TUESDAY

I: The fanaarcensitii. You said he had fallen from a great height. Did anything you saw in the memory bulbs support that idea?

F: Instinct. I didn’t trust what I saw.

I: Why not?

F: Because I haven’t felt the same since I ate them. Because they were scenes out of a nightmare. I don’t know.

I: There’s one strange thing in all of this.

F: Just one?

I: A mention of a fortress. In a desert. Do you know the name of this place?

F: No.

I: I think you do.

F: I don’t even know if it was real or not.

I: Is this real?

[screams]

 

1

Woke to a weight on the bed next to him. Went rigid. Sucked in his breath. Reached for his gun. Then relaxed. Recognized the smell of her sweat, some subtle perfume behind it. Sintra Caraval. The woman who had been part of his life for the last two years. She smelled good.

He could feel her staring at the back of his head. Her breath on his back. He smiled. Didn’t open his eyes. She kissed his neck.

She was naked. Smooth, soft feel of her breasts against his shoulders. He was instantly hard. Opened his eyes. Turned over on his back. Sintra turned with him so she was nestled under his left arm. A surge of happiness startled him. Through the window: dim light creating shadows out of the darkness. Her brown skin somehow luminous against it. She’d told him she was half Nimblytod, half Dogghe. Tribes that had lived in Ambergris since before settlement. Before the gray caps.

Even in the darkness, Finch knew her face. Thick, expressive eyebrows. Green eyes. Full lips. A thin scar across the left cheek he’d never gotten her to talk about. A nose a little too long for her face, which gave her a questioning look.

An exotic lilt to the ends of her sentences as she whispered in his ear: “I let myself in. I wasn’t trying to startle you.”

He started to get up, to lock the door. She pushed him back down. “I locked the door behind me. No one else can get in.”

Finch stopped resisting her. The key was the greatest act of trust between them. Was that good or bad?

“Sintra,” he said sleepily, bringing his right arm around to cup one warm breast. “I could get used to you. I really could.” Not really listening to what he was saying. Still waking up. Reduced to the kind of meaningless words he’d mouthed at fifteen. Having sex in his room with the neighbor’s daughter while his father was out.

“You could get used to me?” she said.

When mock-angry with him, she raised her eyebrows in a way he loved.

“A bad joke,” he said. Hugged her closer. “I’m already used to you.” Kissed the top of her head. Relaxed against her, the shudder that had been building up overtaking him. Then gone.

Then, more awake: “Let’s escape. Tonight.”

He’d worked it out in his head hundreds of times. Along the shore of the HFZ at dusk.

A rowboat. Not a motorboat. To the end of the bay. Then either west to the Kalif’s empire or south to Stockton. West because it was easier to get through the security zones in the desert. He knew places there. Places his father had shown him on maps.

Escape. Now.

Imagined she was grimacing, there, in the dark. The way she always did when he mentioned it.

“Bad night?” she asked.

“Just don’t betray me,” the man said, and took Finch’s hand.

“Confusing night.”

“Tell me later.”

Then she was kissing him and he was kissing her. Tongue curled against tongue. The salt of her in his mouth. A hunger. A need. His hand between her muscular thighs. His cock in her hand. A pulse. A current that made him want to touch, to kiss, every part of her. Warmth and softness at his fingertips. Burning in her hand. An intake of breath. A little sighing cry. He turned and turned until he was above her, his forearms brushing her shoulders. Moaned as he slid into her and kept kissing her. Dissolving his poisoned thoughts. Not thinking at all. Becoming someone else.

She felt so good that he had to stop for a moment. Locked his elbows to hold himself up over her, looked into her eyes, her hands on his chest.

“I love your neck,” he said, and kissed it. “And your eyes.” Kissed her eyelids. He could see her better now, light colonizing shadows.

She wasn’t smiling back. Wasn’t responding.

“John,” she said, looking worried. “John, you’re crying blood.”

She wiped a too-dark tear away with her finger.

“Am I?” he said, trying to smile, and came with a long shuddering groan before the thought could hit him.

Occupational hazard.

---

Later. Lying in bed together. Feral pushing his head against a bedpost, already wanting breakfast. The blood tears had stopped almost as soon as they’d started. Remembered Wyte had told him it could be an after-effect of eating memory bulbs. It hadn’t hurt. It had just surprised him. He’d daubed his eyes clean with a bathroom towel. Had stared for a moment at the worn face of the stranger trapped in the cracked mirror.

A desert fortress. An army of silent gray caps. And Ethan Bliss, Frankwrithe & Lewden’s top man for so many years.

Pushed the thoughts aside. Sintra would have to leave soon. The place on the back of her neck where she liked to be kissed. Soft brown hairs. Crisp salt taste.

“How was your work yesterday?” he asked her, holding her tightly to him. Skin so warm against his body.

“The same as always.”

What did that mean?

“The same as always,” Finch echoed. “That’s good.”

“I guess,” she said. She sounded distracted.

Still didn’t know what Sintra did, or even where she lived. Remnants of the Dogghe and Nimblytod had carved out a defiant kingdom for themselves in the ruined Religious Quarter. But Sintra might not even think of herself as one of them, integrated into the city. He’d never asked. Sometimes he daydreamed of her being a rebel agent. Comforting. Utterly unreal. But that didn’t matter.

“I’m lonely. Even with you.”

“Someday, it will be different…”

That she preferred him not knowing hurt him. Even though he understood the sense of it. Even though they made a game out of it.

“Where do you work?”

“In the city.”

“And what do you do?”

“Answer questions. Apparently.”

He’d known everything about his past girlfriends. But even in their lovemaking Sintra seemed to change from week to week.

Exhausting. Exciting. Dangerous.

Still missed the normalcy of the one time she’d stayed long enough to make breakfast. A surreal, sublime morning. They’d met at a black market party the night before. Taken off his detective’s badge, gone as a civilian wanting some fun. Bumped into each other on the makeshift dance floor. In someone’s basement. Everyone there expecting the gray caps to blast up through the tiles and send them to the work camps.

“Your day wasn’t as good, I can tell,” she said now. Bringing him back.

“I have a difficult case.”

“How difficult?”

He sat on the chair and talked to me. The cat was as big as a pony and the lizard was as big as a cat. And me, I was as tiny as a reflection in Feral’s eye. A perverse nursery rhyme.

“Difficult enough. A gray cap cut in half. A dead man. In an apartment. But they seem to have fallen from the sky…”

Sintra sat up, looked at him. “Where were they found?”

Finch stared back at her. Surprised by her sudden interest. Sometimes he shared details as an act of faith. But not on something that might pull her down with him.

“Down by the bay,” he said. Waited.

Sintra considered him as he’d considered her. Then changed the subject. “Is that why you were crying? Because of what the memory bulbs showed you?”

“Yes.” Propped himself up on an elbow. Shuddered, winced. An aftershock? Pressure in his head. Like his brain had outgrown his skull.

Sintra hugged him. Kissed him. He laid his head against her chest. She scared him sometimes. Both from her presence and her absence.

“Maybe it was a bad reaction to a drug,” she said. “Maybe you inhaled a bad spore.”

Back before the Rising, Sintra said she had been a doctor’s aide.

“Unlikely.” He and his fellow detectives got fed antidotes every few months. One perk of working for the gray caps. He stole extras for Sintra and Rathven. Sintra always took them with her. Never used them in the apartment.

“But it’s over now.”

“Yes. It’s over.”

He broke off the embrace. Feral was cleaning himself in a shaft of light by the window. Sidle was motionless on the windowsill. Drunk on the new sun.

Sintra wrapped the sheets around her and stood up, walked toward the window. Leaving Finch naked and exposed on the bed. Watching her as he put his underwear back on. Remembering the first time they had made love. How he’d checked the sheets, the pillows after she’d left. Wanting to breathe in more of the smell of her. How there had seemed to be no trace of their sex. Only his memory of the act. As if he had entered a ghost.

She turned to stare at him, framed by the window.

“I’ll come back in a night or two,” Sintra said. “That’s not long.”

“No, it’s not long,” Finch said. Thinking of the station. The other detectives. Work fatigue washed over him.

Memory holes and Wyte and Heretic and wanting to scream, to just start shooting.

“Maybe I’ll even spend the night. If I can,” she said. A curious look on her face, like she was testing him. She held her hands behind her back, one leg slightly bent, her body bronzed and perfect to him. “What do you think of that?”

Must have been obvious what he thought, because she couldn’t take the weight of his gaze. Looked away. Leaned down to pick up her knapsack, retrieve her clothes.

Not that he doubted she felt the same. He knew why she kept her distance. The same reason he did.

Except, it’s not working for me.

A long kiss. A final hug.

And she was gone.

All he could feel was the ache in his thighs. The damp spot on the front of his underwear, colder now than before.

---

Just once, Sintra left something behind. Finch keeps it hidden in a desk drawer. No reason for him to keep it. But no reason to get rid of it.

Written in longhand, Sintra’s concise notes are about mushrooms, which no longer come with any field guide. Ignorance can lead to death, even though since the Rising the gray caps have kept the streets clear. Personal curiosity? Something to do with the black market? Has she helped someone she shouldn’t help? Given aid to some group the gray caps are hunting down?

Does it make her a spy to have this information, or just pragmatic? Does it make him complicit to keep it, or just sentimental?

This incomplete list doesn’t include fungal weapons. These mushrooms all perform certain tasks or “work” within the city. If any have a secondary or tertiary purpose it is unknown at this time.

(1) Tiny white mushrooms almost like star-shaped flowers—found most often around surfaces where dead bodies have recently lain or where some conflict has occurred. Like the chalk outlines used by detectives pre-Rising to mark bodies? Warnings, or…?

(2) Green “spear” mushrooms with sharp, narrow hoods and long, slender stems—four or five will be found around a building targeted for transformation. Three days after the appearance of these green spear mushrooms, the building in question will begin to look moist or spongy, due to infiltration from below. By the fourth or fifth day, it will begin to crumble. By the sixth day, the building has blown away in the wind. On the seventh day, a new structure has usually blossomed, overnight. This new structure may take any of a number of forms, all fungal-based.

