City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(68)

“And you assume it was the other four Divinities,” says Mulaghesh.

“I assume so—especially because the other Divinities did not remark upon Kolkan’s sudden absence at all. We have recovered no indications of a proclamation, or explanation … They didn’t even mention him. It was as if he’d simply never existed. Reality was edited—no, overwritten.”

“And this … ,” says Mulaghesh. “Do you think it was this that you saw? A vanished Divinity, but not a dead one?”

Shara thinks. She finally says, “No.”

“Why not?”

“Our attackers were dressed and definitely spoke like traditional Kolkashtanis. But I have read accounts of communing with Divinities. And what I encountered in that jail cell was nothing so coherent. It was like a cacophony of voices, of images—many people in one. I do not know what to call it. Even Kolkan would have made much more sense than the thing I spoke to, I think.”

They are silent. Sigrud belches softly. “What happened”—another belch—“to the people?”

“The people?”

He waves a hand. “Of Kolkan.”

“Oh. Do you know, they more or less kept doing the same things? They wore Kolkashtani robes, followed Kolkashtani precepts, even enforced the Writs of Punishment, to an extent. They had faint memories of Kolkan, and they retained his edicts—those that were not erased—and they continued doing what they’d always done. It was never as terrible and punitive as it was under Kolkan himself, but the same perspective, the same beliefs … These persist in Kolkashtan and Bulikov even today, as you know.”

“So the reason Votrov’s art show was so scandalous,” says Mulaghesh slowly, “is because of what some mad god believed three hundred years ago?”

“More or less.” She checks the time, then the goat: much of the fat has rendered out. She scoops the diced meat out and allows it to drain. “I suppose these things are like momentum,” she says. “Once you get started, it’s hard to stop.”

Fat strikes the stovetop and sizzles like lava rushing into the sea.

*

Sigrud, Mulaghesh, and Pitry eat like starving refugees. There is curried goat, soft white rice, fried vegetable pastries, pork-wrapped melon. Within minutes all of Shara’s artful displays are reduced to ravaged scraps.

“This is”—Mulaghesh hiccups—“amazing. This is the best curry I’ve had in years. As good as at home. Where did you learn to cook?”

“From another operative.” She sips her tea, but does not eat. “You get stuck in one place a lot, in an operation. You learn to make do with what you have.” She sits back, looks up. Smoke stains trail across the stone ceiling. There is an oily sheen to them: grease deposits, no doubt, from dozens of bubbling meals. “You are absolutely positive, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there has been no disturbance at the Warehouse?”

“None,” says Mulaghesh around a mouthful. “I sent a runner there just now to check. But I am confident that they don’t have the resources to mount an attack on the Warehouse.”

“Why?”

“The attack on Votrov took a lot of manpower. It wasn’t a distraction. If anything, it smacks of desperation to me. I don’t think they could mount two such operations at once.”

“But we will increase security at the Warehouse.”

“Most definitely.”

“Inside, and outside.”

“Well, no.” Mulaghesh coughs and wipes her mouth. “We don’t have any security inside the Warehouse.”

“None?”

“No. No one goes in the Warehouse.”

“Not even patrols?”

“Even if I wanted to do patrols, I doubt if I’d be able to order anyone in there. That place is full of ghosts, Shara. What’s there, we don’t want to disturb.”

“But you do have a list of what’s in the Warehouse?”

“Oh, yeah. Definitely.”

“And I don’t suppose,” she says slowly, “that you have more than one copy? Since Efrem was taking out parts of the list to study, I assume you’d want a backup in case something happened to it. …”

“We have two copies, yeah. What are you thinking?”

“I am thinking,” says Shara slowly, “that Irina Torskeny told me she copied around a hundred pages from the list before the Restorationists found either what they were looking for, or something that would be useful to them.”

“So?”

“So. We know it was the last few pages they were interested in. Once they found what they were looking for, or what would help them, they stopped. This occurred in the month of Tuva, per Irina. So we simply need to pull the segments of the list that he checked out in that period …”

“… and we’ll know what it is the Restorationists found! Of course! Damn, that’s brilliant!”

“No, it’s narrowing it down from a needle in a haystack to a needle in a slightly smaller haystack,” says Shara. “From what Irina told me of this list, there are dozens of entries on each page. So we would be reducing the quantity from thousands of entries to check to, oh, maybe only a few hundred.”

Mulaghesh’s face falls. “A few hundred …”