City of Stairs

THE DIVINE CITY

The days tumble by.

Appointments, appointments. Shara is no longer a person: she is a personage, the physical representation of an office. Yet ironically, being such a thing renders her powerless. She is shuffled from meeting room to meeting room, listening to the pleas of Bulikov, the pleas of the Continent, the pleas of taxpayers, merchants, the wealthy, the impoverished.… She lives on a diet of agendas, each stuffed in her hand as she walks through the door, and a parade of bland and vapid names: “Today is the Legislative Co-Action Association of the Kivrey Quarters” someone tells her, or, “Now is the Cultural Charities of Promise Committee” or, “After this is the Urban Planning and Redistricting Task Force of Central Bulikov.”

There is no crueler hells than committee work, she decides, and Vinya must have taken great pleasure in knowing this. Shara now sits on committees that decide who shall be nominated to be committee chairs for other committees; then, after these meetings, she sits on committee meetings to formulate agendas for future meetings; and after these, she attends committee meetings deciding who shall be appointed to appoint appointments to committees.

Shara smiles through these, which she thinks is quite the feat: for inside she is filled with boiling, thrashing, groaning secrets. She feels at times as if the city is filled with ticking bombs that could go off at any moment, and only she is aware of them, yet she cannot open her mouth to warn anyone. Every morning she awakes in a sweat and dashes to check the papers, sure to discover some lethal plot unfolding only blocks away.

But the world is quiet, and still. Saypuri cranes reconstruct the Solda Bridge, segment by segment. Vohannes has not contacted her since their clumsy night together, and Shara has not yet decided if this is damning evidence or not—even if she didn’t suspect he was the one who blew her cover, she still isn’t sure she’d be able to look him in the eye. Ernst Wiclov’s leave of absence grows longer and longer. Mulaghesh has, after receiving some biting telegrams from the regional governor’s office, reluctantly returned to her regular duties. Shara does not have to look hard to see Auntie Vinya’s hand in that.

But in Shara’s head, the pages of Pangyui’s journal flit in and out of her thoughts, and she must force a smile on her face as she listens to the worries of Bulikov and the Continent, thinking all the while: These are lies. This is all a lie. Everything these people believe, everything Saypur believes, is built upon lies. And I am the only person alive in this world who knows it.

And, most frustrating of all, she is still no closer to solving Pangyui’s murder than before. After all the transgressions and betrayals and horrific discoveries, the very thing that brought her to Bulikov in the first place continues to elude her.

Press on, press on—sit on your leads until they crack.…

She has not seen Sigrud for more than a week. But this is actually good—she has assigned him to watch all of Wiclov’s loomworks. The man himself might have disappeared, but he can’t take whole factories with him, and the loomworks form one leg of the Restorationists’ trifecta—the other two legs being the steel, and whatever was stolen from the Warehouse. And Vinya might have warned Shara against attempting any sort of covert work, but standing in a street and watching a building isn’t inherently covert, is it?

So for now, she watches, and she waits.

Specifically, she waits for nightfall. Because tonight she can actually get some real work done.

Sigrud looks up from where he kneels in the alley. It’s so dark out it’s hard to see which of his eyes is missing. “You’re late,” he says.

“Shut up,” snaps Shara as she jogs up. “I’ve been trying to escape all evening. These meetings, they’re like thieves—they follow you around, wait until you’re not looking, then pounce.” She stops and leans against the wall, breathing hard. Just beyond Sigrud, on the floor of the alley, is a single line of chalk—the same chalk line Shara herself drew weeks ago, when she first tried to deduce exactly how someone could vanish in the middle of a city. “Did you bring them?”

Sigrud holds up a canvas bag. It tinkles slightly. “Wasn’t cheap.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t expect old money to be cheap. Let’s take a look.”

She sits on the alley floor and sifts through the bag, which contains about six pounds of coins, all of many different types and denominations. They all have two things in common, however: they are all very old, and they are all Continental.

“It looks like we have all the polises covered,” mutters Shara. “Taalvashtan, Voortyashtan, Kolkashtan, Ahanashtan, Ol … Wait. Olvoshtan?”

Sigrud shrugs.

“This is a priceless artifact!”

“You asked me to be thorough. Just don’t ask how I managed to be so thorough.”

Shara studies the coins. “Right … So. Many different markings, many different meanings … The question is—which of the meanings has meaning?”

Sigrud stares at her blankly. “What?”

“Never mind,” says Shara. “There’s only one way to find out.” She turns and flings the coins down the alley, past the chalk line. They go ringing on the concrete, clattering and bouncing and rolling away to lie among the refuse.

Sigrud and Shara wait for them to settle, then pace down the alley to examine them. “Silver, silver,” mutters Sigrud. “Silver … Ah. Here. Lead.” Shara extends a hand. He places the coin in her palm, and they continue looking. “Silver, silver, silver … Silver … Lead. And silver … Two leads …”

Shara and Sigrud meet in this alley two nights out of every week. Shara would like to manage three, but her schedule won’t allow it—there are so many evening events, receptions and dinners and the like, that demand the presence of Bulikov’s chief diplomat. But it is this alley, and its invisible door, that occupies every moment of Shara’s waking life.