(3) Red “tree” mushrooms with huge caps and strong, thick “trunks” or stems—these can grow up to eighty feet high and are much more resistant to storms and high winds than other kinds of mushrooms. They appear to have a filtration system that gives them stability by letting air pass through millions of “pores.” In a sense, they float. An examination of distribution patterns from any height reveals that they have been “planted” in regular patterns forming rough “spokes” radiating out from the bay, interrupted only by the HFZ and the Religious Quarter. They regularly expel from their gills a smaller, purple mushroom with a strong euphoric effect and high levels of digestible protein.

(4) Purple “drug” mushrooms with ball caps and almost no stems—dispensed from the red “tree” mushrooms, these purple mushrooms are clearly meant to serve as “crowd control” by giving the people of the city sustenance and making them dependent. These mushrooms create a strong addiction by affecting the pleasure centers of the brain. They also create hallucinations intended to pacify, most drawn from happy memories.

Definitely her handwriting. She’s slipped more than one message under his door while he’s out. Tells himself: I’ll throw it away when I know more about her. But nine months have passed since he found the note. She hasn’t told him anything more than what he knew before.

Yet caution loses out when she walks through the door. Remembering how, on days when he’s expecting her and she’s late, the fear creeps aching into his muscles. Finds himself gulping air like water. Thick and heavy. Lost. Never lost.

2

After Sintra had left, Finch fed the cat, grabbed a quick bite, and cleaned off with a couple of pails of once-used bathwater. Fresh shirt, same pants, same jacket. Kicked Feral out to explore on his own while he went down the stairs to the courtyard, then the basement.

Rath’s pale, angular face peered out from behind the door. Evaluating him. Looking for something.

She let Finch in without a word. Through a hallway brightened by walls painted light green. Probably to conceal rot. Then into a larger area with a few chairs, her strange library to either side. Beyond, where Finch had never gone: the start of entropy. The bruises of gray and blue stains spread across the ceiling. Disappeared into the darkness of a tunnel.

“Nothing new, I see,” Finch said.

Rath laughed. “Not that you’d notice.”

Finch brushed by her to sit in an armchair on a blue throw rug. Rising above him, water-damaged paperbacks and hardcovers had been stacked unevenly on warped shelves. The shelves perched on stilts to fend off any sudden rise in the water level. The weighted smell of moisture seemed both fresh and claustrophobic.

“Coffee?” she asked. The usual.

Hesitated, said, “No. Tea, please.” Didn’t know why.

Rath disappeared into the tunnel. Did she have a kitchen back there? Maybe a bedroom. Maybe more books. A whole troupe of clowns. The thought made him smile.

Stray pages saved from long-drowned books caught his attention as he waited for her. Red eye peering from monstrous face. Lines of scrawl in an unknown language. Diagrams of buildings or plants or motored vehicles. A black-and-white photograph of a gaunt five-year-old girl in a ragged dress standing in the muddy track of a tank.

Truff knew who had lived here before, collected the books originally. Or how long it had taken Rath to organize it all. Or how much she had added to it, scavenging across the city. The collection was an ever-changing scene of preservation and dissolution. So many things saved only to be destroyed by time. Always with the water gurgling its way along the floor. Sometimes fish would get trapped, their fins brushing against pipes or grillwork and making a sound like quills over skulls.

She came out with a teapot and two cups on a tray. Set it down on the table between them. Poured him a cup.

“You sure you want this?” she asked. Skeptical.

“Yes.” Took the tea gladly. His head still hurt. The tea tasted different. Better. Drove out the lingering taste of the memory bulb.

“I haven’t looked at the lists,” she said, sitting opposite him in a low wooden chair with a green blanket atop it.

“Didn’t expect you to yet,” Finch replied. “What about the symbol?”

“Now, that I did get around to,” she said. “If only because it was easy.”

“I’ve seen it, I’ve just never known what it meant.”

“You’re not alone. We know more about what the symbol is associated with than what it means.”

A broken version was scrawled by the gray caps as a warning, Rathven told him. At the beginning of the city’s history, when the gray caps sent back the eyes of Ambergris’s founder, the whaling captain John Manzikert, on the old altar now drowned by the bay. Manzikert, who had slaughtered so many gray caps and driven them underground.

“It looked like this,” she said, drawing it for him:

It had figured prominently in the recovered journals of the monk Samuel Tonsure, Manzikert’s fellow traveler underground. Had appeared in unbroken forms at various times since, at crucial moments in history.

“Give me an example,” Finch said.

“The Silence,” Rathven said. “That symbol, according to the accounts I have, appeared everywhere, all across the city.”

Finch gave her a sharp look. “I never heard that.” But an intense feeling overtook him, telling him that he had known. Just forgotten.

Rathven shrugged. “I’m just telling you what’s in the histories. Half the books down here mention the Silence, so it’s not hard to track down.”

The Silence. Seven hundred years ago, twenty-five thousand people had vanished from the city. The only survivors had been aboard the ruler’s vast fleet of fishing ships, fifty miles downriver at the time. Many a horror story had been written about the Silence. It had shaped Ambergrisian life ever since. Especially attitudes toward the gray caps. Everyone had believed the gray caps had done it. When they’d Risen, some people said it was because of Manzikert’s genocide against them, and because of something they hadn’t finished during the Silence. Revenge, after waiting patiently for centuries. Of course, who could confirm that? The gray caps said less now that they were aboveground than when they’d been below.

“A broken symbol means a broken pact, some believe,” Rathven said.

“I found it on the back of a scrap of paper used to scribble a note. Torn from a book. It probably isn’t connected to the case.” Wanted to move on for reasons he couldn’t identify.

“Probably.” In a tone that said, Why waste my time asking me to research it then?

Took the photo out of his pocket. “I want you to have this while you research the list.”

Rathven took it. Winced.

“What?”

“He’s dead, Finch.”

“Of course he’s dead. It’s the murder case. I need to know who he is. It’s very strange. I can’t get my head around it. I need your help.”

And there’s no one in the station I trust to thoroughly check out that list.

“Are you sure you want to tell me more?” Rathven said.

People came to Rathven who the gray caps would count as enemies. Seeking information from her library. Information from her. Finch turned a blind eye. But someday somebody was going to test Rath’s neutrality, her ability to put it all in a locked box.

A sound distracted him. A sudden retreat of water somewhere in the darkness behind him. He’d seen fish “walk” up out of that darkness. Watched them gasping as they tried to be something other than fish. Once, Finch had heard a splashing like oars, from deep in the tunnel. Had asked Rath, half serious, “Is there something you want to tell me?” She’d ignored him.

Finch put down his tea. Leaned back in the chair. Do I trust Rathven more or less than Sintra?

“A dead man and a dead gray cap. In the same apartment. The gray cap is just a torso with arms and a head. No blood. True, it’s a gray cap. But maybe they weren’t even murdered. Maybe murdered, but not in the apartment. I didn’t get much out of the memory bulbs.” Not much I can share.

It felt good to talk. Drew the tension out of him. Got rid of a strange echo in his head.

Rathven nodded, looking serious. “Didn’t get much? So you got something.” She waited, expectant.

“I haven’t given you enough?” he asked with mock shock. “No. That’s not all. They seem to have fallen from a great height. Maybe from the walls of a desert fortress. I have to file a report today.”

Do I sound crazy?

“What other clues?” Rathven asked.

Suddenly irritable: “Jumbled memories. Including a conversation with the dead man. Must have imagined that.”

“What?”

“Just what I said! Are you deaf?” The man laughed again. Blindingly, unbelievably bright, a light like the sun shot through the window. The night sky torn apart by it.

Realized he’d shouted at her. “Sorry.”

Rath gave him a look he could not interpret. “You’re not the same today,” she said.

“Do you think I can do what I do and not be changed?” Spitting out the words. “Take memory bulbs? Work in the station?”

“I don’t care,” Rathven said. “If you change too much, I won’t let you back in here.” An intensity behind her gaze. Seeing someone or something other than Finch. Couldn’t even imagine …

“Sorry,” Finch said. The words took an effort. Gritted his teeth. Said it again. Fuck!

Rathven looked down. Took a sip of tea. Said, “So the dead man was talking to you?”

Fair enough. Move on. Realized that he needed to take more care with her. She’s not one of the detectives at the station.

“It must have been,” he said. “Imaginary, I mean.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else. Just the piece of paper that symbol was on the back of. Some words. Never Lost. And then bellum omnium contra omnes. Ever heard those words before?”

“No,” she said. Still, Finch sensed interest.

“You don’t know what it means?”

“How would I know what it means if I’ve never heard it before?”

Couldn’t bring himself to say “sorry” again, so he said nothing. “Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Bellum omnium contra omnes.” Rathven said it like an echo from another world. As if it had no meaning at all.

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, does it matter what it means? Why did he have words on a scrap of paper when he died? Pretend for a second that it’s any word. Any word you know: city, cow, apartment, saucepan, book, paragraph.”

“A code? A password?” Felt foolish for not seeing it before. “Might not mean anything at all.”

She pointed at him. “And that’s what makes it valuable.”

“But why? Why have part of it in gibberish?”

She shrugged, gave him an impish look. “I’m not the detective.”

I’m not a detective either.

“We should be detectives together.” Relaxing into their time-worn call and response.

---

“They’re here and then they’re there, and sometimes they don’t know the difference, and if you let them, they’ll keep making that the whole point of everything they’re doing to the city. They’ll break you down by not telling you what you already know, should already know, because that’s the way they operate. Knowledge is the lack they seek in us, and when they find it, they turn the key, open a window, and it’s all back to where we started.”

Finch endured the rant from the madman outside the hotel, then made his way back to the station.

The suspect from yesterday wasn’t in the cage. Instead, an old woman with light blue eyes staring from a face crisscrossed with wrinkles. As if from behind a fence of her own making. She could’ve been a thousand miles away for all the help Finch could give her. Ignored her as a casualty. Ignored Albin quietly feeding her questions like he was at a zoo. Continued on to his desk.

