I: Try to see it from my point of view. Because I’m trying to see it from theirs. They’ve got a vision that’s extraordinarily deep and wide. A long view.
F: How you must admire that.
I: Does an ant mourn the passing of another ant?
F: Maybe. I don’t know.
I: They see everything, everywhere, over thousands of years. And they work with spores and things smaller than spores—on a microscopic level. What’s it to them if they reduce a life from a macroscopic to microscopic level. To its different parts. It’s just life in a different form. Nothing’s been killed. Nothing’s ended because something else has begun. I find it liberating. If only they’d kept their word.
F: Does that excuse them?
I: After all you’ve done over the past week, Finch. Do you really think they need an excuse? Believe me, it’s nothing personal. Now, I’m going to have to hurt you again.
Woke to a sack over his head. Woke to the Partial whittling a tattoo into his leg. Woke to his own shrieks. Wondered if the Lady in Blue had spirited him away. Waking and drugging him. Waking and drugging him. Never lost.
And always, the Partial asking him questions. Who was Ethan Bliss? How did the doors work? Had he met the Lady in Blue? Kept answering sideways, but after a while didn’t remember what he’d said. Or not said.
After midnight. Maybe. Pitch black except for the lanterns. Except for the pale face of the Partial.
Part of his mouth didn’t work right. Jutted out. Swollen. His vowels came out slurry. Couldn’t feel his feet or hands. A kind of mercy. Because early on the Partial had cut off one of Finch’s toes. Had busted up his knee again. Cut a slit in his right cheek that bled into his mouth.
“Confess,” the Partial kept saying. “Confess.”
Was he ready to confess? And to what? Duncan Shriek was dead. The mission dead with it. Changing his name, leaving Crossley behind, now seemed as pathetic as the plan to revive Shriek. What had he been doing but playing sides off against each other? Buying time working for one, working for the other. For what? More of the same? Maybe even less of it. And if he confessed that, would the Partial do more than blink in confusion? Half the time the Partial wanted information. Half the time he just wanted to inflict pain.
The Partial said, “My name is Thomas. You should call me Thomas. That’s my name.”
Laughter gushed up from deep inside Finch at the absurdity of that. Laughter he couldn’t stop.
“I confess,” he said. Screamed it. As the Partial went back to work.
The chair slowly rocking, rocking back and forth.
Rocking. Rocking. Back and forth.
Finch sat on the upper deck of a houseboat in the Spit. From the towers across the bay, green fire gathered. It leapt out at them. Became huge and sparkling over their heads. Burned into boats all around them. Splintered timbers. Sent up waves of flame. A fire that never seemed to reach them. And yet was inside him.
Wyte and Finch’s father sat on a whitewashed bench opposite him. His father was the hunched-over specter he’d been at the clinic, in the last days. Coughing up blood. Wyte was, mercifully, as he’d been before the vainglorious charge from the chapel.
“Getting close,” his father said.
“Getting close,” said Wyte.
“Hang on,” his father said.
“Soon it will be your turn,” Wyte said. “Will you be ready?”
“Ready for what?” Finch said.
“Never lost.” Now it wasn’t Wyte sitting beside his father, but Finch as James Crossley. Youthful. Neatly trimmed beard. Eyes bright with confidence. The James Crossley who’d worked as a courier for Wyte.
Finch smiled. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you. Could’ve used you earlier, James.”
His father had disappeared. Duncan Shriek was sitting next to James now. Flickering in and out like a faulty bulb.
Finch stared at them both. While the Spit burned down around them.
Shriek said, “You can’t survive much more of this. You’ve got to find a way out.”
Finch grinned painfully. With each new bolt of green light another part of him was disintegrating. Falling away.
“Easy for a dead man to say. I’m still in the world,” he said.
Something was calling. Some noise was exploding in his head.
“You’ll be back,” Shriek promised, fading into darkness.
Woke, finally, to the sounds of combat. Rockets. Gunfire. The recoil of a tank blast?
Through the window, through the blood in his eyes, Finch saw intense flashes of light. Nothing like the gray caps’ spore clouds. Or their fungal displays. That light was more like a mist. This was harsh and sudden. Unforgiving.
Blood tickled his throat. The Partial had taken teeth. Each a raging agony in his mouth.
The Partial sat on the couch, tapping his foot. He’d turned the chair so it faced him.
Finch laughed. An unhinged laugh that ended on too high a note. Thought, “Could the interrogation be getting to the fucker?” But had said it aloud. The Partial crept behind him. Felt a soft sawing around his numb hand. A sudden flowing release.
Still the rockets went off. So they must be real. Not hallucinations.
No one’s coming for me. No one.
The Partial placed Finch’s bloody pinkie finger on the table. It looked like a white worm.
“Don’t disrespect me again,” the Partial said. Breathing hard. Something almost sexual in the way he swallowed. Let the tip of his tongue show through his teeth. “Or there’s more where that came from.”
A chuckle or the low sound of a moan? “Only eight, or nine. But I won’t. I won’t. I won’t. Just untie me. I can’t feel my hands. I can’t feel my legs.”
The Partial ignored him. Which meant slapping him a few times.
Nothing he’d told the Partial had stopped him. Nothing. Not once. Not any more than Stark had stopped Finch. Saw Bliss at the table in the Photographer’s apartment, carefully creating the vial of liquid. Saw Sintra’s face against the wall as they made love. Rathven’s hesitant smile at their detective joke. None of it mattered anymore.
Began to cry. To weep. Slumped over. Head leaning toward his lap.
“Oh, there’s nothing to cry about, Finch. Nothing at all,” the Partial said. “We’re just having a conversation. A kind of meeting of the minds. If it makes you feel any better, those sounds you hear—they’re your rebels, Finch. They’ve abandoned you. They’re attacking the tower. It won’t work, but I almost wish it would. Except there’s no place for me in their new world, either.”
“I’m sorry the gray caps. Betrayed you.” Mangled the words. Parched. As if he could drink forever and not be satisfied. But the Partial had only given him boiling water.
“Are you?” the Partial asked. “Really? Because all I ever got from you before was contempt. An aura of deep contempt.”
“Not contempt. Ignorance.”
“Ignorance?” Incredulous.
“Of what. You had to go through. To become a Partial.”
At some point during the interrogation, if that’s what it still was, Finch remembered consoling the Partial. Couldn’t keep it straight in his head. His brain felt like it was outside of his body. Exposed and raw.
“It’s nice of you to pretend,” the Partial said.
