City of Stairs

WHAT IS REAPED

Volka descends the stairs in the Seat of the World with a satisfied air. “I have done good works,” he says aloud. “And I think Father Kolkan shall be pleased.”

Vohannes can’t help but scoff in disgust.

“And now”—Volka takes the final step off of the stairs—“to bring him home.” He looks sideways at where Vohannes and Shara are trapped. “Maybe after this, we shall embrace as true brothers. Perhaps he will cleanse you. Perhaps he will show mercy.”

“If he made you in his image, Volka,” says Vohannes, “then I very much fucking doubt it.”

Volka sniffs and walks to Kolkan’s atrium. The Restorationists are arranged before the clear glass pane, a kneeling congregation awaiting their prophet. Volka calmly drifts through their ranks—Shara is reminded of a debutante at a ball—and stops before one man in particular.

Shara’s bonds are growing looser. “Keep trying,” she says desperately. “Please, Vo.”

Vohannes grunts, pulls harder.

“The hammer,” Volka says softly.

The man produces a long silver hammer. Volka takes it delicately, then walks to the ladder and slowly climbs up to the glass.

Shara almost has her thumb through one loop of rope, but this has pulled another cord tight around her wrist.

Volka holds the silver hammer to his lips and whispers to it, chanting something.

I don’t want to see him, thinks Shara. I can’t. Anyone but him, anyone but Kolkan …

She twists at the ropes. Something hot drips into her palm. She feels one cord slip over her pinky knuckle, then her thumb.

The silver hammer quivers, its edges blurring as if the metal itself trembles, filled with an energy it can barely contain.

Vohannes grabs hold of the ropes; Shara lunges forward, hoping they’ll break, but they hold fast.

Volka holds the hammer high. The yellow-orange sunlight blazes off of the hammer’s head.

The dribbling heat in Shara’s palm is now a trickle, thick and wet.

Someone do something, thinks Shara.

Volka cries out and swings the hammer forward.

With a tinny snap, the glass shatters.

Golden sunlight pours through, illuminating the white stone of the temple floor until it flares bright. It is a sun, a star, a blaze of light that is pure, terrible, heatless.

Both Vohannes and Shara cry out, blinded. The burst of light is so shocking that they twist away and fall over. Something grinds uncomfortably in Shara’s wrist: a bad sprain, perhaps.

Then silence. Shara waits, then looks up.

The men in Kolkashtani wraps are staring at something before them.

There is a figure standing in front of the broken window, sunlight falling on its shoulders.

It is man-like, but it is very tall: nine feet tall at least. He—if it really is a he—is draped in thick gray robes from head to toe, concealing his face, his hands, his feet; yet his head slowly turns from side to side with a puzzled air, taking in his environs and the kneeling men before him as if awoken from a very peculiar dream.

“No,” whispers Shara.

“He lives,” says Volka. “He lives!”

The robed figure turns its head to look at him.

“Father Kolkan!” cries Volka. “Father Kolkan, you are brought back to us! We are saved! We are saved!”

Volka scurries down the ladder and joins the men before Kolkan, who still has hardly moved. Volka drops to his knees and falls to his face, hands splayed at the toes of the Divinity.

“Father Kolkan,” Volka says, “are you all right?”

Kolkan is silent. One would mistake him for a statue, if the breeze did not rustle his robes so.

“You have been away for many, many years,” says Volka. “I wish I could tell you that all the world is right and good upon your waking. But in your absence, all has gone awry: our colonies have rebelled, they have murdered your brothers and sisters, and they have enslaved us all!”

The men around him all nod and peek up at Kolkan, expecting him to react with shock: but Kolkan is still and silent under his gray robes.

“Vo,” whispers Shara.

“Yes?”

“Do what I do,” she whispers. Still bound, she rolls over onto her face, kneels, and bows forward until her forehead kisses the floor.

“What are you—?”

“Penitence,” Shara says quietly. “Kolkan will always recognize penitence.”

“What?”

“Prostrate yourself before him! And do nothing else! Anything else will be considered an offense!”

Reluctantly, Vohannes rolls over and bows as well.

And if Kolkan doesn’t pay much attention, thinks Shara, maybe I can finish what Vo started on my knot.

“Voortya was killed in the colonies,” says Volka. “Taalhavras and Ahanas were slain when the colonials invaded. And Jukov, cowardly Jukov, surrendered to them, and was executed! The colonials rule over us as if we are dogs, and they have outlawed our love for you, Father Kolkan. We are not allowed to worship you as we wish, to hold you in our hearts. But we have waited for you, Father Kolkan! My followers and I have kept the faith, and worked to bring you back! We even rebuilt your atrium in the Seat of the World for you! I labored to carry the stones from Kovashta itself back to this place, so when you returned you would be met by signs of praise and worship! And we have captured the most heretical betrayer of your ways, and the child of the very man who overthrew our Holy Lands!” Volka points backward at Shara and Vohannes and does a brief double take when he sees them bowed forward in penitence. “Wise cowards, they throw themselves on your mercy. But so do we all! We all throw ourselves upon your mercy, Father Kolkan! We are your devoted servants! We have created an army of the sky to make war for you, but we fear this will not be enough! We beg of you, please, help us throw off our shackles, rise up, and bring righteousness and glory back to the world!”

The Seat of the World is silent. Shara tilts her head up slightly to see and begins to quietly work one hand out of her ropes.

Kolkan’s head turns back and forth as he surveys his tiny, black-clad flock.

He shifts from one foot to the other and examines the rest of the Seat of the World.

A voice is then heard somewhere in the temple; not heard with Shara’s ears, but somewhere in her mind—a muffled voice that could be the sound of rocks being crushed together, though there is a single word in it:

“WHERE?”

Volka hesitates and lifts his head. “Wh-where what, my Father Kolkan?”

Kolkan continues staring around the Seat of the World. The voice sounds again: “WHERE IS THE FLAME AND THE SPARROW?”

Volka blinks and glances back at his lieutenants, who are just as dumbfounded as he is. “I … I am not sure what you mean, Father Kolkan.”

“WHEN I AM MET,” says the voice, “I AM TO BE MET WITH THE FLAME AND THE SPARROW.”

A long pause.

“WHY DO YOU NOT BEAR THEM?”

