Finch frowned. Used to be. Wyte didn’t usually indulge in used to be.
Nothing for it but to follow the wall.
People began to appear in doorways. Leaning against rusting lampposts. On balconies. Dark in complexion. Wore strange hats. Stared you in the eye. Challenged silently why you were here. Sometimes as many as six or seven. Loitering on a street corner. Any time Finch saw more than four people gathered in one place, he figured the gray caps had used their resources elsewhere.
“Put your badges away,” Finch said, suddenly.
Dapple had been holding his badge so anyone could see it. Protested, even after Wyte made his own disappear.
“Seen any Partials here?” Finch asked.
“No.”
“Seen anyone who would give a shit about your badge?”
Dapple didn’t respond.
“And you won’t, either,” Finch continued. “Not this close to the wall. Except for the ones following us.”
They’d be heavily armed. Probably with fungal weapons. Moving in a tight formation. If they were doing more than shadowing Wyte and Dapple, gray caps might be following, too.
From below.
* * *
The chapel at 1829 Northwest Scarp Lane pushed out from the wall. It had once been a modest two-story church topped by a silver metal dome. Now that dome was spackled and overgrown with rich burnished copper-bronze-amber mold that met a sea of mixed sea greens and blues creeping up. Little rounded windows in the dome. Perfect firing lines.
Beneath, the green-and-white paint of the rounded walls had peeled away to reveal dry dark wood beneath. In the center, a large ornate double door. To either side, hollowed-out alcoves that Finch didn’t think led anywhere. In front of all three, a facade of archways.
A horseshoe-shaped barricade of six or seven tanks with a sandbag wall curved from just beyond the side of the chapel to around the front of it. The tanks nestled together as if sleeping. Been there seven years at least. Burnt out. Crumbling. Faithful old Hoegbotton insignia still visible on the sides. Delicate snow-white mushrooms had overtaken them. Fernlike green tendrils grew from their rusted tops: all that was left of the men that had been flushed out.
Less than one hundred feet between the chapel entrance and the sandbag wall. Anyone could have manned it. At any time. Rival armies and militias had marched and retreated across that damaged ground for more than forty years.
No one in sight now, in either direction. Yet another kind of sign.
“Great fucking place for an ambush,” Finch said, as they stood outside the chapel. At their backs, beyond the tanks and sandbags, a warren of streets. Burnt-out schools, apartments, abandoned businesses.
“I don’t like it, either,” Wyte said.
“What if it’s a test? A test to prove our loyalty?” Dapple said. “And it’s not a rebel safe house at all.”
“Shut up,” Wyte said. Shifting his weight from foot to foot as if something pained him. To Finch: “If anyone is in there, we ask a few questions. Try to get some information to satisfy Heretic. Get out.”
Finch nodded. If anyone was in there, Finch didn’t know if they’d get many words in before the shooting started. Rebel safe house. Three detectives working for the gray caps, with Partials backing them up. Be better off turning in their guns, asking for mercy. Maybe.
Dapple looked close to tears. “We should get. The hell out now.”
“Changed your mind? Then why don’t you stay out here,” Finch said. “Guard the door. Duck inside and tell us if you see anything suspicious.” Dapple would be less dangerous as a guard than backing them up.
“With Partials out here?” Dapple protested.
Finch checked the magazine in the semiautomatic. Released the safety. “You’ll do it, Dapple, and you’ll be happy about it. And Dapple? Don’t run away. We’ll find you.”
“Enough!” Wyte said. “Let’s get this over with.”
The language of men scared shitless.
Wyte put his hand in the huge left-side pocket of his coat. The one with the growing verdigris stain. The one with his gun in it.
He walked through the middle doorway, Finch behind him.
* * *
Dark and cool inside. A second door just a few feet after the first. Wyte pushed it open. Finch covered him.
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Finch let the room come to him. The smell of moist, rotting wood. A high ceiling that made every step echo up in the rafters. Two sets of pews, in twelve rows. Leading up to a raised wooden platform with an ornate, carved railing. Beyond that, red curtains. The supports for a chandelier hung down from the ceiling. But there was no chandelier. On the right side of the dais, an iron staircase curled up toward the dome.
“What the hell is that?” Wyte said, pointing.
As his eyes adjusted, Finch could see that a long, low glass-lined counter ran along the right side of the dais. Couldn’t tell what was inside it.
“I don’t know.”
Finch drifted ahead of Wyte. Walked up the carpet with Wyte behind. Climbed onto the platform from the steps built into the right side.
The counter. Under the smudged glass, a series of arms and heads. The arms looked like prosthetics. Didn’t understand the heads with their hollow eye sockets any better.
“Why in a church?” Wyte asked.
Finch shushed him.
Beyond the counter: a doorway covered with a tapestry of Manzikert subduing the gray caps.
Finch motioned toward the tapestry with his Lewden Special.
Wyte shook his head. Too dangerous. Too unknown.
Finch nodded.
Wyte retreated into the shadows to the left of the counter. Pulled the gun from his pocket. It looped spirals of dark fluid onto his overcoat. Finch bent at the knees, put the counter between his body and the doorway. Aimed at the tapestry.
“Is anyone there?” Finch said. Loud enough to be heard in any back room.
Something fell. Like a jar or tin.
“Is anyone there?” Finch repeated. His heart felt like a fragile animal inside his chest. Trying to get free. Being battered in the attempt. Kept switching the gun from hand to hand. So he could wipe his sweaty palms on his shirt.
A kind of hesitation from beyond the doorway. A kind of poised silence. Then a careful movement swept aside the tapestry. A short, thin woman walked out.
She stood behind the counter as Finch rose, gun at his side. Wyte reappeared from the shadows.
The woman’s gray hair had been pulled back into a tight ponytail. She wore a formless blue dress with a black belt. Her face was heavily lined. Her mouth drooped on the left side as if from a stroke. Or an old wound. Finch thought he could see the whispering line of a scar across the cheek.
“Point your gun somewhere else, Detective,” she said, staring at Wyte. Her voice had gravel in it. Finch had no doubt she’d commanded men before.
The seepage had become a constant spatter against the wooden floor. But Finch couldn’t tell if it came from the gun or from Wyte.
Wyte lowered his gun.
“Who says we’re detectives?” Finch said.
Her eyes were the color of a knife blade. “That’s a gray cap weapon.”
“We’re investigating a murder,” Finch said. “That’s all we’re here for.”
“All?” she echoed.