If I ever get free, I am going to put out your eye with my hands.
Another flash. A recoil. But the attack seemed blunted. The explosions of light less frequent. Saw the Partial’s serious, pale face in the half-light.
“I’ve told you all I know,” Finch said. “Anything you needed to know.” But not Sintra. Not Rathven. Not the Lady in Blue. Hadn’t given them up. Still, couldn’t be sure anymore.
She said she’d have watchers on me. She lied.
The Partial ignored him. “Don’t worry, Finch. We’re almost to the end. Almost to dawn. Just another couple of hours. You might even make it.”
Couldn’t help himself. “Fuck you. Fuck you. You psychotic little prick. You cock-sucking psychotic bastard. You fucking coward!”
Thrashing in his chair until it fell over onto its side.
Silence then. Waiting.
The Partial lowered himself against the floor next to Finch. Looked him in the eyes. Said, “We’ll keep going until I see all of you. All of you.”
Finch tried to spit in his face. All that came out was a trickle of blood.
Am I dying? Is this what death is like?
The rest dissolved into a kind of distant burning.
A kind of despairing, raging ache.
Back on the Spit. On the roof of the houseboat. Dusk now, the sun almost gone, but lingering.
The Spit smoldered. Thick with flame and smoke. The towers were silent. From that angle, he couldn’t see what lay between them. But strange birds flew out between them. Like parrots, but different. Flashes of green-blue-orange. Beyond that, the city, in an agony of bronzing light.
Opposite him on the bench sat Duncan Shriek. This time he had a long gray beard, white hair down to his shoulders. His beard writhed, alive. His overcoat wasn’t made of cloth at all. Concealed a mountain of a body, reminding Finch of Wyte. No shoes. Shriek’s feet seemed to blend into the wood of the floorboards as if rooted there. His image flickered in and out. Could not seem to settle into flesh and blood.
“Hello again, Finch,” Shriek said.
Finch, bitter: “They burned your body. Spread your ashes over the towers. You’re dead,” Finch said. “You failed us. Thousands and thousands of people are going to die because of you.” Angry at himself.
Shriek said, “Your body is shutting down, Finch. You cannot take more torture. You have to do something. All I can do for now is numb the pain.”
Finch’s legs were on fire. He couldn’t put out the flames.
“There’s nothing I can do.”
Shriek pulled him close. Until his face was inches from Finch’s. Drawn into the power of those eyes that were both more and less than eyes. Into the magisterial force of the experience and pain there. “Find a way. And when you’ve done it, drink the vial you brought with you. Even if you do kill the Partial you’ll die there on the floor, otherwise.”
“The Photographer said the vial is poison.”
“It is. But it’s life as well. You’ll die, and then I’ll bring you back.”
“You can’t do anything,” Finch said. “You’re just in my head.”
“So are you,” Shriek said.
He picked Finch up by the shoulders. Raised him high. Pushed and released him in the same motion. So violently that he was sent flying over the city. Where Shriek’s hands had touched him, a healing numbness. Spreading.
Below, the fires crackling on the Spit were snuffed out. The black smoke turned white and then broke apart. Still he soared, over the twinkling green of the Religious Quarter, over the dull white remains of the camps, over everything.
So this is how it ends. How it really ends. But at least it ends.
Woke to darkness. Woke to blood caked around his eyes. To a broken nose. To the knowledge that his bowels had loosened. That he’d pissed himself. Dribbling hot down his thighs, itching through the numbness. Was able to move his legs a little. A veil now between him and the pain. It registered as an even, serrated glow around his body. No part of him hurt more than any other part. Allowed him to concentrate. Gave him energy.
“Not done with you. Not the right answers.” Mumbled like a prayer from somewhere in front of him.
Right eye was swollen shut. Opened his left enough to squint.
The Partial’s face was up close through that slit of vision. The abyss of the fungal eye. The orange lichen of the other. The stark white landscape of that face. Staring at him. A hand shaking him. Trying to see if he was still alive.
Too close.
The gun was on the table. The knives were on the table.
Erupted hard up and out. Caught the Partial on the chin with the top of his head. A grunt of surprise. Of pain. Finch fell on top of the Partial. Legs still too rubbery. Brought his forehead hard onto the fungal eye. Could feel it give. The Partial screamed. Tried to push Finch off him. Battered his sides with his fists. But Finch felt none of it. Bit into the Partial’s left cheek. Pulled back. Spit out the flesh. The Partial shrieking. Finch kept smashing his head into the right side of the Partial’s face. Until the eye socket sagged and the Partial was moaning. The beating of hands at Finch’s sides now more like the wings of a bird.
Finally, the Partial stopped moving. Maybe he’d been saying something. Screaming something. Finch didn’t know. Didn’t care. The warm glow that surrounded him muffled sound. Muffled everything but itself.
Was the Partial dead? He would be. Finch picked up a knife off the table with his mouth. Positioned it between his teeth. Knelt. Bent his head to the side. Came down hard. Jammed it hilt-deep in the Partial’s throat. Got out of the way as the blood came quick and heavy. The Partial convulsed once, twice, back bucking. Then nothing.
The pain was coming back. Everywhere. The veil fading. He backed up to the table. Got his hands around a knife. Tilted it downward. Cut himself free after a minute. Didn’t care what he had to cut through to do it.
Stumbled past the Partial. Past Heretic. To his jacket. Found the vial. Opened it. Stood there, trembling.
The Photographer had said it was poison. Bliss had said in liquid form it would rejuvenate Shriek. Shriek was gone. But the figment in his mind had been right about one thing: one way or the other, he was going to die without help.
Downed it in one gulp. Tasted like dirt and chocolate. Sprinkled with some sharp yet familiar herb.
Fell heavily to the floor. Sat there as the energy left him. As his wounds laid him out flat on his back. As he gasped. Every inch of his body crying out in an endless agony.
Finch and Shriek stood in the cavern by the underground sea. In front of Samuel Tonsure’s one-room shelter.
“You’re a hallucination,” Finch said. Wouldn’t look at Shriek. “I’m dying. I’m having a conversation with myself.”
Shriek said, “Remember how Wyte had Otto inside of him? In a different way, you have me inside of you. I entered your mind when you ate my memory bulb.”
Something had lived inside of Wyte. When it came out, Finch had shot it. Then sliced it apart as it squealed.
“That’s impossible.”
