City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(19)

“That’s one reason, yes.”

“And another reason, I’m sure,” says Mulaghesh as she lights the cigarillo, “would be for the Ministry to determine whether my actions—or inactions—could have contributed to their cultural emissary’s death. Because it also, in a way, happened under my watch. Right?”

“That is not my priority,” says Shara.

“I commend you,” she says. “You have evidently got the diplomat-thing to an art.”

“It’s the truth,” says Shara.

“I believe it’s the truth for you. Just probably not for the Ministry.” Mulaghesh sighs, wrapping her head in a wreath of smoke. “Listen, I’m glad you’re here, because if you tell them what I’ve been saying for the past year, maybe they’ll listen. Because ever since I first got wind of this cultural expedition bullshit, I knew, I just knew, that this was all going to end in tears. Bulikov’s like an elephant, see? It’s got a long memory. Ahanashtan, Taalvashtan, those places—they’ve got their act together. They’re modernizing. Getting train tracks in, doctors … shit, letting women vote.” She snorts, hawks, and spits into a trash can at her desk. “This place”—she gestures out the windows, toward the walls of Bulikov—“this place still thinks it’s in its Golden Ages. Or that it should be. Every once in a while it forgets, and we get some peace, but then someone stirs up the nest again, and I have another crisis on my hands. A crisis I can’t really intervene in, because the policy is ‘Hands off.’ Policy, as always, sounds solid as shit in Ghaladesh, a whole damn ocean away, but when you’ve got those walls only a day’s walk from you, it’s all just words.”

Shara opts to interrupt. “Governor Mulaghesh, before we continue …”

“Yeah?”

“Who do you think killed Dr. Pangyui?”

Mulaghesh looks slightly taken aback. “Me? Hell. I don’t know. It could have been anyone. The whole city wanted him dead. Besides, I haven’t been given the go-ahead to investigate.”

“But surely you must have some ideas.”

“Yeah. I do.” She studies Shara for a long while. “Why do you care? You’re a diplomat. You’re just here for the parties. Right?”

Shara reaches into her robes and produces her Ministry of Foreign Affairs badge.

Mulaghesh sits forward and, to her credit, examines it without a reaction.

After a long while, she reads from the name at the bottom, “Komayd.”

“Yes,” says Shara.

“Not, I take it, Thivani.”

“No,” says Shara.

“Komayd. As in Vinya Komayd?”

Shara stares back at her, unblinking.

Mulaghesh sits back. She looks at Shara for some time, then asks, “How old are you?”

“I am thirty-five.”

“So … That thing, sixteen years ago. The Nationalist Party. Was that … ?”

With a great deal of effort, Shara’s face shows no emotion.

Mulaghesh nods. Shara thinks she can see a sly gleam in her eye. “Huh. Why didn’t you say so at the start?”

“I’m afraid you started talking before I could say anything.”

“I guess that’s true,” Mulaghesh says. “I get mouthy after a run.” She sticks her cigarillo back between her teeth. “So. You are here to investigate the professor’s murder.”

“I am here,” says Shara as she puts away her badge, “to see if anything in Bulikov poses a threat to Saypur.”

“In Bulikov? Shit. It’s only crawled out of total squalor in the past fifteen years or so. When I got here it was probably no different than when the Kaj captured it. People were still shitting in buckets. It’s hard to imagine how it could pose a threat.”

“They thought the same before the Summer of Black Rivers, when we introduced the Regulations and Bulikov rebelled, and the city was in an even worse state then. The passion of Bulikov far outweighs its limitations, it seems.”

“Poetic,” says Mulaghesh. She runs a thumb along the scar on her jaw. “But probably true.” She slouches back farther in her chair, a feat Shara hadn’t realized was possible, and appears to think.

Shara knows she is wondering if it’s wise to extend a hand to this new, mysterious official: so often in the Ministry good deeds and charitable actions win only woe, when someone loses their footing and all those who supported them get punished.

“I need your help, Governor,” says Shara. “I cannot depend on the embassy.”

Mulaghesh snorts. “Who can?”

“Quite right. And I am willing to do what is necessary to win your support.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. I wish to put this all to bed as quickly as possible. And I’d need your help to do so.”

Mulaghesh chews the end of her cigar. “I don’t know if you can give me what I want.”

“You may be surprised.”

“Maybe. I don’t mind being a servant, Ambassador Komayd. And that’s what we are, civil servants. But I’ve served enough. I want to go someplace a lot better than this backward ruin.”

Shara thinks she already knows where she’s going. “Ahanashtan?”