More of the same from the detectives around him. Indifference, absence, fear, boredom. Blakely and Gustat as always inseparable, whether in agreement or argument. Skinner out on a call, about to tell a man his missing wife was probably dead. Dapple drawing something on a piece of paper. Lost in another world.

Wyte had turned away from him for once and was hunched over as if Finch were trying to cheat from him on a test. He looked bulky, blotchy.

Finch leaned over. “Don’t let your pencil burn up.”

Wyte grimaced, said, “I’m busy, Finchy. Really. I am.” And kept writing. It looked incomprehensible to Finch.

“Last will and testament?” Wished he hadn’t said it.

“Shut up, Finchy,” Wyte said. Still scribbling.

“I’m not pathologically reporting on evidence I haven’t gathered yet,” Finch said, “and they haven’t come to cart me away.”

“You’re just lucky,” Wyte mumbled.

A light green stain began to spread across the back of Wyte’s blue shirt.

Finch cleared space on his desk. Brought the typewriter over. One of the best models Hoegbotton had ever made. A hulking twenty-pound monster that reminded Finch of just what Ambergris could accomplish back in the day. Hundreds of thousands had been shipped out to cities up and down the River Moth. “Combat-ready” went the slogan, and it wasn’t a joke.

Looked at his notes. Didn’t want to tell Heretic about everything he’d found. Not until he knew more about what the words meant. Discounted the symbol entirely. Even though it had burned its way into his head. “Focus on what you can control. The rest is just distraction.” Something his father used to say.

What could he report that was solid? A few moments gazing into space. Then he started to type. Stopped when he got to a part that bothered him.

Both memories contained images of a desert fortress. Both memories contained images of falling.

From a great height? Maybe.

Finch took a sip of his coffee. He’d washed the cup beforehand to make sure no fungus, visible or invisible, had taken root. Sometimes the gray caps did strange things with the mugs during the night.

Both memories contained images from the HFZ.

I think. How would I know, never having been there?

From analyzing

“My memory of…”

both memories it seems certain that the gray cap

Fanaarcessitti? Fanarcesittee? Always typos in these reports.

that the fannarcessitti was in pursuit of the man. But I don’t know why.

Then Sintra was kissing him and he was kissing her. Tongue curled against tongue. The salt of her in his mouth. His hand between her muscular thighs. A hunger. A need. Something that didn’t exist outside the sanctuary of his apartment.

Recognized the strength of that need, the danger of it, on the way to the station.

He exhaled sharply. That way lies madness.

More to the point, he shouldn’t even have been on this case. Not many people made the distinction between what detectives did and what Partials or gray caps did. Never do police work anywhere near your own area. Never let the people where you lived know your job. And yet, 239 Manzikert Avenue was only a mile from the hotel. Why had Heretic put him in charge? Didn’t trust Wyte anymore? Or was there some other reason? Leaned forward in his chair. Had to make some progress. Just dive into it.

The man’s memories had more coherence than the fannarcessitti’s memories. I could not tell if this was because the fanarcesitti’s mind had been more confused and disjointed at the time of death or because, as a human, I could more easily read the man’s memories.

Nothing during the experience brought me any closer to knowing the identity of the man.

I wish the memory bulbs had been more useful.

But he had seen one person he recognized. He leaned back and thought about Ethan Bliss. What he knew. What he didn’t know.

First, the impersonal. Bliss had fought for Frankwrithe & Lewden during the War of the Houses. Behind the scenes. No one seemed to know for sure what he did for F&L. Secret ops? Bliss had joined the political wing. Risen quickly to become F&L’s number one man in Ambergris. Had been instrumental in forging the alliance between the F&L and the Lady in Blue. Then, right before the gray caps took over, he dropped out of sight. Probably returned to his native Morrow, only to reappear a couple of years ago. Because of how Morrow had suffered from the gray caps having cut off the flow of water? Ships suddenly resting on a dry riverbed. Trade disrupted. Drinking water scarce.

This new Bliss had reverted to spying. Had connections to the Spit. But hadn’t made common cause with the rebels, according to Finch’s informants.

Although, when you paid informants in food and clothing, how valuable could your information be? More valuable? Less?

All of this made Bliss of special interest to any detective who hated foreigners messing around in Ambergris business. Finch could’ve used Bliss as a snitch, perhaps, but hadn’t. He was wary of who Bliss might be working for now. If he worked for anyone other than himself.

Second, the personal. Bliss had been at his father’s house a couple of times when Finch was maybe twelve, thirteen. He could recall looking through the kitchen window to see Bliss and his father in the garden. The smaller man compact, unmoving. His father unruly, animated, throwing his arms about, pointing at Bliss and demanding something. And yet, seeing the two figures there like that, Bliss had seemed in his silence and self-possession to be the one in charge.

Thought, too, that Bliss might’ve been in one of the photographs he’d burned before becoming Finch. But Bliss was one of many visitors. During the few peaceful years, there had been lots of parties at their house, with people from both sides.

Finch had seen Bliss give speeches, too. One, in front of the Voss Bender Memorial Opera House, to a crowd of almost ten thousand. He’d looked striking in an evening coat and tails. A chestful of honorary medals that made you notice the glitter more than the man. Urging cooperation and common cause in that silky voice when, just a year or two before, behind the scenes, he’d caused House Hoegbotton so much grief. Bombings. House-to-house battles to clear insurgents. Fighting in narrow streets where tanks were no help, but where F&L fungal bullets worked just fine.

Third, whatever the gray caps knew about Bliss, if they knew about Bliss. Finch couldn’t remember pulling the file on him. He’d have to put in a request. Which he hated doing. Couldn’t know what Heretic would “request” in return.

Took out the form anyway. Wrote in what he needed. Under “subject,” he filled in Ethan Bliss’s name and a few others. For cover. If Finch put in his report that he’d seen Bliss in the dead man’s memories, Bliss was as good as dead. Or would want to be. And Finch couldn’t be sure what it all meant until he questioned Bliss. Which wouldn’t happen if Heretic got hold of him first.

Why the hell was Ethan Bliss in the memories of the dead man? Typed:

Perhaps a fannarcesitti would be more useful in reading the man’s memories?

What would a gray cap see? Baiting Heretic gave Finch a grim satisfaction. Gray caps hated eating human memories. Almost as if there were a taste, a smell, that repulsed them. Finch couldn’t recall Heretic ever eating one. Could human memories harm a gray cap?

It is not entirely clear that these deaths are murders, rather than accidental. The two may have died somewhere else and been brought to the apartment. Residents of the apartment building have no additional information. Rumors that two people lived in apartment 525 cannot be confirmed.

Just covering himself in case whatever game the Partial was playing went south. Yet, stubbornly, couldn’t bring himself to mention the scrap of paper. Despite the fact the Partial knew about it. Had the Partial told Heretic? Maybe. Maybe not.

Finch pushed his chair away from the typewriter, hands behind his head. The report made no sense. Composed of smoke and shadows. Doubted Heretic would find it convincing. What did it mean that the dead man had spoken to him? Another thing he hadn’t put in the report. Some instinct had warned him against it.

Ripped the paper out of the typewriter carriage. A mechanical tearing sound loud enough to make all the other detectives turn toward him in one motion that seemed choreographed.

What the hell are you looking at?

Realized he’d said it out loud.

Jammed his report into a pod, along with the request for files. Shoved that down the memory hole gullet. Choke on it.

A minute later: a sound coming from the damn thing. Incoming.

The pod. The tendrils. Hammer. Egg. Extraction. A message from Heretic.

STAY LATE TONIGHT TO MEET

“Fuck,” Finch said.

“Is it bad?” Wyte asked.

“Why do you always ask that question?”

“Why is the answer always yes.”

“Then you shouldn’t ask it.”

Staying late always unnerved him.

Have to get out of here.

“Come on,” he said to Wyte. It would do Wyte some good, too. “We’re going to go talk to Ethan Bliss.”

If they could find him.

---

On a table near the desk in his apartment, Finch has a map of Ambergris from before the Rising. It covers the whole table, renders the city in perfect detail. He has no idea what it’s made of. Never tears. Never wrinkles. His father had given it to him when he was thirteen. “You’ll never need another.” Made a mark on it with a green pen every time he sent his son on an errand to a new location. Insisted Finch take the map with him everywhere. Even though it was heavy. Even if Finch had been to a place before. “The streets are shifty. I want to make sure you don’t get lost.”

The errands? Collect letters. Drop off packages. Say a single word or phrase. “Shipping lanes.” “The weather is too cold for this time of year.” “Mr. Green says you are a lucky man.” Never to the same people. Old, young, male, female, each one with secrets behind their eyes. He played it like a game. Delighted in the mystery of not really knowing the rules. Then he’d return, a human homing pigeon, to their house.

“Official business,” his father said. He held an important position for H&S because he was a war hero. Anyone could tell that from all the photographs of him fighting against the Kalif, and from the people who came over to visit. Some of them wearing funny hats and uniforms.

But by the time Finch was seventeen, his father had stopped sending him on these errands. He’d felt discarded. Hadn’t understood then that his father had turned to others when Finch began to ask questions. When he began to have a sense of the secrecy behind his missions. A tallish, dark-haired, serious boy with few close friends his age, taught at home by his father. Those journeys across the city had meant a lot to him.

But he’d kept the map, used it for his new job, which his father had gotten for him. Courier for Hoegbotton business interests. Running invoices and shipping inventories between the main offices and the warehouses at the docks. Sometimes, if the conflict heated up, if F&L cut off certain roads, he had to find alternate routes.

Trade “has to keep on an even keel, no matter what,” his boss Wyte liked to say. Wyte, seven years his senior, with an office in the brick building on Albumuth they’d both work at after the Rising. Even then Wyte had seemed too large for the world around him. Desk too small. Him too clumsy. But to Finch he’d been the height of authority.

