“Good for you,” says Mulaghesh. “But you weren’t sent here for this. You don’t have clearance. The way to keep these things secret is to keep people from seeing them. And that includes you, Ambassador Komayd.”
Shara readjusts her glasses. She defiantly files all this in the back of her head for later perusal. “I see,” she says finally. “So. The Restorationists.”
Mulaghesh nods approvingly. “Right.”
“Do you have any sources on them?”
“Not a single one,” says Mulaghesh. “Or at least not a trustworthy one. I don’t want to wade into that mess and have them start trumpeting that I’m watching them.”
“I suppose the New Bulikov supporters could be a help.”
“To an extent. There’s one City Father who’s a big proponent, which is unusual. But he probably doesn’t want to mix too close with Saypuris like us. Collusion, you see. There are some formal opportunities, though. He throws a monthly reception for his party, calling on the supporters of the arts. Sort of a fundraising thing—it’s an election year. He usually invites me and the chief diplomat, as a formality. So if you wanted a chance to talk to him, that’d be it.”
“What more can you tell me about him?”
“He’s old money. Family’s really established. They broke into the brick trade years back, and bricks are useful when you’re rebuilding a whole damn city. They’re political, too. A member of the Votrov family has been a City Father for, shit, sixty years or so?”
Shara, who has been nodding along with this, freezes.
She replays what she just heard, then replays it again, and again.
Oh, she thinks, I badly hope she did not say what I think she said . …
“I’m sorry,” says Shara. “But which family is it?”
“Votrov. Why?”
Shara slowly sits back in her chair. “And his name … His first name.”
“Yeah?”
“Would it happen to be Vohannes?”
Mulaghesh cocks an eyebrow. “You know him?”
Shara does not answer.
The words come crashing back down on her as if it’d only been yesterday.
If you were to come with me to my home, I’d make you a princess, he’d said to her when she saw him last. And she’d answered: What I think you truly want, my dear child, is a prince. But you can’t have such a thing at home, can you? They’d kill you for that. And the cocksure grin had melted off his face, his blue eyes crackling with brittleness like ice dunked in warm water, and she’d known then that she’d hurt him, really, genuinely hurt him, found someplace deep inside him no one knew about and burned it into ash.
Shara shuts her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Oh, dear.”
*
Columns pierce the gray sky again and again, stabbing it, slashing it. It bleeds soft rain that makes the crumbling building faces glisten and sweat. Though the war that littered this city with such wounds is long over, the flesh and bones of the buildings remain broken and exposed. Desiccated children clamber across the ruin of a temple, its collapsed walls dancing with the twinkles of campfires, its cavities and caves echoing with cries. The wretches make apish gestures to passersby and harangue them for coin, for food, for a smile, for a warm place to sleep; yet there is a glitter of metal in their sleeves, tiny blades hidden among the filthy cloth, waiting to repay any kind gesture with quick violence. The new generation of Bulikov.
Those few who see Sigrud pass say nothing: they make no plea, no threat. They watch silently until he is gone.
A crowd of women cross the street before him, shoulders hunched, humble and eyes averted, their figures buried under piles of dark wool. Their necks and shoulders and ankles are carefully obscured. The putter and squeak of cars. The stink of horseshit. Pipes protrude from buildings several stories up, sending waste raining down on sidewalks. A city too old and too established for proper plumbing. Colonnades stacked with faceless statues stare down at him, eyeless, watchful. Squatting, thick-walled structures with twisting loggias ring with music and laughter, homes of the powerful, the wealthy, the hidden. On their balconies men in thick black coats dotted with medals and insignias glower at Sigrud, wondering, What is this doing here? How could a mountain savage be allowed into this neighborhood? Next to these bulbous mansions might be a puzzle piece of building facade, half a wall with windows empty, a wooden staircase clinging to the frames. And beyond these are winding rivers of stairs, some rounded and aged, some sharp and fresh, some wide, some terribly narrow.