City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(105)

And behind them is someone she did not expect to see.

Vohannes Votrov stands at the back of the crowd. He appears to have eschewed his normally ostentatious wardrobe in favor of a dark brown coat and a black shirt buttoned up to the neck. He looks gaunt and pale, and he watches Shara with an expression of placid disdain, as one would watch an insect beat against the pane of a window. It takes her a moment to notice that he does not have his cane.

The crowd surges around Vohannes and the photographers. Sigrud and Shara are swept up in the tidal wave of claps on the back and bellowed congratulations. When she manages to look back at the photographers, he is gone.





I fault no one for praising Saypur’s history—history, after all, is a story, one that is sometimes wonderful. But one must remember it in full—as things really were—and avoid selective amnesia. For the Great War did not start with the invasion of the Continent, nor did it begin with the death of the Divinity Voortya.

Rather, it began with a child.

I do not know her name. I wish I did—she deserves to be named, considering what happened to her. But from court records, I know she lived with her parents on a farm in the Mahlideshi province in Saypur, and I know that she was a simple child, one touched by nature in a manner to stunt her intelligence. Like many children of a certain age, she had an attraction to fire, and perhaps her simple nature made this attraction even stronger.

One day in 1631, she found an overturned, abandoned wagon in the road. It had been bearing boxes and boxes of paper—and seeing all this paper, I think, and knowing no adult was nearby, was all too tempting for her.

She built a little fire in the road, burning pages with a match, one after the other.

Then the wagon’s passengers returned. They were Continentals, wealthy Taalvashtanis who owned many nearby rice paddies. And when they saw her burning the paper, they became enraged—for she was unknowingly burning copies of the Taalvashtava, the sacred book of Taalhavras, and to them this was a grave transgression.

They took her before the local Continental magistrate and pled for justice for this heretical indiscretion. The girl’s parents begged for mercy, for she was simple and did not know what she had done. The townspeople joined their call, and asked for a light punishment, if any.

The Continentals, however, told the judge that if any Saypuri was willing to put the sacred words to flame, then they should be put to the flame as well. And the judge—a Continental—listened.

They burned her alive in the town square of Mahlideshi with all the townspeople watching; court records tell us they hung her from a tree by a chain, and built a bonfire at her feet—and when she, weeping, climbed the chain to escape the fire, they cut off her hands and feet, and whether she bled to death or burned to death first, I cannot say.

I do not think the Continentals expected the people to react as they did—they were, after all, poor Saypuris, not individuals of any strength or might, and brutal humiliation was the norm for them. But this gruesome sight caused the entire town of Mahlideshi to revolt, tear down the magistrate’s office, and stone its inhabitants to death, including the executioners of the girl.

For one week, they celebrated their freedom. And I would like to say that the Colonial Rebellion started then, that Saypur was so inspired by this brave stand that the Kaj rose up and took the Continent at this moment. But the next week the Continentals returned in force … and Mahlideshi is no longer on any map, save for a charred spot of land along the shore and a lump of earth a sixth of a mile long—the last resting place of the victorious citizens of Mahlideshi.

Word spread of the carnage. A quiet, hateful outrage began to seep through the colonies.

We do not know much about the Kaj. We do not even know who his mother was. But we know he lived in the province of Tohmay, just beside Mahlideshi; and we know that it was just after this massacre that he began his experimentations, one of which must have created the weaponry he would eventually use to overthrow the Continent.

An avalanche dislodges a tiny stone into the ocean; and, through the mysteries of fate, this tiny stone creates a tsunami.

I wish I did not know some parts of the past; I wish they had never happened. But the past is the past, and someone must remember, and speak of it.

—“Of History Lost,”

Dr. Efrem Pangyui





Salvation


No breaks,” says the doctor. “Probably some fractures. Definitely bruising, to the point that I would expect some bone bruising as well. I would be able to tell, of course, if the patient would permit me to examine him more closely …”

Sigrud, leaning back in the bed with a pot of potato wine in his lap, allows a grunt. One half of his face is a brilliant red; the other is black and gray, like molded fruit. In the light of the weak embassy gas lamps, he looks positively ghoulish. So far he has only allowed the doctor to prod his stomach and witness that he can move his head, arms, and legs; beyond this, Sigrud only answers the doctor’s requests with sullen grunts.

“He reports no abdominal pain,” says the doctor. “Which is, I must say, unbelievable. And I also see no signs of frostbite—also fairly unbelievable.”

“What is frostbite?” asks Sigrud. “I have never heard of this frostbite.”

“Are you implying,” says the doctor, “that Dreylings never get frostbite?”

“There is cold”—Sigrud takes a massive swig of wine—“and less cold.”