“What is that thing? Did she …?” But she could not have got that out, and had she delivered it it would not be with him.
“I’ve had this for years,” he said. “This I found myself. When I was first digging. Security wasn’t always like now.”
“Where did you meet her? A bullshit dissensus? Some old empty bollocks building you told her was where Orciny did their magic?” It did not matter. The murder site would just be some empty place.
“… Would you believe me if I told you I really don’t remember the actual moment?” he said carefully.
“Yes.”
“Just this constant, this …” Reasoning, that broke his creation apart. He might have shown her the artefact as if it were evidence. It’s not Orciny! she perhaps said. We have to think! Who might want this stuff? The fury at that.
“You broke it.”
“Not irreparably. It’s tough. The artefacts are tough.” Despite being used to beat her to death.
“It was a good idea to take her through the checkpoint.”
“When I called him Buric wasn’t happy sending the driver, but he understood. It’s never been militsya or policzai that are the problem. We couldn’t let Breach notice us.”
“But your maps are out of date. I saw it on your desk, that time. All that junk you or Yorj picked up—was that from where you killed her?—was useless.”
“When did they build that skate park?” For a moment he managed to make it sound as if he was genuinely humourous about it. “That was supposed to be direct to the estuary.” Where the old iron would pull her down.
“Didn’t Yorjavic know his way around? It’s his city. Some soldier.”
“He never had reason to go to Pocost. I hadn’t been over since the conference. I bought that map I gave him years ago, and it was right last time I was there.”
“But goddamn urban renewal, right? There he was, van all loaded up, and there’s ramps and half-pipes between him and the water, and light’s coming. When that went wrong, that was when Buric and you … fell out.”
“Not really. We had words, but we thought it had blown over. No, what got him troubled was when you came to Ul Qoma,” he said. “That was when he realised there was trouble.”
“So … in a way I owe you an apology …” He tried to shrug. Even that motion was urbanly undecidable. He kept swallowing but his tics gave away nothing about where he was.
“If you like,” he said. “That’s when he set his True Citizens on hunt. Even tried to get you blaming Qoma First, with that bomb. And I think he thought I believed it, too.” Bowden looked disgusted. “He must’ve heard about the time it happened before.”
“For real. All those notes you wrote in Precursor, threatening yourself to get us off you. Fake burglaries. Added to your Orciny.” How he looked at me, I stopped myself saying Your bullshit . “What about Yolanda?”
“I’m … really sorry about her. Buric must have thought she and I were … that Mahalia or I’d told her something.”
“You hadn’t, though. Nor did Mahalia—she protected her from all that. In fact Yolanda was the only one who believed in Orciny all the way along. She was your biggest fan. Her and Aikam.” He stared, his face cold. He knew that neither of them were the smartest. I did not say anything for a minute.
“Christ you’re a liar, Bowden,” I said. “Even now, Jesus. Do you think I don’t know it was you who told Buric Yolanda’d be there?” I spoke and I could hear his shaking breath. “You sent them there in case of what she knew. Which as I say was nothing. You had her killed for nothing. But why did you come? You knew they’d try to kill you too.” We faced each other for a long silence.
“… You needed to be sure, didn’t you?” I said. “And so did they.”
They wouldn’t send out Yorjavic and organise that extraordinary cross-border assassination for Yolanda alone. They did not even know for sure what if anything she knew. Bowden, though: they knew what he knew. Everything.
They thought I believed it too , he had said. “You told them she’d be there, and that you were coming too because Qoma First were trying to kill you. Did they really think you’d believed it? … But they could check, couldn’t they?” I answered myself. “By if you turned up. You had to be there, or they’d know they were being played. If Yorjavic hadn’t seen you he’d have known you were planning something. He had to have both targets there.” Bowden’s strange gait and manner at the hall. “So you had to turn up and try and keep someone in his way …” I stopped. “Were there three targets?” I said. I was the reason it had gone wrong, after all. I shook my head.
“You knew they’d try to kill you, but it was worth the risk to get rid of her. Camouflage.” Who would suspect him of complicity, after Orciny tried to kill him?
He had a slowly souring face. “Where is Buric?”
“Dead.”
“Good. Good …”
I stepped towards him. He pointed the artefact at me like some stubby Bronze Age wand.
“What do you care?” I said. “What are you going to do? How long have you lived in the cities? Now what?
“It’s over. Orciny’s rubble.” Another step, he still aiming at me, mouth-breathing and eyes wide. “You’ve got one option. You’ve been to Besźel. You’ve lived in Ul Qoma. There’s one place left. Come on. You going to live anonymous in Istanbul? In Sebastopol? Make it to Paris? You think that’s going to be enough?
“Orciny is bullshit. Do you want to see what’s really in between?”
A second held. He hesitated long enough for some appearance.
Nasty broken man. The only thing more despicable than what he had done was the half-hidden eagerness with which he now took me up on my offer. It was not bravery on his part to come with me. He held out that heavy weapon thing to me and I took it. It rattled. The bulb full of gears, the old clockworks that had cut Mahalia’s head when the metal burst.
He sagged, with some moan: apology, plea, relief. I was not listening and don’t remember. I did not arrest him—I was not policzai , not then, and Breach do not arrest—but I had him, and exhaled, because it was over.
BOWDEN HAD STILL NOT COMMITTED to where he was. I said, “Which city are you in?” Dhatt and Corwi were close, ready, and whichever shared a locus with him would come forward when he said.
“Either,” he said.
So I grabbed him by the scruff, turned him, marched him away. Under the authority I’d been granted, I dragged Breach with me, enveloped him in it, pulled him out of either town into neither, into the Breach. Corwi and Dhatt watched me take him out of either of their reaches. I nodded thanks to them across their borders. They would not look at each other, but both nodded to me.
It occurred as I led Bowden shuffling with me that the breach I had been empowered to pursue, that I was still investigating and of which he was evidence, was still my own.
Coda
Breach
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I DID NOT SEE THAT MACHINE AGAIN. It was funnelled into the bureaucracy of Breach. I never saw whatever it was it could do, whatever Sear and Core wanted, or if it could do anything.
Ul Qoma in the aftermath of Riot Night was buoyed up with tension. The militsya , even after the remaining unifs had been cleared out or arrested, or hidden their patches and disappeared, kept up high-profile, intrusive policing. Civil libertarians complained. Ul Qoma’s government announced a new campaign, Vigilant Neighbours, neighbourliness referring both to the people next door (what were they doing?) and to the connected city (see how important borders are?).