Yet then, in 772, all six Divinities met in Bulikov, & elected—in what we previously thought to be an inscrutable, spontaneous gesture—to begin the Great Expansion, the invasion & domination of all nearby nations & countries, including Saypur.
Even the Continentals themselves recorded some surprise at this decision—but why, if they were already thinking about it themselves?
The argument I pose may be tenuous, but it compensates in quantity of evidence—in my studies, I have found nearly six hundred other instances of similar phenomena, on a much smaller scale: edicts that were proclaimed well after public opinion had been formed, laws that were prescribed after everyone was already following them, persecutions & prejudices that were in place well before the Divine, or their institutions, announced them. …
The list goes on & on.
The pattern is undeniable: the Continentals made their decisions, formed their attitudes … & the Divinities followed, making them official.
Who was leading whom? Is this evidence of some kind of unconscious vote, which the Divinities then enacted?
I wonder, sometimes, if the Continentals were like schools of fish, & the slightest flick of one fish caused dozens of others to follow suit, until the entire shimmering cloud had changed course.
And were the Divinities the sum of this cloud? An embodiment, perhaps, of a national subconscious? Or were they empowered by the thoughts & praises by millions of people, yet also yoked to every one of those thoughts—giant, terrible puppets forced to dance by the strings of millions of puppeteers?
This knowledge, I think, is incredibly dangerous. The Continentals derive so much pride & so much power from having Divine approval. … But were they merely hearing the echoes of their own voices, magnified through strange caverns & tunnels? When they spoke to the Divinities, were they speaking to giant reflections of themselves?
And if I am right, then it means that the Continentals were never ordered to invade Saypur, never ordered to enslave us, never ordered to force their brutal regime onto the known world: the gods merely enforced it, because the Continentals wished it.
Everything we know is a lie.
Where did the gods come from? What were they?
I find it hard to sleep, knowing this. I relax at night with a game of cards, played on the embassy rooftop. You can see the scarring in the city. It is like a roadmap of clashing realities. …
So much forgotten. If this city is a chrysalis, it is an ugly one.
24th of the Month of the Turtle
The minister is pleased with my progress, but asks for more verification. I have compiled a tower of contradictions in Continental history—& this, for me, would suffice—yet I will find more for her.
Yet something absurd has happened: I have discovered among the piles in my office some crumbling letters written by a soldier close to Lieutenant Sagresha … & thus close to the Kaj himself! How could I have forgotten or missed this? Perhaps I never even looked at them … Though sometimes I worry my office at the university is being tampered with. Yet this may be silly paranoia.
But what the soldier writes is eye-opening to say the least:
We have suspected for some time that the Kaj used some sort of projectile weapon: a cannon, gun, or bolt that fired a special kind of fire or lightning against which the Divinities had no defense.
Yet I believe we have been thinking about this the wrong way: we think about the gun, the cannon itself, rather than what it fired. But this soldier records stories of a “hard metal” or a “black lead” that the Kaj produced & stored & protected! Here, upon the Kaj’s execution of the Divinity Jukov:
“We followed the Kaj to a place in the city—a temple of white & silver, its walls patterned like the stars with purple glass. I could not see the god in the temple, & worried it was a trap, but our general did not worry, & loaded his black lead within his hand-cannon, & entered. Time passed, & we grew concerned, yet then there was a shot, & our general—weeping!—slowly came out.”
A valuable piece of history, certainly, but also a revolutionary one!
What if it was not the cannon at all that was important? What if it was simply the metal that was used in the shot? We know the Kaj was something of an alchemist: we have records of his experiments. What if he produced a material that the Divine could not affect, just as we cannot affect an arrow through our hearts?
Even stranger, the soldier writes of the Kaj mentioning a “djinnifrit” that was kept in his father’s manor house back in Saypur. We do know that certain Continental collaborators were given Divine servants as a reward, but it would be scandalous for anyone to discover that the Kaj had such close contact with any agent of the Divine! 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.
I will wait to send this information back to the minister until I know more.
20th of the Month of the Cat