THURSDAY

I: Why do you hate Partials?

F: I don’t hate them.

I: We all have a job to do.

F: I don’t like cameras.

I: Where did you go during the party?

F: Nowhere. Home. I went home.

I: You were seen on the street after curfew. By a Partial.

F: It was someone else. No. No. Please. Don’t! [sounds of weeping] I didn’t go anywhere. I don’t remember.

I: Who was it? Stark? The Lady in Blue? Bliss? Someone else?

F: All of them. None of them. Doesn’t matter what answer I give. Your answer is always the fucking same.

I: I can make you remember.

 

1

Light. Blinding him. They both fell heavy and sprawling across some unforgiving surface. Gun skittered out of his hand. A shooting pain in his left leg, ribs. Cried out. Lost his grip on the man’s shoulders. Every scrap of skin crawled. As if he’d passed through a cloud of hornets. Spasmed for a moment, his muscles not obeying his commands. Brain on fire. Worse than the skery. Came to rest gasping. Rough stones with something soft between them. An intense clapping sound rose up. Faded.

The other man rolled to the side. Started to get up. Finch reached out. Caught a booted foot. Pulled the man back down toward him. He opened his eyes just a slit against the terrible light. Saw the man’s face.

“Bliss! Bliss!” Finch hissed. Still in the grip of darkness. He dragged Bliss closer as the man kicked, struggling to get free. Jumped on top of him. Punched him in the kidneys. Once. Twice. Three times. Knuckles aching. Bliss grunted. Finch delivered an elbow across the face, through Bliss’s guard. Bliss went limp. Saw the man’s eyelids flutter, his eyes almost roll back into his head.

Finch got up, staggering. What did you do to me? Keening. Kicked Bliss in the ribs. A bark of distress and Bliss curled onto his side.

Meant to launch another kick, but was brought up short. The ground around them had caught his attention. Dull red tiles. Yellow-green weeds thrusting up between them.

Looked up. In a sudden panic, he realized that the terrible light was the sun. He stood in the middle of an empty courtyard. A rusted, crumbling fountain. Blank azure-amber eyes of some long-dead hero astride a rusting horse. Mottled brown fish spouting air beside him.

Above the wall facing him: the looming white dome of one of the camps. Took a quick glance behind. The green shimmer of the two towers just visible through an archway leading out. A flock of pigeons circling. The clapping sound.

He was between the Spit and the Religious Quarter.

On the other side of the bay from his apartment.

The sun was out.

In the middle of the night.

Finch began to shake. Fought down nausea.

Said, gasping the words, “What the fuck did you do, Bliss?” Almost couldn’t stop saying it. Taste of grit in his mouth. Skin still twitching.

Bliss raised his head, still on his side. Through blood-greased teeth: “Don’t be frightened. We went through a door. Like any other door.”

Finch kicked Bliss again for that. This time he didn’t cry out, just lay there. Found his gun. Squatting beside Bliss, Finch shoved the muzzle against the man’s left cheek. Forced Bliss’s face against the stone.

“Answer my questions. Answer them without any bullshit,” voice calmer than he felt.

This wasn’t the first time he’d put a gun to someone’s face. But he was threatening a man who, in his former life, had made speeches and led parades. A man now reduced to snooping in apartments after dark.

“I’ll answer them! Stop hitting me.” Startling bloodshot white of Bliss’s eye trying to look up at Finch from that extreme angle. Face already darkening with bruises like a stormy sky.

“Get up,” Finch said. He pulled the smaller man to his feet by one arm. Looked around. Two exits. The archway behind him. Another on the far side. Didn’t trust the broken windows blinding him with the sun. Anyone could be watching.

Finch dragged Bliss into the darkness of the nearest archway. The contrast of shadows after the extreme light almost left him blind again. Black sunspots everywhere.

Pushed Bliss up against a whitewashed wall turned gray. Bricks exposed through the mortar like dark red teeth in a rotting mouth. Got close to Bliss so he could force the gun under the man’s jaw. Pinned him to the wall with a fist wrapped around his shirt collar.

His hands were steady now. Shock hadn’t set in yet. Maybe it never would.

Bliss was wheezing from the pressure of the Lewden Special against his windpipe. Trying to swallow.

“Now. Tell me what just happened.” He eased up on Bliss’s throat.

Bliss coughed. Managed, in a hollow voice, “Like I said, nothing to panic about. We just went through a door.”

Something switched on in Finch. Stark threatening him. Heretic and the skery. Falling through darkness with Bliss like moving through the doors on the Spit, like traveling through the gullet of a skery large as a behemoth.

Smashed Bliss across the face with the Lewden. Felt a satisfying give as metal met flesh and laid open Bliss’s right cheek. Bliss made a sound more like surprise than pain. Began to slump but Finch held him up. Blood flowed down the side of Bliss’s face. Spattered onto his shoulder. Another puzzled sound. Like he couldn’t believe Finch was doing this to him.

“You already said it was a door, Bliss. Tell me something new.”

Bliss’s head drooped toward his chest. Finch slapped him lightly.

“Stay with me, Bliss,” Finch said. Released his grip on Bliss’s collar. “Here.” Handed him his handkerchief. “Keep it.”

“Thanks,” Bliss said, with more than a hint of something deadly behind the word. He held the handkerchief to his face, the gray-white soon soaked with red.

“If you tell me enough I’ll let you go,” Finch said. Tried to sound reasonable. As reasonable as he could while he kept the gun trained on Bliss. Truth was, he didn’t know what he was going to do with Bliss. Or to him.

After a moment, Bliss said in a dull tone, “We went through a door to another part of the city. Across a kind of bridge.”

“That’s how you escaped the first time. There was no hidden exit.”

“No, there wasn’t,” Bliss said.

“It was night just a few minutes ago.” Couldn’t keep the confusion from his voice.

“From the position of the sun, I’d say it’s noon now. Maybe it’s the next day.”

“The next day?”

“Yes. If we’re lucky. You surprised me. I didn’t have time to be … specific.”

Impossible. Like a story told about the gray caps to frighten children. Fought the urge to bring the gun smashing down on Bliss’s face again.

Focus on what makes sense. Ignore the rest.

He was in a courtyard, the tiles warm and rough beneath the shitty shoes Wyte had lent him. There was a breeze. The sun was out. These things were real.

“What were you doing in my apartment?”

Bliss put more energy behind his words suddenly. “Finch, listen to me: you don’t want to know. It isn’t what you find out that’s going to keep you alive. It’s where you’re standing. You’re in the middle of things you can’t control. It’s too big for you. You shouldn’t be worried about me, or what I was doing. You should be worried about yourself.”

“Answer the question.”

Bliss must have caught the returning menace in Finch’s voice. He tried to smile sheepishly, as if embarrassed. Said in his polished but shopworn voice, “I was looking for information on you.”

“What did you find?”

“Nothing. I didn’t have time to find anything.”

“Who do you work for?”

“I work for Morrow,” Bliss said.

“I don’t believe you.” He didn’t. Not really.

“My answer won’t change no matter how you rough me up.”

Finch doubted that. Bliss’s face was covered in blood. But more damage could be done.

“Let’s go back to what I asked you after we took you down off that wall. Why were you in the dead man’s memories?” Bliss looked genuinely surprised. By the question? Or being asked it? “I ate the dead man’s memory bulb. I saw you. I saw you near a desert fortress.”

A kind of mirror. An eye. Pulling back to see a figure that seemed oddly familiar, and then a name: Ethan Bliss. Then a circle of stone, a door, covered with gray cap symbols. And, finally, jumping out into the desert air, toward a door hovering in the middle of the sky, pursued by the gray cap, before the world went dark.

“Memory bulbs are unreliable. You know that. You can see almost anything in them.”

Finch would never be able to tell when Bliss was lying.

“What do the two towers have to do with all of this?”

“Who says they do?”

“Stark.”

Bliss made a dismissive spitting sound. “Stark’s a thug. He’s nothing. Knows nothing.”

“Yet he killed all of your men and nailed you to a wall.”

Bliss grimaced, like he’d swallowed a mouthful of dirt. “That was beginner’s luck. His days are numbered. In this city you adapt or you die.”

Finch still didn’t believe him.

“Like you’ve adapted? Gone from Frankwrithe spymaster to politician to something else?” Then, on an impulse: “What were you doing during the war with the Kalif? Working for F&L and Morrow? For Hoegbotton?”

Bliss smiled, though his eyes were cold. “I was doing my duty for my city.”

“Which city?”

“Like I said, you adapt or you die.”

“What did you promise to Stark to save your life?”

“Nothing. Stark’s a smooth-talking thug. Anything he got I gave him because I wanted him to have it. Because nothing I have would’ve stopped him from killing me if he got it into his head to kill me.”

“Then what did you want him to have?”

Bliss just shook his head.

“How do you travel between doors?”

“Maybe there are some things I’m never going to tell you.”

The sunlight, the fact it shouldn’t be sunlight, kept getting into Finch’s head. Disrupting his thoughts.

“Let’s talk about the towers again, then.”

Bliss’s expression had gone neutral. No one, looking at the spy’s face, could’ve known what he was thinking. “The towers are close to completion. And the gray caps are putting all of their resources into those towers. Ignoring everything else. Even their Partials. But, still, they have an intense interest in this case. Curious, isn’t it?”

“Any theories?”

“You already know more than you should. Enough to get you killed.”

A weariness came over Finch. His skin still felt wrong. What would happen if he faded away with Bliss still there? Where would he wake up? The nausea was getting worse.

“Here’s a theory. It just came to me. I might as well try it out on you. I think my murder victim saw you, Bliss. I think he saw you because you were somehow involved with his murder. Maybe you took him through a door like the one you took me through. Maybe the door closed on the gray cap. But you led the victim to his death. The only thing is: I don’t know why you would do it.”

But Bliss was done. He lowered the handkerchief from his cheek. “Are you going to try to take me to the station now? Or just start hitting me again?” Defiant. Almost smug.

For one terrible moment Finch had the sense he hadn’t been hurting Bliss at all. That it was all an act. A light shone in Bliss’s eyes that seemed shielded from the moment.

Finch let out a deep breath. Lowered the gun. Shoved Bliss away from him. “Go. Get the fuck out of here.”

Bliss looked surprised. “Just like that?”

Finch gave a tired smile. “Just like that. I’ve run out of questions. And you’d just jump through a door before I got you back across the bay.” He was going to be sick in a second. Didn’t know how much control he’d have then.

“Letting me go doesn’t make me forget what you’ve done to my face, Finch.”

“I could’ve done worse. Don’t come near my apartment again, Bliss, or I’ll kill you.” Don’t come near Sintra. Don’t come near Rathven. No one.

The spy’s voice went cold, condemning. “When you see me again, it will be because I want you to see me. And not before.”

Finch turned around. He really didn’t want to see Bliss leave.

Bliss said, “You could escape, you know. You could just disappear.”

“I tried that once,” Finch said. “It didn’t work. I’m still here.”

A pause. Then a sound like darkness imploding on itself, a brief flash of green-gold light.

Bliss was gone. The scent of limes hung in the air.

Cursed and shuddered as he realized something: Bliss’s hands hadn’t been bandaged. They’d looked good as new. Who healed that fast, even with fungal help?

Bent over. Threw up his guts onto the courtyard tiles.

When he’d recovered, he sat down heavily on the edge of the fountain. Bone-tired.

Wondering what day it was.

---

Ten doors knocked on. Three doors that actually opened for him. Only the last one had a working telephone inside. An apartment a few blocks from the courtyard. He flashed his badge. An emaciated woman in a flower pattern dress let him in, checking first to make sure none of her neighbors on the ground floor saw her do it. Eyes large and bloodshot. Anywhere from forty to sixty. A purple growth on her left shoulder like a huge birthmark.

Inside, a bald man in socks but no shoes sat in a wicker chair facing the wall in a spare living room. Staring at a crappy painting of a beach in the Southern Isles. Wore a stained white undershirt and brown shorts.

The woman went to stand beside the man, protective hand on his shoulder, while Finch leaned on the kitchen counter.

Dialed the station. Wyte’s number. Listened to it ring once, twice, ten times. His mouth was still dry, vision a little blurry. Jacket dirty. His hair full of grit. Wyte’s extra pair of shoes scuffed from kicking Bliss. A sound in his ears he couldn’t identify. Tired because he hadn’t slept? Or because of stress?

A click, and someone said through the crackling, “Wyte’s desk.”

“Who’s this?” Finch asked.

“Blakely. Who’s this?”

“Blakely? It’s Finch. Where’s Wyte?”

“Finch. Where the hell have you been?”

Now he’d find out. “Have I been gone that long?”

“Just the whole damn morning.” Blakely sounded rattled, and a little drunk.

Perverse relief. He’d only lost a half day, maybe less.

“I had to follow up on a lead. Can you pass me over to Wyte?”

“Wyte’s not here. Heretic came in. Smoldering mad about your case. He ordered Wyte to go investigate an address. It related to something in your report, I think. Wyte was told to take Dapple with him. Poor bastard.”

“Crap.” Consequences of being honest with Heretic. “How long ago did they leave?”

“An hour. Maybe a little more.” That meant he could still catch up with them. He was already on the right side of the bay.

“By boat?”

“Yes. Western canal.”

What experience did Wyte and Dapple have investigating rebel safe houses? Partials and their snitches usually followed up on those kinds of leads. A spark of anger and guilt. Anger at Stark for giving them the information. Guilt at himself for putting it in the report.

“Remind me of the address?”

“1829 Northwest Scarp Lane. Wyte made sure I wrote it down.”

“Right,” Finch said.

The edge of the Religious Quarter. Dogghe-controlled territory. A low-grade war still going on between the native insurgency and the gray caps. The war they’d all forgotten. Either the gray caps no longer saw that insurgency as a threat, or the towers took up all of their time now. Or Finch just wasn’t in the loop.

“Putting Dapple and Wyte together. That’s like a suicide mission.”

“No shit, Finch. But Heretic wanted it done, said Wyte knew the area.”

“Only because he was a shipping manager for Hoegbotton, Blakely.” Twelve years ago. More.

“I wasn’t the one who sent them out there,” Blakely said, irritated.

The crackling became a roar, flooding the phone, then subsided after a minute.

“Blakely? You still there?”

“Barely. Listen, there were two messages for you. One from someone called Rathven. Another from a woman who just left her name as ‘S.’”

“What’d they say?”

“Just to call them. You should get back here. Soon. People are saying strange things, like the towers will be finished this week. We’re all on edge.”

Didn’t know you cared.

“I’ve got to find Wyte first.”

“You’re an idiot,” Blakely said, hanging up.

The woman stirred. An accusing stare. Hand still on the man’s shoulder. “Are you going to go now?” she asked. It didn’t take much effort to realize the gray caps or the Partials had done something to her husband. No stretch at all to blame the stranger with the badge.

“One more call and I’ll leave,” he said.

She held his gaze for a second. Then turned to the painting as if it were a window.

Finch dialed the number Sintra had given him. Rathven could wait.

A voice answered after a moment. Finch wasn’t sure it was her.

“Sintra?”

“Finch?”

“Yes.”

“Finch.” Relief in that single word, but also something that he couldn’t identify. “I was worried. I went by your apartment. Your door was open. You weren’t there. Are you okay?”

