City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(34)
*
Sigrud stares into the fire, massaging the palm of his gloved hand with one thumb. He recalls a saying from his homeland: Envy the fire, for it is either going or not. Fires do not feel happy, sad, angry. They burn, or they do not burn.
It took Sigrud several years to understand this saying, but it took many more for him to learn to be like the fire: merely alive, and no more.
He watches Shara and the man with the cane circle one another in the crowd. See how they stand, faces almost averted, but never quite completely: always they can watch one another, peering over someone’s shoulder or glancing to the side to catch the other’s feigned ignorance.
They watch without watching. It is, he thinks, a clumsy dance.
The man with the cane keeps checking his watch: perhaps, Sigrud thinks, to avoid appearing too eager. After he’s made a good show of pumping the crowd, he grabs a footman and whispers into his ear. The footman orbits the crowd a handful of times before closing in on Shara, to whom he delivers a small white card. Shara, smiling, tucks it away, and after severing herself from the talkative young girl in the furs, slinks upstairs.
Sigrud turns back to the fire. Lovers, certainly. Their movements sing of past caresses. He is amused: though small and quiet, Shara Komayd is as much a weapon as he is. But he realizes this surprise is silly. All creatures in this world have a little love in their lives, however short.
He remembers the whaling ship Svordyaaling. The deck slick with blood and fat as the crew peeled away the skin of a dead whale as one peels an apple. The reeking, bleeding thing clutched to the side of the ship, trailed by churning clouds of gulls. On the days after a kill, after the chase, after the foreman hacked at the beast’s lungs with a halberd until its blowhole sprayed blood, after they dragged it back to the ship across the ocean … On those days down belowdecks Sigrud would pull a locket from his jacket, and he would hold it in his hands, and open it and peer at it by candlelight. …
Sigrud looks at his gloved, aching hand. He cannot recall what the locket looks like, nor can he recall the portrait inside. He thinks he remembers at least the feel of the locket in his hand. But perhaps he is imagining things.
“You seem occupied,” says a voice. A middle-aged woman, obviously wealthy and established, sits next to him by the fire. “Perhaps a drink?” She holds out a goblet of wine.
Sigrud shrugs, takes it, downs it in one gulp. The gold bracelet on his left wrist tinkles as it falls against the buttons on his sleeve. She watches, excited, curious.
“What a remarkable guest you are,” says the woman. “I doubt if Votrov has ever had someone like you under his roof.”
Sigrud puffs at his pipe and watches the fire.
“So what would you be here for?” she asks.
He takes another long puff of his pipe. He considers it. “Trouble,” he says.
Someone has made a ribald joke: a cross-section of the crowd bursts into laughter, and some of the more delicate members turn away, offended.
*
The clink of glassware, the mutter of laughter. Cheers ring out in some distant cavity of this warped house. How hollow and horrible the wild noise of a party sounds, thinks Shara, when filtering through yards of stone.
The spiral staircase keeps going up. She wonders if she will find him waiting at the top; if he is, she feels it would be wise to tip backward, and tumble down these steps, rather than try to speak to him.
She gets control of herself and climbs the stairs to what is ostensibly the library, but it is far too large to be one room. One wall boasts a massive family portrait. Not once in their two-year relationship did Vohannes ever mention his parents—which now strikes her as odd—yet they look much like she imagined: proud, regal, stern. Father Votrov is dressed in an almost militaristic uniform, with lots of medals and ribbons; Mama Votrov wears a plush, pink ballroom gown. The sort of people who intermittently review their children, she thinks, rather than raise them. But what surprises her more is that standing next to what looks like an eleven-year-old Vohannes is a second boy, slightly older, with darker eyes and paler skin. The two look so alike they could only be brothers, but Vohannes never mentioned him.
The wind rises; the candle flames dance. She licks her fingers, tests the air, and finds the source of the draft in a nearby window. She walks to it.
The lights of Bulikov stretch out below her like a sea of blue-white stars. The moon is weak tonight, but she can see strange, alien forms out among the rooftops: a half-collapsed temple, the ruined skeleton of an estate, the curlicue twist of tottering stairs.
She looks down. Three tin-hatted guards patrol the walls of the house of Votrov, with bolt-shots in their hands. This is interesting: she didn’t see any guards when they arrived out front.
The click of a door handle. She turns and watches as someone fumbles the two side doors open, and the tip of a white cane pokes through.
Now is your last chance to run! says a voice in her mind. She is ashamed that she doesn’t wholly dismiss it outright.
He enters, limping. His white furs are honey-golden in the light of the lamps. He half looks at her—he avoids eye contact—and walks to a drink trolley and pours himself something. Then he begins to hobble over.
“This room,” he says, “is far too large. Do you not agree?”
“That would depend on what it’s being used for.” She is not sure what to do with her hands, her body: how many dignitaries she has met before, how many nobles, yet now such awkwardness comes plummeting down on her? “I’m sorry to take you away from your party.”