“This is Scarp Lane,” Wyte said. “I was here before the Rising. Tree-lined. Nice homes. Bars and restaurants and dance halls. Little alcoves for people to put up offerings to their gods. You could indulge in your favorite vice and then walk right over and pray it away. Between the wars, it used to be a nice row of wrought-iron streetlamps and sidewalk vendors.”

Finch frowned. Used to be. Wyte didn’t usually indulge in used to be.

Nothing for it but to follow the wall.

People began to appear in doorways. Leaning against rusting lampposts. On balconies. Dark in complexion. Wore strange hats. Stared you in the eye. Challenged silently why you were here. Sometimes as many as six or seven. Loitering on a street corner. Any time Finch saw more than four people gathered in one place, he figured the gray caps had used their resources elsewhere.

“Put your badges away,” Finch said, suddenly.

Dapple had been holding his badge so anyone could see it. Protested, even after Wyte made his own disappear.

“Seen any Partials here?” Finch asked.

“No.”

“Seen anyone who would give a shit about your badge?”

Dapple didn’t respond.

“And you won’t, either,” Finch continued. “Not this close to the wall. Except for the ones following us.”

They’d be heavily armed. Probably with fungal weapons. Moving in a tight formation. If they were doing more than shadowing Wyte and Dapple, gray caps might be following, too.

From below.

The chapel at 1829 Northwest Scarp Lane pushed out from the wall. It had once been a modest two-story church topped by a silver metal dome. Now that dome was spackled and overgrown with rich burnished copper-bronze-amber mold that met a sea of mixed sea greens and blues creeping up. Little rounded windows in the dome. Perfect firing lines.

Beneath, the green-and-white paint of the rounded walls had peeled away to reveal dry dark wood beneath. In the center, a large ornate double door. To either side, hollowed-out alcoves that Finch didn’t think led anywhere. In front of all three, a facade of archways.

A horseshoe-shaped barricade of six or seven tanks with a sandbag wall curved from just beyond the side of the chapel to around the front of it. The tanks nestled together as if sleeping. Been there seven years at least. Burnt out. Crumbling. Faithful old Hoegbotton insignia still visible on the sides. Delicate snow-white mushrooms had overtaken them. Fernlike green tendrils grew from their rusted tops: all that was left of the men that had been flushed out.

Less than one hundred feet between the chapel entrance and the sandbag wall. Anyone could have manned it. At any time. Rival armies and militias had marched and retreated across that damaged ground for more than forty years.

No one in sight now, in either direction. Yet another kind of sign.