“I … had never heard of this ritual, Father Kolkan,” says Volka. He rises to a kneel, like the rest of his followers. “I read so much about you, but … but you have been gone from this world for many hundreds of years. This must have been a rite that I missed.”

“DO YOU,” asks the voice, “INSULT ME?”

“No! No, no! No, Father Kolkan, we would never do such a thing!” Volka’s followers fervently shake their heads.

“THEN WHY DO YOU NOT BEAR THEM?”

“I just … I didn’t know, Father Kolkan. I am not even sure what they—”

“IGNORANCE,” says the voice, “IS NO EXCUSE.”

Kolkan steps forward and looks at his flock. His head tilts back and forth, as if seeing many things in them.

“YOU ARE UNWORTHY.”

Volka is mute with shock.

The voice says, “YOU HAVE BATHED FRUITS IN THE WATERS OF THE OCEAN. YOU HAVE MIXED LINENS AND COTTONS WITH YOUR GARMENTS. YOU HAVE CREATED GLASS WITH MANY FLAWS. YOU HAVE TASTED THE FLESH OF SONGBIRDS. I SEE THESE WRONGS IN YOU. YOU ARE UNREPENTANT OF THEM. AND NOW, AS I EMERGE, YOU DO NOT MEET ME WITH THE FLAME AND THE SPARROW.”

Volka and his followers glance among themselves, wondering what to do. “F-Father Kolkan, please,” murmurs Volka. “Please … forgive us. We followed all your edicts that we could find, that we knew. But we freed you, Father Kolkan! Please forgive u—”

Kolkan points at him. Volka halts as if frozen.

“FORGIVENESS,” says Kolkan’s voice, “IS FOR THE WORTHY.”

Kolkan looks at Volka’s followers. “YOU ARE AS THE DUST AND THE STONE AND THE MUD.”

From what Shara can see, there is no change, no flash of light; but in one instant, they are men, and in the next, they are statues of dark stone.

Volka stands before Kolkan, still frozen, but alive: Shara can see his eyes turning in his sockets.

“AND YOU,” says Kolkan’s voice. “YOU THINK YOU ARE NOT AS THE DUST AND THE STONE AND THE MUD. YOU WILL BE REMINDED OF WHAT YOU ARE.”

Whatever hold Kolkan had on him is apparently lifted, and Volka falls to the ground, gasping. “I … I will,” he says. “I will, Father Kolkan. I will remem—” He gags, lurches forward, and shrieks with pain. “Ah! Ah, my stomach, it—” Shara can see his belly bulging, swelling, as if pregnant. Horrified, she turns her head back to face the ground.

Volka’s shrieks build and build until finally they are a gurgle. She hears him fall to the ground. There is a pop! as the Butterfly’s Bell around them vanishes, and Volka is silent, though she can hear him struggling.

“YOU WILL KNOW PAIN.”

There is a sound like heavy cloth being torn. Helpless to stop herself, Shara glances up. Black round stones—hundreds of them—come spilling out of Volka’s open stomach, glistening in a wash of blood, the pile growing and growing even as Shara watches.

She gags. Kolkan looks up slightly, and she turns back to face the ground.

“HM,” says Kolkan’s voice.

She and Vohannes are silent. She can hear Vohannes’s trembling breath beside her.

“THIS IS A SIGHT I KNOW WELL,” says his voice. “AND A SIGHT I WELCOME. TIME MAY HAVE PASSED, BUT THOSE OF FLESH STILL REQUIRE JUDGMENT.”

Shara feels her limbs stiffen. She wonders if Kolkan is turning them to stone, but apparently not: she is paralyzed, just as Volka was.

There is a crack, and Vohannes begins to slide toward Kolkan, as though the stone floor of the temple is a conveyor belt. Out of the side of her eye Shara can see Vohannes look back at her, terrified, shocked. Don’t leave me! he seems to say. Don’t!

“COME BEFORE ME,” says Kolkan’s voice. “AND PLEAD YOUR CASE.”

Shara cannot see, but she hears Vohannes’s voice: “M-my case?”

“YES. YOU HAVE ASSUMED THE POSE OF THE SHAMEFUL AND THE PENITENT. PLEAD YOUR CASE, AND I WILL CONSIDER MY JUDGMENT.”

It’s like his judgments before he pronounced his edicts, thinks Shara. But Vo doesn’t know what the hells he’s doing.

A long silence. Then Vohannes says, “I—I am … I am not an old man, Father Kolkan, but I have seen much life. I have … I have lost my family. I have lost my friends. I have lost my home, in many ways. But … but I will not distract you with these tales.”

Vohannes nearly shouts the word “distract.” If she had the mind for it, Shara would roll her eyes. Not a particularly subtle message, Vo.…

“I am penitent, Father Kolkan,” says Vohannes. His voice grows stronger. “I am. I am sorrowful. I am ashamed. Namely, I am ashamed that I was asked to be ashamed, that it was expected of me.” He swallows. “And I am ashamed that, to a certain extent, I did as they asked. I did and, and I do hate myself. I hated myself because I didn’t know another way to live.

“I am sorrowful. I am sorrowful that I happened to be born into a world where being disgusted with yourself was what you were supposed to be. I am sorrowful that my fellow countrymen feel that being human is something to repress, something ugly, something nasty. It’s … It’s just a fucking shame. It really is.”

If Shara could move, her mouth would drop open in shock.

“I am penitent,” says Vohannes. “I am penitent for all the relationships this shame has ruined. I am penitent that I’ve allowed my shame and unhappiness to spread to others. I’ve fucked men and I’ve fucked women, Father Kolkan. I have sucked numerous pricks, and I have had my prick sucked by numerous people. I have fucked and been fucked. And it was lovely, really lovely. I had an excellent time doing it, and I would gladly do it again. I really would.” He laughs. “I have been lucky enough to find and meet and come to hold beautiful people in my arms—honestly, some beautiful, lovely, brilliant people—and I am filled with regret that my awful self-hate drove them away.

“I loved you, Shara. I did. I was very bad at it, but I loved you in my own confused, mixed-up way. I still do.

“I don’t know if you made the world, Father Kolkan. And I don’t know if you made my people or if they made themselves. But if it was your words they taught me as a child, and if it’s your words that encourage this vile self-disgust, this ridiculous self-flagellation, this incredibly damaging idea that to be human and to love and to risk making mistakes is wrong, then … Well. I guess fuck you, Father Kolkan.”