Does this alley function by calendar? By time? By the phase of the moon? Must it be approached by a certain angle? Sigrud has seen people both run and fall through these invisible doors, so the latter is unlikely. Does someone need to be on the other side of the door, to allow them through? Does it only work on men, not women? No, of course not, don’t be absurd.…

Trial and error, trial and error. Boil down all the possibilities until only one remains.

After picking up lead coins for nearly ten minutes, Shara has a brimming handful. She sits back to study them, one by one.

“Well?” says Sigrud.

Shara continues counting under her breath.

“Well?”

“Yes! Yes. It’s as I thought—all of the lead ones are either Jukoshtani, Kolkashtani, or Olvoshtani. The others remain silver.”

Sigrud lights his pipe. The scarred brick walls glint with orange, and his one eye glows. “So?”

“So, whatever is happening in this alley, it happens to specific items with specific markings. A reaction—like a chemical. It waits for the right thing. It’s not looking for an incantation, or some gesture, it’s looking for … I don’t know. For things to look right.”

“Like a guard,” says Sigrud.

“Like what?”

“Like a guard, watching the gate of a fortress. Do you have your badge? Are your colors right? Do you carry the right flag? If not, you don’t get through.”

“Yes, I suppose, it could be like a unif—” Shara stops. She slowly sits back to stare down the alley.

“What?” says Sigrud.

“A uniform … Sigrud—what’s the last thing to have disappeared down this alley?” she asks softly.

“The man who drove the car.”

“Yes. But think of this alley like the gate of a fortress, and there is something invisible here, acting as a guard like you said.…”

“… checking his uniform,” says Sigrud. “So you are saying …”

“I am asking,” she looks up at him, her glasses glinting in the moonlight, “how easy would it be for you to get ahold of the Kolkashtani wraps that were worn by the men you killed?”

Sigrud sighs. “Oh, boy.”

Another cold night, another sky smoked with thin clouds, another moon weak and formless like a coffee stain. Shara stands as Sigrud comes pacing down the sidewalk to her, a heavy satchel swinging from his shoulder. “Now you’re late. What took you so long? Was it so hard to get the wraps?”

“The wraps,” he says slowly, “were not the problem. But I have them.” He reaches inside his satchel and hands one to Shara.

It is a hard, lumpy, dense ball of gray wool. The fabric is so tightly knit, it’s almost like sealskin. But of course it would be, thinks Shara.

Kolkashtanis wouldn’t want to entertain even the chance of having something show through. “Excellent … Excellent!” she says. “Do I want to know how you got this?”

He shrugs. “I took some police officers whoring. Frequently the easiest solution is best, I find. They like me, after Urav.”

Shara feels the edges of the fabric, her small fingers parsing through the threads. “Come on, come on.… There has to b—Wait.” The fabric around the neck is stiff and scratchy, like it has dried paint on it, or … “Wait, is this …? Is this blood?”

“You think I had time to wash them?”

Shara sighs. “Well. Anything for the job, I suppose. Now … Hm. Yes. Here.” She feels something hard in the collar of the wrap, turns the collar inside out, and pulls apart the wool strands. It’s a small copper necklace engraved with the symbol of Kolkan. She feels the rest of the clothing and finds lumps in the wrists, the ankles, the waist … all of them trinkets and jewelry bearing Kolkan’s scale.

She laughs. “Yes,” she says. “Finally! It’s what I expected! They’re not coins, per se, but they definitely have similar sigils and markings. This is a breakthrough! It was so obvious! I don’t know why I didn’t …” She looks up at Sigrud, grinning, but she sees he’s dolefully watching her. “What’s wrong?”

“I am wondering … how to tell you something,” he says.

“How to tell me something? Plainly and quickly, I would hope.” He rubs his chin. “Well. The loomworks … the ones you have had me watching …”

“Yes?”

“For a long while, it has been business as usual. Just … Wool. Thread. Workers. Rugs. Boring.”

“Yes, and?”

“But today, and yesterday, at two of the loomworks … I saw someone. The same person at both places. Visiting.”

Shara slowly lowers the wrap. “Who?”

Sigrud rubs his chin a little harder. “Votrov.”

“What?”

“I know.”

Shara stares at him. “Vohannes Votrov is visiting these loomworks?”

He nods, wincing. “Yes.”

“But … why would he do that?”

“I have no idea. But I saw him. Vohannes Votrov himself. It was a very … secretive visit. He was trying to sneak in the back way. But I caught him. I thought, ‘Maybe he wants to buy these loomworks,’ you know, maybe to rub salt in Wiclov’s wounds, but no, I checked—all are owned by Wiclov, and so far there is no record of anyone trying to change that. That is why I was late.”

“You’re … You’re sure.”

“I’m sure. Vohannes Votrov. As plain as day. He did not look well, though. He looked quite sickly. And not at all happy. He looked, I thought, like a dying man. He wasn’t even dressed the same. He was dressed like a sad little monk.”

This confuses Shara so much that she stops thinking about the alley entirely. “Are you suggesting that Vohannes Votrov is acting like he’s complicit with the Restorationists?”

Sigrud raises his hands as if defending himself. “I am telling you what I saw. He snuck into a factory owned by Wiclov, did business, then moved on to the next factory. The people there seemed to recognize him. Were I to guess, those were far from his first visits.”

