He pushed her up against the wall. Pulled her pants down. Got his arms under her, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. Slid into her tight wetness. Groaned. Her hand against the back of his head. Her arm around his back. Nails digging into him ecstatically. Thrust hard up into her like an animal, muttering obscenities into her ear. While she encouraged him. His tongue into her mouth. Finding her tongue. Pulling back to look at her sweat-tinged face in the dark. A shadow. A wraith. Those eyes. She leaned into him, both arms around him, and sucked on his ear in a way that drove him mad. Everything receded to just that point at which he was entering her. Then expanded until he was everywhere at once. Suddenly she came, biting his shoulder and he, snarling, telling her to bite harder. The feel of her teeth on his skin made him cry out, come deep into her. Held there by her long after he was spent. She was spent.
With reluctance, Finch let her slide back to her feet. Pulled up his pants as she pulled up hers. Buttoned her blouse. Kissed again. Salty and deep. Shocked him.
They walked until they stood in the archway, staring into the main room. With its loudness. Its light. Its movement.
“Stay here,” she whispered. “I’ll get more wine and be back.”
“Now?”
“Now. I need another drink.” She threw her arms around him. Clung to him like a child. Whispered in his ear, “Be careful, John.”
When she pulled away she looked so vulnerable Finch almost told her everything he thought he knew. She looked like she was receding from him at a great speed. And he was suddenly frightened.
Then she was gone. Beyond his grasp. Out into the crowd. Lost. And he was standing there. Alone.
He started after her. Didn’t know why. She was just going to get more wine. Not leaving for good. But a familiar face stopped him.
Bosun. Entering from the raised stage opposite. Five tough-looking men in trench coats stood behind him. Bosun was scanning the crowd. For him?
Looked again for Sintra but couldn’t find her. Decided to step back into the archway. Out of sight.
A hint of movement behind him. A hand over his mouth. A sharp pain in his arm before he could react. Falling as the lamps shuffled through his vision, became the scrap of paper pulled from Shriek’s hand, bursting into flame. Became the candles on a cake from his eleventh birthday. Began to blow out the candles. And with each, another clue snuffed out. Shriek going dark. Stark’s transcript extinguished. His father’s face, hovering just beyond the candles. Mysterious. Shadowed. Smiling.
7
Someone slapped his face.
“Wake up. Wake up.”
Finch opened his eyes. Night. Lying on his back. In the grass. Staring up at a field of green stars. He shivered. It looked nothing like the sky over Ambergris.
A woman’s face blocked out the stars. For a second, in the gloom, he thought it was the woman from the rebel safe house. She had a gun. Didn’t recognize the make.
“You…” he said, still woozy.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” she said, then stepped out of view.
Hands roughly pulled him up. They shoved his arms behind him. Handcuffs slid into place. Cut into his wrists. Felt almost as bad as he had after following Bliss through the door.
“Where am I?” Finch asked.
“Shut up,” the woman said.
Wyte, saying to him once, “You know what they say about the rebels? A rebel is just a Hoegbotton who made the mistake of marrying a Frankwrithe.”
They stood on the side of a grassy hill. Below them, a crushed tangle of tanks and other military equipment. Glistening darkly. The wind through the hundred metal husks made a distant, warped, singing sound. Beyond, he could see the black silhouette, jagged and wrong, of a ruined city. In the middle: a dome of dull orange light.
“Is that Ambergris?” Incredulous.
“Shut up,” she said.
Two men appeared to either side of him. They wore dark pants tucked into boots. Camouflage shirts. Ammo belts. Rifles slung over their shoulders. Military helmets.
“Or are we inside the HFZ somehow?” Finch asked. His gun was missing from its holster. His mouth was dry. His arms already ached.
“No one is in the HFZ, John Finch,” the woman said.
“Why am I here?” Tried hard to bite down on a rising fear. I’m here because I work for the gray caps …
“Walk,” said one of the men. Shoved him in the back.
“We’re going to the top of the hill,” the woman said, from in front of Finch. “Don’t move too fast, or we’ll shoot you. Understand?”
“Yes,” he said. “I understand.” Understood, too, that Sintra had betrayed him. Realized he’d been expecting that ache for a long time.
Some of the stars in the sky were moving. Slowly moving back and forth. The wind was very cold. The grass whispered around his boots.
They reached the top of the hill. In the shelter provided by the ruined wall of an ancient fortress, a tent served as a windbreak for two chairs. A table with a pitcher on it. Two glasses. A couple of dim lamps, placed so they couldn’t be seen from downhill.
A figure beside the chairs. In a long, dark robe. Graying hair lifted slightly by the wind.
The Lady in Blue.
Unmistakable. Finch just stared at her. Disbelieving. Forgot his captors shoving him from behind. Forgot the danger he was in. He had never seen her before, and now he was seeing her by starlight. On a hill under a strange night sky. Surrounded by some kind of dead city.
In the Hoegbotton Irregulars, the promise of meeting her had been held out like a guarantee of better times. As they lay in the trenches. As they went from house to house, rooting out insurgents. As they ate hard, stale bread and molding fruit. Made soup from glue, water, and salt. That whole past life overtaking Finch as they marched him up in front of her.
She was shorter than Finch. Maybe five-six. Late fifties or early sixties. Thin and in good shape. Wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, across her forehead. Accentuated by the lamplight: a near perpetual wry smile, a sad amusement to the eyes. A look that seemed to say she was here, in the moment, but also a dozen other places as well.
The Lady in Blue said, “You are, supposedly, John Finch. And I am, reportedly, the Lady in Blue. You have questions, although I may not have as many answers as you’d like. Let’s sit.” She spoke with the quiet, weathered quality of experience. Mixed with a bluntness that was nothing like her radio broadcasts. It came as a jolt. Thought for a moment that she might not be the Lady after all.
His captors uncuffed him. Shoved him into a chair opposite the Lady in Blue. Withdrew out of the light.
Finch rubbed his wrists. Sitting in the chair a kind of weight dropped onto his chest. Didn’t know if it was some after-effect of how he’d gotten there. Or the presence of the Lady in Blue.
“Where are we? Why am I here?” Aware he sounded weak. Because I am weak. Sintra’s scent was still on him. Felt trapped.
“Where are we?” echoed the Lady in Blue. “Maybe it’s a place you know. Maybe it’s, to pick somewhere random, a place called Alfar. Or one version of Alfar. Does it matter? No. We could be anywhere. That’s one thing you’ll learn.”
She leaned forward, poured a clear liquid from the pitcher into a glass. Offered it to him. He took it but didn’t drink.