City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(131)

Shara has decided she definitely knows this room, bereft of furniture and adornment: she remembers how the mhovost laughed at her, and how she flicked the candle into its chest, and the stairs of earth leading down. …

I know exactly where we are, she thinks, and where Kolkan is.

“He’s down in the Seat of the World, isn’t he?” she says aloud.

Volka looks at her like she just slapped him.

Vohannes frowns. “In that rotten old place?”

“No, no. Down underneath, where the real Seat is hidden, yards below us, where we are right now.” She shuts her eyes. The fumes from the rag have wrapped her brain in a fog, but she cannot stop the thought from thrashing up to her. “And the Divine were fond of using glass as storage space. … Ahanas hid prisoners in a windowpane, and even kept a small vacation spot in a glass sphere. Jukov stored the body of St. Kivrey in a glass bead. And when I was down there, in the Seat of the World, I looked for the famous stained glass I have always heard of … but all the windows were broken. All except one, in the Kolkashtani atrium. And I thought it was so curious, at the time, that it was whole, unbroken, yet blank.”

She opens her eyes. “That’s where the other gods jailed him, didn’t they? That’s where Kolkan has been imprisoned for the past three hundred years. A living god, chained within a pane of glass.”

*

“I don’t quite know everything that’s going on,” says Vohannes chipperly, “but this is pretty entertaining, isn’t it, Volka?”

“How do you mean to free him?” asks Shara.

Volka stares at her furiously, breath whistling in his nostrils.

“Unless,” says Shara, “it’s a simple Release miracle … one any priest would know.”

“Not any priest,” says Volka hoarsely.

“So it must be much more potent. Perhaps … ,” says Shara slowly. “Perhaps something from a monk from the Kovashta? Something you found written down in their vaults?”

Volka growls like he’s been struck.

“Are you so sure, Brother,” asks Vohannes, “that she’s your inferior?”

“And Wiclov?” asks Shara. “Will he participate? It was you who was running him, wasn’t it? You were the man who trapped the mhovost here and set it up as a guard dog.”

“What happened to Wiclov will seem like a blessing in comparison to what happens to you,” snaps Volka. “Wiclov, he was … He was a believer. A true Kolkashtani. But once he led you to the Seat of the World, and once you realized how I had found the Warehouse of stolen items, I could not forgive him.”

“What did you do?” asks Shara.

Volka shrugs. “I had to find out if the Butterfly’s Bell really worked somehow. I had never seen it performed. Wiclov made … a tolerable subject. I reminded myself—we are but instruments in the hands of the Divine. I did not mind you chasing after Wiclov. You obviously had no idea I was even here, for I’d laid all my plans years before you ever arrived.”

“Though I startled you, didn’t I?” says Shara. “When I arrived, you thought you had to hurry—so you attacked Vohannes’s house to try and force him to give you what you needed.”

“The arrival of the great-granddaughter of the Kaj would upset any true Continental,” says Volka. “And I knew who you were.” Another flash of teeth as brown as old wood. “I had stared at portraits of the Kaj for hours, days, thinking of him, hating him, wishing I could have been there to end his life, stop history from bringing us here. … And the second I saw you—saw your eyes, your nose, your mouth—I saw the past come to life. I knew you were his kin. From there, it was easy to find out who you were, and a simple thing to tell my countrymen.”

“Wait. … You blew my cover?” She glances at Vohannes, who stares at the two of them, uncomprehending.

“Yet they did not rise up against you, nor did they hang you in the streets as I expected,” says Volka. “They praised you for killing Urav, one of Kolkan’s sacred children. I honestly cannot tell if you are actually talented, or if your inopportune appearances are all coincidence. Like today. Did you actually follow us to the real Votrov estate, or did you simply stumble into it?”

“Oh,” says Shara. “You were in the house, weren’t you? When Sigrud and I traveled to Old Bulikov. You saw us.”

“I wouldn’t even be performing this rite now if things had gone as I intended,” says Volka. “But again, your intrusion forces us to make haste. You went to the true Bulikov. You saw the waiting ships. So, rather arbitrarily, unfortunately, the new age will have to begin today.”

“Will you destroy the city now, with your warships?” asks Shara. “Why do you need flying warships at all, if you’re freeing a Divinity? Can’t Kolkan just point a finger at us and turn us into stone?”

“Why would we bother with the city?” Volka says. “It’s wiser to divide and conquer. Saypur is wed to the sea—its strength lies in ships. Our vessels of the air will race directly to Saypur itself and shell its harbors and shipyards before your blasphemous nation ever realizes what is happening. We wished for more ships, but I’ve no doubt that even with only six ships, we’ll still outmatch any Saypuri weaponry. For all its might, Saypur could never expect an attack from the air. We will rain down fire from the clouds. We will shower destruction from the sky like angels. We will castrate your vile country, as it deserves.”