“I always told the truth. You heard  me, Inspector. I told you many times. There’s no such place as Orciny.”

“Did you flatter her? Did you tell her she was the only one you could admit the truth to?”

“Borlú, I can kill you where you stand and, do you realise, no one will even know where we are. If you were in one place or the other they might come for me, but you’renot . The thing is, and I know it wouldn’t work this way and so do you but that’s because no one  in this place, and that includes Breach, obeys the rules, their own rules, and if they did it would  work this way, the thing is that if you were to be killed by someone who no one was sure which city they were in and they weren’t sure where you were either, your body would have to lie there, rotting, forever. People would have to step over you. Because no one breached. Neither Besźel nor Ul Qoma could risk clearing you up. You’d lie there stinking up both cities until you were just a stain. I am going, Borlú. You think Besźel will come for you if I shoot you? Ul Qoma?” Corwi and Dhatt must have heard him, even if they made to unhear. Bowden looked only at me and did not move.

“My, well, Breach, my partner, was right,” I said. “Even if Buric could have thought this up, he didn’t have the expertise or the patience to put it together so it would have fooled Mahalia. She was smart. That took someone who knew the archives and the secrets and the Orciny rumours not just a bit but totally. Completely. You told the truth, like you say: there’s no such place as Orciny. You said it again and again. That was the point, wasn’t it?

“It wasn’t Buric’s idea, was it? After that conference where she made such a nuisance of herself? It certainly wasn’t Sear and Core—they would have hired someone to smuggle more efficiently, a little nickel-and-dime operation like that, they just went along with an opportunity that was presented. Sure you needed Buric’s resources to make it work, and he wasn’t going to turn down a chance to steal from Ul Qoma, pimp Besźel out—how much investment was tied to this?—and  make a mint for himself. But it was your idea, and it was never about the money.

“It was because you missed Orciny. A way to have it both ways. Yes, sure you were wrong about Orciny, but you could make it so you were right, too.”

Choice artefacts had been excavated, the details of which only the archaeologists could know—or those who had left them there, as poor Yolanda had thought. Supposed-Orciny sent their supposed-agent sudden instructions, not to be delayed, no time to think or rethink—only, quickly, liberate, hand over.

“You told Mahalia she was the only one you’d tell the truth. That when you turned your back on your book, that was just you playing politics? Or did you tell her it was cowardice? That would be pretty winning. I bet you did that.” I approached him. His expression shifted. “‘It’s my shame, Mahalia, the pressure was too much. You’re braver than me, keep on; you’re so close, you’ll find it…’ Your shit messed up your whole career, and you can’t have that time back. So the next best thing, make it have been true all along. I’m sure the money was nice—can’t tell me they didn’t pay—and Buric had his reasons and Sear and Core had theirs, and the nats’ll do for anyone with a way with words and a buck. But it was Orciny  that was the point for you, right?

“But Mahalia figured out that it was nonsense, Doctor Bowden.”

How much more perfect that unhistory would be, second time around, when he could construct the evidence not only from fragments in archives, not from the cross-reference of misunderstood documents, but could add to those planted sources, suggest partisan texts, even create messages—to himself, too, for her benefit and later for ours, that all the while he could dismiss as the nothings they were—from the nonplace itself. But still she worked out the truth.

“That must have been unpleasant for you,” I said.

His eyes were unhitched from wherever we were. “It got… That’s why.” She told him her deliveries—so all secret payments—would end. That was not why his rage.

“Did she think you were fooled too? Or did she realise you were behind it?” It was amazing that such a detail should almost be epiphenomenal. “I think she didn’t know. It wasn’t her character to taunt you. I think she thought she was protecting  you. I think she arranged to meet you, to protect you. To tell you that you’d both been duped by someone. That you were both in danger.”

The rage of that attack. The task, that post-facto vindication of a dead project, destroyed. No point scoring, no competition. Just the pure fact that Mahalia had, without even knowing it, outsmarted him, realised that his invention was invention, despite his attempts to seal up the creation, to watertight it. She crushed him without guile or bile. The evidence destroyed his conception again, the improved version, Orciny 2.0, as it had the last time, when he had actually believed it. Mahalia died because she proved to Bowden that he had been a fool to believe the folktale he created.

“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?”