To Finch’s right, on the north shore: the Hoegbotton & Frankwrithe Zone. Huge tendrils of reddish-orange fungus vein into the rocks lining the water. A green haze obscures any view of what might be left on the north shore. Six years ago, the HFZ had just been northern Ambergris: wild, yes, but not infected. Then, under sustained attack by the gray caps, the rebel army had retreated there. So much heavy armor, munitions, and ordnance had gone in, along with twenty thousand soldiers, that it is hard for Finch to believe all of it could just vanish or molder. Yet, apparently, it had. They’d gone in and the gray caps had created the Zone around them. Only the rebel commander they called the Lady in Blue and some of her soldiers had escaped the trap.

Once, the HFZ had grown in size every day. Now, it has stopped, covers about ten square miles. Almost every citizen can see it. For all the good that did. Will the rebels return? is the question everyone asks, even now. When the wind is strange—gusting this way and that without purpose—great glittering particles from the north drift orange and purple and blue across the bay into Ambergris. Even the gray caps don’t enter the HFZ except by proxy. Content to let the remnants of the rebels wander through a toxic fungal stew, goes the theory. Almost like another camp, without fences or guards.

Except, no one comes out of the HFZ.

Beyond the towers, beyond the bay, the far shore of the River Moth. Distant. Unattainable. Beyond that, although Finch can’t see it, just feels it: the easternmost edge of the Kalif’s empire, the Stockton Commonwealth to the south, the Morrow Protectorate to the north. Between them and Finch: security zones. Blockades. Set up by the surrounding countries. All three as determined as the gray caps that no one gets out of Ambergris. Even as they send in their spies to steal the city’s secrets.

Finch turns away from the window. It leaves him sad and cold and frightened. The towers especially. What will happen when the gray caps have finished them?

A view like that could drive a person mad.

3

“When the time comes, right, Finch?”

Back at the station, which used to be Hoegbotton & Sons’ headquarters. High ceilings. Hints of gold leaf and mosaic. Dull light from tiny round windows set in rows across both side walls. A tortured light that never gave any hint of the weather outside. Sometimes in the early morning and late afternoon they had to use old lanterns. The chandeliers had been ripped out long ago.