“You don’t have that luxury, James Scott Crossley. That out there is nothing. It’s just the latest thing to make us falter, to make us doubt ourselves.” She released him. “When we started out, we didn’t really understand. We had to learn fast.”
“You read Samuel Tonsure’s journal?”
“That and other things. Shriek’s books after we found him.”
“And you learned about Zamilon?”
“Sometimes by hard-earned experience. But now we know: Zamilon is a nexus for the doors. It exists in our world, but it also exists in many other worlds simultaneously.”
“And Duncan needed to go through it for his mission? He was on a mission for you?”
“Yes. But he’s unpredictable. We think he went somewhere he shouldn’t have. Triggered a trap. I’m not sure we’ll ever know what went wrong unless Shriek chooses to tell us.”
“So it’s dangerous to travel through the doors?”
She stared up at the wash of stars. “It can be. We only use doors leading from or to Zamilon. Anything else has resulted in disaster. We don’t know why. But Duncan has no such constraint…”
Remembering the Spit: Through many doors … The doors smaller then larger, then smaller again. Oval. Rectangular. Square. Inlaid with glass. Gone, leaving only gaping doorway and a couple rusted hinges.
“Who knows about the portals, the doors?”
The Lady in Blue laughed. “Duncan Shriek knew. Maybe some people have always known. Ambergris’s early kings may have had the knowledge and lost it. Every schoolchild used to know. Because every scary story about the gray caps implies that they can move quickly from place to place … So far we’ve kept it from the rebel cells operating in the city. There’s too much risk of them being captured by the gray caps and made to talk. And on the other side, the gray caps seem to have kept the doors hidden from the Partials.”
“How much do the gray caps know about you?” How much does Stark know? Or Bliss?
“They know we’re out here. But we’re blessed by their concentration on the towers. It makes it easier for us to operate.”
“Tell me why I’m here,” Finch asked. The question he didn’t want answered.
The Lady in Blue’s features tightened. She looked away. “What I’m going to ask from you is dangerous. I wanted you to understand fully. So you’d know it in your gut. What’s at stake. Because the war we’re fighting right now isn’t in Ambergris. It’s out here. It’s about opening and closing doors. Holding positions around places like Zamilon. With the few soldiers we have.
“We don’t have a functional army here.” She gestured around her. “Maybe a thousand well-trained men, if that. The rest are scattered. Twenty thousand soldiers, Finch. Marked by the HFZ and scattered across the doors. Imagine. Each one flung somewhere else, like a pearl necklace shattering on a marble staircase. Only, the moment after that necklace shatters there are thousands of marble staircases and one bead on each.”
“They’re not dead?” Finch, incredulous.
The Lady in Blue shook her head. “No. Most of them are just lost, and we need to bring them back … When Duncan didn’t complete his mission, when we figured out where the bodies had turned up, where Duncan was, some wanted to cut our losses. Abandon the mission. Try to sabotage the towers. I said no. I said, I knew your father. I knew him well enough to know that, in this case, we could trust you. That you’d understand. That I’d make you understand.”
“Understand what?” Finch said. “What is there left to understand?” A fury rising in him. “Understand that when I go back I have the secret services of not one but two countries working against me? That the gray caps will kill me if I don’t solve this case? That my partner is probably dying? What is it that you want me to understand?”
The Lady in Blue looked at him in surprise. As if no one had spoken to her like that for a long time.
“I understand, Finch,” she said slowly, biting off each syllable, “that you are the only one who can get back to the body while they’re watching. It’s a trap for anyone else. A fatal trap. And you and I both understand now that Duncan Shriek is alive. And I’m telling you that if you can get to him, you can bring him all the way back and help him complete his mission.”
“What kind of weapon is Shriek? Is he a bomb?” Only thing Finch could think of. Like the suicide bombers the rebels had used in the past.
“No. He’s the kind of weapon that’s also a beacon. Also a door.” She smiled. A wide and beautiful smile that cut right through Finch. There on the ramparts. Overlooking the desert. In a place that might or might not be part of the world. “There may be a way.”
“Just say it.”
“We mean to force the door, Finch. To hijack it. To come through in numbers. Duncan Shriek is going to find our lost men and bring them through the gate formed by the towers. Before the gray caps can bring their own people through.”
“That’s insane. The risk…”
“If we had a better plan, we would use it.”
“Even if Shriek is alive, how do you know he can do it? Bring the soldiers back?”
“He’s shown us some of what he can do already.”
“How will he find them?” Each question cut him off from one more avenue of retreat.
“They are all marked, or tagged, by the HFZ event. Each man. Each woman. He will find them through the doors, and we will return to Ambergris triumphant.”
A strange light had entered her eyes. Like someone who had been dreaming of something that they’d never thought could happen. And now it was happening.
“What if they kill me? Eat my memories?” Finch asked. “What then?”
The Lady in Blue turned the full force of her gaze on him. “What’s really bothering you, Finch? Is it fear? Or is it something else?” She turned to look out at the desert again. “Those things out there,” she murmured. “They’re gray caps, and they’re people. Combined. How? I don’t know. Maybe they came here during the Silence. Possible. But even though I don’t know, I understand. Because we’re changing, too, Finch. There’s no one under my command who hasn’t been altered in some way. The question is how much you change. Change too much and you’re no different from Shriek, no different from a gray cap. And then even if we win, we lose. But adapt just enough? That’s what I need from you. To adapt just enough.”
An answer for everything. Yet Finch knew he’d always be searching for the next question. He felt a hundred years old. Like the weight of everything had piled on his back at once.
“What if I say no? What if I want you to just leave me the fuck alone?” Stop fighting, some part of him advised. Just fall into it and keep falling. But he couldn’t. Not yet.
The Lady in Blue sighed. “You know, it’s no good for the Kalif, either, if the gray caps come through. I don’t care who you are or aren’t working for. I don’t care about your father’s spying. I just know you hate Partials and your father had no love for the gray caps.”
“How are you going to protect me?”