Not that he doubted she felt the same. He knew why she kept her distance. The same reason he did.
Except, it's not working for me.
A long kiss. A final hug.
And she was gone.
All he could feel was the ache in his thighs. The damp spot on the front of his underwear, colder now than before.
Just once, Sintra left something behind. Finch keeps it hidden in a desk drawer. No reason for him to keep it. But no reason to get rid of it.
Written in longhand, Sintra's concise notes are about mushrooms, which no longer come with any field guide. Ignorance can lead to death, even though since the Rising the gray caps have kept the streets clear. Personal curiosity? Something to do with the black market? Has she helped someone she shouldn't help? Given aid to some group the gray caps are hunting down?
Does it make her a spy to have this information, or just pragmatic? Does it make him complicit to keep it, or just sentimental?
This incomplete list doesn't include fungal weapons. These mushrooms all perform certain tasks or "work" within the city. If any have a secondary or tertiary purpose it is unknown at this time.
(1) Tiny white mushrooms almost like star-shaped flowers found most often around surfaces where dead bodies have recently lain or where some conflict has occurred. Like the chalk outlines used by detectives pre-Rising to mark bodies? Warnings, or ... ?
(2) Green "spear" mushrooms with sharp, narrow hoods and long, slender stems four or five will be found around a building targeted for transformation. Three days after the appearance of these green spear mushrooms, the building in question will begin to look moist or spongy, due to infiltration from below. By the fourth or fifth day, it will begin to crumble. By the sixth day, the building has blown away in the wind. On the seventh day, a new structure has usually blossomed, overnight. This new structure may take any of a number of forms, all fungal-based.
(3) Red "tree" mushrooms with huge caps and strong, thick "trunks" or stems-these can grow up to eighty feet high and are much more resistant to storms and high winds than other kinds of mushrooms. They appear to have a filtration system that gives them stability by letting air pass through millions of "pores." In a sense, they float. An examination of distribution patterns from any height reveals that they have been "planted" in regular patterns forming rough "spokes" radiating out from the bay, interrupted only by the HFZ and the Religious Quarter. They regularly expel from their gills a smaller, purple mushroom with a strong euphoric effect and high levels of digestible protein.
(4) Purple "drug" mushrooms with ball caps and almost no stemsdispensed from the red "tree" mushrooms, these purple mushrooms are clearly meant to serve as "crowd control" by giving the people of the city sustenance and making them dependent. These mushrooms create a strong addiction by affecting the pleasure centers of the brain. They also create hallucinations intended to pacify, most drawn from happy memories.
Definitely her handwriting. She's slipped more than one message under his door while he's out. Tells himself: I'll throw it away when I know more about her. But nine months have passed since he found the note. She hasn't told him anything more than what he knew before.
Yet caution loses out when she walks through the door. Remembering how, on days when he's expecting her and she's late, the fear creeps aching into his muscles. Finds himself gulping air like water. Thick and heavy. Lost. Never lost.
2
fter Sintra had left, Finch fed the cat, grabbed a quick bite, and .cleaned off with a couple of pails of once-used bathwater. Fresh shirt, same pants, same jacket. Kicked Feral out to explore on his own while he went down the stairs to the courtyard, then the basement.
Rath's pale, angular face peered out from behind the door. Evaluating him. Looking for something.
She let Finch in without a word. Through a hallway brightened by walls painted light green. Probably to conceal rot. Then into a larger area with a few chairs, her strange library to either side. Beyond, where Finch had never gone: the start of entropy. The bruises of gray and blue stains spread across the ceiling. Disappeared into the darkness of a tunnel.
"Nothing new, I see," Finch said.
Rath laughed. "Not that you'd notice."
Finch brushed by her to sit in an armchair on a blue throw rug. Rising above him, water-damaged paperbacks and hardcovers had been stacked unevenly on warped shelves. The shelves perched on stilts to fend off any sudden rise in the water level. The weighted smell of moisture seemed both fresh and claustrophobic.
"Coffee?" she asked. The usual.
Hesitated, said, "No. Tea, please." Didn't know why.
Rath disappeared into the tunnel. Did she have a kitchen back there? Maybe a bedroom. Maybe more books. A whole troupe of clowns. The thought made him smile.
Stray pages saved from long-drowned books caught his attention as he waited for her. Red eye peering from monstrous face. Lines of scrawl in an unknown language. Diagrams of buildings or plants or motored vehicles. A black-and-white photograph of a gaunt five-year-old girl in a ragged dress standing in the muddy track of a tank.
Truff knew who had lived here before, collected the books originally. Or how long it had taken Rath to organize it all. Or how much she had added to it, scavenging across the city. The collection was an ever-changing scene of preservation and dissolution. So many things saved only to be destroyed by time. Always with the water gurgling its way along the floor. Sometimes fish would get trapped, their fins brushing against pipes or grillwork and making a sound like quills over skulls.
She came out with a teapot and two cups on a tray. Set it down on the table between them. Poured him a cup.
"You sure you want this?" she asked. Skeptical.
"Yes." Took the tea gladly. His head still hurt. The tea tasted different. Better. Drove out the lingering taste of the memory bulb.
"I haven't looked at the lists," she said, sitting opposite him in a low wooden chair with a green blanket atop it.
"Didn't expect you to yet," Finch replied. "What about the symbol?"
"Now, that I did get around to," she said. "If only because it was easy."
"I've seen it, I've just never known what it meant."
"You're not alone. We know more about what the symbol is associated with than what it means."
A broken version was scrawled by the gray caps as a warning, Rathven told him. At the beginning of the city's history, when the gray caps sent back the eyes of Ambergris's founder, the whaling captain John Manzikert, on the old altar now drowned by the bay. Manzikert, who had slaughtered so many gray caps and driven them underground.