Stray pages saved from long-drowned books caught his attention as he waited for her. Red eye peering from monstrous face. Lines of scrawl in an unknown language. Diagrams of buildings or plants or motored vehicles. A black-and-white photograph of a gaunt five-year-old girl in a ragged dress standing in the muddy track of a tank.
Truff knew who had lived here before, collected the books originally. Or how long it had taken Rath to organize it all. Or how much she had added to it, scavenging across the city. The collection was an ever-changing scene of preservation and dissolution. So many things saved only to be destroyed by time. Always with the water gurgling its way along the floor. Sometimes fish would get trapped, their fins brushing against pipes or grillwork and making a sound like quills over skulls.
She came out with a teapot and two cups on a tray. Set it down on the table between them. Poured him a cup.
“You sure you want this?” she asked. Skeptical.
“Yes.” Took the tea gladly. His head still hurt. The tea tasted different. Better. Drove out the lingering taste of the memory bulb.
“I haven’t looked at the lists,” she said, sitting opposite him in a low wooden chair with a green blanket atop it.
“Didn’t expect you to yet,” Finch replied. “What about the symbol?”
“Now, that I did get around to,” she said. “If only because it was easy.”
“I’ve seen it, I’ve just never known what it meant.”
“You’re not alone. We know more about what the symbol is associated with than what it means.”
A broken version was scrawled by the gray caps as a warning, Rathven told him. At the beginning of the city’s history, when the gray caps sent back the eyes of Ambergris’s founder, the whaling captain John Manzikert, on the old altar now drowned by the bay. Manzikert, who had slaughtered so many gray caps and driven them underground.
“It looked like this,” she said, drawing it for him:
It had figured prominently in the recovered journals of the monk Samuel Tonsure, Manzikert’s fellow traveler underground. Had appeared in unbroken forms at various times since, at crucial moments in history.
“Give me an example,” Finch said.
“The Silence,” Rathven said. “That symbol, according to the accounts I have, appeared everywhere, all across the city.”
Finch gave her a sharp look. “I never heard that.” But an intense feeling overtook him, telling him that he had known. Just forgotten.
Rathven shrugged. “I’m just telling you what’s in the histories. Half the books down here mention the Silence, so it’s not hard to track down.”
The Silence. Seven hundred years ago, twenty-five thousand people had vanished from the city. The only survivors had been aboard the ruler’s vast fleet of fishing ships, fifty miles downriver at the time. Many a horror story had been written about the Silence. It had shaped Ambergrisian life ever since. Especially attitudes toward the gray caps. Everyone had believed the gray caps had done it. When they’d Risen, some people said it was because of Manzikert’s genocide against them, and because of something they hadn’t finished during the Silence. Revenge, after waiting patiently for centuries. Of course, who could confirm that? The gray caps said less now that they were aboveground than when they’d been below.
“A broken symbol means a broken pact, some believe,” Rathven said.
“I found it on the back of a scrap of paper used to scribble a note. Torn from a book. It probably isn’t connected to the case.” Wanted to move on for reasons he couldn’t identify.
“Probably.” In a tone that said, Why waste my time asking me to research it then?
Took the photo out of his pocket. “I want you to have this while you research the list.”
Rathven took it. Winced.
“What?”
“He’s dead, Finch.”
“Of course he’s dead. It’s the murder case. I need to know who he is. It’s very strange. I can’t get my head around it. I need your help.”
And there’s no one in the station I trust to thoroughly check out that list.
“Are you sure you want to tell me more?” Rathven said.
People came to Rathven who the gray caps would count as enemies. Seeking information from her library. Information from her. Finch turned a blind eye. But someday somebody was going to test Rath’s neutrality, her ability to put it all in a locked box.
A sound distracted him. A sudden retreat of water somewhere in the darkness behind him. He’d seen fish “walk” up out of that darkness. Watched them gasping as they tried to be something other than fish. Once, Finch had heard a splashing like oars, from deep in the tunnel. Had asked Rath, half serious, “Is there something you want to tell me?” She’d ignored him.
Finch put down his tea. Leaned back in the chair. Do I trust Rathven more or less than Sintra?
“A dead man and a dead gray cap. In the same apartment. The gray cap is just a torso with arms and a head. No blood. True, it’s a gray cap. But maybe they weren’t even murdered. Maybe murdered, but not in the apartment. I didn’t get much out of the memory bulbs.” Not much I can share.
It felt good to talk. Drew the tension out of him. Got rid of a strange echo in his head.
Rathven nodded, looking serious. “Didn’t get much? So you got something.” She waited, expectant.
“I haven’t given you enough?” he asked with mock shock. “No. That’s not all. They seem to have fallen from a great height. Maybe from the walls of a desert fortress. I have to file a report today.”
Do I sound crazy?
“What other clues?” Rathven asked.
Suddenly irritable: “Jumbled memories. Including a conversation with the dead man. Must have imagined that.”
“What?”
“Just what I said! Are you deaf?” The man laughed again. Blindingly, unbelievably bright, a light like the sun shot through the window. The night sky torn apart by it.
Realized he’d shouted at her. “Sorry.”
Rath gave him a look he could not interpret. “You’re not the same today,” she said.
“Do you think I can do what I do and not be changed?” Spitting out the words. “Take memory bulbs? Work in the station?”
“I don’t care,” Rathven said. “If you change too much, I won’t let you back in here.” An intensity behind her gaze. Seeing someone or something other than Finch. Couldn’t even imagine …
“Sorry,” Finch said. The words took an effort. Gritted his teeth. Said it again. Fuck!
Rathven looked down. Took a sip of tea. Said, “So the dead man was talking to you?”
Fair enough. Move on. Realized that he needed to take more care with her. She’s not one of the detectives at the station.
“It must have been,” he said. “Imaginary, I mean.”
“What else?”
“Nothing else. Just the piece of paper that symbol was on the back of. Some words. Never Lost. And then bellum omnium contra omnes. Ever heard those words before?”
“No,” she said. Still, Finch sensed interest.
“You don’t know what it means?”
“How would I know what it means if I’ve never heard it before?”