City of Stairs (52 page)

“And not
everyone
was capable of the miraculous,” says Olvos.

A soft wind dances through the copse of trees, and coals flare bright.

Efrem’s journal:
Djinnifrit servants prepared their master’s beds, served them food, wine. … I cannot imagine what everyone would say if it was revealed that the Kaj had been pampered in such a way.

A log lazily rolls over in the fire like a whale in the sea.

And when she saw Jukov:
My own progeny, my own Blessed child rises up against us and slaughters us like sheep!

Snowflakes twirl down and die silently as they near the fire.

“The Blessed were legends and heroes, Shara Komayd,” says Olvos quietly. “Offspring of the Divine and mortals whom the world went out of its way to accommodate.”

Shara’s head spins. “You … You aren’t saying that …”

“I suppose no one guessed who his mother was,” remarks Olvos thoughtfully, “because no one would have ever believed it.”

* * *

“Her name was Lisha,” says Olvos quietly. “As the offspring of a Divinity, she was moderately powerful in her own right. But she was a sweet creature: softhearted, quiet, not too terribly bright but eager to help … and also very eager to help her father.” She sucks at her pipe. “Jukov’s priests wanted to shore up support among Saypur, for it was Saypur’s corn and grapes that kept Jukoshtan afloat. So he offered to
rent
”—the word makes her face wrinkle in disgust—“his daughter to the Saypuri who would best facilitate their needs, for a time. It was not meant to be anything sexual: it was meant to be purely servitude. But then, something happened that Jukov did not expect: she and the man who eventually won her servitude fell in love.

“They kept it a secret. She stayed on as his … his
maid
.” Shara senses a cold rage surfacing in Olvos. “And when she bore a child, the nature of its parentage was so dangerous and so terrible that even the child could not know.”

Shara feels ill. “The Kaj,” she whispers.

“Yes. His father died when he was young. He was never told that the Divine servant in the house was his mother. Because, I think, he grew up hating the Divine; and his mother—being sweet, softhearted, and not too bright—did not wish to upset him. Then Mahlideshi happened.” Something falls into the snow and hisses: Shara sees it was a hot teardrop falling from Olvos’s cheek. “And Avshakta si Komayd decided something must be done.”

Olvos tries to speak again, but cannot.

“So he tortured his own mother,” Shara says, “in order to find out what could kill the Divine.”

Olvos manages a nod.

“And though he didn’t know it, because he was Blessed, he was able to actually
produce
something, and with it, overthrow the Continent.”

“After killing his despicable little household servant, of course.”

Shara shuts her eyes. The awfulness of it all is almost too much for her.

“I have lived with this burden for so long,” Olvos says. “I could only ever hint and suggest it to Mr. Pangyui—I have never actually told anyone. But it’s good, I think, to speak it aloud. It’s good to tell someone what happened to my daughter.”

“Your
daughter
? You mean you and Jukov …”

“He could be a very charming man,” admits Olvos, “and though I could tell there was an awful madness in him, still I was drawn in.”

“I sympathize,” says Shara.

“Clever Jukov figured it all out when the Kaj invaded. He understood that he had, through his own pride and arrogance, fathered the death of the Continent and the other Divinities. Before he hid himself with Kolkan, his last bitter act was to use a familiar to tell this fearsome invader the truth of his parentage.”

“I see,” says Shara. “The Kaj fell into a deep depression after killing Jukov, and practically drank himself to death.”

“Bitterness begets bitterness,” Olvos says. “Shame begets shame.”

“ ‘What is reaped is what is sown,’ ” Shara says, “ ‘and what is sown is what is reaped.’ ”

Olvos smiles. “You flatter me with my own words.” The smile dissolves. “I have lived with this knowledge for so long. … And for all those years, I knew that the balance of power in this world, this brave new land of politics and machinery, was predicated purely on
lies
. Saypur and the Continent hate one another, completely oblivious that each is now the product of the other. They are not separate—they are intertwined. When Efrem came, I decided it was time this secret got out. But you do understand what this means … for you.”