“Then why … Why would he tell us about the loomworks, and make us suspicious of them, if he’s doing … whatever it is he’s doing there himself?”

Sigrud shrugged. “He looked sick. I think he is a sick man, frankly.”

And with those words, he cuts straight to the heart of a suspicion Shara has harbored for a while: that Vohannes Votrov is not himself. His actions are too inexplicable. Why would he leak her identity? Why would he, having now gotten exactly what he wanted out of the Saypuri government, not talk to her, now the figurehead of Saypur’s presence in Bulikov? Why would he, a man whose whole life was marred and damaged by his Kolkashtani upbringing, mutter lines from the Kolkashtava in the drunken depths of sleep?

The only answer is that Vohannes, a man already divided, is even more divided than she imagined. Perhaps divided enough that he is unwell, that he does not truly know what he is doing.

“There’s nothing we can do about that here,” says Shara finally. “We … We have to soldier on.”

“Fine,” says Sigrud. “Then what were you saying?”

Shara tries to refocus. “These wraps: they’re seeded with tiny charms. Little medallions and bracelets and pieces of metal bearing the mark of Kolkan—just like the coins were, in a way. So these wraps, whenever they encounter that space in the alley, will evoke a reaction of some kind, just like the coins.”

“Meaning …”

“Meaning …” Shara wads up the wrap until it’s a tight ball, turns, and throws it toward the chalked line in the alley.

Yet it never crosses.

Sigrud blinks.

The ball of gray cloth is gone.

“Good,” says Shara. “To be completely honest, I was not entirely sure that would work.”

“What …?”

“I do feel a bit bad, I suppose—I hope you have more than one or two of those.…”

“What just …? What just happened?”

“I think I was right,” says Shara. “This alley is damaged by the Blink in a very deep way. Not just the alley. Reality.” She brushes off her hands and turns to face the chalk line. “That is the first spot of reality static witnessed since the end of the Great War.”

“After the War, after the Divinities were killed, it took a long time for reality to figure out what it was supposed to be,” says Shara. “In one city, one tenet was absolutely and completely true; then, in another, the opposite. When the Divinities were killed, these two areas had to reconcile with one another and decide what their true state was. While that was getting resolved, you had—”

“Static,” says Sigrud.

“Exactly. Places where the rules were suspended. A deep marring to the fundamental nature of reality, caused by the Blink.”

“How could reality still be broken here and no one ever noticed?”

“I think part of it”—Shara waves at the street—“is that it blends in so well.” The area is like much of Bulikov: twisted, warped, pockmarked; buildings trapped inside of buildings; streets ending in tangles of stairs. “As anyone can plainly see, Bulikov has never really recovered from the Blink.”

“And on the other side of that”—he points at the invisible spot in space, wondering what to call it—“that static, is another reality?”

“I believe so,” says Shara. “Specifically, it’s a reality that pays attention to what sort of Divinity you worship, whose markings and sigils and signs you bear.”

“I suppose it’s true, then—the clothes make the man.…”

“How many more wraps do you have?”

He looks in his satchel. “Three.”

“Then please give me your smallest one, if you can. We’re going over.”

Shara and Sigrud each pull on a set of clothes: for Shara, the clothes are absurdly large, and for Sigrud, absurdly small. “I really do wish you’d washed these,” says Shara. “This one is still stiff on the inside.”

“You’re sure this will work?” asks Sigrud.

“Yes. Because once, you almost went there.”

Sigrud frowns. “I did?”

“Yes. When you saw the first disappearance, the man jumping down into the alley, you said you glimpsed, just for a moment, tall, thin buildings of white and gold.… And I believe the only reason you did see that”—she points at his right hand in its gray glove—“is because of that.”

“Because I had been touched,” says Sigrud, “by the Finger of Kolkan.”

“You bore a Divinity’s mark, so it was willing to accept you. Halfway, at least.”

Shara pulls on the Kolkashtani hood and steps toward the chalk line.

“You should let me go first,” says Sigrud. “Over there, it is enemy territory. Only our attackers have ever gone there.”

Shara grins for the first time in what feels like weeks. “I have spent half my life reading about other realities. I’d never refuse the opportunity of being the first to enter one, even with my life at stake.”

She walks forward.

There is no change, unlike when she passed through to the Unmentionable Warehouse. She is not even sure if anything has happened at all: she is still in the alley, standing on the stone floor, facing a street that looks almost exactly like it did before.

She looks down. At her feet is a Kolkashtani wrap, tied up in a tight bundle.

She turns around to see Sigrud manifest—there is no other word for it—in the middle of the alleyway. His one eye blinks behind the Kolkashtani hood, and he asks, “Are we through?”

“I think so,” says Shara. “But where we are doesn’t seem that diff—”

She trails off and stares over Sigrud’s shoulder.

“What?” he says. He turns to look, and says only, “Oh.”

The first real noticeable difference is that, beyond the next building, it is day. Not just day, but a beautiful day—a day with a cloudless, piercingly beautiful blue sky. Shara looks back in the other direction and sees that over those buildings the sky is an inky, smoky purple: the night sky she just came from. Even time is in disagreement, in this place.…

But that doesn’t come close to the other real difference: beyond the end of the alley, where the beautiful day begins, are huge, splendid, beautiful white skyscrapers, lined and tipped with gold, covered in ribbons of scrolling and interlacing vegetal ceramics, penetrated with fragile white arches and decorative window shafts, layered with pearl and glass.