More than they’d said to each other in person sometimes.

“I’m fine.” An ache rose in his throat. His hand on the receiver shook. No, he wasn’t fine. Exhausted. Starving. Still trying to process losing twelve hours in a blink of an eye. Holding it together because he had no one to hold it together for him.

“Are you back home? I came by, and when I saw the door open I locked it.”

“Thanks for that.”

“Where are you, Finch?”

Where was he? Clinging to a lifeline. He’d meant to warn her to be careful. But, somehow, talking now, it felt like he was talking to a stranger. A voice in his head told him he should be careful. How had Stark found out about Sintra? What if Sintra had told Stark? About him? Was that possible?

“I’m working on a case.”

“But why was your door open? Things were knocked over, as if there’d been a struggle.”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Can I come by tonight?”

Lump in the throat. “Sure,” he said. “I just called to hear your voice. Tough day.”

“Finch,” she said. “Is everything really all right?”

“No,” he said. Made a decision, leapt out into the abyss. “Not really. I’m about to go into a dangerous situation near the Religious Quarter. There’s an address we’re supposed to check out.”

“Then don’t go. Just don’t go.”

“I have to. I don’t have a choice.” Not with Wyte out there with only Dapple for backup.

“You’re scaring me, Finch,” Sintra said.

“I’m going to hang up now,” Finch said. “See you soon. Be safe.” A click as the phone cut out. Didn’t know if she’d heard him or not.

The woman watched him without saying anything. Even as he told her thanks. Even as he left a gray cap food voucher on the counter. Even as he backed out into the corridor.

Relax your guard in this city and you were dead.

2

An hour later, Finch stood on the ridge and stared down. Far below, the dull blue snake of a canal. Two detectives in a boat. Slowly making their way northeast. Finch was about three hundred feet above them. Wyte was a large shadow with a white face, the boat a floating coffin. Dapple had been reduced to a kind of question mark. Not a good place to be. Anyone could’ve been on the ridge, looking down. Lucky for them it was just him.

A steep hillside below Finch. Made of garbage. Stone. Metal. Bricks. The petrified snout of a tank or two. Ripped apart treads. Collapsed train cars pitted with scars and holes. Ragged, dry scraps of clothing that might’ve been people once.

A dry smell hung over it all. Cut through at times by the stench of something dead but lingering. He’d been here before, when it had just been a grassy slope. A nice place. A place couples might go to have a picnic. Couldn’t imagine it ever returning to that state.

The weather had gotten surly. Grayish. A strange hot wind dashed itself against the street rubble. Blew up into his face. Off to the northeast: the Religious Quarter. A still-distant series of broken towers, steeples, and domes. Wrapped in a haze of contrasting, layered shades of green. Looking light as mist. Like something out of a dream from afar. Up close, Finch knew, it reflected only hints of the Ambergris from before, the place once ruled by an opera composer, shaped by the colors red and green.

The canal led into the Religious Quarter, but Wyte and Dapple would have to disembark much earlier. Their objective lay just outside the Quarter.

Finch’s gaze traveled back down the canal, toward civilization. Zeroed in on a series of swift-moving dots some two hundred feet behind the boat. Dark. Lanky. Angular. Using the bramble on the far side of the canal as cover. Partials. Trailing Wyte.

Stared down at the story unfolding below him with a kind of absurd disbelief. Swore under his breath. Took the measure of the Partials down the barrel of his Lewden Special. But it was a long shot. Literally. He lowered the gun.

Maybe Wyte knew about the Partials? What if they were providing support? No. Blakely would’ve mentioned that. Blakely would’ve told him about Partials. Probably sent to make sure Wyte did as he’d been told. Was the Partial with them, or was he back at the apartment guarding a dead man?

For a moment, Finch just stood on the ridge, under the gray sky. Watched with envy the wheeling arc of a vulture like a dark blade through the air.

Easy to turn away. Heretic didn’t expect him to be there. Wyte didn’t know where he’d gone. Finch could say he’d been investigating some other lead. Could go back to the station. Forget he’d seen any of this. Wait for them to get back. If they came back.

Bliss: “It isn’t what you find out that’s going to keep you alive. It’s where you’re standing … You shouldn’t be worried about me, or what I was doing. You should be worried about yourself.”

Bone-weary. Hungry. Bliss’s words still in his thoughts. The long fall through the door still devouring him. Finch looked back the way he’d come. Looked down at Wyte and Dapple. Remembered Dapple calm once, at his desk, stealing a moment to write a few lines of poetry. Remembered Wyte training him as a courier for Hoegbotton. His patience and his good humor. Long nights in their home, laughing and joking not just with Wyte but with Emily. Back before the end of history.

Now he was standing on top of a mountain of garbage, trying to figure out how he’d gotten there.

“Fuck,” he said to the vulture. To the false light of the Religious Quarter. “Fuck you all.”

Then he was descending the ridge at an angle. Trying to put enough shadow, enough debris, in front of him and the canal that the Partials couldn’t see him.

This was going to get worse before it got better.

---

Finch caught up to them as they were mooring the boat to a rickety dock under a stand of willow trees. Shadowed by a lichen-choked, half-drowned stone archway that led nowhere now. The canal had a metallic blue sheen to it. Nothing rippled across its surface. The gray boat had that mottled, doughy look Finch hated. Like it was made of flesh.

He said nothing. Just came out of the shadow of the trees and leaned against the arch. Waiting for Wyte to see him.

Looping one last length of rope round a pole, Wyte did a double take.

“Finch?” he said. “Finch.” A slow, hesitant smile broke across his troubling face. A sincere relief that softened the sternness of his features. “It’s good to see you.”

Dapple jumped off the boat. “How’d you know where to find us?” he demanded. The anger of a desperate man.

“Relax. Blakely told me,” Finch said. “I was already on this side of the bay.”

But Dapple’s face darkened at the mention of Blakely. He looked more nervous than usual. The body language of a mouse or rat. Twitching. Had two guns. Both gray cap issue. One drawn. One stuck through his belt. He wore a mottled green shirt too big for him and black trousers shoved into brown boots. Like a doll dressed for war.

As ever, Wyte hid himself in a bulky, tightly buttoned overcoat. An angry red splotch had drifted down his forehead. Had colonized half of one eye. Cheek. Chin. The splotch had elongated and widened his face. Made his head more like a porous marble bust. He wore black gloves over his hands. Red and white threads had emerged from his sleeves. Wandered of their own accord.

As Wyte trod heavily closer, he extended his hand. Gave Finch a thankful look as they shook. Wyte’s grip was strong but gave. Like the glove was full of moist bread. Finch suppressed a shudder from the sense of things moving inside each finger.

“Where were you this morning?” Wyte asked. Dapple stood behind him, eclipsed.

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Why not tell me now.” Finch heard the fear in Wyte’s voice.

“No,” Finch said, laying the word down hard.

Wyte considered that for a moment. Like it was a wall between them. Looked back toward the boat as if thinking about getting back on it. “Did Blakely tell you our mission?”

“I told Wyte we should just. Should just run,” Dapple said, breaking in. “That this is going to. Going to get us killed.” Sometimes Dapple stopped in mid-sentence. Like an actor trying to perfect a line.

“Listen, Wyte,” Finch said, ignoring Dapple. “I came down off the ridge. There are Partials following you. A few hundred feet behind. They’re probably watching us now.”

Or they’ve got a spy on you, Wyte, and they don’t need to watch us.

Wyte grimaced. Dapple stared at the water like he expected something to erupt out of it.

“What do we do.” Dapple asked. Didn’t seem to expect an answer.

“Shut up, Dapple,” Wyte whispered.

“Carry out our mission. Come home alive. Like always.” Finch putting emphasis on our. An ache in his throat. Knew Wyte would understand that Finch wouldn’t have come down the ridge for anyone else.

No matter that you’re not always the Wyte I remember.

A sudden spark in Wyte’s eyes. Something that glittered. Began to fade almost as soon as it had passed through.

“Like old times,” Wyte said. A wry grin. “Like when I taught you how to deal with ship captains down at the docks.” His voice was crumbling like a ruined wall. The edges of words worn away.

Finch was too tired to take the brunt of that. “We should get moving.”

He wanted action so he wouldn’t have to think.

About any of it.

3

The haze of the Religious Quarter came closer and closer. A fake fairy tale city-within-a-city above them. Of those following, no sight. Just the sound of gravel once, dislodged. A distant muttered curse.

After a climb, the ground leveled out. They came to a long, tall wall parallel to a rough road. Ahead, the wall ran on into the distance, buckled and cracked in places. Like it was having trouble restraining what it had been made to hold back. Coming over the wall: the lime scent, the rich greens of the Religious Quarter. Fungus and trees wedded in a vast alliance. Looked like nothing more or less than a fiery explosion, frozen in time. Bullet holes in the wall, in dozens of places. The blackish spray of old blood where someone had gotten unlucky. Under it all, a latticework of fungus. Faintly visible. Faintly green-glowing.

“This is Scarp Lane,” Wyte said. “I was here before the Rising. Tree-lined. Nice homes. Bars and restaurants and dance halls. Little alcoves for people to put up offerings to their gods. You could indulge in your favorite vice and then walk right over and pray it away. Between the wars, it used to be a nice row of wrought-iron streetlamps and sidewalk vendors.”

Finch frowned. Used to be. Wyte didn’t usually indulge in used to be.

Nothing for it but to follow the wall.

People began to appear in doorways. Leaning against rusting lampposts. On balconies. Dark in complexion. Wore strange hats. Stared you in the eye. Challenged silently why you were here. Sometimes as many as six or seven. Loitering on a street corner. Any time Finch saw more than four people gathered in one place, he figured the gray caps had used their resources elsewhere.

“Put your badges away,” Finch said, suddenly.

Dapple had been holding his badge so anyone could see it. Protested, even after Wyte made his own disappear.

“Seen any Partials here?” Finch asked.

“No.”

“Seen anyone who would give a shit about your badge?”

Dapple didn’t respond.

“And you won’t, either,” Finch continued. “Not this close to the wall. Except for the ones following us.”

They’d be heavily armed. Probably with fungal weapons. Moving in a tight formation. If they were doing more than shadowing Wyte and Dapple, gray caps might be following, too.

From below.

---

The chapel at 1829 Northwest Scarp Lane pushed out from the wall. It had once been a modest two-story church topped by a silver metal dome. Now that dome was spackled and overgrown with rich burnished copper-bronze-amber mold that met a sea of mixed sea greens and blues creeping up. Little rounded windows in the dome. Perfect firing lines.

Beneath, the green-and-white paint of the rounded walls had peeled away to reveal dry dark wood beneath. In the center, a large ornate double door. To either side, hollowed-out alcoves that Finch didn’t think led anywhere. In front of all three, a facade of archways.

A horseshoe-shaped barricade of six or seven tanks with a sandbag wall curved from just beyond the side of the chapel to around the front of it. The tanks nestled together as if sleeping. Been there seven years at least. Burnt out. Crumbling. Faithful old Hoegbotton insignia still visible on the sides. Delicate snow-white mushrooms had overtaken them. Fernlike green tendrils grew from their rusted tops: all that was left of the men that had been flushed out.

Less than one hundred feet between the chapel entrance and the sandbag wall. Anyone could have manned it. At any time. Rival armies and militias had marched and retreated across that damaged ground for more than forty years.

No one in sight now, in either direction. Yet another kind of sign.

“Great fucking place for an ambush,” Finch said, as they stood outside the chapel. At their backs, beyond the tanks and sandbags, a warren of streets. Burnt-out schools, apartments, abandoned businesses.

“I don’t like it, either,” Wyte said.

“What if it’s a test? A test to prove our loyalty?” Dapple said. “And it’s not a rebel safe house at all.”

“Shut up,” Wyte said. Shifting his weight from foot to foot as if something pained him. To Finch: “If anyone is in there, we ask a few questions. Try to get some information to satisfy Heretic. Get out.”

Finch nodded. If anyone was in there, Finch didn’t know if they’d get many words in before the shooting started. Rebel safe house. Three detectives working for the gray caps, with Partials backing them up. Be better off turning in their guns, asking for mercy. Maybe.

Dapple looked close to tears. “We should get. The hell out now.”

“Changed your mind? Then why don’t you stay out here,” Finch said. “Guard the door. Duck inside and tell us if you see anything suspicious.” Dapple would be less dangerous as a guard than backing them up.

“With Partials out here?” Dapple protested.

Finch checked the magazine in the semiautomatic. Released the safety. “You’ll do it, Dapple, and you’ll be happy about it. And Dapple? Don’t run away. We’ll find you.”

“Enough!” Wyte said. “Let’s get this over with.”

The language of men scared shitless.

Wyte put his hand in the huge left-side pocket of his coat. The one with the growing verdigris stain. The one with his gun in it.

He walked through the middle doorway, Finch behind him.

---

Dark and cool inside. A second door just a few feet after the first. Wyte pushed it open. Finch covered him.

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Finch let the room come to him. The smell of moist, rotting wood. A high ceiling that made every step echo up in the rafters. Two sets of pews, in twelve rows. Leading up to a raised wooden platform with an ornate, carved railing. Beyond that, red curtains. The supports for a chandelier hung down from the ceiling. But there was no chandelier. On the right side of the dais, an iron staircase curled up toward the dome.

“What the hell is that?” Wyte said, pointing.

As his eyes adjusted, Finch could see that a long, low glass-lined counter ran along the right side of the dais. Couldn’t tell what was inside it.

“I don’t know.”

Finch drifted ahead of Wyte. Walked up the carpet with Wyte behind. Climbed onto the platform from the steps built into the right side.

The counter. Under the smudged glass, a series of arms and heads. The arms looked like prosthetics. Didn’t understand the heads with their hollow eye sockets any better.

“Why in a church?” Wyte asked.

Finch shushed him.

Beyond the counter: a doorway covered with a tapestry of Manzikert subduing the gray caps.

Finch motioned toward the tapestry with his Lewden Special.

Wyte shook his head. Too dangerous. Too unknown.

Finch nodded.

Wyte retreated into the shadows to the left of the counter. Pulled the gun from his pocket. It looped spirals of dark fluid onto his overcoat. Finch bent at the knees, put the counter between his body and the doorway. Aimed at the tapestry.

“Is anyone there?” Finch said. Loud enough to be heard in any back room.

Something fell. Like a jar or tin.

“Is anyone there?” Finch repeated. His heart felt like a fragile animal inside his chest. Trying to get free. Being battered in the attempt. Kept switching the gun from hand to hand. So he could wipe his sweaty palms on his shirt.

A kind of hesitation from beyond the doorway. A kind of poised silence. Then a careful movement swept aside the tapestry. A short, thin woman walked out.

She stood behind the counter as Finch rose, gun at his side. Wyte reappeared from the shadows.

The woman’s gray hair had been pulled back into a tight ponytail. She wore a formless blue dress with a black belt. Her face was heavily lined. Her mouth drooped on the left side as if from a stroke. Or an old wound. Finch thought he could see the whispering line of a scar across the cheek.

“Point your gun somewhere else, Detective,” she said, staring at Wyte. Her voice had gravel in it. Finch had no doubt she’d commanded men before.

The seepage had become a constant spatter against the wooden floor. But Finch couldn’t tell if it came from the gun or from Wyte.

