City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(64)

A cry in the dark, unanswered

We lost him, we lost his family

Our family, for we have lost our king

We could not even mourn his passing

They spirited Harkvald’s body away

Fed it to the waves, to the creatures of the sea

Fed it to the harvest from which we fed our children

Red days these are now, dark days

Days of piracy and lawlessness

Days of warfare never ending

Days of empty shores, and full graves

We remember him. We remember his family

We remember his lost son

We remember the Dauvkind

And we know one day

He will return

And save us from ourselves

—Anonymous Dreyling song, 1700





What History Tells Us


Shara stands in the courtyard, watching the small crowd depart. Mulaghesh and Sigrud slowly cross over to her. “Well,” says Mulaghesh, “That … didn’t go well.”

Shara agrees—in fact, the past thirty-six hours have not gone well at all. In her opinion, they have been nothing short of disastrous.

She reviews the situation: the Restorationists know about the Unmentionable Warehouse. Worse, it sounds very likely that they’ve learned of something in the Warehouse that would be quite terribly useful. The question is, thinks Shara, have they somehow gotten inside the Warehouse yet? And if they have, have they started using whatever it is they found? Is that why I contacted that Divinity?

And stranger still: Why kill Pangyui after they’ve gotten what they wanted from him? Especially if it brings “bad people” to Bulikov.

Shara rubs her eyes. A tiny growl of frustration squeaks out of her throat.

Pitry coughs from the doorway. “Are … Are you okay?”

“No,” says Shara softly. “No, I am not.”

“Is there anything I can get you?”

Shara’s index and thumb find the webbing of her opposite hand, and she pinches, hard. The dull pain fails to break through the ice currently cracking about in her mind.

Only one thing to do, then.

“I need,” she says, “a knife.”

“What?” says Pitry.

“Yes, a knife. A very sharp one.”

“Uhh,” he says, alarmed.

“And an iron skillet.”

Mulaghesh cocks her head. “What?”

“And two fresh onions, parsley, salt, pepper, paprika, and about three pounds of goat, I think.”

Sigrud groans and covers his face. Shara ignores him and walks back into the embassy. “Come on,” she says, and waves to them.

“What?” says Mulaghesh. “What the hell?”

Sigrud grumbles for a moment but reluctantly explains, “She always cooks when she is really angry.”

Shara stops and points at Sigrud without looking. “Are you still in touch with your contractors?”

“Of course,” says Sigrud.

“Have them follow Torskeny and Wiclov. And report back to us hourly.”

“Do you not wish for me to do it?” asks Sigrud.

“I need you with me,” says Shara. She marches down the embassy halls. “We’re going to sort some things out.”

“What kind of things?” asks Mulaghesh.

“Dead things,” says Shara. “Or things that should be dead.”

*

What a pleasant thing it would be to be a knife, always eager to take the path of least resistance, always drawn to the weak points, falling though tendons and skin and rinds like a blade of grass swept downstream. The knife slips and slides, skids and curls, leaving piles of tiny scrolls of orange peels, lemon peels, melon rinds, like a mound of curling ticker tape. It saws slowly against flesh, parting vein and muscle, tendon and gristle, breaking the goat cutlet down until it no longer resembles any part of any living creature.

All you need is one good knife, and one good skillet, thinks Shara. With these simple tools one can create anything.

Shara lights a match, hunts for the gas jet. Flames bloom along the oven, caressing the skillet. She douses the skillet with oil, then grabs an onion.

“There were six of them, originally,” says Shara quietly. Her face flickers with the light of the gas flames. “Or at least six that made themselves known. Olvos, the light-bearer. Kolkan, the judge. Voortya, the warrior. Ahanas, the seed-sower. Jukov, the trickster, the starling shepherd. And Taalhavras, the builder.”

Mulaghesh clenches her right fist; her knuckles emit a chorus of cracks. “I know all this. Everyone knows this.”

“You know part of it,” says Shara. She stands before the ovens in the spacious embassy kitchens, which once catered to numerous social events before Troonyi oversaw the embassy’s decline. Mulaghesh and Sigrud sit at the servants’ table producing a small cloud of smoke, Mulaghesh with her cigarillo, Sigrud with his pipe; Pitry runs back and forth from the pantry, bringing more vegetables, spices, salted meats. “There’s a lot of it that is not taught. The Worldly Regulations might demand silence from the Continent on this subject, but there are just as many strictures about it in Saypur. Historians are permitted to publish some discoveries; others are filed away to be forgotten. Especially when it comes to the Ancients, the Most Heavenly, the Divine. All six of them sprang to life on the Continent—how long ago, no one is quite sure—all six of them built their domains here, and all six of them fought like cats and dogs for what we estimate to be over five hundred years.”