Finch searched the face of the dead man for honesty or deceit. Saw himself reflected back.
“How do we start?” he asked.
“For you, it’s easy,” Shriek said. “A mental trick. Just think back to the time when you went from being Crossley to being Finch. Imagine that instant as exactly as you can. Every detail you can remember. While you concentrate on that, I will enter through the ‘gap’ created. That’s as simply as I can put it … The rest you won’t feel.”
A hopeful expression on Shriek’s face.
The thought that maybe this was happening in the seconds before his death. That the last week had taken place in a single moment in his head. That none of it was real. Even the parts that seemed real. Those least of all.
Finch shuddered. Closed his eyes.
“Let’s get this over with.”
* * *
The creation of John Finch happened at night. Cold for once. The flares and tracers of battle over the darkened skyline. The roar of the tanks. The gunfire of attacking infantry. A percussive music playing all over southeast Ambergris. Near the Religious Quarter. Heavy losses for the Hoegbotton side. A series of tactical mistakes.
They stood on the street behind the clinic, he and his father. Next to a burning trashcan. His father was a hunched figure who kept coughing up blood. By then his father had been very sick.
John Crossley had a folder full of documents for his son. James had a suitcase stuffed with identity cards, certificates, incriminating photographs. Had checked John Crossley into the clinic under the name “Stephen Mormeck.” Someone they’d picked out of the phone book.
A clinic in Frankwrithe territory. Because of the rash of refugees. Because F&L had less reason to hate John Crossley.
“Is there anyone you want me to contact?” he’d asked his father.
A shake of the head, the great mane of gray hair. “No, no one. Make a clean break. For both of us.” A gruff laugh. By then, he was self-medicating with whiskey early in the day. That night next to the trashcan, John Crossley had been drunk for two days.
But his eyes were clear. His arm steady as he handed the folder to his son. “Everything you’ll need. For John Finch. Including a way to rejoin the Hoegbotton Irregulars.”
Two years before the Rising. Six months after Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe had joined forces against the gray caps. Five months since his father had been denounced as a Kalif spy and they’d had to go on the run. The posters were everywhere. One of a row of traitors.
“I didn’t do what they say I did. Not the way they say I did it. I never got anyone killed. I never…”
His father had never told James how they’d come to be betrayed. Which of the many people who had come to the house in the valley over the years. And James didn’t have a clue, because his father kept pushing him further and further away from that part of his life.
James reached down, opened the suitcase. Felt the click of the clasps against his fingers. “It’s all here. Every last document. Every last photograph.” From the old house in the valley. James had gone there earlier that night, snuck in. Returned to the clinic in an army truck, along with a few other civilians with ties to Hoegbotton’s trading arm. Wyte had stood watch for him, then gone out the back way and melted into the night. Wyte knew every street in the city. He’d have been back home with his wife before midnight.
Two in the morning now.
“What are you waiting for? Start shoveling this stuff into the fire,” his father said.
Still, he hesitated. Watched the smoky flames rising into the darkness, the sparks mimicking the flares in the distance.
“If we burn all of the photographs, I’ll forget what you look like.”
His father didn’t miss a beat. “But not who I am. And if you don’t do it, there’s no clean break, son.”
His father reached down, picked up a handful of documents and IDs. Shoved them into the fire. Which flared up for a moment.
“This is the best way.” John Crossley had said it a dozen times that day.
Anything else of value that couldn’t tie the son to the father had been put in a storeroom on the edge of the merchant district. A neutral area. James could retrieve it at any time. The whiskey. The cigars. The books. The map. The ceremonial scimitar his father had gotten while fighting against the Kalif. “Keep it hidden, son, but use it when you have to.”
After a moment, James joined him. Started tossing handfuls into the flames. Photographs from the offensive into Kalif territory. John Crossley on a tank. In a window. Walking through the desert. Old journal entries. Even the little tobacco pipe he’d shown James as a youth.
“They’ll never forget, never forgive, no matter who the enemy is, son. Better just to start a new life. Be someone else.”
They’d never talked about his betrayal. The son had felt that asking would have meant admitting that the father had done something horribly wrong. He didn’t want to let that into their world.
“Is there anyone you want me to contact,” he’d asked his father. “No, no one,” the old man had insisted.
When the suitcase was empty, James stood back. Beside his father. Watched the flames die down. Then hugged his father close. Sour breath. Shaking arms. The rasp at the back of his throat. Knew he was going to lose him soon.
“Welcome to Ambergris, John Finch,” his father whispered in his ear.
3
Still dark when he woke, except for the lanterns. Except for a hint of gray from the window. He lay on the floor. Felt hungry. Thirsty. As much as he’d ever felt in his life. Hollow, too. As if he were made of spores. Would blow away. Over all of that, the constant complaint of his nerves. Reporting pain. Everywhere.
The Partial lay facedown beside the gray cap. Arms out to the sides. On the table, the bloody knives, the pot of water. The empty vial.
He sat up and saw himself, naked, propped up on two elbows opposite. Feet almost touching. Shock. Sudden horror. Even in the dim light, the same dark hair. The rakish yet thickening features. The solid build on the edge of fat. But Shriek’s features rose out of his own. The cheekbones a little higher. The eyes different. This other Finch had green eyes. This other Finch had a strange smoothness to him, a blankness. None of Finch’s scars had manifested on him. Few of the wrinkles. Finch shuddered. Shriek-Finch looked like a man who had reached middle age without the physical signs of experience.
“The resemblance will fade,” Shriek said. “I’ll be able to take any form I like, soon.” A scratchy voice. As if getting used to his vocal cords.
Shriek rose, and Finch rose with him. An imperfect reflection. Shriek held himself differently than Finch. Shoulders hunched from some invisible weight. A stare less guarded. More expressive hands. Light gathered around Shriek in unnatural ways. A gentle iridescent strobing rippled across his body. It reminded Finch of the starfish in the cavern by the underground sea.
“How do you feel?” Shriek asked.
“I feel light … and yet heavy,” Finch said. Could sense Shriek’s overlay lifted from his mind. Its presence only confirmed by absence.
While all of those things he’d thought himself numb to came rushing back in with a near-fatal intensity. Sintra. Wyte.