City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(32)
Mulaghesh stands at attention before a pillar. Just looking at her posture makes Shara’s back hurt. Mulaghesh is dressed in her uniform, which is pressed, polished, spotless. Her hair is tied back in a brutal bun, and her knee-high black boots boast a mirror shine. Her left breast is covered in medals; her right handles the considerable overflow. Overall, she does not look well dressed, but rather carefully assembled. Shara is almost tempted to search the seams of her coat for rivets.
“The original home vanished in the Blink,” says Mulaghesh. “Or so I’m told.”
“Hello, Governor. You look quite … impressive.”
Mulaghesh nods, but does not take her eyes off the socialites milling before the fires. “I don’t like for these people to forget what I am,” she says. “Despite all diplomatic pretenses, we are a military presence in their city.”
Once a soldier, thinks Shara, always a soldier. Beside the hearth on the right is a plinth with five short statues standing on it. “And those would be the reason for the occasion?” asks Shara.
“They would be,” says Mulaghesh. She and Shara wander toward them. “It’s an art auction, benefiting the New Bulikov party and a number of other vaguely worthy causes. Votrov’s become well known as an art fan. Pretty controversial stuff, too.”
Shara can see why: while none of the stone figures are nude to the extent that they’d show anything one would actually wish to see, they come very close, with the fold of a robe or the neck of a guitar in just the right place to shield things from view. There are three female statues, two male, but none are particularly physically lovely: they are bulky creatures, with wide hips and shoulders and fat thighs.
Shara squints as she reads the plate at the bottom of the plinth. “Peasants in Repose,” she says.
“Yes,” says Mulaghesh. “Two things Bulikov doesn’t like to think about: nudity and the poor. Especially the nudity, though.”
“I am familiar with this city’s stance on sexuality.”
“Not so much a stance as a glower, though,” says Mulaghesh. She picks up a horn-flute of ale from a passing footman and quaffs it. “I can’t even talk about it with them.”
“Yes, I wouldn’t expect you could. Their disgust for our more … liberal marital arrangements is well known,” says Shara.
Mulaghesh snorts. “It didn’t seem liberal when I was married.”
As nearly all Saypuris were treated as chattel under the Continental Empire, many were forced into marriage or divorced on the whims of whichever Continental company or individual owned them. After the Kaj overthrew the Continent, Saypur’s laws on marriage and personal freedom were greatly influenced by these traumas: in Saypur, two consenting spouses enter into a six-year contract, which at its end they can either renew or allow to expire. Many Saypuris have two, three, or even more spouses in their lifetimes; and while homosexual marriage is not formally recognized in Saypur, neither does Saypur’s vehement observance of personal freedom allow the state to forbid it.
Shara observes the scandalous protuberance underneath one statue’s robe. “So one could categorize this work as countercultural.”
“Or as pissing in the eyes of the powerful, yeah.”
“A crass way of putting it,” says a voice. A tall, slender young woman dressed in a menagerie of furs walks to stand just behind them. She is terribly young, not much older than twenty, with dark hair and high, sharp cheekbones. She manages to look both very Continental and yet also very urbane, two characteristics that often conflict. “I would instead say that it is embracing the new.”
Mulaghesh raises her horn-flute in a sardonic toast. “That I shall drink to. May its feet find earth, and may it run fast and far.”
“You do not sound like you think it likely, Governor.”
Mulaghesh grunts into her ale.
The young woman does not appear surprised, yet she says, “I always find it disheartening that you are so doubtful of our efforts, Governor. I would hope that, as a representative of your nation, you’d lend us support.”
“I am not in a position to lend anything, especially support. Nor am I in a position to officially say much. But I am compelled to listen to your City Fathers quite frequently, Miss Ivanya. And I am not sure your ideas, ambitious as they are, are on fertile ground.”
“Things are changing,” says the young woman.
“That is so,” says Mulaghesh. She stares balefully into the fire. “But not as much as you imagine.”
The young woman sighs and turns to Shara. “I hope the governor has not saddled you with too much gloom. I would prefer if your first social event in Bulikov would have a lighter mood to it. You are our new cultural ambassador, are you not?”
“I am,” says Shara. She bows politely. “Shara Thivani, cultural ambassador, second-class, and acting chief of the Saypuri Embassy.”
“I am Ivanya Restroyka, assistant curator to the studio that donated the pieces. It is a genuine pleasure to have you here with us, but I must warn you that not everyone here will greet you so warmly—fusty old attitudes are sometimes so hard to shrug off. Yet I hope that at the end of the night, you will count me a friend.”
“That is extremely kind of you to say,” says Shara. “Thank you.”
“Come, allow me to introduce you to everyone,” says Ivanya. “After all, I am sure that the governor will not wish to sully herself with such social responsibilities.”