City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(42)

Vohannes stares around his ruined ballroom. “This?” he says. “This is what your man does best?”

Shara approaches the masked man struggling to lift the chandelier and begins to disarm him. “We all have our talents.”

*

Sigrud spots no masked attackers guarding the hostages when he runs down the stairs. “Oh, thank goodness you came, we—,” says one woman, before seeing fully seeing him. Then she begins shrieking.

Mulaghesh is not half so fazed. She clears her throat from beside a pillar in the foyer: the polis governor is hunched over a robed figure and appears to be calmly garroting him with a festively colored ribbon. Mulaghesh looks at him, her left eye blooming dark from what must have been a terrific blow, and says, “Two more. Out the door.”

When Sigrud makes it outside the car is already trundling away, but is not gaining much speed yet. His boots thud as he sprints across the cobblestones. He hears one of the men inside it cry, “Go! Go! Hurry!”

The answer: “I am! I’m trying!”

The car shifts into a higher gear, but just before it can pull away, Sigrud leaps forward and grabs onto the back door.

“Shit!” shrieks one of the men. “Oh, gods!”

Sigrud’s hands are so slick with blood that he almost loses his hold. He wedges a foot into the running board, then reaches up with his right hand and stabs his black knife into the roof of the car.

“Shoot him, damn you!” cries a voice.

A bolt-shot appears in the window. Sigrud leans to the side. The bolt slices through the glass of the window, missing him by inches, but does not shatter the window. Sigrud punches through the window with his left hand, grabs the man who fired at him by the collar, and repeatedly slams him against the door and roof of the car.

The driver, now totally panicked, begins swerving throughout the street. Sigrud can see coffeehouse patrons, restaurant attendees, and horse-and-cart drivers stare in amazement as they fly by. A small child points and laughs, delighted. Sigrud focuses on battering the man into submission.

Sigrud can feel it when the man goes unconscious, and he begins to haul the man out of the broken window with one arm, intending to hurl him from the car. But then the car makes a hard turn. …

He looks up. The corner of a building flies at them. Sigrud immediately sees that the driver intends to scrape the car along the building’s side, scraping off Sigrud as well.

Sigrud considers climbing onto the roof of the car, judges that he doesn’t have enough time, pulls his knife free, and dives away.

It is a painful landing, but not as painful as what happens to the unconscious man dangling out the broken window of the car: there is a wet smack, and something goes tumbling across the stony streets. Sigrud can hear the driver begin to scream in horror, and what’s left of the passenger slips out the window to roll into the gutter.

The car makes a wide turn and roars down an alley. Sigrud, now quite frustrated, gets to his feet and sprints after it.

He turns down the alley. The car has come to a stop several yards down. He runs to the car and flings open the driver’s side door to see …

Nothing. The car is empty.

He looks around. The alley ends in the blank side of a building, yet before that there is nothing: no windows, no ladders, no sluice gates or manhole covers or doors.

Sigrud grunts, sticks his knife back in its sheath, and slowly walks the alley, feeling the walls. None of them give. It’s like the driver simply disappeared.

He sighs and scratches his cheek. “Not again.”





I am the stone beneath the tree.

I am the mountain under the sun.

I am the river below the earth.

I dwell in the caves in the hills.

I dwell in the caves in your heart.

I have seen what lies there.

I know what lives in your minds.

I know right. I know justice.

I am Kolkan, and you will listen.

—The Kolkashtava, Book Two





A Memory Engraved


The officers’ mess hall of the Bulikov Police Department is a unique vantage point for the unfolding panic. There are windows that allow the mess hall attendees to see into the front offices, where a full-scale riot is building—composed of politicians, reporters, outraged citizens, and family members of the hostages—and one can also see back into the halls of the interview rooms, where the Bulikov policemen are still confused as to who exactly is a suspect, who should get to go to the hospital, and what in the world to do with Sigrud.

“This is a new experience for me,” says Shara.

“Really?” says Mulaghesh. “I would have thought you’d been arrested at least a couple of times.”

“No, no. I never get arrested. One of the perks of being a handler.”

“It must be nice. You seem very calm, for someone who’s just been through an assassination attempt. How do you feel?”

Shara shrugs. The truth is she feels ridiculous, sitting here sipping tea with Mulaghesh while chaos surges around them. Their status immediately set them apart from the other rescued hostages, mostly due to Mulaghesh, whom all the police officers seem acquainted with. Mulaghesh holds a pack of ice to her eye and occasionally mutters curses about being “too shitting slow” or, alternately, “too shitting old.” She’s already sent her orders to the local outpost, and a small squad of Saypuri veterans should be here shortly to take watch over the both of them. Though Shara has not said so, she privately dreads this: one’s own security often makes it hard to penetrate that of one’s opponents. And Sigrud often provides enough security, anyway. Sigrud, however, is currently cooling off in a holding cell. The captured attacker has gone totally untouched, stuck in a tiny cell normally reserved for the most violent offenders.