Flinched before it. Pushed back in his chair. Waited for the blow, but couldn’t look away.
Bliss’s eyes were dead. Something else shone through. Something hostile. Something alien. Like a mask had slipped. Peering out through the urbane little man’s face was something other.
Then it was gone. Bliss was just Bliss. “No matter,” he said, with a smile that cut. “A complication soon solved.” But Finch didn’t think it would be that easy. Hoped it wouldn’t.
Footsteps walking up the stairs.
A reptilian smile from Bliss.
“You’re just a spectator now, Finch. Just another pawn. But I’ll leave you with this: Did you ever stop to think that maybe Wyte represents the future of this city? That maybe you’re the past. Still living, but the past nonetheless. There will be a day you’ll remember this conversation in a much different light.”
Then he was walking into the bookshelves. Which turned into a door fringed with green and gold.
Which he stepped into.
And was gone.
Rathven came in, holding her gun and a disgruntled Feral.
“Was someone in here with you, Finch?” She let Feral down. The cat ran to him, rubbed up against his legs.
Finch shook his head. “Talking to myself.” Leaned over to pet Feral. Felt like he’d escaped some great danger. Had come across the edge, the outline, of something that his map could not encompass. That neither Finch nor Crossley could ever understand.
Somewhere out there the Lady in Blue was readying for invasion. Somewhere Sintra was bringing the strange piece of metal to her superiors.
Somewhere Shriek was trying to come home.
And he was in a secret room surrounded by books, petting a cat.
From far above, he heard the mutter of mighty engines coming to life. A groaning, rending roar. A rising hum behind it. A metallic scream like the cry of a raptor.
The ceiling vibrated. The floor rumbled. A plume of dust. Feral looked up, concerned.
“I was coming to tell you, John,” Rathven said. “The towers are changing. The electricity is out. Everywhere.”
Panic and a surge of energy. “I’ve got to get to the roof to see it.”
She shook her head. “No, you don’t. You’re too weak. We can take the boat instead. The tunnel leads out to the bay.”
* * *
Wincing, he settled into the boat opposite Rathven. It felt strange to be in a boat not made by the gray caps. The wood so stiff. The lack of give beneath his feet. She lurched onto the seat opposite him. Set the lantern by her feet. Two gas masks there. Binoculars, too. Feral paced on the steps, watching them leave. Rathven had left food just in case.
Ribs of light from the lantern sent across the ceiling made it seem as if they traveled down the gullet of a great beast. Cool, under the earth. Overhead, there might be violence. There might be mobs. Street sweeps by the Partials. Poisonous clouds of fungus. Almost anything. But down here, there was just the shudder from the towers.
Were they entering a new life? Would it be better than the last? He didn’t know.
“They’ll sing your praises,” Rathven said. “If Shriek leads them back.” She stared at him as if the enormity of events had finally found her.
Have I done what’s best? Have I done the right thing or the wrong thing?
“They won’t even remember my name, Rath.”
“I will,” she said.
An emotion rose up in him that he didn’t think he deserved to feel. Facing each other. Two survivors. Gliding through a dark tunnel, headed for the light.
* * *
Now Finch can see the frailty death has lent them. Now Finch can see the vulnerability. The way the light uses them in the same way it uses him … and looks out across the damaged face of Ambergris.
The wide expanse of the bay confronts their boat. A stiff, hot wind rising. The Spit just a trace of black smoke. The towers shambly and green to the left. Shuddering and quaking like something alive. Debris falling off of them into the water. On the right, the north shore, and the long arm of the HFZ. Agitated. Alive. A curving hand reaching out across the water toward the towers. A wave of orange-green-red spores. Already torn and jagged at the limits of its reach. Already fading back into itself.
From the towers, an ungodly roar and cacophony. Lines of light reach out from the tops of the towers into the city. Toward the blood-red mushroom stations. As if helping to hold them up. In front of the towers, the tiny shadows of rows of gray caps lined up on the bridge. As if in worship.
In that space between the towers, the gate—the door—has finally found what it was searching for.
A weak white disk in a porous pale sky, poor mimic of the sun beyond the towers. Framed in gray, gigantic living citadels rise in a swirl of glittering dust motes so tightly packed they can only be spores. Two, three hundred feet the citadels rise. Circular. Studded with tiny eyes for windows. A hundred curving causeways run between them. Rising from below, a thick forest of tendrils in constant, rippling motion. Waves of color washing across them, strobing from greens to reds to blues, and back again. Through this landscape, great beasts stride in perpetual gloom. Hunched over. Half seen, half heard. Cities of fungus rising from their backs.
But at the bottom of this scene, a tear or rip. Like a photograph with a flame burning through it in a rough triangle. Turning it to ash.
A green-gold door rising.
They watch from the boat as it lengthens, enlarges itself. Encroaches on the forest of tendrils. A whining sound. A kind of crackling and popping that hurts his ears. And no other sound out across the bay. Or across the city behind them. As if everyone holds their breath. Waiting for this new thing.
The background scene becomes glassy. Vague. Blurry.
The green-gold door stops growing.
The breath goes out of him, and then returns. As if he’s been dead and now is coming back to life.
They come in numbers. In legions. Pouring through the door. Across the bridge, overrunning the gray cap positions like an unstoppable river, into the city. He can see them, toy soldiers, through the binoculars. A never-ending torrent running across the surface of the bay. Some wear strange clothes. Carry strange weapons that discharge violet light. Some with gas masks. Some encased in great armored suits of metal sinew and tendon. Others on horses. Some looking human. Others like Wyte at his worst. Some in motored vehicles. Others on foot. A few leading creatures he has never seen before.
The rending sound becomes louder. Vibrating in his ears. He is transfixed. She is transfixed. People will ask him where he was on this day. He will say, “In a small boat in the bay. With a friend.”
The towers shake and shake but never fall. The men and women and things coming out from the door, their progress does not slacken. They keep spilling out, and as they do, the scene in the background becomes grayer and grayer. Like a smudge. The lines of force from the tops of the towers into the city begin to waver. Until one by one they erase themselves. Slowly. Then more quickly.
Waves now in the bay, like an aftershock. Smacking against the boat. He is holding her tight against the awful wonder of it. He is holding on to her like something familiar.
And still the rebels come, as the backdrop begins to fade. Things from the other side now touch that surface. Fall forward. Into the air. Their shapes that were in that other place graceful or translucent become crumpled and dark. Falling. Extinguished in the bay.