A long, long, long silence.

Then Kolkan’s voice, trembling with rage: “YOU ARE UNWORTHY.”

The Seat of the World lights up with screams.

Shara struggles against her paralysis, wishing to rise up and run to Vo’s side, but she cannot: whatever miracle Kolkan has used holds her down.

She wants to scream with Vohannes, even as his screams intensify—shrieks of unbearable, inconceivable pain, louder and louder—as Kolkan applies unspeakable tortures to him.

Then the miracle breaks, and she is free.

Shara sits up and looks: Kolkan stands before Vohannes, one long, rag-wrapped finger pressed against Vohannes’s forehead; Vohannes trembles, his flesh quaking as if the Divinity is pouring endless agony and pain into him, and has completely forgotten about her.

Go to him! a part of her thinks.

Another part says, He baited Kolkan into doing this in order to free you. Kolkan’s so angry you’ve slipped his mind, for now—so what will you do with this chance?

Weeping, she rips her hands out of the loose ropes, shuts her eyes, remembers the lines from the Jukoshtava, and draws a door in the air.

There is the sound of a whip crack. She steps forward into the Cupboard and her body vanishes from her sight.

Kolkan looks up. Vohannes drops to the floor, pale as snow, and does not move.

Shara shuts her eyes and doesn’t dare to breathe: Parnesi’s Cupboard does not conceal sound.

Kolkan shuffles forward, his head sweeping the Seat of the World. Shara feels an immense pressure exerting itself on her, as if she is sinking deeper and deeper into the ocean. He’s looking for me, feeling for me.…

“THE CUPBOARD,” says Kolkan’s voice. “I REMEMBER THIS.”

Shara feels sick with terror. Kolkan is less than four feet away from her now, and she is awed by his size, his filth, the stench of decay leaking from underneath his many cloaks.

“I COULD CAVE IN THIS TEMPLE,” he says, “AND CRUSH YOU. IF YOU ARE STILL HERE.”

He looks up, into the ceiling of the Seat of the World.

“BUT I HAVE BIGGER THINGS TO DO.”

Then, abruptly, Kolkan is gone, as if he had never been here.

Shara still doesn’t breathe. She stares about the Seat of the World, wondering if the Divinity could be lurking in some dark corner.

A voice comes booming down out of the skies: “THIS CITY HAS GROWN UNWORTHY.”

“Oh, no,” says Shara. She looks at Vohannes, wishing to go to him. Prioritize, snaps the operative’s voice in her head. Grief is for later.

She whispers, “I’m sorry, Vo.” And she stands and sprints out of the temple.

All across Bulikov, in the fish markets and the alleys, by the Solda and in the teashops, the citizens stare at the enormous white cathedral that has suddenly appeared in their city, and jump as the voice of Kolkan echoes through the streets.

“YOU HAVE BROKEN COUNTLESS LAWS,” says the voice.

Children at play stop where they are and listen.

“YOU HAVE LAIN WITH ONE ANOTHER IN JOY.”

A street sweeper, still holding his broom, slowly turns to look up into the sky.

“YOU HAVE BUILT FLOORS OF WHITE STONE.”

The elderly men at the Ghoshtok-Solda Dinner Club stare at one another, then at their bottles of wine and whiskey.

“YOU HAVE EATEN BRIGHT FRUITS,” says the voice, “AND ALLOWED THEIR SEEDS TO ROT IN DITCHES.”

In a barbershop beside the Solda, the barber, stunned, has removed most of an old man’s mustache; the old man, just as stunned, has yet to realize.

“AND YOU HAVE WALKED IN THE DAY,” says the voice, “WITH YOUR FLESH EXPOSED. YOU LIVE WITH FLESH OF OTHER FLESH. YOU HAVE LOOKED UPON THE SECRETS OF YOUR FLESH, AND KNOWN THEM, AND FOR THIS I WEEP FOR YOU.”

In the House of Seven Sisters infirmary, Captain Nesrhev, still bound up in many bandages, sets his pipe aside and calls to the nurses: “What the fuck is going on?”

“YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN THE WAY YOU SHOULD BE,” says the voice.

A pause.

“I WILL RESTORE YOU.”

Ocher sunlight washes over Bulikov. The citizens shield their eyes, look away from windows.…

And when they look back they see the view has changed: it is as if all the city blocks have been rearranged, shoved out of the way to make room for …

An old woman at the corner of Saint Ghoshtok and Saint Gyieli falls to her knees in awe and says, “By the gods … By the gods.”

… splendid, beautiful white skyscrapers, lined and tipped with gold. They look like giant white herons wading among the low, gray swamp of modern Bulikov.

“YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN ALL I TAUGHT YOU,” says the voice. “I HAVE RETURNED TO REMIND YOU. YOU WILL BE SCOURGED OF SIN. YOU WILL BE PURIFIED OF TEMPTATION.”

A wind stirs along Saint Vasily Lane. As if in a dream, dozens of pedestrians suddenly walk to the center of the street, stand together shoulder to shoulder, and face the north. They are mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters; none respond to plaintive cries from friends and family asking what’s wrong.

The wind increases. Citizens of Bulikov are forced to raise their hands and turn their faces away. There is a clinking and clanking, as if the wind has somehow blown thousands of metal plates down the street. When the people lower their hands and look back, they are shocked by what they see:

In place of the pedestrians, five hundred armored soldiers now stand in the streets. The armor they wear is huge and thick and gleaming, protecting every inch of their bodies: it is so thick they might not even be soldiers, but animated suits of armor. Their helmets depict the glinting visages of shrieking demons; their swords are immense, nearly six feet in length, and flicker with a cold fire.

Only Shara Komayd, who glances at the soldiers as she sprints to the embassy, recognizes them from somewhere: had she not asked Sigrud to tear that painting off of CD Troonyi’s wall mere weeks ago?

Kolkan’s voice says, “YOU WILL KNOW PAIN, AND THROUGH IT YOU WILL KNOW RIGHTEOUSNESS.”

The soldiers turn to the people on the sidewalk and raise their swords.

Mulaghesh sees Shara running toward the fortifications and bellows to her, “What in hells is that voice talking about?”

