“I suspect,” says Shara, “that Pangyui’s death was probably part of a reactionary movement here, meant to rebuke Saypur’s influence and return the Continent—or at least Bulikov—to its former glory.”
Vinya sits in silence. Then: “And how would you have determined that?”
“He was being watched,” says Shara. “And I suspect that he was being watched by agents of this reactionary movement.”
“You suspect?”
“I would say I deem it terribly likely. Specifically—though I cannot confirm yet—I think his death is probably related to their discovery of exactly what he was doing here. Which was not a mission of cultural understanding, as they were told.”
Vinya sighs and massages the sides of her neck. “Ah. So.”
Shara nods. “So.”
“You found out about his little … historical expedition.”
“So you do know about the Warehouse?”
“Of course I know about the Warehouse!” Vinya snaps. “It’s why he went there, of course!”
“You signed off on this?”
Vinya rolls her eyes.
“Oh. So you planned this.”
“Of course I planned this, darling. But it was Efrem’s idea. It was just one I had a very specific interest in.”
“And what was this idea?”
“Oh, well, I’m sure that you being the Divine expert that you are, you probably know all about it. … Or you would, if Efrem would have been allowed to publish it. His idea was not, as one says in the parlance of our era, approved. And it is still a highly dangerous idea.”
“And what idea was this?”
“We don’t talk much about the Divine over here—we like for such things to stay dead, naturally—but when we do, we, like the Continent itself, assume that it was a top-down relationship: the Divinities stood at the top of the chain, and they told the Continentals and, well, the world, what to do, and everything obeyed. Reality obeyed.”
“So?”
“So,” she says slowly, “over the course of his career, Efrem quietly became less convinced this was the case. He believed there was a lot more subtle give and take going on in the relationship than anyone imagined. The Divinities projected their own worlds, their own realities, which our historians have more or less surmised from all the conflicting creation stories, and afterlife stories, and static and whatnot.” She waves her hand, eager to cycle through all the minutiae.
“Of course,” says Shara—for this is a topic well-known to her.
One of the Continent’s biggest problems with having six Divinities were the many, many conflicting mythologies: for example, how could the world be a burning, golden coal pulled from the fires of Olvos’s own heart while also being a stone hacked by Kolkan from a mountain behind the setting sun? And how could one’s soul, after death, flit away to join Jukov’s flock of brown starlings, while also flowing down the river of death to wash ashore in Ahanas’s garden, where it would grow into an orchid? All Divinities were very clear about such things, but none of them agreed with one another.
It took Saypuri historians a long while to figure how all this had worked for the Continent. They made no progress until someone pointed out that the discordant mythologies appeared to mostly be geographical: people physically near a Divinity recorded history in strict agreement with that Divinity’s mythology. Once historians started mapping out the recorded histories, they found the borders were shockingly distinct: you could see almost exactly where one Divinity’s influence stopped and another’s began. And, the historians were forced to assume, if you were within that sphere or penumbra of influence, you essentially existed in a different reality where everything that specific Divinity claimed was true was indisputably true.
So, were you within Voortya’s territory, then the world was made from the bones of an army she slew in a field of ice in the sky.
Yet if you traveled to be near Ahanas, then the world was a seed she’d rescued from the river mud, and watered with her tears.
And still if you traveled to be near Taalhavras, then the world was a machine he had built from the celestial fundament, designed and crafted over thousands of years. And so on and so forth.
What the Divinities felt was true was true in these places. And when the Kaj killed them, all those things stopped being true.