This sometimes sense of safety was in part caused by a retrenchment by both sides following the first seven or eight months of the war. House Lewden’s original probes centered on feints to the southeast and southwest, with the aim of control of H&S headquarters and the docks. But after several intense battles, F&L had been restricted to the northern third of Ambergris. They controlled part of the docks and a portion of Albumuth Boulevard, but they could not smash through to H&S headquarters. Recovering from the initial shock, H&S had found the morale and discipline to hold their ground. Thus, the “front” became relatively stable, except for some porousness due to spies, sneak attacks and, eventually, the Kalif’s mortar fire. The regularity of it became a kind of comfort. (I was never comforted. The whole conflict had troubled me from the beginning. Just trying to guess the reasons for gray cap involvement bothered me. Never before had they backed one faction over another, or even seemed to recognize the difference between factions—or, if they did understand the difference, to care. Why now should they change tactics? Also, their weapons were everywhere, but they were nowhere to be seen.)

Still, it could not go on forever. The city was in real danger of becoming less than a city, of becoming rubble and black smoke and piles of bodies—of becoming twenty different cities that only loosely formed a country called “Ambergris.”

Duncan sensed this, but could not really articulate it. (I anticipated it as a feeling deep in my ever-changing body, but could do nothing about it.)

“We’re near the end,” he said one evening eighteen months into the war, as we sat in the smoldering remains of the Café of the Ruby-Throated Calf. It was more or less neutral ground now that most of it had been destroyed by mortars. At least we could count on no one trying to kill us as we sat there, protected by overturned tables and a few strategically placed shrubs. The service was terrible, but, then, all the waiters were dead.

Duncan was pale but whole, face dark with dirt, a flurry of cuts rubbed red. We were drinking a couple of bottles of Smashing Todd’s Wartime Stout, which we had found—miraculously whole under a fallen, splintered door—in an abandoned store.

“Near the end?” I prompted.

“Yes,” he said, and took a long pull on his beer. “We’re near the end. Something has to give. Someone has to blink. To change. It can’t go on this way. It can’t.”

“It’s done a fine job of going on this way for a while now, Duncan,” I reminded him. I took a sip of ale. It was warm, almost hot, but the bite of it still tasted good.

“Maybe I mean I can’t go on this way,” he said.

“You mean, being paid in eggs, cauliflower, and milk?” I said.

He laughed, but I knew he was thinking about Mary, always Mary.