City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(113)
A tremor in her stomach. This Shara did not expect. Could she have been right? Could blowing her cover really be a wild gambit on Vo’s part? And—even more insane—could it have worked? Right before the City Father elections, too …
“I suppose you are waiting,” says Vinya, “for me to get to the part where I tell you what action I will be taking.”
Shara purses her lips, blinks; beyond that, she gives Vinya nothing.
Vinya shakes her head. “I should have told you to never enter the Warehouse,” she says. “I should have known right away that you, as obsessed with the Continent as you are, would have found the Warehouse totally irresistible.”
Shara cocks an eyebrow. “Wait. … What are you—?”
“But of course, the second you learned it existed, you’d try and find a way in,” continues Vinya. “You’d break in, poke your nose in it, and rifle its shelves one way or another.”
“What! Auntie Vinya, I didn’t want to go into the Warehouse! I had to!”
“Oh? Oh, really? Last I heard, you were interviewing a university maid about the death of Dr. Pangyui. Next, you’ve penetrated the Warehouse, the most classified building currently in existence in this world, burned it down, and then you’re battling Divine river monsters on the front of the paper! With your cover blown! I struggle to understand exactly how all that could have evolved organically, Shara! It seems much more likely that you, as obsessed with the musty dead gods as you are, simply broke in to see what was there for yourself like it was a damn museum, and you wound up getting quite literally burned and freeing some abysmal Divine creature!”
Shara’s mouth falls open. She is utterly and completely aghast: of all the mad things and sights that she’s experienced in the past forty-eight hours, all of them are minuscule in comparison to this. “I … The Warehouse was mined!”
“Oh, by the Restorationists?” Vinya pronounces the name as if describing a group of illiterate potato farmers.
“Yes!”
“And how did they get in?”
“They … They used a miracle!”
“Ah,” says Vinya. “A miracle. Very convenient, those. Especially when, theoretically, most of them shouldn’t work anymore. So why would they mine the Warehouse, which was full of things they themselves held sacred?”
“To cover their tracks!”
“And where did their tracks lead, dear?”
“There … There was something they wanted to steal!”
“Which was?”
“I don’t know! It was mined!”
“So you set off the mine.”
Shara is so outraged she can hardly speak. “They had been accessing the Warehouse using an ancient Divine miracle! They had been for months!”
“And what intent would they have for whatever it is they stole from the Warehouse?”
“I don’t know!”
“You don’t know.”
“No! Not yet! I know it … it has something to do with steel!” This sounds pathetic even to Shara’s ears. “I am currently investigating the situation!”
Vinya nods and slowly sits back in her chair, thinking.
“Talk to Mulaghesh! Talk to Sigrud! Talk to anyone here!” shouts Shara.
“Mulaghesh’s reputation is not quite as sterling as it used to be,” says Vinya, “as the Warehouse was her jurisdiction, and is now a pile of ashes. And I would no sooner listen to your Dreyling’s word than I would consult with a rabid dog. But most of all, Shara, my dear, no other operative on the whole of the Continent has reported any hint of such a plot.”
“That’s because these people are damn good! Unlike us! I arrived in Bulikov to find the walls swarming with rats! These machinations were well under way before I ever got here!”
Vinya rolls her eyes and shakes her head, concerned, dismayed, as if listening to a demented relative at dinner.
“You don’t believe me,” says Shara desperately.
“Shara, you went to Bulikov on your own to investigate a disastrous international scandal. And now, you have caused one much, much larger. Thank the seas that the Continent doesn’t know about the Warehouse. If they knew you’d burned down hundreds of years of history, they’d want your head, and mine! Can you imagine the consequences? And apparently somewhere in the midst of all this, you somehow blew your own cover, which really does not surprise me, at this point. You are either vain and stupid, or reckless and stupid, I am not sure which one I prefer. And I notice that you haven’t mentioned Pangyui’s murder yet. Unless I am mistaken, that was the primary reason I allowed you your time in Bulikov—wasn’t it? Has your investigation into these grand, dark plots shed any light on who might have killed him, and why?”
Shara glances at Vohannes’s white suitcase, which sits underneath her desk. “Perhaps I would have something,” she says savagely, “if you would allow me to review his dead drop material!”
Vinya snaps forward. “And if you did that, then you would be directly disobeying a Ministry order! That material is be reviewed by me first! And if I think it could be of use to you, then I will allow you access to it! That’s how the chain of command works! It’s what our entire intelligence agency is predicated on! And I will not allow my arrogant niece to buck the system solely because she feels like reading enough dusty old books gives her more insight than any other intelligence officer! Your fascination with the Divine has always been a fault, not a virtue! And I will tell you right now, right now, that my first instinct is to rip you out of Bulikov and put you on a ship back here right away!”