“Do you really know what’s impossible anymore?” Shriek asked. “Are you in a position to have an opinion that means anything anymore? You will still die there, on the floor, Finch, if you don’t believe in me.” Felt an immense pressure in his skull. A kind of pulse. “That’s me,” Shriek said. “Me, trying to get out.” His eyes burned with a deep and abiding fire. “I was still regenerating. Healing. But I altered the memory bulb. I encoded it with a copy of me. When you ate it, I entered your brain. If my body had lived, if the real me had lived, I would have eventually become less than an echo. A stray thought. An impulse for tea instead of coffee. Unexpected sadness or joy. You would have carried me, decaying, for the rest of your life. But that didn’t happen. They’ve killed me and I’m all that’s left. Now it’s my mission.”
Tea not coffee. The strange surge of energy during the shoot-out. Sadness or joy. Emotions not his own. Not Crossley’s, either.
“There is no mission now.”
“You’re wrong, Finch. Very wrong.”
Finch, disgusted: “Like Wyte and Otto. I’ll die and you’ll come out of me. Like a fucking parasite.”
Shriek frowned. “No. Not like Wyte and Otto. Not like that at all. Otto ate Wyte from the inside out. I’m just a passenger, gone soon enough. If you help me.”
“Help you do what?”
“Manifest in the real world. Become flesh and blood. Complete the mission while there’s still time.”
“But you’re just a … an imitation.”
“It’s not the best way. It’s just the only way now.”
“My mind’s playing tricks on me.”
“Listen to me, Finch. It was Bliss who found me in this cavern. Who brought me to the rebels. I wasn’t even human anymore. I wasn’t, in any sane sense, alive. I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it. If I could come back from a hibernation of so many years, then maybe you’ll understand why a copy of me might be able to reenter the world.”
Bliss again. On the walls of Zamilon. Finding Duncan Shriek. Bending the ear of the Lady in Blue.
“When I wake up, you’ll just be a memory of a dream.”
“You’re not hearing me. You won’t wake up. Your body is shutting down.”
“Then take over. It’s a weak enough machine,” Finch said with self-contempt. “How can I stop you?”
Shriek waved his hand. They stood on the battlements of Zamilon. No one there but them. Cold and windy. Out in the desert: shadows gathering.
“I can’t force you. It would take too much time. We don’t have that kind of time. You’d die first. And right now the Lady in Blue is holding off the invaders at Zamilon. She’s waiting for a miracle. I’m that miracle.”
“And if I said no? If I said no, you’d just fade away and this would all be over?”
“Yes.”
Thinking again about Wyte. About Stark under the influence of Wyte’s memory bulb. At what price? And: You knew you might die. Why aren’t you willing to do this?
Because it’s not real.
Looked out at the green lights beginning to appear. Above, the blurred gleam of stars obscured by dust.
“It’s up to you, Finch,” Shriek said.
“How do we do it?” Finch asked. “I cut open my own head and you pop out?” And what happens to me then?
“It’s nothing like that,” Shriek said. “Nothing like that. You open yourself to me, and then I open myself to you. Then you sleep for a while. When you wake up, I am out of you. I can feed off moisture. Off the air. What I take from you will be no larger than the weight of a baby. And I will do the rest. Then we go our separate ways. You’ll never see me again.” Except when I look in the mirror. “I know you’re afraid. But what happened to Wyte was invasive. Hostile. He had a parasite inside of him. Something made possible by the gray caps.”
This isn’t invasive?
The green lights were closer. He could almost make out the forms of the creatures gathered out there in the desert. Waiting to take Zamilon for themselves. Who could say their cause was any less just? The Lady in Blue didn’t even know what they were.
“How do I know you’re not hostile? I ‘open up’ and you take over.”
“I won’t. I promise. I can’t. It wouldn’t last for long.”
“What’s the risk if I say yes?”
Shriek hesitated. Then said, “I won’t lie to you. It’s a sacrifice. I will be doing things to your body to make my own. Stealing from your tissue. Robbing you while you’re already weak. You won’t be the same afterward. Even after you recover from the torture. You’ll have dizzy spells. Headaches. You may not sleep for a while. When you do sleep, there will be nightmares as your mind flushes out my memories. But you’ll be setting me free. And I won’t take it from you unless you let me.”
“You’re saying it’ll almost kill me.”
“And heal you, too,” Shriek said. “In the short term, I can make your flesh knit faster. I can shield you from the aftershock of what the Partial did to you. And a part of you will always be with me. Even after you die, you will live on because I will still be alive.” Shriek grinned, showing his teeth. “I’m hard to kill.”
Lost time. Lost worlds. A man who had lived for more than a hundred years, only to die in a crappy apartment as part of a larger game by a species that had come from a place so distant they’d spent centuries trying to find it again.
A giving up. A giving in. That’s what Shriek was offering him. It tempted him. He had nothing left. Nothing of worth. No master plan. No better life waiting. Just his own death. Too much for him, and too little, standing there on the battlements of a place re-created by a passenger in his brain.
Finch searched the face of the dead man for honesty or deceit. Saw himself reflected back.
“How do we start?” he asked.
“For you, it’s easy,” Shriek said. “A mental trick. Just think back to the time when you went from being Crossley to being Finch. Imagine that instant as exactly as you can. Every detail you can remember. While you concentrate on that, I will enter through the ‘gap’ created. That’s as simply as I can put it … The rest you won’t feel.”
A hopeful expression on Shriek’s face.
The thought that maybe this was happening in the seconds before his death. That the last week had taken place in a single moment in his head. That none of it was real. Even the parts that seemed real. Those least of all.
Finch shuddered. Closed his eyes.
“Let’s get this over with.”
The creation of John Finch happened at night. Cold for once. The flares and tracers of battle over the darkened skyline. The roar of the tanks. The gunfire of attacking infantry. A percussive music playing all over southeast Ambergris. Near the Religious Quarter. Heavy losses for the Hoegbotton side. A series of tactical mistakes.
They stood on the street behind the clinic, he and his father. Next to a burning trashcan. His father was a hunched figure who kept coughing up blood. By then his father had been very sick.
John Crossley had a folder full of documents for his son. James had a suitcase stuffed with identity cards, certificates, incriminating photographs. Had checked John Crossley into the clinic under the name “Stephen Mormeck.” Someone they’d picked out of the phone book.
A clinic in Frankwrithe territory. Because of the rash of refugees. Because F&L had less reason to hate John Crossley.
“Is there anyone you want me to contact?” he’d asked his father.
