City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(44)

An idea strikes Shara, and she grabs an old newspaper from another table. She flips through the pages until she finds an article with the headline city father wiclov opposes immigrant quarters. Below this is a picture of a man with a round face pinched in a stern expression, and a mountain of a beard. To Shara, he looks like the sort of man who must constantly debate whether he should yell or merely talk very loudly.

“Why are you reading about Wiclov?” asks Mulaghesh.

“You know him?”

“Everyone knows him. Man’s a shit.”

“It was suggested to me,” says Shara, “that he might have some connection to Pangyui’s murder.”

“Did Votrov tell you that?”

Shara nods.

“I would watch yourself, Ambassador,” says Mulaghesh. “Votrov might just be giving you his personal shit list.”

Shara continues staring at the picture, but Mulaghesh has voiced one of her deepest concerns: I’m flying blind, she thinks. Usually I have six months or six weeks to prepare an operation, not six hours. …

She drinks more tea and chooses not to admit to Mulaghesh that she only inhales caffeine at this rate when her work is going very, very badly.

Captain Nesrhev—who is quite handsome, and at least ten years Mulaghesh’s junior—finally arrives at five-thirty in the morning. At first he is not amenable to much of anything, as is common among people awoken at such an hour; but Shara is skilled at the shell game of badges and paperwork, and after using the term “international incident” a few times, he reluctantly consents to “one hour, starting now.”

“That will do,” says Shara, who fully intends to ignore the time limit. “What’s happened to Votrov?”

“After he gave his statement, his little girlfriend bundled him up and took him home right away,” says Nesrhev. “That man, you could lead him around by the dick, if you got a good grasp on it.”

He seems to expect a chuckle, but Shara doesn’t even bother to try to pretend.

*

The captured man, as it turns out, is hardly more than a boy: Shara gauges him at around eighteen when she walks in. He sits up behind the big wooden table in the cell, glowering at her and rubbing his wrist, and says, “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”

“Mostly to give you medical attention.” She holds the door open for the doctor, who is quite fatigued by now.

The doctor grows appalled as he examines the captured boy. “Did this child fall through a pane of glass?”

“He was struck repeatedly with a chandelier.”

The doctor grumbles and shakes his head: These people find such stupid ways to harm themselves. “Most of this is superficial, it looks like. The wrist is sprained pretty badly.”

When he is finished, the doctor bows and excuses himself. Shara sits across from the boy and puts her satchel down beside her. It is quite cold in the room: the walls here are made of thick stone, and whoever designed the building opted not to place any heating in here.

“How are you feeling?” says Shara.

The boy does not answer, content to sulk.

“I suppose I could simply be direct,” says Shara, “and ask you why you attacked me.”

His eyes flick up, hold her gaze for a moment, then flick away.

“Was that what you were sent there to do? Your colleagues did have ample opportunity.”

He blinks.

“What’s your name?”

“We don’t have names,” says the boy.

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He considers answering, but is reluctant.

“Why not?”

“Because we are the silenced,” says the boy.

“What does that mean?”

“We do not have a past. We do not have a history. We do not have a country.” His words have the beat of highly rehearsed lines. “These things are denied to us. But we do not need them. We do not need these things, to know who we are.”

“And what are you?”

“We are the past come to life. We are what cannot be forgotten or ignored. A memory engraved.”

“You are Restorationists, then,” says Shara.

The boy is silent.

“Are you?”

He looks away.

“Your weapons, your dress, your car,” says Shara. “All very expensive. Money like that getting moved around, people notice. We are looking now. Who will we find? Wiclov? Ernst Wiclov?” No reaction. “He’s a well-funded supporter of the Restoration, isn’t he? His political posters tend to feature a lot of weapon-oriented imagery, I understand. Will we find him at the back end of this, child?”

The boy stares into the table.

“You do not seem to me,” says Shara, “a hardened, violent criminal. Then why act like one? Don’t you have a home to go to? This is all just unpleasant politics. I can make it stop. I can get you out.”

“I will not talk,” says the boy. “I cannot talk. I am silenced, by you and your people.”

“I’m afraid you are quite wrong there.”

“I am not wrong, woman,” says the boy. He glares at her, and as he looks away his eyes trail over her exposed neck and collarbone.

Ah. Old-fashioned, is he? “I do hope I’m not breaking any rules,” says Shara. “Will you receive some kind of punishment for being alone in a room with an unwed woman?”