The map shows that brick building, with a green mark by it. It also has detailed views of the Bureaucratic Quarter, the Religious Quarter, and what had unofficially been known as the Merchant Quarter before the wars. Albumuth Boulevard, the great snake wending its way through almost every part of the city. The valley that had been the home of so many citizens. The docks. The swampland to the north.

A view of Ambergris that had remained essentially unchanged for centuries. Had survived early incursions by the Kalif, the cavalry charges of Morrow back when it had a king instead of the F&L. Had even survived the Silence.

But could not survive the Rising.

The gray caps have a kind of see-through paper. A slight greenish tint, barely noticeable. It feels light as a leaf, but is very strong. Finch has stolen two sheets of it, taped them together to form an overlay to his old map. On this overlay he charts the changes he has observed, using a dark pencil that he can erase at will.

In the evenings, when too restless to sleep but too tired to read, Finch will turn on the light in the study. Or use a lantern if the electricity is out. Review the overlay. Search for what he knows has been made different again. Then render a section bare with handkerchief and water. Build it up again, redraw it all. A change in the lip of the bay. Or in the HFZ. A row of houses that has burned down. A drug mushroom that erupted from the pavement. A new gray cap house or cathedral.

Lately, he has been charting the retreat of the water. Right after the Rising, the canals from the bay into Ambergris had been like the fat fingers of a grasping hand. Now they are withered, the “thumb” almost dry, the others shriveling. Like his father’s blue-veined hands in the clinic near the end. A disease he’d picked up early in life, fighting the Kalif. It got into his lungs first, and spread. No cure except death.

Remapping takes the kind of concentration that empties out the mind. In the old house, before they became vagabonds together, his father had created something similar in his locked study. Much bigger, with even more detail, laid out across a huge table fit for a banquet. Color-coded to show Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe territories within the city. Green and red. Along with blue for those narrow reefs of neutrality. Over time, his father would chart weapons depots on that map. Troop concentrations. Hidden storehouses. Usually Hoegbotton but some Frankwrithe positions, too. His father’s overlay was actually a black sheet that perfectly hid the map. And a tablecloth over top of that.

How many guests invited into that place had been served drinks on that table, never realizing what was hidden beneath?

At seventeen, mad at his father for no longer using him as a courier, Finch had stolen the key. Started sneaking into the study when his father was out. Found the map. He used to stand there, it naked before him, and memorize the progress of the war in his head. It looked like lively abstract art. Symbols in search of context.

Finch doesn’t draw directly on the old map because he doesn’t want to forget the past. Hopes that one day that lost world will return. The overlay is only temporary, he keeps telling himself. Even as the changes become more and more permanent.

His map is a crude facsimile of the original. He has only the dark pencil to record the changes. Nor can his map chart the changes in the people around him. Or tell him what to do next.

One day, his father surprised him in the study. He stood at the door with a guarded look on his face. Finch stared back, frozen. There seemed to be nothing he could say. His father walked up. Put the black sheet over the map. Replaced the tablecloth. Muttered, “This didn’t happen.” Took the key from him. Escorted him out.

They never talked about it again. But in that moment of shock, when Finch heard the door open, it burned his father’s map into his head. Every detail. Every nuance. And even now, looking at his own map, the overlay, he sees it. Sees that room.

Knows every inch of Ambergris. Even the parts he hasn’t yet visited. Even the parts still changing.

3

Tracking down Bliss took three tries. Wyte had an address for a townhouse Bliss sometimes used for meetings, in an old Hoegbotton stronghold southeast of Albumuth. Finch could still see the slashes of faded paint on the pavement, left by groups of Irregulars. Who knew how old the marks were? A code that told a secret history of the city. Gray cap passed by here Tuesday … Food and ammo in the second house on the left … Stay clear of this intersection after dark.

They found the house on a street that had once been part of a wealthy district. Trees lined the sidewalk, but not a leaf on them. Gravel where grass had been. Silence all around. The houses to either side derelict husks. A burned corpse with no arms right on the steps. Which should’ve told them Bliss wasn’t there. Flies had settled on the torn-up face like a congregation. A slender whiteness had begun to push up through the black. Stalks of fruiting bodies. Rising. In another twenty hours, nothing would be left.

“Nothing inside,” Finch said, coming back out.

“Let’s visit Stanton,” Wyte said.

---

Stanton, one of Wyte’s druggie snitches, lived a few blocks down. Behind Stanton, Finch saw a tarp draped over a soot-gray alley mouth. A bundle of his possessions to one side. A crumbling brick he used to protect himself at night. Before the Rising, Stanton had been a banker. Or, at least, that’s what he’d told Wyte. Probably an addict then, too.

Wyte always kept a few extra purple mushrooms in his overcoat pockets. Stanton, in a kind of makeshift robe, clung to Wyte like he was the drug. Wyte a plank of wood in the River Moth and Stanton trying to stop from drowning. Except all he ever did was drown.

“Where’d Bliss go?” Wyte asked Stanton.

The thirty-year-old Stanton lifted his gaunt, balding head. Red-eyed, wrinkled face. “Down by the abandoned train station. Four streets over. Corner of Sporn and Trillian. He was just there yesterday.”

Wyte put three purple mushrooms in Stanton’s hand. Stanton received them like they were worth more than one day’s relief. The huge red mushrooms that dispensed the drugs stuck to a strict schedule. Monday and Friday. Stanton had already gone through what he’d gathered the day before. Finch didn’t think he’d last another month.

When they left Stanton, he was trembling under his pathetic shelter. Eyes wide open and dilated. Gone someplace better. Someplace temporary.

---

The train station was empty. But way in the back, under the shadowed arches populated by pigeons and bats, they found a gambling pit. Almost a grotto, for all the fungus surrounding it. Fuzzy clumps of muted gold and green hid the entrance. Cockfighting. Card games. Betting black market goods.

Not much of a conversation. Wyte stuck his gun up against the lookout’s cheek. Convinced her it would be better just to lead them in. The hardened men and women they surprised, lantern-lit and reaching for knives or guns, thought better of it, too. But they had a hard time restraining the roosters. One fire-red, the other a muted orange. Razor talons moving like pistons.

A heavily muscled man in his twenties who had done some piecework for Bliss gave him up, quick. Called Bliss a slang word for foreign. Even though the muscled man looked foreign himself. Seemed to dare any of the others to argue with him. They didn’t.

Wyte and Finch receded into the gloom. Shoved the lookout inside. Barricaded the door from the outside with a couple of heavy rusted barrels. Hoped there wasn’t a second entrance. But knew there always was. Got the hell out before anyone could start thinking about an ambush.

“Fuck, but I hate this job!” Wyte exclaimed, as their boots kicked up water pooling between rows of bolted-down chairs alongside the abandoned track.

Said he hated it, but looked a lot happier than at the station.

---

The address turned out to be a modest-looking two-story apartment building west of the Religious Quarter. Shoved up against more of the same, with the billowing dome of the northernmost camp beyond.

Finch recognized it as a former Frankwrithe & Lewden neighborhood. It had retained some sense of order. Of discipline. A few men with red armbands stood on the sidewalk like guards. While people traded goods.

Finch was nervous. Always worried when they went to F&L places that someone would tag him as an ex-Hoegbotton Irregular. Maybe want to put a bullet through his brain. He would’ve liked to have told the detectives in this sector what they were doing, but the gray caps frowned on cooperation. They liked to keep the stations as separate as possible. Make themselves the conduit.

It began to drizzle. Had been damp and warm all day. A mist gathered around Finch. Moistened his hair, his face. Green sweat had darkened the armpits of Wyte’s shirt and now leaked through his overcoat.

Would Wyte hold up? Truff, please let him hold up.

Inside. Down the hall. Gun drawn. Leaking.

Wyte always went first now. He’d accepted that role voluntarily. It only made sense.

At the green-gold-purple splotched door of Bliss’s apartment on the first floor, Wyte signaled his intent. The door didn’t look that strong. Wyte would batter it down. Finch would storm through behind him.

A strange mewling whine came from inside. Just strange enough to make Finch shiver.

Finch mimed, Wait.

Took out his handkerchief, turned the knob.

The door opened.

Wyte was through before Finch could stop him, yelling, “Detectives! Hands up! Weapons down!”

Finch followed. Heart like a hammer. Gun squirting out a little between his hands in his hard double grip.

The first four rooms: empty, trashed. Someone had destroyed or ransacked everything. Tables, couches overturned. Books shredded. Torn pages everywhere. A smell of shit or rot or both. And blood. Lots of blood. Sprayed. Pooling. But no bodies. From the looks of the furniture, the arrangement had always been meant to be temporary. Or at least, it was now.

In the back bedroom they found the source of the mewling.

“Oh fuck,” said Finch.

“Is that him?” Wyte asked.

“Yes.”

Ethan Bliss had been nailed alive against the far wall, above a bed. His face was crusted with blood. White shirt red. Blood welling from his punctured extremities. His hands and feet still twitching as he tried to pull free of the green nails that looked like hard mushrooms. Whimpering and looking down at them through eyes crusted by something purple and brittle.

The eyes through the crust registered Finch, Wyte. A bright red mushroom had been rammed into his mouth. But he’d managed to get most of it out.

In a muffled roar: “Don’t just stand there like a couple of fucking idiots. Get me down!”

Bliss began to weep.

---

Finch held Bliss while Wyte worked at the hands and feet. Too close. Sweat. Funk. Some underlying sweetness that was worse. For a sixty-year-old man, Bliss was wiry and muscular. Odd. To be here with someone who had been so well-known. Nailed to a wall. Blood all over the place. Would’ve been a scandal before the Rising. Now it was just another day on the job.

It took ten minutes to get him down. They tried to wipe the crust from his eyes. Managed to smear his face with green residue from his wounds. Looked like pollen dusted over the blood.

Wyte muttered, “Should we take him back to the station?”

Finch shook his head. “No. Let’s do it here.”

They took him to the couch in the living room. Pulled the couch upright. Wyte pushed the glass off it using his sleeve. Finch found towels in the kitchen, brought them back and offered them to Bliss.

Bliss angrily waved Finch off.

“No, not yet,” he said.