“What,” says Sigrud, “is that?”

Shara, breathless, totters out to the street and finds that the entire block is lined with gorgeous lily-white buildings, each bearing its own frieze. The walls are covered in calligraphic facades resembling twisting vines or lines of text: one building, she sees, is covered in giant lines from the Voortyashtani Book of Spears. Shara’s brain begins overheating as it tries to identify their many depictions: Saint Varchek’s loss at the Green Dawn.… Taalhavras repairs the arch under the world.… Ahanas recovers the seed of the sun.…

“Oh, my goodness.” She is trembling. She falls to her knees. “Oh, oh my goodness …”

“Where are we?” asks Sigrud as he walks out.

She remembers what Saint Kivrey said: It was like living in a city made of flower petals.

“Bulikov,” says Shara. “But the Bulikov of old. The Divine City.”

“I thought all this was destroyed,” says Sigrud.

“No—it vanished!” says Shara. “Bulikov shrank by huge amounts during the Blink—whole sections of the city just abruptly disappeared. Some of it was destroyed, certainly—but not all of it, it seems. This … This section of Bulikov must have been saved but cut adrift, tethered to our reality by a handful of connections.”

Moths caper and twirl in sunbeams. A courtyard’s crystal windows send golden prisms dancing in the street.

“So this is what they fight to return to?” He casts his one eye over a half-mile-high tower tipped with a wide, golden bell dome. “I can see why.”

“This is just a piece of what it was like,” says Shara. “Much more was genuinely lost, along with anyone else in the buildings.”

A fountain carved to resemble stacks of jasmine blossoms percolates happily. Dragonflies flit from edge to edge, their green eyes sparkling.

“Thousands, then,” says Sigrud.

She shakes her head. “Millions.” Then she thinks. “Here. I want to try something.…”

She holds her hands out and begins murmuring things. Her first three attempts fail—“What are you doing?” asks Sigrud—but on the fourth …

A glass sphere the size of an apple appears in her hands. She laughs gaily. “It works! It works! Let me see if I can …” She maneuvers it so it catches a ray of sunlight: instantly, the sphere lights up, glowing a clear, bright gold. Shara cackles again, puts the sphere on the ground, and rolls it toward Sigrud. He stops it with his boot: its glow persists, lighting him from below.

“A miracle,” says Shara. “From the Book of the Red Lotus, of Olvos. One that never works on … well, in our Bulikov, I suppose. But here …”

“It works quite well.”

“Because this reality obeys different rules. Watch—roll it back to me.” Shara picks it up, tosses it high, and cries, “Stay and show!” The glowing sphere hangs ten feet over them, bathing the streets around them in soft light. “They had these throughout Bulikov, rather than streetlights. Much more convenient.”

“And a good way to tell people where we are,” says Sigrud disapprovingly. “Take it down, please.”

“Well … Actually, I don’t know how to do that, exactly.”

Sigrud, grumbling, picks up a stone and hurls it at the sphere. Shara shouts and covers her head. The shot is dead-on, and the sphere pops and bursts into a cloud of dust, which blows away down the street.

“At least stones still work here,” says Sigrud.

They wander Old Bulikov—as Shara has termed it—not sure what they are looking for. The city is completely abandoned: the gardens are barren, the courtyards empty. Everything is quite clean and white, though: Shara is happy to have the Kolkashtani wrap, as it helps reduce the glare. But though the city is beautiful, she cannot absorb it without thinking of Efrem’s theory: Did the gods make this place, she wonders, or did they simply make what the Continentals wished them to make?

Sometimes when they glance into windows of alleys in this empty city they do not see what they expect: instead of more alleys, or the inside of a building, they see muddled, filthy streetways packed with frowning Continentals, or a drainage ditch leading to the Solda, or just a blank brick wall.

“More reality static,” says Shara. “A connection to New Bulikov—our Bulikov.”

Sigrud stops and looks into one window, which gazes in on an old woman’s kitchen. He watches as she cuts the head off of four trout. “They do not see us at all?”

“Excuse me,” says Shara into the window. “Excuse me!”

The old woman mutters, “How I hate trout. By the gods, how I hate trout.…”

“I suppose not,” says Shara. “Come on.”

After a few blocks they come to a sprawling estate with a white-walled mansion, horseshoe arches, grass-floored courtyards (which are now clotted up with weeds), and dozens of reflecting pools, each of which is positioned to reflect the flower-shaped citadel.

“I wonder what esteemed person lived here,” says Shara. “A high priest, or perhaps one of the Blessed.…”

Sigrud points to one of the horseshoe arches: “Someone we know, actually.”

On the top of the arch are the words: THE HOUSE OF VOTROV.

“Ah,” says Shara softly. “I should have guessed.… Vohannes did say the original house vanished during the Blink. But I did not realize it was quite this nice.”

“What did you mean, one of the Blessed?” asks Sigrud.

“People who had interbred with the Divine,” says Shara. “Their progeny were heroes, saints … unusually fortunate and legendary sorts of people. The world rearranged itself around the Blessed to give them what they want.”