Wyte lowered his gun.

“Who says we’re detectives?” Finch said.

Her eyes were the color of a knife blade. “That’s a gray cap weapon.”

“We’re investigating a murder,” Finch said. “That’s all we’re here for.”

“All?” she echoed.

Finch wondered what they looked like to her. Wyte transforming. Him tired and dirty. In Wyte’s crappy shoes.

Wyte asked, “What’s your name?”

No answer.

“We could bring you in for questioning,” Wyte said.

“But you won’t, because I’m an old woman,” she said in a whisper. “Because you’re decent men.”

Wyte snorted, losing patience. “A night in the station holding cell might make you more talkative.”

The full, hawklike intensity of her stare focused on Wyte. “You want a name? It’s Jane Smith.”

Wyte opened his mouth. Closed it again.

Finch gave Wyte a wary look. Said to her, “What are all these parts doing here?”

“This is a business. People who’ve been released from the camps come here if they’ve lost a leg. Or an arm.”

“Or a head?” Finch asked.

“You seem to be keeping yours, Detective,” she snapped.

Wyte said, “Are you the Lady in Blue?”

Finch knew he’d meant it as a kind of joke. But Wyte’s voice couldn’t convey a joke anymore.

A look of disbelief spread across the woman’s thin features. The wrinkles at the sides of her eyes bunched up. She began to guffaw. The roughest, crudest laughter Finch had ever heard from a woman.

When she had recovered, she said, “You should leave. Now.”

“Bellum omnium contra omnes,” Finch said. Put as much weight as he could behind the words. As if he meant to physically move her with them. Couldn’t have said where the impulse came from, to say it. Wyte gasped.

Her eyes opened wide. The color in her cheeks deepened.

“There is a way,” she said. Hesitated. As if she’d made a mistake.

Finch repeated the words: bellum omnium contra omnes.

Her features hardened. “I don’t think I know what you’re talking about after all.”

“I think you do,” Finch said. He hadn’t given the right response, but he’d been close.

Wyte pulled out his gun, brushed past Finch, and shoved it in the woman’s face.

“Wyte…” Finch said in a warning tone.

“No, Finch,” Wyte said. “I’m sick of this. Sick of it. She’s lying. You want this to go down like Bliss all over again? Well, I don’t.” Wyte pushed the muzzle into the woman’s forehead until the discharge dribbled down her face. She closed her eyes, winced, said again, “I don’t know what it means. I don’t.”

“Wyte, this won’t get you what you want,” Finch said.

Turned his pale, monstrous head for a second. “Hell it won’t.”

“For Truff’s sake, Wyte! Put down the fucking gun!”

“If I do, she’s going to kill us,” Wyte said. The gun slipping in his grasp. Finger still tight on the trigger. “Can’t you feel it? We’re going to die here because of her.” Voice small and low. His shape beneath the overcoat in the grip of some terrible insurrection.

The woman’s eyes fluttered, closed again. Waiting for the bullet while Wyte waited for his answer.

No way to get to Wyte before he shot her.

Saved by Dapple calling out in alarm from beyond the door. “Partials!”

Wyte looked toward the door. Lowered the gun. But something was swimming in his eyes. Something that wasn’t part of him. Not really.

The woman leaned down, fast.

The front of the counter exploded in a cloud of dust and debris.

The force threw Finch up against the rail, drove Wyte down to one knee. Wyte’s gun skittered across the floor. A piece of wood had grazed Finch’s left arm. His ears rang from the blast. Through the wreckage of the counter, Finch could see the cannon of a gun that had done the damage. Mounted on a metal stand.

The woman had leapt to the spiral staircase. She was shouting to someone above her. Coughing, Finch got off a shot that bit into the steps at her heels. Then the darkness took her.

Wyte recovered his weapon, started to move toward the stairs. Finch followed, then stopped. Pulled at Wyte’s coat sleeve.

“Fuck. Wait.”

“Wait, Finch? Wait?” Straining against his grip. “Goddamn it, she’s getting away!”

The sound of gunfire. Coming from the top of the chapel. And a torrent of boots on steps from beyond the tapestry door.

“No! Didn’t you hear Dapple? And there’s a whole fucking army coming.”

“Shit,” Wyte said. No longer pulling away.

They ran back down the carpet. Past the pews.

Bullets sprayed in a torrent against the outside of the chapel walls. A muted cry from Dapple.

Brought them up short at the double doors.

Finch looked at Wyte. Wyte looked back at him. Knew they were thinking the same thing. Better outside with Partials than trapped inside with the rebels.

Finch heard the sound of the tapestry parting just as they burst through the double doors. Out into the light. Stumbled over Dapple lying on his back in the dirt between the doors and the archways. Face slack. Clipped by a fungal bullet. Left shoulder turning black. Neck covered in looping veins of dark red that made him look like an obscene map. Convulsions already. Eyes distant. Muttering through a mouth flecked with spit. His guns beside him.

Finch looked up to see Partials behind the sandbags, among the tanks. Dozens of them. Pale faces. Dark clothing. Aiming up at the top of the chapel and the sharpshooters pouring fire down on them.

Frozen for an instant. Caught between two bad choices. Didn’t know how Dapple had gotten hit.

Then a roar from next to him. Wyte was roaring. Standing straight up. Not caring if he got hit. Finch could just see the Partials moving back and forth behind their shelter. The liquid muzzle flashes.

“No, Wyte!” But it was too late. Wyte was shooting at them, and shooting and shooting. Bullets stitched through the dirt. Smacked into the stone of the archways.

No chance for finding common cause now. They had to get away from the front door.

“Wyte! Come on!” Shoved Wyte toward the alcove to their right. Finch dragging Dapple, who had gone silent with shock. Wyte still blazing away with his gun, gone mad with the pressure. Goading them. Laughing at them. Their confused pale faces in Finch’s confused vision like smears of fat.

Between the alcove and the archway in front of it: enough cover to get Dapple out of sight and Finch mostly out of the line of fire.

But Wyte, oblivious, was beginning to scare Finch. A fungal bullet ripped right into Wyte’s arm as he shot back at them. The bullet just stuck there. Absorbed by Wyte’s body.

Finch got off a couple shots at the Partials. Semiautomatic bucking in his hand. Smelled the acid smoke of the aftermath. None of the Partials went down. Had about ten bullets in the gun. More clips in his pockets.

But they’d still get shot to pieces. Now the double doors had opened. Rebels were firing back at the Partials. From the doors. From the dome.

Wyte jammed another bunch of sticky nodules into his gun from his right front pocket. Kept right on firing. The noise was hellacious. Wyte’s bullets made an echoing thwack sound. Finch’s a deeper crack. The Partials’ return fire was like wood popping in a fire. The smell of the fungal bullets musty and metallic.

A scream from one of the Partials. Another scream. Finch, back up against the wall, shielding Dapple, had only a partial view.

A fungal bullet hit the dirt well to their right. Veins of red spread out across the ground. Seeking. Searching. Stopped next to a lizard sunning itself, oblivious to the threat.

“What’s happening, Wyte,” Finch shouted above the roar.

“I’m fucking killing them. Killing them all,” he roared.

A conventional bullet clipped the side of Wyte’s head. Left a bloody track. A runnel of flesh coming off. He roared again—this time with pain. Directed his fire to the left, toward the rebels or more Partials. The response was a fresh hail of bullets that sent even Wyte back into their shelter for a moment. Finch kept squeezing off rounds blind. Trying to aim high but not too high.

Wyte’s face shone bright. His eyes were large and dilated and he was smiling.

“The bullets don’t hurt,” he kept saying. “They don’t hurt at all.”

“They’ll hurt you eventually, dammit!” Finch got off another round.

Dapple convulsed. Blood rushed out of his mouth. His eyes stared toward the sky. Lifeless.

“Fuck.”

Finch grabbed Wyte’s shirtsleeve. Pulled him in close. Green pallor. Tongue purple. Eyes like black marbles shot through with gold worms. A bullet lodged in his left cheek. Coin-shaped. Like a curious birthmark.

“Wyte! We’ve got to get out of here. Do you understand?”

Wyte seemed to wake up. Spittle came out of his mouth as he said, “We’ll go right through the Partials.” Firing with his straight right arm as he talked. Bullets slamming into his side. Finch could hear them making impact. Being absorbed. “There’s an alley behind them. Up or down the street you’re dead. But if we’re fast, right through the Partials works.”

“How the fuck does that work?” Finch shouted at Wyte.

“I go out first, shielding you,” Wyte said impatiently. Almost with a snarl.

“With your body?” Finch said, incredulous. “That’s crazy.”

Grinned at him. One eye on the street. “It’s all fucked up. What’s one more thing? Trust me, Finch.”

“You’ll die if you do this, Wyte,” Finch said.

“No. I won’t.” Never heard Wyte so confident.

A bullet spiraled into Wyte’s left thigh. He didn’t even flinch.

Grim smile. “I love you, Wyte.” And he did, he realized.

A smile back from Wyte like it was the old days before the Rising.

---

Later, in memory, it would be a fractured mix of shouts and screams and bullets flying and Finch running into the back of Wyte to keep as close as possible. Tripping over the things crawling off Wyte’s legs. Wyte exploding out from their shelter, overcoat thrown aside to reveal a body become other. A garden of fungus. Arms ballooning out into sudden wings of brilliant purple-red-orange. Legs lost in shelves and plateaus and spikes of green and blue. Back broader and insanely strong and gray. Head suddenly elongated and widened. As he ran a high-pitched scream came from his mouth that frightened Finch and bloodied the ears of the Partials.

The bullets. Wyte kept taking them like gifts. They tore through his limbs, lodged in his torso. Leaving holes. Leaving daylight. That closed up. And running in the shadow of that magnificence, as Wyte’s scream became a roar again and they were assailing the ramparts of the Partials, he felt as if he were following some sort of god, his own gun like a toy as, from the shelter that was Wyte, he shot back at the chapel to keep the rebels pinned down.

Wyte’s voice came out incomprehensible and strange now. Guttural and animallike. No part of him in those moments that was human. Once he looked back at Finch to make sure he was still there. The whites of his eyes colonized. His pupils looking like something trapped. Trapped forever inside its own flesh.

For a while it was as if Wyte had lent Finch that kind of vision, because he could see the bullets coming. As if Finch were floating overhead, watching. And it was ecstasy or some kind of odd heaven. The surprise that eclipsed the Partials’ pale faces as Wyte overran their positions. Wyte trying to outrun something he couldn’t outrun. Tendrils from his chest racing out to impale them. The weeping muzzle of his gun taking them in the legs, the heads. Faces trampled under his charge. Fungal eyes still clicking and clicking as the bodies lay dead. While even the rebels’ fire had become scattershot from the shock of the new. From seeing the glory that Wyte had become. The monster.

Then it all came crashing down and Finch was in his skin again. In that one last look back he saw it all as a crazed tableau of men fallen, falling, firing, or running at an impossible speed. Almost distant enough as they made it to the warren of streets beyond to think of them as the silhouettes of broken, spasming dolls.

Realized he was roaring, too, like Wyte. As the tears ran down his face. As he kept firing behind him long after the enemy had faded into time and distance.

4

Breathless. Aching. Side hurting. Wyte trailing bits of things into the rubble behind them. Waiting for a bullet in the back of the head that never came. The acrid smell of spent ammo. A shambling halt under the shadow of the arch. The boat still tethered in the canal. The sky dark gray.

Wyte was still coming down from whatever had possessed him. Voice slick with some hidden discharge. Muttering: “Like wheat. Like paper. Just shredding them. Just running through them.”

Finch babbling back. Exhilarated. Heart still beating so hard in his chest.

Wyte’s face had regained a semblance of the normal, skin sealed over the bullets. Already now looking drawn, diminished. Finch kept seeing Wyte killing the Partials.

Wyte had rebuttoned his trench coat. The lining torn. Hung down below the hem. Mud-spattered. Blood-spattered. About a dozen bullet holes in it. Small orange mushroom caps peeked out from the holes. Others had burst through the fabric. Around the buttons, purple fungus rasped out, probing.

“Wyte, Dapple’s dead,” Finch said.

“I know, Finch. I saw. Get in the boat.”

Finch climbed in and sat down. Held himself rigid as Wyte made the difficult negotiation of casting off and jumping in without capsizing them. Wyte sat down opposite. The boat glided across the water, back the way it had come. Like magic.

“You saved my life, Wyte,” Finch said. And it was true. Monstrously true. Kept staring at Wyte with a kind of awe. Wyte’s strength had manifested in a way Finch still couldn’t quite believe.

“But not Dapple,” Wyte said. “Dapple’s dead. And I feel beaten and bruised all over.”

Had Wyte passed a point of no return? More things that had colonized him peered out from the collar of the coat. Spilled out from his pants legs. Erupted in red-and-green patterns from his boots. A stench of overwhelming sweetness. Of corruption.

“Don’t go back to the station,” Finch said. “Not today.”

“We were sent there to die, weren’t we?” Matter-of-fact.

For my sins.

“Maybe we weren’t,” Finch said, thinking about the Partial standing over Shriek’s body. Lecturing him about how Partials saw more than gray caps. “Maybe it’s all falling apart. In front of our eyes. Everything.”

Wyte made a wet clucking sound. He was trying to laugh. “Didn’t it fall apart a long time ago?”

Knew Wyte was thinking about his wife, his kids, the little house they’d shared together so long ago.

Finch didn’t want that in his head, shot a glance up toward the ridge. Anyone could pick them off. Anyone. “Stay at home. I’ll figure it out. Call you.”

Wyte nodded again, almost slumped over in his seat. A kind of glow had begun to suffuse his features. Green-golden.

Or you’ll call me. Suppressed a shudder.

Finch’s vision blurred. Too many things to keep inside. Every time he thought he’d tamped down one thing, another came rushing up.

A long silence. A complex smile played across Wyte’s blurring lips. Finally said, “You know, Finch, I think we’re a lot closer to solving this case.”

A double take from Finch. A stifled smile. “Yeah, Wyte. Sure you do. Rest now. Sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

Wyte nodded. Closed his eyes.

A flake of something floated onto Finch’s shoulder. Then another and another. He looked up to see that it was snowing. It was snowing in Ambergris.

As the white flakes drifted down, Finch on a hunch looked back. The white dome of the farthest camp had disappeared, replaced by an impression of billowing whiteness. An outline of what had once been. Realized that bits of fungus were raining down on them.

Raindrops followed, thick but sparse. Finch blinking them away. He laughed then. A wide laugh. Showing his teeth.

The “snow” still coming down. Falling onto Wyte’s slack face. Melting away. Into him.

5

By the time Finch made it back to the hotel, he was almost asleep on his feet. Keeping him awake: left shoulder on fire. A bullet hole through the right arm of his jacket. Would’ve nicked him if he’d been a fatter man. A sharp pain in his ankle when he climbed the steps to the lobby. Stomach empty and complaining. Even after he bought some sad-looking plums. On credit. With a threat. From a woman who’d set them out on her stoop like a row of Bosun’s carvings. Ate them on the way back to the hotel. Slowly.

Passed the Photographer inside. Grunted a hello. The Photographer just stared at him.

Lots of love to you, too.

