone give.”

“Yes … Pardon me. Might I ask you something?”

“You may ask me”—he shoves open the door—“anything you wish.”

“Are you … Olvoshtani?”

He stops and looks at her with an expression both confused and slightly offended. “No,” he says. “That would be illegal, to follow a Divinity. Wouldn’t it?”

Shara is not sure what to say. The robed man smiles his glittering grin again, and they continue into the shelter.

Ragged urchins and trembling men and women crowd around a wide, long fireplace bedecked with many bubbling cauldrons. The room is filled with coughs and groans and, among the children, miserable whimpers.

“But your robes,” says Shara. “Your bearing …”

“What have they,” he asks, “to do with the Divine?”

“They’re … historically that of an Olvoshtani.”

“And historically when one wished to praise the Divine, one looked up to the sky, arms outstretched.” He hauls an empty cauldron out of the kitchens and pours soup into it, with a rap rap rap as he taps his spoon against the side of the pot. “But if a man were to do this today, in the street, would he be arrested?”

Shara looks back into the kitchens. She sees many other shelter attendants there wearing pale orange robes, cheerily working away, all hairless, all quite exposed to the frozen air. “So if you are not Olvoshtani,” says Shara, “what are you?”

“We’re a warming shelter, of course.”

“Well, all right, but what are you?”

“A person, I suppose. A person who wishes to help other persons.”

She tries another tack: “Why do you not warm yourself against the cold?”

“Cold?”

“It is freezing outside. I can see men hacking holes in the ice to fish from here.”

“That is the water’s affair,” he says. “The temperature of the wind, that is the wind’s affair. The temperature of my feet, my hands … that is my affair.”

“Because,” says Shara, remembering the old texts, “you have captured a secret flame in your heart.”

The man stops and appears to struggle between trying to close off his face and looking positively delighted with what she has said.

“Are you Olvoshtani?” says Shara.

“How can I be Olvoshtani,” says the robed man, “if there is no Olvos?”

Then it comes to her. “Oh,” says Shara. “Oh, I remember this. You are … Dispersed.”

The robed man makes a face: If you wish to say so.

When the Divinity Olvos abandoned the Continent, her people did not—not completely, anyway. Jukoshtan and Voortyashtan were the first cities to record sightings of people resembling Olvoshtani priests, wearing yellow or orange robes and sporting no other adornments, not shoes or gloves or even hair, only too happy to expose themselves to the elements. These people appeared nomadic, traveling through villages and cities, walking the world with apparently no other agenda than to help people when they most desperately needed it. Yet they did not claim to be Olvoshtani, or priests, or part of any higher order: though some called them “the Abandoned” or “the Dispersed,” they themselves did not declare to be anything at all. “We are here,” they were known to say. “What more is there to be?”

“I am afraid you are mistaken,” says the robed man. “We do not claim that name.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” says Shara. “You reject names, don’t you?”

“There is nothing to reject. Names are other people’s affairs. They are things to help people identify the things that they themselves are not.”

“So what are you doing, here in Bulikov? By what reason are you here?”

He gestures to the throngs of miserable people huddling by the fire. Some are families, with young children: a father pulls off his infant’s tiny boots to bare her bluish feet to the warmth. “This,” says the robed man, now without a trace of joy, “seems reason enough.”

“So you live to offer hope, as the old texts say. To be a light in dark places.”

“Old texts say many things. You say these things as though they are special—as if it is unusual for one person to see another in pain, and wish to help. As if,” he says quietly, “to do the extraordinary—or what you think is extraordinary—a person must be told to do so, by the Divine.”

“Well, don’t you?”

“Do you? You have not donated yet, but if you did—would it be because you were told to?” He picks up a lump of black bread.

“No.”

“Do you—a Saypuri, obviously—need a Divinity to live your life?”

“That’s different. We’re from different countries.”

“I never saw a country before,” says the robed man. “All I saw was the earth under my feet.”

“You do these things,” says Shara, insistent, “because Olvos told you to.”

“I have never met Olvos,” he says. He spears the black bread with a thick wire and holds it over the coals. “Have you?”

“You would not be here without Olvos,” says Shara. “Olvos started your order. Without her, this shelter would not exist.”

“If this Olvos—whom, if I recall, I am not legally allowed to acknowledge ever existed …”

Shara, irritated, impatient, waves her hand.

“… if Olvos was ever here, then the greatest thing she ever gave us was the knowledge that we did not need her to do good things. That good can be done at anytime, anywhere, to anyone, by anyone. We live our lives thinking up so many rules …” He twists off some of the bread. As the crust splits, a tiny bloom of steam rises up. “… when often things can be so simple.” He offers the piece of steaming bread to her and smiles. “A bite? You look cold.”

