The words still came out slowly. Mangled. It took her time to recognize them and respond.
"You had no record up until two years before the Rising, John. That made us curious ... What was Duncan Shriek's mission?"
"To stop more gray caps coming through. What were your orders with regard to me?"
"Coming through what?"
"The towers. Was it always that way? Between us?" From the beginning? An ache now that wasn't from his wounds. A slow-motion treachery. A life concealed.
"Finch, what can you tell me about Ethan Bliss?"
"I loved you." Let go of the words now, while she couldn't really see his face. When it didn't matter anymore. He had nothing to say to her about Bliss.
Her slow response: "And I liked you, John. I really did. I wouldn't have slept with you, otherwise. No matter the mission."
A childish bitterness, but he was too weak to keep the poison out of his mind: "You left behind some of your notes once. I had suspicions, but I never went to the gray caps with them. I never told anyone.
A mistake. He could feel the retreat in her words: "You might never have had to find out. We could have continued having our fun. The mystery of it. You liked that very much, I know. But a normal life? Like regular people? We aren't regular people. We were playing roles."
"What roles?"
Her voice took on a harshness that he knew shielded her as much as him. "You were the protector. I was the exotic native girl you liked to f**k."
"That's not true." Wanted no part of what she was doing.
"Isn't it? None of you really see us, John. Only what you want to see."
"And what do the dogghe want? What do they want out of Ambergris?"
Anger in her voice. Desire and need, too. Just not for him. "This was our place, John. Before your people came. Before the gray caps. And maybe it will be again."
"The rebels will never let that happen, no matter how you help them," Finch said. "Neither will the gray caps."
"Maybe they won't have a choice. Maybe this time we will just take it."
Saw it now. In the chaos of conflict between gray caps and rebels and the Partials. The dogghe might hold on to the Religious Quarter. If they were lucky. If others weren't.
"I won't answer any more of your questions," he said. "You already know the answers, I think."
He sat up. Took her in while he still could. A beautiful but tiredlooking woman in her early thirties. Hair messy, face long and pinched from stress.
"Did your father ever recover?" he asked.
"What?" The question, after all the others, seemed to take her by surprise.
"From his trauma. Did he recover?"
She looked down, away from him. "Yes, he did." Was that a tremor in her voice? "He's passed on now, but he had as good a life as anyone."
He reached out, touched her shoulder. Her skin warm. Like he remembered it.
She clasped his hand. Eyes bright as she met his gaze. "Clean yourself up. Find some place safe to be, Finch. The next time I see you, I might be forcing answers from you. And I really wouldn't like that."
He nodded.
A flash of those green eyes. She put his gun down on the table. "I'm leaving it for you, but I'm taking this." Held up the metal strip Shriek had used. Unmistakable that it, ultimately, was what she'd come for.
"You shouldn't." But beyond caring. "It'll do more harm than good." To me.
"John, I don't think you really know the difference." Then she was walking out the door, down the hallway. Gone for good.
Finch stared after her for a moment. Then hobbled to the window. Looked out.
The towers were complete. They shone with green fire in the light. Between them, impossible scenes flashed so fast he caught only glimpses. A vast blue dome like an observatory. Replaced by a mountain topped by a tower. A city of gleaming buildings taller than any he'd ever seen. A forest of vine-like trees. A roiling sea over which egg-shaped balloons floated, trailing lines of shimmering light. And on it went. Almost beyond comprehension.
At some point soon, the scenes would stop changing. They would settle in on one scene. They would settle in on the gray caps' home.
Would he know by then if he'd done the right thing?
5
he way home. So heavy, so light, he almost didn't feel the pavement. Wearing one shoe. Only a sock over his other foot because it hurt too much. Somehow easier to hold the sword. The gun shoved into his belt. Head felt like a balloon stuffed with rags. Ached all over, with eruptions of pain in the places most sorely used by the Partial.
Through a haze, saw:
Partials gathered in a black squadron, marching toward a barricade manned in part by a truck weighted down by a cannon that had to be a century old at least. Two anemic mules whose ribs stuck out stood placidly behind the barricade. Along with the pale, uncertain faces of the defenders.
Gray caps approaching, at their back a huge cloud of spores, gliding and shifting, a thousand shades of green. Of red. Of blue. Suffocating the street. A last few stragglers running out before them, anonymous in their gas masks.
The huge drug mushrooms transformed. Hoods drawn down to the ground, the red surface once so soft become hard as brick. Wavering lines of green energy sparked from their minaret-like tops. Shot out toward the green towers. Gray caps stood watch from tiny circles of windows. Across the sides of each stem, unending repetitions of the symbol Shriek had carried with him on the scrap of paper. Over and over again in a kind of madness. No flow of food or drugs now. No pretense of even caring. Just a sense of waiting. For what?
He took a side street, then an alley. Crept through a courtyard and walked into an apartment complex as a shortcut. Kept his face turned to the wall. If someone wanted to kill him, they could.
Finally reached the hotel steps. The madman lay sprawled there. Someone had slit his throat. His arms were thrown out to either side as if in welcome. Just another body. Already a sly fringe of tiny greenand-white mushrooms had sprouted up through his pant legs, his shirt, his face. In another day, he'd be a f**king flower bed.
Next to the madman's left hand Finch saw a little round carving. He picked it up. Crudely drawn, but unmistakably Stark's face, with its sharp features. The deep-set eyes.
Rathven telling him,"You have to choose a side, Finch. Eventually you have to choose a side, even if you pretend to be neutral. Even if you think giving out information is like selling smokes or food packets."
Through his fuzziness, a terrible thought.
Dropped the carving. Hobbled fast up the steps.