Shara is terribly aware of her breathing. She can feel her pulse in her forehead and behind her ears. “Yes,” she says weakly. “It means me, and my … my family …”

The fire is so hot her eyes feel like they simmer.

“… We have a trace of the Divine in us.”

“Yes.”

“We are … We are the very things our country fears.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why Kolkan and Jukov thought I was you.”

“Probably, yes.”

Shara is weeping: not in sorrow, but in rage. “And so … So is nothing I did true?”

“True?”

“The world shifts to accommodate the Blessed, doesn’t it? It helps them achieve great things, not because of how they are doing it, but because of who they are. Did nothing I did really …
count
?”

Olvos puffs at her pipe. “You forget, of course,” she says, “that the nature of the Blessed becomes diluted through the generations. Often very, very quickly.” She looks Shara up and down, her eyes glimmering. “Do you feel that you have had an easy life, Miss Komayd?”

Shara wipes her eyes. “N-no.”

“Have you gotten everything you wanted?”

She remembers Vo falling to the ground, pale and still. “No.”

“Do you think,” asks Olvos, “that this will change anytime soon?”

Shara shakes her head.
If anything,
she thinks,
I am willing to bet my life is about to get much, much worse.

“You are not Blessed, Shara Komayd,” says Olvos. “Though you are distantly related to me, to Jukov, to the Divine, the world treats you as it does anyone else—with utter indifference. Consider yourself fortunate. Your
other
relatives, though … That might be different.”

A cold wind tickles Shara’s neck.

Another snap from the fire, and sparks go dancing.

“I see,” she says.

Olvos is watching her from behind hooded eyes, appraising her. “I have told you quite a bit, Shara Komayd, information few else know or dream of. I wonder—what do you plan to do with it?”

Rage and pity and grief and sorrow twine around in Shara’s mind, looping and curling like fireworks, and somewhere underneath all their chaotic designs—all their frenzied, fruitless spins and chases—an idea comes bubbling up.

Olvos nods. “Good. Perhaps I was wiser than I thought. The Divine do not always know themselves: maybe we are but tools in the hands of fate like any other mortal … and perhaps my selection of Efrem was meant solely to bring
you
here, to me.”

Shara is breathing slowly. “I think,” she says, “that I would like to go back to my quarters now.”

“Good,” says Olvos. She uses her pipe to point between two trees. “If you walk through that gap, you will find yourself in your bedroom. You may leave whenever you wish.”

Shara stands and looks down at Olvos, feeling torn. “Will I ever see you again?”

“Do you
wish
to see me again?”

“I … I think I would enjoy that, actually.”

“Well … I think both you and I know that if you make the choices I expect you will make, and if you are
successful,
your path will take you far away from these shores. I do not wish to leave this place—I don’t tell my followers what to do, but it’s nice to keep an eye on them.” She taps her pipe against her finger. “But if you were ever to return, I
might
make myself available for a visit.”

“Good,” says Shara. “I have just one more question.”

“Yes?”

“Where did you come from?”

“Me?”

“You and the other Divinities—all of you. Where did you
come
from? Do you exist simply because people believe you exist? Or are you something … else?”

Olvos considers the question, grave and sad. “That is … complicated.” She sucks her teeth. “Divinities have the very odd ability to overwrite reality. Did you know that?”

“Of course.”

“But not just
your
reality. Not just the reality of your people—but the reality of us, our own. Each time people believed I came from somewhere new, I came from that place—and it was like I’d never come from any other place, and I never knew what I was before.” She takes a breath. “I am Olvos. I pulled the burning, golden coal of the world from the fires of my own heart. I fashioned the stars from my own teardrops when I mourned for the sun during the very first night. And I was born when all the dark of the world became too heavy, and scraped against itself, and made a spark—and that spark was me. This is all I know. I do not know what I was before I knew these things. I have looked, and tried to understand my origins—but history, as you may know, is much like a spiral staircase that gives the illusion of going up, but never quite goes anywhere.”

“But why did Saypuris never have a Divinity of their own? Were we simply unlucky?”

“You saw what happened, Shara,” says Olvos. “And you know your history. Are you so sure Saypur was
un
lucky to lack a Divinity?” She stands and kisses Shara on the brow. Her lips are so warm they almost burn. “I would tell you to go with luck, my child,” she says. “But I think you will choose to make your own.”

