Read Online City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett - Free Book Online
Authors: Robert Jackson Bennett
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resembling a barge lost on its yellowed waves. Shara turns on the gas lamps and surveys the damage: she sees countless tacks on the corkboard on the walls, with scraps of paper still tacked up. “The police must have torn them all down,” she says quietly. “My word.”
It is a small, dingy office, not at all befitting a man of Pangyui’s stature. There is a window, but it is of stained glass so dark it might as well be brick.
“We shall have to bag this all up and take it back to the embassy, I suppose.” She pauses. “Tell me: how many followed us on the way here?”
Sigrud holds up two fingers.
“Professionals?”
“Doubt it.”
“Did Nidayin or Pitry see them?”
Sigrud gives her a look: What do you think?
Shara smiles. “I told you. Stir up the hornets’ nest … But back to the matter at hand. What do you think?”
He sniffs and rubs his nose. “Well … Obviously someone was looking for something. But I think they did not find it.” Shara nods, pleased to see her own conclusions were correct. Sigrud’s one gray eye dances along the tides of paper. “If they were looking for one thing, and found it, they would have stopped. But I see no sign of stopping.”
“Good. I see the same.”
Which leaves the question—what were they looking for? The message in Pangyui’s tie? She isn’t yet sure, but more and more, Shara doubts if Pangyui was murdered simply for committing heresy in Bulikov.
Assume nothing, Shara reminds herself. You do not know until you know.
“All right,” says Shara. “Where?”
Sigrud sniffs again, shuffles through the paper to the desk, and uses his foot to clear away the floor on the side of the desk opposite from where the professor would normally work. A large, dark stain still lies on the stone floor. She has to get very near before she catches the coppery smell of old blood.
“So he wasn’t at his desk,” says Shara.
“I doubt it, yes.”
She wishes she knew where he lay when they found him, what was next to him, what was on his person. … There were notes in the police report, of course, but the police report did not mention Pangyui’s shredded clothing at all, so it’s not exactly trustworthy. She supposes she’ll have to work with what she has.
“If you could fetch me a bag for this paper, please,” she says softly.
Sigrud nods and stalks off down the hallway.
Shara surveys the room. She walks forward gingerly, and stoops and picks up a scrap of paper:
… but the contention is that the Kaj’s history as an unusually entitled Saypuri does not undermine his actions. His father was a collaborator with the Continent, yes, and we know nothing of his mother. We know the Kaj was a scholar and something of a scientist, performing experiments in his home, and though he did not lose any of his own in the massacre, he …
She picks up another.
… one wonders what the chamber of Olvos was used for in the original university, for it is suggested she disapproved of the actions of the Continent, and indeed the other Divinities. Considered a Divinity of hope, light, and resilience, Olvos’s withdrawal from the world in 775 at the onset of the Continental Golden Age was considered a great tragedy. Exactly why she withdrew was hotly debated: some texts surfaced claiming Olvos predicted nothing but woe for the path the other Divinities had chosen, yet many of these texts were quickly destroyed, probably by the other Divinities …
And another:
… by all indications, the Kaj’s time on Continental shores was spent very sparsely before he died of an infection in 1646. He slept, ate, and lived alone, and only spoke to give orders. Sagresha, his lieutenant, records in her letters, “It was as if he was so disappointed in the homelands of those who had conquered and ruled over his people for so long that it wounded him. Though he never said so, I could hear him thinking it: ‘Should not the land of the gods be fit for gods?’ ” Though of course
It is a small, dingy office, not at all befitting a man of Pangyui’s stature. There is a window, but it is of stained glass so dark it might as well be brick.
“We shall have to bag this all up and take it back to the embassy, I suppose.” She pauses. “Tell me: how many followed us on the way here?”
Sigrud holds up two fingers.
“Professionals?”
“Doubt it.”
“Did Nidayin or Pitry see them?”
Sigrud gives her a look: What do you think?
Shara smiles. “I told you. Stir up the hornets’ nest … But back to the matter at hand. What do you think?”
He sniffs and rubs his nose. “Well … Obviously someone was looking for something. But I think they did not find it.” Shara nods, pleased to see her own conclusions were correct. Sigrud’s one gray eye dances along the tides of paper. “If they were looking for one thing, and found it, they would have stopped. But I see no sign of stopping.”
“Good. I see the same.”
Which leaves the question—what were they looking for? The message in Pangyui’s tie? She isn’t yet sure, but more and more, Shara doubts if Pangyui was murdered simply for committing heresy in Bulikov.
Assume nothing, Shara reminds herself. You do not know until you know.
“All right,” says Shara. “Where?”
Sigrud sniffs again, shuffles through the paper to the desk, and uses his foot to clear away the floor on the side of the desk opposite from where the professor would normally work. A large, dark stain still lies on the stone floor. She has to get very near before she catches the coppery smell of old blood.
“So he wasn’t at his desk,” says Shara.
“I doubt it, yes.”
She wishes she knew where he lay when they found him, what was next to him, what was on his person. … There were notes in the police report, of course, but the police report did not mention Pangyui’s shredded clothing at all, so it’s not exactly trustworthy. She supposes she’ll have to work with what she has.
“If you could fetch me a bag for this paper, please,” she says softly.
Sigrud nods and stalks off down the hallway.
Shara surveys the room. She walks forward gingerly, and stoops and picks up a scrap of paper:
… but the contention is that the Kaj’s history as an unusually entitled Saypuri does not undermine his actions. His father was a collaborator with the Continent, yes, and we know nothing of his mother. We know the Kaj was a scholar and something of a scientist, performing experiments in his home, and though he did not lose any of his own in the massacre, he …
She picks up another.
… one wonders what the chamber of Olvos was used for in the original university, for it is suggested she disapproved of the actions of the Continent, and indeed the other Divinities. Considered a Divinity of hope, light, and resilience, Olvos’s withdrawal from the world in 775 at the onset of the Continental Golden Age was considered a great tragedy. Exactly why she withdrew was hotly debated: some texts surfaced claiming Olvos predicted nothing but woe for the path the other Divinities had chosen, yet many of these texts were quickly destroyed, probably by the other Divinities …
And another:
… by all indications, the Kaj’s time on Continental shores was spent very sparsely before he died of an infection in 1646. He slept, ate, and lived alone, and only spoke to give orders. Sagresha, his lieutenant, records in her letters, “It was as if he was so disappointed in the homelands of those who had conquered and ruled over his people for so long that it wounded him. Though he never said so, I could hear him thinking it: ‘Should not the land of the gods be fit for gods?’ ” Though of course
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