“For Truff’s sake, aren’t you glad to be alive?” Wyte said.

Finch gave Wyte a hard look. “He’s probably in shock.”

“Shock’s overrated,” Bliss said. “Hand me that red mushroom. The one they stuffed in my mouth.”

It had fallen onto the bed. Finch went back and got it. Wondering if Bliss would recognize him. Probably not. Finch had changed his appearance completely, and Bliss had last seen him about twenty years ago.

Bliss smeared the remains of the fungus, soft cheese consistency, all over his hands and feet. Glistening. Already he had stopped bleeding.

“Now the towels,” he said, taking them from Finch. He glared at Wyte, then Finch. “Who are you anyway? How did you find me? What do you want?” Even in anger, he had a youthful face. One of those faces that got more rigid as it aged. But you could still see the boyish features under the wrinkles. Under the neatly trimmed mustache.

Finch stood in front of Bliss. Wyte to the side, tapping his foot. Restless. Disturbed by something.

“I’m Finch. This is Wyte.” Finch showed Bliss his badge. “You don’t look happy. Should we put you back up there?”

“I wasn’t dying,” Bliss snapped. “Someone would have come along.” Emphasis on someone made Finch think Bliss knew exactly who.

Bliss at the old desert fortress, turning slowly at his approach. A sound of metal locking into place. A kind of mirror. An eye. Then a circle of stone, a door, covered with gray cap symbols.

“Who did this, Bliss?” Wyte asked, kicking a broken chair out of the way. “Whose blood is all over the floor? Who’d you piss off?”

Bliss appeared not to hear this question. He stared instead at Finch. Measuring him. Like a light had clicked on behind his eyes. That weathered face had hardened remarkably, even as it managed a good imitation of a smile. Said to Finch, “You look familiar to me, Detective. Do I know you? You obviously know me.”

Wyte barged in, to Finch’s relief: “Shut up. We’re asking the questions.”

Bliss registered Wyte as if for the first time. Said in a smooth voice that drove in the barb. “Why don’t you find who did that to you, instead of wasting your time with me?”

“I said, shut up!” Wyte slapped Bliss across the cheek. Hard.

Finch had never seen Wyte hit a suspect who hadn’t tried to hit him first.

Bliss took it quietly. Cursed. Put a hand to the mark. Like it had happened before. Or like pain was just an inconvenience to him. “What do you think happened, Detective? They surprised us, lit us up, and didn’t leave much behind. Ten of my best men.”

Finch, supporting Wyte: “Answer the question, Bliss. Who did this to you?”

An exasperated sigh that seemed to signal a decision.

“A new man, from the Spit. He asked a lot of questions about gray caps. About the towers.”

“What’s his name?”

“He kept telling it to me over and over so I wouldn’t forget. Even while they butchered my men. Stark.”

“Just Stark? What’s his full name?”

Wyte broke in. “I know about Stark. He’s only been here eight weeks. He’s from Stockton. New blood. He’s been liquidating the opposition the past few weeks.” Wyte was the station’s Stockton expert. Ran a few snitches in that organization.

“And we’ve been letting him?”

Wyte shrugged. “Makes our job easier, doesn’t it?”

Finch gave him a look that said we’ll talk more about this later. Found it odd that Wyte knew something he didn’t.

He turned to Bliss. “Why the hell did he leave you alive?”

Bliss shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to send a message.”

I don’t believe you.

“What kind of message? To who?” Wyte asked.

Silence.

“Take a guess about what he wanted, Bliss,” Finch said.

“Part of what he wanted to do was to hurt me. He enjoyed that a little too much. I think he would have done it even if he hadn’t wanted information.”

“Anyone with him?”

“Just his god-awful muscle. His second-in-command goes by the name of Bosun, like on a ship. He’s built like a kind of wiry circus strongman with a bullet-bald head. Once you see him, you recognize him forever. He’s the one who lifted me to the wall with one hand and drove the nails in with the other while Stark watched. All this before they asked me any questions.”

“What questions, Bliss?” Wyte asked.

No response.

Finch showed Bliss the photograph of the dead man. “Do you know him?”

Bliss stiffened, glanced up at Finch. “Again, it would be nice to know why you’re here?”

“Look at the photo, Bliss.” Bliss looked.

“This man is dead.”

“Yes, but do you know him?” Finch asked again.

Bliss shook his head. “I’ve never seen him before.”

Lying? Or truly confused?

“What about these words?” Finch took out a piece of paper on which he’d written bellum omnium contra omnes.

Saw the surprise on Bliss’s face. Saw that surprise change to something vaguely catlike and unreadable. Knew whatever Bliss told him would be truth diseased with lie.

“Stark asked about something similar,” Bliss said, gaze distant. “But I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

Wyte made an exasperated sound. “Let’s finish this at the station. Interrogate him there.” To Bliss: “If you cooperate, maybe it won’t come down to a bullet and a memory bulb.”

Most men would’ve gone a little pale. Bliss just sat there staring daggers at them. A defiant little man who had once run half the city.

Finch pushed. “Maybe you’re right, Wyte. I’d like to know what deal you made with Stark for your life. You don’t mind a trip to the station, do you, Bliss? You’ve got nothing to hide, right?”

Bliss erupted up off the couch like a man twice his size, flung the lamp at Wyte, knocking his gun away. Completed the motion by slamming Finch on the side of the head with surprising strength. Dazed, Finch fell over a low table, banging his knees. Bliss bolted for the kitchen while Wyte was still scrambling for his gun.

“Fuck! Finch, stop him!”

Finch got up off the floor, drew his gun, stumbled toward the kitchen. Wyte was two steps behind.

Beyond the kitchen: a flight of stairs leading down. Finch could hear running footsteps but couldn’t see Bliss. Had no choice but to charge down the stairs, only to be greeted by another hallway. Then a quick, tight corner. Wyte had caught up, and they barreled around like a couple of slapstick comedians, sliding into each other.

Caught a glimpse of Bliss’s white shirt through darkness.

“Bliss! I’ll shoot! Don’t think I won’t!” Could Bliss even hear him?

He lost Bliss in the shadows again, but got off a round or two. Hit nothing but wall. Cursing himself for not having checked the rest of the apartment. Collided with Wyte taking a second corner. Wyte was already breathing hard.

They collected themselves. Opened the door that greeted them. Another long corridor, with a door at the end.

“Fuck! How big is this place?”

They sidled up to the door. Finch got down low on his haunches, put his hand on the knob. Now he was breathing hard, but not because he was winded.

“Cover me high,” he said, glancing up at Wyte. Blood singing in his ears, fingers a little numb.

Wyte nodded, face impossibly long and thick from that angle, chin jutting, expression priest-solemn. Finch turned the knob and pushed the door open. Slowly rose, knees already aching.

“Goddamn it.”

An empty room ten feet square, the walls made of cinder blocks painted white. A single bulb for light. No windows. No other door.

They kept circling it with guns drawn, like Bliss would appear out of nowhere.

Never lost.

Except now he was.

4

Where had Bliss gone? The question haunted Finch as they left the apartment. Didn’t know if anyone had heard the shots. Or if Bliss still had people who might be watching. “Secret door?” Wyte had suggested, almost as if it didn’t bother him. But they’d found nothing. They’d have had to tear the place apart. Brick by brick. Didn’t have the tools or time for that.

They passed addicts with the familiar purple stains across their skin. Men in the ill-fitting uniforms of janitors for the camps. Somebody pissing in an alley. Faded posters on a long crumbling wall, showing pictures of members of the short-lived puppet government. Another blood-red mushroom looming over them big as a tree. Every week there seemed to be more of them. Next to it, a blossoming flower of a building atop the squashed remains of the local grocery store. Soft humming sounds came from an interior obscured by fleshy window flaps.

Where had Bliss gone—and how was he involved?

Finch replayed that moment over and over. Bliss running for the kitchen. Bliss in his memory bulb dream. Trying to reconcile those versions with the Bliss he remembered from before the Rising. The way Bliss’s gaze couldn’t settle on one thing. As if his mind worked faster now. A growing sense that this new Bliss hadn’t been stripped of prestige and security but had traded it for something else.

Wyte seemed agitated, and Finch thought he knew why. So he said, “It’s my fault. We should’ve taken him in from the beginning, like you suggested. I didn’t need to question him first. And I forgot to check out the rest of the apartment.”

Wyte’s neck had an orange stain on it. Fingernails that had turned black. A smell like a distant sewer drain. But he’d been worse.

“I hit him, and I spooked him,” Wyte said. “I’m as much to blame as you. Maybe more. But that’s not the point, Finchy.”

Here it comes.

Wyte stopped walking, faced him. Finch had his back to a crumbling wall veined through with fungus so blue it looked black. An overlay of scattered bullet holes. Across the street, a laughing pack of Partials shoved a couple of prisoners ahead of them. A middle-aged bearded man with a bandage across his forehead and angry rips in a shirt discolored pink. A woman who could have been the man’s wife, her long black hair being used as a leash by one of the Partials. Just a jaunt around the block before getting down to business.

“Look, Finch,” Wyte said. “I’m your partner. And you keep keeping things from me. I hadn’t even seen the photo of the dead man until you showed it to Bliss. And where’s the list Heretic gave you?”

Wyte will never adjust. It made Finch sick deep in his stomach.

Finch pulled Wyte back to the wall with him. The Partials had moved on ahead, oblivious to anything but their prisoners, but he didn’t want to take any chances. In a whisper: “Listen to me. I’m just trying to protect you.”

Wyte stared at him for so long that Finch had to look at the ancient dislodged stones of the sidewalk. A sudden hunger for a past when Wyte hadn’t been this way. A feeling so strong he felt water in his eyes.

Each word meant to wound, Wyte said: “I don’t need protecting, like I’ve told you. Back in the day, I protected you.” Then self-importantly, when Finch said nothing: “I’m going to work for the rebels soon. I know someone who knows someone.”

This shit again. Once every few weeks.

Something snapped in Finch. Felt it in his head like the sudden eruption of a migraine.