A shake of the head, the great mane of gray hair. “No, no one. Make a clean break. For both of us.” A gruff laugh. By then, he was self-medicating with whiskey early in the day. That night next to the trashcan, John Crossley had been drunk for two days.
But his eyes were clear. His arm steady as he handed the folder to his son. “Everything you’ll need. For John Finch. Including a way to rejoin the Hoegbotton Irregulars.”
Two years before the Rising. Six months after Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe had joined forces against the gray caps. Five months since his father had been denounced as a Kalif spy and they’d had to go on the run. The posters were everywhere. One of a row of traitors.
“I didn’t do what they say I did. Not the way they say I did it. I never got anyone killed. I never…”
His father had never told James how they’d come to be betrayed. Which of the many people who had come to the house in the valley over the years. And James didn’t have a clue, because his father kept pushing him further and further away from that part of his life.
James reached down, opened the suitcase. Felt the click of the clasps against his fingers. “It’s all here. Every last document. Every last photograph.” From the old house in the valley. James had gone there earlier that night, snuck in. Returned to the clinic in an army truck, along with a few other civilians with ties to Hoegbotton’s trading arm. Wyte had stood watch for him, then gone out the back way and melted into the night. Wyte knew every street in the city. He’d have been back home with his wife before midnight.
Two in the morning now.
“What are you waiting for? Start shoveling this stuff into the fire,” his father said.
Still, he hesitated. Watched the smoky flames rising into the darkness, the sparks mimicking the flares in the distance.
“If we burn all of the photographs, I’ll forget what you look like.”
His father didn’t miss a beat. “But not who I am. And if you don’t do it, there’s no clean break, son.”
His father reached down, picked up a handful of documents and IDs. Shoved them into the fire. Which flared up for a moment.
“This is the best way.” John Crossley had said it a dozen times that day.
Anything else of value that couldn’t tie the son to the father had been put in a storeroom on the edge of the merchant district. A neutral area. James could retrieve it at any time. The whiskey. The cigars. The books. The map. The ceremonial scimitar his father had gotten while fighting against the Kalif. “Keep it hidden, son, but use it when you have to.”
After a moment, James joined him. Started tossing handfuls into the flames. Photographs from the offensive into Kalif territory. John Crossley on a tank. In a window. Walking through the desert. Old journal entries. Even the little tobacco pipe he’d shown James as a youth.
“They’ll never forget, never forgive, no matter who the enemy is, son. Better just to start a new life. Be someone else.”
They’d never talked about his betrayal. The son had felt that asking would have meant admitting that the father had done something horribly wrong. He didn’t want to let that into their world.
“Is there anyone you want me to contact,” he’d asked his father. “No, no one,” the old man had insisted.
When the suitcase was empty, James stood back. Beside his father. Watched the flames die down. Then hugged his father close. Sour breath. Shaking arms. The rasp at the back of his throat. Knew he was going to lose him soon.
“Welcome to Ambergris, John Finch,” his father whispered in his ear.
Still dark when he woke, except for the lanterns. Except for a hint of gray from the window. He lay on the floor. Felt hungry. Thirsty. As much as he’d ever felt in his life. Hollow, too. As if he were made of spores. Would blow away. Over all of that, the constant complaint of his nerves. Reporting pain. Everywhere.
The Partial lay facedown beside the gray cap. Arms out to the sides. On the table, the bloody knives, the pot of water. The empty vial.
He sat up and saw himself, naked, propped up on two elbows opposite. Feet almost touching. Shock. Sudden horror. Even in the dim light, the same dark hair. The rakish yet thickening features. The solid build on the edge of fat. But Shriek’s features rose out of his own. The cheekbones a little higher. The eyes different. This other Finch had green eyes. This other Finch had a strange smoothness to him, a blankness. None of Finch’s scars had manifested on him. Few of the wrinkles. Finch shuddered. Shriek-Finch looked like a man who had reached middle age without the physical signs of experience.
“The resemblance will fade,” Shriek said. “I’ll be able to take any form I like, soon.” A scratchy voice. As if getting used to his vocal cords.
Shriek rose, and Finch rose with him. An imperfect reflection. Shriek held himself differently than Finch. Shoulders hunched from some invisible weight. A stare less guarded. More expressive hands. Light gathered around Shriek in unnatural ways. A gentle iridescent strobing rippled across his body. It reminded Finch of the starfish in the cavern by the underground sea.
“How do you feel?” Shriek asked.
“I feel light … and yet heavy,” Finch said. Could sense Shriek’s overlay lifted from his mind. Its presence only confirmed by absence.
While all of those things he’d thought himself numb to came rushing back in with a near-fatal intensity. Sintra. Wyte.
Teetered on the edge of an abyss.
Shriek’s voice brought him back: “Let it wash over you. Let it wash out of you. It’s not real. It’s like a dam breaking.”
Finch nodded. Vague resentment: How could Shriek know how it felt?
Shriek wrapped his nakedness in the blanket. Muted the strobing. A shimmer across the face. The arms.
“What now?” Finch couldn’t stop staring at himself.
“Just what Bliss gave you. Just that.”
The piece of metal was still in his jacket pocket. He handed it to Shriek.
Shriek nodded. “Perfect.”
Perfect for what? An unease in Finch. That he hadn’t thought it all through. An urge to pick up his gun and shoot Shriek.
A spark in Shriek’s eyes that originated there. Not a reflection from the light.
“What are you?” Finch asked.
A low, wheezy laugh from Shriek. As if his lungs were filled with spores.
“Just someone who knows too much.”
Finch watched Shriek assemble the metal strip. Must’ve been some button or other mechanism hidden in the symbols. Because in Shriek’s hands the strip of metal clicked, and like some kind of magician he began to pull more metal out of it. Until he had a length of metal as tall as a man. As tall as Shriek.
“Whoever created this also created the doors,” Shriek said as he worked. “But I’ve never found them. Granted, I was more interested in the gray caps.”
“Where did you find it?”
“Bliss found it. Somewhere far, far away.”
Bliss, again. Finch beyond surprise.
“What does it do?”
Shriek pulled it sideways, with a motion almost like pulling apart something soft, crumbly. A piece of bread or a biscuit. A frame began to appear.
“It focuses my abilities. Like a lens.”
When he had persuaded it into a rectangular shape, roughly door-like, Shriek knelt. Pressed the frame into the air like he was hanging a painting.
Let go of it.