Shara remembers one of the last entries in Efrem’s journal, and the single word: Blessed.

“That must be nice,” says Sigrud. “And you think the Votrov family was one of these?”

“Oh, no, not at all. Those sorts of lineages were always well documented. If he was, I’m sure his family would have never let anyone forget about it. Wait.… Look.” She points at where the weeds of one courtyard have been parted. “Someone’s been here. Quite recently.”

Sigrud walks to the disturbance, squats, and reviews the markings on the ground. “Many people. Many. Men, I think. And recent, as you said.” He carefully steps forward into the weeds. “Most of them burdened. Carrying … heavy things.” He points ahead, toward another horseshoe arch that exits onto a descending hillside. “There is where they went.” He points to the citadel of the house of Votrov. “And there is where they came from.”

“Can you follow the trail?”

He looks at her as if to say, Did you really just ask that?

Shara debates splitting up, but decides against it. If we get lost in here, how will we ever get out? “We’ll follow the trail where they went,” she says. “And if we have time, we’ll examine where they came from.” They stalk along white streetways, through courtyards, around gardens. The silence gnaws on Shara’s sense of ease until she mistakes every glimmer for a lowering bolt-shot.

All the Continentals conspire against us. I should have never allowed Vohannes into my bed.

“Why do you not dance?” asks Sigrud.

“What? Dance?”

“I would think,” he explains, “that you would be dancing to see Old Bulikov. Running back and forth, trying to sketch things …”

“Like Efrem did.” She considers it. “I do wish to. I would gladly spend the rest of my life here, if I could. But here, in Bulikov, every piece of history feels lined with razors, and the closer I try and look at it, the more I wound myself.”

A curving house, designed to resemble a volcano, perches over a babbling brook of white stones.

“I do not think that is history’s nature,” says Sigrud.

“Oh? Then what is it?”

“That,” he says, “is the nature of life.”

“You believe so? A depressing perspective, I feel.”

“Life is full of beautiful dangers, dangerous beauties,” says Sigrud. He stares into the sky, and the white sunlight glints off of his many scars. “They wound us in ways we cannot see: an injury ripples out, like a stone dropped in water, touching moments years into the future.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“We think we move, we run, we push forward, but, I think, in many ways we are still running in place, trapped in a moment that happened to us long ago.”

“Then what are we to do?”

He shrugs. “We must learn to live with it.”

The wind pulls a tiny dust devil to its feet and sends it tottering along a white stone lane.

“Does this place make you contemplative?” asks Shara.

“No,” he says. “This is something I think I have believed for a long time.”

A bulging crystal window at the top of a rounded house captures the blue sky, stretches it, and makes a perfect azure bubble.

“You are not,” says Shara, “the man I freed from prison.”

He shrugs again. “Maybe not.”

“You are wiser than he was. You are wiser than I am, I feel. Do you ever think about going home?”

Sigrud briefly halts on his trail; his eye dances over the cream-white cobblestones; then, “No.”

“No? Never?”

“They do not know me anymore. It was a long time ago. They are different people now. Like I am. And they would not wish to see this thing I am.”

They follow the trail for a few moments of silence.

“I think you’re wrong,” says Shara.

Sigrud says, “Think what you like.”

The trail leads on and on and on. “Of course, they couldn’t bring cars, could they?” Shara muses aloud. “The reality static wouldn’t allow them through, being so modern.”

“I would have preferred if they could have brought a horse or two.”

“And they would simply leave them here for us? We should be so luck—” Shara stops and stares at a tall, rounded building on her left.

“What?” asks Sigrud.

Shara’s eyes study the walls, which have windows in the pattern of eight-pointed stars, filled with bright violet glass.

“What now?” asks Sigrud.

Shara’s eyes study the facade: at its top is an abridged quote from the Jukoshtava:

“I have read about this place,” murmurs Shara.

“I expect you have read about every place in this city.”

“No! No, I read about this place just … just recently.”

She walks forward and touches the white walls. She remembers the line from Efrem’s journal, quoting the letters of a Saypuri soldier about the death of Jukov: We followed the Kaj to a place in the city—a temple of white and silver, its walls patterned like the stars with purple glass. I could not see the god in the temple, and worried it was a trap, but our general did not worry, and loaded his black lead within his hand-cannon, and entered.

Shara feels numb. She approaches the door of the temple—white-painted wood, carved in a pattern of stars and fur—and pushes it open.

The door opens on a large empty courtyard. The walls are high and frame a piercing bright blue sky above. In the center of the courtyard is a dry fountain, around which are four small benches.

Shara slowly walks to the benches. These she also touches, as if to confirm they are really there.

Is this, she thinks, where a god once sat?

And did my great-grandfather sit next to him, or stand over him?

She slowly sits on the bench. The wood softly creaks.

Could this really be the place where Jukov himself died? Could I have found it?

She believes so. It seems unreal to see this place, trapped in a fragment of reality long since faded from the real world: but she knows it is perfectly possible. The period after the Blink was chaotic, with pieces of reality flashing into existence, then away.…

She looks to the right. A low gallery circles the courtyard, heavy square roofs supported by white wood columns.

In one column there is a small black hole. It is just at shoulder height, if you are seated.

Seated and, perhaps, holding out a pistol, perhaps to someone’s head.