He turned left in the courtyard, descended. Stopped at Rathven’s door. Knocked.

A slow, reluctant opening. Long wedge of light. When Rathven looked up at Finch he thought he saw the secret knowledge they shared shining through her eyes.

A frown hardened her face. “What do you want?” She had one arm behind her back, hiding something. Wore severe pants and a shirt that almost made her look like an Irregular.

“You called me. Remember?”

She seemed to consider that. Almost as if she couldn’t tell if he was lying. That she couldn’t remember making the call.

“Can I come in?” Finch said, pressing.

“No. I mean, not now. You look like a wreck. What happened to you?”

Felt exposed there, in the hallway.

“Just let me in,” he said, pushing at the door. Seeing if it would give. Seeing if she would give. “Of course I look rough. It’s been a rough day.”

“Stay where you are,” Rathven said. She was stronger than she looked. The door hadn’t even trembled. Or she’d wedged something behind it. “Are you drunk?” she asked.

Brought up short by the question, he shook his head. “No, of course not. At least tell me why you called.” Felt like he had stone blocks attached to his legs. His vision was swimming. The words he said came both fast and slow. Didn’t wait for her hesitation, said, “Don’t tell me it was nothing. Something’s obviously wrong. You’re not yourself.”

A fire in her hazel eyes. A kind of scorn in the set of her mouth. Her rigid stance. “Do you blame me?” she spat out. “And you—you’re not ‘yourself’ either. I don’t know who you are. You work for the gray caps but you help me get someone out of the camps. You help people in this building but then you go off and do Truff knows what during the day. For them. For them. You’re in a good humor. You’re in a bad mood. Sullen. Distant. Suddenly friendly. You like coffee, then suddenly you like tea. Why wouldn’t I be wary?”

The words hit him like a blow to the head. Felt the corridor swirling.

“I have to sit down,” he said. “If I have to, I’ll sit down right here.” The nausea had come back. Kept seeing Bliss and the tunnel they’d fallen through. Holding on to Bliss’s shoulders had made it real, hard to shake off.

Rathven, continuing: “You bring me these lists. These lists of dead people. And you say research them, and it turns out you’re investigating the murder of someone who couldn’t possibly have been alive. It’s a burden knowing that. Thinking that maybe you’re not even working on a murder case. That maybe you’re just crazy.”

Each word like a length of rope Finch tried to hold on to as he fell. Slipping away under his grasp. Burning his palms.

He saw the floor coming up on him, then the ceiling above as he managed to land on his back. Shoulder feeling crunchy, like ground-up glass. Hand scraping against the floor. Crumpled into darkness. But, thankfully, not Bliss’s darkness. Weightless. No nausea here. No thoughts.

Except the original one: What was Duncan Shriek doing in that apartment?

---

Ghosts of light pearling across the uneven surface of ceiling beams. Came to his senses in his own apartment, on the couch. A lamp on the stand by his head. Rathven leaning forward to stare at him. Her gun on the table between them. A battered old revolver. Heavy. The kind of thing that at close range would take your heart out, throw you across the room. Not what Finch would’ve expected from her. Curled up next to it, Heretic’s list, returned, along with Shriek: An Afterword and Cinsorium & Other Historical Fables.

With an effort, he pulled himself into a sitting position.

“How long was I out?”

“Just a few minutes.” Rathven wasn’t smiling.

A sudden, suspicious thought. “How’d you get me in here?” Reached for his own gun. Found it still there. Tried to make a graceful motion away from it. Too late. Looked up to see Rathven frowning again.

“What are you afraid of?” she asked. “That I’m really strong or that I had an accomplice? Or that I’m going to shoot you?”

“No, I meant—”

“My brother helped bring you in here.”

Finch nodded, ran a hand across his face. His hand felt like lizard skin. In his head a sound like waves.

Slowly realized the apartment didn’t look the same. Thought it was him at first, vision blurry. But no: books tossed on the floor. Paintings smashed or askew on the walls. His other furniture knocked over. The kitchen trashed, too. Winced from pain in his shoulder.

“Shit, Rathven. What happened?”

“I don’t know. It was this way when we came up. There’ve been too many strangers in the hotel lately. Why do you think I’m carrying a gun now?”

“You didn’t before?” Ignored the look she gave him. “I’ve got to get cleaned up,” he said.

“I’ll wait.”

He checked the table in his bedroom, with the maps on it. On the floor. The overlay was torn and had a boot print on it. Of the Partial? The one he hated? Much as he’d hoped during Wyte’s mad charge, he hadn’t seen the man.

The map his father had given him was intact. Still on the table. The bed was tossed. Pillows on the floor, sheets pulled back. Mattress had knife marks in it.

Finch considered that for a second. Then went into the bathroom. Shower didn’t work. A thin trickle of water from the sink. He took off his clothes slowly, knees creaky. Like an old man. Washed himself clean with a washcloth. Waiting patiently for the water. Cold. Bracing. A lot of sandy dirt. Especially on his feet. He put on clean clothes. Same jacket. Bullet hole and all. Found some socks and an old pair of boots. Felt a little bit more human. Still, the face in the mirror looked defeated, pinched. Eyes he didn’t know stared back at him.

He walked into the living room to find Rathven with a broom, sweeping up broken glass in the kitchen. She’d already wrestled many of his books back onto their shelves.

“Rath, you don’t need to do that,” Finch said.

“No, I don’t,” she said. Kept sweeping.

Whoever had trashed the apartment had left Finch’s whiskey alone. He found a glass. A generous pour. Let the taste burn in his mouth. Sterilize me. Grimaced as his shoulder tightened. Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been the right shoulder. Interfered with drawing his gun. Or his sword.

He picked up a chair with his good arm, righted it. Sat, watching Rathven in the kitchen. Admired how she could focus so single-mindedly on the ordinary.

“Seen Feral?” he asked her.

“No. I’m sure whatever happened scared him.”

“Was the door open when you brought me up here?”

“No, it was closed. And locked. I had to get your key out of your pocket.”

Relief. Sintra. Though how many hours had just anyone been able to walk in?

“Do you know a man named Ethan Bliss?” Had to ask the question.

A break in the rhythm of her sweeping. “Bliss? No.”

Finch wasn’t convinced. “Ethan Bliss. Smaller than me. Dark eyes. You might have known him as a Frankwrithe & Lewden supporter before the Rising.… He was the one in my apartment last night.” Although he didn’t have time to trash the place then.

No reaction. Which was a kind of reaction.

“We fought,” Finch continued. “It’s part of why I look this way.”

Rathven leaned on the broom. Eyes narrowed. “How does he look?”

“I don’t follow y—”

“Because I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met him.”

“Never even seen him? He used to be a powerful man for Frankwrithe before the Rising.”

“No.”

Hard to read her. Had, for that reason, sometimes been tempted to request her file from the gray caps. Resisted the urge. Didn’t want to have Heretic asking him why.

In a low voice, “Are you investigating me?” Her tone said, After all the help I’ve given you.

“No, of course not.” Scrambled for cover: “Could you do me a favor? He has a couple of aliases I need checked out.”

Finch searched for a piece of paper. Wrote down Graansvoort, Dar Sardice.

The truth: he couldn’t really imagine Rathven hurting him. Not on purpose. Suspected her of hiding something. But that might have nothing to do with him. Everyone in the city kept secrets.

She looked at the names on the piece of paper.

“It’s all getting more and more complicated, Rathven. Hard to keep it all clear in my head.”

“More complicated than Duncan Shriek?”

“Much more complicated.” Doors that were more than doors. Wyte become something greater and lesser than human. Suddenly, the city was several cities. Time was several times. As if he’d been looking at his map and the overlay, and suddenly realized more overlays were needed to really see Ambergris.

The confusion must have shown because she gave him a half smile. A kind of peace offering. “I’ll be finished soon. Then you should get some sleep.”

In the apartment Bliss can visit anytime he wants to?

He tried to smile back. “But why did you call? Really?” Teetering now. Two towers. Heretic’s skery. Wyte’s improbable charge. Dapple sprawled in the dirt. Dead.

She held his gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable. As if trying to convey something to him that could not be said aloud.

“Sintra came by the hotel this morning.”

“I know. She told me.”

“Did she tell you she came down to see me?”

Finch, suddenly alert: “No…”

“Did she tell you she asked about your case?”

“It was a short phone call.” Already marshaling stones, sandbags, the wreckage of tanks as a barricade.

“Well, she did, Finch,” Rathven said. “She asked me about the case. We talked about it.”

“And you told her about Shriek?” Incredulous.

Flat, dead tone. Not a glimmer of humor in her eyes.

“No. She already knew.”

---

Feral came to the door scratching about ten minutes after Rathven had left. Frantic as Finch undid the locks on his apartment door. Complaining about the tragedy of not having been fed. That there should be such injustice in the world. Despite himself, Finch smiled.

Finch locked the door behind Feral. Once again shoved a chair up against the doorknob. Put down twice the normal amount of food for the cat. Then lay down on his couch, forcing himself to eat a packet of gray cap rations. The packet was porous. The contents a swelling purple. In his mouth, it tasted like onions and salt and chicken. Knew it was not.

Welcomed the utter fatigue. It emptied his head. Made it hard to think about unthinkable things. He’d go back to the station in the morning. Sort it out. Somehow. The apartment still looked like shit, but not as much like someone had trashed it. Actually found himself hoping it had been Bliss, come back to finish the job. Otherwise, Stark was already upping the pressure. Or, there was an unknown element out there.

Too tired to sleep. Poured himself another whiskey. Sat down with Shriek: An Afterword and Cinsorium & Other Historical Fables. He was facing the apartment door, with his Lewden Special wedged in beside his left leg. So he could reach across his body to draw it. Sitting upright eased the pain in his shoulder.

Cinsorium looked like a kind of abridgment of Duncan Shriek’s theories. He started to read it, then put it down. Needed something first that gave him more of a sense of Duncan’s character.

He picked up Shriek, began to skim it. Saw at once the conceit: Duncan’s voice in parentheses, commenting on Janice’s history of a broken family and the first war between the Houses. Skipped to the end, read the editor’s afterword. Duncan’s disappearance. His sister’s disappearance and possible death. The manuscript found in a pub Finch figured must’ve gone under or been destroyed years ago. With notes scrawled on the pages by Duncan. Which meant he’d still been alive when Janice went missing.

Finch turned back to the beginning. Charted Duncan’s rise and fall as a historian, a believer in fringe theories about the gray caps. Almost all of them now proven true. Obsessed with a student at the academy where he’d taught history. A long, unhappy love affair. Duncan turned into a stalker. Discredited. Become unbelievable. Skipped Janice’s own rise in the art world. Beside the point to Finch. He found Janice an exasperating narrator. She hid things, lied, delayed the truth. To undermine and slant. Like a particularly crafty interrogation subject.

Gradually, he got a sense of the tragedy of Duncan’s life. How close Shriek had been to success. To being a kind of prophet. An injustice, his fate working at Finch’s sense of fairness. A staggering sense of an opportunity lost. A path not taken. An Ambergris where Duncan Shriek was lauded and the Rising had never happened. Or been defeated. A horror at the idea of nothing really changing in a century. The Houses had gone from war to war. The city was more fractured than ever. Would still be fractured even if the gray caps disappeared tomorrow.

All depressingly similar, and yet he remembered the brief years of peace more vividly than the war. No matter how hard he tried to forget. A better life. A better way.

Kept searching Duncan’s asides for anything that might point to why the man would wind up dead a hundred years later in an apartment he’d once lived in. Found a reference to switching apartments to evade the gray caps. Another reference to working as a tour guide while living in an apartment in Trillian Square. The place had been destroyed long before the Rising. Finch wondered if the few children growing up now even knew who Trillian was anymore.

Then there was Shriek’s obsession with Manzikert. With the Silence. And with Samuel Tonsure, the monk who accompanied Manzikert underground and who never returned, although his journal—half evidence of an ill-fated expedition, half the ravings of a madman—reappeared sixty years later.

I became convinced that the journal formed a puzzle, written in a kind of code, the code weakened, diluted, only hinted at, by the uniform color of the ink in the copies, the dull sterility of set type.

A quote from a book Duncan had found helpful called A Refraction of Light in a Prison had an uneasy resonance with the desert fortifications from Shriek’s memory bulb:

Where the eastern approaches of the Kalif’s empire fade into the mountains no man can conquer, the ruined fortress of Zamilon keeps watch over time and the stars. Within the fortress … Truffidian monks guard the last true page of Tonsure’s famous journal.

Could Zamilon be the place he had seen in the memory bulb vision?

He read, too, about Duncan’s own explorations underground, following in Tonsure’s footsteps:

I could disguise myself from the gray caps, but not from their servants—the spores, the parasites, the tiny mushroom caps, fungi, and lichen. They found me and infiltrated me—I could feel their tendrils, their fleshy-dry-cold-warm pseudopods and cilia and strands slowly sliding up my skin, like a hundred tiny hands. They tried to remake me in their image.

Like Wyte. A few pages later, a section Janice had taken from Duncan’s journal. About doors. About a door. A kind of recognition from deep within that stirred him to read carefully.

A machine. A glass. A mirror … But it hasn’t worked right since they built it. A part, a mechanism, a balance—something they don’t quite understand … Ghosts of images cloud the surface of the machine and are wiped clean as if by a careless, a meticulous, an impatient painter. A great windswept desert, sluggish with the weight of its own dunes. An ocean, waveless, the tension of its surface broken only by the shadow of clouds above, the water such a perfect blue-green that it hurts your eyes … Places that if they exist in this world you have never seen, or heard mention of their existence. Ever … After several days, your vision strays and unfocuses and you blink slowly, attention drawn to a door … The distance between you and the door is infinite. The distance between you and the door is so minute you could reach out and touch it.

Skipped a few pages. Found a section where Janice related a conversation with her brother.

Duncan: The door in the Machine never fully opens.

Janice: What would happen if it did?

Duncan: They would be free.

Janice: Who?

Duncan: The gray caps.

Janice: Free of what?

Duncan: They are trying to get somewhere else—but they can’t. It doesn’t work. With all they can do, with all they are, they still cannot make their mirror, their glass, work properly.

And, then, on the Silence:

You learned it wrong. That’s not what happened. It didn’t happen like that … They disappeared without a drop of blood left behind. Not a fragment of bone. No. They weren’t killed. At least not directly. Try to imagine a different answer: a sudden miscalculation, a botched experiment. A flaw in the Machine. All of those people. All twenty-five thousand of them. The men, the women, the children—they didn’t die. They were moved. The door opened in a way the gray caps didn’t expect, couldn’t expect, and all those people—they were moved by mistake. The Machine took them to someplace else. And, yes, maybe they died, and maybe they died horribly—but my point is, it was all an accident. A mistake. A terrible, pointless blunder.

Also, mentions of the symbol from the back of the scrap of paper: “Manzikert had triggered the Silence, I felt certain, with his actions in founding Ambergris. Samuel Tonsure had somehow cataloged and explained the gray caps during his captivity underground.”

Throughout, Finch caught a refrain by Janice. Didn’t know if it was Duncan’s refrain echoed by Janice: No one makes it out. And near the end, with Duncan apparently lost underground again, this sentence: “There may be a way.” What the woman had said to him when he’d blurted out bellum omnium contra omnes.