It didn’t fall. Made a snapping sound and it stayed there. About two feet off the ground. No flicker or waver. Static. Solid. Still. An intense but narrow gold-green light invested the edges of the metal. Made the symbols glow. The space inside the frame continued to show the window beyond it.
“It will be a minute or two before I can leave,” Shriek said. Finch said. As Finch had watched, it had almost been like watching himself do it. A ghost watching its body move about the apartment.
“What happens next?” Finch asked.
“I complete the mission. Time doesn’t work the way we think it works. Not really. I’ll go into the HFZ to pick up the trail. From there, I will journey years and worlds away and return. An army gathered with me. I will be the beacon, the light, that guides them.”
Words came tumbling out Finch hadn’t known were there. “Why? Why do it? What does it matter to someone”—something—“so old. Who is so … removed”—alien—“from all of this.”
The intensity of his need to know shocked him.
A sad, lonely smile. “The truth? None of my books ever changed anything. Nothing I did changed anything. I always tried, and I always failed. But Bliss helped me to see that failing a hundred times didn’t mean you had to fail every time.”
“And you trust Bliss?”
“About this? Yes. Even if I am just an echo, this is the last chance.”
“It’s too late to put things right,” Finch said. “Too much has gone wrong.” Ruined neighborhoods. The vacant stares of the people from the camps. The fighting in the streets. The effects of decades of near-constant war.
“As much as they can be put right, Finch,” Shriek said.
“And after? What then?”
Shriek’s dark gaze, from a dark place. The rectangle hanging in the air like a magic trick. A terrible power. Something in between.
“After? After, I’ll be gone. Somewhere. Everywhere. Nowhere. A pile of ashes at the base of the towers…”
“And I’ll still be here,” Finch said. It came out like an ache.
Shriek, forceful: “You are a man who did the best he could in impossible circumstances. That’s all.”
After Shriek left, he would be alone. Terribly injured. In an apartment with two dead bodies. In a war zone.
The door lit up. Became a reflecting mirror.
“I’m leaving now, Finch,” Shriek said.
“Wait!” A last burst of curiosity. “Tell me what happened. How did you end up in this apartment?”
Shriek’s features softened. “I tried something dangerous. Something impossible. I tried to use the nexus at Zamilon to go back in time. I tried to change the past so I wouldn’t have to change the future. But you can’t do that. And the past caught up with me. The attempt almost killed me.”
The door had begun to hum. An intense white light shot from it, silhouetting Shriek. The hum became a kind of unearthly music.
“And the gray cap?”
“He got caught in the door I’d made.”
“What does that mean? I don’t know what that means,” Finch said.
“You might ask yourself who Samuel Tonsure really was,” Shriek said. Then nodded at Finch, and stepped through the door. Disappeared into the light.
The light went out.
The rectangle clattered to the floor.
The metal fell in on itself.
Just a bar of metal again, as before.
Finch knew he would never be able to make it do what Shriek had done. Knew that he would never see Shriek again.
Sunlight. Warm against his battered face. Curled up on the couch. His ankles and wrists seemed made of broken glass. Could feel the fragile bones shifting. Sending the glass up into his arms, his legs. His whole body hurt. Ached. His jaw was sore. Couldn’t feel his nose anymore.
A vast and formless rush of city sounds from beyond the window. Sporadic gunfire. The thud and shift of something heavier. Like a giant striding across Ambergris. But distant. So distant.
Someone had applied field dressings to the stumps of finger and toe using torn fabric.
Tried to get up. A hand held him down. A voice he knew said, “Don’t get up yet.” The accent more pronounced. As if she were no longer acting.
An arm propped up his head so he could drink from a cup of water. It tasted good. Even though he had trouble getting it down. Even though it mixed with the blood inside his mouth.
Sintra’s face came into view. He looked up at her with what he knew was a stupid, childlike dependence. Everything stripped away from him. Couldn’t raise his arm far enough to wipe his eyes.
“Just lie there,” she said. An oddly clinical concern in her voice. She wore forest green. Camouflage pants and shirt. Brown boots made out of something soft. A long knife sheathed at her waist. A rifle in the crook of her left arm, muzzle pointed toward the floor.
“Sintra,” he said. Turned his stiff neck to follow her as she got up for more water. Saw again the bodies on the floor. A moment of disorientation. A man and a gray cap. Looking like they’d fallen from a great height. Except the Partial, facedown, was sporling the remains of his fungal eye out across the floor. An army of tiny, black, fernlike mushrooms with golden stems had traveled from the eye to colonize the back of his head.
A croaking raven’s laugh at the unexpected sight. Even as he realized there’d still be a recording there, somewhere, in the mess.
Tried to say to Sintra, “How did you find me?” Wasn’t sure it came out right.
Sintra gave him more water to drink. Perched beside him on the armrest. “The city is catching its breath this morning. There is no one in this building now. Not a single Partial. No eyes left in this apartment. Their attention is elsewhere.”
“How did you know? To look here.”
Her voice from above him, matter-of-fact: “I’ve followed you here before.”
“When?”
He felt her shrug. “I’ve followed you everywhere. Especially the last few months. Before the towers started firing on the Spit. I have followed you so much I know more about you than you do.” Not said like a joke. More like she was weary of it. Tired of being a shadow.
The words lay there, in the sunlight. Finch picked over them again and again. Didn’t find what he was looking for.
“Did you kill them?” she asked. Motioning toward the bodies.
“One of them.”
“But not before he got to you.” Said it like he was a problem to be solved. Like a threat.
Finch thought for the first time about the sword on the floor. Looked toward it.
His own gun appeared in her hand. Again.
“Finch…”
“Are you here to finish me off?”
“No, just to stop you from doing anything stupid.” She held out a pill to him. “You’ll feel better if you take it. Maybe long enough to get back to your apartment.”
Took the pill gladly. Willingly. A test both of him and of her. Swallowed. A vague warmth spread through his limbs.
The old absurd idea crept up on him with the warmth. It still isn’t too late. We can get out of Ambergris. Cross the river. Make it to Stockton or Morrow … Readying himself to make the argument again. That if they left together they could leave their old selves behind, too. But he couldn’t get the words out. Dust on his tongue. To say them would mean he was delusional. That he was pursuing a ghost.
“What happened to the man who was here before? Your case?”
A deep, shuddering breath. “First, tell me the truth,” he said. Had no cleverness, no deception, left to him. “Whatever it is.”
She considered the question for a moment.
“We work with the rebels sometimes, in exchange for other favors. Who was the man in this apartment? Was it Duncan Shriek?”