“It’s Kolkan!” Shara says, panting.

“The god?”

“Yes! He’s talking about his edicts!”

“White stone floors? Eating bright fruits?”

Soldiers help Shara scramble over the fortifications. “Those are his edicts, yes!”

“And where the hells did these white buildings come from?”

“It’s Old Bulikov,” says Shara. “Parts of Bulikov as it was. He must have pulled it all back in and tossed the buildings in with the normal Bulikov!”

“I have …” Mulaghesh searches for words. “I have no fucking idea what you are talking about! Forget all that—what’s he going to do now? What do we do now?”

The sound of tinny screams echoes through the streets. Mulaghesh shades her eyes to look. “There are people running toward us,” she says. “What’s going on?”

“Have you ever seen the painting The Night of the Red Sands? By Rishna?”

“Yeah?”

“Remember the Continental army the Kaj faces in that painting?”

“Yeah, I—” Mulaghesh lowers her hand from her eyes, and turns to stare at Shara in horror.

“Yes,” says Shara. “It seems Rishna was quite accurate in her depiction.”

“How …? How many?”

“Hundreds,” says Shara. “And Kolkan can make more if he chooses. He is a Divinity, after all. But I may have a weapon he doesn’t know about.”

Shara races upstairs to her office with Mulaghesh. She opens a drawer in her desk and takes out the piece of black lead she had reworked into the point of a bolt. “This,” she says softly.

“What’s that supposed to be?”

“It’s the metal the Kaj used to kill the Divinities,” says Shara. “It’s immune to any Divine influence. He fired this very shot through the skull of Jukov, executing him. All we have to do is lure Kolkan out, and then someone, maybe, can use it to take a shot at him, just like during the Great War.”

“Okay.… Assuming everything you’re saying is true,” says Mulaghesh, “during the Great War, wouldn’t the Kaj have had hundreds or thousands of those little shots?”

“Well … Yes.”

“And you’ve only got the one?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. And how do we lure him out?”

“Well …”

“And what if that shot misses?”

“Well, we’d … we’d have to go and get it, I suppose.”

Mulaghesh gapes at Shara with an expression equal parts disbelief and exasperation.

“I didn’t have time to plan this out!” says Shara.

“I couldn’t tell!”

“I had no idea this’d be happening now!”

“Well, it is! And I must admit, Chief Diplomat, I do not have much faith that that plan will work!”

The floor rumbles. Soldiers begin shouting outside. Shara and Mulaghesh reach the window just in time to see a four-story building ten blocks down collapsing as if it’s been demolished. Glimmering steel shapes come marching out of the dust and debris, holding their giant swords straight up.

“They’re strong enough to destroy buildings?” says Shara aloud in disbelief.

“And what is your plan,” asks Mulaghesh, “for dealing with those?”

She adjusts her glasses. “How much weaponry do you have?”

“We have the typical bolt-shots, plus five repeat-shot small cannons.” She makes a small “O” with her forefinger and thumb. “You crank them and they fire rounds about this big twice every second.”

“No other large cannonry?”

She shakes her head. “None. The treaties outlawed mobile heavy cannonry on the Continent.”

“And do you think those rounds could pierce the armor of those … things?”

“Well, it’s Divine armor, right?”

“But perhaps Kolkan,” Shara wonders aloud, “does not yet know about gunpowder.”

“I’m not really willing to take that chance. My suggestion would be to retreat.… But those things appear to move very fast.”

“And even if we did retreat, that’d still leave the flying warships,” says Shara.

Mulaghesh stares at her, incredulous. “What flying warships?”

“No time to explain now. Do we have a working telegraph?”

Mulaghesh shakes her head. “Line went dead just minutes ago. Everything electrical has stopped working, actually.”

“It must be Kolkan’s influence. But I don’t think we can retreat, and I don’t think we can stay, and we can’t signal ahead to Ghaladesh.…” Shara rubs her temples. I always wondered if I’d die for my country, she thinks, but I never thought it’d be like this.

She glances back at her open drawer, wishing—stupidly—that she might find a second plug of black lead to use.

She sees a small leather bag sitting in her drawer, inside of which, she knows, are a dozen or so little white pills.

“Hm,” says Shara. She picks up the bag and peers into it.

“If you’re starting to think of something,” says Mulaghesh, “I advise you think fast.”

She picks out a pill and holds it up. “Philosopher’s stones.”

“The drug you used on the kid in the jail?”

“Yes. They help one commune with the Divine, but they also … They also amplify the effects of many miracles.”

“So?”

This is suicide, thinks Shara.

“So?” says Mulaghesh again.

To not do it is also suicide.

She reluctantly says, “I know a lot of miracles.”

“All right!” shouts Mulaghesh. “Listen up!” Another building collapses several blocks away; the Saypuri soldiers glance at one another uneasily, but Mulaghesh continues: “Ever since you were kiddos you all wanted to be the Kaj, didn’t you? You wanted to fight those wars, to win those victories, to feel that glory? Well, I will remind you, boys and girls, of a history lesson.…” Something explodes beside the Solda; a fireball twenty feet across rises into the air between two tall white skyscrapers. “Do you remember how the Night of the Red Sands got its name? It’s because when the Kaj brought his scrawny army of about a hundred freed slaves to the desert of Hadesh, they wound up facing not only the Divinity Voortya, but also five thousand armored Continental warriors. Warriors a hell of a lot like those.” She points down the street, where silver shapes hack and slash at crowds and wagons and cars and buildings—anything. “They were outnumbered ten to one, on flat terrain, with absolutely no strategic advantage! Any decent strategist would have decided they were done for! Hells, I would have decided they were done for! But they weren’t, because the Kaj brought up a cannon, loaded it with a special shot, and fired it directly through Voortya’s damned face!” She taps the center of her forehead. “And the second Voortya died, all the armor those Continentals were wearing—which was so thick, so heavy, so impenetrable, and so miraculously light—suddenly became as heavy as it would normally be. And the army collapsed underneath it. These terrifying soldiers, without their Divinity, were helpless, trapped beneath hundreds and hundreds of pounds of iron and steel! And the Kaj’s army, a bunch of untrained slaves and farmers who had lived their whole lives being punished and abused by those soldiers, waded among them and used knives, and rocks, and fucking gardening tools to finish them off!” One of the cranes working on the New Solda Bridge tips back and forth like a metronome, then topples into the icy water. Flocks of brown starlings wheel above the city, shrieking and cheeping. “They slaughtered five thousand men in one night! They slaughtered them as a winemaker prunes grapes from the vine! The blood was so deep it went up to their ankles! And that, boys and girls, is why they call it the Night of the Red Sands!”