Before she can answer, Pitry comes running down the street, calling for her. Shara flips the robed man a ten-drekel piece—he snatches it out of the air with shocking speed, smiling—and she hurries out.

He still follows his god, in his own way, she thinks. Which begs the question: who else in Bulikov is doing the same thing, but with far less benevolent intentions?

The old woman sits in the embassy hallway, eyes beet-red from weeping. Her upper lip glistens with snot in the lamplight. Her knuckles are purple from ages of soaking in soap and water.

“That’s her?” Shara asks quietly.

“That’s her,” says Sigrud. “I am sure.”

Shara watches her closely. So, this is one of the two “expert” agents who were watching them at the university just the other day: Irina Torskeny, university maid from Pangyui’s offices, who perhaps moonlights as a Restorationist. Could this sad old creature somehow be complicit in Efrem’s death?

Shara frowns, sighs. I really cannot afford a second botched interrogation, she thinks. “Put a table and two chairs in the corner of the reception hall, by the window,” she tells Pitry. “Brew some coffee. Good stuff—vitlov if you have it.”

“We do, but … it’s expensive,” says Pitry.

“I don’t care. Do it. Get our best porcelain, too. Quick as you can.”

Pitry scampers away.

“She thinks you are to kill her,” says Sigrud softly.

“Why would she think a thing like that?” asks Shara.

He shrugs.

“She didn’t put up a fight?”

“She came,” says Sigrud, “as if she’d been expecting it all day.”

Shara watches the old woman a moment longer: Irina tries to wipe away her tears, but her hands tremble so much she resorts to using her forearm. How much more I would prefer it, Shara thinks, if it were just some simple thug.…

When the reception hall is arranged, Pitry leads the old woman over to where Shara waits, seated before a small, modest table bearing two teacups, saucers, biscuits, sugar, cream, and a steaming pot of coffee. Despite the cavernous space, this corner now has the atmosphere of someone’s tidy front room.

“Sit,” says Shara.

Irina Torskeny, still sniffling, does so.

“Would you like some coffee?” Shara asks.

“Coffee?”

“Yes,” says Shara. She pours a cup for herself.

“Why would you give me coffee?”

“Why wouldn’t we? You are our guest.”

Irina considers it, then nods. Shara pours her a cup. Irina sniffs the steam uncurling from the tiny cup. “Vitlov?”

“I’m eager to hear your opinion of it,” Shara says. “So often the people we serve feel obliged to compliment everything we do. It’s … polite, but not quite honest—do you see?”

Irina sips it and smacks her lips. “It is good. Very good. Surprisingly good.”

Shara smiles. “Excellent.” Then her smile grows slightly sad. “Tell me—why were you crying?”

“What?”

“Why did you cry just now?”

“Why?” Irina thinks, and finally says, “Why would I not cry? There are only reasons to cry. This is all I have now.”

“Have you done something wrong?”

She laughs bitterly. “Don’t you know?”

Shara does not answer: she only watches.

“Looking back, I have done nothing but wrong things,” says Irina. “Everything, all of it … it has been a huge mistake. This is what they need of you, isn’t it? This is what idealists and visionaries ask of you—to make their mistakes for them.”

“Who have you made mistakes for?”

Again, the laugh. “Oh, they are too clever to allow an old thing such as me to know too much. They knew I was—how should I say?—a risk. A necessary one, but a risk. Oh, my mother, my grandmother … I think of how they would feel to look at me now, and I …” She almost begins crying again.

Before she can, Shara asks, “Why were you necessary?”

“Why, I was the only one who worked with him, wasn’t I?”

“The professor?”

She nods. “I was the only person who had access to his affairs behind the university walls. And they came to me, and they said, ‘Are you not a proud child of Bulikov? Does not the past burn in your heart like a smoldering cinder?’ And I said yes, of course. They were not surprised, or gracious—I expect people say yes to them a lot.”

Shara nods sympathetically, though internally she is rapidly recalibrating her approach. She has dealt with sources such as this woman only a few times before: people so angry, so worn down, so anxious that the information comes spilling out of them in a dangerous flood. Questioning her will be like riding a rabid horse.

She tries a calmer tack: “What is your name?”

Irina dries her eyes. “Do you not know it?”

Shara gives her a sad look that could mean anything.

“My name is Irina Torskeny,” says the old woman softly. “I am a university maid. I have worked soap and water into those walls, into those floors, for twenty-four years of my life. I was here when it was built—rebuilt. And now I feel I will die and those stones shall forget me.”