“Who is ‘we’?”
“The Dogghe. My people. Who was the man in this apartment?”
The Dogghe. The Religious Quarter. She was part Dogghe, part Nimblytod. Had no known address. Came to him in the night. Seemed to move around the city with ease. Of course she worked for the Dogghe.
“Yes, Duncan Shriek,” he told her, because it didn’t matter anymore. “Someone who is an expert with … doors. Why me? Why not Blakely or Dapple. Or even Wyte?”
The words still came out slowly. Mangled. It took her time to recognize them and respond.
“You had no record up until two years before the Rising, John. That made us curious … What was Duncan Shriek’s mission?”
“To stop more gray caps coming through. What were your orders with regard to me?”
“Coming through what?”
“The towers. Was it always that way? Between us?” From the beginning? An ache now that wasn’t from his wounds. A slow-motion treachery. A life concealed.
“Finch, what can you tell me about Ethan Bliss?”
“I loved you.” Let go of the words now, while she couldn’t really see his face. When it didn’t matter anymore. He had nothing to say to her about Bliss.
Her slow response: “And I liked you, John. I really did. I wouldn’t have slept with you, otherwise. No matter the mission.”
A childish bitterness, but he was too weak to keep the poison out of his mind: “You left behind some of your notes once. I had suspicions, but I never went to the gray caps with them. I never told anyone.”
A mistake. He could feel the retreat in her words: “You might never have had to find out. We could have continued having our fun. The mystery of it. You liked that very much, I know. But a normal life? Like regular people? We aren’t regular people. We were playing roles.”
“What roles?”
Her voice took on a harshness that he knew shielded her as much as him. “You were the protector. I was the exotic native girl you liked to fuck.”
“That’s not true.” Wanted no part of what she was doing.
“Isn’t it? None of you really see us, John. Only what you want to see.”
“And what do the Dogghe want? What do they want out of Ambergris?”
Anger in her voice. Desire and need, too. Just not for him. “This was our place, John. Before your people came. Before the gray caps. And maybe it will be again.”
“The rebels will never let that happen, no matter how you help them,” Finch said. “Neither will the gray caps.”
“Maybe they won’t have a choice. Maybe this time we will just take it.”
Saw it now. In the chaos of conflict between gray caps and rebels and the Partials. The Dogghe might hold on to the Religious Quarter. If they were lucky. If others weren’t.
“I won’t answer any more of your questions,” he said. “You already know the answers, I think.”
He sat up. Took her in while he still could. A beautiful but tired-looking woman in her early thirties. Hair messy, face long and pinched from stress.
“Did your father ever recover?” he asked.
“What?” The question, after all the others, seemed to take her by surprise.
“From his trauma. Did he recover?”
She looked down, away from him. “Yes, he did.” Was that a tremor in her voice? “He’s passed on now, but he had as good a life as anyone.”
He reached out, touched her shoulder. Her skin warm. Like he remembered it.
She clasped his hand. Eyes bright as she met his gaze. “Clean yourself up. Find someplace safe to be, Finch. The next time I see you, I might be forcing answers from you. And I really wouldn’t like that.”
He nodded.
A flash of those green eyes. She put his gun down on the table. “I’m leaving it for you, but I’m taking this.” Held up the metal strip Shriek had used. Unmistakable that it, ultimately, was what she’d come for.
“You shouldn’t.” But beyond caring. “It’ll do more harm than good.” To me.
“John, I don’t think you really know the difference.” Then she was walking out the door, down the hallway. Gone for good.
Finch stared after her for a moment. Then hobbled to the window. Looked out.
The towers were complete. They shone with green fire in the light. Between them, impossible scenes flashed so fast he caught only glimpses. A vast blue dome like an observatory. Replaced by a mountain topped by a tower. A city of gleaming buildings taller than any he’d ever seen. A forest of vine-like trees. A roiling sea over which egg-shaped balloons floated, trailing lines of shimmering light. And on it went. Almost beyond comprehension.
At some point soon, the scenes would stop changing. They would settle in on one scene. They would settle in on the gray caps’ home.
Would he know by then if he’d done the right thing?
The way home. So heavy, so light, he almost didn’t feel the pavement. Wearing one shoe. Only a sock over his other foot because it hurt too much. Somehow easier to hold the sword. The gun shoved into his belt. Head felt like a balloon stuffed with rags. Ached all over, with eruptions of pain in the places most sorely used by the Partial.
Through a haze, saw:
Partials gathered in a black squadron, marching toward a barricade manned in part by a truck weighted down by a cannon that had to be a century old at least. Two anemic mules whose ribs stuck out stood placidly behind the barricade. Along with the pale, uncertain faces of the defenders.
Gray caps approaching, at their back a huge cloud of spores, gliding and shifting, a thousand shades of green. Of red. Of blue. Suffocating the street. A last few stragglers running out before them, anonymous in their gas masks.
The huge drug mushrooms transformed. Hoods drawn down to the ground, the red surface once so soft become hard as brick. Wavering lines of green energy sparked from their minaret-like tops. Shot out toward the green towers. Gray caps stood watch from tiny circles of windows. Across the sides of each stem, unending repetitions of the symbol Shriek had carried with him on the scrap of paper. Over and over again in a kind of madness. No flow of food or drugs now. No pretense of even caring. Just a sense of waiting. For what?
He took a side street, then an alley. Crept through a courtyard and walked into an apartment complex as a shortcut. Kept his face turned to the wall. If someone wanted to kill him, they could.
Finally reached the hotel steps. The madman lay sprawled there. Someone had slit his throat. His arms were thrown out to either side as if in welcome. Just another body. Already a sly fringe of tiny green-and-white mushrooms had sprouted up through his pant legs, his shirt, his face. In another day, he’d be a fucking flower bed.
Next to the madman’s left hand Finch saw a little round carving. He picked it up. Crudely drawn, but unmistakably Stark’s face, with its sharp features. The deep-set eyes.
Rathven telling him, “You have to choose a side, Finch. Eventually you have to choose a side, even if you pretend to be neutral. Even if you think giving out information is like selling smokes or food packets.”
Through his fuzziness, a terrible thought.
Dropped the carving. Hobbled fast up the steps.
At Rathven’s door. One more time. Only it was open now. Had forced the Lewden Special into his left hand, over the bandaged finger. Held the sword in his right.