Shara is standing in the middle of the courtyard, counting out pills and guessing the right dosage. Will I go mad? Will Kolkan swoop into my mind and destroy me? Will I simply topple over, dead, and leave my soldiers and my people here to die? Or perhaps it will just be like having too much tea.…

“Now let me remind you of our current predicament!” says Mulaghesh. “We face ridiculous odds, yes! Absurd odds! But we are trained soldiers! And we have on our side the great-granddaughter of the Kaj, who just a month ago brought down a Divine horror that was ravaging this very city! You wish to relive history? Are your standards so low? You will make it this day! You are heroes that will be sung about for centuries to come! You are legends! And you will be victorious!”

To Shara’s utter surprise, a bloodthirsty cheer rises up among the soldiers. They begin to chant: Komayd! Komayd! Komayd!

Shara turns a furious beet red and mutters, “Ohmygoodness.”

“Now man these fortifications,” says Mulaghesh, “and I want you to aim for those things’ fucking eyes, do you hear me? They might be armored, but they’re not perfect!”

The soldiers cheer and rush to the fortifications behind the embassy walls. Mulaghesh saunters over to where Shara stands. “How’d I do?”

“Very good,” says Shara. “You ought to do this for a living.”

“Funny,” says Mulaghesh. She peers through the gates. “Those things know we’re here. It looks like they break off about a dozen for each building, and we’re about to get our fair share. Are you ready?” Shara hesitates. “This is five times the dosage I gave the boy in the jail.”

“And?”

“So I have absolutely no idea if potency correlates with quantity.”

“And?”

“So I mean that even if this does work, there is a very good chance I may overdose, and die.”

Mulaghesh shrugs. “Yeah, probably. Welcome to war. Let’s see if you can do something before you actually die, though, okay?”

“How can you …? How can you be so calm about this?”

Mulaghesh watches the advancing armored soldiers. “It’s like swimming,” she says. “You think you’ve forgotten how to do it, but then you jump in, and suddenly it’s like you never stopped doing it at all. If you’re going to do this, Chief Diplomat”—she points at the pills in Shara’s hand—“do it. Because we’re about to find out if our guns are worth a damn against those things.”

The armored soldiers line up and begin to march toward the embassy with metronomic precision. Teeth-rattling clanks echo across the streets and over the walls. Mulaghesh mounts the foremost gun battery and shouts, “Focus on the one on the right!” The repeat shooters slowly swivel to aim at the rightmost armored soldier, who does not react at all.

Mulaghesh waits for the armored soldiers to come in range, then drops her hand and bellows, “Fire!”

The repeat shooters do not sound at all like cannons, Shara finds, but rather like huge saws in a sawmill. Rainbows of bronze casings tumble over the edge of the gun batteries and tinkle on the embassy courtyard. Shara watches, hoping the armored soldier will simply explode: rather, the soldier slows down, small holes and dents appearing in its breastplate and face and legs. It makes a sound like a kitchen cabinet overflowing with an endless stream of pots and pans.

The repeat shooters maintain the stream of bullets; the armored soldier begins wobbling on its ragged legs; after nearly a full half minute of shooting, the soldier falls over. Instantly, a flock of brown starlings come fluttering out of the many gaps in the armor, which falls apart as if it had been held together by strings. Brown starlings, thinks Shara, surprised. But that’s one of Jukov’s tricks. The soldier behind it implacably steps over the tattered armor, as if the death of its comrade means nothing.

Mulaghesh looks back at Shara and grimly shakes her head: No good. “Keep firing!” she shouts to her men, and they pour a stream of fire into the advancing soldiers, which slows them but does not come close to stopping them.

Ten of them, thinks Shara. It’ll take five whole minutes to kill them all.

The soldiers are a hundred yards away now. Their feet clank and rattle with each step.

“Do it, Shara!” shouts Mulaghesh. “We can’t hold them off!”

Shara looks down at the tiny white pills in her hand.

Seventy yards.

“Do it!”

I damn my fate, thinks Shara, with all my heart.

She stuffs the pills in her mouth and swallows.

Shara waits. Nothing happens.

The armored soldiers are fifty yards away.

“Oh dear,” says Shara. “Oh, no. It’s not working at all! It’s not—”

Shara gags. Then she jerks forward slightly, gripping her stomach, and touches her mouth.

“I don’t feel …” She swallows. “Mm, I don’t feel exactly …”

She falls to her knees, coughs, and begins to vomit, but what she vomits is rivers and rivers of white snow, as if inside of her is a frozen mountain sloughing off an avalanche, and it all comes pouring out of her mouth, complete with stones and sticks and flecks of dark mud.

One of the soldiers turns away in disgust. “By the seas …”

The world ripples around her. Color bursts in the corners of her eyes. The sky is parchment; the earth is tar; the white skyscrapers of Bulikov burn as if lit by torches.

Oh​my​goodness​oh​my​goodness​oh​my​goodness …

Her skin is fire and ice. Her eyes burn in their sockets. Her tongue is too big for her mouth. She screams for five seconds before getting control of herself.

“Ambassador?” says Mulaghesh. “Are you all right?”

These are just the psychedelic effects, she tries to tell herself.

Words appear written in the stones before her: THESE ARE JUST THE PSYCHEDELIC EFFECTS.

Shara says, “What a curious drug this is,” but the words come from tiny mouths that have appeared on the backs of her hands. “How marvelous!”

“If you’re going to do something”—Mulaghesh’s screamed words make coils of fire in the air—“then do it now!”

Shara looks up at the advancing soldiers. She counts them and shouts, “Nine!” for reasons that immediately escape her. She immediately sees that they are walking tangles of many complicated miracles, but inside there are real human beings, people who have been forcefully conscripted into Kolkan’s service. Yet the second the armor is too damaged, she sees, the miracle turns them into starlings, and sends them away.… Which is definitely something Jukov would do.