“And you worked with Dr. Pangyui?”

“Worked? Pah. You say it as if I was his colleague, his peer … as if he consulted me, saying, ‘Here, Irina, take a look at this.…’ I was his maid. I picked up his teacups. Swept his floor, polished his brass, dusted his bookshelves … All those bookshelves.” Her righteous bitterness recedes. “Will you kill me?”

“Why would we do something like that?”

“For his death. For allowing your countryman to die.”

“ ‘Allow’? It doesn’t sound like you killed him.”

“No. No, I did not do the deed. But I think I … I think I made it happen.”

“How, Irina? Please tell me.”

She takes a breath, coughs. “He had only been at the university a few days before they contacted me. They came to my apartment. I had gone to … meetings, you see. Rallies for people who did not wish to deal with sh—… Saypuris anymore.”

Shara nods. She understands, and Irina sees she understands.

“Do you hate me for this?” asks Irina.

“I might have, once,” says Shara, in a moment of such honesty that she surprises herself.

“But you don’t now?”

“I don’t have the time or the energy to hate,” says Shara. “I only wish to understand. People are what they are.” She smiles weakly and shrugs: What can one do?

Irina nods. “I think that is a wise way to look at things. I was not so wise. I went to these meetings. I was angry. We all were. And these men found me there.”

“Who?”

“They never told me their names. I asked, but they said it was not safe. They said they were in danger, always in danger. From who, they did not say.”

“How many were there?”

“Three.”

“What did they look like?”

Irina describes them, and Shara takes notes. Her descriptions for the first two—short, dark-eyed, dark-haired, excessively bearded—could describe nearly any man in Bulikov. But the last one is different: “He was tall,” she says. “And pale. And terribly starved. It was like he ate only broth, the poor thing. He could have been quite handsome, if he took care of himself. He spoke the least. He only watched me, really. Nothing I said seemed to surprise him. They knew I worked at the university—how, I don’t know. But they asked me to serve them, to serve Bulikov. Just like the old ways. And I did.” Irina coughs again. “I was to spy on him, the professor. I was to pilfer his pages, open his drawers, look among his folders.”

“For what?”

Irina colors, but does not answer.

“What were you looking for, Irina?”

“I was not going to look for anything.”

“Then how were you to know if you’d found something?”

Irina turns an even brighter red. “I would just … I would just have to guess.”

“Why?”

“Because, the words …” She is on the verge of tears again. “I look at them on the page, and they don’t make sense to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was never taught such a thing, you see? We had no school here, in Bulikov, when I grew up. And when they brought schooling to us, I was too old, and I could never figure it out.… I could only pretend. I would hold a book, and pretend to look at it, and …” She purses her mouth; Shara gets the strong impression of a humiliated child. “I tried.” She reaches into her pocket, and pulls out a crumpled-up piece of what looks like anti-Saypuri propaganda. “I tried to learn. I wanted to learn to be righteous. I wanted to know. But I could only ever pretend.…”

Shara is not surprised: much of the Continent is still illiterate. “So what did you do, when they asked you to spy on him?”

“I told them I would. I did not want to let them down. And I … I hated him. I hated the professor, always so giddy to be reading our histories, when we, when I …” She trails off. Then: “What I chose to bring to them was a list.”

“A list of what?”

“I do not know. The professor worked out of this list all the time, so I knew it had to be important. But to me, it was just a list, with lots of information. Many squares, going all across the page, up and down, side to side, with letters and numbers in them. I did this over a period of weeks. I could not take it out—he would know if I did, and he only had pieces of this list at a time—so I would sneak out one page, maybe two or three or four, and take it to the broom closet and copy it, sketching it. The first time was hard, but after that I could do it in minutes. Even if I didn’t know how to read, I knew how to copy,” she says with a slight sniff of vanity. “Then I would bring them the copies.”

“How many copies of pages did you bring them?”

“Dozens. Maybe more than a hundred, over the course of many weeks. I was quite good at it,” she says, pleased with herself. “And they were so pleased when I first brought it to them. They were overjoyed. They wept. I felt … I felt …” She trails off, unable to finish the thought.

“Why did you stop?”

“They asked me to. Not at first—after the first time, when I brought them copies, they were less and less pleased. ‘Oh, this is good, but it is not what we were looking for, not what we need at all.’ As if it was all my fault! But then, one day, the tall pale one, he saw something on the list, and he did not smile, exactly, but his eyes, they crinkled, and he nodded. And the men laughed and said, ‘Good! Good, good, very good.’ As if they’d found what they needed. And they never asked me to get anything else again.”

