City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(56)

Shara pauses, wondering how to broach the most obvious question. “And … I’m curious,” she says slowly. “Why did you not tell me about this when I first came to Bulikov?”

Vinya sniffs and sits up. But for one second her dark eyes skitter and dance as she considers how to answer.

Shara leans forward slightly and watches her aunt carefully.

“This was a highly, highly restricted project,” pronounces Vinya. Still her eyes search the bottom of the pane before wandering up to find Shara’s face. “If you had caught someone, good on you. If not, we would have pursued the matter through different channels.”

Vinya smiles haughtily.

Lying, screams Shara’s mind. She’s lying! Lying, lying, lying, lying!

In that instant, Shara decides not to tell her aunt what she witnessed in the jail cell. It goes against every line of reasoning she can imagine—Vinya wishes to know how to destroy any new Divinity, so of course she’d want to know Shara has actually encountered such a being—but Shara feels something is very, very, very wrong. She knows she should discount her own paranoia, of course—Paranoia of one’s case officers and commanders, as she’s told her own sources, is a perfectly natural feeling—but her aunt has not been her normal shrewd self recently, and now every instinct Shara has is shouting that Vinya is lying. And after nearly seventeen years of interviews and interrogations, she’s learned to trust her instincts.

With no small amount of disbelief, she begins to wonder if her aunt has somehow been compromised. Could someone possibly gather enough material to own and control the heir apparent to the prime minister’s seat? A corrupt politician, thinks Shara sardonically. What a wildly unconventional idea. After all, one can’t mount the last few steps on the ladder without a lot of nasty compromises. And, more so, if one pried open any of Auntie Vinya’s closet doors, surely a whole parade of skeletons would come tumbling out.

But Shara is surprised at how terribly guilty and ashamed she feels to make such a decision. This is, after all, the woman who raised her, who took care of her and oversaw her education after her parents died in the Plague Years. But just as Vinya is minister first, aunt second, Shara has always been an operative first and foremost.

So Shara returns to her old maxim: When in doubt, be patient, and watch.

Vinya asks, “Now. What is this movement you talked about?”

Shara summarizes the New Bulikov movement in a handful of sentences.

“Oh,” says Vinya. “Oh, I remember this. This is the thing with the man who wants to make us guns.”

“Yes. Votrov.”

“Yes, yes. Some ministers are really keen on it, but I’ve tried to stall it as much as I can. … I do not want us to be dependent on a place like Bulikov for anything. Especially gunpowder! So Votrov is the man who got attacked last night?”

“Yes.” Shara measures exactly what to share now, and decides not to reveal that the Restorationists were after his steel.

“Votrov … that name is strangely familiar, for some reason. …”

“We … went to school together.”

Vinya holds up a finger. “Ah. Ah. I remember now. That’s him? The boy from Fadhuri? He’s the one wanting to make us guns? I remember being terrified he’d get you pregnant.”

“Aunt Vinya …”

“He didn’t, did he?”

“Aunt Vinya!”

“Fine, fine …”

“I don’t think he will give up on the munitions proposal,” says Shara. “Just as a note. He seems very insistent on trying to bring industry to the Continent.”

“He can be as insistent as he likes,” says Vinya. “That’s not happening on my watch. It’s better for the Continent to remain the way it is. Things are tenuously stable right now.”

“Not here,” says Shara. “Obviously.”

Vinya waves a hand. “The Continent is the Continent. It’s always been that way, ever since the War. And I hope you’re not getting soft on me, Shara. You know every country in the world wants to bleed Saypur dry. And every single time they’ll claim children are starving in the streets, bloodshed of the innocent, and so on and so forth. … We hear it dozens of times every day. The wise look after their own, and leave the rest to fate—especially if it’s the Continent. But enough about this. So. You want me to extend your work there, I assume. What do you have that’s so solid?”

“We’ll be pulling in a likely Restorationist agent for questioning shortly. Off the grid.”

“Who’s this agent you wish to grab?”

“A … maid.”

Vinya laughs. “A what?”

“The university maid! Which, I remind you, is where Pangyui worked. Cases and operations, as you know, frequently run on some of the most menial of workers.”

“Hm,” says Vinya. “Fair point. Speaking of which, have you found anything else on Pangyui’s murder?”

Here it is, thinks Shara. She attempts to step back into a cold veil and keep her face still. “No, not yet. But we are following our leads.”

“No? Nothing?”

“Not so far. But we’re working on it.”

“That’s interesting.” Vinya’s tongue, red as a pomegranate, explores an incisor. She smiles. “Because I show you ran a check on a bank just two days ago. You haven’t mentioned that.”