She walks to it and gets the uncanny sense that something is inside it, watching her. I have been waiting here for you, the little hole seems to say, for so long!

“Sigrud,” she says hoarsely. “Bring me your knife.”

He places the handle of the heavy black knife in her palm. She takes a breath and shoves the blade into the hole in the wood.

A tink as it strikes something metal. She begins hacking at the column, carving the wood away, until the thing inside begins to shake loose.

Something small and black clatters to the floor of the courtyard. Shara stoops and picks it up.

A piece of dark, dark metal, half-flattened from where it struck the wood, about the size of a fat fig.

She rolls it around in the palm of her hand, feeling its weight.

Jukov must be dead, thinks Shara. He must be. Otherwise, how could this be here?

“What is that?” asks Sigrud.

“This little thing,” says Shara softly, “is what brought down the gods.”

They continue following the trail, which twists and turns across the streets until it unexpectedly ends in the middle of what seems to have been someone’s living room.

“Where are they?” asks Sigrud. “The footsteps end here.”

Shara kneels and examines the floor, but she can see nothing. “I can never figure out exactly what you are using to track people. Where do the footsteps end?”

Sigrud points at a spot on the floor not quite in the corner, nor quite in the center of the room.

“More static, I would imagine,” says Shara. “Just a very subtle spot, one that’s very hard to notice.”

“And you think we can pass back through?”

“I don’t think our reality—the actual reality—rejects anyone. Unlike this one. The question is, where will we come back through?”

“I think it would be wise to allow me to go first this time,” says Sigrud. “We know our enemies are over there, somewhere, doing … something. It would be stupid to allow you through. All right?”

“All right.”

Sigrud steps toward the spot. He gradually disappears, his leading foot dissolving, followed by his waist and shoulders, but it all happens too quickly for her eyes to really understand.

She waits. Then she is treated to the bizarre sight of Sigrud’s head and hand appearing in midair.

He gestures to her to follow, but holds a finger to his lips.

She walks toward the spot, bracing herself.

Last time her surroundings did not seem to change at all, but this time the change is absolute: the white city fades away, and a blue-purple dawn sky comes spilling in above, framed by harsh, sandy mountains. Short, scraggly trees rise out of the chalky soil around them and bend back down to graze the earth.

“So,” says Sigrud, “where are we now?”

Shara’s mind races. “Not in Bulikov, that’s for sure. Interesting … It seems there is no fixed geographical relationship between Old Bulikov and the real Bulikov.”

Sigrud impatiently rolls his index finger: Get on with it.

“I think … that we are outside of Jukoshtan.” Shara reaches up, grabs the slender branch of a tree, and examines its leaves. “I think so. This sort of juniper only grows near Jukoshtan. They used to perfume wine with the berries.”

“So … is Jukoshtan behind this in any way?”

“I genuinely have no idea,” says Shara. She turns around and examines the spot they just passed through: it bears some minor effects from the Blink—the sand is molten together, and many of the trees appear bent and mutated—but otherwise you’d never be able to tell this spot had any trace of reality static to it.

She breaks off a branch from a nearby tree, peels back the bark so its green inner core is revealed in a slender stripe, and stabs it into the ground. “To mark our entry point,” she says. “Now—lead on.”

The trail leads down a valley, then up the hills, up and up, until they come to the crest, and then …

“Down,” whispers Sigrud. “Down!” He grabs her shoulder and rips her forward, crashing into the soft sand hills.

Shara lies still and listens. Then she hears it: voices, and hammers.

Sigrud peers through the undergrowth.

“Have we been spotted?” Shara whispers.

He shakes his head. “No. But I am not sure what I am looking at.”

“Is it safe for me to move?”

“I think so,” he says. “They are very far down in the valley.… And they are very busy.”

She lifts her head and crawls to a spot where she can see. The bottom of the valley is dotted with fires, as if the people there are preparing to work well into the night. But what they are working on is hard to discern: there are six long, wide shapes of gleaming metal that Shara first thinks are giant shoes, pointed at the front and square in the back like the clogs they wear in Voortyashtan, but there are doors and windows in the giant metal shoes, and stairs and trapdoors … and in the middle is something that looks like a mast with no sail.

Shara says, “They almost look like—”

“Ships,” says Sigrud. “Boats. Giant boats of metal, with no ocean, and no sails.”

She squints to see the figures scurrying around the ships, screwing in screws, welding plates together. All the workers are dressed in traditional Kolkashtani wraps.

“They’re definitely Restorationists,” she murmurs. “But why the hells would they build boats of metal out here in the country? We’re hundreds of miles from the ocean! I suppose that’s what they needed the steel for.…”

“That is not a terribly large fleet,” says Sigrud with some contempt. “Only six ships? If they were going to sail anywhere, there’s not much you could do with that.”

Shara considers it. “Almost two thousand pounds of steel a month, for a little over a year—that doesn’t make very many ships. But this must have been what they were using the steel for!”

“And then what?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps they found something in the Warehouse that could create an ocean wherever you wanted it.”

Eight men are pushing something up a ramp into one of the metal boats. Even though the light is faint, Shara’s heart almost stops at the sight of it.

“Oh my,” she says.

“Is that what I think it is?” says Sigrud.