She runs up the fortifications and cries to the soldiers, “What armor is it you wear? That of Kolkan, or that of Jukov? Which Divinity do you pay fealty to?” But, of course, they don’t answer. Then she laughs madly. “Oh, wait. Wait! I forgot! I forgot, I forgot, I forgot!”

Twenty yards away.

“Forgot what!” screams Mulaghesh.

“I forgot I do know Ovski’s Candlelight!” cries Shara happily. “I read that one long ago!”

She faces the platoon of armored soldiers—Scarecrows, she thinks—and remembers the nature of this miracle: All hearts are like candles. Focus the light of yours, and it will remove all barriers.

Shara imagines the soldiers as a metal wall before her.

The soldiers flicker with a golden honey light. Then …

It’s as if an immense column of burning wind blows through them: the soldiers glow red hot, blur …

… and suddenly there is an enormous flock of starlings in the street, screeching and cheeping. They flutter up through the canyon of buildings and into the sky, a dark thundercloud raining brown feathers.

The armored soldiers have collapsed into a sloshing lake of molten metal. Only the bottom parts of their legs remain, sticking up out of the bright yellow-red tide like nine pairs of forgotten metal boots.

Shara stares at her hands. Written on the inside of her palms in large type is: I DON’T FUCKING BELIEVE IT.

“I don’t fucking believe it!” screams Mulaghesh. The soldiers shout in triumph and disbelief, banging their bolt-shots on the embassy wall.

Three more armored soldiers turn and march down the street toward them. The repeat shooters turn and begin to fire, and the metal soldiers quiver as if cold, but do not stop.

Miracles are just formal requests, Shara thinks wildly. It’s like having a form preprinted and filled out and handing it in to get exactly what you want! But you don’t always have to do it that way! You can make it up as you go along, so long as you do it right!

“What is she shouting about?” says Mulaghesh.

“Something about filling out forms?” says a soldier, bewildered.

Shara points at the leftmost armored soldier. You’re a person wearing armor, she thinks at it, but it’s just made of spoons!

The armored soldier appears to dissolve like a child’s sandcastle struck with a wave, collapsing into a cloud of thousands of tumbling metal spoons that go clanking to the cement. Another burst of starlings, which wheel away into the darkening sky.

Shara bursts out laughing and claps like a child at a magic show. “What the hells?” says Mulaghesh. Shara points at the next two and shouts, “Spoons! Spoons!” and both of them dissolve as well. More starlings come fluttering out, as if their roosts have collapsed beneath them.

“It’s easy!” shouts Shara. “It’s easy once you think about it! I just never thought about it the right way! There are so many muscles you can flex, you just don’t know about them!”

Then the sky flickers: it’s like the sky is a paper backdrop, and someone behind it—someone very big—just touched it.

There is a pulse in the air that only Shara seems to feel.

She hears Kolkan’s voice softly whisper in her ear, Olvos? Is that you?

Shara stops smiling.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh, dear.”

“What is it?” asks Mulaghesh.

The voice inside Shara’s head says, Olvos? What are you doing? Why did you not help us?

“What’s going on?” asks Mulaghesh, impatient.

“He knows I’m here,” says Shara. “Kolkan knows I’m here.”

“Are you sure you aren’t just hallucinating?” asks Mulaghesh.

The voice says, Olvos? Sister-wife? Why do you hide from me, from us?

“I’m positive,” says Shara. “I don’t think I could hallucinate something this strange.”

“What are you going to do?”

Shara rubs her chin. “I will have to make my own fortifications against this particular assault.” She turns to face the city. But why does he think, she wonders, that I am Olvos?

She feels something like a hand reach into her mind to try to grasp this thought. Olvos? says the voice. Is it really you? Are you hurt like we are?

She must clear her mind. She has to clear her mind.

She begins on the physical reality around her: the soldiers are purely physical creations, so she unrolls the street running along the embassy walls (the Saypuri soldiers stare as the stone and asphalt vanish), and fills it up with freezing water: Water so cold it will shatter metal.…

A thick ribbon of fog now lies in front of the embassy. Two armored soldiers advance out of the ruin of a shop; the repeat shooters fire, briefly, before the soldiers step into the lake of swirling, freezing mist; there is the hissing sound of rapidly contracting metal, and the soldiers glaze over with frost. The next burst of shot from the repeat shooters causes them to explode like crashing mirrors, and hundreds of brown starlings take to the sky.

The voice—or is it two voices?—inside her mind asks, Why do you fight us? Have you done something wrong?

I must construct barriers, thinks Shara. I must keep it out.…

Information, Shara realizes, can be received by so many different channels, and so few channels speak to one another: just as an antenna cannot receive a telegram, a radio transmitter cannot make sense of a simple document, even though it is all just information, really. The human brain has such a limited number of channels in—so few antennae, so few receivers.… Yet Shara’s own brain, she now realizes, has just had an untold number of antennae and receivers added, so that all the information she thought was hidden can now course directly into her mind.

Shara looks out at Bulikov and sees the machinery behind the reality, the many wheels and gears and supports, and she sees how ruined and broken it all is. How phenomenally complicated this city was before the Blink—more than anyone could have guessed! This is what Taalhavras made, she thinks, before he died.… A chain of miracles upon miracles forever operating behind the scenes.

She sets to work building a shelter out of the ruins of the sub-reality around her. To Mulaghesh and the soldiers, it looks as if Shara is conducting an invisible orchestra, but they cannot see the impossibly heavy pieces she is moving into place, the Divine structures hidden to their eyes. It’s like making a lean-to, thinks Shara, out of the ruins of a bridge.

The voice in her head says, Why do you run from us? Why did you abandon us, Olvos?

Shara wonders, What in the world is going on?

She maneuvers one giant piece to block a gap, and just as she does the world goes black, and she sees …

… Kolkan standing before her on a sea of darkness, his gray robes rippling. They imprisoned me, he whispers. They locked me away, stuffed me in a tiny corner of the universe, just for trying to help my people.… And then Jukov came to me. He visited me in my cell, and he hurt me. He hurt me so much.…

Kolkan vanishes, and in his place is a skinny man dressed in a tricorn hat tipped with bells, and a jester’s outfit made of furs. I had to! snarls the man. His voice is like a thousand starlings screaming. They were killing us! They killed our children! They piled the bodies of our children to rot in giant graves! I had to do something! I had to hide myself away!

