Saw double for a second. Another puff on the cigar fixed that. Went back to his desk.
Waiting this way, helpless, his vision became apocalyptic, false. In his mind, mortar fire rained down on the city. Artillery belched out a retort. Blasted into walls, sending up gouts of stone and flame. The war raged on, unnoticed by most. He was an agent of neither side. Just in it for himself.
Tried to think past the evening’s torment. The walk back to his apartment afterward. In the dark. Thought of who might be waiting.
If he didn’t screw up before that.
* * *
A little after six, the gray caps began to arrive. The night shift.
The first one pulled aside the curtain. Had emerged from the awful red-fringed hole at the back. Perfect parallel to the memory hole. Only much larger. Finch could see the gray cap’s face under the hat. Pulsing. Wriggling. The eyes so yellow. What did they see that he could not?
The gray cap stepped forward, onto the carpet.
In the light of day, on certain streets, Finch could almost pretend that the Rising had never happened. But not here. Not now. Any fantasy was fatal. Any fear.
Finch walked out onto the carpet. Puffing. Feeling the brittle squeeze in his chest even as he released the smoke from his mouth. Let the cigar burn down toward his fingers to feel the distracting pain.
A strong scent of rotting licorice as the gray cap pushed past him. Ignoring him as it sat down at a desk. Gustat’s desk.
One.
Nine more. One for each desk. Along with whatever familiars they had decided to bring with them.
Finch wished he had a club. A knife. Anything. The fungal guns didn’t work against gray caps. Thought again about the sword. About bringing it across Heretic’s rubbery neck.
He drove the image away as irrational. Heretic had asked him to be here. If Heretic ever wanted him dead, he’d send a present to his apartment. Or dissolve him into a puff of spores in front of the other detectives.
Five times he’d stayed after hours. Survived each encounter. But talking to a single gray cap during the day was different from being among many of them after dusk. It brought back memories of the war. It reminded him of night duty in the trenches, the crude defenses House Hoegbotton had created for its soldiers. Sighting through the scope at some pile of rubble opposite. Hoping not to see anything. Feeling the sweat and fear of the others to each side. The flinch and intake of breath at the slightest movement.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Moving past him. Soft rustle of robes. Hushed sigh of their breathing, as if they slept even while awake. Oddly heavy footfalls. A smell that ranged from sweet like syrup to rank and disgusting. Did they control it? Were there signals they gave off humans could never read? Those eyes. That mouth. The ragged claws on the doughy hands.
Sitting at the desks like distorted reflections of their daytime counterparts. He had never learned their names. Thought of them only by the names of the humans who’d been assigned the same desks. Or once had. So there sat Dorn, and there sat Wyte, and there were Skinner and Albin.
The fifth was Heretic. He’d brought something with him. On a leash. Finch didn’t know what it was. Couldn’t tell where it started or ended. It had no face, just a sense of wet, uncoiling darkness. Like an endless fall off a bridge at night, under a starless sky, into deep water. That one glimpse and Finch never looked at it directly again.
The light in the room had faded to the dark green preferred by the gray caps.
“Do you like my skery, Finch? Do you find my skery pleasing to the eye?” Heretic asked in a voice rough yet reedy, standing in front of Finch. Emphasis on pleasing to the eye. As usual when Heretic tried out a turn of phrase. “No? That’s a shame. The skery is a new thing, and useful to us. Very soon, it will save us a lot of effort, allow the Partials to do other work.”
Finch had no answer for that.
Together, Finch, the gray cap, and the skery went to his desk. At night, Heretic walked with a kind of effortless forward movement. More at ease and more deadly. As if daylight affected a gray cap’s equilibrium.
Heretic sat down, dropping the leash. The skery went right to Finch’s memory hole and began worrying the edges with its wet gobble of a mouth. Cleaning it of parasites.
Finch put out his cigar in the ashtray at the edge of the desk. Stood in front of Heretic. Take the initiative. In a calm, flat voice, he said: “I went back to the apartment. The body … one of the bodies was missing.”
“I took it away.” A clipped quality behind the moistness. Some continuing thread of amusement. The eyes looked as though embedded in a rubber festival mask. “We’re testing the body for a variety of——.” The word sounded like tilivirck.
Finch nodded like he understood.
“We also harvested another memory bulb from the man.”
Utter paralysis. Unbidden: an image of Sintra’s face as he entered her. The way she sighed and relaxed into him. As the blood of his tears dropped onto her cheeks, her lips.
“What did you see?” Finch asked.
Heretic shook his head. A simple motion rendered alien, frightening. “Perhaps you should tell me first, Finch. What you saw.”
“It’s in the report,” Finch said. Too quickly.
“The report. It’s all in the report. How could we forget? Perhaps because the report was disappointing. Very disappointing, and not what we’ve come to expect from you.” Still a secret amusement there, mingled with the threat.
His stomach lurched. The room felt hot. At the other desks, the last of the gray caps had sat down. At their feet, their familiars curled, mewled, foraged.
“It’s only been a day,” Finch said.
“Finch,” Heretic said. “Are you telling me everything?”
Bliss had disappeared from a ten-foot-square room. With no windows.
“I left out nothing important,” Finch said. “Up to that point.”
Heretic said something in his own language that sounded like a child arguing with a click beetle. Then, a half-expected blade held to the throat: “What about the scrap of paper the Partial says you took from the body?”
The symbol. The strange words. What would Heretic tell him about the Silence if he asked? Nothing. He’d kill Finch. Or worse.
Out of sudden fear, a strange calm. Later, he realized it felt like losing control even as he gained it. An echoing faint laughter that became the sound of hammers working on the two towers in the bay. That became water slapping against the wall in Rathven’s basement.
Words left his mouth. “There was a man in the memories I recognized. I didn’t put it in the report because I wanted to investigate first. It related to the paper in the dead man’s hand.” Lying.
Falling through cold air and he couldn’t feel his legs.
“Explain.”
“A man called Ethan Bliss.” And then the flood: “A Morrow agent active for Frankwrithe & Lewden, during the War of the Houses. I tracked him down today with Wyte, but he … slipped away. I’m following up. I put in a request for his file along with my report.”
If we can’t find him, we’ll go after Stark.
Heretic seemed to consider that, then asked, “And the scrap of paper?”
“I’m still investigating what it means. I’ll put it all into my report for tomorrow.”