Rathven nodded. “It’s impossible. But it’s him.”
The books felt too heavy in his lap. “Or his twin. Or his great-great-grandson.”
“Do you really believe that, Finch?” Rathven asked.
“No.”
No, he really didn’t. Not in his gut.
Suddenly, the double murder had a sense of scale that expanded in his mind like Heretic’s list. A time line almost beyond comprehension.
How to escape this?
I am not a detective.
He understood Rathven’s look now.
Haunted.
* * *
Being haunted had started for his father during the war against the Kalif’s empire, in the engineering arm of the Hoegbotton army. Something had gotten into his lungs during that time. The doctors at the clinic, toward the end, still couldn’t find a solution. Something about dust. Different kinds of dust. Dust from the road to empire, thousands of years old. Dust from the retreat. Dust from trying to hold Ambergris together. Dust from betraying it.
Earlier on during the campaign there had been a feeling of optimism, a heady confidence. House Frankwrithe had been beaten back to Morrow. The gray caps seemed once again in decline, and because of the war effort Ambergris now had a powerful military.
As his father had said once, “They didn’t want it to go to waste. And they feared that the young officers might be too ambitious left at home. And there was this kind of claustrophobic restlessness hard to understand now, perhaps. People wanted to be part of Ambergris, but to be out of it at the same time. They felt cramped, hemmed in—and the eastern flank of the Kalif’s empire was so close, and the Kalif spread so thin, defending all of that territory. It was too tempting. Too easy.”
One of his father’s first tasks was to get the Hoegbotton army across the Moth in a way that allowed quick return. He accomplished this with boats, with floating bridges that could be taken apart and reused in other ways. From there, “the Fixer,” as he came to be called, participated in more than a dozen battles. Helping take defensive positions. Solving how to get across supposedly impassable mountains. Whenever they needed an engineer, he was there. And he had the photographs to prove it, the ones Finch had since consigned to the flames: his lean, clean-shaven figure posing in front of a canyon, a cityscape, a smoldering tank. If the posture seemed more stooped, more resigned, the smile a little more faded as time passed, it could have been the natural process of aging. If not for Finch knowing that, eventually, what his father had found there would kill him.
He’d told Finch one day that he’d imagined he would be able to quit the military, take on the civilian projects that he preferred. Saw, he said, a grand new age of architectural expansion, as in the days of Pejoran. A city reimagined and rebuilt in a way that meant more than just restoration or renovation. Mineral deposits that fueled a war effort could fuel a peace effort.
But it didn’t happen that way, as if the dust of empire that slowly changed his father had changed Ambergris, too. House Hoegbotton’s race to acquire territory in the name of Ambergris meant not engaging insurgents at its exposed flanks: holding cities but not holding land. Until, finally, a slow collapse back to the River Moth, leaving behind as evidence of their passage more than a few half-breed children, abandoned equipment, and all of Finch’s father’s engineering projects. His father had had photos of these, too. In a separate album. He used to thumb through it at night with Finch on his lap, as if to deny what had happened next.
Images from some other life. A few of a woman with the distinctive features of the west. Faded. Worn. Lost.
His father had returned to an Ambergris exhausted in some ways, with House Frankwrithe eager to resurrect itself in people’s hearts because House Hoegbotton neglected the home front to focus on the Kalif. Food shortages, electricity shortages.
In the decade that followed, Finch’s father rose to become a strangely neutral figure. As the divide between Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe became narrower, as the city devolved into regions and factions and neighborhoods, he found himself working in government as a former war hero. For bridges. For reconstruction of roads. For anything that could bring back, even for just a month or a year, stability to a district or side.
“It was like fighting a guerilla war of engineering,” he told Finch once. “I’d rebuild it. Someone else would smash it.”
Finch believes that being found out was a kind of relief for his father. To give up the exhaustion of playing sides against each other. Of having to find work. Of having to be so secretive. Being a fugitive didn’t weigh on him as heavily.
Thinks about this as he struggles with the mystery that is Duncan Shriek.
Is Duncan Shriek the dust, coming down across a century, that will kill him?
8
Could be a twin. Could be a great-great-grandson. But wasn’t.
Finch walked up the stairs to his apartment, holding the two books. Rath had tried to get him to stay longer. As if she didn’t want to be alone with what she’d found out. But he had to be alone with it.
Still at a loss. You could plod along for years thinking you were holding on, that you were doing okay. That you might even be doing a little good. Then something happened and you realized you didn’t understand anything. A sudden shuddering impulse for Sintra that he understood was reflexive. Wasn’t real. Was about forgetting. Even though he needed to remember.
The stairs seemed to go on forever. Like a throat swallowing him up.
Finch had shielded Rath from his confusion. Asked her to do more investigative work. Suggested there was a rational explanation. Even though he didn’t believe it. Even intimated he knew something he couldn’t share.
How long until Heretic knows? Maybe he already knows.
He came to the seventh floor. Saw that his apartment door was open a crack. Which drove Duncan Shriek from his mind and brought Stark back. Stark and Bosun. Unless it was Sintra?
Would she have left the door open?
Strange, how calm he felt. Had he played out the scenario of intruder in his mind too often to be surprised?
Finch placed the two books on the floor. Took out his Lewden Special and released the safety. Nudged the door wider. Saw the gray and black silhouettes of his living room furniture, the kitchen beyond, and the window directly ahead of him. A hazy green-white light came from outside.
No one there.
No sign of anyone having been there.
Maybe they’d already left.
Maybe he’d forgotten to close the door. Not likely.
Slowly, Finch entered, sighting along the gun’s barrel. Still felt like ice water ran through his veins. Saw even the darkness in preternatural detail.
Stood to the left of the window. In the shadow of bookcases. Listening. Heard someone breathing in the next room. Someone moving around. What if it is Sintra?
Decided to wait there. Let whoever it was come out into the living room. Now, finally, his heart pounded. Images of mistakes flashed through his head. Of Sintra with a bullet hole through her forehead. Or Wyte.
The bedroom door opened. Out came a shadow. Finch couldn’t see the face. Couldn’t see a weapon, either.
“I’ve got a gun. Stay where you are, or I’ll shoot,” Finch said.
The shadow stopped, quick glance toward him. Then ran for the window.