Turned to the back. Found the author’s photo staring out at him. A confusion overtook him that snuffed out rational thought.

The man could’ve been forty-five or fifty, with dark brown hair, dark eyebrows, and a beard that appeared to be made from tendrils of fungus.

“Fuck.”

The man laughed again. Blindingly, unbelievably bright, a light like the sun shot through the window. The night sky torn apart by it.

The photo was ancient. Stained. Falling apart. But it didn’t lie. The face in the back of the book matched the face of the dead man in the apartment.

Light-headed. Cold. He sat back in the chair, the books in his lap. Cinsorium closed so he didn’t have to look at the photo. Never lost.

“When did he live there? Show me the entry.”

Rathven reached down to get the list. “It’s already folded right to it.” Handed it to him.

SHRIEK, DUNCAN, OCCUPANCY 17 MONTHS, 5 DAYS, 15 HOURS, 4 MINUTES, 56 SECONDS—WRITER AND HISTORIAN; LEFT SUDDENLY, DISAPPEARED AND PRESUMED DEAD.

“That’s impossible,” Finch said, letting the list slither out of his hands to the floor. “That’s impossible.”

Felt exposed. Vulnerable like never before. The semiautomatic at his side was no protection at all. Stark, lips drawn back in a leer. Bosun and his psychotic carvings. Bliss as a young F&L agent staggering across the Kalif’s desert. A dead man talking to him, flanked by a cat and a lizard.

Rathven nodded. “It’s impossible. But it’s him.”

The books felt too heavy in his lap. “Or his twin. Or his great-great-grandson.”

“Do you really believe that, Finch?” Rathven asked.

“No.”

No, he really didn’t. Not in his gut.

Suddenly, the double murder had a sense of scale that expanded in his mind like Heretic’s list. A time line almost beyond comprehension.

How to escape this?

I am not a detective.

He understood Rathven’s look now.

Haunted.

Being haunted had started for his father during the war against the Kalif’s empire, in the engineering arm of the Hoegbotton army. Something had gotten into his lungs during that time. The doctors at the clinic, toward the end, still couldn’t find a solution. Something about dust. Different kinds of dust. Dust from the road to empire, thousands of years old. Dust from the retreat. Dust from trying to hold Ambergris together. Dust from betraying it.

Earlier on during the campaign there had been a feeling of optimism, a heady confidence. House Frankwrithe had been beaten back to Morrow. The gray caps seemed once again in decline, and because of the war effort Ambergris now had a powerful military.