The gray caps, the files revealed, had spent at least as much time trying to track her down as preparing for the Rising. But they could not locate her. They flooded tunnels. Sent spore armies rushing down remote streets. Blocked off passageways. Still, they couldn’t find her. Which made Finch, even conflicted, admire her, reading the files. Understanding the cost of being constantly on the move. Constantly in flux.

Sometimes that cost came through over the radio. A mad howling. As if the city were a creature gone insane. Capturing the sounds of warfare. Of demolition. Of fighting with the gray caps or the Partials.

But for the last several months Finch knows there have been no radio broadcasts from the Lady in Blue. From Alessandra Lewden. Little or no organized rebel activity anywhere in the city. Meanwhile, the towers continue to rise in the bay. People grow more and more used to their situation. Becoming cynical about the Lady in Blue. Distrust reborn between former Hoegbottons and former Frankwrithes. Even Wyte’s noticed it.

The fact is she hasn’t saved Wyte, him, or anyone from six years of living under gray cap rule.

5

Home is an apartment in a twelve-story run-down hotel. He’d moved there six years ago, three months after the Rising, two years after his father’s death. In its day, during the worst of the fighting between House Hoegbotton and House Frankwrithe, it had become famous as a kind of sanctuary. Far enough away from the battles to be neutral. Near enough to the merchant quarter to be profitable. Everybody trying to make money on the war.

But those days are gone. Outside the hotel, a statue of a dead composer stands guard beyond the crumbling steps that lead to the gaping front door. Powder-burned, nose shot off, one raised arm just a stone stump. A raving madman lives near the statue. Finch has no idea how he survives the gray caps’ patrols at night.

Inside, the lobby is dank and dim and molding. An old crooked photograph on the wall captures a few signs of the hotel’s lost luxury in a scene from some long-ago party. A strain of pale green lichen has infiltrated the faded burgundy of the carpet. Gives the floor a spongy feel and sheds a disconcerting, ghostly glow that leads Finch through the entrance after dark.

Elsewhere, bulbs burn fierce or dull, like mismatched cousins. Always, a ghastly yellow haze. A curling faded wallpaper that sometimes isn’t. Smells that change by the hour, dictated by the currents in the basement. Walls knocked out. Old furniture piled high. A courtyard through the middle of the hotel. The basement is awash in water, an intrusion from the River Moth.