“What?”
“The weight check! The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has automatic background checks on purchasers of large quantities of materials! Oil, wood, stone, metal … We want to know who we’re selling to, if they buy large enough amounts. And for steel, the weight check amount must be—”
“Two thousand pounds,” realizes Pitry. “So the Ministry has never checked on him.”
The drugged boy in the jail cell confessed that they’d gone after Vohannes for his “metal.” Which leads Shara to wonder—why try to kidnap Vohannes if you’re already purchasing steel through legitimate means?
Unless I spooked them, she thinks. I wanted to stir up the hornets’ nest, didn’t I? They must not have acquired enough steel for whatever it is that they’re making. … So when Pangyui was killed, and a Ministry operative arrived, they got nervous, and desperate.
She stares out the window, her mind racing. What could they possibly be building? What use could someone have for so much steel?
She keeps thinking on it until she sees something peeking over the rooftops at her: a huge, black tower, a ten-story stripe of ebony against the gray night sky.
Her heart twitches.
Oh, no, thinks Shara. They can’t be taking her there. Not there …
She has not been to see this place yet. It seems unreal to believe it still exists.
Of all the things the Kaj threw down, why did he leave that still standing?
*
Pitry parks in an alley. The darkness in an old doorway trembles; Sigrud emerges from the shadows and paces across the street.
“Please do not tell me they went in there,” says Shara as she climbs out.
“Into where?” asks Sigrud.
“The bell tower.”
Sigrud stops, bemused. “Why do you ask?”
Shara sighs and readjusts her glasses. “Show me,” she says.
The streets of Bulikov are almost impenetrably dark at night in quarters most affected by the Blink: no one has been able to lay gas lines, as the disturbances reach deep down into the earth. One construction company made a valiant attempt, only to discover a sheet of iron three feet thick, forty feet tall, and (they estimated) a quarter-mile long simply suspended in the loam below the streets. No one could logically explain its existence: eventually, like so many aberrations, they assumed it was one of the unintended and inexplicable consequences of the Blink. Though the iron sheet could be dealt with, the company withdrew its bid, perhaps out of concern about what else might be buried below Bulikov.
At the center of this damaged neighborhood is a wide, empty park. Sapling firs grow in the damp soil: recent transplants, as all the natural vegetation in Bulikov died when the climate abruptly changed. Behind these is a long building with one huge tower at the north end, a belfry with a very curious, skeletal structure at the top: a metal globe-like frame that appears to have once held a carillon, but is now empty. The base of the structure is rambling clay walls with a flat roof to which time has not been kind: the roof dips and curves like a field marred by a glacier.
“They went in there?” asks Shara.
“No,” says Sigrud. He points to a long, dismal-looking municipal structure at the edge of the park. “Wiclov and one other man took her in there. Just adjacent to it. Why do you worry so?”
“Because that”—Shara nods at the bell tower—“is the oldest structure in Bulikov, after the walls. It was at the center of Bulikov, originally, though the lopsided effects of the Blink considerably changed that. The Center of the Seat of the World. Normally just called the Seat of the World, though outsiders called Bulikov the same.”
“A temple?”
“Something like that. Supposedly it was like Saypur’s Parliament House for the Divinities. Though I always imagined it would look much grander—it is quite shabby, I must say, and I remember reading it had amazing stained glass—but I’m told the Blink did not leave it unscathed. Apparently the tower was originally much, much taller. Each Divinity had a bell housed there, and the ringing of each bell had different … effects.”
“Such as?”
She shrugs. “No one knows. Which is why I’m reluctant to be here. So it was Wiclov who came?”
“Wiclov and one attendant. They came and took Torskeny to that little building. Then, forty minutes ago, Wiclov and his attendant departed. No sign of Torskeny.”
“That’s rather bold of them to operate in the open. Where did they go afterward?”
Sigrud’s face darkens.
“Let me guess,” says Shara. “They took a series of turns throughout the streets, and then they suddenly—”