Ghosts of early-morning conversations with Wyte ran through Finch’s head.
“Most of my informants have gone dark. Stark’s influence. Taking care of leaks and stirring up hornets.”
“You’ve got to know more about Stark than what you left on my desk, Wyte.”
“No. Not a thing. We don’t even know if that’s his real name.”
“Nobody’s real name is just Stark, Wyte.”
Wyte had arranged for a Stockton operative named Stephen Davies to act as a go-between with Stark. They’d approach the floating pontoons at the northeast edge of the Spit. Much safer than from the land side. A maze of ruins there. Ideal for ambush. No cover. No way to retreat.
Spies came into Ambergris simple and alone, first stop the Spit. Over the water. In the darkness, as if newly born. With nothing on them that the gray caps might want. Nothing that their masters wouldn’t want taken. They built up their resources over time. Using whatever money or influence they’d brought from Stockton, Morrow, or even more distant lands. Sometimes the Spit was the last stop, too.
“Truff love foreigners, trying to take advantage of our fucked-up city.”
“Stark’ll be no different. Where was Stockton during the Rising?”
“Waiting to pick the bones clean.”
Trying to pump themselves up. Convince themselves they were still loyal to Ambergris. Hated how the masks made their voices tinny.
“Davies seems in awe of Stark.”
“Sure it’s not fear? Though most of them are probably past fear or awe by now…”
Wyte just shrugged. Finch knew he didn’t want to think about that. Didn’t want to know what shit might be waiting on the Spit.
Hints of bobbing islands in the waves now. Some of them too close to ignore. Yet Finch ignored them. Corpse islands made from workers who had died in the camps. Reborn as floating compost for fruiting bodies. And far, far below them, the decaying docks, the drowned part of Albumuth Boulevard. All of the dead, still in the buildings where they had worked or lived, the onslaught of water so sudden. Slamming into them. For a time lit up by the strobing of the giant squid that had patrolled the bay. Long since gone, driven out by the pollution. Finch couldn’t take it. Not this morning.
“Water can behave like a person,” his father used to say. Treacherous. Tides and swirls and eddies. Sucking boats down with them.
The past didn’t seem like another world. The past seemed like it had never happened. Couldn’t have happened. The leap to this too hideous, too nightmarish. Better to have no past at all. Suddenly, he needed Sintra. Needed her badly. Could almost smell her perfume. Wanted to be back in his apartment, next to her.
“Where do you live?”
“A place with four walls, and a ceiling.”
“What are the neighbors like?”
“Noisy. Sad. Temporary…”
Resented Wyte irrationally for a moment. As if Sintra could’ve replaced him on the boat. Backed him up. Except she couldn’t.
“What can you hear from your window, Sintra?”
“The sound of detectives asking questions.”
“Finch.” Wyte made it sound like a warning, jolting him from his thoughts. “Over there.” Pointing, like he wanted a distraction, too.
Just behind them: another boat. Much larger, coming in from the southeast. Flat-bottomed. Lagging in the water.
Finch had brought his gun against his own better instincts. Drew it now. Then looked closer and holstered it.
“Just prisoners,” he said. Could as well be us.
Wyte took a second look, nodded.
Soon the boat slid past their prow, heading for the towers. It held about thirty people from the camps. Guarded by two gray caps and a Partial. The men and women dressed in the dull sack robes of their status. Some wearing old-fashioned masks that might or might not work. Heads bowed not from prayer but from hopelessness. Thin, with light-green skin. Shoulders slumped.
“During the day?” Wyte said, almost pleading to be told he was wrong.
“During the day,” Finch said, annoyed. Best just to be thankful not to be in the camps.
The Truffidian priest in the back of the boat caught Finch’s attention. In full regalia, down to the golden chains. The same priests had walked side by side with Ambergrisian infantry invading Kalif lands. The gray caps had broken them. Treated them almost like pets now. Their eyes locked, the older man bowing his head to avoid Finch’s stare. Noted the hooded look. The slight shake. He was on the gray caps’ drugs. Did this in return for his fix. Turncoat.
Wyte: “In the old days, he’d have died for that. And not quickly.”
And so would we.
“What?” Wyte said.
“Nothing.”
Against his will, pulled to it by the immensity, Finch’s gaze slid beyond the work camp boat. To the towers in mottled green, with darker blues writhing through. Protected by scaffolding, they seemed to flutter and be alive. Portions like lungs. Breathing. The tops, two hundred feet high or more, lost in clouds and rain and odd magenta shards of lightning. A wide pontoon bridge led out to the towers. A semi-permanent island at the base housed the workers. Several boats had docked there. Dozens of gray caps stood guard.
Past the towers, back the way they’d come, Finch could just make out the hunched group of buildings that included the apartment with the dead man and gray cap. Was the Partial there, staring out at him? Talking to Heretic? Hiding something from Heretic?
“When will they know the towers are finished?” Finch wondered aloud.
“Roofs, Finchy. When you see roofs on top. That means it’s done.”
Joking? Serious? Didn’t know anymore when Wyte was lucid and when not. Didn’t know what to encourage.
The wrongness of the railing at the prow suddenly got through to Finch. Should be grainy, splinters needling his hands. Instead: soft, fleshy. He took his hand away like the railing was boiling hot.
Through the rain, the Spit was revealing itself. Gone with surprising quickness from a brown line in the distance to something with substance and texture. Rows of boats moored side by side by side, twenty or thirty deep. Still floating, bobbing, even as they were falling apart and half-sinking. A leaky sovereignty. A chained-together legion of convicts treading water. All of it shoved up against the shore, against the remains of the Religious Quarter. If the gray caps ever decided they wanted to truly cut off citizen from citizen, they’d burn the Spit, place a wall between it and the Religious Quarter. They’d root out the Dogghe and Nimblytod from the Quarter like so many weeds. Shove them all into the HFZ and be done with it.
Limits to what they can do? Or to what they want to do?
The boat began to slow. Soon they bumped up against the docks, gently. Prow kissing wood. Finch jumped off the boat as it lay wallowing there, followed by Wyte. Took off their masks. Breathed in the metallic air. Tossed their masks back in the boat. The boat sighed, shutting down until their return. Didn’t know what would happen to anyone who tried to board it while they were gone. Knew it would be bad.
No sign of Davies. An avalanche of other boats before them, a scattering of tall buildings, natural and not, dull-glistening far beyond, through the rain. Buckets tied to the dock gurgled and filled, emptied. A blue dinghy. Oily water. Rotting planks.
“Got a plan if Davies doesn’t show up, Wyte?”