“That must be nice,” says Sigrud. “And you think the Votrov family was one of these?”
“Oh, no, not at all. Those sorts of lineages were always well documented. If he was, I’m sure his family would have never let anyone forget about it. Wait. … Look.” She points at where the weeds of one courtyard have been parted. “Someone’s been here. Quite recently.”
Sigrud walks to the disturbance, squats, and reviews the markings on the ground. “Many people. Many. Men, I think. And recent, as you said.” He carefully steps forward into the weeds. “Most of them burdened. Carrying … heavy things.” He points ahead, toward another horseshoe arch that exits onto a descending hillside. “There is where they went.” He points to the citadel of the house of Votrov. “And there is where they came from.”
“Can you follow the trail?”
He looks at her as if to say, Did you really just ask that?
Shara debates splitting up, but decides against it. If we get lost in here, how will we ever get out? “We’ll follow the trail where they went,” she says. “And if we have time, we’ll examine where they came from.”
They stalk along white streetways, through courtyards, around gardens. The silence gnaws on Shara’s sense of ease until she mistakes every glimmer for a lowering bolt-shot.
All the Continentals conspire against us. I should have never allowed Vohannes into my bed.
“Why do you not dance?” asks Sigrud.
“What? Dance?”
“I would think,” he explains, “that you would be dancing to see Old Bulikov. Running back and forth, trying to sketch things …”
“Like Efrem did.” She considers it. “I do wish to. I would gladly spend the rest of my life here, if I could. But here, in Bulikov, every piece of history feels lined with razors, and the closer I try and look at it, the more I wound myself.”
A curving house, designed to resemble a volcano, perches over a babbling brook of white stones.
“I do not think that is history’s nature,” says Sigrud.
“Oh? Then what is it?”
“That,” he says, “is the nature of life.”
“You believe so? A depressing perspective, I feel.”
“Life is full of beautiful dangers, dangerous beauties,” says Sigrud. He stares into the sky, and the white sunlight glints off of his many scars. “They wound us in ways we cannot see: an injury ripples out, like a stone dropped in water, touching moments years into the future.”
Shara nods. “I suppose that’s true.”
“We think we move, we run, we push forward, but, I think, in many ways we are still running in place, trapped in a moment that happened to us long ago.”
“Then what are we to do?”
He shrugs. “We must learn to live with it.”
The wind pulls a tiny dust devil to its feet and sends it tottering along a white stone lane.
“Does this place make you contemplative?” asks Shara.
“No,” he says. “This is something I think I have believed for a long time.”
A bulging crystal window at the top of a rounded house captures the blue sky, stretches it, and makes a perfect azure bubble.
“You are not,” says Shara, “the man I freed from prison.”
He shrugs again. “Maybe not.”
“You are wiser than he was. You are wiser than I am, I feel. Do you ever think about going home?”
Sigrud briefly halts on his trail; his eye dances over the cream-white cobblestones; then, “No.”
“No? Never?”
“They do not know me anymore. It was a long time ago. They are different people now. Like I am. And they would not wish to see this thing I am.”
They follow the trail for a few moments of silence.
“I think you’re wrong,” says Shara.
Sigrud says, “Think what you like.”
*
The trail leads on and on and on. “Of course, they couldn’t bring cars, could they?” Shara muses aloud. “The reality static wouldn’t allow them through, being so modern.”
“I would have preferred if they could have brought a horse or two.”
“And they would simply leave them here for us? We should be so luck—” Shara stops and stares at a tall, rounded building on her left.
“What?” asks Sigrud
Shara’s eyes study the walls, which have windows in the pattern of eight-pointed stars, filled with bright violet glass.
“What now?” asks Sigrud.
Shara’s eyes study the facade: at its top is an abridged quote from the Jukoshtava:
those who come upon a choice, a chance, and tremble and fear—why should i allow them in my shadow?
“I have read about this place,” murmurs Shara.
“I expect you have read about every place in this city.”
“No! No, I read about this place just … just recently.”