Sam Marlowe's Arc

Chapter 9 of 14

Sam didn't move. The three-eyed figure below stayed still. Then it raised one white hand, six fingers spread, and pointed at the door. An invitation, or a command. Sam picked up the wooden model. He looked at Dolly. "Stay up here," he said. "No." She stood. "You've run from everyone in this city. You're not running from this alone." She took the flashlight and went down the stairs ahead of him. They met the Mayor on the burned ground floor. Up close he was taller than the doorframe. His white suit caught the neon glow from above. Both mouths were shut. All three eyes fixed on the model under Sam's arm. "You made this city," Sam said. "So the drunk was right. The old bones do shake loose." "I did not come for the carving," the Mayor said. "Someone left the walls. That has never happened. You touched every corner of my city chasing that wood. You saw the seams. Tell me where a person could slip out." Sam's mouth went dry. He thought of the cannery, the harbor, the fog. Places that felt too thin, too made. He hadn't known why. Now he did. A new figure stepped in from the street behind the Mayor. Silver scales, a feathered crest, a black cutaway coat. Aldric Quillscale, the administrator who had bound Sam, McSnork, and the mayor's office to silence over the harbor graft. He moved fast for a man his size. "Sir," Quillscale said. "You should not be out here." "He knows the harbor," the Mayor said, not turning. Quillscale's yellow eye flicked to Sam, then to the model, then back. Sam read the flick. The administrator was afraid. Not of Sam. Of what Sam might say in front of his master. "The harbor district is my file," Quillscale said. "I will handle the gap." Sam saw the play. Quillscale wanted him quiet. The fake waste contracts. The dead men no one solved. All of it sat in the same harbor where the walls had worn thin. Whatever left the city had left through the rot Quillscale was hiding. Sam could stay silent and keep his deal. Or he could trade the one thing he had left. He held out the wooden model. "You want the seam," he told the Mayor. "It's in the harbor. Same place your administrator's been burying bodies and paying a company that isn't real. The wall's thin there because nobody minded it. Take the carving. It came from that ground. It'll lead you straight to the hole." The Mayor took the model in six-fingered hands. Both mouths opened, then closed. "Then I will look at the harbor," the Mayor said. He turned and walked into the street. Quillscale stared at Sam. "You just broke our silence." "I know," Sam said. The relic was gone. And now the man who built the world was walking toward the one secret that could bury them all.