City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(69)

“It’s a starting point, at least,” says Shara. “And speaking of Irina …” She turns to look at Sigrud.

“We are watching,” says Sigrud.

“You’re certain of the men you hired?”

“I know what we are paying them,” he says. “For a job this simple, it will be no trouble. She’s been returned to her house, I am told. They have left her there, alone. And we are watching.”

“You must make sure not to miss her. She’s one of our last solid leads. And we must keep a close eye on Wiclov.”

“We”—Sigrud pulls his knife free of the ham shank—“are watching.”

Shara taps the side of her teacup. Sit on your leads, the saying goes, until they crack under your weight.

“If you only drink tea when you work,” says Mulaghesh, “I advise you switch to coffee. I see a lot of work in our future, and coffee packs more punch.”

“Coffee refreshes the body,” says Shara. “Tea refreshes the soul.”

“And is your soul so bruised?”

Shara opts not to respond.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” says Pitry. “Have some before we eat it all.”

“We could never eat all this,” says Mulaghesh.

“Mm. No,” says Shara, through the fog of thought.

“Why? Aren’t you hungry?”

“That’s not the issue. I tend to find,” says Shara as she refills her tea, “that the taste reminds me a little too much of home. If I want a taste of Ghaladesh, I prefer it to be tea.”

*

The coffin sits inside the shipping crate perfectly, hardly an inch of space on any side. I wonder, Shara thinks, if there’s a market for crates for coffins. Do so many people die overseas?

“Do you want us to nail it shut now?” asks the foreman. He and his three employees do not try to bother to hide their impatience.

“Not just yet,” says Shara quietly. She touches the surface of the coffin: lacquered pine, something most Saypuris would never be buried in. “Could you give me a moment, please?”

He hesitates. “Well … The train to Ahanashtan is set to leave within an hour. If it goes out late, then …”

“Then they dock your pay. Yes. I will gladly pay the difference, if I make you late. A moment. Please?”

The foreman shrugs, gestures to his men, and Shara is alone in the alley behind the embassy.

There ought to be more ceremony than this, but there almost never is. Her operative in Javrat; the dockworker they turned in Kolkashtan; the peddler from Jukoshtan, going door to door selling cameras, taking pictures of the residents, ostensibly as part of his pitch … None of them she ever truly laid to rest. They wander in her mind still, just as they often did in life.

If I could go home with you, she tells the coffin, just to see you rest, I would.

She remembers when he first came to her in Ahanashtan, how delighted she’d been to see he was exactly the bright-eyed, nattily dressed little man she’d always imagined him to be. After a day of training, he was impressed with how well read she was: “What university did you study at? I am so sorry. I’m unfamiliar with your publications.” And when she told him that she was not published, that she would never be published, that her line of work was far outside of academia, he paused, thinking, and asked, “I am sorry, I must ask … You are, ehm, Ashara Komayd, yes? Everyone seems a little reticent to say so … but that is the case, yes?”

Shara smiled a little, and reluctantly nodded.

“Ghonjesh and Ashadra—they were your parents?”

She stiffened, but nodded again.

He reflected on this a moment. “I knew them, you know. Very distantly. Back in the reformist days. Did you know that?”

In what sounded like a very small voice, Shara said, “Yes.”

“They were much more active than I was. I stayed behind my desk and wrote my letters and my articles, but they actually went to the slums, to the Plague areas, setting up medical tents and hospitals. … I suppose they knew the danger—the Plague was so infectious—but they did it anyway. I sometimes think I was a coward, in light of what they did. A cloistered academic to the core.”

“I don’t think so,” Shara said.

“No?”

“I think you … you changed history. You changed history when we needed it changed.”

He grew a little stern at this. “Change? No, I did not change anything, Miss Komayd. I told what I thought was the truth. Historians, I think, should be keepers of truth. We must tell things as they are—honestly, and without subversion. That is the greatest good one can do. And as a Ministry servant, you must ask yourself—what truth do you wish to keep?”

And after that, Shara felt he held back a little, as if he’d sniffed her out, sensed she was a creature with different values than his, maintaining an agenda and a story he knew he’d one day refute. And Shara had wished to say, No, no, please don’t spurn me—I am a historian, just as you. I seek the truth, just as you do.

But she could not say this, for she knew in her heart that this would be a lie.





I have never met a person who possessed a privilege who did not exercise that privilege to the fullest extent that they possibly could. Say what you like of a belief, of a party, of a finance system, of a power—all I see is privilege and its consequences.