He shoved Wyte up against the wall. Didn’t care who was watching. Felt the air go out of the older man’s lungs. Those eyes scared by what they saw in Finch. Skin clammy. Some of Wyte’s shirt wasn’t really a shirt.

Finch said as calmly as he could: “You are not going to be a fucking spy for the rebels. You are not going to be a fucking spy for the rebels. Ever. Do you understand?”

“Get the fuck off of me!” Wyte hissed. Twisting in Finch’s grip. Head angled toward the sky. Shoulders arched back like he was trying to take off his coat but had gotten his arm stuck.

“You’re not. And do you know why not? Because you’ve been colonized. And it’s gone too far. And they’ll never take you.” Never take you back. Never want you now. Too late. “And if they did, you’d probably be spying on them. For the gray caps. Without even knowing it. Which is why you can’t.” And you’d be leaving me with a station full of detectives who hate me because I didn’t abandon you.

He released Wyte, pushing off him. Creating space between them in case it turned into a fight.

But Wyte stayed up against the wall. What was the look on his face? Didn’t matter. It was the way he stood. Finch had seen the same tired stoop in workers from the camps. Seen it at times in Rath.

Continued on now that it made no difference: “The closest you’ll get to working for anyone is wringing intel out of that ragged bunch of Stockton contacts you call a network.” Trailed off.

Wyte’s self-disdain when he turned to Finch made him look angry or righteous. A darkness there that might have been spores coming up through his skin.

“Better than doing nothing, like you.”

“I don’t do nothing. I do what I can. There’s a difference.” Hands clenched into fists. Face contorted. Close to being out of control. What if he’s right?

Stood there while Wyte opened his mouth to say something.

But Wyte didn’t say anything, just let out his breath with a shudder. Finch watched warily as Wyte reached into his overcoat pocket with a hand that trembled slightly and took out a flask made of battered silver and tin, the once-proud H&S insignia marred by fire burns.

Finch had given it to Wyte on his birthday ten years ago. Emily hadn’t liked it. Thought her husband drank too much anyway. Didn’t need to “make it into a ritual” as she put it. But that didn’t stop her from joining them when they’d stood on the step outside of the house to share a smoke and whatever Wyte had put in the flask. Remembered its quick glint as it picked up the sun or a streetlight.

“It’s got good brandy in it, Finchy,” Wyte said. “The last bit I’ve been hoarding.”

“You’re not going to hit me?”

“What for, Finchy? What’d be the point?”

Finch grimaced. Managed to transform it into a thin smile. “Some brandy might be a good idea.” He patted Wyte’s ruffled overcoat back into place. “I’m sorry, Wyte. I’m sorry.”

And he meant it. Turned away. Disgusted with himself. Who had the bigger burden? The one who had to watch the other person endure or the one who endured?

Wearily, Wyte said: “How could you know? What it’s like living with something else inside me. While on the outside I keep changing.”

Worse than a dead man talking to me?

Finch didn’t want to think about it. Took the flask. Downed half of it in a gulp. Felt the liquid rage through his capillaries. Like a forest fire that left ice behind it. He handed the flask back. “Good stuff.” They started walking again.

Wyte laughed. “Still can’t really hold it, can you? Any more than you could when you were working for me.”

Slapped Finch on the back hard enough to make him stagger.

Fair enough.

---

Wyte. The story.

He’d gone to investigate a death about a year ago. By himself. No one else in the station. The call sounded simple. A man found dead beneath a tree, beginning to smell. Could someone take a look? Most days, not worth bothering with. But it was a slow morning, and Wyte took the job seriously. The woman seemed upset, like it was personal.

The body was down near the bay. Beside a cracked stone sign that used to welcome visitors to Ambergris. Holy city, majestic, banish your fears. No one was around. Not the woman who had called it in. No one.

The man lay on his back. Connected to the “tree,” which was a huge mushroom. Connected by tendrils. The smell, vile. The man’s eyes open and flickering.

Wyte should have left. Wyte should have known better. But maybe Wyte was bored. Or wanted a change. Or just didn’t care. He hadn’t seen his kids since they’d been sent out of the city. He’d been fighting with his wife a lot.

He leaned over the body. Maybe he thought he saw something floating in those eyes. Something moving. Maybe movement meant life to him.

“Who knows? Just know that it’s a dumb move.”

A dumb move. That’s how the detectives would say it during the retell. At their little refuge, not far from the station. Blakely had discovered the place. In front of what used to be the old Bureaucratic Quarter. Looks like a guard post. Nondescript. Gray stone. Surrounded by a thicket of half walls, rubble hills, and stunted trees. With a moat that’s really just a pond that collects rainwater. From the inside, it’s clear the structure is the top of a bell tower pulled down and submerged when the gray caps Rose.

Always half out of their minds with whiskey or homemade wine, or whatever. When they told the story. A dumb move. Like they were experts.

“Point is,” Albin would say, because Albin usually told the story, “he leaned over, and the man’s head exploded into spores. And those spores got into Wyte’s head.”

White spores for Wyte. Through the nose. Through any exposed cuts. Through the ears. Through the eyes.

Although he fought it. Twisted furiously. Jumped up and down. Cursed like the end of the world. So at least he didn’t just stand there and let it happen.

“But by that time, it was too late. A few minutes later and he’s just somebody’s puppet.”

Wyte became someone else. The “dead” man. Someone who didn’t understand what had happened to him. Wyte ran down the street. Taken over. Screaming.

“Screaming a name over and over. ‘Otto! I’m Otto!’ because that was the dead man’s name. Wyte thought he was Otto.”

Or most of him did. Wyte, deep inside, still knew who he was, and that was worse.

Sometimes, out of a casual cruelty, a kind of boredom, one of the other detectives, usually Blakely, will call Wyte “Otto.” Until Finch makes him stop.

“Well, they found him a day later. Once they figured out who the dead body was. Cowering in a closet. Saying ‘Otto’ over and over again.”

In the dead man’s apartment.

“A caution to us all.”

Then they would clink glasses and bottles, congratulating themselves on being alive.

Truth was, they told the story less to humiliate Wyte than to keep reminding themselves not to take any chances. Ambergris Rules. No dumb moves.

Wyte got Otto out of his head. Eventually. Most of Otto. But not the fungus. That became worse. The gray caps couldn’t or wouldn’t help. Maybe they saw it as some kind of perverse improvement.

No one had ever found out who had lured Wyte there. Or why.

Finch knew they never would.

---

They split up. Wyte headed back to the station. Finch decided to return to the apartment on Manzikert. He’d have more than his fill of the station later.

“Do I mention Bliss?”

“If it comes up, no. His file’s already being pulled. That’s enough for now.”

“He made us look like fools.”

“We made ourselves look like fools.”

Black trees. Odd fruit. Pissed-off cat. Hallways that still squeaked from wax. The stairwell still collected darkness. But a silence had crept in, too. An emptiness that hadn’t been there before. No sounds of a mother and child. No smells of cooking.

On a hunch, Finch stopped at the fourth floor again. Knocked on the door of the man who had dressed up for Finch’s mild interrogation. Held his badge up to the peephole.

The door creaked open. A Partial stood there. Stockier than the one who had cataloged the crime scene. His face even paler. Red teeth. As if he’d been eating raw meat sloppily. Dressed in black dyed leather, but wore beige boots. Like he’d been caught trying on someone else’s clothes. In the belt around his gut, two holstered guns and a hammer, of all things.

Finch held the badge in front of him.

“I’m the detective on the case in apartment 525,” he said. “Where’s the old man who lives here?”

The Partial considered him for a moment. The glittering black eye was flickering madly. But the rest of him was like a chilled tortoise. Arms at his sides. Almost paralyzed.

“Gone,” he said slowly. Making the syllable linger.

“Gone where?” Finch asked.

“Gone somewhere else,” the Partial said with an effort.

Like you, my friend. Wondered if the flickering eye meant his attention was elsewhere. Reviewing not recording.

A new thought, horrifying him. “Are they all gone?”

The eye stopped flickering. Blinked twice. In a more normal voice the Partial said, “The building has been cleared.”

Cleared how? Escorted out and rehoused? Sent to the camps? Liquidated?

But he didn’t ask, just nodded. Smiled. Stepped back.

The Partial parroted the nod and receded from him into darkness. Shut the door.

Finch stood there a moment. This place was now a Partial stronghold. No witnesses.

He took the stairs to the fifth floor in leaps. As if running fast might prevent the crime that had brought him here. Bring back the old man in the too-tight suit.

The door. The gray cap symbol, glistening and obscene. The hallway. The bedroom, empty. The living room; no sign of the Partial.

The bodies.

Correction. Body.

The gray cap’s body had disappeared.

Finch stood there a moment, brought up short. Trying to process that sudden … lack. Then realized: Heretic must have removed the body. If not, they’d send Finch to the camps. Scapegoat. Returning: the chill that had come over him talking to the red-toothed Partial. It hit him as it hadn’t before. This case was a threat to his life. To the little security he had. His apartment. His relationship with Sintra.

But the man was still there, under a blanket someone had thrown over him. The dead man sat in the chair next to him, smiling. In the same position. The blue of the preservatives still stippling his features. The man laughed again. Blindingly, unbelievably bright, a light like the sun shot through the window. The night sky torn apart by it.

Finch went over and pulled the blanket back from the man’s face. Sat on the couch, looking at the body. He would have to meet with Heretic soon. The thought unnerved him. Wished now he’d asked Wyte for the whole flask. Wished he could just go home. Find Sintra waiting for him.

“You know what those nonsense words mean,” Finch said to the man. “You know why it’s important.”

Peaceful. The man looked peaceful, to be so dead. How perfectly preserved in the light from the open window. Ignoring how that light changed as it was interrogated by the space between the twinned towers in the distance.

Finch got down on his knees. Searched the body again. Not the careful search of yesterday. Fuck the spore cameras. Fuck the Partial.

Roughly, he rolled the body over and went through the pockets. As if he’d killed the man himself.

There must be something else.

