City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(116)

The two groups—mortal & Divine—were not as divided as history would have us believe.

This is an absurdly large example, akin to deciphering the destination of a ship by which way the seabirds are buffeted by the winds … yet it sketches the outline of what I expected to see.

I wish I could mail Shara about it. But I am not entirely sure how genuine her interest in me was—how can you ever tell what is & is not an act with such people?

There is a café I find myself frequenting, just adjacent to the Seat of the World. Bulikov is a mixed-up jumble of a city, there—the Blink still reverberates in the city’s bones—& there I watch children play & fight, wives gossip & laugh, men smoke & drink & play cards &, often ineffectually, court the women.

People fall in love & bicker over silly things, even in a place as mad as this. Life goes on, & I must smile.





15th of the Month of the Sloth


It is saying something that I, veteran of libraries, begin to tire of my task. I look forward to finishing this so I can continue on to my next task: researching the Kaj. How ridiculous it is that, though the man’s profile emblazons coins, flags, & so on, we know almost as little about him as we do the Divinities. Especially in regards to how he actually managed to assassinate them. I can understand why the minister wished me to research this subject first, but I, stupidly, convinced her that the Continentals still derive a sense of legitimacy from the Divinities, so researching their nature would offer more definite geopolitical benefits.

Listen to me. I sound like Shara.

The grass is always greener on the next task, surely, but the Kaj has always been a fascination of mine. He just seems to suddenly appear, the son of a wealthy, Continental-collaborator family, poking his head up in history & surging forward. I have reviewed numerous family trees, & have found almost nothing about the man. Some list his father as never even having married! Was the Kaj, possibly, the product of an illegitimate relationship? Was he even the man’s son at all?

I no longer sound like Shara. Now I sound like a gossip magazine.

I sometimes go to the sections of the city most disrupted by the Blink. The stairs there look like fields of giant cornstalks, rising into the sky, ending suddenly. The children play a funny game: they run up the stairs, see who is bravest to go the highest, then run back down.

Up the stairs & down the stairs they run, over & over, always hurrying, yet never quite going anywhere.

I sympathize.

I must focus. … I must examine the threads of history, the calendars & timelines, & see if they align.

If they do not, as I expect, what does this mean for the Continent? What does it mean for Saypur?





29th of the Month of the Sloth


Yesterday I met something I am not sure is legally permitted: an Olvoshtani monk.

I think it was a monk … I am not sure. I was taking a break from my work, reveling in sunlight on the Solda, sketching the bridge (it is so much narrower than nearly every bridge I’ve seen—I forget, of course, that it was meant solely for foot & horse traffic) & the walls behind it when she approached: a short, bald woman in orange robes.

She asked me what I was doing, & I told her. I showed her my work, & she was very appreciative. “You have captured its essence exactly,” she said. “And they say there are no more miracles!”

I asked her her name. She said she had none. I asked her the name of her order. She said she had none, only a “disorder.” (A joke, I presume.) I asked her what she thought of Bulikov these days. She shrugged. “It is being reinvented.”

I asked her what she meant.

“Forgetting,” she said, “is a beautiful thing. When you forget, you remake yourself. The Continent must forget. It is trying not to—but it must. For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must forget it was ever a caterpillar at all. Then it will be as if the caterpillar never was, & there was only ever the butterfly.”

I was so struck by this I fell into deep thought for some time. She skipped two stones across the Solda, bowed to me, & walked away.





2nd of the Month of the Turtle


Amazing discoveries, & terrifying ones. The discussions I have found taking place just before the Great Expansion have shed so much more light on the strange relationship between Divinities & mortals.

In 768 through 769:

In Ahanashtan, a priest stood on the shore & daily preached his reflections of foreign lands; in Voortyashtan, a sparring master pointed to mountain canyons headed east, below (then) the Dreyling lands, & commented on the way the rain must fall on the other side of the mountains, inspiring numerous exploration parties; later, in Jukoshtan, a starling-singer (must research this term later) sang a three-day poem of the currents in the ocean, & how they carry one so far away to distant places, & perhaps distant peoples … & so on, & so on.

One can see, then, that the Continentals were thinking about lands besides theirs. I have discovered a wealth of text that noses at the boundaries of their geographic knowledge.

Yet I have trudged through Divine decrees of all kinds during this same period, & have found no Divine mention of anything beyond the Continent’s boundaries & shores!

It is odd that the Divinities remained silent on a conversation surging through their mortal flock.