City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(112)

“No,” says Shara again. “No. That … That can’t be.”

“Yeah,” says Mulaghesh.

“And this is the … the …”

“The Continental Herald.”

“So it doesn’t just go to Bulikov, but …”

“To the entire Continent,” says Mulaghesh. “Yeah.”

The reality of it all comes crashing down on her. “Ohh … Oh no, oh no, oh no!”

“Who all knew who you are?” asks Mulaghesh.

“You,” says Shara. “Sigrud, Vo … A few employees here suspect I’m more than I say I am, but there’s a leap between that and being …”

“Being the great-granddaughter of the Kaj,” says Mulaghesh. “Yeah. No shit. I know I didn’t say anything. I never talk to the press.”

“And Sigrud wouldn’t,” says Shara. “So …”

She parses down the ideas, the possibilities.

Vinya, maybe? Shara is no longer sure what to think of her aunt; she feels almost certain Vinya has been compromised somehow, but for Vinya, it seems overwhelmingly likely that her compromise would be political, ceding power only for the opportunity to gain more. And this would be very, very damaging, politically.

She keeps boiling down her options, down and down, hoping to avoid what she increasingly feels is an inevitable conclusion.

“It could only be Vohannes,” she says finally.

“Okay, but … why?”

Would this be some petty revenge over last night? she wonders. It seems unlikely. Or could he be punishing her for her refusal to intervene in Bulikov? Or … “Could … Could he be trying to use me to get the attention of Ghaladesh?” she asks aloud.

“How would blowing your cover possibly do that?” asks Mulaghesh.

“Well … It makes for a great story, doesn’t it? The great-granddaughter of the Kaj, swooping in and saving Bulikov. It gets people talking. … And talk is as good as action in the geopolitical realm. It would focus the world’s attentions all on Bulikov—and then he could make his pitch. I mean, you’ve met him. All Vo ever needs is a spotlight.”

“Yeah, but … but that has got to be,” says Mulaghesh, “the stupidest possible way to spur Ghaladesh into doing anything! Right?”

Shara doesn’t entirely disagree, but she doesn’t entirely agree, either. And she remembers what Vo mumbled last night: Once a Kolkashtani …

She can’t help but feel that she’s missing something. But whatever the cause, she knows she cannot trust Vo any longer, and she thinks it was foolish to have done so in the first place: to collaborate with such a passionate, broken, divided creature was always a poor decision.

From nearby, there’s the sound of a throat being cleared.

Mulaghesh looks to the window, and asks, “What was that?”

But Shara knows that sound quite well, having heard it throughout her childhood: two parts impatience, one part condescension. …

“Nothing outside,” Mulaghesh says, peeking through the draped window, “except for the crowd, of course. I didn’t imagine that sound, did I?”

Shara glances at the shuttered window next to her desk. The bottom left pane is shimmering strangely, and the reflection in the glass is slightly warped.

“Governor,” Shara says, “could you please … excuse me for a moment?”

“Are you going to be sick?”

“Possibly. I just need to … to gather myself.”

“I’ll be downstairs,” Mulaghesh says, “but I won’t have long to wait around. There’s so much to clean up, I’ll have to return to my quarters very shortly.”

“I understand.”

The office door clicks closed. Shara arrives at the window just as her aunt’s face appears.

*

“I believe … that I am almost as much to blame as you,” says Vinya.

Shara says nothing. She does not move. She does not speak. She only watches. Vinya, for her part, is just as reserved and removed as Shara. The two look at one another through the glass with expressions slightly suspicious, slightly hurt, and slightly aggrieved all at once.

“I should have stopped you when you were younger,” says Vinya. “Your interest in the Continent was always quite unhealthy. And I have trusted you more and more, letting you go out on your own without my supervision. … But now I regret that. Perhaps I should have brought you home more. Maybe you were right. I wish you could have come here and seen exactly how things are changing here in Parliament, shifting, and … and how delicate and precarious everything is.”

Ah. I have endangered her political career. Having faced fire and Urav last night, Shara finds it difficult to muster sympathy for someone grappling with parliamentary squabbles. In fact, Shara finds it difficult to bother to do anything in this conversation. She is content to let her aunt keep talking, allowing Shara to watch as Vinya’s intents and motives crystallize in the glass pane like fall’s first frost.

“The discourse has changed considerably, almost overnight. For so long, no one ever even thought of engaging the Continent, but now … Now we are open to the idea. Now, suddenly, we are curious. Despite all my efforts of the past decade, the ministers are now reconsidering their stance on the Continent. And all their aides, all their assistants, are reviewing all their personal correspondence from the Continent, and they are finding one name on hundreds and hundreds of petitions: Votrov, Votrov, Votrov …”