Sitting in his mother’s bedroom with the diary open before him, the young Robert Hoegbotton had felt a chill across the back of his neck. What had happened to Samuel Hoegbotton? He spent many summer afternoons in the attic, surrounded by antiquities, speculating on the subject. He combed through old letters Samuel had sent home before his disappearance. He visited the family archive. He wrote to relatives in other cities. His mother disapproved of such inquiries; his grandmother just smiled and said sadly, “I’ve often wondered myself.” He could not talk to his father about it; that cold and distant figure was rarely home.

His sister also found the mystery intriguing. They would act out scenarios with the house as the backdrop. They would ask the maids questions to fill gaps in their knowledge and thus uncover the meaning of words like “gray cap” and “Cappan.” His grandmother had even given them an old sketch that showed the apartment’s living room—Samuel Hoegbotton surrounded by smiling relatives on a visit. But for his sister it was just relief of a temporary boredom and he was soon so busy learning the family business that the mystery faded from his thoughts.

When he reached the age of majority, he decided to leave Morrow and travel to Ambergris. No Hoegbotton had set foot in Ambergris for ninety years and it was precisely for this reason that he chose the city, or so he told himself. In Morrow, under the predatory eye of Richard, he had felt as if none of his plans would ever be successful. In Ambergris, he had started out poor but independent, operating a sidewalk stall that sold fruit and broadsheets. At odd times—at an auction, looking at jewelry that reminded him of something his mother might wear; sneaking around Ungdom’s store examining all that merchandise, so much richer than what he could acquire at the time—thoughts of the Silence wormed their way into his head.

The day after he signed the lease on his own store, Hoegbotton visited Sam- uel’s apartment. He had the address from some of the man’s letters. The building lay in a warren of derelict structures that rose from the side of the valley to the east of the Merchant Quarter. It took Hoegbotton an hour to find it, the carriage ride followed by progress on foot. He knew he was close when he had to climb over a wooden fence with a sign on it that read OFF LIMITS BY ORDER OF THE CAPPAN. The sky was overcast, the sunlight weak yet bright, and he walked through the tenements feeling ethereal, dislocated. Here and there, he found walls where bones had been mixed with the mortar and he knew by these signs that such places had been turned into graveyards.