Dar Sardice proved the most interesting. The other names had been ways of disguising movements across checkpoints within the city. Dar Sardice had been used much earlier, during Ambergrisian-Hoegbotton campaigns against the Kalif. “Dar Sardice” had been Frankwrithe’s man keeping an eye on the progress of the war. From behind the Kalif’s supply lines. The cover? Independent merchant and businessman. With an established trade route that cut through over eight hundred miles of desert dotted with fortified towns. The whole Western Front. Against which the Ambergrisian Army had thrown itself with unparalleled ferocity. From which it had eventually retreated. “It was just too large,” his father had said once. “It was overwhelming. The wide, hot, empty spaces. The strangeness of the towns. The fact we didn’t speak the language.” Left a trail of broken, bombed equipment behind. Trucks. Tanks. Mortars.

A desert fortress. A fall from a great height. Ethan Bliss as Dar Sardice, turning up in every major theater of a desert war. Then appearing again not long after as F&L’s man in Ambergris. Popping up in the dead man’s memories. Had disappeared when cornered, after having been nailed to a wall just a few minutes before.

Was he looking at a secret that should be obvious? If so, it eluded him the more he tried to pin it down.

Beside him, the Photographer stirred. “I am going to go back inside. Do you need anything from me?”

“Just information,” Finch said, and downed some whiskey. He enjoyed the way it spread out from his throat, his stomach. Settling him as it mixed with the afterburn of the cigar.

“What kind of information?”

On a hunch, feeling like his back was exposed: “Seen anyone strange around the hotel recently?”

The Photographer replied with a kind of odd regret, as if speaking out of turn: “Yes, I have.”

Suddenly more alert: “Describe them?”

“Two of them, today. They came separately. The first I saw around noon. A tall Partial. He was on the stairs when I saw him. Coming down.” A look of disgust on the Photographer’s face.

The same Partial?

“Coming down from where?”

“I don’t know. I was on the fifth floor. He was coming down.”

Could’ve been anyone. Could’ve been here for any reason. And nothing he could do about it.

“The second?”

“He stayed outside the building. It was late afternoon. A bald man. Dangerous-looking. He talked to the madman by the statue. Didn’t like what the madman told him. Then looked up at the windows for a while. He stayed off to the side smoking a cigarette. Got impatient and walked into the lobby for a moment, came back out, and left almost right away.”