“I still can’t believe it,” he said. “That he could have done this.”
“Who?”
“Buric. Any of them.”
I leaned against a chimney and watched him. I watched the sun coming.
“No,” I said finally. “She was too smart. Young but…”
“… Yes. She worked it out in the end, but you wouldn’t think Buric could have taken her in to begin with.”
“And then the way it was done,” I said slowly. “If he had someone killed we wouldn’t find the body.” Buric was not competent enough at one end, too competent at the other, to make sense of this story. I sat still in the slowly growing light as we waited for help. “She was a specialist,” I said. “She knew all about the history. Buric was clever, but not like that.”
“What are you thinking, Tye?” There were sounds from one of the doors that jutted onto the roof. A slamming and it flew open, disgorging someone I vaguely recognised as Breach. She came towards us, speaking into her radio.
“How did they know where Yolanda would be?”
“Heard your plans,” he said. “Listening to your friend Corwi’s phone …” He offered the idea.
“Why did they shoot at Bowden?” I said. Ashil looked at me. “At Copula Hall. We thought it was Orciny, going for him, because he inadvertently knew the truth. But it wasn’t Orciny. It was …” I looked at dead Buric. “His orders. So why would he go for Bowden?”
Ashil nodded. He spoke slowly. “They thought Mahalia told Yolanda what she knew, but…”
“Ashil?” the approaching woman shouted, and Ashil nodded. He even stood, but sat down again, heavily.
“Ashil,” I said.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I just…” He closed his eyes. The woman came faster. He opened them suddenly and looked at me. “Bowden told you all along Orciny wasn’t true.”
“He did.”
“Move,” the woman said. “I’ll get you out of here.”
“What are you going to do?” I said.
“Come on Ashil,” she said. “You’re weak …”
“Yes I am.” He interrupted her himself. “But…” He coughed. He stared at me and I at him.
“We have to get him out,” I said. “We have to get Breach to …” But they were still engaged in the end of that night, and there was no time to convince anyone.
“A second,” he said to the woman. He took his sigil out of his pocket and gave it to me, along with a ring of keys. “I authorize it,” he said. She raised an eyebrow but did not argue. “I think my gun went over there. The rest of Breach is still …”
“Give me your phone. What’s its number? Now go. Get him out of here. Ashil, I’ll do it.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
THE BREACH WITH ASHIL did not ask me for help. She shooed me away.
I found his weapon. It was heavy, its silencer almost organic-looking, like something phlegmy coating the muzzle. I had to look for far too long before I could find the safety catch. I did not risk trying to release the clip to check it. I pocketed it and took the stairs.
As I descended I scrolled through the numbers in the phone’s contacts list: they were meaningless-seeming strings of letters. I hand-dialled the number I needed. On a hunch I did not prefix a country code, and I was right—the connection made. When I reached the foyer it was ringing. The security looked at me uncertainly, but I held out the Breach sigil and they backed away.
“What… who is this?”
“Dhatt, it’s me.”
“Holy Light, Borlú? What … where are you? Where’ve you been? What’s going on?”
“Dhatt, shut up and listen. I know it’s not morning yet, but I need you to wake up and I need you to help me. Listen.”
“Light, Borlú, you think I’m sleeping? We thought you were with Breach … Where are you? Do you know what’s going on?”
“I am with Breach. Listen. You’re not back at work, right?”
“Fuck no, I’m still fucked—”
“I need you to help me. Where’s Bowden? You lot took him in for questioning, right?”
“Bowden? Yeah, but we didn’t hold him. Why?”
“Where is he?”
“Holy Light, Borlú.” I could hear him sitting up, pulling himself together. “At his flat. Don’t panic; he’s watched.”
“Send them in. Hold him. Till I get there. Just do it, please. Send them now. Thanks. Call me when you have him.”
“Wait, wait. What number is this? It isn’t showing on my phone.”
I told him. In the square, I watched the lightening sky and the birds wheel over both cities. I walked back and forth, one of few but not the only person out at that hour. I watched the others who passed close, furtively. I watched them trying to retreat to their home city—Besźel, Ul Qoma, Besźel, whichever—out of the massive Breach that was at last ebbing around them.
“Borlú. He’s gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was a detail on his apartment, right? For protection, after he got shot? Well, when stuff started going mad tonight it was all hands to the pump and they got pulled off onto some other job. I don’t know the ins and outs—no one was there for a little while. I sent them back—things are calming down a bit, the militsya and your lot are trying to sort out boundaries again—but it’s still fucking lunacy on the streets. Anyway I sent them back and they’ve just tried his door. He’s not there.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Tyad, what the fuck is going on?”
“I’m getting there. Can you make a … I don’t know it in Illitan. Put out an APB on him.” I said it in English, copying the films.
“Yeah, we call it ‘send the halo.’ I’ll do it. But fuck, Tyad, you seen what chaos it is tonight. You think anyone’s going to see him?”
“We have to try. He’s trying to get out.”
“Well no problem, he’s fucked then, all the borders are closed, so wherever he turns up he’ll just get stopped. Even if he got through to Besźel earlier, your lot aren’t so incompetent they’re going to let people out.”
“Okay but still, put a halo on him?”
“Send , not put. Alright. We’re not going to find him, though.”
There were more rescue vehicles on the roads, in both cities, racing to the sites of continued crisis, here and there civilian vehicles, ostentatiously obeying their own city’s traffic laws, negotiating around each other with unusual legal care, like the few pedestrians. They must have good and defensible reasons to be out. The assiduousness of their unseeing and seeing was marked. The crosshatching is resilient.
It was predawn cold. With his skeleton key but without Ashil’s aplomb I was breaking into an Ul Qoman car when Dhatt called back. His voice was very different. He was—there was no other way to hear it—in some kind of awe.
“I was wrong. We’ve found him.”
“What? Where?”
“Copula Hall. The only militsya who weren’t sent onto the streets were the border guards. They recognised his photos. Been there for hours, they told me, must’ve headed there as soon as it all kicked off. He was inside the hall earlier, with everyone else who got trapped when it locked down. But listen.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Just waiting.”
“Have they got him?”
“Tyad, listen. They can’t. There’s a problem.”
“What’s going on?”
“They … They don’t think he’s in Ul Qoma.”
“He crossed? We need to talk to Besźel border patrol then—”
“No, listen . They can’t tell where he is.”
“… What? What? What the hell’s he doing?”
“He’s just… He’s been standing there, just outside the entrance, in full view, and then when he saw them moving towards him he started walking … but the way he’s moving … the clothes he’s wearing … they can’t tell whether he’s in Ul Qoma or Besźel.”
“Just check if he passed through before it closed.”