City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(117)
But look how the discourse changes among the Continentals between 771 & 774:
In Kolkashtan, a town magistrate claimed that, since the Continent is blessed by the Divinities, there is nothing they do not own—they own the stars, the clouds, & the waves in the ocean; in Voortyashtan, a “gallows-priestess” asked why they make blades that will shed no blood, for there are no more wars to fight in, & debated whether this was a sin; in Ahanashtan, a “mossling” (some kind of nun?) wrote a poetic epic about what will happen when Ahanashtan grows so large (was the city alive? I must research further) that it begins to harm itself, bringing disharmony, starvation, & exhaustion. This epic was terribly successful, & caused many debates & much anxiety, with some even demanding the mossling’s imprisonment.
The Continentals were thinking, however peripherally, about expansion. It is patently obvious to anyone that they feared exhaustion, starvation, & moreover they began to feel that they deserved to expand, & take ownership of new places.
The Divinities, however, were not thinking about expansion—Kolkan was starting down the train of thought that would begin with his period of open judgment, & Taalhavras, always the most distant of Divinities, was adding onto the walls of Bulikov—and, I believe, altering the nature of Bulikov in many more profound, invisible ways. … All of them were off on their own concerns, while the people of the Continent fretted over the future.
Yet then, in 772, all six Divinities met in Bulikov, & elected—in what we previously thought to be an inscrutable, spontaneous gesture—to begin the Great Expansion, the invasion & domination of all nearby nations & countries, including Saypur.
Even the Continentals themselves recorded some surprise at this decision—but why, if they were already thinking about it themselves?
The argument I pose may be tenuous, but it compensates in quantity of evidence—in my studies, I have found nearly six hundred other instances of similar phenomena, on a much smaller scale: edicts that were proclaimed well after public opinion had been formed, laws that were prescribed after everyone was already following them, persecutions & prejudices that were in place well before the Divine, or their institutions, announced them. …
The list goes on & on.
The pattern is undeniable: the Continentals made their decisions, formed their attitudes … & the Divinities followed, making them official.
Who was leading whom? Is this evidence of some kind of unconscious vote, which the Divinities then enacted?
I wonder, sometimes, if the Continentals were like schools of fish, & the slightest flick of one fish caused dozens of others to follow suit, until the entire shimmering cloud had changed course.
And were the Divinities the sum of this cloud? An embodiment, perhaps, of a national subconscious? Or were they empowered by the thoughts & praises by millions of people, yet also yoked to every one of those thoughts—giant, terrible puppets forced to dance by the strings of millions of puppeteers?
This knowledge, I think, is incredibly dangerous. The Continentals derive so much pride & so much power from having Divine approval. … But were they merely hearing the echoes of their own voices, magnified through strange caverns & tunnels? When they spoke to the Divinities, were they speaking to giant reflections of themselves?
And if I am right, then it means that the Continentals were never ordered to invade Saypur, never ordered to enslave us, never ordered to force their brutal regime onto the known world: the gods merely enforced it, because the Continentals wished it.
Everything we know is a lie.
Where did the gods come from? What were they?
I find it hard to sleep, knowing this. I relax at night with a game of cards, played on the embassy rooftop. You can see the scarring in the city. It is like a roadmap of clashing realities. …
So much forgotten. If this city is a chrysalis, it is an ugly one.
24th of the Month of the Turtle
The minister is pleased with my progress, but asks for more verification. I have compiled a tower of contradictions in Continental history—& this, for me, would suffice—yet I will find more for her.
Yet something absurd has happened: I have discovered among the piles in my office some crumbling letters written by a soldier close to Lieutenant Sagresha … & thus close to the Kaj himself! How could I have forgotten or missed this? Perhaps I never even looked at them … Though sometimes I worry my office at the university is being tampered with. Yet this may be silly paranoia.
But what the soldier writes is eye-opening to say the least:
We have suspected for some time that the Kaj used some sort of projectile weapon: a cannon, gun, or bolt that fired a special kind of fire or lightning against which the Divinities had no defense.
Yet I believe we have been thinking about this the wrong way: we think about the gun, the cannon itself, rather than what it fired. But this soldier records stories of a “hard metal” or a “black lead” that the Kaj produced & stored & protected! Here, upon the Kaj’s execution of the Divinity Jukov:
“We followed the Kaj to a place in the city—a temple of white & silver, its walls patterned like the stars with purple glass. I could not see the god in the temple, & worried it was a trap, but our general did not worry, & loaded his black lead within his hand-cannon, & entered. Time passed, & we grew concerned, yet then there was a shot, & our general—weeping!—slowly came out.”