City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(5)
He checks his watch. Twenty minutes, maybe. His breath roils with steam. By all the seas, what an awful job.
Perhaps he can transfer out, he thinks. There are actually many opportunities for a Saypuri here: the Continent is divided into four regions, each of which has its own regional governor; in the next tier below, there are the polis governors, who regulate each major metropolitan area on the Continent; and in the next tier below that are the embassies, which regulate … well, to be honest, Pitry has never been quite sure what the embassies regulate. Something to do with culture, which seems to involve a lot of parties.
The station porter strolls from his offices and stands at the edge of the platform. He glances backward at Pitry, who nods and smiles. The porter looks at Pitry’s headcloth and his short, dark beard; sniffs twice—I smell a shally; and then, with a lingering glare, turns and walks back to his office, as if saying, I know you’re there, so don’t try and steal anything. As if there is anything to steal in a deserted train station.
They hate us, thinks Pitry. But of course they do. It is something he has come to terms with during his short period at the embassy. We tell them to forget, but can they? Can we? Can anyone?
Yet Pitry underestimated the nature of their hatred. He had no understanding of it until he came here and saw the empty places on the walls and in the shop windows, the frames and facades shorn clean of any images or carvings; he saw how the people of Bulikov behaved at certain hours of the day, as if they knew this time was designated for some show of deference, yet they could not act, and instead simply milled about; and, in his walks throughout the city, he came upon the roundabouts and cul-de-sacs that had obviously once played host to something—some marvelous sculpture, or a shrine fogged with incense—but were now paved over, or held nothing more marvelous than a streetlamp, or a bland municipal garden, or a lonely bench.
In Saypur, the overwhelming feeling is that the Worldly Regulations have been a wild success, curbing and correcting the behaviors of the Continent over the course of seventy-five years. But in his time in Bulikov, Pitry has begun to feel that though the Regulations appear to have had some superficial success—for, true, no one in Bulikov praises, mentions, or acknowledges any aspect of the Divine, at least in public—in reality, the Regulations have failed.
The city knows. It remembers. Its past is written in its bones, though now the past speaks in silences.
Pitry shivers in the cold.
He is not sure if he would rather be at the office, so alight with concern and chaos in the wake of Dr. Efrem Pangyui’s murder. Telegraphs spitting out papers like drunks vomiting at closing time. The endless cranking of phones. Secretaries sprinting into offices, staking papers onto spikes with the viciousness of shrikes.
Yet then came the one telegraph that silenced everyone:
C-AMB THIVANI TO BULIKOV MOROV STATION 3:00 STOP VTS512
And from the coding on the end it was clear this had come not from the polis governor’s office, but the regional governor’s office, which is the only place on the Continent that has direct, immediate connection with Saypur. And so, the Comm Department secretary announced with terrible dread, the telegram might have been rerouted across the South Seas from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself.
There was a flurry of discussion as to who should meet this Thivani person, because he had doubtlessly been sent here in reaction to the professor’s death, bringing swift and terrible retribution; for had not Dr. Efrem Pangyui been one of Saypur’s brightest and most favored sons? Had his ambassadorial mission not been one of the greatest scholarly endeavors in history? Thus it was quickly decided that Pitry—being young, cheerful, and not in the room at the time—would be the best man for the job.
But they did wonder at the coding, C-AMB, for “Cultural Ambassador.” Why would they send one of those? Weren’t CAs the lowest caste of the Ministry? Most of them were fresh-faced students, and often harbored a rather unhealthy interest in foreign cultures and histories, something metropolitan Saypuris found distasteful. Usually CAs served as ornamentation to receptions and galas, and little more. So why send a simple CA into the middle of one of the greatest diplomatic debacles of the past decade?
“Unless,” Pitry wondered aloud back at the embassy, “it’s not related at all. Maybe it’s just coincidence.”
“Oh, it’s related,” said Nidayin, who was assistant manager of the embassy Comm Department. “The telegram came through just hours after we sent out the news. This is their reaction.”
“So why send a CA? They might as well have sent a plumber, or a harpist.”
“Unless,” said Nidayin, “Mr. Thivani is not a cultural ambassador. He might be something else entirely.”
“Are you saying,” Pitry asked, fingers reaching up into his headcloth to scratch his scalp, “that the telegram lied?”
Nidayin simply shook his head. “Oh, Pitry. How did you get yourself into the Ministry?”
Nidayin, thinks Pitry in the cold. How I hate you. One day I will dance with your beautiful girlfriend, and she will fall helplessly in love with me, and you shall walk in upon us mussing your sheets, and ice will pierce your muddy heart. …
But Pitry now sees he was a fool. Nidayin was suggesting this Thivani might be traveling as a CA, but he could in truth be some high-ranking, secret operative, infiltrating enemy territories and toppling resistance to Saypur. Pitry imagines a burly, bearded man with bandoliers of explosives and a glimmering knife clutched in his teeth, a knife that’s tasted blood in many shadows. … The more he thinks on it, the more Pitry grows a little afraid of this Thivani person. Perhaps he will emerge from the train car like a djinnifrit, he thinks, spouting flames from his eyes and black poison from his mouth.