Remembering the Spit: Through many doors … The doors smaller then larger, then smaller again. Oval. Rectangular. Square. Inlaid with glass. Gone, leaving only gaping doorway and a couple rusted hinges.

“Who knows about the portals, the doors?”

The Lady in Blue laughed. “Duncan Shriek knew. Maybe some people have always known. Ambergris’s early kings may have had the knowledge and lost it. Every schoolchild used to know. Because every scary story about the gray caps implies that they can move quickly from place to place … So far we’ve kept it from the rebel cells operating in the city. There’s too much risk of them being captured by the gray caps and made to talk. And on the other side, the gray caps seem to have kept the doors hidden from the Partials.”

“How much do the gray caps know about you?” How much does Stark know? Or Bliss?

“They know we’re out here. But we’re blessed by their concentration on the towers. It makes it easier for us to operate.”

“Tell me why I’m here,” Finch asked. The question he didn’t want answered.

The Lady in Blue’s features tightened. She looked away. “What I’m going to ask from you is dangerous. I wanted you to understand fully. So you’d know it in your gut. What’s at stake. Because the war we’re fighting right now isn’t in Ambergris. It’s out here. It’s about opening and closing doors. Holding positions around places like Zamilon. With the few soldiers we have.

“We don’t have a functional army here.” She gestured around her. “Maybe a thousand well-trained men, if that. The rest are scattered. Twenty thousand soldiers, Finch. Marked by the HFZ and scattered across the doors. Imagine. Each one flung somewhere else, like a pearl necklace shattering on a marble staircase. Only, the moment after that necklace shatters there are thousands of marble staircases and one bead on each.”

“They’re not dead?” Finch, incredulous.

The Lady in Blue shook her head. “No. Most of them are just lost, and we need to bring them back … When Duncan didn’t complete his mission, when we figured out where the bodies had turned up, where Duncan was, some wanted to cut our losses. Abandon the mission. Try to sabotage the towers. I said no. I said, I knew your father. I knew him well enough to know that, in this case, we could trust you. That you’d understand. That I’d make you understand.”

“Understand what?” Finch said. “What is there left to understand?” A fury rising in him. “Understand that when I go back I have the secret services of not one but two countries working against me? That the gray caps will kill me if I don’t solve this case? That my partner is probably dying? What is it that you want me to understand?”