"I'll tell you later."
"Why not tell me now." Finch heard the fear in Wyte's voice.
"No," Finch said, laying the word down hard.
Wyte considered that for a moment. Like it was a wall between them. Looked back toward the boat as if thinking about getting back on it. "Did Blakely tell you our mission?"
"I told Wyte we should just. Should just run," Dapple said, breaking in. "That this is going to. Going to get us killed." Sometimes Dapple stopped in mid-sentence. Like an actor trying to perfect a line.
"Listen, Wyte," Finch said, ignoring Dapple. "I came down off the ridge. There are Partials following you. A few hundred feet behind. They're probably watching us now."
Or they've got a spy on you, Wyte, and they don't need to watch us.
Wyte grimaced. Dapple stared at the water like he expected something to erupt out of it.
"What do we do." Dapple asked. Didn't seem to expect an answer.
"Shut up, Dapple," Wyte whispered.
"Carry out our mission. Come home alive. Like always." Finch putting emphasis on our. An ache in his throat. Knew Wyte would understand that Finch wouldn't have come down the ridge for anyone else.
No matter that you're not always the Wyte I remember.
A sudden spark in Wyte's eyes. Something that glittered. Began to fade almost as soon as it had passed through.
"Like old times," Wyte said. A wry grin. "Like when I taught you how to deal with ship captains down at the docks." His voice was crumbling like a ruined wall. The edges of words worn away.
Finch was too tired to take the brunt of that. "We should get moving."
He wanted action so he wouldn't have to think.
About any of it.
3
he haze of the Religious Quarter came closer and closer. A fake fairy tale city-within-a-city above them. Of those following, no sight. Just the sound of gravel once, dislodged. A distant muttered curse.
After a climb, the ground leveled out. They came to a long, tall wall parallel to a rough road. Ahead, the wall ran on into the distance, buckled and cracked in places. Like it was having trouble restraining what it had been made to hold back. Coming over the wall: the lime scent, the rich greens of the Religious Quarter. Fungus and trees wedded in a vast alliance. Looked like nothing more or less than a fiery explosion, frozen in time. Bullet holes in the wall, in dozens of places. The blackish spray of old blood where someone had gotten unlucky. Under it all, a latticework of fungus. Faintly visible. Faintly green-glowing.
,,This is Scarp Lane," Wyte said. "I was here before the Rising. Treelined. Nice homes. Bars and restaurants and dance halls. Little alcoves for people to put up offerings to their gods. You could indulge in your favorite vice and then walk right over and pray it away. Between the wars, it used to be a nice row of wrought-iron streetlamps and sidewalk vendors."
Finch frowned. Used to be. Wyte didn't usually indulge in used to be.
Nothing for it but to follow the wall.
People began to appear in doorways. Leaning against rusting lampposts. On balconies. Dark in complexion. Wore strange hats. Stared you in the eye. Challenged silently why you were here. Sometimes as many as six or seven. Loitering on a street corner. Any time Finch saw more than four people gathered in one place, he figured the gray caps had used their resources elsewhere.
"Put your badges away," Finch said, suddenly.
Dapple had been holding his badge so anyone could see it. Protested, even after Wyte made his own disappear.
"Seen any Partials here?" Finch asked.
"No."
"Seen anyone who would give a shit about your badge?"
Dapple didn't respond.
"And you won't, either," Finch continued. "Not this close to the wall. Except for the ones following us."
They'd be heavily armed. Probably with fungal weapons. Moving in a tight formation. If they were doing more than shadowing Wyte and Dapple, gray caps might be following, too.
From below.
The chapel at 1829 Northwest Scarp Lane pushed out from the wall. It had once been a modest two-story church topped by a silver metal dome. Now that dome was spackled and overgrown with rich burnished copper-bronze-amber mold that met a sea of mixed sea greens and blues creeping up. Little rounded windows in the dome. Perfect firing lines.
Beneath, the green-and-white paint of the rounded walls had peeled away to reveal dry dark wood beneath. In the center, a large ornate double door. To either side, hollowed-out alcoves that Finch didn't think led anywhere. In front of all three, a facade of archways.
A horseshoe-shaped barricade of six or seven tanks with a sandbag wall curved from just beyond the side of the chapel to around the front of it. The tanks nestled together as if sleeping. Been there seven years at least. Burnt out. Crumbling. Faithful old Hoegbotton insignia still visible on the sides. Delicate snow-white mushrooms had overtaken them. Fernlike green tendrils grew from their rusted tops: all that was left of the men that had been flushed out.
Less than one hundred feet between the chapel entrance and the sandbag wall. Anyone could have manned it. At any time. Rival armies and militias had marched and retreated across that damaged ground for more than forty years.
No one in sight now, in either direction. Yet another kind of sign.
"Great f**king place for an ambush," Finch said, as they stood outside the chapel. At their backs, beyond the tanks and sandbags, a warren of streets. Burnt-out schools, apartments, abandoned businesses.
"I don't like it, either," Wyte said.
"What if it's a test? A test to prove our loyalty?" Dapple said. "And it's not a rebel safe house at all."
"Shut up," Wyte said. Shifting his weight from foot to foot as if something pained him. To Finch: "If anyone is in there, we ask a few questions. Try to get some information to satisfy Heretic. Get out."
Finch nodded. If anyone was in there, Finch didn't know if they'd get many words in before the shooting started. Rebel safe house. Three detectives working for the gray caps, with Partials backing them up. Be better off turning in their guns, asking for mercy. Maybe.
Dapple looked close to tears. "We should get. The hell out now."
"Changed your mind? Then why don't you stay out here," Finch said. "Guard the door. Duck inside and tell us if you see anything suspicious." Dapple would be less dangerous as a guard than backing them up.
"With Partials out here?" Dapple protested.
Finch checked the magazine in the semi-automatic. Released the safety. "You'll do it, Dapple, and you'll be happy about it. And Dapple? Don't run away. We'll find you."