Hobbled inside, trying to focus his fading attention. Through the hallway. Entered the room ringed by bookshelves. In one chair, facing him, Bosun. He’d abandoned his custom-made revolvers. Held a fungal gun on Rathven. Her back was to him, but he could see her raised arms. The glint of her own monstrous revolver. A standoff.
“You are fucking late,” Bosun said. “We’ve been waiting for a while.”
Didn’t reply. Just walked around until he stood to the right side of them both. Bosun’s bald head was bloodstained. Other people’s blood? A yellowing bandage over his shoulder where Finch had clipped him. A nervous tic working its way across the corner of his left eye. Wore a dark shirt and darker pants, tucked into boots. Taken from a Partial? Some perverse form of camouflage?
Rathven was pale but composed. Gaze never wavering from Bosun. The battered old gun trembled only a little in her grip. A smell of sweat and fear came from both of them.
“Finch!” Relief in Rathven’s voice. That someone was there. That she wasn’t alone with the madman. “I didn’t let him in. He took me by surprise.” As if Finch might, even now, accuse her. Stress crackling into her voice as she glanced over. “But he didn’t know I had the gun…” Her look turned to dismay at his condition.
“This is my fault, Rathven,” Finch said. “I’m sorry.”
Bosun: “Your fault? Because you didn’t kill me when you had the chance?” An odd expression of sadness and contempt.
Not for lack of trying.
“No, because I ever went after you. I should’ve left you alone.”
A snort from Bosun. “I don’t believe you.”
I don’t believe myself.
The fungal gun complicated things. Even if Finch got a shot in first, Bosun’s gun could go off in an unexpected way. Infect them both.
“Where’s Stark?” he asked. Knew the answer. Had to start somewhere.
Flat, emotionless: “Gone, but you knew that. You didn’t hide him well enough. I found him all crumpled up in the alley, thinking he was someone else. Then he died. There was nothing I could do … He’s somewhere safe. For now.”
A wave of dizziness washed over Finch. Let it come, bent at his knees to stop from falling. As if he were back on the boat with Wyte, heading out to the Spit to meet Stark and Bosun for the first time.
Said: “I wasn’t trying to hide him. I didn’t want to hurt him. But he, you, kept coming at me.”
Bosun ignored that. “I came here to kill you, maybe kill her, too. I still could.” In a speculative tone. Like weighing whether to skip stones across a river or keep their smooth weight in his pocket.
“You didn’t bring your muscle.” To remind him it was two-to-one odds.
A sharp, curt laugh from Bosun. “No muscle left. They wouldn’t follow with Stark gone. Now it’s just like old times. Or would have been.”
Finch, in an even tone: “Why don’t you just leave? No one gets hurt then. Because you’ll get hurt even if you manage to take out one of us. You know that.”
Could see Rathven was having a harder and harder time holding on to the revolver. Didn’t want her to drop it. No idea what Bosun would do then. Even with Finch ready to put a bullet in his head.
Bosun looked up at Finch for a second. Nothing there but a low animal cunning. But unmoored somehow. The eyes older than before. “Here’s a deal for you: give me the memory bulb powder and then I’ll leave.” Could sense the intent.
Something in Finch rebelled at that. Wyte resurrected, even as a shadow. Along with Stark and Otto. Each haunting the other inside of Bosun’s mind. Dead but not put to rest.
“That might drive you insane, Bosun. All kinds of things might happen.”
“He’s my brother!” A shriek. A scream. Something horrible and lost rising out of Bosun. Finger twitching on the trigger. Finch saw now the incredible control Bosun was exerting over his own impulses. To kill. To strike out. Weighed against that the promise of seeing his brother again. No matter how perverse the homecoming.
Could hear Rathven’s sudden intake of breath in the aftermath.
Finch nodded. “I’ll give it to you.” Took the last pouch of powder out of his jacket. Turned sideways, gun still trained on Bosun. Tossed it toward the open door. “All you have to do to get it is leave.”
Mouth dry. Legs still shaky. Holding it together for Rathven.
Bosun: “Tell her to put her gun down. And put down your sword.”
“Rathven, put the gun down,” Finch said. Let the sword clatter out of his hand. Couldn’t risk squatting to place it on the floor. Might just fall over.
“I don’t want to put the gun down, Finch.”
“Just do it. I’ve got him covered.”
She hesitated, then, hand shaking, placed her gun on the table between them.
“Now I’ll get up and move around you to the door,” Bosun said.
“Be careful, Finch,” Rathven said.
Bosun got up. Came around the table toward Finch. Stepping over the fallen sword.
Gun to gun. Bosun inches away from him in that enclosed space.
“Let’s not see each other again,” Finch said.
A map of anger and frustration on Bosun’s face. “No promises,” he hissed.
A hint of a movement as Bosun passed him, back to the door. A blossoming agony Finch couldn’t at first identify because of all of the other pain. Then he realized it came from his side.
Knew he was reeling, losing his balance.
Bosun, at the door, stooping to pick up the pouch just as Finch realized he was bleeding. Rathven lunging for her revolver, turning to shoot at Bosun as he ran out the door. Missing. Tearing a chunk out of the ceiling. Rathven scrambling to lock the door behind Bosun.
Finch looked down to see bright red blood welling up from a cut in his side. Saw Bosun’s long, thin knife there on the floor. It had been the lightest of touches. Not even a touch. A whisper.
Vaguely knew Rathven was next to him as he slumped to the ground. Felt the touch of his own sword against his exposed foot as he slid, her arms around him.
“Finch! Finch!” Her voice, keeping him awake when he didn’t want to be awake.
She brought him close. Her body warm and solid and real. He thought she was shaking. Realized she was sobbing. Then she was pulling his shirt away from his side. Pushing something up against it. Felt something wet and sticky next to his left arm.
“What’s wrong?” he thought he asked.
“You’ve been stabbed, Finch,” he thought he heard her say. Her face way up near the ceiling, looking down. Her arms impossibly long.
A coughing laugh. “Have I?” A kind of lurching dislocation.
Rathven was wrapping something around his side. Gauze? Urging him onto his feet.
“You’re going into shock. I need to get you somewhere I can help you,” she said.
“I deserve better.” A dry laugh. Everybody deserved better.
Lurched up, almost falling forward onto his face. Leaned into her.
Glints and glimmers in a dark pool. Past the battered, weathered book stacks. Past her little kitchen. Past her bedroom. A glimpse of green and purple. The brightness of a single bulb. Like a sentry.
A rough-hewn doorway. Water on the floor. Curved walls. Moisture. A cockleshell of a boat. Strange pale-blue eyes of mudskippers in the shallows. Glowing in the light from a lantern.
