City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(147)
“Why would he do all this?”
“Revenge, I expect,” says Shara. “He could be a very merry Divinity, unless you crossed him. Then he was wildly vindictive. Jukov knew that the Kaj had a weapon against which he had no power, so I believe he opted to wait and return once the threat had passed. I am not sure how he planned to do that. Perhaps he arranged some sort of method of contacting anyone who looked for a Divinity hard enough—that would explain how he reached Volka Votrov, at least. That is just a guess, as I said. But I doubt if Jukov expected the side effects of submitting to imprisonment with Kolkan.”
“Being fused together?”
“Yes. The warped thing I met told me the prison was made for only Kolkan. To stay there, Jukov was slowly but surely melded with Kolkan, perhaps absorbed by him. They were two diametrically opposed Divinities—chaos and order, lust and discipline. … It was Jukov, after all, who convinced the other Divinities to imprison Kolkan in the first place. The end result was the mad, confused thing that begged me to kill it.”
“Noor wishes me to confirm that no more Divinities will be appearing.”
“I can confirm only that no one knows the whereabouts of Olvos, who is now the last surviving Divinity. But no one has seen her for nearly a thousand years, and I doubt if she’d ever be a threat. Olvos has shown no interest in worldly matters since her disappearance, which was well before the Kaj was ever born.”
“And … we also wish to confirm that the powers you experienced using the philosopher’s stones cannot be duplicated.”
“That I cannot say for sure. … But probably. More and more, the Continent is less Divine, which means that the philosopher’s stones allow access to less and less power.”
“Is that all it took back in the Continent’s heyday? Take a handful of those pills, and attain godlike powers?”
Shara smirks. “In case you have forgotten, the Divinity almost crushed me like a bug once I got its attention. My powers were definitively not godlike. But that is how things used to work here: there are records of priests and acolytes taking copious quantities of philosopher’s stones and performing astounding miracles—and frequently dying shortly thereafter.” She rubs her head. “Frankly, I almost envy them.”
Pitry is silent for a few moments. Then: “The papers in Ghaladesh … They think you are a h—”
“Don’t,” says Shara.
“But you are being cele—”
“I don’t want to hear it. They don’t know what it means. They should be mourning.” It might have been mostly Continentals who died, yes. It might have been Continentals who—confused, misled—freed their Continental god and asked it to attack us. But I was asked many times if we could help the Continent in any way before this catastrophe. I think it was already too late when I heard those pleas. But I was warned that this would happen, and I chose to listen to policy instead.”
“Noor is committed to helping the survivors, Chief Diplomat. Saypur will help Bulikov survive.”
“Survive,” says Shara, sinking down. “Survive and do what?”
Water fills her ears and washes over her face, yet among the sloshing and bubbles she imagines she hears the voice of Efrem Pangyui—one death among thousands, yes, but one she feels will plague her until her last days.
*
Three days later Shara tours the recovery efforts with General Noor’s executive committee. The armored car bustles and bangs over the broken roads of the city, not helping Shara’s headache, which has only faintly receded. She is forced to wear dark glasses, as the sight of sunlight still pains her—doctors have informed her that this damage may be permanent. She finds this somehow quite easy to accept: I have looked upon things not meant to be seen, and I have not escaped unscathed.
“I assure you, this is not necessary,” says General Noor, bristling with disapproval. “We have matters well in hand. And you should be in recovery, Chief Diplomat Komayd.”
“It is my duty as chief diplomat of Bulikov,” she says, “to concern myself with the welfare of my assigned city. I will go where I wish. And I have some personal matters to attend to.”
What she sees wounds her heart: parents and children covered in bandages, field clinics packed to bursting with patients, shanty houses, rows and rows of wooden coffins, some of them very small. …
If I had discovered Volka sooner, thinks Shara, this might have never happened.
“It’s like the Blink,” she says. “It’s like how things were after the Blink.”
“We did tell you,” says Noor quietly at one field tent, “that you would not like what you saw.”
“I knew I would not like what I saw,” says Shara. “But it is my responsibility to see it.”
“It is not all gloom. We have had some local help,” Noor gestures to a section of a field clinic staffed by bald, barefoot Continentals in pale orange robes. “These people have swarmed our offices, and more or less taken over in some cases. They are an invaluable gift, I must say. They relieve us as we await more aid from Ghaladesh.”
One of the Olvoshtani monks—a short, thickset woman—turns to Shara and bows deeply.
Shara bows back. She finds that she is weeping.
“Chief Diplomat,” says Noor, startled. “Are you … ? Would you like us to take you back?”