No one makes it out. Yet There may be a way. Janice had thought Duncan meant metaphorically. Spiritually. Maybe it was literal.

Couldn’t help thinking of the words on the scrap of paper in Shriek’s hand: Never lost. Like a call and response. There is a way. Never lost. Was that what he should have said to the woman?

Absently, he petted Feral, who’d leapt onto his lap, nudging his head up against Finch’s chest. Tossed back another shot of whiskey. The alcohol had begun to numb his shoulder. It also helped push worry for Wyte into the back of his mind.

Returned relentlessly to the facts.

A man last seen alive a hundred years before turns up dead in an apartment he once lived in. There’s a dead gray cap with him. The gray cap has been cut in half as neatly as if he’d been killed in a slaughterhouse.

The dead man is Duncan Shriek, former discredited historian and explorer of the underground. The Stockton spymaster Stark believes the apartment holds a rebel weapon, but the only thing left in the apartment is the body of Shriek.

Stark kills all of Bliss’s men, but leaves Bliss alive. Bliss travels through the city using doors that aren’t doors—doors that when you come out the other side, it is the future.

And Shriek, the center of it all, believed the gray caps had built a door to another place, and the Silence was a result of that door malfunctioning.

Finch took out the photo of Shriek the Partial had given him. Stared at the photo on the dust jacket of Cinsorium & Other Historical Fables. Hadn’t looked at either that closely before. Not like he was looking now. Shadows of light and dark in both. Framing a man with eyes shut, eyes open.

Who is he? Who was he?

Eyes Shut had a beard made of fungus. A hard face. A well-preserved quality to it. Weathered in the way of someone who has lowered his head into the wind too many times. Eyes Open had a close-cropped normal beard. A kind of naive quality to the face. The smile perhaps too self-satisfied. The look of a martyr-in-waiting.

Eyes Shut’s smile was that of someone with a secret.

6

Woken by a sudden shifting of shadows. A vague awareness of a figure. A sound like a thousand soft gunshots. Dreamt he’d gone down the hole behind the station’s curtain. Into the underground. Found the gray caps there. Sleeping on their sides. Heads down like resting silverfish. Heretic and the skery lying peacefully on a mattress made of curling ferns. Finch went to join them and immediately exploded into spores. Was everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Finch had a headache. Mouth felt thick. The sound: a thunderous rain. A woman knelt in the gloom beside his bed.

“Sintra.”

The sharp smell of grass and water on her skin. Wanted to fall into her. Hold her like he was holding on to Bliss as they fell into darkness. Not caring in that moment what Rathven had told him.

But couldn’t decipher the look on her face. Somewhere between watchful and sad. Made him hold back.

“I could’ve been anyone,” she said. “You’re too trusting.”

Teasing: “But you’re not anyone.”

Sintra rose and dropped something onto the bed. He picked it up. The extra key to his apartment.

“Keep it.” Offered it back to her.

“No,” she said.

Frowned, kept holding it out to her. “It’s yours. Not mine.” Disturbed by her now. Calm disrupted. There are doors and there are doors.

“Someone broke into your apartment,” she said. “I don’t want you to think it was me. Keep the key. Maybe I’ll take it back later.”

Finch turned on the lamp next to the bed. Could see her clearly. A white blouse that revealed the curve of her breasts. Black pants that ended in stylish boots she must have bought long ago. Over that, a deep green trench coat ending at the knee. And still that expression on her face. Almost grim. Almost frowning.

Lowered his arm. The key felt cold and small in his palm. Made him weak to think of her without it.

“Are you sure?” Couldn’t risk more than that.

“Yes,” she said. Folded her arms.

He got up. Reached out to touch her hair. She pulled back.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to stay here,” she said. “I want to go out.” Not looking at him.

So this was how it would go down. What could he do but let her.

“Okay, so we’ll go out, then.”

“You don’t have to,” she said. As if suddenly undecided. Thought he understood. But he felt reckless. They’d only gone out twice before.

“I want to.” And he did. Wanted to be out in the world. Even if that world was completely fucked up.

“I can go out by myself.”

Touched her face with one finger, to brush aside a strand of hair. To feel the softness of her cheek. Brought her close. Kissed her on the forehead.

“Let me get some clothes on. We’ll go. Wherever you want to go.” No matter how far.

Wouldn’t burden her with the details of his day. Wyte erupting from ruins of his own dissolution to save them both. The mad charge to safety. The “snow” falling on them both. A whole world of torment he wanted to leave behind.

“We’ll go wherever you want to go,” he said again, from the bedroom as he dressed. Savagely. Like he didn’t care. Putting it on her. Apartment wasn’t safe anyway. A solid wall could become a portal. A man could die and keep dying for a hundred years.

Came back out and made a show of sticking his Lewden in its holster. Put his arm around her, despite the pain in his shoulder. Opened the door. Feral shot out through the gap and was gone.

Made a show, too, of locking the door behind them with Sintra’s key.

“You look rested,” she said as they went down the stairs. “That’s good.”

Didn’t feel rested. Not anymore.

---

Sintra: “There’s a black market party tonight. We’ll go to that. I know the way. There will be signs.”

An urgency to the night. A dangerous pace to it. In the sky at some distance: the green towers, lit up like a glistening festival display. They rose impossibly high. In another city, at another time, that stained, blurry light might have seemed romantic.

The rain made it difficult to look for signs that didn’t look like signs. A line of white paint in the gutter. A sudden fracture of light from a door. A muttered phrase from a drunk collapsed on a corner. At night, only about half the streetlamps worked. But all across the skyline phosphorescence draped and bled and hazed in and hazed out again. Ragged groups of camp refugees were gray smudges. A smoke smell, and a strong whiff of acidic perfume that came from a blossoming fungus like a light blue wineglass. No umbrellas. They looked too much like mushroom caps.

They huddled in awnings. Ran across open courtyards. Hugged the sides of buildings. Splashed through puddles. Loosened up enough to laugh about it. Like kids. Like the Rising had never happened. Like she’d never returned the key.

They crossed a bridge over a canal. Lights from both sides careened and cascaded through the water rippling below. Stood there for a few minutes. The rain had let up. Came in waves now, with calm between. The night had turned cooler.

He took her hand. Took in her bedraggled hair, the way the rain had moistened her cheeks. Wanted her. Badly. While another part of him wanted to ask, “How did you know about Duncan Shriek?”

“It’s almost a normal night,” he said.

“What’s a normal night?” she asked. But she was smiling. A little.

“A night when my apartment isn’t trashed twice,” he said.

“What do you think they wanted?”

“Money, probably,” he said. Unable to look at her while he was lying.

“What about you?” he asked.

“I had a day like any other.” She smiled at him. Revealed near perfect teeth. Wondered again if the Dogghe skill with herbs helped.

Couldn’t take it anymore. “Sintra, what do you do?” Such a naked question. It split the air like a thunderclap.

She studied him. The light from the canal reflected in her eyes. Anything from rotted leaves to dead bodies could lie at the bottom.

“I could be anyone, John,” she said. “I could be someone you wouldn’t like very much.”

“I might have a better idea than you think.”

“No. You don’t. What if I have three children? What if I’m a trained assassin? What if I’m a prostitute?” In one swift motion: she had his gun and was pointing it at him. “What if I’m somebody who wants you dead?”

Took a step back, had his hands out in front of him. Too surprised to do more.

But a flick of her wrist and she was offering the Lewden back to him, grip-first. While his heart dealt with it.

“Point made,” he said. Taking it. Swallowing. Hard.

“Maybe I should tell you I’m a spy for the rebels. I think that’s what you’d like me to say, isn’t it? But why does it matter. Why now?”

“I don’t know,” Finch said. Except he did. She’d given back the key. While everything was falling down around him.

They stood facing each other. Like friends, or enemies.

“What do you want to know?” she asked. “And why?”

“Whatever you can tell me,” Finch said. Something that makes you more real.

She looked out over the shimmering water. “You don’t really want to know. There’s nothing I can tell you that will help you more than what’s already in your head.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What’s really wrong?”

She didn’t blink or turn away. But she didn’t answer, either. Just took his hand.

“Do you still want to follow me?”

---

She led him past an abandoned factory lit up like a burning ship. As if displaced from the Spit. Windows slick with the spray of rain. Came closer, saw that a neon-red fungus had colonized it. Heard Partials hooting and mocking someone a couple streets over. Even saw a couple of quickly disappearing shadows that might’ve been gray caps. Part of the risky thrill of finding a bootleg party. Like they were doing something dangerous. Kept his hand on his gun the whole time.

Finally found the guts of a building whose roof had been blown off. Every inch of its exterior glittered with graffiti. Finch had completely lost his bearings. Was trusting Sintra.

The weight and sound of the rain lifted off them. They were sopping, but didn’t care. So was everyone else.

“It was a theater,” she whispered, moving up against him. “I saw a play here once about Voss Bender’s life. I saw it with my father when I was fourteen. Afterward, we got ice cream from a sidewalk vendor. Then we took a long walk down to the park. There were so many people around. The night was beautiful. It was one of the first times I’d dressed up for anything. My mother was sick, so she didn’t come along. But I spent all night telling her about it.”

“Stop,” Finch said.

“A year later, the war broke out again and the park was gone. The people couldn’t come out onto the streets. It was too dangerous. My mother had gotten better, but my father had lost his arm to a fungal bullet. He couldn’t work for a long time he was so depressed. He’d been a journalist. I knew about my native heritage, but it wasn’t until then that I learned more, because my father returned to his roots. It was a way of making himself whole again, I think.”

“Stop,” he said again. Each detail making her more distant.

“What about you, John?” she asked. “What do you want to tell me? Is there anything you want to tell me?” Tone between bitterness and sympathy. Maybe even affection.

“No.”

“Does it make it better or worse if I tell you these things?”

Daring him to look at her. But he wouldn’t.

“Worse,” he admitted. Defeated.

“Because you can’t tell me anything back,” she said. “Because you don’t trust me. Shouldn’t trust anyone.”

Because then you’re not who I need you to be.

Hugged him then. Whispered in his ear, “Do you understand now? We’re alone, John, even when we’re together.” Kissed his cheek.

Didn’t want it, but took it.

“Let’s just find the party.” Needed a drink. Bad.

---

Down a stairwell. Through a hallway picked clean of detail. The deeper they went, the more light. From gas lamps. From naked bulbs. From flurries of candles unwinding along their path.

People began to appear out of the half-light. Couples kissing. Sidewalk barbers, driven inside. A man leaning against the wall, offering cigars. More vendors. Wine. Drugs. Food. Candy. Pots and pans. Watches. Fabric. The smell of something spicy.

Finch bought a bottle of wine with three packets of gray cap food. The man popped the cork for them. Finch handed the bottle to Sintra. She took a manly swig, laughed, pulled him close as if in apology. Kissed him, her tongue in his mouth. Connected to every nerve in his body. She pulled away to hand him the bottle, whispered, “Isn’t that better than words, John?” He drank long and deep. Sweet, full-bodied. Exploding against his taste buds. Coursing into his body. Followed by a bitter aftertaste. But he didn’t care. He really didn’t care.

Down more stairs. The sounds of the party now muted, now blaring. As if they were getting closer, then farther away. They came to a doorway with a black sheet draped across it. A small man with a slurred, gritty voice and dirty black hair took their payment: three food pods and the pocketknife Sintra had brought. Let them through, into light.

A raised platform, looking down at a huge room that must have been used for storage once. Hundreds of people occupied that space now, the sound of their voices muffled yet deafening. Gray archways surrounded the room. No way to defend the space. From anything. Oil lamps hung from each archway, made a buttery light that created shadow even as it swept away the darkness. A strong smell of sweat.

A band played in the far left corner. Cello. A drum made from trashcan lids. An old accordion. People were exchanging pieces of paper nearby. Probably stories, poetry, artwork. The gray caps didn’t care, but the Partials did. Noticed a few silent, large men at the fringes. Probably bouncers hired by the vendors.

Finch took another swig of wine. The last time he’d seen so many people in such a small space he’d been fourteen and his father had taken him to a reception thrown by the Frankwrithe viceroy three months after an armistice with House Hoegbotton. Stiff and cramped in a suit. His father had introduced him to each dignitary, and afterward, while they were distracted, Finch had snuck into the viceroy’s rooms and taken the papers his father needed.

Recklessly, he crushed Sintra to him, put his arm around her neck, let his hand touch her breast. She turned into him. Shouted in his ear, “Should we go down there?”

He nodded, and they descended into the chaos. Relaxed into it. Despite seeing the tawdry cheapness of it. Too good at playing a role not to know when another role was being played out in front of his eyes.

The frantic, almost hysterical dancing of the women. The faces rising toward them masklike in that half-light. The hesitant rhythm of the band. As if the Partials would break in at any second. How much alcohol everyone was drinking. Quickly, just in case.

More wine. Another kiss from Sintra. Thought he saw on her face a look close to desperation. Or was it resignation?

They made their way to the far end. Next to the band. Joined the dancers. A man and woman, both shirtless, careened into them. Disappeared again in a whirl of arms. Another couple up close to each other, slow as the music was fast. The pungent tang of some drug. A smell like incense. The bodies around them became like one body. Only to fall apart, like the limbs in the rebel safe house. Heads. Legs. Arms. Wyte charging out to meet the Partials.

Finch needed more wine, then. For both of them. Smiles from people around them. A shared secret. Life could be good. If you could only get far enough out of yourself. Abandoning. Forgetting.

A song ended. As it had ended before, and before that, too. But this time Sintra said, “Follow me.” Led him by the hand into the darkness of a doorway where a lamp had failed. The sudden touch of cold stone. On the other side, a catacomb of rooms. The light from the party already receding. Snuffed out. Men and women had paired off here. Moans, murmurs, a sudden heat.

They found a section of wall around a corner. Drank the last of the wine. Let the bottle fall, and, broken, roll to the side. She was unbuttoning her white blouse, a wild light in her eyes. He was helping her, suddenly frantic in his need. His mouth was on her breasts. Tongue on her delicate brown nipple. Coming back up to her mouth with his. She gasped. Unbuttoned his pants. His cock throbbing as she took it in her hand. He let out a long sigh. His fingers curled through her hair.

He pushed her up against the wall. Pulled her pants down. Got his arms under her, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. Slid into her tight wetness. Groaned. Her hand against the back of his head. Her arm around his back. Nails digging into him ecstatically. Thrust hard up into her like an animal, muttering obscenities into her ear. While she encouraged him. His tongue into her mouth. Finding her tongue. Pulling back to look at her sweat-tinged face in the dark. A shadow. A wraith. Those eyes. She leaned into him, both arms around him, and sucked on his ear in a way that drove him mad. Everything receded to just that point at which he was entering her. Then expanded until he was everywhere at once. Suddenly she came, biting his shoulder and he, snarling, telling her to bite harder. The feel of her teeth on his skin made him cry out, come deep into her. Held there by her long after he was spent. She was spent.

With reluctance, Finch let her slide back to her feet. Pulled up his pants as she pulled up hers. Buttoned her blouse. Kissed again. Salty and deep. Shocked him.

They walked until they stood in the archway, staring into the main room. With its loudness. Its light. Its movement.

“Stay here,” she whispered. “I’ll get more wine and be back.”

