“Is this about how you want to start making munitions?”
“I am talking about increased Saypuri engagement with Bulikov,” he says. “Real engagement. Real aid. Not this subterfuge. Right now, we are given but a trickle of water, when we need a flood to wash all this stagnancy away. Flex your muscles, Shara. Give me genuine political support.”
“We can’t possibly voice support for a local politician. Maybe one day, but not right now. The circumstances—”
“The circumstances will never be right,” says Vohannes, “because this will always be hard.”
“Vo …”
“Shara, my city and my country are desperately, desperately poor, and I genuinely think they are on a path that can only end in violence. I am offering you an opportunity to try and help us, and put us on a different path.”
“I cannot accept it,” says Shara. “Not now, Vo. I’m sorry. Maybe one day soon.”
“No. You don’t believe that. You’re not an agent of change, Shara. You don’t make the world better—you work to keep things how they are. The Restorationists look to the past, Saypur wishes to maintain the present, but no one considers the future.”
“I am sorry,” she says. “But I cannot help you.”
“No, you aren’t sorry. You are a representative of your country. And countries do not feel sorrow.” He turns and limps away.
*
Shara stands in front of the window again. Dawn is now in full riot across the roofs of Bulikov, giving a golden streak to all the wandering columns of chimney smoke. She takes a deep sip of tea. An import, she thinks. Maybe made in Ghaladesh. She wonders, briefly, if she is not addicted to the tea’s caffeine so much as the taste and scent of home, so far away.
She opens the window—wincing at the blast of cold air—shuts the shutters outside, then shuts the window.
She licks her finger, hesitates, and begins to write on the glass.
Why do I always do this, she thinks, when I’m at my most vulnerable?
Slowly, the shadows shift. The air gains a curious new current. Somewhere in the room, in some invisible manner, a door opens to somewhere else. And there in the glass, she sees …
An empty office.
Shara sits to wait.
Twenty minutes later, Vinya Komayd arrives, holding many papers and clad in what she personally refers to as her “battle armor”: a bright red, highly expensive dress that is both attractive and tremendously imposing. It has always possessed the odd property of making Vinya the undeniable center of any room. When Vinya spotted the dress in a store, she purchased five of them, then arranged it so the entire line was permanently removed from shelves. I could never trust such a dress to anyone else, she remarked when she told Shara. It’s much too dangerous.
“Important meeting?” asks Shara.
Auntie Vinya looks up and frowns. “No,” she says, slightly irritated. “But important people were there. Why are you calling on the emergency line? If you’ve found something, send it through the normal channels.”
“We have sixteen dead,” says Shara. “Continentals. They were killed in an attack on a Bulikovian political figure—a City Father. Who survived.”
Vinya pauses. She looks at the piece of paper in her hand—work that obviously needs to get done, and soon—and sighs and lays it aside. She walks over to sit before the pane of glass and asks, “How?”
“They opted to attack during a social occasion. At which I was present.”
Vinya rolls her eyes. “Ah. You and … what’s his name …”
“Sigrud.”
“Yes. How many dead?”
“Sixteen.”
“So he’s clocking in his normal rate, then. By all the damned seas, Shara, I’ve … I’ve no idea why you keep such a man on! We have trouble with the Dreylings every day! They’re pirates, my dear!”
“They weren’t always. Not while their king was still alive.”
“Ah, yes, their dead king they do so love to sing about … Him and their little lost prince, who’ll one day sail back to them. I expect they also sing all day while burning half the northern Continental coastline! I mean, you must admit, my dear, these people are savages!”
“I think he’s proved his worth, last night and many other nights.”
“Intelligence work is meant to avoid bloodshed, not generate it by the quart!”
“And yet intelligence work is as susceptible to its environs as anything else,” says Shara. “We ‘operate within a set of variables that we often cannot influence’.”
“I hate it when you quote me,” says Vinya. “All right. So what? So some bumpkins took a shot at an alderman, or whatever he is. That’s not news. That’s just your average day of the week. Why would you contact me?”
“Because I am convinced,” says Shara, “that there is some connection to Pangyui.”
Vinya freezes. She looks away, then slowly looks back. “What?”