“I came across something that didn’t like me,” Finch said. No desire to share the details. Thinking about how he had to hold out for another day before seeing Sintra again.
The Photographer nodded as if this made sense. Returned to his contemplation of the view. Didn’t care much for small talk.
Slowly, stiffly, Finch lowered himself into a chair. A few feet away, Feral was munching on something he’d caught.
A couple lightbulbs hung near the rotting sign. The outer arc of their light just barely caught the edge of the chairs. Enough to read by.
Eyes adjusted to the dim light, Finch began to go through Bliss’s file. Two laughably old photographs. One so dark it was just a silhouette with a hint of jaw leering out of a smudge. The report itself was brief, pithy, in the spidery script of gray cap transcriptions. Translated from their original files. Which took what form? Probably were worse things than memory holes down below.
Finch already knew most of what was in the report. Bliss’s rise within F&L ranks. The compromise with Hoegbotton. The alliance with the Lady in Blue. But he was somehow surprised that the gray caps knew it. Made him wonder about the extent of their intel before the Rising.
Buried in the middle of the report, Finch found a list of aliases under which Bliss had operated: Charles Dinley, George Graansvoort, John Letcher, Grant Shearwater, Dar Sardice. And, most improbably, Jasper Marlowe Anthony Blasio. A typo? An error in the transcription?
Dar Sardice proved the most interesting. The other names had been ways of disguising movements across checkpoints within the city. Dar Sardice had been used much earlier, during Ambergrisian-Hoegbotton campaigns against the Kalif. “Dar Sardice” had been Frankwrithe’s man keeping an eye on the progress of the war. From behind the Kalif’s supply lines. The cover? Independent merchant and businessman. With an established trade route that cut through over eight hundred miles of desert dotted with fortified towns. The whole Western Front. Against which the Ambergrisian Army had thrown itself with unparalleled ferocity. From which it had eventually retreated. “It was just too large,” his father had said once. “It was overwhelming. The wide, hot, empty spaces. The strangeness of the towns. The fact we didn’t speak the language.” Left a trail of broken, bombed equipment behind. Trucks. Tanks. Mortars.
A desert fortress. A fall from a great height. Ethan Bliss as Dar Sardice, turning up in every major theater of a desert war. Then appearing again not long after as F&L’s man in Ambergris. Popping up in the dead man’s memories. Had disappeared when cornered, after having been nailed to a wall just a few minutes before.
Was he looking at a secret that should be obvious? If so, it eluded him the more he tried to pin it down.
Beside him, the Photographer stirred. “I am going to go back inside. Do you need anything from me?”
“Just information,” Finch said, and downed some whiskey. He enjoyed the way it spread out from his throat, his stomach. Settling him as it mixed with the afterburn of the cigar.
“What kind of information?”
On a hunch, feeling like his back was exposed: “Seen anyone strange around the hotel recently?”
The Photographer replied with a kind of odd regret, as if speaking out of turn: “Yes, I have.”
Suddenly more alert: “Describe them?”
“Two of them, today. They came separately. The first I saw around noon. A tall Partial. He was on the stairs when I saw him. Coming down.” A look of disgust on the Photographer’s face.
The same Partial?
“Coming down from where?”
“I don’t know. I was on the fifth floor. He was coming down.”
Could’ve been anyone. Could’ve been here for any reason. And nothing he could do about it.
“The second?”
“He stayed outside the building. It was late afternoon. A bald man. Dangerous-looking. He talked to the madman by the statue. Didn’t like what the madman told him. Then looked up at the windows for a while. He stayed off to the side smoking a cigarette. Got impatient and walked into the lobby for a moment, came back out, and left almost right away.”
A description that matched what Bliss had told them about Bosun, Stark’s muscle. Which meant they’d had watchers on Bliss’s place. Watchers who had identified Finch incredibly fast. Now they were checking out where he lived. He didn’t like that. Didn’t like it at all.
Definitely time to have a talk with Stark.
“Tell me if you see them again? Or anyone else who doesn’t live here?”
The Photographer nodded. Then he was taking long strides to the hatch, as if he suddenly needed to be somewhere. The hatch creaked open, and he was gone.
Off to Finch’s left, Feral was stalking something new around a couple of wooden boxes. Finch went back to his whiskey. Wondered if Bliss/Dar Sardice leading them to Stark meant Stark would lead them back to Bliss. And who was Stark, then? Just another Stockton man, or something else?
All the while trying not to think of the skery. Curling up his leg. Wound around his neck.
Failing.
WEDNESDAY
I: When did you first decide to contact Stark? Before or after Bliss?
F: I was just investigating two deaths. Following orders.
I: And to you that meant scheming with all of the city’s enemies?
F: No, that’s not it at all. That you—
[screams, garbled recording]
F: Why did you do that? Why? I’m talking. I’m talking.
I: But you’re not saying anything.
1
On their way the next morning to track down Stark …
Wind and spray of rain against Finch’s face as they sped across the bay toward the Spit. Glad of the cool water soaking his hair. But he had a hard time keeping the filter-mask over eyes, nose, and mouth from clouding up. It itched, made him sweat. Made Wyte, as he turned toward Finch, look like something meant to frighten children. But better safe than dead. Even the gray caps didn’t know what lived in the air above the bay, the water corrupted by runoff from the HFZ. Tiny assassins. Cell disruptors and breath-stealers …
Finch stood at the prow of the gray cap boat, the only kind allowed out on the bay. Wyte beside him, skin on his arms green. Not from being seasick. The boat was big enough for eight or ten. Empty with just the two of them. Slight upward lurching push as it expelled water below the surface to propel them forward. Looked like any other boat from afar. Except it acts like it’s alive. Route preplanned by the gruff Partial who had met them on the shore. Who had shoved a mushroom into an orifice on the hull that looked uncannily like a memory hole. Somehow the boat knew where to go. How to return.
Finch’s shoes were sinking into the loamy sponge of the “planks.” Tried to remember to bend his knees to keep his balance. But balance was a precarious thing. Tongue dry, stomach aching. The skery had done something to his muscles. Made him feel like he’d wrestled a giant all night. Didn’t like that. Didn’t like being robbed of his natural river-legs. Finch had liked the water, once. With childhood friends, names now lost—Charlie? Sam?—he’d gone down to the docks to fish. Pushed a canoe out into the current. Later, working for Wyte, he’d gotten up close to the big ships docking to unload and take on board H&S goods.