“Yes,” she says. “A six-inch cannon. I’ve only ever seen those on a Saypuri dreadnought.” She glances at the cannon shutters on the other ships. “And it looks like they have, or expect to have, thirty-six of the damn things.”

“And they plan to do what with them? Bombard the hills? Fight a war with the squirrels?”

“I don’t know,” says Shara. “But you’re going to find out.”

A pause.

Sigrud says, “What?”

“I’m going back to Bulikov”—Shara looks over her shoulder and is discomfited to see that the actual Bulikov is nowhere in sight—“to the actual Bulikov, to telegraph Mulaghesh. But we can’t just leave the Restorationists here to do … well … whatever it is they’re going to do.”

“So your plan,” says Sigrud, “is to leave me here to fight six metal ships loaded with cannons?”

“I’m asking you to watch. Only do something if they do something.”

“This something I should do being …”

“Infiltration, if you can. You must have dealt with a few stowaways in your time, right? Hopefully you learned something from them. If I get back to Bulikov in time, we can return with a small army within days.”

“Days plural?”

Shara squeezes his shoulder, says, “Good luck,” and crawls back down the hillside.

The journey back through the white city of Old Bulikov is a strange and heavy one for Shara. She tries to put her mind to the dozens of mysteries before her—landlocked ships preparing an invasion; Vohannes collaborating with Wiclov, and, possibly, arranging passage for the Restorationists in and out of Old Bulikov; yet her thoughts keep returning to the lump in her pocket, which jostles with each step.

I have on my person something that has tasted the blood of the Divine.

It takes her a moment to realize that this grants her a profound technological advantage: no matter what Wiclov, Vohannes, and the Restorationists are plotting, none of them could imagine she possesses a piece of the Kaj’s weaponry, however small. But how to use something that’s hardly bigger than a marble?

When she returns to Bulikov—the real, current Bulikov—she sheds the Kolkashtani wrap right away and goes straight to a metalworker’s shop.

“Can I help—?” The clerk does a double take as he realizes he faces the famed Conqueror of Urav.

“I need you to make something for me,” she says before he can comment.

“Oh, ah … Certainly. What would it be?”

She places the little ball of metal on the counter. “A bolt tip,” she says. “Or a small knife.”

“Well … which would you like? A bolt tip or a knife?”

“Something that could be both, if needed. I will need this to be quite versatile.”

The clerk picks up the ball of black metal. “And what would you be hunting, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Shara smiles and says, “Deer?”

Just once I would like to get eight hours of sleep, thinks Shara. I would pay for them. Steal them. Something.

But Shara cannot sleep. She is working on a deadline—Mulaghesh’s forces will arrive in a matter of hours—but knows she is missing something. Yet she feels she is drowning in information: Efrem’s journal, the lists from the Warehouse, financial transactions, Continental history, forbidden lists, Votrov subsidiaries, possessors of loomworks—all of it dances before her eyes until she cannot hold a single thought besides, Please, just calm down, stop thinking and calm down, just stop, stop, stop.…

A tap at the door. Shara shouts, “No!”

A pause. Pitry’s voice: “Well, I think you—”

“No! No appointments. None! I told you that!”

“I know, but—”

“All meetings are off! All of them. Tell them I’m … Tell them I’m sick! Tell them I’m dying, I don’t care.”

“All right, but … but this is a little different.” He slowly enters the room. “It’s a letter.”

“Oh, Pitry …” She rubs her eyes. “Why do you do this to me? Is it from Mulaghesh?”

“No. It’s from Votrov. A boy brought it on a silver plate. And it’s … very odd.”

Shara takes the message. It reads:

Shara reads this several times. “He can’t be serious.”

“What’s he talking about?”

“To be honest, I’ve no earthly idea,” says Shara. Could Votrov actually be involved with the Restorationists? It seems absurd, but, if so, could calling in the military have cut their plans off at the knees? And, even more, how could he have heard?

None of this makes any sense. Either Vohannes has gone insane—something she isn’t ready to rule out yet—or she’s missing a very big piece of the puzzle.

“What are you going to do?” asks Pitry.

“Well,” she says, “if he asked me to meet him at his home, somewhere private, I’d never go. But the New Solda Bridge site is both public and terribly popular. I think he’d be mad to try something there.”

But that still doesn’t answer the question: what is she going to do? An operative takes care of their sources personally, she tells herself. And though he’s not a source, he is mine. But deep down, she does not want any other Ministry official to deal with Vo. So many insurgents and enemy agents wind up disappearing to meet horrible ends.

If someone needs to talk Vo down off of whatever ledge he’s climbed up on, she thinks, it should be me.

“If you could, Pitry, please get my coat and a bottle of tea,” says Shara. “And if I’m not back in two hours, I want you to tell Mulaghesh the moment she gets here to raid Votrov’s estate. There is something terribly strange going on with that man.”

As Pitry hurries away, Shara rereads the note. I could never really tell exactly which game I was ever playing with Vo.

But perhaps now she will find out.

The walk does good things for Shara’s mind: the screaming, jabbering questions fade, scraped away by each turning staircase or twisting street, until she is just another person walking along the Solda.

Just imagine, she tells herself. Behind this crumbling city is a hidden, mythic paradise, and one only has to scrape at reality with one’s fingernail to find it.