“Now?”

“Now. I need another drink.” She threw her arms around him. Clung to him like a child. Whispered in his ear, “Be careful, John.”

When she pulled away she looked so vulnerable Finch almost told her everything he thought he knew. She looked like she was receding from him at a great speed. And he was suddenly frightened.

Then she was gone. Beyond his grasp. Out into the crowd. Lost. And he was standing there. Alone.

He started after her. Didn’t know why. She was just going to get more wine. Not leaving for good. But a familiar face stopped him.

Bosun. Entering from the raised stage opposite. Five tough-looking men in trench coats stood behind him. Bosun was scanning the crowd. For him?

Looked again for Sintra but couldn’t find her. Decided to step back into the archway. Out of sight.

A hint of movement behind him. A hand over his mouth. A sharp pain in his arm before he could react. Falling as the lamps shuffled through his vision, became the scrap of paper pulled from Shriek’s hand, bursting into flame. Became the candles on a cake from his eleventh birthday. Began to blow out the candles. And with each, another clue snuffed out. Shriek going dark. Stark’s transcript extinguished. His father’s face, hovering just beyond the candles. Mysterious. Shadowed. Smiling.

7

Someone slapped his face.

“Wake up. Wake up.”

Finch opened his eyes. Night. Lying on his back. In the grass. Staring up at a field of green stars. He shivered. It looked nothing like the sky over Ambergris.

A woman’s face blocked out the stars. For a second, in the gloom, he thought it was the woman from the rebel safe house. She had a gun. Didn’t recognize the make.

“You…” he said, still woozy.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” she said, then stepped out of view.

Hands roughly pulled him up. They shoved his arms behind him. Handcuffs slid into place. Cut into his wrists. Felt almost as bad as he had after following Bliss through the door.

“Where am I?” Finch asked.

“Shut up,” the woman said.

Wyte, saying to him once, “You know what they say about the rebels? A rebel is just a Hoegbotton who made the mistake of marrying a Frankwrithe.”

They stood on the side of a grassy hill. Below them, a crushed tangle of tanks and other military equipment. Glistening darkly. The wind through the hundred metal husks made a distant, warped, singing sound. Beyond, he could see the black silhouette, jagged and wrong, of a ruined city. In the middle: a dome of dull orange light.

“Is that Ambergris?” Incredulous.

“Shut up,” she said.

Two men appeared to either side of him. They wore dark pants tucked into boots. Camouflage shirts. Ammo belts. Rifles slung over their shoulders. Military helmets.

“Or are we inside the HFZ somehow?” Finch asked. His gun was missing from its holster. His mouth was dry. His arms already ached.

“No one is in the HFZ, John Finch,” the woman said.

“Why am I here?” Tried hard to bite down on a rising fear. I’m here because I work for the gray caps …

“Walk,” said one of the men. Shoved him in the back.

“We’re going to the top of the hill,” the woman said, from in front of Finch. “Don’t move too fast, or we’ll shoot you. Understand?”

“Yes,” he said. “I understand.” Understood, too, that Sintra had betrayed him. Realized he’d been expecting that ache for a long time.

Some of the stars in the sky were moving. Slowly moving back and forth. The wind was very cold. The grass whispered around his boots.

They reached the top of the hill. In the shelter provided by the ruined wall of an ancient fortress, a tent served as a windbreak for two chairs. A table with a pitcher on it. Two glasses. A couple of dim lamps, placed so they couldn’t be seen from downhill.

A figure beside the chairs. In a long, dark robe. Graying hair lifted slightly by the wind.

The Lady in Blue.

Unmistakable. Finch just stared at her. Disbelieving. Forgot his captors shoving him from behind. Forgot the danger he was in. He had never seen her before, and now he was seeing her by starlight. On a hill under a strange night sky. Surrounded by some kind of dead city.

In the Hoegbotton Irregulars, the promise of meeting her had been held out like a guarantee of better times. As they lay in the trenches. As they went from house to house, rooting out insurgents. As they ate hard, stale bread and molding fruit. Made soup from glue, water, and salt. That whole past life overtaking Finch as they marched him up in front of her.

She was shorter than Finch. Maybe five-six. Late fifties or early sixties. Thin and in good shape. Wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, across her forehead. Accentuated by the lamplight: a near perpetual wry smile, a sad amusement to the eyes. A look that seemed to say she was here, in the moment, but also a dozen other places as well.

The Lady in Blue said, “You are, supposedly, John Finch. And I am, reportedly, the Lady in Blue. You have questions, although I may not have as many answers as you’d like. Let’s sit.” She spoke with the quiet, weathered quality of experience. Mixed with a bluntness that was nothing like her radio broadcasts. It came as a jolt. Thought for a moment that she might not be the Lady after all.

His captors uncuffed him. Shoved him into a chair opposite the Lady in Blue. Withdrew out of the light.

Finch rubbed his wrists. Sitting in the chair a kind of weight dropped onto his chest. Didn’t know if it was some after-effect of how he’d gotten there. Or the presence of the Lady in Blue.

“Where are we? Why am I here?” Aware he sounded weak. Because I am weak. Sintra’s scent was still on him. Felt trapped.

“Where are we?” echoed the Lady in Blue. “Maybe it’s a place you know. Maybe it’s, to pick somewhere random, a place called Alfar. Or one version of Alfar. Does it matter? No. We could be anywhere. That’s one thing you’ll learn.”

She leaned forward, poured a clear liquid from the pitcher into a glass. Offered it to him. He took it but didn’t drink.

“Go on. If I wanted you dead, you never would have woken up.”

“Maybe you’re cruel,” Finch said. But he drank. The water was cool on his throat. Drove away the lingering nausea.

“Do you know why you’re here, ‘Finch’?” she asked, leaning back. An appraising look.

“Only you know that.” The way she said “Finch” made him feel naked, exposed. His awe was fading. Replaced by a kind of perverse resentment. This woman had helped ruin his father.

“Bellum omnium contra omnes,” she said, and the little hairs on Finch’s neck rose. “Maybe I say those words to you three times and you wake up from this dream you’ve been living and remember your mission.”

“I don’t believe you,” Finch said. Waking up to the fact that he’d been kidnapped. That he was in a dangerous situation. She’d hinted she knew his real name. She knew he worked for the gray caps. Knew he’d been at the rebel safe house.

The Lady in Blue laughed. “Of course you don’t, because, unfortunately, you’re correct. You’re not a secret agent for the resistance.”

“What do the words mean?” Asking questions meant he didn’t have to answer any.

“Maybe it’s in a language from another place, a place the gray caps don’t know about. Maybe we’re the only ones who can understand it. ‘War of all against all,’ that’s what it means. Though we won’t be using it again after today. You’ve made sure of that.”

“Never lost is the countersign.”

“Part of the countersign.” She wasn’t smiling.

“We were just doing our jobs,” Finch said. “We were going to ask some questions and leave. We wanted to stay alive.”

The wind coming from the city below had faded. Finch could hear strange mewls and moans. Then a sound like a million leaves rustling.

The Lady in Blue folded her arms. “Maybe we should talk about your murder investigation instead. Such as it is.”

“You’re not the first to be interested.”

Her smile was as humorless as a knife blade. “Then one more won’t hurt, will it? Tell me what you know.”

Remembered the transcript Stark had given him: “There’s a weapon in the apartment where we found the dead man. You, the rebels, lost a weapon there.”

“We lost an agent there, Finch,” the Lady in Blue said flatly.

Duncan Shriek.

“What’s his name? The man?” Finch asked.

A look of profound displeasure from the Lady in Blue.

“Now that is disappointing, Finch. Disappointing in three ways. First because I don’t have much time and you’re wasting it. Second because I suppose this means you’re going to try to survive by giving me scraps. And third because I’m not your unimaginative little gray cap boss.” Unable to keep disgust out of her voice.

“You left,” Finch said. “You left all of us behind. We’ve had to live in that city for six years. Survive any way we could.”

You abandoned us. Curled up inside that outburst all the bottled-up frustration from nearly eight years of playing a role. A role inside of a role.

The Lady in Blue nodded as if she agreed, but said, “Do you think we’ve been having a party out here, Finch? Do you think we’ve been sitting out here waiting for the end times? No. We’ve been learning things. We’ve been gathering our forces. Waiting for the right moment. It’s been as hard for us as for you. Harder maybe.”

At least you’ve had a change of scenery.

When he remained silent, she said, “Tell me the name of the man in the apartment. Think of it as an exercise in trust.”

They already knew. He had no leverage.

“It’s a man named Duncan Shriek. Except he died a hundred years ago. That’s what I don’t understand.”

The dead man sat in the chair next to him, smiling.

“Was there anyone with him?”

“Half of a dead gray cap.”

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

“Is the body still in the apartment?”

“Not the gray cap, but Shriek’s is.”

“Is there any visible sign of injury to Shriek?”

“Not really.”

“How did he die?”

“I don’t know. He looks like he might have fallen. Twisted his neck a bit.”

“Don’t you feel better, telling the truth?”

“Yes,” he said. Meant it.

She paused for a moment, as if marshaling hidden forces. Then said, “While we’re telling the truth, Finch, I should let you know something: I knew John Crossley. John Marlowe Crossley.”

A sharp intake of breath he couldn’t control. Too long since he’d heard that name spoken. Hadn’t uttered it in years, either. Had tried to unthink it.

The Lady in Blue continued: “John had a strange idea of honor. He had genuine disagreements with us. With everyone, really. That’s why he fell so hard. Why no one could protect him. It would have been easier if he’d been a simple spy, one side against another, not working for the Kalif.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Finch said. Although he knew it was hopeless. He felt like a hermit crab being pulled from its shell.

The Lady in Blue nodded, but not to Finch.

A slamming blow came down on Finch’s bad shoulder. He cried out, fell from his seat into the grass. Moaning in pain. Turning to protect his shoulder.

The Lady in Blue had risen. Stood next to him. Suddenly more threatening, more terrible, than anyone he had ever seen. “You do know what I’m talking about, James Scott Crossley. You do know.”

Like looking in a mirror and seeing a double that didn’t really match up. He’d been Finch for so long that he didn’t know James Scott Crossley anymore. Not really. Some stranger who hadn’t survived the Rising. Some poor bastard who’d never made it back, like so many others.

She pulled the chair away from the table and sat down. “Do I have your attention?”

Through gritted teeth. “Yes.” He didn’t want to remember Crossley. Crossley was dead. Both of them.

“You’ve changed your look. Your hair is lighter, and you’ve shaved the beard. You’re heavier. Older, of course. But it’s still you. What would people do if they knew? With your father’s reputation for treachery? Even now, maybe they’d be firmer with you. Maybe they’d stop what they’re up to long enough to settle old scores. One thing to protect the key to a weapon. Another to find out the key has close ties to someone who betrayed the city to a foreign power. Maybe you’d wake up to a bullet in your brain. And know this, too, John: your father brought it on himself. Don’t delude yourself about that.”

“Fuck you,” Finch said. “Fuck you, Alessandra Lewden.”

Got a kick in the ribs for that. Lay there, saying nothing. Pinned to the ground by her words. Shoulder knifed through with broken glass.

She relented then. Said in something close to a kindly tone, “But that’s not why you’re here, ‘Finch,’ if that’s what you’d prefer I call you. A year ago? Maybe. But now? No.”

Through gritted teeth, “What do you want, then?”

“We’ve time enough to talk about that,” she said. “Soon we’ll be leaving here. It’s never safe to stay in one place for long. Get up.”

Finch stood. Holding his shoulder.

“Look,” the Lady in Blue said, pointing out past the ruined hulks of tanks. Toward the dull orange dome.

“What am I looking for?”

“Just wait.”

As she spoke, the dome exploded. A thousand streamers rising in intense shades of red and orange. Like some kind of land-bound sun. The tendrils arched into the sky. Hung there. Then disintegrated into a vast cloud. A roiling mass of particles. Discharging light until a steady humming glow suffused the city in a kind of dawn. There came in reply from the city a hundredfold bestial roar. Strange fractal creatures began to grow at a frenetic pace across every surface. Straining up toward the light. While the orange dome, much reduced, seemed to breathe in and out. Beyond the particle cloud the darkness continued unabated.

“Dawn, Finch,” the Lady in Blue said. “That’s the kind of dawn they have here.”

“Yes, but what is this place?” Finch asked, almost pleading. “Where am I?”

“It’s a place where the echo of the HFZ—just the echo of it—destroyed a city. Subjected it to this perpetual artificial dawn. There’s no one living down there now. No one. Just flesh that serves as fertile soil … for something else. The HFZ is like a wound where the knife cut through more than one layer. And that’s really all you needed to see. No, it hasn’t been fun out here for six years, Finch. Not really.”

She nodded to someone behind him. A man came up and got Finch in a choke hold. He struggled against it. Kicked his legs. Frantic. The woman came around front. Stuck a needle in his arm.

The stars swirled into a circle, then a haze.

The world disappeared all over again.

---

James Crossley had been callow, self-absorbed, impatient, a ladies’ man. Finch was none of those things. Finch was direct, brusque, had a dark sense of humor. Crossley had been, for a while, finicky about food. Finch had cured him of the last of that during the worst times, with stew made from leather belts, made from dogs and rats.

Crossley never swore. Finch had trained himself to swear to fit in. To break up the rhythm of his normal speech patterns. Crossley liked the river. Finch kept waiting for something to leap out of it. Both liked cigars and whiskey. Both were as dependable as they could be, indifferent to music, and hated small talk. Although Crossley had had more chances to hate it than Finch.

Crossley had been part of his father’s network as a youth, something he’d only known later. Even if he’d had an inkling.

His father passed information on Frankwrithe to Hoegbotton, and information on Hoegbotton to Frankwrithe. Built things for Hoegbotton only to give Frankwrithe the intel to blow them up. Used the contacts to feed Hoegbotton sensitive information on troop movements from supposed “sources.” Neither side having any sense of the level of betrayal until they came together to fight the gray caps. After which it became clear John Crossley had been given his orders by someone working for the Kalif. Creating chaos while providing the Kalif’s secret service with an inside look at both factions.

And why? Why? Neither James Crossley nor John Finch had any idea. Their father had never told them. Just said once that being a powerful man meant you made enemies. “Too many people get the wrong idea,” he’d said. While he hid out in an abandoned mansion in northern Ambergris. Coughing up blood from the sickness he’d first contracted while on campaign in the Kalif’s territory.

“Look,” he’d said to Finch, showing him, “I never knew my face would be printed on playing cards.” One of fifty most-wanted men and women. On the rebels’ list.

Remembered again the pipe his father had shown him.

Crossley was the past. Finch was the present, waiting for the future. For the air to clear. For all of this to go away.

But two things they agreed on.

Both still trusted in their father, couldn’t bring themselves to shun him. Even knowing what he had done.

Both had loved him.

8

Finch woke with an uneven, sharp surface cutting into his back. Above, a wavery light showed a shelf of rippling black rock. Glittering stalactites pointed down at him.

“We’re in an underground cave system,” a voice said from nearby.

He sat up. The walls of the cavern glowed a deep, dark gold. Traveling across them, in the waves of illumination, Finch saw what looked like strobing starfish. A smell like and unlike brine came to him. Colder, more muted. He still didn’t have his gun. Felt vulnerable, small. She knows I’m Crossley. And she doesn’t care. Which meant she was going to ask him for something big.

