Lately, he has been charting the retreat of the water. Right after the Rising, the canals from the bay into Ambergris had been like the fat fingers of a grasping hand. Now they are withered, the “thumb” almost dry, the others shriveling. Like his father’s blue-veined hands in the clinic near the end. A disease he’d picked up early in life, fighting the Kalif. It got into his lungs first, and spread. No cure except death.
Remapping takes the kind of concentration that empties out the mind. In the old house, before they became vagabonds together, his father had created something similar in his locked study. Much bigger, with even more detail, laid out across a huge table fit for a banquet. Color-coded to show Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe territories within the city. Green and red. Along with blue for those narrow reefs of neutrality. Over time, his father would chart weapons depots on that map. Troop concentrations. Hidden storehouses. Usually Hoegbotton but some Frankwrithe positions, too. His father’s overlay was actually a black sheet that perfectly hid the map. And a tablecloth over top of that.
How many guests invited into that place had been served drinks on that table, never realizing what was hidden beneath?
At seventeen, mad at his father for no longer using him as a courier, Finch had stolen the key. Started sneaking into the study when his father was out. Found the map. He used to stand there, it naked before him, and memorize the progress of the war in his head. It looked like lively abstract art. Symbols in search of context.
Finch doesn’t draw directly on the old map because he doesn’t want to forget the past. Hopes that one day that lost world will return. The overlay is only temporary, he keeps telling himself. Even as the changes become more and more permanent.
His map is a crude facsimile of the original. He has only the dark pencil to record the changes. Nor can his map chart the changes in the people around him. Or tell him what to do next.
One day, his father surprised him in the study. He stood at the door with a guarded look on his face. Finch stared back, frozen. There seemed to be nothing he could say. His father walked up. Put the black sheet over the map. Replaced the tablecloth. Muttered, “This didn’t happen.” Took the key from him. Escorted him out.
They never talked about it again. But in that moment of shock, when Finch heard the door open, it burned his father’s map into his head. Every detail. Every nuance. And even now, looking at his own map, the overlay, he sees it. Sees that room.
Knows every inch of Ambergris. Even the parts he hasn’t yet visited. Even the parts still changing.
3
Tracking down Bliss took three tries. Wyte had an address for a townhouse Bliss sometimes used for meetings, in an old Hoegbotton stronghold southeast of Albumuth. Finch could still see the slashes of faded paint on the pavement, left by groups of Irregulars. Who knew how old the marks were? A code that told a secret history of the city. Gray cap passed by here Tuesday … Food and ammo in the second house on the left … Stay clear of this intersection after dark.
They found the house on a street that had once been part of a wealthy district. Trees lined the sidewalk, but not a leaf on them. Gravel where grass had been. Silence all around. The houses to either side derelict husks. A burned corpse with no arms right on the steps. Which should’ve told them Bliss wasn’t there. Flies had settled on the torn-up face like a congregation. A slender whiteness had begun to push up through the black. Stalks of fruiting bodies. Rising. In another twenty hours, nothing would be left.
“Nothing inside,” Finch said, coming back out.
“Let’s visit Stanton,” Wyte said.
* * *
Stanton, one of Wyte’s druggie snitches, lived a few blocks down. Behind Stanton, Finch saw a tarp draped over a soot-gray alley mouth. A bundle of his possessions to one side. A crumbling brick he used to protect himself at night. Before the Rising, Stanton had been a banker. Or, at least, that’s what he’d told Wyte. Probably an addict then, too.
Wyte always kept a few extra purple mushrooms in his overcoat pockets. Stanton, in a kind of makeshift robe, clung to Wyte like he was the drug. Wyte a plank of wood in the River Moth and Stanton trying to stop from drowning. Except all he ever did was drown.
“Where’d Bliss go?” Wyte asked Stanton.
The thirty-year-old Stanton lifted his gaunt, balding head. Red-eyed, wrinkled face. “Down by the abandoned train station. Four streets over. Corner of Sporn and Trillian. He was just there yesterday.”
Wyte put three purple mushrooms in Stanton’s hand. Stanton received them like they were worth more than one day’s relief. The huge red mushrooms that dispensed the drugs stuck to a strict schedule. Monday and Friday. Stanton had already gone through what he’d gathered the day before. Finch didn’t think he’d last another month.
When they left Stanton, he was trembling under his pathetic shelter. Eyes wide open and dilated. Gone someplace better. Someplace temporary.
* * *
The train station was empty. But way in the back, under the shadowed arches populated by pigeons and bats, they found a gambling pit. Almost a grotto, for all the fungus surrounding it. Fuzzy clumps of muted gold and green hid the entrance. Cockfighting. Card games. Betting black market goods.
Not much of a conversation. Wyte stuck his gun up against the lookout’s cheek. Convinced her it would be better just to lead them in. The hardened men and women they surprised, lantern-lit and reaching for knives or guns, thought better of it, too. But they had a hard time restraining the roosters. One fire-red, the other a muted orange. Razor talons moving like pistons.
A heavily muscled man in his twenties who had done some piecework for Bliss gave him up, quick. Called Bliss a slang word for foreign. Even though the muscled man looked foreign himself. Seemed to dare any of the others to argue with him. They didn’t.
Wyte and Finch receded into the gloom. Shoved the lookout inside. Barricaded the door from the outside with a couple of heavy rusted barrels. Hoped there wasn’t a second entrance. But knew there always was. Got the hell out before anyone could start thinking about an ambush.
“Fuck, but I hate this job!” Wyte exclaimed, as their boots kicked up water pooling between rows of bolted-down chairs alongside the abandoned track.
Said he hated it, but looked a lot happier than at the station.
* * *
The address turned out to be a modest-looking two-story apartment building west of the Religious Quarter. Shoved up against more of the same, with the billowing dome of the northernmost camp beyond.
Finch recognized it as a former Frankwrithe & Lewden neighborhood. It had retained some sense of order. Of discipline. A few men with red armbands stood on the sidewalk like guards. While people traded goods.
Finch was nervous. Always worried when they went to F&L places that someone would tag him as an ex-Hoegbotton Irregular. Maybe want to put a bullet through his brain. He would’ve liked to have told the detectives in this sector what they were doing, but the gray caps frowned on cooperation. They liked to keep the stations as separate as possible. Make themselves the conduit.
It began to drizzle. Had been damp and warm all day. A mist gathered around Finch. Moistened his hair, his face. Green sweat had darkened the armpits of Wyte’s shirt and now leaked through his overcoat.