Bliss nodded. “Nothing ever happens the way we think it will. Now, where’s that piece of metal?”
“I have a few questions first.”
“Questions?”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” Finch said. “In between passing out. When I haven’t been pissing blood. About things like whether or not you really work for the rebels. Maybe Ethan Bliss does, but not Dar Sardice.”
A pause, then, as if deciding whether or not to play along with him. Then: “Very good, Finch. Keep going.”
“You share information with the rebels, yes, but you don’t work for them. Even if they think so.”
“Excellent, Finch!” A kind of forced cheeriness. “So who do I work for?”
“You were Dar Sardice before you were Ethan Bliss. It’s the oldest name you’re known by. You knew my father. You said you worked with him. My father was deep in Kalif territory during much of the campaign. Working on engineering projects for the Ambergris army. Often shuttling back and forth behind the front lines. You met him then, I think, not after he returned to Ambergris.”
Bliss gave him a look of mingled regret and triumph. “You’re right, of course. I gave him that, actually.” Nodded at the scimitar on the table behind Finch, beside its scabbard. “A reward for his good service. I was also your father’s control in Ambergris. I ran him, along with other sources. But he was the best.”
“Ran him for who?” Wanted to hear Bliss say it.
“For the Kalif, of course. Always for the Kalif. The Kalif has a long memory, Finch. And the Kalif never forgets anything. We turned your father in the desert, and he stayed turned. But you knew that.”
The question he’d been homing in on, the one he’d never been able to ask his father: “Why did he do it?”
“He never told you? Why does anyone do anything? For money. For love. For our children. Because we think it’s right. Your father, he met a woman. He had reservations about the war by then. He’d seen some of the excesses of the Ambergrisian army, had never felt comfortable with the power of the Hoegbottons before the war. And he’d lived in the desert for a couple of years. Observed the traditions of a culture thousands of years old. He was ready to fall in love—with all of it.”
“And then what?”
An impassive gaze. “The woman died. Brutalized and killed by Ambergrisian soldiers, apparently. Her body burned in a fire.” A kind of triumphant smile. “But you, Finch. You were saved from that fire. You were less than a year old at the time.”
A shifting feeling in his stomach. A distant sense of confusion. Stared at Bliss across the maps. “That’s a lie. My mother died in childbirth. She was from Stockton. She had no family.”
Bliss shrugged. “Believe what you like. Hoegbotton, Frankwrithe—both right. Both wrong. Does it matter in the long run? Your father worked for the Kalif. As for why, look around you, Finch. This is a city founded on an attempted genocide, and everything that came out of that. The Silence. The Wars of the Houses. The Rising. This place is dangerous, Finch. Its people are dangerous. Ambergris will always need a counterweight. First through Morrow and Frankwrithe & Lewden. Now through the rebels, because the gray caps are in control. Either that, or Ambergris tries to take over the world. One way or the other. That’s what the Kalif learned repulsing your offensive.”
“Is that what my father believed?”
“That’s what I believe. Your father believed that by playing both sides against each other he was serving a greater good. I’ve never been under that delusion.”
Searching Bliss’s guarded face for what was true. Trying to reject the idea of further treacheries.
“You abandoned him, then. You let him take the fall when Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe joined forces. I was there. He died alone. Except for me.”
Bliss shrugged. “I couldn’t stop him from being found out. Just from being found. Too many people on each side were talking, suddenly. But, Finch, he wouldn’t let me help him. Wouldn’t let me take him out of Ambergris. Because of you. And because he was dying.”
“But you made sure nobody got to him so he wouldn’t talk.”
“I did what I could.”
Something clicked. Even on the run, when his father was dying, he hadn’t wanted Finch to contact anyone. No help from anyone. Because he didn’t trust anyone.
“He didn’t want you getting near me,” Finch said.
“I could’ve found you at any time, James Crossley,” Bliss said, leaning back.
“I wouldn’t have worked for you. You couldn’t have recruited me.”
“Haven’t I already?” Then shrugged. “But this is all beside the point. Where’s the piece of metal, Finch?”
A gun had appeared in Bliss’s hand. His regretful look said, Just in case.
“Maybe I left it in the apartment. Maybe you should look there.”
“Maybe you should just give it to me,” Bliss said. “It’s not the kind of thing you want to leave lying around.” Acid in his voice. A hard glitter to the eyes that chilled Finch. But it didn’t stop him.
“Mostly, though, Bliss, I keep thinking about how good you are at finding things. You never told me that you were the one who found Shriek. Gave him to the rebels. Do you want to explain that?”
Bliss sat back, tapping his foot against the floor. “You want the truth? Shriek was dumb luck. A wild card. Something to hold in reserve. He was like a spigot once I found a way to pry him out of his protective shell. Like a man left on a desert island for a hundred years. He would’ve talked to anyone.”
“And you found him next to Samuel Tonsure’s bones, of all people. And then you ‘found’ that magical strip of metal. The one that wasn’t made by us or by gray caps. You even found the doors before the rebels did. Did you also tell them the soldiers in the HFZ weren’t all dead, just lost?”
A sly smile. “It’s a skill, Finch. Finding things. Leveraging them. My goals and the goals of the rebels are the same. For the moment. Although it’s a very long game we’re playing here.” The eyes not smiling at all.
“Where did you find the metal?”
A hiss of impatience from Bliss. “I understand, Finch. I really do. You won’t be working for me. You don’t care who your mother is. Your father is a hero, not a traitor. Now just give me that fucking piece of metal, or we’ll do it the hard way. We’ll do it the hardest possible way.”
Finch turned away from a thought that truly terrified him. That Bliss didn’t work for the Kalif at all. That Dar Sardice was just the first of the masks he knew about. That the “long game” was beyond comprehension.
The sounds of oars from beyond the open doors. Of a boat thudding up against the steps.
“That’ll be Rathven,” Bliss said. “Do you really want to involve her in this?”
No, he didn’t.
“I don’t have it. Sintra took it from me in the apartment,” Finch said. Almost triumphant. Almost proud of Sintra. “There was nothing I could do. The Dogghe have it now. I couldn’t stop her.”
Bliss erupted from his seat. Suddenly seemed twice as tall. Mouth open in an expression of rage beyond any caricature Finch had ever seen.