Shara feels an immense dread welling up in her. “What day was this?”

“Day? I am not sure.…”

“Month, then.”

“It was still warm then. It must have been late fall. The month of Tuva, I think.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me about this list?”

“I do not know anything more than what I said.”

“You copied it. You copied hundreds of pages of it. What was on them?”

Irina thinks. “Well. There were page numbers.”

“Besides those.”

“Besides those, there was … There was a stamp in the corner. No, not a stamp—a sign of some kind, in the corner of every page. Like a … a bird atop a wall.”

Shara is quiet. Then: “Did it have a crest on its head? And did it have its wings outstretched?” She holds out her arms to show her.

“Yes. I had never seen a bird quite like it.”

That’s because it lives only in Saypur, thinks Shara, who knows this insignia well. There could be only one list bearing the stamp of the polis governor’s office that would excite the Restorationists so much: So not only have our enemies known about the Unmentionable Warehouse for months, she thinks, but they also know its contents, something even I am not allowed access to.… She deeply regrets her promise to her aunt now: perhaps Pangyui’s dead drop contains some hint of what the Restorationists were looking for.

“What does it all mean?” asks Irina.

“I’m not sure yet,” says Shara.

“I thought I hated the professor,” says Irina. “But when I was told he was dead, I realized I never really did. I wanted to hate him. But I hated things far larger than him. I hated feeling so … humiliated.” She looks at Shara, her eyes wet with fresh tears. “What will you do with me? Will you kill me?”

“No, Irina. I am not in the business of hurting innocents.”

“But I am not innocent. I got him killed.”

“You cannot know that. As you said, you hated things far larger than you—and I think things far larger than you, or me, or even the professor are in play here.”

Irina looks hopeful, relieved. “Do you think so?”

Shara tries not to let her face hint at her dread. “I know so.”

Then both women look up as shouts echo up from the street outside: “Let me through! Let me through!”

“What is that?” says Irina.

Shara leans over and pulls a drape aside with a finger. There is a small crowd gathered before the embassy gates: Shara can see the glimmer of a golden sash, suggesting a City Father, and numerous official-looking men in off-white robes. And before them, on the inner side of the gates, is Mulaghesh, arms crossed, feet fixed in a martial pose, emanating contempt like a fire makes smoke.

Shara smiles at Irina. “Excuse me.”

Shara can hear the bellowing before she even exits the front doors. “This is a political and ethical travesty, do you hear me!” shouts a man. “A crime that verges on a declaration of war! Grabbing a woman from her home? An old maid, who’s spent her life serving one of Bulikov’s most beloved and revered institutions? Governor, I insist you step aside and release her immediately! If you do not, I will do everything in my power to guarantee this becomes an international incident! Am I clear?”

Mulaghesh mutters something back, but it is too quiet to hear.

“Attack? Attack?” the man’s voice answers. “The only attack we should be concerned with is the attack on the rights and privileges of the citizens of Bulikov!”

Shara crosses the courtyard. She can see Sigrud lurking in the shadows, leaning up against the embassy wall. The City Father outside grips the gate as prisoners do their cell bars. He is tall, for a Continental, and his face is brown and bright red. Shara imagines a potato that has been glazed and fired in a kiln. Half of his face, however, is concealed behind a thick, woolen beard that climbs almost up to his eyes.

Shara recognizes him. The photo in the paper, she thinks, does not do the real Ernst Wiclov justice.…

Behind him stand at least twelve bearded men in the plain, off-white robes of Bulikovian advocates. Each of them observes Mulaghesh with small, unimpressed eyes, and in their right hands they carry leather valises like most men would swords.

Now we must deal with lawyers, too, thinks Shara. If I were to die now, I’d count myself lucky.

“As this embassy is technically Saypuri soil—” says Mulaghesh.

Wiclov laughs. “Oh, I am sure you would be giddy to see all the world called Saypuri soil!”

“As this embassy is part of Saypur,” says Mulaghesh, through gritted teeth, “we have no obligation to inform you of who is or who is not on our property.”

“But you do not have to! For my own friends and colleagues personally observed the woman being taken here!”

Shara glances at Sigrud, whose brow is furrowed in concern: normally he can spot nearly any tail, so if anyone escaped his watch, then they must be talented indeed.

Wiclov continues: “I tell you, Governor Mulaghesh”—he intentionally butchers the pronunciation of her name—“if a child of Bulikov is harmed or threatened by your familiars in any way, then the streets will ring with calls to tear down your embassy, and your quarters, and to cast you out as we should have done years ago!”

