City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(111)

“No one’s asking you to be.”

He breathes heavily for a moment; she suspects he is weeping. “ ‘The world is our crucible,’ ” he murmurs. “ ‘And with each burn, we are shaped.’ ”

Shara knows the line. “The Kolkashtava?”

He laughs bitterly. “Maybe Volka was right. Once a Kolkashtani …”

Then he is silent.

Shara wonders what kind of man thinks of his brother when naked in a woman’s bed. Then they both find troubled sleep.

*

Shara’s consciousness churns awake, kicking against the dark, oily waters of a hangover. The pillowcase against her face is sandpaper; her arms, exposed, are frigidly cold; while her feet, deep in the comforter, are sweltering.

A voice barks, “Get up. Get up.”

The pillow on her head rises up, and cruel daylight stabs in.

“Roll over,” says Mulaghesh’s voice, “and get up!”

Shara turns in the sheets. Mulaghesh is standing at her bed, holding up the morning paper like it’s the severed head of an enemy.

“What?” says Shara. “What?” She is, thankfully, still wearing her slip; Vohannes, however, is long gone. She wonders if he fled in shame, and feels hurt that he might think so poorly of her.

“Read this,” says Mulaghesh. She points to a blurry article.

“You want me to wh—”

“Read! Just read.”

Shara digs in the pillows for her glasses. Shoving them on her nose, she encounters her own face, rendered in black and white on the front page of the newspaper. The picture shows her standing by the Solda: behind her is the dead form of Urav, and at her feet, covered in blood, is Sigrud, whose face is hidden by a veil of oily hair. It is, she thinks, the best photo of her she has ever seen in her life: she is caught in regal profile, the wind catching her hair just so, making it a soft river of ebony trailing out from behind her head.

Her bemusement is dashed when she reads the article below:

BULIKOV SAVED!

The central quarters of Bulikov were terrorized last night by a sudden, inexplicable, and horrifying attack from the Solda River. It has been confirmed that an enormous creature of an aquatic nature (the nature of the creature obligates this paper to refer to it only as “the creature,” for to be any more precise could incur legal consequences) swam upstream against the Solda, broke through the ice, and began pulling passersby off of the celebrated river walks and into the freezing water.

The size and mass of this creature was so great that it managed to level several riverside buildings before any municipal forces were able to react. A stunning twenty-seven citizens lost their lives, and as of 4:00 a.m. this morning, more reports are still coming in. Few bodies have been recovered.

The Bulikov Police Department quickly mounted an attack to capture or kill the creature, but this provoked it into damaging the Solda Bridge to the point that it collapsed, killing six officers and injuring nine more, including the celebrated officer Captain Miklav Nesrhev. As of this morning, Captain Nesrhev is now stable and recovering at the House of Seven Sisters infirmary.

The resolution of this threat may be the most amazing element, as the creature was finally felled by a highly unlikely hero, for Bulikov: it has been revealed that the recent appointment to the Saypuri Embassy, Ashara Thivani, is in truth Ashara Komayd, niece of the Saypuri Minister of Foreign Affairs Vinya Komayd, and great-granddaughter of the controversial general Avshakta si Komayd, the infamous last Kaj of Saypur. Sources confirm that it was through her efforts and planning that the creature was successfully stopped, and killed.

“The ambassador and her associates identified the nature of the creature, and prescribed a method for containing and killing it,” said a source in the city government, who preferred to go unnamed. “Without her help, dozens if not hundreds more of Bulikov’s citizens would have been lost.”

Several police officers have also commended the ambassador’s behavior during the attack: “We were trying to evacuate the embassy, but she insisted on coming to help,” said Viktor Povroy, a sergeant in the Bulikov Police Department. “She and her colleagues set to it right away. I’ve never seen a more audacious plan put together so quickly.”

The ambassador and the polis governor of Bulikov, Turyin Mulaghesh, are also credited with saving Captain Nesrhev’s life. “Without them,” testified Povroy, “he would have drowned or froze to death.”

However, many questions remain: why did the ambassador hide her identity? Why was she so singularly adept at combating such a creature? And what does it mean for Bulikov, to have a member of the Komayd family in a position of power in the city once again?

As of the time of this paper’s publication, the embassy has yet to make an official comment.

Shara stares at the paper, feverishly hoping that the words will dance and rearrange themselves until it tells another story entirely.

“Oh, no,” she whispers.

To have one’s cover blown … To be known to an enemy, to have a dossier on you compiled in some distant and lethal department, that is one thing: all operatives are prepared for that.

But to have your name and story splashed across the newspaper, to be known not in the secret annals of government but in the front rooms and dining rooms and public houses across the world … That is horror beyond horror.