The vision fades. Shara is dripping with cold sweat and trembling.

I must block them out, she says to herself. I must block them out.

In the corner of her eyes, she sees another handful of armored soldiers approach, touch the mist, and freeze. “Fire,” says Mulaghesh. The repeat shooters eat them alive, and the street swirls with starlings.

Shara probes her invisible barrier with her mind. She can almost see the holes, for through the gaps the sky is the color of yellow parchment. Outside, she thinks, Kolkan is turning the real world into his own—his Divine influence is remaking Bulikov’s reality. She pulls more Divine struts down and uses them to cover the openings, but as she does …

… Kolkan appears and says, You were older than me, the only one older than me. I listened to you, Olvos. When you were gone, I grew frightened, and I asked my flock to tell me what to do.… I think I made so many mistakes, Olvos.…

Kolkan vanishes again. The skinny man in the tricorn hat appears and angrily shouts, I looked for you! I searched for you, Olvos! You were the only survivor, besides me! I needed your help! I was forced to resort to faking my own death, pulling down my creations, letting my children die! I was forced to hide with Kolkan in his miserable little jail cell for years and years!

Shara tries to focus.

Jukov is alive too, she thinks in shock as she fills this gap. But why did only Kolkan appear when the glass broke?

So many little gaps … So many tiny places he or they or it or whatever it is could slip in.

I am not stopping him, thinks Shara. This is just defending, delaying everything, while Bulikov burns and people die.

Fifteen more armored soldiers touch the icy mist and freeze. Mulaghesh’s repeaters tear them apart. Starlings take flight like a cloud of flies.

Kolkan appears before her: What am I to do? What are we to do? Then he is gone.

Jukov appears, spitting and snarling: Kill them all! Kill them for what they did to us! Incest and matricide and bitterness and horrors! My own progeny, my own Blessed kin rises up against us and slaughters us like sheep! Let them burn! Let them burn!

Then she understands: No … No, it’s not possible. I saw only one Divinity standing in the Seat of the World, heard only one voice—didn’t I?

The clink and clank of the armored soldiers’ footsteps. The scream of the repeat shooters. The screech of millions of starlings …

Then the skies ripple like the surface of a dark lake.

Kolkan’s voice rings out through Bulikov: “STOP.”

Instantly, the armies of clanking armored soldiers halt.

Shara feels a giant eye swivel to look at her.

She looks down the street before the embassy. A tall, robed figure stands watching her, six blocks down.

Kolkan cocks his head. “YOU,” says his voice, “ARE NOT OLVOS.”

Shara frantically fumbles with the Divine machinery surrounding her, trying to pull it together, trying to protect her people, her countrymen.

Kolkan shakes his head. “TRICKS AND GAMES,” he says.

The air quivers. Rivers of armored soldiers march out of the alleys, and all line up on the street leading up to the embassy.

“IT IS ALL JUST TRICKS AND GAMES.”

The sea of armored soldiers turns to face the embassy and starts marching.

“No,” whispers Shara. “No, no, no …”

Instantly she feels a huge, terrible pressure on all the defenses she’s constructed: her river of freezing water begins unraveling; her Divine shelter creaks and groans; her very mind trembles. Madness spills into her skull like water on a sinking ship. She tries to push back. But it is like an insect, she thinks, trying to push back against the lowering foot of a man.

The freezing water fades. The streets are flooded with gleaming soldiers. Three of them hurl their massive blades at the walls. The swords hack through the white stone, and Saypuri soldiers tumble back shrieking from a gun post. To Shara’s surprise, little Pitry Suturashni, screaming a tinny war cry, mans the abandoned cannon and opens fire. Shara tries to use Ovski’s Candlelight, but it’s like the oxygen is sucked out of the air, and she cannot even make a spark.

Everything pushes on her, pushes and pushes and pushes, flood-waters piling up against a dam.…

I will die as countless Saypuris died, she thinks.

A thousand Divine soldiers push upon her invisible walls.

Crushed under the machinery of the Divine.

Then one of the soldiers beside her screams, “Look! In the sky! Ships! There are ships sailing in the sky!”

Shara feels the pressure immediately release. She falls to the ground, gasping and half-dead.

She looks over the wall and sees Kolkan staring up: apparently this turn of events is a surprise even to him.

Shara, choking and coughing, thinks, No, no! Have they already destroyed Ghaladesh? After all this, is everything already lost?

She tries to peer through the tears in her eyes … and sees, to her confusion, that there is only one ship in the sky.

Then she hears another soldier’s voice: “Is that a Dreyling flag that ship is flying?”

Mulaghesh says, “I know that. That’s the flag of King Harkvald. What the hells is going on?”

Shara says, “Sigrud.”

The good ship Mornvieva, once occupied by twenty-three souls, now occupied by one sole stowaway, cuts through the clouds and the wind like a dream. Sigrud stands at the wheel, puffing at his pipe, and makes a slight adjustment south-southwest.

Sigrud laughs. He can’t remember the last time he laughed. Ship-borne for the first time in years and smoking his pipe.… It is a blessing he never thought he’d have again.

There is no greater pleasure, he thinks, than to sail once more.

On the mast before him is a large steel plate sporting a very large ring; and once, twenty-three cables were tied to this ring, anchoring all the crew to the ship. However, now there are only twenty-three severed ends of cables hanging from the ring, and they click and clack in the brutal winds.

To be frank, it might be the easiest time Sigrud has ever had taking a ship: if you just aim a cannon at every other ship in the armada, fire once (in retrospect, Sigrud reflects that this ship was not designed to fire that many guns at once, so he is lucky the thing didn’t fall apart under the stress), run up to the deck in the confusion, cut all the cables, and grab the wheel and tip the ship over ever so slightly …

Sigrud grins wickedly as he remembers all the little black figures tumbling through the clouds, rushing down to the embrace of the world.

The Restorationists bet everything on Saypur never expecting air-to-ground combat; but they, similarly, never considered air-to-air.

Sigrud sees the embassy below, and the river of silver soldiers before it, and the giant robed figure standing at its back.

He sets the course and trots belowdecks. He had no idea what to expect—certainly not this—but he had all the cannons ready, though some require minor adjustments.

Straight ahead, he reminds himself. Start at the beginning of that stripe of silver, and work down.