Shara steps away from the firelight and through the two trees.

She turns back to say good-bye but sees only the blank wall of her bedroom over her shoulder. She turns around, confused, and is met by her bed.

She sits down upon the bed and thinks.

* * *

“Turyin,” whispers Shara. “Turyin!”

Mulaghesh grunts and cracks an eye. “By the seas,” she says croakily. “I’m happy you visited, but did it have to be at two in the morning?”

Mulaghesh is not the hale and hearty woman Shara knew mere days ago: she has lost a lot of weight during her stay in the hospital, and both of her eyes are still blackened. Her left arm ends just below the elbow in rings of tight, white bandages. She sees Shara staring. “I hope this”—she raises her wounded arm—“won’t keep me from swimming in Javrat. But at least I still have my drinking hand.”

“You’re all right?”

“I’m all right. How are you, girl? You look … alive. That’s good. The black glasses are, uh, interesting looking, I guess. …”

“I am alive,” says Shara. “And, Turyin, I wish that … that for you, this had never—”

“Save it,” says Mulaghesh. “I’ve given the very speech you’re giving. But when I gave it, it was to boys and girls I knew weren’t going to live. I’m alive. And I’m grateful for it. And you are not to blame. But it does give me a damn good excuse to transfer out.”

Shara smiles weakly.

“I
am
still getting transferred, right? Javrat’s still happening—right?”

“There is a good chance, yes,” says Shara.

“That sounds like the out clause of a contract. And I don’t remember signing a contract. I remember saying, ‘If I do this, I get stationed in Javrat,’ and I remember you saying, ‘Okay.’ Do
you
remember differently?”

“I have called in some favors with some middle managers in the Ministry,” says Shara.

“There’s an ‘and’ or a ‘but’ coming. …”

“True.” Shara pushes her glasses up on her nose. “And I am taking a train to Ahanashtan in two hours, and sailing home to Ghaladesh tomorrow.”

“Okay?” says Mulaghesh, suspicious.

“If I disappear—I will be blunt here, and say that if I am secretly
murdered
—during that trip, or when I arrive in Saypur, then you will be stationed in Javrat within a matter of months.”

“If you’re
what
?”

“If, however, I survive my trip,” continues Shara, “then much about the current predicament will change.”

“Like what?”

“Like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

“How will that change?”

“Well, for starters, it will probably cease to exist.”

Someone coughs somewhere in the hospital.

“Are you sure that you didn’t catch a bump on the head during—”

“I think you and I had the same job, Turyin,” says Shara. “You weren’t to intervene in Bulikovian affairs—things were supposed to stay the same. I intervened in Continental affairs constantly, but to keep things the way they are—with the Continent desperately poor, and all commerce directed to Saypur. ‘To leave the Continent to the Continent,’ ” Shara says from memory. “Which is to say, poor, savage, and irrelevant.”

“You don’t have to quote the policy to me. I wasted two decades of my life enforcing it. So what are you saying you want to do?”

“I wish to change this. And if I am to change this,” Shara says, “then I will need allies on the Continent.”

“Aw, shit.”

“Especially here in Bulikov.”

“Aw,
shit
.”

“Because if I need anyone backing me up,” says Shara, “I want it to be General Turyin Mulaghesh.”

“I’m a governor first and foremost, but my military rank is colonel.”

“If I survive, and do what I plan,” says Shara, “it won’t be.”

Mulaghesh blinks and laughs hollowly. “You want me to play Sagresha to your Kaj? I told you, I’m not interested in promotion. I’m
out
of the game.”

“And I’m going to change the game entirely,” says Shara.

“Oh, by the seas … Are you
serious
about this?”

Shara takes a deep breath. “I am, actually. I am not sure how many radical changes I can make—but I plan to try and make as many as I can. The Ministry failed Bulikov last week. It failed you, Turyin. It failed, and thousands are dead.”

“You … You really think you can? Do you really think you aren’t being, like”—Mulaghesh laughs—“well, wildly fucking naïve about this?”