I disconnected and dialled another number, also without an international code, though it was in another country. Despite the hour the phone was answered almost immediately, and the voice that answered was alert.

“Corwi,” I said.

“Boss? Jesus, boss , where are  you? What’s happening? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

“Corwi. I’ll tell you everything, but right now I can’t; right now I need you to move, and move fast, and not ask any questions and to just do exactly as I say. I need you to go to Copula Hall.”

I CHECKED MY WATCH and glanced at the sky, which seemed resistant to morning. In their respective cities Dhatt and Corwi were on their way to the border. It was Dhatt who called me first.

“I’m here, Borlú.”

“Can you see him? Have you found him? Where is he?” Silence. “Alright, Dhatt, listen.” He would not see what he was not sure was in Ul Qoma, but he would not have called me had there been no point to the contact. “Where are you?”

“I’m at the corner of Illya and Suhash.”

“Jesus, I wish I knew how to do conference calls on this thing. I’ve got call waiting figured, so stay on the damn phone.” I connected to Corwi. “Corwi? Listen.” I had to pull up by the kerb and compare the map of Ul Qoma in the car’s glove compartment with my knowledge of Besźel. Most of the Old Towns were crosshatched. “Corwi, I need you to go to ByulaStrász and … and WarszaStrász. You’ve seen the photos of Bowden, right?”

“Yeah …”

“I know, I know.” I drove. “If you’re not sure he’s in Besźel you won’t touch him. Like I said, I’m just asking you to go walking so that if anyone were  to turn out to be in Besźel, you could arrest him. And tell me where you are. Okay? Careful.”

“Of what, boss?”

It was a point. Bowden would not likely attack either Dhatt or Corwi: do so and he would declare himself a criminal, in Besźel or Ul Qoma. Attack both and he would be in Breach, which, unbelievably, he was not yet. He walked with equipoise, possibly in either city. Schrödinger’s pedestrian.

“Where are you, Dhatt?”

“Halfway up Teipei Street.” Teipei shared its space grosstopically with MirandiStrász in Besźel. I told Corwi where to go. “I won’t be long.” I was over the river now, and the number of vehicles on the street was increasing.

“Dhatt, where is he? Where are you, I mean?” He told me. Bowden had to stick to crosshatched streets. If he trod on a total area, he’d be committing to that city, and its police could take him. In the centres the most ancient streets were too narrow and twisted for the car to save me any time and I deserted it, running through the cobbles and overhanging eaves of Besźel Old Town by the intricate mosaics and vaults of Ul Qoma Old Town. “Move!” I shouted at the few people in my way. I held out the Breach sigil, the phone in my other hand.

“I’m at the end of MirandiStrász, boss.” Corwi’s voice had changed. She would not admit she could see Bowden—she did not, nor quite did she unsee him, she was between the two—but she was no longer simply following my directions. She was close to him. Perhaps he could see her.

One more time I examined Ashil’s gun, but it made little sense to me. I could not work it. I returned it to my pocket, went to where Corwi waited in Besźel, Dhatt in Ul Qoma, and to where Bowden walked no one was quite sure where.

I SAW DHATT FIRST. He was in his full uniform, his arm in a sling, his phone to his ear. I tapped him on the shoulder as I passed him. He started massively, saw it was me, and gasped. He closed his phone slowly and indicated a direction with his eyes, for the briefest moment. He stared at me with an expression I was not sure I recognised.

The glance was not necessary. Though a small number of people were braving the overlapping crosshatched street, Bowden was instantly visible. That gait. Strange, impossible. Not properly describ-able, but to anyone used to the physical vernaculars of Besźel and Ul Qoma, it was rootless and untethered, purposeful and without a country. I saw him from behind. He did not drift but strode with pathological neutrality away from the cities’ centres, ultimately to borders and the mountains and out to the rest of the continent.

In front of him a few curious locals were seeing him then with clear uncertainty half looking away, unsure where, in fact, to look. I pointed at them, each in turn, and made ago  motion, and they went. Perhaps some watched from their windows, but that was deniable. I approached Bowden under the looming of Besźel and the intricate coiled gutters of Ul Qoma.

A few metres from him, Corwi watched me. She put her phone away and drew her weapon, but still would not look directly at Bowden, just in case he was not in Besźel. Perhaps we were watched by Breach, somewhere. Bowden had not yet transgressed for their attention: they could not touch him.

I held out my hand as I walked, and I did not slow down, but Corwi gripped it and we met each other’s gaze a moment. Looking back I saw her and Dhatt, metres apart in different cities, staring at me. It was really dawn at last.

“BOWDEN.”

He turned. His face was set. Tense. He held something the shape of which I could not make out.

“Inspector Borlú. Fancy meeting you … here?” He tried to grin but it did not go well.

“Where’s here?” I said. He shrugged. “It’s really impressive, what you’re doing,” I said. He shrugged again, with a mannerism neither Besź nor Ul Qoman. It would take him a day or more of walking, but Besźel and Ul Qoma are small countries. He could do it, walk out. How expert a citizen, how consummate an urban dweller and observer, to mediate those million unnoticed mannerisms that marked out civic specificity, to refuse either aggregate of behaviours. He aimed with whatever it was he held.

“If you shoot me Breach’ll be on you.”

“If they’re watching,” he said. “I think probably you’re the only one here. There are centuries of borders to shore up, after tonight. And even if they are, it’s a moot question. What kind of crime would it be? Where are you?”

“You tried to cut her face off.” That ragged under-chin slit. “Did you … No, it was hers, it was her knife. You couldn’t though. So you slathered on her makeup instead.” He blinked, said nothing. “As if that would disguise her. What is that?” He showed the thing to me, a moment, before gripping and aiming it again. It was some verdigrised metal object, age-gnarled and ugly. It was clicking. It was patched with new metal bands.

“It broke. When I.” It did not sound as if he hesitated: his words simply stopped.

“… Jesus, that’s what you hit her with. When you realised she knew it was lies.” Grabbed and flailed, a moment’s rage. He could admit to anything now. So long as he remained in his superposition, whose law would take him? I saw that the thing’s handle, that he held, that pointed towards him, ended in an ugly sharp spike. “You grab it, smack her, she goes down.” I made stab motions. “Heat of the moment,” I said. “Right? Right?

“So did you not know how to fire it, then? Are they true, then?” I said. “All those ‘strange physics’ rumours? Is that  one of the things Sear and Core were after? Sending one of their ranking visitors sightseeing, scuffing their heels in the park for? Just another tourist?”

“I wouldn’t call it a gun,” he said. “But… well, want to see what it can do?” He wagged it.

“Not tempted to sell it on yourself?” He looked offended. “How do you know what it does?”

“I’m an archaeologist and an historian,” he said. “And I’m incredibly good at it. And now I’m going.”

“Walking out of the city?” He inclined his head. “Which city?” He wagged his weapon no .

“I didn’t mean to, you know,” he said. “She was…” That time his words dried up. He swallowed.

“She must have been angry. To realise how you’d been lying to her.”