City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)(90)

Would this—Shara’s heart is trembling—be the view from shelf C5-162, where the other Ear of Jukov sits?

Shara reaches down and picks up a clod of earth. She gauges the distance and tosses it into the doorway.

The clod flies through the door frame, into the shadows, and lands with a thunk on the wooden floor.

“It passes through,” remarks Sigrud.

“That,” says Shara, “would be a major security breach.”

And so, she muses, Lord Jukov allows us in his shadow.

This deeply concerns her, though she does not say so: not only has she just found that one of Jukov’s Divine creatures was still alive, now one of his miraculous devices appears to still function. Who actually witnessed Jukov’s death, she thinks, besides the Kaj himself?

She returns to the task at hand. “Let’s take a look, shall we?”

*

There is a passing shadow—the candle flames in her candelabra shrink to near nothing—an unsettling breeze, then the creak of wood below her feet.

Shara is through.

She takes a breath and immediately starts coughing.

The interior of the Unmentionable Warehouse is musty beyond belief, much more so than the Seat of the World: it is like entering the home of a hugely ancient, hoarding old couple. Shara hacks miserably against the bloody handkerchief around her hand. “Is there no ventilation here?”

Mulaghesh had tied a bandana around her head before she stepped through. “Why the hells would there be?” she says, irritated.

Sigrud enters behind her. If the air bothers him, he doesn’t show it.

Mulaghesh turns around to look at the second stone door frame, sitting comfortably in the lowest spot on shelf C5. Shara can see Mulaghesh’s two soldiers watching them from the other side of the door, anxious.

“Could we really be here?” Mulaghesh asks aloud. “Could we really have been transported miles outside of Bulikov, just like that?”

Shara holds up the candelabra: the shelves tower above them nearly three or four stories tall. Shara thinks she can make out a tin roof somewhere far overhead. The skeletal form of an ancient rolling ladder lurks a dozen feet away. “I would say we are here,” she says, “yes.”

The three of them stand in the Unmentionable Warehouse and listen.

The dark air is filled with sighs and squeaks and low hums. The rattle of pennies, the scrape of wood. The air pressure in the room feels like it is constantly changing: either something in the Warehouse has confused Shara’s skin, inner ear, and sinuses, or there are countless forces applying themselves to her, then fading, like ocean currents.

How many miracles are down here with us, Shara wonders, functioning away in the dark? How many of the words of the Divinities still echo in this place?

Sigrud points down. “Look.”

The wooden floor is covered in sediments of dust, yet this aisle has been marred by recent footprints.

“I presume,” says Mulaghesh, “that that would be the passage of our mysterious opponent.”

Shara fights to concentrate: there are many paths of footprints, none of them completely clear. Their trespasser must have paced the aisles many times. “We need to look for any sign of tampering,” she says. “Then, after that, we need to look and see if anything’s missing. I would expect that if there’s anything missing, it’d be something from these pages, since these are the records that interested the Restorationists. So”—she flips through the pages—“we’ll want to look at shelves C4, C5, and C6.”

“Or he could have just randomly stolen something,” says Mulaghesh.

“Yes. Or that.” Thank you, she thinks, for highlighting the futility of our search. “We all have a light, don’t we? Then let’s spread out, and keep an eye on each other … and we’ll get out of here as fast as we can. And I don’t think I need to say this, but do not touch anything. And if something asks for your attention, or for your interference … ignore it.”

“Would these … items really have minds of their own?” asks —Sigrud.

Shara’s memory supplies her with a litany of miraculous items that were either alive, or claimed to be. “Just don’t touch anything,” she says. “Stay clear of all the shelves.”

Shara takes shelf C4, Mulaghesh C5, Sigrud C6. As she walks down her aisle, Shara reflects on the age of this place. These shelves are nearly eighty years old, she thinks, listening to the creaking. And they look it. “The Kaj never intended for this to be a permanent fix, did he?” she whispers as she looks down the aisle. “We just kept ignoring it, hoping this was a problem that would go away.”

Each space on the shelves is marked by a tiny metal tag with a number. Beyond this, there is no explanation for the contents, which are beyond random.

One shelf is occupied by most of a huge, disassembled statue. Its face is blank, featureless, save for a wriggling, fractal-like design marching across the whole of its head. Taalhavras, thinks Shara, or one of his incarnations.

A wooden box covered in locks and chains wriggles; a scuttering noise comes from within, like many small, clawed creatures scrabbling at the wood. Shara quickly steps past this.

A golden sword shines with a queer light above her. Beside it sit twelve short, thick, unremarkable glass columns. Beside these, a large silver cup with many jewels. Then mountains and mountains of books and scrolls.