City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(35)

“Oh, that. I’ve seen it before. Know how it ends.” He grins at her. It is still a blinding smile. “I am not, as they say, on tenterhooks about the whole thing. Enjoying the view?”

“It’s quite … splendid.”

“That’s one word for it.” He joins her at the window. “My father would talk endlessly about the view around here. About what used to be there, I mean. He’d point and say, ‘There, at that corner, that was where we had the Talon of Kivrey! And there, across the park, that was Ahanas’s Well, and the line of people would stretch down the street!’ I was impressed, enamored, until I figured out the timeline and realized dear Papa had not been alive to see any of this. That was all long before his time. He hadn’t really known. He’d just been guessing. And now, I don’t really care to know what he meant, or what all those old things were.”

Shara nods stiffly.

Vohannes glances sidelong at her. “Well, go on.”

“Go on? Go on with what?”

“Go on and tell me. I know you’re bursting at the seams to.”

“Well …” She coughs. “If you really want to know … The Talon of Kivrey was a tall metal monument with a small door in the front: visitors would walk in through the door and find something waiting for them, something that would change their lives. Sometimes it would change their lives for the good—a bundle of medicine to bring home to a sick relative—or sometimes it would change their lives for the worse: a bag of coins, and the address of a prostitute who would later bring them to ruin.”

“Interesting.”

“It was probably a testament to the Divinity Jukov’s strange sense of humor: a long, ongoing joke on everyone, in other words.”

“I see. And the well?”

“Oh, just healing waters. The Divinity Ahanas had them all over the Continent.”

He shakes his head, smiling. “Still an insufferable know-it-all.”

She gives him a taut, bitter grin. “And you’re still so smugly, blithely ignorant.”

“Is it ignorance if you don’t care to know it?”

“Yes. That is the definition of ignorance, actually.”

He looks her up and down. “You know, you don’t look anything like I expected you to.”

Shara is too affronted for words.

“I thought you’d be all in jackboots and military gray, Shara,” he says. “Like Mulaghesh down there, but louder.”

“Was I such a terror in those days?”

“You were a bright, blessed little fascist,” says Vo. “Or at least a savage little patriot, as many children of Saypur are. And I’d expect you to come in here the conquering hero, rather than slip in through the backdoor, like a little mouse.”

“Oh, shut up, Vo.”

He laughs. “How remarkable it is that we so quickly fall into our old patterns after so many years apart! Tell me—should I arrest you for violating the WR? I noticed you mentioned a few forbidden names. …”

“I think there’s a clause in there,” says Shara, “specifying that any ground the ambassador walks on is considered Saypuri soil. Do you know, your asinine little speech was probably the longest I’ve ever heard you talk about your family?”

“Is it?”

“You never talked about them at all while we were at school.” Shara nods toward the painting on the wall. “You definitely never told me you’ve got a brother.”

Vohannes’s grin grows fixed. “Had a brother,” he says. “And I probably didn’t tell you because he wasn’t a very good one. He taught me Tovos Va—so I suppose we should thank him for having brought us together.” Shara tries to scan his comment for irony, and comes up inconclusive. “He died before I ever went to school. He didn’t die with my parents, not during the Plague Years, but … after.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Really? I wasn’t, not much. Like I said, he was not a very good brother.”

“Your family did leave you a magnificent home. You never talked about that, either.”

“That’s because it didn’t exist yet.” He raps the stone floor with his cane. “I tore the old Votrov manor down the second I came back from school, and had this one built. All my various legal guardians—the old trolls followed me around like ducklings after mama, honestly—all of them were horrified, just horrified. But it wasn’t even the real Votrov manor! Not the centuries-old one everyone talked about, at least. No one knows where the hells that is anymore, just like the rest of Bulikov. We all just pretended the house had always been the house, and nothing ever happened—no Blink, no Great War, nothing. I regret including all these stairs, though.” He winces and touches his hip.

“That’s how you injured yourself?”

He allows a pained nod.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Is it bad?”

“When it’s wet out, yes. But be honest with me.” He spreads his arms and turns his head so light catches the side of his face. “Beyond that, how cruel has time’s blade been to me? Am I still the beauty you fell head over heels for at first sight? I am, admit it.”

Shara resists the urge to push him out the window. “You are a horrific ass, Vo. That hasn’t changed.”