“Just do it. I’ve got him covered.”
She hesitated, then, hand shaking, placed her gun on the table between them.
“Now I’ll get up and move around you to the door,” Bosun said.
“Be careful, Finch,” Rathven said.
Bosun got up. Came around the table toward Finch. Stepping over the fallen sword.
Gun to gun. Bosun inches away from him in that enclosed space.
“Let’s not see each other again,” Finch said.
A map of anger and frustration on Bosun’s face. “No promises,” he hissed.
A hint of a movement as Bosun passed him, back to the door. A blossoming agony Finch couldn’t at first identify because of all of the other pain. Then he realized it came from his side.
Knew he was reeling, losing his balance.
Bosun, at the door, stooping to pick up the pouch just as Finch realized he was bleeding. Rathven lunging for her revolver, turning to shoot at Bosun as he ran out the door. Missing. Tearing a chunk out of the ceiling. Rathven scrambling to lock the door behind Bosun.
Finch looked down to see bright red blood welling up from a cut in his side. Saw Bosun’s long, thin knife there on the floor. It had been the lightest of touches. Not even a touch. A whisper.
Vaguely knew Rathven was next to him as he slumped to the ground. Felt the touch of his own sword against his exposed foot as he slid, her arms around him.
“Finch! Finch!” Her voice, keeping him awake when he didn’t want to be awake.
She brought him close. Her body warm and solid and real. He thought she was shaking. Realized she was sobbing. Then she was pulling his shirt away from his side. Pushing something up against it. Felt something wet and sticky next to his left arm.
“What’s wrong?” he thought he asked.
“You’ve been stabbed, Finch,” he thought he heard her say. Her face way up near the ceiling, looking down. Her arms impossibly long.
A coughing laugh. “Have I?” A kind of lurching dislocation.
Rathven was wrapping something around his side. Gauze? Urging him onto his feet.
“You’re going into shock. I need to get you somewhere I can help you,” she said.
“I deserve better.” A dry laugh. Everybody deserved better.
Lurched up, almost falling forward onto his face. Leaned into her.
* * *
Glints and glimmers in a dark pool. Past the battered, weathered book stacks. Past her little kitchen. Past her bedroom. A glimpse of green and purple. The brightness of a single bulb. Like a sentry.
A rough-hewn doorway. Water on the floor. Curved walls. Moisture. A cockleshell of a boat. Strange pale-blue eyes of mudskippers in the shallows. Glowing in the light from a lantern.
She said something to him he didn’t understand. Took his arm. Guided him until he was lying with his back against the prow, legs out in front like useless matchsticks. She took off the oars, began to row.
Glimpses of roots, brick, and wood in the ceiling. His mangled hand trailing through the water. The wound in his side like a rip in a stuffed animal. All the sawdust coming out. Lulling him to sleep. Closed his eyes. She shook him awake. Nodded at her as if she’d said something he agreed with. But there was nothing left to say.
A thud as the boat knocked against something.
“We’re here,” she said.
Opened his eyes. Saw her tying a rope to a lock embedded in old stone steps. Beyond, a worn archway.
She forced him to his feet. Helped him up the steps.
A single large room at the top, dark except for Rathven’s swinging lantern. Caught a glimpse of books, a table.
She led him to a cot at the far end. Fell heavily onto it. She asked him a question. Didn’t hear her. Fuzziness around the words. Drifted. Curious about the dryness in his mouth. The way his vision kept blurring.
Said, “The towers are changing. Need to get to the roof.”
Rathven saying “No,” forcing him back down onto the cot.
Blinks of light and time.
Fading and coming back.
* * *
A few hours later. Awake on the cot. Looking out through his good eye. She’d cut his clothes off. Washed him. Bandaged his side. Could feel the edge of the wound like a mouth as he lay there with a towel around his waist.
He was at the back of a large room, looking toward the front and the doors. The archway. Rich, burgundy carpet and rugs worn but clean. The walls covered from top to bottom in bookcases. Every shelf was filled with books. Perfectly preserved. In neat rows. On the floor, more books. In careful piles. Beside boxes and boxes of black market supplies.
Next to him, medicine and food. Two more cots and another table. A one-burner portable kerosene stove and a pot on this second table. Along with a rifle and several boxes of ammo. His sword. His gun.
Between him and the doors: a globe of the known world on a rosewood table. Four ornate wooden chairs. Rathven sitting in one of the chairs. Watching him.
“I brought your maps down here,” she said, indicating the table. “A cane to help you walk. A chamber pot. A bottle of your whiskey. You need to stay here. Out of sight,” she said. “You need to rest.”
“Clean yourself up. Find someplace safe to be, Finch.”
“What about Feral? Where is he?”
“I’ll bring him later, if the boat doesn’t spook him.”
Outside, he could lose himself in the fight. Could join the rebels. Could join the militias. Could do something. But, overnight, he had become a broken-down old man. A pensioner well past the days of pensions. Waiting for better days.
I am not a detective.
“What about the towers? Has anything changed?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry—I’ll let you know.”
“What is this place?”
“It’s an old library,” she said. “From above it’s just rubble. You can’t get to it. But this one room I found intact. Although it didn’t have many books in it to start.”
“Found the rest?” he managed.
“Yes. I brought them here from all across the city.”
“Why?”
She had the look of the true believer, of someone who still had hope, as she said, “Finch, here you’ll find every book I could salvage about the city. Every book by any Ambergrisian author. Every book of history, of politics. Biographies. Novels. Poetry. They’re all here. Much of it knowledge that was lost in the wars, because of the Houses. Because of the gray caps. But someday, Finch, when all of this is over…”
Finch looked away. Ashamed by her passion when he had so little left.
“Ever afraid of being found out?”
“All the time.”
“The cots?”
“Before they disbanded the camps, I’d shelter escapees here. Or people who had been released but were injured.”
“And now?”
“Apparently, this is now a haven for cynical detectives.”
That made him smile. A little.
She stood. “You lost a lot of blood. But I stopped the bleeding. It’s your other injuries I need to work on now. I’m not strong enough to turn you over. I’ll need your help.”
She got gauze, bandages, and other supplies. Water from the underground channel. A kind of ritual and finality to the way she set the supplies on the table next to him. That made him shudder. Thinking of the Partial with his knives and scalding water.