The Lady in Blue stood beside him. Wearing the plain uniform of a private or Irregular, all in muted green. Short-sleeved shirt. Tapered pants. Holding a lantern, staring across an underground sea. It stretched out into a horizon of swirling black shadows and glints like newborn stars. A rowboat was tethered to the shore.

“Stop drugging me,” Finch said. He felt sluggish.

“The less you know, the better.”

“How long was I out for?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.”

“We drug you because there are things we can’t let you know.”

“You mean if I’m interrogated. By someone else.”

She ignored him, indicated the cave with a sweep of her hand. “This is where the gray caps left Samuel Tonsure,” she said. “You know who Tonsure is? Not everyone does.”

He nodded. “The monk Shriek was obsessed with. The one who disappeared.”

“They took his journal from him right here. Left him to make his own way in their world.”

Duncan, in his book: “I became convinced that the journal formed a puzzle, written in a kind of code, the code weakened, diluted, only hinted at, by the uniform color of the ink in the copies, the dull sterility of set type.”

“And where exactly is that?” Finch managed with a thick tongue. His head felt heavy. Whatever they’d drugged him with had quieted the pain in his shoulder.

“You might be better off asking when, but it’s your question. Answer: we’re everywhere. But at this moment, we’re deep beneath the city. Or, at least, a city.”

The Lady in Blue stepped into the boat, hung the lantern on a hook in the prow. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going on a journey.”

Finch hesitated. Suffered from too many journeys. From a shoot-out on an Ambergris street to falling through a door in time and space. Stepping onto the boat felt like a kind of slow drowning. Into yet another dream.

“You don’t have a choice,” the Lady in Blue growled. “I don’t want to have to force you. But I will.”

She was alone. Finch couldn’t see a weapon, though she’d picked up a long pole from the boat. But he didn’t doubt she could hurt him.

Awkwardly, he got to his feet. Stepped into the boat behind the Lady in Blue. It wobbled beneath his weight.

“Sit down,” she said. He sat.

She began to pole them across the little sea, with a strength he hadn’t noticed before. He could see the outline of her triceps as she pushed off with the pole.

Over the side, by the lantern light, needle-thin fish with green fins shot through the water. More starfish. A couple of delicate red shrimp. It wasn’t very deep; he could see the silver-gold flash of the bottom. The unreal translucent light confounded him. A glimpse of a kind of peace. Fought against relaxing. Was still in danger.

“Where are we going?” he asked. “What does this have to do with Duncan Shriek?”

“Eat something,” she said. “Drink something.”

Sandwiches and a flask by his feet. He unwrapped a sandwich. Chicken and egg. Ordinary. Normal. Tasted good. The flask had a refreshing liquor in it. It warmed him as it spread through his body.

“And while you eat, listen to me. Don’t talk. Just listen…”

---

[She said:] For a moment, imagine everything from the gray caps’ point of view, John Finch. James Scott Crossley.

In the beginning. Once upon a time. A small group of you became separated from your world while on an expedition. In a word, lost. A problem or mistake in the doors between places. Suddenly there are hundreds or thousands of doors between you and home. Suddenly you’re adrift. You find yourselves washed up on an alien shore, along the banks of a strange and magnificent river. You can’t find your way back to where you came from, even though at first all you do is try. And try and try.

After a while of trying and failing, you decide to settle down where you are, establish a colony that we will later call “Cinsorium.” It’s a better place for you than other choices for exile. You live a long time but procreate slowly so the isolation is good. No competition. No real threats. You create buildings that remind you of home. No corners. All circles. You bend the local fungus to your will, because you’re spore-based and everything you do is based on this fact. Plenty of raw material to use in and around Cinsorium.

But, still, you’re always looking for a way back, a way out. You might even have been close at one point—right before Cappan Manzikert sails upriver with his brigands. Because as soon as Manzikert appears, it’s back to square one for you. Even less than square one. He destroys your colony, drives you underground. He burns your records, all of the information in your library. Not just the clues you’ve gathered of how to get home, but your whole knowledge base. Essential things.

Ironic, really, Finch. Because Manzikert’s a barbarian. Yet as far as I can tell, he saved us all with that one brutal act. Something even Duncan Shriek didn’t understand.

So you stay underground to rebuild. You’re cautious, you’re far from home, and there aren’t very many of you. Will never be very many of you, no matter what you do. You let the people above become comfortable. You lie low, so to speak.

Then you try again. At last. And because you’re cautious you build it underground. A door. A machine.

But the door doesn’t work. Something goes wrong. Who knows what? It could’ve been anything. Maybe it’s the wrong location. Maybe it was always a long shot. Many of your own people are killed. And everyone in Ambergris disappears, except the ones in the fishing fleet. Either dead or taken elsewhere. Scattered across worlds and time. Unable to get back. (Think about that, Finch—somewhere out there, there must be a colony or two of Ambergrisians who survived. Can you imagine what they might be like now, after so long? Stranded. Vague tales of another place, one crueler, kinder, more hospitable, less so.)

Maybe it’s then that you believe, this is the end. We’re doomed to die out here, in this backwater. We’ll never be found. But, still, you’re patient. You’re clever. You’re hard working. You spend a long time learning from your mistakes. Sometimes you venture out during Festival nights. You do experiments related to your goal. You even kidnap humans, use them as test subjects. Always trying to convey a sense of dread in those who live aboveground, always trying to make yourself larger in their minds—like a wild cat that puffs itself up in front of an enemy.

When the opportunity comes, it’s because Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe have exhausted themselves against each other—sometimes even using weapons you provided to them—and the city lies in ruins. You take a huge gamble. Why a gamble? Because there still aren’t enough of you, not compared to the human population.

You pour all of your resources into the Rising. You’re hard to kill, but you can’t possibly hold a whole city for long against an armed resistance, not if it means a true occupation. But you don’t need it to last for long. You just need to create the impression of overwhelming force.

And it works. You Rise. You use your reengineering skills and knowledge of the underground to flood the city. You use your spores like a kind of diversion, a magic show. Yes, you can kill people, but not all of them, and not as fast as the enemy thinks. Besides, fear is even more useful to you—it’s how your agents have worked throughout Ambergrisian history. Preying on the imaginations of a people raised to fear you. (Often for good reason.)

You force the combined Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe army arrayed against you to fight on your terms, on your turf. You even leave an escape route so that no one needs to fight to survive. They can just flee.

Again, it works. The resistance retreats—and when they’re far enough away, in one more spasm of energy and expertise, you cast the HFZ over your enemy, like a net, and you disperse them across the doors. Thus ending effective armed resistance, and creating more fear.

For the actual occupation, you are clever and resourceful. You enlist the remaining population to police itself, to govern itself—as much as it is able. When the situation is stable except for isolated pockets of unrest, you start to build your final attempt at a door. A way home. Two towers, which aren’t really towers but a kind of complex gateway. Situated precisely where you need them to be for success.

Meanwhile, you stall. You go through the motions. You provide electricity, food, drugs on the one hand. Camps, the Partials, and repression on the other. You don’t need to control territory in the normal way. You don’t see the city from the sky looking down, like humans. You see it from the underground looking up. And you control the underground. That’s your homeland away from home. You can choose what you hold on to aboveground and what you don’t. So long as you rule everything below. So long as you can block access to whatever you like.

You leave the burnt-out tanks on the streets, don’t clean up the HFZ not as a warning to the human population, but because you don’t have the personnel to do that and keep working on the towers, too. And because, on some level, you don’t really care about any of it. Not any of it. Especially not governing. All you care about are the two towers.

And do you know why? Because we might have called it a door all this time. “A window. A machine.” But it’s more complex than that. It’s not just a door. It’s a beacon. Because, you see, Finch, they don’t need a huge door if they’ve found a way home. Not according to our intelligence. No, they only need a door this big if they’re planning to use it to bring more over here. To Ambergris. To the world.

The Silence? All of what Duncan Shriek said in those old books—it’s true. Except he was wrong about this one thing. They’ve found they like it here. They want to stay. Permanently. In numbers.

Now, is that exactly what happened, and how it happened? No, probably not, because we can’t actually imagine how they think, or what they think about. And it might not even be a door yet. It might just be a beacon. If they haven’t found their home yet.

But what I’ve told you is close. Close enough, according to our sources.

… You may not believe me, Finch-Crossley, but I don’t take any of it personally. Not really. They behave as their nature and their situation warrants. I can respect that. There’s a sick kind of honor in that, really. But that still doesn’t mean I don’t plan on finishing what Manzikert started. Because, as you’ve guessed, we now have a new weapon. A new weapon that is very old.

---

They’d reached the far shore, the sea giving way to land. The boat nudged up against a lip of flat rock. Which led to an overhang carved out of the black stone. The ancient fossilized remains of a fireplace out front. Beyond the fireplace, evidence of habitation.

Almost as unreal as the story the Lady in Blue had told him. The air moist and cold. Finch shivered.

Didn’t know whether to believe her or not. Didn’t know if it mattered. Nothing she’d said sounded any more or less plausible than what Duncan Shriek had written in his books. Understood, too, the weight of everything she had shown him. Knew it in his gut.

Wanted to tell her he lived in a different world. The world where Stark wanted to hurt people he loved, where Heretic could have him killed on a whim. Where Wyte’s condition went from bad to worse. All of it gritty and immediate, with immediate consequences. He wasn’t Crossley’s son anymore. He was Finch, and there was a reason for that. Survival.

“You’re too quiet,” she said.

“I’ve heard worse theories,” Finch said. Because he felt he had to say something. Because he felt overwhelmed.

The Lady in Blue gave him a curious look, head tilted to the side. “Not convinced? That’s a shame, because you can disbelieve it all you want. It’ll get you nowhere. Now get out of the boat and help me,” she said.

The shocking cold of the shallow water woke him up. They pushed the rowboat up onto the shore. The Lady in Blue unhooked the lantern, walked forward.

“What is this place?” Finch asked as his boots found dry land.

“Wait and see,” she said. Ushered him toward the overhang.

A cozy little space, sheltered by the rock. A thick layer of dust covered the uneven floor. Looked fuzzy in the lantern light. A welter of numbers and words had been carved into the far wall, all the way up to the ceiling. So many marks that they struck Finch like a cacophony of noise. Made him claustrophobic.

In the far corner, a skeleton on top of a blanket had disintegrated into a thicket of fibers and fragments. Intact. Yellowing. Human. Delicate, almost birdlike. Curled up in a position of sleep. On its side.

Looking at those small bones, Finch felt a sudden, inexplicable sadness. “Is that the monk?”

Words from the man’s mouth in the clicks and whistles of the gray caps’ language. And then, a sudden and monstrous clarity that can never be put into words.

“Yes, according to Shriek, that’s Samuel Tonsure,” the Lady in Blue said. “This is where he died. A hermit. In exile. Truff knows why the gray caps left him to this fate. Blind. Alone. He must have gone mad in his last years.”

She pointed to the other corner. To a large pockmark in the floor. Light green. With rings within rings. Like a cross section of tree trunk. “And that’s where Duncan was found. We didn’t even know that he was human, or alive. He looked to us like a gray cap whose legs had been fused into the ground. When he was brought to me, I don’t think he even knew who he was. He’d learned to walk among gray caps undetected. He’d traveled through the doors for many, many years. And then he’d come home here, alone, lonely. To give up being human. Half out of his mind. Attuned to the rhythms of mushroom and spore. Here, by Tonsure’s side. Like a dog guarding the grave of its master. I think he thought he’d wake up in a thousand years and everything would be different. Or that he’d never wake up at all.”

Remembering Duncan’s words: “They found me and infiltrated me—I could feel their tendrils, their fleshy-dry-cold-warm pseudopods and cilia and strands slowly sliding up my skin, like a hundred tiny hands. They tried to remake me in their image.”

“And you found a way to use him.” An echo of his voice against the stone. A place more like a memorial than a home.

“Yes. After a while. After we managed to remind him that he was human. Amazing how long that part took.”

Finch said, “What happened next?”

Pain in her smile. “Do you want to know a secret?”

He leaned in toward the Lady in Blue, humoring her. This close she looked somehow off-balance. Something in her eyes. The faint smell of cigars. Masked by the freshness of some subtle herb.

“Duncan Shriek isn’t dead,” she whispered.

Then she jabbed something into his neck.

No time for surprise. No time for anything but falling through the gullet of the skery. Again.

9

Came to: On the battlements of a fortress at night. Gun emplacements dark and menacing.

Duncan Shriek isn’t dead. For a moment he was losing his balance. Then someone propped him up from behind. I don’t believe it. Not Crossley, not Finch.

Cold, with a wind blowing. Above, the heavens, laced with stars that seemed to be falling in together. A wash of silver and gold across the sky. Beyond the walls, a vast empty space. A desert? In that space, a thousand green fires blossoming. He knew this place—he knew it. It had been in his memory bulb dream. Shriek’s memories. Bliss was here.

The Lady in Blue stood beside him again. Surrounded by dozens of soldiers. Intent on moving supplies, guard duty, or cleaning weapons.

“This is the monastery fortress of Zamilon, or at least a version of it,” the Lady in Blue said, as if reading his thoughts. “Abandoned for many decades, until we came along.”

Duncan: “Where the eastern approaches of the Kalif’s empire fade into the mountains no man can conquer, the ruined fortress of Zamilon keeps watch over time and the stars. Within the fortress … Truffidian monks guard the last true page of Tonsure’s famous journal.”

Below the battlements, the great hulking shadows of some kind of machinery. Engines of war flanking a wide road that led to a huge door. Looked like it was made half of volcanic rock and half of charred book cover. Set in the door, a smaller door, and a small door set into that one.

Painted and carved into every surface, radiating outward, the symbol from the scrap of paper:

Finch pointed to it. “What’s that?”

“It’s part of how we travel through the doors. Part of the … mechanism. But it means something different to the gray caps. It doesn’t work the same way for us as for them. Thankfully.”

Turned to the scene beyond the battlements. Furtive movement out there. Occluding the fires at times. A suggestion of long, wide limbs. Of misshapen heads.

“And all of that?”

“Those are the fires of enemy camps. Not gray caps. Not human. Something else. They don’t know what to make of us. And we don’t know what to make of them. But we have to hold this positison. Do you want to know why?”

Felt again like he was falling. “I’m not sure.”

The Lady in Blue pulled him around. Held him by the shoulders. A viselike grip. An almost inhuman strength. He understood now, on a physical level, how she had held on, and kept holding on, all this time.

“You don’t have that luxury, James Scott Crossley. That out there is nothing. It’s just the latest thing to make us falter, to make us doubt ourselves.” She released him. “When we started out, we didn’t really understand. We had to learn fast.”

“You read Samuel Tonsure’s journal?”

“That and other things. Shriek’s books after we found him.”

“And you learned about Zamilon?”

“Sometimes by hard-earned experience. But now we know: Zamilon is a nexus for the doors. It exists in our world, but it also exists in many other worlds simultaneously.”

“And Duncan needed to go through it for his mission? He was on a mission for you?”

“Yes. But he’s unpredictable. We think he went somewhere he shouldn’t have. Triggered a trap. I’m not sure we’ll ever know what went wrong unless Shriek chooses to tell us.”

