City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(60)

Shara frowns, sighs. I really cannot afford a second botched interrogation, she thinks. “Put a table and two chairs in the corner of the reception hall, by the window,” she tells Pitry. “Brew some coffee. Good stuff—vitlov if you have it.”

“We do, but … it’s expensive,” says Pitry.

“I don’t care. Do it. Get our best porcelain, too. Quick as you can.”

Pitry scampers away.

“She thinks you are to kill her,” says Sigrud softly.

“Why would she think a thing like that?” asks Shara.

He shrugs.

“She didn’t put up a fight?”

“She came,” says Sigrud, “as if she’d been expecting it all day.”

Shara watches the old woman a moment longer: Irina tries to wipe away her tears, but her hands tremble so much she resorts to using her forearm. How much more I would prefer it, Shara thinks, if it were just some simple thug. …

When the reception hall is arranged, Pitry leads the old woman over to where Shara waits, seated before a small, modest table bearing two teacups, saucers, biscuits, sugar, cream, and a steaming pot of coffee. Despite the cavernous space, this corner now has the atmosphere of someone’s tidy front room.

“Sit,” says Shara.

Irina Torskeny, still sniffling, does so.

“Would you like some coffee?” Shara asks.

“Coffee?”

“Yes,” says Shara. She pours a cup for herself.

“Why would you give me coffee?”

“Why wouldn’t we? You are our guest.”

Irina considers it, then nods. Shara pours her a cup. Irina sniffs the steam uncurling from the tiny cup. “Vitlov?”

“I’m eager to hear your opinion of it,” Shara says. “So often the people we serve feel obliged to compliment everything we do. It’s … polite, but not quite honest—do you see?”

Irina sips it and smacks her lips. “It is good. Very good. Surprisingly good.”

Shara smiles. “Excellent.” Then her smile grows slightly sad. “Tell me—why were you crying?”

“What?”

“Why did you cry just now?”

“Why?” Irina thinks, and finally says, “Why would I not cry? There are only reasons to cry. This is all I have now.”

“Have you done something wrong?”

She laughs bitterly. “Don’t you know?”

Shara does not answer: she only watches.

“Looking back, I have done nothing but wrong things,” says Irina. “Everything, all of it … it has been a huge mistake. This is what they need of you, isn’t it? This is what idealists and visionaries ask of you—to make their mistakes for them.”

“Who have you made mistakes for?”

Again, the laugh. “Oh, they are too clever to allow an old thing such as me to know too much. They knew I was—how should I say?—a risk. A necessary one, but a risk. Oh, my mother, my grandmother … I think of how they would feel to look at me now, and I …” She almost begins crying again.

Before she can, Shara asks, “Why were you necessary?”

“Why, I was the only one who worked with him, wasn’t I?”

“The professor?”

She nods. “I was the only person who had access to his affairs behind the university walls. And they came to me, and they said, ‘Are you not a proud child of Bulikov? Does not the past burn in your heart like a smoldering cinder?’ And I said yes, of course. They were not surprised, or gracious—I expect people say yes to them a lot.”

Shara nods sympathetically, though internally she is rapidly recalibrating her approach. She has dealt with sources such as this woman only a few times before: people so angry, so worn down, so anxious that the information comes spilling out of them in a dangerous flood. Questioning her will be like riding a rabid horse.

She tries a calmer tack: “What is your name?”

Irina dries her eyes. “Do you not know it?”

Shara gives her a sad look that could mean anything.

“My name is Irina Torskeny,” says the old woman softly. “I am a university maid. I have worked soap and water into those walls, into those floors, for twenty-four years of my life. I was here when it was built—rebuilt. And now I feel I will die and those stones shall forget me.”

“And you worked with Dr. Pangyui?”

“Worked? Pah. You say it as if I was his colleague, his peer … as if he consulted me, saying, ‘Here, Irina, take a look at this. …’ I was his maid. I picked up his teacups. Swept his floor, polished his brass, dusted his bookshelves … All those bookshelves.” Her righteous bitterness recedes. “Will you kill me?”

“Why would we do something like that?”

“For his death. For allowing your countryman to die.”

“ ‘Allow’? It doesn’t sound like you killed him.”

“No. No, I did not do the deed. But I think I … I think made it happen.”

“How, Irina? Please tell me.”

She takes a breath, coughs. “He had only been at the university a few days before they contacted me. They came to my apartment. I had gone to … meetings, you see. Rallies for people who did not wish to deal with sh— … Saypuris anymore.”