City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(143)

Shara looks out at Bulikov and sees the machinery behind the reality, the many wheels and gears and supports, and she sees how ruined and broken it all is. How phenomenally complicated this city was before the Blink—more than anyone could have guessed! This is what Taalhavras made, she thinks, before he died. … A chain of miracles upon miracles forever operating behind the scenes.

She sets to work building a shelter out of the ruins of the sub-reality around her. To Mulaghesh and the soldiers, it looks as if Shara is conducting an invisible orchestra, but they cannot see the impossibly heavy pieces she is moving into place, the Divine structures hidden to their eyes. It’s like making a lean-to, thinks Shara, out of the ruins of a bridge.

The voice in her head says, Why do you run from us? Why did you abandon us, Olvos?

Shara wonders, What in the world is going on?

She maneuvers one giant piece to block a gap, and just as she does the world goes black, and she sees …

… Kolkan standing before her on a sea of darkness, his gray robes rippling. They imprisoned me, he whispers. They locked me away, stuffed me in a tiny corner of the universe, just for trying to help my people. … And then Jukov came to me. He visited me in my cell, and he hurt me. He hurt me so much. …

Kolkan vanishes, and in his place is a skinny man dressed in a tricorn hat tipped with bells, and a jester’s outfit made of furs. I had to! snarls the man. His voice is like a thousand starlings screaming. They were killing us! They killed our children! They piled the bodies of our children to rot in giant graves! I had to do something! I had to hide myself away!

The vision fades. Shara is dripping with cold sweat and trembling.

I must block them out, she says to herself. I must block them out.

In the corner of her eyes, she sees another handful of armored soldiers approach, touch the mist, and freeze. “Fire,” says Mulaghesh. The repeat shooters eat them alive, and the street swirls with starlings.

Shara probes her invisible barrier with her mind. She can almost see the holes, for through the gaps the sky is the color of yellow parchment. Outside, she thinks, Kolkan is turning the real world into his own—his Divine influence is remaking Bulikov’s reality. She pulls more Divine struts down and uses them to cover the openings, but as she does …

… Kolkan appears and says, You were older than me, the only one older than me. I listened to you, Olvos. When you were gone, I grew frightened, and I asked my flock to tell me what to do. … I think I made so many mistakes, Olvos. …

Kolkan vanishes again. The skinny man in the tricorn hat appears and angrily shouts, I looked for you! I searched for you, Olvos! You were the only survivor, besides me! I needed your help! I was forced to resort to faking my own death, pulling down my creations, letting my children die! I was forced to hide with Kolkan in his miserable little jail cell for years and years!

Shara tries to focus.

Jukov is alive too, she thinks in shock as she fills this gap. But why did only Kolkan appear when the glass broke?

So many little gaps … So many tiny places he or they or it or whatever it is could slip in.

I am not stopping him, thinks Shara. This is just defending, delaying everything, while Bulikov burns and people die.

Fifteen more armored soldiers touch the icy mist and freeze. Mulaghesh’s repeaters tear them apart. Starlings take flight like a cloud of flies.

Kolkan appears before her: What am I to do? What are we to do? Then he is gone.

Jukov appears, spitting and snarling: Kill them all! Kill them for what they did to us! Incest and matricide and bitterness and horrors! My own progeny, my own Blessed kin rises up against us and slaughters us like sheep! Let them burn! Let them burn!”

Then she understands: No … No, it’s not possible. I saw only one Divinity standing in the Seat of the World, heard only one voice—didn’t I?

The clink and clank of the armored soldiers’ footsteps. The scream of the repeat shooters. The screech of millions of starlings …

Then the skies ripple like the surface of a dark lake.

Kolkan’s voice rings out through Bulikov: “STOP.”

Instantly, the armies of clanking armored soldiers halt.

Shara feels a giant eye swivel to look at her.

She looks down the street before the embassy. A tall, robed figure stands watching her, six blocks down.

Kolkan cocks his head. “YOU,” says his voice, “ARE NOT OLVOS.”

Shara frantically fumbles with the Divine machinery surrounding her, trying to pull it together, trying to protect her people, her countrymen.

Kolkan shakes his head. “TRICKS AND GAMES,” he says.

The air quivers. Rivers of armored soldiers march out of the alleys, and all line up on the street leading up to the embassy.

“IT IS ALL JUST TRICKS AND GAMES.”

The sea of armored soldiers turns to face the embassy and starts marching.

“No,” whispers Shara. “No, no, no …”

Instantly she feels a huge, terrible pressure on all the defenses she’s constructed: her river of freezing water begins unraveling; her Divine shelter creaks and groans; her very mind trembles. Madness spills into her skull like water on a sinking ship. She tries to push back. But is like an insect, she thinks, trying to push back against the lowering foot of a man.

The freezing water fades. The streets are flooded with gleaming soldiers. Three of them hurl their massive blades at the walls. The swords hack through the white stone, and Saypuri soldiers tumble back shrieking from a gun post. To Shara’s surprise, little Pitry Suturashni, screaming a tinny war cry, mans the abandoned cannon and opens fire. Shara tries to use Ovski’s Candlelight, but it’s like the oxygen is sucked out of the air, and she cannot even make a spark.