City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(155)

*

The walls of Bulikov are peach colored with the light of the dawn. They swell before her, rising out of the violet countryside as the train speeds by. Are the walls alabaster in daylight? she thinks. Bone? What word best describes them? What shall I write? What shall I tell everyone?

The train wheels squall and sputter. She touches the window, the ghost of her face caught in its glass.

I must not forget. I must not forget.

She will not go into Bulikov: the train takes a straight track from the governor’s quarters to Ahanashtan. She will not see the collapsing temple of the Seat of the World. She will not see the cranes around the Solda Bridge. She will not get to see the construction teams hauling the ancient white stone out of the rubble, the stone of the Divine City, nor will she get to see what they will do with it. She will not get to see the armadas of pigeons wheeling through the spokes of smoke as the day begins. She will not get to watch as the mats in the market are rolled out, as the wares are put on show, as merchants wade through the streets crying prices, carrying on as if nothing has happened.

I will not see you, she tells the city, but I will remember you.

The walls continue to swell; then, as she passes, they shrink behind her.

When I come back to you, she thinks, if I come back to you, will I know you? Will you be the city of my memory? Or will you be a stranger?

She could ask the same of Ghaladesh: the city of her birth, of her life, a city she has not seen in sixteen years. Will I know it? Will it know me?

The walls have shrunk to a tiny cylinder of peach-white, a can floating on black waves.

The past may be the past, she tells them, but I will remember.

*

Shara waits for over two hours. So far the movements of the ship are smooth and easy, but very shortly they’ll enter the deep sea, where the waves will be much less kind.

Shara’s cabin is as spacious as the merchant’s vessel could allow, and she has promised a worthy fee from the Ministry when she finally returns to Ghaladesh. Penny for pound, she muses, I am probably the most profitable cargo this ship has ever carried.

She stares into the porthole in her cabin wall. The South Seas are on the other side, but in the window’s reflection is a large, dark office, and a big teak desk.

Aunt Vinya finally arrives, looking harried and harassed. She violently rifles through her desk, tearing open drawers, slamming cupboards. “Where is it?” she mutters. “Where is it! These questions, these damn questions!” She picks up a stack of papers, flips through them, and angrily throws them in her trash can.

“It looks,” Shara says, “like you’ve had a few rough meetings.”

Vinya’s head snaps up, and she stares at Shara in the window. “You …”

“Me.”

“What are you doing?” Vinya snaps. “I should have you arrested for this! Performing a miracle on the Continent is a treasonous act!”

“Well, then, it’s probably a very good thing that I’m not on the Continent anymore.”

“You what?”

“This is obviously not my office.” She gestures to the room behind her. “You look at me in the cabin of a vessel in the South Seas, bound, of course, for Ghaladesh.”

Vinya’s mouth opens and shuts, but no words escape.

“I am coming home, Aunt Vinya,” says Shara. “You cannot keep me away any longer.”

“I … I damn well can! If you come home I’ll have you imprisoned! I can have you exiled! You are disobeying the orders of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in essence you are committing treason! I don’t … I don’t care how damn famous you are now, you’ve no idea what sort of powers I’m allowed, with no questions asked!”

“What sort of powers would those be, Auntie?”

“Powers to eliminate threats to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, without question, without disclosure, without testimony to any damnable oversight committees!”

“And would this be,” Shara asks slowly, “what happened to Dr. Pangyui?”

Vinya’s righteous fury evaporates. Her shoulders sink as if her spine has vanished. “Wh-what?”

“You may wish,” says Shara, “to take a seat.”

But Vinya is too shocked to move.

“As you wish,” says Shara. “I will keep this short. Let’s say I have a feeling that somewhere in all the cables and transmissions and orders that have come out of the Ministry—in all the inscrutable, impenetrable, classified, technically nonexistent communications—there is a message to some unquestioning thug on the Continent informing him or her of a national threat, that threat being Dr. Efrem Pangyui at Bulikov University, and that he or she is authorized to eliminate this threat with utmost discretion, and to search for and destroy any sensitive material in his office and library.” Shara adjusts her glasses. “Would that be right?”

Vinya has gone terribly pale.

“You want to shut down this conversation altogether, don’t you, Auntie?” says Shara. “But you want to know what I know and how I know it. You want to know if I know, for example, that the reason Dr. Efrem Pangyui was labeled a threat was one very personal to you.”

Shara waits, but Vinya does not move or speak. Shara thinks she can see something trembling in her aunt’s cheek.

“I do,” says Shara. “I do know, Auntie. I know that you are Blessed, Vinya. I know that you are a descendant of the very thing that haunts Saypur’s nightmares.”