“Fire,” says Sigrud.

The retort of the first six-incher is like hearing a whole mountain cave in.

“Down!” screams Mulaghesh, but Shara does not listen.

Shara turns to the street and pulls up a thick, thick wall of soft snow, and she tells it to hang in space.

The first block of armored soldiers explodes. Evidently, though Divine armor was designed to protect many things, the Divinities never expected six-inch cannons.

Shara and everyone else on the fortifications are blown backward. Metal goes clanging off of building fronts. Shrapnel flies into the veil of snow, slows, and tumbles softly to the ground. The sky is black with starlings.

The next retort sounds in the skies, and another, and another, as if an immense thunderstorm is breaking open above them. Huge explosions march down the street toward Kolkan, who stands with his head at an angle, as if thinking, This is very unusual. This is all very unusual.

Sigrud watches, pleased, as the Divine army is progressively decimated by the cannon fire. He adjusts the Mornvieva and aims her bow at the robed figure. Couple hundred shells going off, he thinks, should make quite a pop.

He spots a white structure with a crystal roof from Old Bulikov—What are all these white buildings doing here? he wonders—walks to the side of the ship, and readies himself.

“Probably won’t survive this,” he says aloud. Then he shrugs. Ah, well. I always thought I would die sailing.

Sigrud jumps; the crystal roof flies at him much too quickly; he sees the sky in its glittering reflection.

My hand, he realizes. It no longer aches.

The sky breaks apart.

Shara sits up just in time to see the belly of the steel ship part the smoke above them. A tiny dark shape flies from its side and plummets into one of the white buildings.

Kolkan watches, curious, as the metal ship sails down, down, speeding toward him, the wings cutting through the street facades and raining stone on the sidewalks.

Shara realizes what is about to happen. She throws up another layer of snow, then a second, then a third, and screams, “Off the wall! Everyone off the wall!”

Kolkan watches with a slight air of disbelief as the bow of the ship flies at him, crumples on his brow …

The world is turned to fire.

Shara is deaf, dumb, blind.… The world is clanging, ringing, smashing, crashing, cheeping, fluttering, and she is sure the massive amount of psychedelics she took is not helping. She hears Mulaghesh groan from nearby: “My arm, my arm. My fucking arm …”

Shara sits up and looks through the gates, which are bent and torn. At first all she can see is smoke and flame. Then the wind slowly, gently scrapes the smoke away.

The building, shops, and homes all down the street leading up to the embassy have been halved. Wooden teeth and partial living rooms droop over the exposed foundations. The street itself has been pulverized into a rocky, smoking ditch. Starlings sit on the windowsills, on the streetlights, on the sidewalks, silently watching … something.

Kolkan stands in the middle of the street, slightly hunched over, his robes and rags fluttering in the smoke.

No, she thinks. Not Kolkan.

Shara stands, takes the bolt point of black lead from her pocket, and limps down the street to the silent Divinity.

“That hurt, didn’t it?” she calls.

The Divinity does not answer.

“You’ve never experienced the destructive capabilities of our modern age,” she says. “Perhaps the modern rejects you as much as you reject it.”

The Divinity raises its head to look at her, but otherwise does nothing.

“Maybe you can keep fighting. But I don’t think you have it in you. This world doesn’t want you anymore. And even more, you don’t want it.”

The Divinity angrily says, “I AM PAIN.”

Shara stands before it and says, “And you are pleasure.”

The Divinity hesitates, and says, “I AM JUDGMENT.”

“You are corruption.”

Then, defiantly: “I AM ORDER!”

“You are chaos.”

“I AM SERENITY!”

“You are madness.”

“I AM DISCIPLINE!”

“You are rebellion.”

Trembling with fury, the Divinity says, “I AM KOLKAN!”

Shara shakes her head. “You are Jukov.”

The Divinity is silent. Though she cannot see its eyes, she knows it is staring at her.

“Jukov faked his death, didn’t he?” says Shara. “He saw what was happening to the Continent, so he faked his death, and hid, and sent a copy of himself in his place. He was the Divinity of trickery, after all. The old texts said he hid in a pane of glass, but we never knew what that meant—or I didn’t, until today. When I saw Kolkan’s jail cell—a single pane of clear glass …”

The Divinity bows its head. It seems to tremble slightly. Then it lifts a hand and pulls off its robes.

It is Kolkan: the stern man made of clay and stone.

It is Jukov: the skinny, laughing man of fur and bells.

It is both of them: both Divinities twisted together, shoved together, melded into one person. Kolkan’s head, with Jukov’s warped face appearing at Kolkan’s neck; one arm on one side, a forked arm with two clenched fists on the other; two legs, but one leg has two feet.…

It stares at her with muddled, mad eyes, a tottering, tortured wreck of a human form. Then its faces wrinkle, and it begins to weep. Its two mouths scream in two voices, “I am everything! I am nothing! I am the beginning and I am the end! I am the fire and I am the water! I am of the light and I am of the dark! I am chaos and I am order! I am life and I am death!” It turns to the ruined buildings of Bulikov: “Listen to me! Will you listen to me? I have listened to you! Will you listen to me? Just tell me what I should be for you! Tell me! Please, just tell me! Tell me, please!”

“I see now,” says Shara. “The prison cell was meant only for Kolkan, wasn’t it?”

“For Jukov to hide there, he had to become Kolkan,” says the Divinity. It puts its hands over its ears, as if hearing a roaring cacophony. “Too many things, too many, all in one. Too many things I needed to be. Too many people I needed to serve. Too much, too much … The world is too much.” It looks at Shara pleadingly. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Shara looks down at the tiny black blade in her fingers.

The Divinity follows her gaze, nods, and says through its two mouths, “Do it.”

Despite everything, Shara hesitates.

“Do it,” the Divinity says again. “I never really knew what they wanted. I never really knew what they needed me to be.” The Divinity kneels. “Do it. Please.”

Shara walks around behind the Divinity, bends low, and places the black blade at its throat.

As she says, “I’m sorry,” the Divinity whispers, “Thank you.”

Shara grasps its forehead and pulls the blade across.

Instantly, the Divinity is gone, as if it never was.

The air fills with crashes and groans as hundreds of white skyscrapers come tumbling down, and screams as innumerable starlings take flight.