But, no, there wasn’t. Just lint in one pocket. A few bits of sand and gravel, maybe a grain of rice?, in the other.

He began to rip up the fabric. It tore easier than he would’ve thought. Hurting his hands. Red lines on his palms. Aching wrists. Still nothing. No hidden pockets. He forced himself to stop tearing.

The upturned corners of the man’s lips seemed to say, “You’ll never solve me.”

I’m not a detective.

But he would be judged as a detective. Convicted as a detective.

A desert fortress. The HFZ. A phrase. Never lost. Falling from a great height. A gray cap even the gray caps couldn’t identify. An operative from Stockton who was on the same trail. Another operative, probably from Morrow, attacked by Stockton spies and appearing in a dead man’s memories. Now disappeared.

Stark. Bosun. Bliss.

It would drive him mad, he realized. If he let it.

I need a better gun.

Looked at his watch.

5:20.

Time to leave.

Let the horror show begin.

5

Back at the station.

5:50.

No sign of Wyte. The other detectives had left, too, except for Gustat, who was frantically packing up his things. Finch looked at the smaller man with a kind of scorn. Gustat ignored him in his haste. Strange horselike footfalls across the carpet. The croaking bang of the door behind him.

Then it was just Finch.

Soon the curtains at the back of the room would part. Night would truly begin.

Wyte had placed a hasty typo-filled report on Finch’s desk about the situation in Bliss’s apartment. “John Finch” typed at the bottom. Brave of you, Wyte. A blotch of purple obscured a few words in the middle. A smudged green thumbprint on the left corner. Wyte had tried to wipe it away, which just made it worse.

Under it, another sheet, handwritten, with some crude facts about Stark.

“Stark is now the operational head of Stockton’s spy network.”

Stating the obvious. No one started liquidating the competition unless they were already secure in their position.

“He carries a sword.”

Who didn’t, these days? Thought about pulling his own sword out. As he did several times a week, when he thought the others weren’t looking.

“He has a taster for his food … He’s a psychopath … He’s been seen…” well, practically everywhere and nowhere, if Wyte’s information was correct.

Nothing solid. Nothing that linked Stark to the case except Bliss saying Stark had asked him about those words they’d found on the scrap of paper. Bellum omnium contra omnes. Wondered what Bliss would’ve said if he’d shown him the symbol too.

Finch kept a stack of cigars in his desk in a box converted to the purpose. He took one out. Trillian brand. Several years old. Common and popular in its day. A little dry now.

Nothing new in this city. Not whiskey. Not cigars. Not people.

The kind of thing his father used to say.

He cut the tip. Used his oil lamp to light it.

The ash was even. The burn slow. He puffed on it, waiting. The congregation will be here soon enough.

His thoughts went back to Wyte’s flask. In a flush of inspiration, Finch went over to Blakely’s desk, opened the top drawer. Sure enough. Something plum-colored in a bottle. Homemade cork. He pulled it off. Took a whiff. Rotgut, but good enough. Took a couple of swigs right from the bottle. His throat burned. His tongue felt numb.

Saw double for a second. Another puff on the cigar fixed that. Went back to his desk.

Waiting this way, helpless, his vision became apocalyptic, false. In his mind, mortar fire rained down on the city. Artillery belched out a retort. Blasted into walls, sending up gouts of stone and flame. The war raged on, unnoticed by most. He was an agent of neither side. Just in it for himself.

Tried to think past the evening’s torment. The walk back to his apartment afterward. In the dark. Thought of who might be waiting.

If he didn’t screw up before that.

---

A little after six, the gray caps began to arrive. The night shift.

The first one pulled aside the curtain. Had emerged from the awful red-fringed hole at the back. Perfect parallel to the memory hole. Only much larger. Finch could see the gray cap’s face under the hat. Pulsing. Wriggling. The eyes so yellow. What did they see that he could not?

The gray cap stepped forward, onto the carpet.

In the light of day, on certain streets, Finch could almost pretend that the Rising had never happened. But not here. Not now. Any fantasy was fatal. Any fear.

Finch walked out onto the carpet. Puffing. Feeling the brittle squeeze in his chest even as he released the smoke from his mouth. Let the cigar burn down toward his fingers to feel the distracting pain.

A strong scent of rotting licorice as the gray cap pushed past him. Ignoring him as it sat down at a desk. Gustat’s desk.

One.

Nine more. One for each desk. Along with whatever familiars they had decided to bring with them.

Finch wished he had a club. A knife. Anything. The fungal guns didn’t work against gray caps. Thought again about the sword. About bringing it across Heretic’s rubbery neck.

He drove the image away as irrational. Heretic had asked him to be here. If Heretic ever wanted him dead, he’d send a present to his apartment. Or dissolve him into a puff of spores in front of the other detectives.

Five times he’d stayed after hours. Survived each encounter. But talking to a single gray cap during the day was different from being among many of them after dusk. It brought back memories of the war. It reminded him of night duty in the trenches, the crude defenses House Hoegbotton had created for its soldiers. Sighting through the scope at some pile of rubble opposite. Hoping not to see anything. Feeling the sweat and fear of the others to each side. The flinch and intake of breath at the slightest movement.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Moving past him. Soft rustle of robes. Hushed sigh of their breathing, as if they slept even while awake. Oddly heavy footfalls. A smell that ranged from sweet like syrup to rank and disgusting. Did they control it? Were there signals they gave off humans could never read? Those eyes. That mouth. The ragged claws on the doughy hands.

Sitting at the desks like distorted reflections of their daytime counterparts. He had never learned their names. Thought of them only by the names of the humans who’d been assigned the same desks. Or once had. So there sat Dorn, and there sat Wyte, and there were Skinner and Albin.

The fifth was Heretic. He’d brought something with him. On a leash. Finch didn’t know what it was. Couldn’t tell where it started or ended. It had no face, just a sense of wet, uncoiling darkness. Like an endless fall off a bridge at night, under a starless sky, into deep water. That one glimpse and Finch never looked at it directly again.

The light in the room had faded to the dark green preferred by the gray caps.

“Do you like my skery, Finch? Do you find my skery pleasing to the eye?” Heretic asked in a voice rough yet reedy, standing in front of Finch. Emphasis on pleasing to the eye. As usual when Heretic tried out a turn of phrase. “No? That’s a shame. The skery is a new thing, and useful to us. Very soon, it will save us a lot of effort, allow the Partials to do other work.”

Finch had no answer for that.

Together, Finch, the gray cap, and the skery went to his desk. At night, Heretic walked with a kind of effortless forward movement. More at ease and more deadly. As if daylight affected a gray cap’s equilibrium.

Heretic sat down, dropping the leash. The skery went right to Finch’s memory hole and began worrying the edges with its wet gobble of a mouth. Cleaning it of parasites.

Finch put out his cigar in the ashtray at the edge of the desk. Stood in front of Heretic. Take the initiative. In a calm, flat voice, he said: “I went back to the apartment. The body … one of the bodies was missing.”

“I took it away.” A clipped quality behind the moistness. Some continuing thread of amusement. The eyes looked as though embedded in a rubber festival mask. “We’re testing the body for a variety of——.” The word sounded like tilivirck.

Finch nodded like he understood.

“We also harvested another memory bulb from the man.”

Utter paralysis. Unbidden: an image of Sintra’s face as he entered her. The way she sighed and relaxed into him. As the blood of his tears dropped onto her cheeks, her lips.

“What did you see?” Finch asked.

Heretic shook his head. A simple motion rendered alien, frightening. “Perhaps you should tell me first, Finch. What you saw.”

“It’s in the report,” Finch said. Too quickly.

“The report. It’s all in the report. How could we forget? Perhaps because the report was disappointing. Very disappointing, and not what we’ve come to expect from you.” Still a secret amusement there, mingled with the threat.

His stomach lurched. The room felt hot. At the other desks, the last of the gray caps had sat down. At their feet, their familiars curled, mewled, foraged.

“It’s only been a day,” Finch said.

“Finch,” Heretic said. “Are you telling me everything?”

Bliss had disappeared from a ten-foot-square room. With no windows.

“I left out nothing important,” Finch said. “Up to that point.”

Heretic said something in his own language that sounded like a child arguing with a click beetle. Then, a half-expected blade held to the throat: “What about the scrap of paper the Partial says you took from the body?”

The symbol. The strange words. What would Heretic tell him about the Silence if he asked? Nothing. He’d kill Finch. Or worse.

Out of sudden fear, a strange calm. Later, he realized it felt like losing control even as he gained it. An echoing faint laughter that became the sound of hammers working on the two towers in the bay. That became water slapping against the wall in Rathven’s basement.

Words left his mouth. “There was a man in the memories I recognized. I didn’t put it in the report because I wanted to investigate first. It related to the paper in the dead man’s hand.” Lying.

Falling through cold air and he couldn’t feel his legs.

“Explain.”

“A man called Ethan Bliss.” And then the flood: “A Morrow agent active for Frankwrithe & Lewden, during the War of the Houses. I tracked him down today with Wyte, but he … slipped away. I’m following up. I put in a request for his file along with my report.”

If we can’t find him, we’ll go after Stark.

Heretic seemed to consider that, then asked, “And the scrap of paper?”

“I’m still investigating what it means. I’ll put it all into my report for tomorrow.”

“And the list I gave you, of people who lived in that apartment?”

Finch relaxed a little. “I’m still working on it. By tomorrow afternoon I should know more.” If Rathven’s finished by then.

Heretic considered this statement for a long time, then said, “You have withheld information from me. You haven’t even finished with the list. From now on, you will report every day. You are to tell me everything. Do not leave it to your judgment.”

Finch opened his mouth to speak. Heretic said words that sounded like kith vrisdresn zorn. Snapped his fingers.

The skery wound itself around Finch’s legs and tightened. Sudden tingling paralysis. He could not move away. Could not fall. Choking on his own breath. The paralysis brought with it an image of an endless field of dim stars, one by one extinguished. A gulf and a void. Finch was as afraid as he had ever been in his life. Because he didn’t know what he was looking at, or why.

