City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)
Robert Jackson Bennett
And Olvos said to them: “Why have you done this, my children? Why is the sky wreathed with smoke? Why have you made war in far places, and shed blood in strange lands?”
And they said to Her: “You blessed us as Your people, and we rejoiced, and were happy. But we found those who were not Your people, and they would not become Your people, and they were willful and ignorant of You. They would not open their ears to Your songs, or lay Your words upon their tongues. So we dashed them upon the rocks and threw down their houses and shed their blood and scattered them to the winds, and we were right to do so. For we are Your people. We carry Your blessings. We are Yours, and so we are right. Is this not what You said?”
And Olvos was silent.
—Book of the Red Lotus, Part IV, 13.51–13.59
Someone Even Worse
Bulikov—1719
I believe the question, then,” says Vasily Yaroslav, “is one of intent. I am aware that the court might disagree with me—this court has always ruled on the side of effect rather than intent—but you cannot seriously fine an honest, modest businessman such a hefty fee for an unintentional damage, can you? Especially when the damage is, well, one of abstraction?”
A cough echoes in the courtroom, dashing the pregnant pause. Through the window the shadows of drifting clouds race across the walls of Bulikov.
Governor Turyin Mulaghesh suppresses a sigh and checks her watch. If he goes on for six more minutes, she thinks, we’ll have a new record.
“And you have heard testimony from my friends,” says Yaroslav, “my neighbors, my employees, my family, my … my bankers. People who know me well, people who have no reason to lie! They have told you again and again that this is all just an unfortunate coincidence!”
Mulaghesh glances to her right along the high court bench. Prosecutor Jindash, his face the very picture of concern, is doodling a picture of his own hand on the official Ministry of Foreign Affairs letterhead. To her left, Chief Diplomat Troonyi is staring with unabashed interest at the well-endowed girl in the first row of the courtroom seats. Next to Troonyi, at the end of the high court bench, is an empty chair normally occupied by the visiting professor Dr. Efrem Pangyui, who has been more and more absent from these proceedings lately. But frankly, Mulaghesh is only too happy for his absence: his presence in the courtroom, let alone in this whole damn country, has caused enough headaches for her.
“The court”—Yaroslav pounds on the table twice—“must see reason!”
I must find someone else, thinks Mulaghesh, to come to these things in my place. But this is wishful thinking: as the polis governor of Bulikov, the capital city of the Continent, it is her duty to preside over all trials, no matter how frivolous.
“So you all have heard, and you must understand, that I never intended the sign that stood outside of my business to be … to be of the nature that it was!”
The crowd in the courtroom mutters as Yaroslav skirts this sensitive subject. Troonyi strokes his beard and leans forward as the girl in the front row crosses her legs. Jindash is coloring in the fingernails on his sketch. Mulaghesh casts an eye over the crowd, cataloging the various ailments and diseases: the boy with the crutches, rickets; the woman with the scabbed face, pox; and she can’t tell what’s wrong with the man in the corner, though she dearly hopes what he’s covered in is mud. Yaroslav and a few others, as mildly successful Continentals, can afford running water, and thus in their examples one can observe the Continental specimen free of filth: stout, pale, heavy-featured, dark-eyed, and in the case of the men, sporting untamed mountains of beards. Mulaghesh and the other Saypuris, by stark contrast, are short, slender, and dark-skinned, with somewhat long noses and narrow chins, and as Troonyi’s utterly ridiculous bearskin coat attests, they are much more accustomed to warm Saypuri climates, far across the South Seas.
To a distant extent—very distant—Mulaghesh can understand Troonyi and Jindash’s disinterest: the Continent is steadfastly, defiantly, stubbornly backward, to the degree that one sometimes forgets the many unsettling reasons why Saypur bothers occupying such a miserable nation. (Though can we really call ourselves occupiers, thinks Mulaghesh, if we’ve been here for nearly seventy-five years? When do we graduate to residents?) If Mulaghesh were to offer everyone in the courtroom money right now and say, “Here, here is something to get you the medicine you need, to buy you fresh water,” it’s all too likely the Continentals would spit in her hand before accepting a single red cent.
Mulaghesh understands why they resent them so. She has to, as her duty as polis governor is to ensure the Bulikovian Continentals aren’t a threat to Saypur and to each other, functioning as both watchdog and babysitter. For though they may look like no more than paupers and beggars, these people were once the most powerful and dangerous human beings alive. Which they remember, of course, Mulaghesh thinks as she watches one man stare at her with naked rage. Hence why they hate us so …
Yaroslav summons up his nerve.
Here it comes, thinks Mulaghesh.
“I never intended,” he says clearly, “for my sign to reference any Divinity, any trace of the celestial, nor any god!”
A quiet hum as the courtroom fills with whispers. Mulaghesh and the rest of the Saypuris on the bench remain unimpressed by the dramatic nature of this claim. “How do they not know,” mutters Jindash, “that this happens at every single Worldly Regulations trial?”