“You can cut the rhetoric, Wiclov,” says Mulaghesh. “There’s no crowd. There’s just you, me, and an empty courtyard.”

“But there will be a crowd if you do not release that woman! I guarantee that there will be riots if that poor woman is not released!”

“Released? Anyone who’s here is here voluntarily.”

“Voluntarily! After being visited by that?” Wiclov points a finger at Sigrud, who scratches his nose, bored. “This is intimidation! Threats! How is that any different than capturing her?”

Shara clears her throat and says, “You are mistaken, sir. Mrs. Torskeny has been having coffee upstairs with me. I can personally testify to that.”

He shifts his scornful gaze to her. “And who are you? Oh, are you the replacement for that vile oaf Troonyi? If so, then I no more accept your authority in this matter than I would a drunken simpleton!”

Shara blinks slowly. It has been a while since she’s been spoken to like that. She asks, “You would be Ernst Wiclov, I take it?”

He nods savagely. “I know my name must be on one of your lists somewhere. ‘Enemy of Saypur,’ I am sure, and I am proud to wear the target you lay upon my chest!”

“Quite the opposite, sir,” says Shara. “I only read about you in the paper last night.”

Mulaghesh covers her mouth to prevent a laugh. Wiclov colors. “Insolence is one of the few things your kind actually excels in,” he says. “Little miss, neither you nor your governor can lie your way out of this. There are no diplomatic tricks to play. The facts are plain: you are holding a citizen of Bulikov hostage, almost certainly as an act of petty revenge for the scuffle last night!”

“Scuffle?” says Mulaghesh. “Sixteen people are dead. Violently dead. I was there. I saw the bodies. Did you?”

“I do not need any further confirmation,” he says, “of your people’s barbarism.”

“First a scuffle, now barbarism,” says Mulaghesh.

“The matter is moot,” says Wiclov. “Do you have a woman named Irina Torskeny on your property? If you persist in lying, and claiming that you do not, then I and my colleagues shall make the case at the highest level that your actions are in violation of multiple international treaties! I shall personally see to it that you are banned from our lands, never to return again! Does that make sense to you?”

Shara grimaces. She is not, of course, intimidated by such ridiculous bluster: but Wiclov appears quite talented at attracting undue attention, and that is not something she needs right now. Ever since her visions in the jail cell, Shara has felt like she is sitting on a drum of volatile explosives and people keep trying to kick the drum over.

“Ah!” shouts Wiclov suddenly. “There she is! There she is!” Everyone turns around. Shara’s heart drops when she sees Irina Torskeny peeping out from the embassy front doors.

“Do you see!” shouts Wiclov. “Do you see her? She is being held captive! I told you so! That’s her, is it not?”

Shara marches over to Irina, who is staring at Wiclov with wide, awed eyes. “Irina, you should not be downstairs,” says Shara. “It isn’t safe.”

“I heard my name,” she says softly. “Is that a City Father? Is it City Father Wiclov?”

“Do you know him, or any of these men?” asks Shara quietly.

Irina shakes her head. “Are they asking for me?”

“Irina!” shouts Wiclov. “Do not listen to her! Come over to me, Irina! Do not listen!”

“I believe someone was watching your apartment,” says Shara. “They were tracking you, keeping tabs on you, even after you did work for them.”

“Irina! Walk to us! Ignore her!”

“I would advise you do not go with them, Irina. I do not know why they are here for you, but I can’t think it’s honest.”

Irina stares across the courtyard. Wiclov rattles the bars on the gates. Mulaghesh snaps at him to stop it, but Wiclov shouts, “They mean you harm, Irina! They mean to do you and Bulikov ill! Do not listen to that silly woman!”

“Irina … I would not advise it,” says Shara. “The men behind these actions are terribly dangerous. You know that.”

“But a City Father would never—”

“I can hear you!” says Wiclov—an obvious lie. “I can hear you talking to her, telling her to give up her rights as a child of Bulikov! Do not listen to her, Irina Torskeny!”

“Irina,” says Shara. “Think.”

But Wiclov continues: “She is not of your race, of your people! And she is not sacred, like you and I, and all your brothers and sisters. Saying such a thing violates their laws, but you know in your heart it is true!”

Irina looks up at Shara, and Shara can tell she’s made up her mind. “I’m … I’m sorry,” she whispers, and she crosses the courtyard.

Wiclov rattles the bars again, bellowing for Mulaghesh to open the gates. Mulaghesh looks to Shara. Shara tries to think of something, anything, but nothing comes. Mulaghesh nods stiffly, face bitter, and machinery begins clanking and wheels start spinning, and slowly the gates draw back.