She said something to him he didn’t understand. Took his arm. Guided him until he was lying with his back against the prow, legs out in front like useless matchsticks. She took off the oars, began to row.
Glimpses of roots, brick, and wood in the ceiling. His mangled hand trailing through the water. The wound in his side like a rip in a stuffed animal. All the sawdust coming out. Lulling him to sleep. Closed his eyes. She shook him awake. Nodded at her as if she’d said something he agreed with. But there was nothing left to say.
A thud as the boat knocked against something.
“We’re here,” she said.
Opened his eyes. Saw her tying a rope to a lock embedded in old stone steps. Beyond, a worn archway.
She forced him to his feet. Helped him up the steps.
A single large room at the top, dark except for Rathven’s swinging lantern. Caught a glimpse of books, a table.
She led him to a cot at the far end. Fell heavily onto it. She asked him a question. Didn’t hear her. Fuzziness around the words. Drifted. Curious about the dryness in his mouth. The way his vision kept blurring.
Said, “The towers are changing. Need to get to the roof.”
Rathven saying “No,” forcing him back down onto the cot.
Blinks of light and time.
Fading and coming back.
A few hours later. Awake on the cot. Looking out through his good eye. She’d cut his clothes off. Washed him. Bandaged his side. Could feel the edge of the wound like a mouth as he lay there with a towel around his waist.
He was at the back of a large room, looking toward the front and the doors. The archway. Rich, burgundy carpet and rugs worn but clean. The walls covered from top to bottom in bookcases. Every shelf was filled with books. Perfectly preserved. In neat rows. On the floor, more books. In careful piles. Beside boxes and boxes of black market supplies.
Next to him, medicine and food. Two more cots and another table. A one-burner portable kerosene stove and a pot on this second table. Along with a rifle and several boxes of ammo. His sword. His gun.
Between him and the doors: a globe of the known world on a rosewood table. Four ornate wooden chairs. Rathven sitting in one of the chairs. Watching him.
“I brought your maps down here,” she said, indicating the table. “A cane to help you walk. A chamber pot. A bottle of your whiskey. You need to stay here. Out of sight,” she said. “You need to rest.”
“Clean yourself up. Find someplace safe to be, Finch.”
“What about Feral? Where is he?”
“I’ll bring him later, if the boat doesn’t spook him.”
Outside, he could lose himself in the fight. Could join the rebels. Could join the militias. Could do something. But, overnight, he had become a broken-down old man. A pensioner well past the days of pensions. Waiting for better days.
I am not a detective.
“What about the towers? Has anything changed?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry—I’ll let you know.”
“What is this place?”
“It’s an old library,” she said. “From above it’s just rubble. You can’t get to it. But this one room I found intact. Although it didn’t have many books in it to start.”
“Found the rest?” he managed.
“Yes. I brought them here from all across the city.”
“Why?”
She had the look of the true believer, of someone who still had hope, as she said, “Finch, here you’ll find every book I could salvage about the city. Every book by any Ambergrisian author. Every book of history, of politics. Biographies. Novels. Poetry. They’re all here. Much of it knowledge that was lost in the wars, because of the Houses. Because of the gray caps. But someday, Finch, when all of this is over…”
Finch looked away. Ashamed by her passion when he had so little left.
“Ever afraid of being found out?”
“All the time.”
“The cots?”
“Before they disbanded the camps, I’d shelter escapees here. Or people who had been released but were injured.”
“And now?”
“Apparently, this is now a haven for cynical detectives.”
That made him smile. A little.
She stood. “You lost a lot of blood. But I stopped the bleeding. It’s your other injuries I need to work on now. I’m not strong enough to turn you over. I’ll need your help.”
She got gauze, bandages, and other supplies. Water from the underground channel. A kind of ritual and finality to the way she set the supplies on the table next to him. That made him shudder. Thinking of the Partial with his knives and scalding water.
She saw his look as she set a pot to boil on the little stove. “I have to clean the wounds, Finch,” she said.
He nodded. “I know.”
She began wiping away any blood that hadn’t already come off.
Ignored him when he winced. Stopped only if he cried out.
She looked different in that light. Older. Tougher. More experienced.
“I think two of my ribs are broken,” he said.
“Or bruised,” she said. “You might be lucky.”
Tried not to scream when she washed the places where his toe and finger had once been. Replaced Sintra’s field dressings with proper bandages. Cleaned his swollen eye. His broken nose.
He stared at the ceiling as she pulled the towel back and gently dabbed at his thighs. Past modesty.
“Oh, Finch,” she said, betraying tenderness that had been disguised by action before. “Who did this to you?”
“A Partial.”
“How did you get away?”
“I killed him … Will I live?”
Didn’t answer. Just replaced the towel, said, “You have deep cuts on your arms and legs.” She began to wash and dress the wounds. The warmth stung and comforted all at once. The smell of piss had faded. There was an antiseptic feel to the air.
“Turn over now,” she said. “I need to check your back.”
With a groan, he managed that delicate maneuver. Ancient, creaky, feather-weak.
“You have more cuts,” she announced after a second. Her voice not quite as even. Not quite as under control. She’d stopped working. Knew she was staring at him.
“Is it that bad?”
“I’ve seen worse,” she managed.
“Can’t even feel it,” Finch said. Shock? Infection? Some last blessing from Shriek?
She worked on him for long minutes. Finally, had him sit up.
Wrapped bandages around his ribs. Her head next to his. Her arms stretched around him.
Slowly reached out to her. Wrapped his arms around her. Though it hurt him.
Rathven held him. Held him like a friend. Solid. Comforting.
“Why are you doing this for me, Rathven?”
“You saved my life.”
“I put you in danger.”
“We both did.”
“I have to tell you something,” he said.
“Whatever you need,” she said.
Understood that she might give him more than he had any right to expect.
It was hard. Halting. But after he began, it was hard to stop. He told her everything. All of it. Leaving nothing out. Sparing no one, least of all himself. As if truly confessing. Needing it out of him.
He told her about the Lady in Blue. About how he’d left Stark. Wyte’s death. About Bliss. The Partial. How Shriek had come out of him. About Sintra. Heard his voice. Detached, normal. Wondered how it sounded to her. Rational? Insane?
She said nothing. Just held him. Listened. When he was done, she gave him water. Made him eat a little. Then gently pushed him back onto the cot. Whispered that she would bring him clean clothes soon.
He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.