City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(76)
I hesitated. Temptation spoke to me. And I listened.
As the starlings watched, I took off my robes and stepped out of my sandals. I shivered, naked, as I felt the cool wind on my skin. Then I stepped inside.
This was how I came to know Jukov, Sky-Dancer, Face-Peddler, Lord of Song, Shepherd of Starlings. And before he ever touched me, I think I already loved him.
—Memoirs of Saint Kivrey,
priest and 78th wife-husband of Jukov, c. 982
Survivors
Mulaghesh runs.
She runs over the frozen hills, through muddy roads, around dank forests. She runs though her breath burns in her chest and her legs protest with each step.
At forty-eight, she knows she is about to be beyond the age when she can do this to herself. So I had better get my licks in now, she thinks, if I really want to do this. She likes running because it is the purest combat sport possible—the only thing you’re fighting is yourself, with every step. And it’s been so long since she really fought anyone (her still-dark eye aches a little with each footfall) that maybe this is the only kind of fighting she can do now.
It has been nearly a week since she last saw Shara Komayd, but Mulaghesh cannot stop thinking about what the “ambassador” told her. By the seas, I hope that girl’s wrong, she thinks. The thought saps her of her strength—the next hill feels so much harder than the last—yet she cannot stop thinking about it.
One of the gods is alive. Maybe they never really left at all.
Mulaghesh, like everyone in the military—everyone in Saypur—grew up wanting to be the Kaj. Yet now that she just might get her opportunity, the idea terrifies her. Every child of Saypur grew up with the Divinities pacing just past the border of their nightmares: huge, dark unmentionables swimming in the deeps of history. … Shara talks about them as if they were politicians or generals, but to Mulaghesh and the rest of Saypur, they will always be the bogeyman’s bogeyman, beings so dreaded that merely mentioning their names feels like an illicit and terrible act.
Give me a real war any day, she thinks. Something with trenches and bolts. Something human. Something that bleeds. As a veteran of the Summer of Black Rivers, Mulaghesh must see the irony in wishing for those awful days of mud and thunder, and the struggle in the dark. A short, glorious war, as all Saypuris agree, but one Mulaghesh hopes she’ll never see again.
Still. Better that than this.
How confident that young girl is. Has she read so much? Or is that what it’s like to be a descendant of the Kaj?
Yet Mulaghesh remembers how the day after, young Shara Komayd trembled under her blanket, trying to concentrate on holding a cup of tea. …
By the seas, she thinks, I hope that girl’s wrong.
She trots back into her quarters to find a small stack of papers on her desk. There is a note in the seat of her chair from one of her lieutenants:
PULLED THE RECORDS. HERE ARE THE PAGES CHECKED OUT THAT MONTH. TOOK A WHILE. MIGHT WANT TO GIVE THE KIDS A DAY OFF … ONLY A SUGGESTION.
She examines the papers: it is twenty pages from the list of items in the Unmentionable Warehouse.
Mulaghesh has never looked at this list—she never wanted to—but she casts an eye over a page now, reviewing notes written decades ago by the now-dead Saypuri soldiers who locked all these things away:
368. Shelf C5-158. Glass of Kivrey: Small marble bead that supposedly contains the sleeping body of Saint Kivrey, a Jukoshtani priest who changed gender every night as part of one of Jukov’s miracles. Miraculous nature—undetermined.
369. Shelf C5-159. Small iron key: Name is unknown, but when used on any door the door sometimes opens onto an unidentified tropical forest. Pattern has yet to be determined. Still miraculous.
370. Shelf C5-160. Bust of Ahanas: Once cried tears that possessed some healing properties. Users of the tears also had a tendency to levitate. No longer miraculous.
371. Shelf C5-161. Nine stone cups: if left in a place where they receive sun, these cups would refill with goat’s milk every dawn. No longer miraculous.
372. Shelf C5-162. Ear of Jukov: an engraved, stone door frame that contains no door. Iron wheels on the base. Speculated that it has a twin, and no matter where the other Ear is, if the doors are operated in the correct manner one can pass through one door and come out the other. We speculate that the twin has been destroyed. No longer miraculous.
373. Shelf C5-163. Edicts of Kolkan, books 783 to 797: fifteen tomes mostly dictating Kolkan’s attitudes on dancing. Total weight: 378 pounds. Not miraculous, but content is definitely dangerous.
374. Shelf C5-164. Glass sphere. Contained a small pond and overhanging tree Ahanas was fond of visiting when she felt troubled. No longer miraculous.
Twenty pages. Nearly two hundred items of a miraculous nature, many of them terribly dangerous.
“Oh, boy,” says Mulaghesh. She sits down, suddenly feeling quite terribly old.
*
Shara’s bag clinks and clanks, rattles and thumps as she walks down the alley. It took her most of the day to assemble the bag—pieces of silver, pearl, bags of daisy petals, pieces of blown glass—and though she packed it quite well, there’s so much in it that she sounds like a one-man band seeking a corner to play at. She’s grateful when she comes to the alley, so she can stop.
She gauges the alley carefully. It is, like most alleys, a forgotten little strip of interstitial stone, but this one bends around the rounded wall of the west building, which is not more than three blocks from the House of Votrov.