“But it was just lying there until a bunch of Canadian archaeologists—”

“That’s where they kept  it. That stuff wasn’t lost. The earth under Ul Qoma and Besźel’s their store room. It’s all Orciny’s. It was all theirs, and we were just… I think she was telling them where we were digging, what we were finding.”

“She was stealing for them.”

“We  were stealing from  them … She never breached, you know.”

“What? I thought all of you—”

“You mean … like games? Not Mahalia. She couldn’t. Too much to lose. Too likely someone was watching, she said. She never  breached, not even in one of those ways that you can’t tell, standing there, you know? She wouldn’t give Breach a chance to take her.” She shivered again. I squatted down and looked around. “Aikam,” she said in Illitan. “Can you get us something to drink?” He did not want to leave the room, but he could see she was not afraid of me anymore.

“What she did do,” she said, “was go to these places where they’d leave her letters. The dissensi  are entrances to Orciny. She was so close to being part of it. She thought. At first.” I waited, and at last she continued. “I kept asking her what was up. Something was really wrong, in the last couple of weeks. She stopped going to the dig, meetings, everything.”

“I heard.”

“‘What is it?’ I kept saying, and at first she was like, ‘Nothing,’ but in the end she told me she was scared. ‘Something’s wrong,’ she said. She’d been frustrated I think because Orciny wouldn’t let her in, and she’d been going mad with work. She was studying harder than I’d ever seen. I asked her what it was. She just kept saying she was scared. She said she’d been going over and over her notes, and that she was figuring stuff out. Bad stuff. She said we could be thieves without even knowing.”

Aikam came back. He carried for me and for Yolanda warm cans of Qora-Oranja.

“I think she’d done something to make Orciny angry . She knew she was in trouble, and Bowden too. She said so just before she—”

“Why would they kill him?” I said. “He doesn’t even believe in Orciny any more.”

“Oh, God, of course he knows they’re real. Of course he does. He’s denied it for years because he needs work, but have you read his book? They’re going after everyone who knows about them. Mahalia told me he was in trouble. Just before she disappeared. He knew too much, and I do too. And now you do too.”

“What are you intending to do?”

“Stay here. Hide. Get out.”

“How’s that going?” I said. She looked at me in misery. “Your boy did his best. He was asking me how a criminal might get out of the city.” She even smiled. “Let me help you.”

“You can’t. They’re everywhere.”

“You don’t know that.”

“How can you keep me safe? They’re going to get you now too.”

Every few seconds there came the sounds of someone ascending outside the apartment, shouts and the noise of a handheld MP3 player, rap or Ul Qoman techno played loud enough to be insolent. Such everyday noises could be camouflage. Corwi was a city away. Listening now it seemed that every few noises paused by the door to the apartment.

“We don’t know what the truth is,” I said. I had intended to say more, but realising that I was not sure whom I was trying to convince of what, I hesitated, and she interrupted me.

“Mahalia did. What are you doing?” I had taken out my phone. I held it up as if surrendering, both hands.

“Don’t panic,” I said. “I was just thinking … we need to work out what we’re going to do. There are people who might be able to help us—”

“Stop,” she said. Aikam looked as if he might come for me again. I got ready to sidestep but waved the phone so she could see it was not on.

“There’s an option you never pursued,” I said. “You could go outside, cross the road a little bit down the way there, and walk into YahudStrász. It’s in Besźel.” She looked at me as though I was crazy. “Stand there, wave your hands. You could breach.” Her eyes got wider.

Another loud man ran upstairs outside, and we three waited. “Did you ever think it was worth a try? Who can touch Breach?  If Orciny’s out to get you …” Yolanda was staring at the boxes of her books, her boxed-up self. “Maybe you’d be safer, even.”

“Mahalia said they were enemies,” she said. She sounded far away. “She once said the whole history of Besźel and Ul Qoma was the history of the war between Orciny and Breach. Besźel and Ul Qoma were set up like chess moves, in that war. They might do anything to me.”

“Come on,” I interrupted. “You know most foreigners who breach are just ejected—” But she interrupted back.

“Even if I  knew what they’d do, which neither of us do, think about it. A secret for like more than a thousand years, in between Ul Qoma and Besźel, watching us all the time, whether we know it or not. With its own agenda. You think I’d be safer if Breach had me? In the Breach?  I’m not Mahalia. I’m not sure Orciny and the Breach are enemies at all.” She looked at me then and I did not disdain her. “Maybe they work together. Or maybe when you invoke  you’ve been handing power to Orciny for centuries, while you all sit there telling each other it’s a fairy tale. I think Orciny is the name Breach calls itself.”

Chapter Twenty

FIRST SHE HAD NOT WANTED ME TO ENTER; then Yolanda did not want me to leave. “They’ll see you! They’ll find you. They’ll take you and then they’ll come for me.”

“I can’t stay here.”

“They’ll get you.”

“I can’t stay here.”

She watched me walk the width of the room, to the window and back to the door.

“Don’t—you can’t make a phone call from here—”

“You have to stop panicking.” But I stopped myself, because I was not sure that she was wrong to do so. “Aikam, are there other ways out of this building?”

“Not the way we came in?” He looked intently and emptily a moment. “Some of the apartments downstairs are empty, and maybe you could go through them …”

“Okay.” It had begun to rain, fingertipping against the obscured windows. Judging by the halfhearted darkening of the white windows, it was only just overcast. Washed out of colour, perhaps. Still it felt safer to escape than if it had been clear or coldly sunny, as it had that morning. I paced the room.

“You’re alone in Ul Qoma,” Yolanda whispered. “What can you do?” I looked at her at last.

“Do you trust me?” I said.

“No.”

“Too bad. You’ve no choice. I’m going to get you out. I’m not in my element here, but…”

“What do you want to do?”

“I’m going to get you out of here, back to home ground, back to where I can make things happen. I’m going to get you to Besźel.”

She protested. She had never been to Besźel. Both cities were controlled by Orciny, both were overlooked by Breach. I interrupted her.

“What else are you going to do? Besźel’s my city. I can’t negotiate the system here. I have no contacts. I don’t know my way around. But I can get you out from Besźel, and you can help me.”

“You can’t—”

“Yolanda, shut up. Aikam, don’t move another step.” No time for this immobility. She was right, I could promise her nothing but an attempt. “I can get you out, but not from here. One more day. Wait here. Aikam, your job’s finished. You don’t work at Bol Ye’an any more. Your job’s to stay here and look after Yolanda.” He would provide little protection, but his continued interventions at Bol Ye’an would eventually attract other people’s attention than my own. “I will be back. You understand? And I’ll get you out.”

She had food for some days, a diet of tins. This little living room/bedroom, another, smaller, filled with only damp, the kitchen with its electricity and gas supplies disconnected. The bathroom was not good but it would not kill them another day or two: from some standpipe Aikam had brought buckets that stood ready to flush. The many air fresheners he had bought made a stink different than it would otherwise have been.