City of Stairs (7 page)

As she sits back to think, she notices one corner of paper jutting up from the wreckage that is starkly different: it is not a page from an academic publication, but an official form with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs seal in the upper left corner, and in the upper right, the seal of the polis governor’s office.

She fishes it out. It’s a request form filled out by Efrem. Exactly what it is requesting is hard to tell: the request itself is reduced down to a code, ACCWHS14-347. Efrem has signed the bottom, but there’s another signature needed, and underneath the blank are the words:
turyin mulaghesh, polis governor, bulikov
.

“Found something?” says Sigrud’s voice from the door.

“I’m not sure yet,” says Shara.

As they bag up all the material, Shara finds that this is not the only document of the polis governor’s that’s found its way into Efrem’s possession: among the scraps of paper is a hefty number of entry permission stubs, probably handed to him by a guard when he was approved to enter … somewhere.

Shara counts them when they’re done: there are a total of nineteen permission stubs here in the office. Shara knows Efrem probably didn’t keep them intentionally: they’d likely be worthless once his visit was over. He must have just emptied his pockets once he came back to his office.

Shara glances back at the safe in the corner.
And perhaps he brought back more than ticket stubs.

Nidayin and Pitry both stumble in looking quite harassed. Nidayin holds a long, smudged piece of paper in his hands. “Well,” he says. “We’ve finished. We have a sum of sixty-three names, and we’ve recorded their departments, tenure, relation to the professor, and—”

“Good work,” says Shara. “Sigrud, if you could please add that to our collection. I believe we’ve done what we need to here. We’ll be back to the embassy now. And then, Pitry, you will probably need to fill up the car again. I believe a short excursion beyond Bulikov is in order.”

“Where are we going?” asks Pitry.

Shara fingers the permission stubs in her pocket. “To be frank,” she says, “I don’t quite know.”

* * *

When they exit the university and begin to cross to the car, Shara slows down.

Sigrud walks behind her. There is a soft hiss as he exhales through his nose.

She glances down and to the side, at his hands.

He makes a tiny gesture with his index and middle finger, no more than a tap against his thigh. She glances to the right.

They look like ordinary people sitting at the café, but then of course they would: a man buried in a thick gray coat, with oily hair and two days’ worth of beard, who is slowly peeling back the packaging on a cigar; the other, a woman of about fifty or fifty-five, with skinny, bitter features, purplish, worn hands, and gray hair pulled back in a severe bun. The woman refuses to look up from her sewing, yet Shara can see her hands are trembling.

No. Not professionals.

“We’ll drop you around the corner,” says Shara. “Then, follow them.”

Sigrud nods and climbs into the car.

* * *

To get out of Bulikov by road involves a parade of admittance papers, of checkpoints, of bottlenecks and choked traffic, red-and-white striped gates and crossing guards and page after page of lists. All of the attendants—dressed in black or purple uniforms with dozens of brass buttons—are Continental.
Have we so deeply regulated this city,
thinks Shara,
that its very citizens are willing to choke it?
Her papers act as a magic ward, eliciting frenzied hand-waves, sometimes even a salute, and she and Pitry navigate the network of checkpoints within a half an hour—something a citizen of Bulikov accomplishes only if they wake up very, very early.

A polis governor’s “quarters” are always a tricky subject on the Continent. Shara knows that the official stance of Saypur on governors’ quarters, both of the regional and polis variety, is that they are only temporary: it’s practically part of her script, as a Saypuri official. The official stance goes on to state that the governor’s quarters are monitoring stations established by Saypur solely to keep the peace until the peace is self-sustainable. But, as everyone on the Continent asks every day: when exactly will that be?

Judging by the twenty-foot concrete walls, fixed cannonry, iron gates, and soldiers’ shouts echoing over the walls (which are less than two miles from the walls of Bulikov), the impression given by Polis Governor Mulaghesh’s quarters is that the peace will not be self-sustainable for some time. The facility is imposing, stately, mostly barren, and definitely, definitely permanent. Floor-to-ceiling windows stand behind the governor’s desk, and through them Shara sees green, rolling hills encircled by the concrete wall. She can also watch soldiers drilling on the parade grounds, dozens of soft blue headcloths bobbing up and down as the commandant barks out orders.

