City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(157)

“Or?”

“Or we can begin to work with the Continent,” says Shara, “and create an equal to keep us in check.”

Vinya is aghast. “You wish to … to elevate the Continent?”

“Yes.” Shara adjusts her glasses. “In fact, I plan to spend billions on rebuilding their nation.”

“But … but they are Continentals!”

“They are people,” says Shara. “They have asked me for help. And I will give it.”

Vinya massages her temples. “You … you …”

“I also intend,” Shara continues, “to dissolve the WR, and declassify all the Continent’s history.”

Auntie Vinya slumps forward and goes white as custard.

“I don’t think we can build much of a future,” says Shara, “without knowing the truth of the past. It’s time to be honest about what the world really was, and what it is now.”

“I am going to be sick,” says Vinya. “You would give them back the knowledge of their gods?”

“Their gods are dead,” says Shara. “Those days are gone. That I know. It is time for all of us to move forward. In time, I hope to even reveal the nature of the Kaj’s parentage—though that might be decades away.”

“Shara … Dear …”

“Here is how the narrative will go, Auntie,” says Shara. “It will be said that things are different now—true enough—and that the old ways and the old warriors who keep to them must adapt, or go. You can go graciously and quietly: ceding authority to the new generation, after I’m just coming off of an incomparable victory. You might even be lauded for your foresight, as you chose to keep me in Bulikov—that would be a nice touch. And I can make sure that you land on your feet, winding up the head of a research institute or prominent school that can take good care of you. Or, I can dislodge you. You’ve said before you have enemies in Ghaladesh, Auntie. I now have a very big dagger I can give them, which they will then promptly plant in your back.”

Vinya gapes at her. “You … You really …”

“I will arrive in two days, Auntie,” says Shara. “Think about it.”

She wipes the porthole glass with two fingers, and her aunt vanishes.

*

Sunlight bounds out of the clouds, across the waves, ripples over the deck. Far above the ship, gulls float and dip gracefully from current to current, dodging through the air. Shara grips the ceramic canister a little tighter as the ship bobs to the port side: she has never been an accomplished sailor—something the crew members quickly deduced, and are wary of—and she is thankful the sea is calm today.

“Anytime soon, Captain?” she asks.

The captain breaks away from a conversation with his midshipman. “I could give you an exact time,” he says, “if you were to give me an exact point.”

“I have given you that, Captain.”

“The, quote, ‘point equidistant between Saypur and the Continent’ ain’t exactly as exact as you think, if you pardon my saying so, Chief Diplomat.”

“I don’t need for it to be too exact,” Shara says. “Just how long until we’re close?”

The captain tips his head from side to side. “An hour or so. On such calm waters, and with such a benevolent wind, maybe less. Why do you want to know, anyway?”

Shara turns away and walks to the stern of the ship with the canister under her arm. She watches the churning ocean behind them and the wake of their passage. The stripe of curiously smooth water stretches out for miles: after that, the rise and bob of the waves devour it until it is gone.

She stares at the sea for a long time. The wind caresses her hair and her coat. Her glasses are bedecked with crystalline jewels of sea spray. The air alternates between a pleasant warmth and a pleasant coolness.

“It has been a very long journey, hasn’t it, Vo?” she says to the ceramic canister. “But looking back, it seems like it was all over in only a moment.”

A gull dips low and calls to her, perhaps asking for something.

They did not want to cremate him, of course: cremation was heretical on the Continent. But she refused to let him be buried in the Votrov tomb, to lie among the people who had made his life a hell, so she took him with her, the contents of his self baked and boiled down and funneled into a little canister, freed of all pain, of all memory, of all the tortures his country and his god had put him through.

She will not cry. She has decided this. There is nothing to cry over: there is simply what happened.

“Birthing pains,” she says aloud. “That’s what our lives were, weren’t they? The wheels of time shift and clank against one another, and birth a new age.”

Cold wind slaps against her cheeks.

“But there are pains before, violent contractions. Unfortunate that it had to be us, but …”

The captain calls that they are near, or near enough.

“… a butterfly must emerge from its chrysalis sometime …”

She begins to unscrew the top of the canister. Her heart beats faster.

“… and forget it ever was a caterpillar.”

Another plaintive cry from the gulls.

She turns over the canister; a cloud of delicate ash comes twisting out, twirling through the winds to settle over the stripe of calm seas behind the ship.