"Finch." The word invested with some secret amusement. "Come in?"
Smiled, shook his head. "But I do have something for you. A list. A long list."
"A list of what? Laundry list? Shopping list? Enemies? Friends?"
Finch laughed. "You should've been a detective."
"I am a detective," she said. The ritual refrain.
"List of names," he said. "People who lived in an apartment where two murders took place. And you'll love this: it's more than a century of names."
Not quite a frown, but a kind of quiver to the lips. A caution entering the eyes. She'd guessed the source. Not hard, really.
Rathven had been in the work camps for three years. Had the brands on the bottoms of her feet, the red-gold marking of fungus she could hide but never forget. There was a pulsing sensation sometimes, she'd told him. A restlessness. He'd never asked what else had happened to her there. Didn't really want to know.
She helped him because he'd gotten her brother Blaine, who went by the name "the Photographer," out of the camps and into the hotel. Dozens of old cameras in the Photographer's fifth-floor apartment. The man used the cameras to take thousands of photographs of water. Funded that obsession by running a black market for goods. Finch bought or traded with him like everyone else. Using gray cap vouchers, food pods, or salvaged items.
If the Photographer ever cut him off, or Rathven ever stopped helping him, Finch knew it would feel like a punch to the kidneys. Friendship or need?
He leaned over, pulled the list from his satchel. Felt tired suddenly, like he'd stolen something from her but realized it too late. "Could you read it? Tell me if any names are familiar. Maybe from your books." Would pay her in information and fungal antidotes, like usual.
Rathven took the paper gingerly. Prodded the spongy edges with one finger. "Only if you tell me why."
"Recent murders."
The color went out of her face.
"Got a piece of paper?" he asked.
She nodded, reached behind her. Handed him an old envelope. Return address from somewhere in the Southern Isles. Might as well be some imaginary place now.
Drew the symbol. Handed the paper back to her. "Do you know what this is?"
A disdainful glance. "It's a gray cap symbol, of course. Very poorly drawn."
"Can you check it out? I've seen it before. But I don't know what it means."
"Sure. I don't know how long it will take."
"That's fine . . ." Lingered, unsure how to ask for more. Then just said it: "Another favor. Memory bulbs tonight. Can you check on me? Call, or knock on the door if the phones are out? In an hour or two?" No idea when Sintra would get there. No point taking chances.
Now came the frown, as he knew it would. But she nodded. "I will. I will, Finch. Don't worry." Reached out to squeeze his arm. Then withdrew her hand quickly. As if she'd shown weakness.
He stared at her now. Smiled. Sometimes he felt a closeness with her he shared with no one else, not even Sintra. She'd never fought the Rising. She'd just read her books, preserved them. Protected them. Shared them. Eked out a living making crafts. At least, this was the story she'd told him. A small part of him still wondered why she'd been taken to the camps. Or why she'd been let go. "I was too sick to work," she'd told him. But she'd never looked sick to him.
"The gray caps like to confuse randomness with purpose," Wyte had said once. But Finch didn't believe that. Just believed they kept the purpose buried deep.
"Thank you," he said. The words came out a little ragged. "Long day. I'll call when I take them. If the phones work."
"I'll come up and knock if I don't hear," she said. In return, he knew he'd have to help push back the encroaching river one more time. Each task had its own price with Rathven.
She shut the door, taking the light with her.
Finch's apartment was near the end of the hall. Had to negotiate a hothouse wetness to get there. Tendrils and caps of red-and-green fungus sprouted from the walls. Gray caps only cared about keeping the streets clean. No help from his next-door neighbors, either. Almost like they thought it gave them camouflage.
No one around, except his cat Feral, a big brute of a tabby, crying to be let in. Bumping up against his legs while Finch made shushing sounds. Feral was loud, always trying to trip Finch and bring him down to eye level.
Sometimes the little old man in the apartment opposite heard Finch and came out, but not tonight. A former accountant, the man liked to sit in a shaft of sunlight from the hall window. Smile and talk to himself and nod, and read from the same ragged book.
Two minutes to unlock and then relock. Only Sintra knew the sequence. Still not comfortable with that idea. Had thought about changing the key.
Flash of another dark room. A worn bed. White sheets dull in the shadow. Didn't look like anyone had slept in it in months. Dusty floor. Two corpses.
Flipped a switch. Relief when the lights actually came on. Faded floral print wallpaper. Root-like edges to the frayed beige carpet. Worn-out furniture.
Relief at being able to hang up the role of detective in the closet, along with his jacket. To let the tough exterior come off like a mask worn for a festival.
"Hold on for Truff's sake," Finch said to Feral as the cat ran to the kitchen through the living room.
Feral had wide round eyes. They gave his owlish face a perpetual look of surprise. Finch had rescued him as a kitten from a fungus that had wound tendrils around the animal while he slept. Still had purple patches on his flanks, sometimes growing, sometimes not.
No sign of Sidle, his windowsill lizard. Never really knew if it was the same lizard anyway. Felt compelled to pretend for some reason.
After feeding Feral, Finch put the two memory bulbs on the kitchen counter. Poured himself a glass of Trillian's Premium Whisky, aged eighteen years. An F&L brand trading off a famous name. Something no self-respecting H&S man would've drunk before the Rising. He had six bottles left in the closet. Next to the boxes of cigars. These had been his father's habits, his legacy. Nothing better had replaced them. The smell of cigar smoke made him feel like his father was right there, beside him.
Cigars. Whisky. Both working as a kind of peculiar clock or timer. When they ran out, would his life as Finch run out, too?
Heretic's touch like wet, dead leaves sewn together and stuffed with meat.
Dinnertime, but he wasn't hungry.
A long, shuddering sigh as he sat in the old leather chair next to the couch in the living room. Under the light of an old glass lamp shaped like an umbrella that he'd taken from the lobby. Watched the dusk dissolve into night.