“Governor Mulaghesh will be with you shortly,” says the attendant, a chiseled-faced young man with a starved, mean look to him. “She’s currently taking a constitutional.”

“I’m sorry, she’s what?” asks Shara.

He smiles in a manner he apparently believes to be polite. “Exercise.”

“Oh. I see. Then I’m happy to wait.”

He smiles again, as if to say,
How charming to think you had another option.

Shara looks around the office. It has all the soul and ornamentation of an axe: everything is clean gray surfaces, strictly designed to function and function well.

A small door on the side of the room opens. A shortish woman of about forty-five marches in wearing a standard-issue gray tank top, light blue breeches, and boots. She is drenched in sweat, which runs in beads down her immensely large and immensely brown shoulders. She stops and examines Shara with a cold eye, then smiles in a manner just as cold and marches over to the desk. She grabs hold of the corner, kicks her right foot up, and grasps the ankle with her right hand, stretching out her quadriceps.

“Well, hi,” she says.

Shara smiles and stands. Turyin Mulaghesh is, much like her offices, cold, spare, brutal, and efficient, a creature so born and bred for battle and order that she cannot tolerate another manner of living. She is one of the most muscular women Shara has ever seen, sporting wiry biceps and a sinewy neck and shoulders. Shara has heard stories of the feats Mulaghesh performed during the minor rebellions in the aftermath of the Summer of Black Rivers, and she finds herself believing all of them when she studies the immense scarring along Mulaghesh’s left jawline, not to mention her ravaged knuckles. She is, needless to say, a very unusual sort of person to occupy what’s fundamentally a bureaucratic position.

“Good afternoon, Governor Mulaghesh,” says Shara. “I am—”

“I know who you are,” says Mulaghesh. She releases the stretch, opens a drawer, and takes out a cigarillo. “You’re the new girl. The, what is it. Chief Ambassador.”

“Yes. Ashara Thivani, formally Cultural—”

“Yes, yes. Cultural Ambassador. Came in last night, right?”

“That’s correct.”

Mulaghesh dumps herself down in her chair and puts her feet up. “Seems like only two weeks ago they swept Troonyi in here. I’m surprised I still have a job. I thought the man’d burn down all the city in my time here. Just, honestly, a fucking oaf.” She looks up at Shara. Her eyes are steel gray. “But maybe he got the fire started. After all, I mean, Pangyui died under his watch.” She points to Shara with the butt-end of the cigarillo. “That’s why you’re here, right?”

“That’s one reason, yes.”

“And another reason, I’m sure,” says Mulaghesh as she lights the cigarillo, “would be for the Ministry to determine whether my actions—or
inactions—
could have contributed to their cultural emissary’s death. Because it also, in a way, happened under
my
watch. Right?”

“That is not my priority,” says Shara.

“I commend you,” she says. “You have evidently got the diplomat-thing to an art.”

“It’s the truth,” says Shara.

“I believe it’s the truth for
you
. Just probably not for the Ministry.” Mulaghesh sighs, wrapping her head in a wreath of smoke. “Listen, I’m glad you’re here, because if
you
tell them what
I’ve
been saying for the past year, maybe they’ll listen. Because ever since I first got wind of this cultural expedition bullshit, I knew, I just
knew,
that this was all going to end in tears. Bulikov’s like an elephant, see? It’s got a long memory. Ahanashtan, Taalvashtan, those places—they’ve got their act together. They’re
modernizing.
Getting train tracks in, doctors … shit, letting women vote.” She snorts, hawks, and spits into a trash can at her desk. “This place”—she gestures out the windows, toward the walls of Bulikov—“this place still thinks it’s in its Golden Ages. Or that it
should
be. Every once in a while it forgets, and we get some peace, but then someone stirs up the nest again, and I have another crisis on my hands. A crisis
I
can’t really intervene in, because the policy is ‘Hands off.’ Policy, as always, sounds solid as shit in Ghaladesh, a whole damn ocean away, but when you’ve got those walls only a day’s walk from you, it’s all just words.”

Shara opts to interrupt. “Governor Mulaghesh, before we continue …”

“Yeah?”

“Who do
you
think killed Dr. Pangyui?”

