The map his father had given him was intact. Still on the table. The bed was tossed. Pillows on the floor, sheets pulled back. Mattress had knife marks in it.
Finch considered that for a second. Then went into the bathroom. Shower didn’t work. A thin trickle of water from the sink. He took off his clothes slowly, knees creaky. Like an old man. Washed himself clean with a washcloth. Waiting patiently for the water. Cold. Bracing. A lot of sandy dirt. Especially on his feet. He put on clean clothes. Same jacket. Bullet hole and all. Found some socks and an old pair of boots. Felt a little bit more human. Still, the face in the mirror looked defeated, pinched. Eyes he didn’t know stared back at him.
He walked into the living room to find Rathven with a broom, sweeping up broken glass in the kitchen. She’d already wrestled many of his books back onto their shelves.
“Rath, you don’t need to do that,” Finch said.
“No, I don’t,” she said. Kept sweeping.
Whoever had trashed the apartment had left Finch’s whiskey alone. He found a glass. A generous pour. Let the taste burn in his mouth. Sterilize me. Grimaced as his shoulder tightened. Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been the right shoulder. Interfered with drawing his gun. Or his sword.
He picked up a chair with his good arm, righted it. Sat, watching Rathven in the kitchen. Admired how she could focus so single-mindedly on the ordinary.
“Seen Feral?” he asked her.
“No. I’m sure whatever happened scared him.”
“Was the door open when you brought me up here?”
“No, it was closed. And locked. I had to get your key out of your pocket.”
Relief. Sintra. Though how many hours had just anyone been able to walk in?
“Do you know a man named Ethan Bliss?” Had to ask the question.
A break in the rhythm of her sweeping. “Bliss? No.”
Finch wasn’t convinced. “Ethan Bliss. Smaller than me. Dark eyes. You might have known him as a Frankwrithe & Lewden supporter before the Rising.… He was the one in my apartment last night.” Although he didn’t have time to trash the place then.
No reaction. Which was a kind of reaction.
“We fought,” Finch continued. “It’s part of why I look this way.”
Rathven leaned on the broom. Eyes narrowed. “How does he look?”
“I don’t follow y—”
“Because I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met him.”
“Never even seen him? He used to be a powerful man for Frankwrithe before the Rising.”
“No.”
Hard to read her. Had, for that reason, sometimes been tempted to request her file from the gray caps. Resisted the urge. Didn’t want to have Heretic asking him why.
In a low voice, “Are you investigating me?” Her tone said, After all the help I’ve given you.
“No, of course not.” Scrambled for cover: “Could you do me a favor? He has a couple of aliases I need checked out.”
Finch searched for a piece of paper. Wrote down Graansvoort, Dar Sardice.
The truth: he couldn’t really imagine Rathven hurting him. Not on purpose. Suspected her of hiding something. But that might have nothing to do with him. Everyone in the city kept secrets.
She looked at the names on the piece of paper.
“It’s all getting more and more complicated, Rathven. Hard to keep it all clear in my head.”
“More complicated than Duncan Shriek?”
“Much more complicated.” Doors that were more than doors. Wyte become something greater and lesser than human. Suddenly, the city was several cities. Time was several times. As if he’d been looking at his map and the overlay, and suddenly realized more overlays were needed to really see Ambergris.
The confusion must have shown because she gave him a half smile. A kind of peace offering. “I’ll be finished soon. Then you should get some sleep.”
In the apartment Bliss can visit anytime he wants to?
He tried to smile back. “But why did you call? Really?” Teetering now. Two towers. Heretic’s skery. Wyte’s improbable charge. Dapple sprawled in the dirt. Dead.
She held his gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable. As if trying to convey something to him that could not be said aloud.
“Sintra came by the hotel this morning.”
“I know. She told me.”
“Did she tell you she came down to see me?”
Finch, suddenly alert: “No…”
“Did she tell you she asked about your case?”
“It was a short phone call.” Already marshaling stones, sandbags, the wreckage of tanks as a barricade.
“Well, she did, Finch,” Rathven said. “She asked me about the case. We talked about it.”
“And you told her about Shriek?” Incredulous.
Flat, dead tone. Not a glimmer of humor in her eyes.
“No. She already knew.”
* * *
Feral came to the door scratching about ten minutes after Rathven had left. Frantic as Finch undid the locks on his apartment door. Complaining about the tragedy of not having been fed. That there should be such injustice in the world. Despite himself, Finch smiled.
Finch locked the door behind Feral. Once again shoved a chair up against the doorknob. Put down twice the normal amount of food for the cat. Then lay down on his couch, forcing himself to eat a packet of gray cap rations. The packet was porous. The contents a swelling purple. In his mouth, it tasted like onions and salt and chicken. Knew it was not.
Welcomed the utter fatigue. It emptied his head. Made it hard to think about unthinkable things. He’d go back to the station in the morning. Sort it out. Somehow. The apartment still looked like shit, but not as much like someone had trashed it. Actually found himself hoping it had been Bliss, come back to finish the job. Otherwise, Stark was already upping the pressure. Or, there was an unknown element out there.
Too tired to sleep. Poured himself another whiskey. Sat down with Shriek: An Afterword and Cinsorium & Other Historical Fables. He was facing the apartment door, with his Lewden Special wedged in beside his left leg. So he could reach across his body to draw it. Sitting upright eased the pain in his shoulder.
Cinsorium looked like a kind of abridgment of Duncan Shriek’s theories. He started to read it, then put it down. Needed something first that gave him more of a sense of Duncan’s character.
He picked up Shriek, began to skim it. Saw at once the conceit: Duncan’s voice in parentheses, commenting on Janice’s history of a broken family and the first war between the Houses. Skipped to the end, read the editor’s afterword. Duncan’s disappearance. His sister’s disappearance and possible death. The manuscript found in a pub Finch figured must’ve gone under or been destroyed years ago. With notes scrawled on the pages by Duncan. Which meant he’d still been alive when Janice went missing.
Finch turned back to the beginning. Charted Duncan’s rise and fall as a historian, a believer in fringe theories about the gray caps. Almost all of them now proven true. Obsessed with a student at the academy where he’d taught history. A long, unhappy love affair. Duncan turned into a stalker. Discredited. Become unbelievable. Skipped Janice’s own rise in the art world. Beside the point to Finch. He found Janice an exasperating narrator. She hid things, lied, delayed the truth. To undermine and slant. Like a particularly crafty interrogation subject.