City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(135)

The sun isn’t shining through the earth, she thinks. We’re rising up.

“He’s moving it,” she says. “He’s raising it. He’s raising the Seat of the World.”

*

Mulaghesh’s soldiers are doing a halfhearted job of fortifying the embassy courtyard when the light begins to change.

Mulaghesh herself is monitoring their work from the embassy gates: the embassy walls are tall and white with iron railing at the top, and while they’re quite pretty they’re well short of military defenses. The embassy is also very exposed, sitting on an intersection between two major roads: one road runs along the walls, and the other runs all the way through Bulikov and straight up to the embassy gates. Mulaghesh can peer through the bars of the gates and see clear to downtown Bulikov. If Shara’s right about those six-inch cannons, she thinks, there are about a million angles those things could take to wipe us out.

Despite this exposed position, Mulaghesh has not prodded her soldiers along much, mostly because she privately hopes Shara is terribly, terribly wrong. But when she begins to hear the bells in the distance, and the shadows of the iron railing begin to dance on the courtyard stone, her mouth falls open enough for her cigarillo to come tumbling out.

She turns around. The sun itself is moving: though it is rendered somewhat hazy and strange by the walls of Bulikov, it is like a drop of liquid gold, and it streaks from where it sat just above the horizon and twirls and dances to the left, twisting through the sky and growing slightly larger until it’s on the other horizon, just starting to set.

Mulaghesh wonders: Is a whole day being lost before our eyes?

The cacophony of the bells beats on her senses, as if with each toll they are breaking down invisible structures and rebuilding them.

Then yellow-orange sunlight pulses over the rooftops of Bulikov. One sunbeam lances down as if shot through a veil of clouds—yet there are no clouds that she can see—and glances off the bell tower in the center of the city, which glows brightly.

Mulaghesh and her soldiers are forced to look away; when they look back, they see the sunlight—the setting sunlight—glints off of a huge polished roof. Mulaghesh has to shade her eyes to keep from being blinded.

A mammoth, ornate, cream white cathedral sits in the center of Bulikov, with its bell tower almost half a mile tall.

“What is that?” says one of her lieutenants. “Where did that come from?”

Mulaghesh sighs. How I hate it, she thinks, when the alarmists are proven right.

“All right!” she bellows. “Kindly take your eyes off the skyline and get your asses back to work! Start installing fortifications and gun batteries behind the embassy walls, and make it quick!”

“Gun batteries?” says one of her corporals. A girl barely in her twenties, she wipes her brow, nervous. “Governor, are you sure?”

“I absolutely am. So get a move on, and if you need the toe of my boot to speed you on your way, then I will be only too happy to apply it to your dainty backsides! What are you all staring at me for? Fucking move!”





I am lost among the seas of fate and time

But at least I have love.

—message scrawled on the common room wall of Fadhuri Academy





What Is Reaped


Volka descends the stairs in the Seat of the World with a decidedly beatific, satisfied air. “I have done good works,” he says aloud. “And I think Father Kolkan shall be pleased.”

Vohannes can’t help but scoff in disgust.

“And now”—Volka takes the final step off of the stairs—“to bring him home.” He looks sideways at where Vohannes and Shara are trapped. “Maybe after this, we shall embrace as true brothers. Perhaps he will cleanse you. Perhaps he will show mercy.”

“If he made you in his image, Volka,” says Vohannes, “then I very much f*cking doubt it.”

Volka sniffs and walks to Kolkan’s atrium. The Restorationists are arranged before the clear glass pane, a kneeling congregation awaiting their prophet. Volka calmly drifts through their ranks—Shara is reminded of a debutante at a ball—and stops before one man in particular.

Shara’s bonds are growing looser. “Keep trying,” she says desperately. “Please, Vo.”

Vohannes grunts, pulls harder.

“The hammer,” Volka says softly.

The man produces a long, silver hammer. Volka takes it delicately, then walks to the ladder and slowly climbs up to the glass.

Shara almost has her thumb through one loop of rope, but this has pulled another cord tight around her wrist.

Volka holds the silver hammer to his lips and whispers to it, chanting something.

I don’t want to see him, thinks Shara. I can’t. Anyone but him, anyone but Kolkan. …

She twists at the ropes. Something hot drips into her palm. She feels one cord slip over her pinky knuckle, then her thumb.

The silver hammer quivers, its edges blurring as if the metal itself trembles, filled with an energy it can barely contain.

Vohannes grabs hold of the ropes; Shara lunges forward, hoping they’ll break, but they hold fast.

Volka holds the hammer high. The yellow-orange sunlight blazes off of the hammer’s head.

The dribbling heat in Shara’s palm is now a trickle, thick and wet.

Someone do something, thinks Shara.