City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(22)

But she remembers how Efrem lay on the cot in the embassy vault, his skull wearing the crude mask of his small, delicate face. …

Something cold blooms in Shara’s belly. Efrem … did Auntie Vinya get you killed?

“Do you know which artifacts he was studying?” asks Shara.

“He said he wished to study only the books in there, and a few inactive items.”

Shara nods. She knows the term: “active” items referred to often-mundane things—a box, a pen, a painting—that possess miraculous properties, obvious or concealed. The paintings of Saint Varchek, for example, were obviously miraculous, as the figures in them would move on the canvas, shuffling about or sharing gossip; whereas the sheets of the Divinity Jukov had less obvious miraculous qualities, until one actually climbed into the bed they were on and instantly found oneself nude on a moonlit beach several miles away.

But once the Divine power that bestowed the miracle on these items passed—once the god died, in other words—the miraculous properties usually faded quite quickly. These items were considered “inactive”: no longer miraculous, but certainly not trustworthy.

“I don’t know which ones he looked at,” says Mulaghesh. “I don’t know much about those things, and I don’t want to know. All that was established back in the Kaj’s age. And nobody’s really been in it, until Pangyui.

“He understood the dangers. He was remarkably well informed about all of it. I guess he’d read and studied enough of the old stories that he already knew all about them before he walked in the door. He was careful. The ones he took out, he stored and watched safely.”

“He took some out?”

Mulaghesh shrugs. “Some. From what he described, a lot of the Warehouse is just junk, really. There are piles and piles and piles of books down there, too. That was what the professor was primarily looking for, he said. He made some careful selections, and he studied them beyond the … circumstances of the Warehouse. Which I guess were pretty oppressive.”

The safe, thinks Shara. “And do you think his murder had anything to do with the Warehouse?”

“You might think so,” says Mulaghesh. “But I doubt it. Like I said, no one knows much about the Warehouse. The bunkers it’s part of are monitored very closely. There haven’t been any disturbances. To me, there are a lot more public reasons to have killed him.”

“But a danger as significant as the Warehouse …”

“Listen, I can’t do much in Bulikov, but I can watch. And no one’s been tampering with the Warehouse. I’m sure of that. You asked for my advice, and my advice would be to look at the Restorationists.”

Shara considers it reluctantly. “And I suppose,” she says, “that it wouldn’t be possible to allow me access to this Wa—”

“No,” says Mulaghesh sharply. “It would not.”

“I know I do not have approval, but if such a thing were to go unnoti—”

“Don’t even finish that. It’s treason to suggest it.”

Shara glares at her. “I am nearly as well informed as Pangyui in such historical matters.”

“Good for you,” says Mulaghesh. “But you weren’t sent here for this. You don’t have clearance. The way to keep these things secret is to keep people from seeing them. And that includes you, Ambassador Komayd.”

Shara readjusts her glasses. She defiantly files all this in the back of her head for later perusal. “I see,” she says finally. “So. The Restorationists.”

Mulaghesh nods approvingly. “Right.”

“Do you have any sources on them?”

“Not a single one,” says Mulaghesh. “Or at least not a trustworthy one. I don’t want to wade into that mess and have them start trumpeting that I’m watching them.”

“I suppose the New Bulikov supporters could be a help.”

“To an extent. There’s one City Father who’s a big proponent, which is unusual. But he probably doesn’t want to mix too close with Saypuris like us. Collusion, you see. There are some formal opportunities, though. He throws a monthly reception for his party, calling on the supporters of the arts. Sort of a fundraising thing—it’s an election year. He usually invites me and the chief diplomat, as a formality. So if you wanted a chance to talk to him, that’d be it.”

“What more can you tell me about him?”

“He’s old money. Family’s really established. They broke into the brick trade years back, and bricks are useful when you’re rebuilding a whole damn city. They’re political, too. A member of the Votrov family has been a City Father for, shit, sixty years or so?”

Shara, who has been nodding along with this, freezes.

She replays what she just heard, then replays it again, and again.

Oh, she thinks, I badly hope she did not say what I think she said . …

“I’m sorry,” says Shara. “But which family is it?”

“Votrov. Why?”

Shara slowly sits back in her chair. “And his name … His first name.”

“Yeah?”

“Would it happen to be Vohannes?”

Mulaghesh cocks an eyebrow. “You know him?”

Shara does not answer.

The words come crashing back down on her as if it’d only been yesterday.