I’m trusting you, Micky. You look after her, her, her, her …

Her. Sylvie, maned in silver grey. Her face—

Her face, subtly changed by the woman who had crept out and stolen it from her. Her voice, subtly modulated …

I’ve got no way of knowing if or when Sylvie Oshima’s coming back.

Nadia, I’m trying to fucking help.

She wonders who the fuck Micky Serendipity really is, and whether he’s safe to be around. Whether he’ll fuck her over at the soonest opportunity.

She wonders where the fuck you’re going with the souls of so many dead priests.

Todor Murakami’s lean, attentive features on the ferry. Pipe smoke, whipped away in the wind.

So what’s this scam about? Thought you were hanging out with Radul Segesvar these days. Hometown nostalgia and cheap organised crime. Why you going up north again?

It’s time to get back on track. Back to the job in hand.

The job in hand. Yeah, that’ll solve all your problems, Micky.

Stop fucking calling me that.

And screams. And gaping holes cut in spines at neck height. And the weight of cortical stacks in my palm, still slick with clinging gore. And the hollow that would never be filled.

Sarah.

The job in hand.

I’m trying to fucking help.

… hurry …

I’m trusting you …

I’m trying to fucking …

… hurry …

I’m TRYING—

“Coastline.” Suzi Petkovski’s voice rinsed through the cabin speaker, laconic and firm enough to grab at. “Be hitting Sourcetown in fifteen.”

I dumped my brooding and looked left where the Kossuth coast was slicing back towards us. It raised as a dark bumpy line on the otherwise featureless horizon, then seemed to leap in and resolve as a procession of low hills and the occasional flash of white dunes beyond and between. The backside of Vchira, the drowned nubs of an ancient mountain range worn down geological ages past to a seven-hundred-kilometre curve of marsh fringed tidal barrier on one side and the same stretch of crystalline white sand on the other.

Some day, one of Sourcetown’s long-term inhabitants had informed me nearly half a century ago, the sea’s going to break through all along here. Break through and pour into the Weed Expanse like an invading army breaching a long disputed frontier. Wear down the last remaining bastions and wreck the beach. Some Day, man, the Sourcetowner repeated slowly, and capitalised the phrase and grinned at me with what I’d already come to recognise as typical surfer detachment, Some Day, but Not Yet. And until Yet, you just got to keep looking out to sea, man. Just keep looking out there, don’t look behind you, don’t worry what’s keeping it all in place.

Some Day, but Not Yet. Just look out to sea.