Gulls and ducks wheel and honk, chasing one another for scraps of bread.

But whatever beautiful miracles the Divinities made, she reminds herself, they might have been slaves to the Continent almost in the same way Saypur was.

A crowd of homeless fry fish in makeshift skillets on the riverbanks; one, quite obviously drunk, claims each of his fish is a piece of Urav and is met with loud calls to sit down.

Shara suddenly decides that when all this business with Wiclov and Votrov is finished—and how this will wind up, she has no idea—she’ll quit the Ministry, return to Old Bulikov, and continue Efrem’s work. Two months ago she would have thought the idea of quitting insane, but with Auntie Vinya at the wheel for what might as well be forever, Ghaladesh and all its powers are now bitter ground to her, and all her discoveries have rejuvenated her interest in the Continental past. The entirety of her Ministry career pales beside her handful of minutes in Old Bulikov, like escaping choking fumes to capture one lungful of mountain air.

And, secretly, she looks forward to the wicked glee of performing another miracle. She wonders what other miracles will work in Old Bulikov: could one walk through walls, or summon food from the sky or earth, or even fly, or …

Or even …

Shara slows to a stop.

Two gulls dip and snap at another in midair for a peel of a potato.

“Fly,” she whispers.

She remembers an entry in the list from the Unmentionable Warehouse:

Kolkan’s carpet: Small rug that MOST DEFINITELY possesses the ability to fly. VERY difficult to control. Records indicate Kolkan blessed each thread of the rug with the miracle of flight, so theoretically each thread could lift several tons into the air.

A carpet, with every thread blessed.

A loomworks that could take the carpet apart with great ease.

And a small armada of steel ships in the hills, with no ocean.

The boy in the police cell, whispering, We can’t fly through the air on ships of wood.

Perhaps they wouldn’t need the ocean at all.

“Oh, my goodness,” whispers Shara.

Sigrud lifts his head when he hears the clanking. He turns his attention from the roads in and out of the valley to the six ships still marooned on the ground. The sails are being raised on the masts, and something is being extended from their port and starboard sides.

The sails being raised on the steel masts are unusual: Sigrud has seen many types of sails, but these look to be made for unbelievably brutal winds. But the objects being extended on the sides of each ship are something he has never, ever seen before in his life. These adornments are long, wide, and thin, with many pivoting parts to them. They remind Sigrud of fins on a fish, and if he didn’t know any better he’d suspect they were …

“Wings,” he says quietly.

He watches the men ready the ships.

Don’t do something, Shara said, unless they do something.

This definitely counts as something.

He checks that his knife is still in its sheath and begins to creep down the hill.

The New Solda Bridge is a tangle of scaffolding and framing. Huge cement plinths are being laid in the cold waters, guided into place by Saypuri cranes and Saypuri engineers. Continentals watch from the banks or the roofs of homes, grudgingly awed by this show of force.

Shara’s brain is still rattling with her last realization: You can build the ships anywhere, moor them anywhere, and no one could ever, ever be prepared for an assault from the sky.

Yet another niggling question comes worming out of her mind: But if Vohannes is behind it, why would the Restorationists attack his house?

She sees she’ll have the chance to ask him: he sits on a park bench just ahead, legs dandily crossed, hands in his lap as he stares down the river walk, away from her. He is not wearing his usual flamboyant clothing: he has returned, Shara sees, to the dark brown coat and black shirt buttoned up to the neck, like he was the night of Urav.

She remembers Sigrud saying, He wasn’t even dressed the same. He was dressed like a sad little monk.

She surveys the crowd. Vohannes is very much alone. Yet he seems to see her and look away, so she can only see the back of his head.…

“What’s the matter with you, Vo?” she asks as she nears. “Are you sick? Are you insane? Or have you really been working at this all along?”

He turns to her and smiles. She sees he carries no cane. “The latter, I’m quite happy to say,” he says cheerily.

Shara freezes, and immediately sees why he kept his face turned from her until now.

It’s almost the same as the face she knows: the same strong, square jaw, the same glittering smile. But this man’s eyes are darker, and they are sunken deep in the back of his head.

Shara doesn’t wait: she turns and runs.

Someone—a rather short, nonthreatening young man—ambles by, sticks his leg out, and trips her. She crashes to the ground.

The stranger stands and walks toward her with a pleasant air. “I did wonder if you’d come,” he says, “but I guessed the line about Tovos Va would seal it. After all, I taught that game to him. How pleasant to see that it worked!”

She starts to stand back up. The stranger gestures to her and mutters something. There is a sound like a whip crack. She looks down and realizes she is now totally transparent: she can see the stone cobbles through her legs, or rather where her legs should be.

Parnesi’s Cupboard, thinks Shara, right before someone behind her clamps a rag over her mouth: her nostrils fill with fumes, her eyes film over, and suddenly it’s very hard to stand.

She falls back into their arms: two men, maybe three. The stranger—Vohannes, yet not Vohannes—wipes his nose. “Very good,” he says. “Come along.”

They carry her down the river walk. The fumes force their way deeper into her brain. She thinks, Why isn’t someone helping me? But the bystanders merely watch them curiously, wondering why these men appear to be miming carrying something heavy between them.

She gives up; the fumes coil around her; she sleeps.