Mulaghesh looks slightly taken aback. “Me? Hell. I don’t know. It could have been anyone. The whole city wanted him dead. Besides, I haven’t been given the go-ahead to investigate.”

“But surely you must have some ideas.”

“Yeah. I do.” She studies Shara for a long while. “Why do you care? You’re a diplomat. You’re just here for the parties. Right?”

Shara reaches into her robes and produces her Ministry of Foreign Affairs badge.

Mulaghesh sits forward and, to her credit, examines it without a reaction.

After a long while, she reads from the name at the bottom, “Komayd.”

“Yes,” says Shara.

“Not, I take it, Thivani.”

“No,” says Shara.

“Komayd. As in
Vinya
Komayd?”

Shara stares back at her, unblinking.

Mulaghesh sits back. She looks at Shara for some time, then asks, “How old are you?”

“I am thirty-five.”

“So … That thing, sixteen years ago. The Nationalist Party. Was that … ?”

With a great deal of effort, Shara’s face shows no emotion.

Mulaghesh nods. Shara thinks she can see a sly gleam in her eye. “Huh. Why didn’t you say so at the start?”

“I’m afraid you started talking before I could say anything.”

“I guess that’s true,” Mulaghesh says. “I get mouthy after a run.” She sticks her cigarillo back between her teeth. “So. You
are
here to investigate the professor’s murder.”

“I am here,” says Shara as she puts away her badge, “to see if anything in Bulikov poses a threat to Saypur.”

“In Bulikov? Shit. It’s only crawled out of total squalor in the past fifteen years or so. When I got here it was probably no different than when the Kaj captured it. People were still shitting in buckets. It’s hard to imagine how it could pose a threat.”

“They thought the same before the Summer of Black Rivers, when we introduced the Regulations and Bulikov rebelled, and the city was in an even worse state then. The passion of Bulikov far outweighs its limitations, it seems.”

“Poetic,” says Mulaghesh. She runs a thumb along the scar on her jaw. “But probably true.” She slouches back farther in her chair, a feat Shara hadn’t realized was possible, and appears to think.

Shara knows she is wondering if it’s wise to extend a hand to this new, mysterious official: so often in the Ministry good deeds and charitable actions win only woe, when someone loses their footing and all those who supported them get punished.

“I need your help, Governor,” says Shara. “I cannot depend on the embassy.”

Mulaghesh snorts. “Who can?”

“Quite right. And I am willing to do what is necessary to win your support.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. I wish to put this all to bed as quickly as possible. And I’d need your help to do so.”

Mulaghesh chews the end of her cigar. “I don’t know if you can give me what I want.”

“You may be surprised.”

“Maybe. I don’t mind being a servant, Ambassador Komayd. And that’s what we are, civil servants. But I’ve served enough. I want to go someplace a lot better than this backward ruin.”

Shara thinks she already knows where she’s going. “Ahanashtan?”

Mulaghesh laughs. “Ahanashtan? You think I want
more
responsibility? By the seas, no. What I want, Ambassador, is to get stationed in
Javrat
.”

“Javrat?” says Shara, surprised.

“Yes. Way out in the South Seas. I want to go someplace with palm trees. Sun. With
beaches
. Someplace with good wine, and men whose skin doesn’t look like beef fat. I want to get far away from the Continent, Ambassador. I don’t want anything to do with this anymore.”

Shara is a bit taken aback by this. The polis of Ahanashtan contains the only functioning international port on the Continent, and as trade has become more and more naval since the War, that makes Ahanashtan one of the few Continental polises with any wealth. In addition, since Saypur’s military strength lies almost exclusively in its ships, Ahanashtan is also the city with the closest connection to Saypur, making its polis governor one of the more powerful figures in the world. Presumably every Saypuri official on the Continent would love to get the job … but requesting the tiny island of Javrat would mean Mulaghesh wants essentially to step out of the political game
altogether
, and Shara has never really met any Saypuri whose ambition didn’t keep them in the game in perpetuity.

“So do you think,” says Mulaghesh, “that that’s possible?”

“It’s … possible, certainly,” says Shara. “But I expect the Ministry will be a little confused.”

“I don’t want a promotion,” says Mulaghesh. “I’ve got, what, two decades left of my life? Less? I want to take my bones someplace warm, Ambassador. And all this gamesmanship … I find it sickening nowadays.”