“You had no record up until two years before the Rising, John. That made us curious … What was Duncan Shriek’s mission?”

“To stop more gray caps coming through. What were your orders with regard to me?”

“Coming through what?”

“The towers. Was it always that way? Between us?” From the beginning? An ache now that wasn’t from his wounds. A slow-motion treachery. A life concealed.

“Finch, what can you tell me about Ethan Bliss?”

“I loved you.” Let go of the words now, while she couldn’t really see his face. When it didn’t matter anymore. He had nothing to say to her about Bliss.

Her slow response: “And I liked you, John. I really did. I wouldn’t have slept with you, otherwise. No matter the mission.”

A childish bitterness, but he was too weak to keep the poison out of his mind: “You left behind some of your notes once. I had suspicions, but I never went to the gray caps with them. I never told anyone.”

A mistake. He could feel the retreat in her words: “You might never have had to find out. We could have continued having our fun. The mystery of it. You liked that very much, I know. But a normal life? Like regular people? We aren’t regular people. We were playing roles.”

“What roles?”

Her voice took on a harshness that he knew shielded her as much as him. “You were the protector. I was the exotic native girl you liked to fuck.”

“That’s not true.” Wanted no part of what she was doing.

“Isn’t it? None of you really see us, John. Only what you want to see.”

“And what do the Dogghe want? What do they want out of Ambergris?”

Anger in her voice. Desire and need, too. Just not for him. “This was our place, John. Before your people came. Before the gray caps. And maybe it will be again.”

“The rebels will never let that happen, no matter how you help them,” Finch said. “Neither will the gray caps.”

“Maybe they won’t have a choice. Maybe this time we will just take it.”

Saw it now. In the chaos of conflict between gray caps and rebels and the Partials. The Dogghe might hold on to the Religious Quarter. If they were lucky. If others weren’t.

“I won’t answer any more of your questions,” he said. “You already know the answers, I think.”

He sat up. Took her in while he still could. A beautiful but tired-looking woman in her early thirties. Hair messy, face long and pinched from stress.

“Did your father ever recover?” he asked.

“What?” The question, after all the others, seemed to take her by surprise.

“From his trauma. Did he recover?”

She looked down, away from him. “Yes, he did.” Was that a tremor in her voice? “He’s passed on now, but he had as good a life as anyone.”