“So it’s dangerous to travel through the doors?”

She stared up at the wash of stars. “It can be. We only use doors leading from or to Zamilon. Anything else has resulted in disaster. We don’t know why. But Duncan has no such constraint…”

Remembering the Spit: Through many doors … The doors smaller then larger, then smaller again. Oval. Rectangular. Square. Inlaid with glass. Gone, leaving only gaping doorway and a couple rusted hinges.

“Who knows about the portals, the doors?”

The Lady in Blue laughed. “Duncan Shriek knew. Maybe some people have always known. Ambergris’s early kings may have had the knowledge and lost it. Every schoolchild used to know. Because every scary story about the gray caps implies that they can move quickly from place to place … So far we’ve kept it from the rebel cells operating in the city. There’s too much risk of them being captured by the gray caps and made to talk. And on the other side, the gray caps seem to have kept the doors hidden from the Partials.”

“How much do the gray caps know about you?” How much does Stark know? Or Bliss?

“They know we’re out here. But we’re blessed by their concentration on the towers. It makes it easier for us to operate.”

“Tell me why I’m here,” Finch asked. The question he didn’t want answered.

The Lady in Blue’s features tightened. She looked away. “What I’m going to ask from you is dangerous. I wanted you to understand fully. So you’d know it in your gut. What’s at stake. Because the war we’re fighting right now isn’t in Ambergris. It’s out here. It’s about opening and closing doors. Holding positions around places like Zamilon. With the few soldiers we have.

“We don’t have a functional army here.” She gestured around her. “Maybe a thousand well-trained men, if that. The rest are scattered. Twenty thousand soldiers, Finch. Marked by the HFZ and scattered across the doors. Imagine. Each one flung somewhere else, like a pearl necklace shattering on a marble staircase. Only, the moment after that necklace shatters there are thousands of marble staircases and one bead on each.”

“They’re not dead?” Finch, incredulous.

The Lady in Blue shook her head. “No. Most of them are just lost, and we need to bring them back … When Duncan didn’t complete his mission, when we figured out where the bodies had turned up, where Duncan was, some wanted to cut our losses. Abandon the mission. Try to sabotage the towers. I said no. I said, I knew your father. I knew him well enough to know that, in this case, we could trust you. That you’d understand. That I’d make you understand.”

“Understand what?” Finch said. “What is there left to understand?” A fury rising in him. “Understand that when I go back I have the secret services of not one but two countries working against me? That the gray caps will kill me if I don’t solve this case? That my partner is probably dying? What is it that you want me to understand?”

The Lady in Blue looked at him in surprise. As if no one had spoken to her like that for a long time.

“I understand, Finch,” she said slowly, biting off each syllable, “that you are the only one who can get back to the body while they’re watching. It’s a trap for anyone else. A fatal trap. And you and I both understand now that Duncan Shriek is alive. And I’m telling you that if you can get to him, you can bring him all the way back and help him complete his mission.”

“What kind of weapon is Shriek? Is he a bomb?” Only thing Finch could think of. Like the suicide bombers the rebels had used in the past.

“No. He’s the kind of weapon that’s also a beacon. Also a door.” She smiled. A wide and beautiful smile that cut right through Finch. There on the ramparts. Overlooking the desert. In a place that might or might not be part of the world. “There may be a way.”

“Just say it.”

“We mean to force the door, Finch. To hijack it. To come through in numbers. Duncan Shriek is going to find our lost men and bring them through the gate formed by the towers. Before the gray caps can bring their own people through.”

“That’s insane. The risk…”

“If we had a better plan, we would use it.”

“Even if Shriek is alive, how do you know he can do it? Bring the soldiers back?”

“He’s shown us some of what he can do already.”

“How will he find them?” Each question cut him off from one more avenue of retreat.

“They are all marked, or tagged, by the HFZ event. Each man. Each woman. He will find them through the doors, and we will return to Ambergris triumphant.”

A strange light had entered her eyes. Like someone who had been dreaming of something that they’d never thought could happen. And now it was happening.

“What if they kill me? Eat my memories?” Finch asked. “What then?”

The Lady in Blue turned the full force of her gaze on him. “What’s really bothering you, Finch? Is it fear? Or is it something else?” She turned to look out at the desert again. “Those things out there,” she murmured. “They’re gray caps, and they’re people. Combined. How? I don’t know. Maybe they came here during the Silence. Possible. But even though I don’t know, I understand. Because we’re changing, too, Finch. There’s no one under my command who hasn’t been altered in some way. The question is how much you change. Change too much and you’re no different from Shriek, no different from a gray cap. And then even if we win, we lose. But adapt just enough? That’s what I need from you. To adapt just enough.”

An answer for everything. Yet Finch knew he’d always be searching for the next question. He felt a hundred years old. Like the weight of everything had piled on his back at once.

“What if I say no? What if I want you to just leave me the fuck alone?” Stop fighting, some part of him advised. Just fall into it and keep falling. But he couldn’t. Not yet.

The Lady in Blue sighed. “You know, it’s no good for the Kalif, either, if the gray caps come through. I don’t care who you are or aren’t working for. I don’t care about your father’s spying. I just know you hate Partials and your father had no love for the gray caps.”

“How are you going to protect me?”

“We can’t protect you. But we can make sure you don’t get caught.”

“You mean you can kill me.” Feeling ill. Realized that in some ways the Lady in Blue was no different than Stark. Apply pressure. Squeeze. Get what you want.

The Lady in Blue looked somehow both stern and compassionate. In a quiet voice, she said, “I mean you know too much, John Finch. Sometimes we have to take the cards we’re dealt and make the most of them. You can’t throw away the cards now—you’ve already looked at them.”

There it was. Stated directly. Somehow Finch admired her more for it. A bitter laugh of appreciation as he stood there, facing her down. “So I have no choice.”

“If it’s any consolation, maybe you never had a choice. Maybe there was never a point at which you could have turned back.” She had the good grace to look away as she said, “Our man will be in touch when the time comes.”

Finch anticipated the needle a second before it entered his neck.

---

When they released Finch back into the crowd at the black market party, everything was different. The sound soared over him at first. Then it was as if he couldn’t hear it anymore. Looked for Sintra but didn’t see her. Looked for Bosun but didn’t see him, either. Didn’t know how much time had passed. But the band was taking a break.

An urgency to the night, but he’d brought it with him. Couldn’t get the image of the Lady in Blue out of his head. On a hill. In a boat. At the wall of the fortress. The images stabbed at him, threatened madness. What didn’t she tell me?

Finch crossed the room on unsteady legs. Wary of Bosun. But still no Bosun. Felt for his Lewden Special. Relief. It had been returned to him.

Made his way through corridors. Gaze unfocused. Seeing nothing. Out into the rain. The towers a steamy green above the tops of buildings. The street nearly empty.

Two steps onto the street and he met an immovable force. Bosun, appearing out of darkness. Pulling his right arm behind him. Inexorable, the man all muscle. Felt Bosun’s other hand looking for his gun. Felt it taken. Again.

Bosun’s hot breath at his ear as Finch was marched toward a side alley. Helpless as a child.

“Find my carving?” Bosun muttered.

Against the discomfort, twisting, “For Truff’s sake, you don’t have to break my arm.”

“So you didn’t find it.” Bosun seemed disappointed.

“What carving?” Grunting. Contorting to try to get relief.

“Stop moving. In your apartment. Left it there while we took the place apart. Would’ve done in your cat if he hadn’t hidden.”

Another mystery solved. One that didn’t even matter anymore.

“Fuck you. Your breath smells like shit.”

Bosun just laughed. “Be lucky if yours doesn’t begin to smell like blood.”

In the alley: Stark. With five other men. Bosun shoved Finch forward, releasing him.

“Finch, what a surprise!” Stark said. “I know you’re just coming from a party, but we’re having our own little party out here. Glad you could make it.”

Bosun punched him in the gut before he could react. Fists like stone. Sent him slumped over onto the ground. Begging for air.

Got to his feet slowly, not sure if he should. Could’ve used Wyte coming out of the darkness in that moment.

Stark’s face was a vicious half-moon in the dimness. Hard to believe Bosun was his brother.

“Where’d you go, Finch? Where’d you go for an hour and a half? Bosun says you were there and then you weren’t.”

The question so much smaller than the answer. Contempt for the interrogator. What kind of spymaster came in person for this kind of ambush? Only someone who’d never gotten past the simple art of the shakedown. Came in hard and fast and thought that was enough.

Not here it isn’t.

Secret knowledge gave him strength. “Just enjoying the party.”

Stark circled him. “I’ll bet you were. Saw your exotic girl leave. She looked well satisfied. Did you give her a good time in there? You should be glad I’m a man of such refinement, Finch, or we might’ve given her a better one.”

“Is that all you came here to say?” Finch asked.

Bosun nodded and two of his men wrenched Finch’s arms back. Painfully.

“No, not really. We’ve some more serious matters to discuss. Like, did you know there’s a bounty on the head of the Lady in Blue?” Stark came close, looked him in the eye. “I think you do know that. It applies to anyone who associates with her—on my side or yours.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Stark nodded. Bosun punched him in the stomach again. Grunted. Fought through the pain. The thugs held him up.

“I think you do, Finch. I think you do. At least, those two thought so. Show him, boys.”

They dragged him closer to the wall. Saw four pale feet, the rest of the bodies hidden by shadows.

“The two morons that Bosun saw spirit you away. They didn’t say much before they died. But they said enough.”

Finch didn’t think they’d said anything at all. “I don’t even know who they are.”

“Of course you don’t, Finch,” Stark said with disgust. “You never saw their faces. Let alone their feet. So, again, where did you disappear off to?”

“Nowhere.”

Stark looked at him a second. “Nowhere? Nowhere. Next you’ll be saying you’ve made no progress on the case.”

“There is no progress, Stark.”

“Even after I gave you that juicy transcript? I think you’re lying.”

Finch, reckless: “I think you fed us that address in the transcript. It almost got us killed. For nothing. And I wasted a day. So I’ve got nothing for you, either.”

Stark pulled back a second, as if to get a better look at Finch. “Are you serious, Finch? Because that’s not what I heard. I heard Wyte blew it for you. Your man transforms into some huge fucking monster and charges the stage. That’s what I’m told. Not exactly proper procedure. Not exactly what you’d expect from a detective. Or maybe it is. Maybe it’s the old quick-change comic theater routine. Maybe that goes over big in this shit hole. What is Wyte, anyway? Some kind of secret weapon?”

“He’s sick,” Finch said.

“Any sicker than Duncan Shriek?” Stark asked, with a knowing leer. “Because I hear Mr. Shriek is dead. And holed up in a certain apartment on Manzikert Avenue. Writing his ghost memoirs.” Stark’s refinement was slipping. A rougher voice, with a gutter accent.

“Why not go look for yourself,” Finch said. “Maybe you’ll turn up some clues.”

Stark kneed Finch in the groin. Finch groaned. Couldn’t fall down, held by the two men. “Think you’re funny? I know that’s a kill zone. You don’t get me, Finch. Do you think I give a fuck about this sewer of a city?” Stark whispered in his ear. “I don’t give a fuck about this dump. I don’t care if it all goes up in pillars of flame. It’s not my fucking town. But I don’t like being lied to. And I don’t like people getting in the way of what I want.”

Apparently no one did. Not Stark. Not the Lady in Blue. Not Heretic. Finch was tired of it.

Stark wrenched Finch’s head back by his hair. “They’re working all night on the towers, Finchy. All night. Like there’s a deadline suddenly. Driving people past their limits. Until they’re dying. Until they’re falling from the scaffolding. Why are they doing that, Finch? Why are the towers so important? And what’s it got to do with that apartment, Finchy? And what’s that got to do with the rebel safe house, Finchy? And how is all of this going to benefit me?”

With every question, Stark seemed smaller. More brutish.

A wash of stars. An underground sea. A thousand green lights out in the desert.

“You’re the professional spy, Stark. Why don’t you figure it out?” Made professional sound small.

Somehow that made Stark laugh. “I’m trying, Finch. Believe me, I’m trying. But people like you make it so difficult.” Stark nodded.

They let him fall to the ground. Bosun tossed his gun back to him.

Stark leaned down. “There are no professionals here, Finchy. We’re all amateurs. That’s what makes us dangerous. Now, you’d better start getting results. You’d better start thinking about your future. What’s left of it. Or all the lovely people around you are going to suffer. Starting sooner than you think. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll just come for you. There’s not much time left. This is your last warning.”

Had the feel of a well-worn speech.

Stark stalked off, the rest behind him. Leaving Finch beside the two corpses.

Above them all: the towers. Finch saw that the blackness between them was different than to either side. Showed no stars. Blurred, with the vague impression of shadowy nighttime scenes sliding across. Fast.

Now he knew why.

---

Back in the hotel. Near midnight. Didn’t know for sure. Approached the landing below the seventh floor. Heard Feral hissing at something. Saw a flickering, golden light that projected a circle of fire. Elongated and slanted down the hallway. Distorted further by the fungus on the walls. A rank smell, like too-strong perfume.

Bliss? The Partial?

Already had his Lewden out. Slowly walked up the steps. Saw Feral, fur puffed out, standing a few feet from his door. Staring up the source of the light. The thing had attached itself to the door. It looked like a golden brooch with filigree detail extending out in wavy branches or tendrils. From that angle, he could see the transparent cilia underneath. Almost looked like a larger cousin of the starfish he’d seen in the underground cavern.

Came closer, gun aimed at it. Arms shaking a little.

Feral saw him and scurried over to stand next to him. Now a low growl came from the cat’s throat.

From ten feet away, the front of the organism had the look of pure gold. A rough flower pattern. In the middle, a closed aperture divided into four parts.

A beam of light flashed out from the thing. Blinded him for a moment. Withdrew.

“Finch!” Heretic’s voice. A ghostly quaver.

Finch lowered his gun. Didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry. “Not worth your time, Feral.” A message from Heretic. A little more dramatic than usual.

The aperture dilated. Out leapt the skery. Finch screamed. Stumbled back. The skery reached its full length an inch from his face. Receded. Bobbed there, long and black. Curling downward. Until he could see it wasn’t the skery at all. Just a sick joke. In another second, it broke off and fell to the floor.

Feral came forward. Hissed at it, smacked at it with his claws. Jumping back even as he did so.

No one stirred in the apartments to either side. Finch didn’t blame them.

The oval in the middle widened. An approximation of Heretic’s face appeared. He looked almost jolly. As if he’d known how horrified Finch would be of the skery.

“Finch,” Heretic rasped, “you’ve been gone a long time. Almost long enough for me to suspect you had left us. I thought you’d run. Until you appeared again shadowing Wyte—”

But most of the rest was lost. Whatever it was supposed to be. Reverting to a series of clicks and whistles and moist suppurations. The garglings of a monster. As if Heretic didn’t care anymore whether Finch had orders or not. Or something had gone wrong when recording the message. Or everything was falling apart.

Finch listened to the obscene chatter for a minute. Then he put a couple of bullets in Heretic’s face. With a sigh the golden organism slid slowly to the hallway floor. Began to curl in on itself.

Picked up Feral, opened the door, locked it behind him, and went to bed.