City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(125)

She looks to the right. A low gallery circles the courtyard, heavy square roofs supported by white wood columns.

In one column there is a small black hole. It is just at shoulder height, if you are seated.

Seated and, perhaps, holding out a pistol, perhaps to someone’s head.

She walks to it and gets the uncanny sense that something is inside it, watching her. I have been waiting here for you, the little hole seems to say, for so long!

“Sigrud,” she says hoarsely. “Bring me your knife.”

He places the handle of the heavy black knife in her palm. She takes a breath and shoves the blade into the hole in the wood.

A tink as it strikes something metal. She begins hacking at the column, carving the wood away, until the thing inside begins to shake loose.

Something small and black clatters to the floor of the courtyard. Shara stoops and picks it up.

A piece of dark, dark metal, half-flattened from where it struck the wood, about the size of a fat fig.

She rolls it around in the palm of her hand, feeling its weight.

Jukov must be dead, thinks Shara. He must be. Otherwise, how could this be here?

“What is that?” asks Sigrud.

“This little thing,” says Shara softly, “is what brought down the gods.”

*

They continue following the trail, which twists and turns across the streets until it unexpectedly ends in the middle of what seems to have been someone’s living room.

“Where are they?” asks Sigrud. “The footsteps end here.”

Shara kneels and examines the floor, but she can see nothing. “I can never figure out exactly what you are using to track people. Where do the footsteps end?”

Sigrud points at a spot on the floor not quite in the corner, nor quite in the center of the room.

“More static, I would imagine,” says Shara. “Just a very subtle spot, one that’s very hard to notice.”

“And you think we can pass back through?”

“I don’t think our reality—the actual reality—rejects anyone. Unlike this one. The question is, where will we come back through?”

“I think it would be wise to allow me to go first this time,” says Sigrud. “We know our enemies are over there, somewhere, doing … something. It would be stupid to allow you through. All right?”

“All right.”

Sigrud steps toward the spot. He gradually disappears, his leading foot dissolving, followed by his waist and shoulders, but it all happens too quickly for her eyes to really understand.

She waits. Then she is treated to the bizarre sight of Sigrud’s head and hand appearing in midair.

He gestures to her to follow, but holds a finger to his lips.

She walks toward the spot, bracing herself.

Last time her surroundings did not seem to change at all, but this time the change is absolute: the white city fades away, and a blue-purple dawn sky comes spilling in above, framed by harsh, sandy mountains. Short, scraggly trees rise out of the chalky soil around them and bend back down to graze the earth.

“So,” says Sigrud, “where are we now?”

Shara’s mind races. “Not in Bulikov, that’s for sure. Interesting. … It seems there is no fixed geographical relationship between Old Bulikov and the real Bulikov.”

Sigrud impatiently rolls his index finger: Get on with it.

“I think … that we are outside of Jukoshtan.” Shara reaches up, grabs the slender branch of a tree, and examines its leaves. “I think so. This sort of juniper only grows near Jukoshtan. They used to perfume wine with the berries.”

“So … is Jukoshtan behind this in any way?”

“I genuinely have no idea,” says Shara. She turns around and examines the spot they just passed through: it bears some minor effects from the Blink—the sand is molten together, and many of the trees appear bent and mutated—but otherwise you’d never be able to tell this spot had any trace of reality static to it.

She breaks off a branch from a nearby tree, peels back the bark so its green inner core is revealed in a slender stripe, and stabs it into the ground. “To mark our entry point,” she says. “Now—lead on.”

The trail leads down a valley, then up the hills, up and up, until they come to the crest, and then …

“Down,” whispers Sigrud. “Down!” He grabs her shoulder and rips her forward, crashing into the soft sand hills.

Shara lies still and listens. Then she hears it: voices, and hammers.

Sigrud peers through the undergrowth.

“Have we been spotted?” Shara whispers.

He shakes his head. “No. But I am not sure what I am looking at.”

“Is it safe for me to move?”

“I think so,” he says. “They are very far down in the valley. … And they are very busy.”

She lifts her head and crawls to a spot where she can see. The bottom of the valley is dotted with fires, as if the people there are preparing to work well into the night. But what they are working on is hard to discern: there are six long, wide shapes of gleaming metal that Shara first thinks are giant shoes, pointed at the front and square in the back like the clogs they wear in Voortyashtan, but there are doors and windows in the giant metal shoes, and stairs and trapdoors … and in the middle is something that looks like a mast with no sail.