A giving up. A giving in. That’s what Shriek was offering him. It tempted him. He had nothing left. Nothing of worth. No master plan. No better life waiting. Just his own death. Too much for him, and too little, standing there on the battlements of a place re-created by a passenger in his brain.

Finch searched the face of the dead man for honesty or deceit. Saw himself reflected back.

“How do we start?” he asked.

“For you, it’s easy,” Shriek said. “A mental trick. Just think back to the time when you went from being Crossley to being Finch. Imagine that instant as exactly as you can. Every detail you can remember. While you concentrate on that, I will enter through the ‘gap’ created. That’s as simply as I can put it … The rest you won’t feel.”

A hopeful expression on Shriek’s face.

The thought that maybe this was happening in the seconds before his death. That the last week had taken place in a single moment in his head. That none of it was real. Even the parts that seemed real. Those least of all.

Finch shuddered. Closed his eyes.

“Let’s get this over with.”

The creation of John Finch happened at night. Cold for once. The flares and tracers of battle over the darkened skyline. The roar of the tanks. The gunfire of attacking infantry. A percussive music playing all over southeast Ambergris. Near the Religious Quarter. Heavy losses for the Hoegbotton side. A series of tactical mistakes.

They stood on the street behind the clinic, he and his father. Next to a burning trashcan. His father was a hunched figure who kept coughing up blood. By then his father had been very sick.

John Crossley had a folder full of documents for his son. James had a suitcase stuffed with identity cards, certificates, incriminating photographs. Had checked John Crossley into the clinic under the name “Stephen Mormeck.” Someone they’d picked out of the phone book.

A clinic in Frankwrithe territory. Because of the rash of refugees. Because F&L had less reason to hate John Crossley.

“Is there anyone you want me to contact?” he’d asked his father.

A shake of the head, the great mane of gray hair. “No, no one. Make a clean break. For both of us.” A gruff laugh. By then, he was self-medicating with whiskey early in the day. That night next to the trashcan, John Crossley had been drunk for two days.

But his eyes were clear. His arm steady as he handed the folder to his son. “Everything you’ll need. For John Finch. Including a way to rejoin the Hoegbotton Irregulars.”

Two years before the Rising. Six months after Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe had joined forces against the gray caps. Five months since his father had been denounced as a Kalif spy and they’d had to go on the run. The posters were everywhere. One of a row of traitors.