Shara sighs deeply. Mulaghesh is suddenly aware of how frail Shara seems, and she realizes that her demand is likely just one of thousands Shara must hear every single day. “I know. I know it’s not what you wanted. But I suspect it’s all I can give you. It is known that Voortyashtanis possessed a ritual to glimpse into the life beyond death, into the City of Blades—the Window to the White Shores. If there is a ritual that allowed them to fully cross over, I suspect it is a fusion of a Voortyashtani rite and an Ahanashtani rite. And, because of this curious quality, I expect it’s never been recorded. The one person who might know, it seems, is the old man Choudhry mentioned.”
“And he told Choudhry how to cross over. And she went there to…to try to stop whatever’s happening. But obviously she failed somehow.”
“I know,” says Shara. “But you will succeed.”
“I know I have to! You don’t have to tell me that!”
“I did not say you have to succeed,” says Shara. “I said you will. There is not a doubt in my mind, Turyin, that you can resolve this. You have been through far worse trials and faced far more difficult situations than this. You have a military fortress at your disposal, as well as a massive construction fleet. Though they may be unwilling, they are still potential resources.”
“And just how in the hells am I going to use them?” snaps Mulaghesh, furious.
“In Bulikov,” says Shara, “how did you convince me to collapse the tunnel to the Seat of the World, the greatest discovery in modern history, mere moments after I’d discovered it?”
“I…Hells, I can’t remember!”
“You did it,” says Shara, “by being a very belligerent, obnoxious woman.”
Mulaghesh stares at her in disbelief. “Well…Well, thank you very fucking much!”
“You have a talent,” says Shara, “for valuing what you feel is right over anything else, including, occasionally, the people around you. You do what you feel is right not because it is satisfying, but because you find any other option to be intolerable. This makes you incredibly frustrating to deal with. But it also means you find solutions where many others would simply give up.”
“But…But this is a fucking Divinity we’re talking about! Surely if you went to the Ministry and told them what would happen—”
“We have nothing definitive,” says Shara. “No concrete evidence, no proof—only your testimony, and that message of Choudhry’s. A half-coherent letter from an agent who went mad and has vanished, and your story, part of a clandestine operation that is occurring completely off the books. If I were to use what little we have here to mobilize our forces under the precept that another Divine event was imminent, there is a not-insignificant chance that it could result in something very similar to a coup.”
“A coup?” says Mulaghesh, aghast. “In Saypur?”
“I’m sure it would begin as an impeachment,” says Shara wearily. “Or something wearing much more civilized trappings. But I know there are forces in the military and industry that would be the ones to ramrod it through. I’ve broken a lot of rules to put you where you are now, Turyin. Without solid evidence, my opponents in Ghaladesh would say I was fabricating the whole thing, trying to drum up support where I have none. And when the dust settled, it would be these figures that would possess much more global power—something that could be terribly bad for Saypur, and the world.”
Mulaghesh rubs the center of her forehead. “I thought you were going to toss all those ratfucks out on their ears when you got elected.”
Shara smiles weakly. “There are rather a lot of ratfucks, unfortunately.”
“So I’m on my own,” says Mulaghesh. “Even after this.”
“No, no. Not alone. I do not think you are on your own. On the contrary, you have Sig—”
She stops speaking and looks over Mulaghesh’s shoulder. Mulaghesh turns and sees that Sigrud has leapt to his feet and is silently stalking toward a blank section of wall. He examines the wall, looking it up and down, then looks at Shara in the windowpane and shakes his head.
Shara mouths, “Good luck,” to Mulaghesh, wipes her fingers across the glass, and vanishes. The glass grows transparent yet again.
Sigrud turns to the wall and feels along the crown molding. His finger finds a carving of a whale tooth. He presses it—there’s a click!—and the wall falls back like a door.
Sigrud dives into the gap. There’s a cry of surprise and possibly pain from the other side. Mulaghesh has already grabbed the carousel and is raising it at the secret door, finger close to the trigger but not on it, not yet. She paces to line up along the wall behind the door, holding the carousel just at head-height.
Someone tumbles into the room, stumbling from a hard shove. Mulaghesh’s instincts kick in and she puts the carousel’s sights right on their head, though it takes her a second to realize this particular head possesses bright blond hair arranged in an urbane coiffure, along with two furious blue eyes watching her from behind a pair of severe-looking glasses.
“Shit,” says Mulaghesh. “Signe, between you and your father, I’m wondering if your whole family just doesn’t know how to use a door.”
***
Sigrud walks back in and shuts the secret door. “How dare you!” Signe says to him. “How dare you treat me like that!”
He ignores her and sits back down on the couch with his back to them, and lights his pipe.
Mulaghesh looks at the panel in the wall. “I guess you forgot to tell me you had one of these in my room.”
“You didn’t ask,” Signe says angrily. “You knew we had servants’ doors all throughout SDC headquarters. Of course we’d have one here; this is a vice-presidential suite”—she looks around at the chicken bones and tobacco—“though I see you have treated it with your usual amount of care.”
“Why would I want one of these in my room?”
“If you had ordered food it’d have come through that very door. It’s all perfectly innocent!”
“I can order food from my room?”
“What else did you think the button in the corner with the sign RING FOR SERVICE is for?” She looks back at Mulaghesh, who has not yet lowered her gun. “Please stop pointing that at me.”
“What did you hear?” asks Mulaghesh.
Signe glances around the room. Looking, Mulaghesh realizes, for the third person she heard. “Nothing.”
“That’s a pretty bold lie.”
“I didn’t come here to eavesdrop!”
“Maybe. But that’s what you wound up doing.” Mulaghesh lowers the carousel and sets two chairs up facing one another. She sits in one and gestures to the other. Signe slowly sits. “So. What’d you hear?”
“You can’t shoot me, you know,” says Signe. “This is my company’s property. I could stand up and leave right now.”
“Try it,” says Mulaghesh. “I might have one hand, but I still know how to restrain someone and not leave a mark.”
Signe looks to her father. “Are you going to allow this?”
“I remember today,” he says, “when you introduced me to the welders here, then abandoned me, leaving me with them. It is no fun, being stuck in a difficult spot.”
“I…I swear,” says Signe, “you two are the most frustrating, useless people alive! But of course you’d gang up on me; you both know each other so well.”
Mulaghesh says simply, “The afterlife.”
With those two words Signe freezes, just for a second, her pale blue eyes flicking away and then back.