City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(122)

“Static,” says Sigrud.

“Exactly. Places where the rules were suspended. A deep marring to the fundamental nature of reality, caused by the Blink.”

“How could reality still be broken here and no one ever noticed?”

“I think part of it”—Shara waves at the street—“is that it blends in so well.” The area is like much of Bulikov: twisted, warped, pockmarked; buildings trapped inside of buildings; streets ending in tangles of stairs. “As anyone can plainly see, Bulikov has never really recovered from the Blink.”

“And on the other side of that”—he points at the invisible spot in space, wondering what to call it—“that static, is another reality?”

“I believe so,” says Shara. “Specifically, it’s a reality that pays attention to what sort of Divinity you worship, whose markings and sigils and signs you bear.”

“I suppose it’s true, then—the clothes make the man. …”

“How many more wraps do you have?”

He looks in his satchel. “Three.”

“Then please give me your smallest one, if you can. We’re going over.”

Shara and Sigrud each pull on a set of clothes: for Shara, the clothes are absurdly large, and for Sigrud, absurdly small. “I really do wish you’d washed these,” says Shara. “This one is still stiff on the inside.”

“You’re sure this will work?” asks Sigrud.

“Yes. Because once, you almost went there.”

Sigrud frowns. “I did?”

“Yes. When you saw the first disappearance, the man jumping down into the alley, you said you glimpsed, just for a moment, tall, thin buildings of white and gold. … And I believe the only reason you did see that”—she points at his right hand in its gray glove—“is because of that.”

“Because I had been touched,” says Sigrud, “by the Finger of Kolkan.”

“You bore a Divinity’s mark, so it was willing to accept you. Halfway, at least.”

Shara pulls on the Kolkashtani hood and steps toward the chalk line.

“You should let me go first,” says Sigrud. “Over there, it is enemy territory. Only our attackers have ever gone there.”

Shara grins for the first time in what feels like weeks. “I have spent half my life reading about other realities. I’d never refuse the opportunity of being the first to enter one, even with my life at stake.”

She walks forward.

*

There is no change, unlike when she passed through to the Unmentionable Warehouse. She is not even sure if anything has happened at all: she is still in the alley, standing on the stone floor, facing a street that looks almost exactly like it did before.

She looks down. At her feet is a Kolkashtani wrap, tied up in a tight bundle.

She turns around to see Sigrud manifest—there is no other word for it—in the middle of the alleyway. His one eye blinks behind the Kolkashtani hood, and he asks, “Are we through?”

“I think so,” says Shara. “But where we are doesn’t seem that diff—”

She trails off and stares over Sigrud’s shoulder.

“What?” he says. He turns to look, and says only, “Oh.”

The first real noticeable difference is that, beyond the next building, it is day. Not just day, but a beautiful day—a day with a cloudless, piercingly beautiful blue sky. Shara looks back in the other direction and sees that over those buildings the sky is an inky, smoky purple: the night sky she just came from. Even time is in disagreement, in this place. …

But that doesn’t come close to the other real difference: beyond the end of the alley, where the beautiful day begins, are huge, splendid, beautiful white skyscrapers, lined and tipped with gold, covered in ribbons of scrolling and interlacing vegetal ceramics, penetrated with fragile white arches and decorative window shafts, layered with pearl and glass.

“What,” says Sigrud, “is that?”

Shara, breathless, totters out to the street and finds that the entire block is lined with gorgeous, lily-white buildings, each bearing its own frieze. The walls are covered in calligraphic facades resembling twisting vines or lines of text: one building, she sees, is covered in giant lines from the Voortyashtan Book of Spears. Shara’s brain begins overheating as it tries to identify their many depictions: Saint Varchek’s loss at the Green Dawn. … Taalhavras repairs the arch under the world. … Ahanas recovers the seed of the sun. …

“Oh, my goodness.” She is trembling. She falls to her knees. “Oh, oh my goodness …”

“Where are we?” asks Sigrud as he walks out.

She remembers what Saint Kivrey said: It was like living in a city made of flower petals.

“Bulikov,” says Shara. “But the Bulikov of old. The Divine City.”

*

“I thought all this was destroyed,” says Sigrud.

“No—it vanished!” says Shara. “Bulikov shrank by huge amounts during the Blink—whole sections of the city just abruptly disappeared. Some of it was destroyed, certainly—but not all of it, it seems. This … This section of Bulikov must have been saved but cut adrift, tethered to our reality by a handful of connections.”

Moths caper and twirl in sunbeams. A courtyard’s crystal windows send golden prisms dancing in the street.