City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(43)

An officer refreshes their teapot, which Shara promptly drains. “That’s your fourth pot,” notes Mulaghesh.

“So?”

“So, do you normally drink tea like that?”

“Only when I’m at work.”

“You seem like the type who is always at work.”

Shara shrugs mid-sip.

“If you continue at that pace, Ambassador, I would advise you familiarize yourself with a urologist.”

“How’s your eye?”

“Humiliating. But I’ve had worse.”

“It can’t be too humiliating. He did wind up the loser of your scrap, beyond a doubt.”

“There was once a day,” sighs Mulaghesh, “when I could dispatch such little cretins without bothering to breathe. No more, I suppose. What I would give”—she winces, prodding her eye—“for the vigor of youth. Though I doubt I could ever match what your man did in that house, even in my prime. Where did you find him?”

“Someplace quite bad,” says Shara simply.

Then she slowly retreats back inside herself. The susurrus of faraway shouting fades, and internally she begins to compose a list.

In Shara’s estimation, lists form one half of the heart of intelligence, the second half being patience. Most espionage work, after all, is a matter of collecting data and categorizing it: who belongs to which group, and why; where are they now, and how are we so sure, and do we have someone else in the region; and now that we have catalogued those groups, what threat level should they be categorized under; and so on, and so on, and so on.

So whenever Shara is really puzzled by something, she takes her thoughts and sorts them, threshing them out like chaff from wheat, tunneling down and through her mind as she tries to wring truth from everything she knows, a frequently endless list of annotations, qualifications, categorizations, and exceptions all collected as she interrogates herself: Fact: I have been attacked less than one week after Efrem Pangyui.

I. I don’t know for sure if it was me they were attacking.

A. Then who?

1. Vo wants to make munitions for Saypur. So that’s ample reason to kill him there.

a. Then why not simply kill Vo when they had the chance? They could have shot him the moment they walked in the room.

b. His deal is not official, and also not publicly known yet.

1) Doesn’t mean anything—there could always be leaks.

II. Efrem was beaten to death with a blunt instrument in his office. These men were far more professional.

A. You think. Whoever attacked Efrem has not been captured, a mark of professionalism if ever there was one.

1. Professionalism and the incompetence of the local authorities are very different things.

B. Efrem may have been attacked in connection with the Warehouse. Neither Vo nor I has any such connection.

1. I know it exists.

a. Unlikely that that’s enough to get me killed, though.

2. All three of us are heretical to common Continental sensibilities by nature.

a. Not an efficient qualifier. What isn’t heretical to common Continental sensibilities?

Fact: Efrem Pangyui was conducting research at the Unmentionable Warehouse.

I. Does Vinya know? How could she not?

A. Efrem working for the Continent? A traitor?

1. Don’t be an idiot.

B. Why not tell me? What’s buried in there that I shouldn’t know about?

1. Probably a lot, of course

2. Would Continentals have killed him to get access to the Warehouse?

a. Mulaghesh has asserted no one has gotten into the Warehouse besides Efrem.

C. If Vinya knows about Efrem’s operation, why is she letting me stay?

1. Maybe she thinks I’m just too dense to figure this all out.

2. Is she protecting me? From what?

a. Don’t be ridiculous. I just got attacked—of course she’s not protecting me.

3. Does she want to get me killed?

a. She’s your aunt.

1) She’s minister first, aunt second.

a) Okay, then why would the minister want me dead?

2) If Vinya wanted me dead, I’d be dead, end of story.

4. Did Vinya want to get Efrem killed?

a. Seems quite likely Efrem was a Ministry operative. Why would you kill your own operative?

Fact: I have not slept in twenty-three hours.

I. I need more damn tea.

Shara sighs. “No sign of your Captain Nesrhev yet?”

“No,” says Mulaghesh. “Still not in. But it is four in the morning, and he doesn’t live nearby.”

“You know where he lives? How would you know that?”

“Don’t pretend to be such an innocent daisy, Ambassador,” says Mulaghesh. “It doesn’t suit you.” Secretly, Shara smiles: Vigor of youth, indeed … “Anyway. Even though Nesrhev and I have … some history together, I’m not sure it’s enough to make him amenable to the idea of a foreign ambassador taking over an investigation as huge as this.”

“I’m not taking over,” says Shara. “They’ll have their investigation, and I’ll have mine. I just want to talk to the captured man first.”

How much simpler this would be in Qivos, she thinks. We could have just snatched him off the street and claimed he’d never been there in the first place. … She briefly reflects on how civilized countries increasingly pose an inconvenience to her, and for a moment she envies Vohannes for maintaining his idealism—however ineffective it may be.