Try to breathe. Slowly. Breathe slowly.

The skery curled its way up to his chest. Around his neck. It pulled tight so he was gasping in his motionlessness. He felt something like sharp leaves or thorns up against his neck. An impression of lips. A sharp, smoky scent. Half the field of stars had gone out. There was more darkness than light.

From behind Finch’s desk, from a thousand miles away, from behind a thick wall: Heretic. Saying, “A skery is not as bad for you as what I could bring with me.”

The skery curled back down Finch’s body. Released him. He stumbled forward, hands on the desk to stop from falling. The field of stars so bright he almost passed out. Then the desk came into focus. Prickles of sensation came back into his legs. Neck already sore and throbbing.

“Do you understand me, Finch?” Heretic said. “We can make it quite clear who you really are. To everyone. Or we can just put you in the camps. Or we can do much, much worse.”

Finch had killed a gray cap once. As an Irregular. Before the Rising. Out in the confusion of civil war. With a knife and a gun. He thought about that now, looking at Heretic.

Heretic: “How did Bliss manage to escape you? I expect that in your report by tomorrow night. You will leave your report on your desk. I will read it. If I am not satisfied, I will visit you. Find ways to convince me that you are more valuable alive than as a memory bulb. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Finch managed after a moment. Throat sore. Burying his anger deep. Just wanting to be away from there. Just wanting to be somewhere he might fool himself into calling safe.

The gray cap rose. “You’ll find Bliss’s information in the ‘memory hole’ by your desk in a few minutes.”

Heretic walked toward the back, holding his skery. Rivulets of golden spores swirled up from his footfalls. Sparkled in the murk like tiny blinking eyes.

Against all good judgment, against his shock at the skery’s touch, Finch spoke. “What happened when you took the dead man’s memory bulb?”

Heretic half turned, the look on his face murderous. “I did not eat the memory bulb. That was another fanaarcensitii. He saw nothing. He died within minutes, in horrible pain. Apparently, you are very, very lucky, Finch.”

A long peal of that awful laughter before Heretic disappeared behind the curtain.

---

Afterward, Finch couldn’t sleep. Stomach churning. Couldn’t get rid of a crawling sensation. Half his mouth felt numb. The other half tingled like a faint electric shock. His legs moved slowly, a deep ache in both muscle and bone.

Had returned to his apartment to find a note from Sintra shoved under the door: Can’t make it tonight. Tomorrow night. Found that a bad mood could get worse.

He went up to the roof of the hotel, a fifth of whiskey retrieved from his kitchen, and let a nagging Feral come with him. Carried the cat’s comforting weight, like a purring loaf of bread, in the crook of his left arm. In his other hand, the file on Bliss.

The stairs above his floor had been so colonized by moss and lichen that they didn’t creak. Dark. Dangerous. But Finch didn’t care. He’d lost his way anyhow, was in need of something sturdier than self-pity.

A hatch in the ceiling where the stairs ended led to the roof. He switched Bliss’s file to under his arm, next to a protesting Feral. Set down the whiskey long enough to push open the hatch without losing his balance. Picked it back up, and stepped through with Feral. Into a bracing wind. A wash of stars set against the black-and-green-tinged sky.

Except for the bit obscured by the dilapidated sign, Finch could see the whole city from here. One reason he’d chosen the hotel. The view from the roof helped him with his map overlay. Made him feel more in control, being able to see so much from one place. The soldier in him always wanted the best possible recon.

Muted lights from the buildings to either side. Like he saw them through a black curtain. Even the two towers seemed dulled, the emerald glow humble. A few sparkling clouds of spores, in blue and yellow, danced far out in the sky, to the south. Otherwise, just the inward-focused white of the camp domes, balanced to the north by the humming glitter of orange-green HFZ. The air didn’t carry the smell of mushrooms. As if a fresh breeze had come from outside the city.

A tall figure stood near the edge of the roof, looking out. Finch stiffened, making Feral hiss. He groped for the gun he had left in the apartment, Feral jumping from his arm. Then Finch realized it was just the Photographer, Rath’s brother. The man who liked to take pictures of water and ran a black market store out of his apartment.

Finch had seen the photographs. Stacked up next to the cameras. Plastered to the walls. Blown up, miniaturized, blurry, in focus. On anything that might serve, or re-serve, as contact paper. As if the Photographer looked for one particular thing in the water. As if not interested in water at all, searching for something he hadn’t found yet.

A fifth of whiskey was enough for two.

The Photographer turned as Finch approached. A slow, unconcerned motion. Finch had never seen him anything other than calm. Or maybe his mood was always resigned to whatever new thing came next. Didn’t know what had happened to him in the camps. Didn’t know much about him at all, except that he trusted the man. Which made little sense. He was so clearly damaged. So indifferent to Finch’s help in getting him out of the camp.

The Photographer nodded.

Finch passed the bottle to the Photographer. The man took a sip and handed it back. He stared at Finch with an unreadable gaze. A white face and a watchful mouth, with an upturn to the lips that could make him look devilish. The eyes and cheekbones didn’t match the mouth. The eyes were almost vacant, except for a deep-set glint. Finch thought of that glint as curiosity or obsession. The high cheekbones gave the Photographer an aura of deep or deeply denied suffering.

“Anything new out there?”

“A few things.” His voice a thin reed.

“Anything I should know about?”

The Photographer shrugged, looked out at the night. “More activity at the towers, just a little while ago. An emergency? Quickly solved, if so. Nothing there now. A few spore discharges to the west. Can’t tell if they’re human or mechanical. But not much, no … What happened to you?”

An involuntary snort. He must look as ragged as he felt. The Photographer had never asked after his health before.

“I came across something that didn’t like me,” Finch said. No desire to share the details. Thinking about how he had to hold out for another day before seeing Sintra again.

The Photographer nodded as if this made sense. Returned to his contemplation of the view. Didn’t care much for small talk.

Slowly, stiffly, Finch lowered himself into a chair. A few feet away, Feral was munching on something he’d caught.

A couple lightbulbs hung near the rotting sign. The outer arc of their light just barely caught the edge of the chairs. Enough to read by.

Eyes adjusted to the dim light, Finch began to go through Bliss’s file. Two laughably old photographs. One so dark it was just a silhouette with a hint of jaw leering out of a smudge. The report itself was brief, pithy, in the spidery script of gray cap transcriptions. Translated from their original files. Which took what form? Probably were worse things than memory holes down below.

Finch already knew most of what was in the report. Bliss’s rise within F&L ranks. The compromise with Hoegbotton. The alliance with the Lady in Blue. But he was somehow surprised that the gray caps knew it. Made him wonder about the extent of their intel before the Rising.

Buried in the middle of the report, Finch found a list of aliases under which Bliss had operated: Charles Dinley, George Graansvoort, John Letcher, Grant Shearwater, Dar Sardice. And, most improbably, Jasper Marlowe Anthony Blasio. A typo? An error in the transcription?

Dar Sardice proved the most interesting. The other names had been ways of disguising movements across checkpoints within the city. Dar Sardice had been used much earlier, during Ambergrisian-Hoegbotton campaigns against the Kalif. “Dar Sardice” had been Frankwrithe’s man keeping an eye on the progress of the war. From behind the Kalif’s supply lines. The cover? Independent merchant and businessman. With an established trade route that cut through over eight hundred miles of desert dotted with fortified towns. The whole Western Front. Against which the Ambergrisian Army had thrown itself with unparalleled ferocity. From which it had eventually retreated. “It was just too large,” his father had said once. “It was overwhelming. The wide, hot, empty spaces. The strangeness of the towns. The fact we didn’t speak the language.” Left a trail of broken, bombed equipment behind. Trucks. Tanks. Mortars.

A desert fortress. A fall from a great height. Ethan Bliss as Dar Sardice, turning up in every major theater of a desert war. Then appearing again not long after as F&L’s man in Ambergris. Popping up in the dead man’s memories. Had disappeared when cornered, after having been nailed to a wall just a few minutes before.

Was he looking at a secret that should be obvious? If so, it eluded him the more he tried to pin it down.

Beside him, the Photographer stirred. “I am going to go back inside. Do you need anything from me?”

“Just information,” Finch said, and downed some whiskey. He enjoyed the way it spread out from his throat, his stomach. Settling him as it mixed with the afterburn of the cigar.

“What kind of information?”

On a hunch, feeling like his back was exposed: “Seen anyone strange around the hotel recently?”

The Photographer replied with a kind of odd regret, as if speaking out of turn: “Yes, I have.”

Suddenly more alert: “Describe them?”

“Two of them, today. They came separately. The first I saw around noon. A tall Partial. He was on the stairs when I saw him. Coming down.” A look of disgust on the Photographer’s face.

The same Partial?

“Coming down from where?”

“I don’t know. I was on the fifth floor. He was coming down.”

Could’ve been anyone. Could’ve been here for any reason. And nothing he could do about it.

“The second?”

“He stayed outside the building. It was late afternoon. A bald man. Dangerous-looking. He talked to the madman by the statue. Didn’t like what the madman told him. Then looked up at the windows for a while. He stayed off to the side smoking a cigarette. Got impatient and walked into the lobby for a moment, came back out, and left almost right away.”

A description that matched what Bliss had told them about Bosun, Stark’s muscle. Which meant they’d had watchers on Bliss’s place. Watchers who had identified Finch incredibly fast. Now they were checking out where he lived. He didn’t like that. Didn’t like it at all.

Definitely time to have a talk with Stark.

“Tell me if you see them again? Or anyone else who doesn’t live here?”

The Photographer nodded. Then he was taking long strides to the hatch, as if he suddenly needed to be somewhere. The hatch creaked open, and he was gone.

Off to Finch’s left, Feral was stalking something new around a couple of wooden boxes. Finch went back to his whiskey. Wondered if Bliss/Dar Sardice leading them to Stark meant Stark would lead them back to Bliss. And who was Stark, then? Just another Stockton man, or something else?

All the while trying not to think of the skery. Curling up his leg. Wound around his neck.

Failing.