I’d seen the rat sniffing around Daleland’s body. I knew the packs they traveled in, who directed their flows—and so I was unsurprised at the red-haired figure lounging against the walls of the morgue. Usher seemed hardly fazed, either, bobbing out a quick nod to her as he fished for his keys. “Philippa Mar Low,” he said. “Always the quickest to know anything, hmm? I wonder how it is that no one else has taken your strategy. There are so many rats in the city, and even one so charming as yourself cannot command loyalty in its entirety.”

Philippa smiled and held out her hand. A large, mean-looking grey rat scampered out from the wall behind her to perch on her palm. “Why don’t you come and take a look?”

“I like him,” Robin said. She walked up to the rat and reached up to pet its fur. “He—I’m not sure what he reminds me of. Something that I used to have. A rat or a hamster who was old. He liked me and I liked him.”

“Oh, this one isn’t old.” Philippa curled her finger, and suddenly the rat lunged forward with a gnashing of teeth, a horrible insectlike chittering. Robin snatched her fingers back just before its vicious little jaw could close and bite them off. “And he’s no pet of mine. The rats have their own strongmen and killers, like the rest of us do. Reward and punish them well, and the rest fall easily under your thumb.” She lowered her hand, and the grizzled rat leapt to the ground. “The smaller ones know well what will happen if they fall out of line.”

Usher sighed. “A microcosm of life, hmm? But not so much of death, where I concern myself.”

“So I hear. It draws no rats.”

“What?”

“A bloody, messy monster like that should draw scavengers in its wake. This one doesn’t.”

There was that little gleam in Usher’s eyes. He turned to Robin, gesturing for her to follow him into his office. “Interesting, hmm? What a strange beast it is we have on our hands. Come, come. Let us see what we can surmise you know of it, whether it is real or dreamt to you, memory or present.” He nodded to me. “You can supervise, Hexel, but I promise Robin will be unscathed. I am not so stupid, hmm?”

I was going to follow him anyway—even if it was only to avail myself of the morgue’s cleaning supplies for my shoes and my hands, to stop Robin glancing about herself with such anxiety. Then Philippa caught my arm. “I’d like to talk with you, Starling.’

“Now?”

“We are here. Together. Undeterred. Do you think yourself lucky enough to trust the future?”

There was no way she could have known what Zamir had written me. No way in hell. But I thought, then, of the rats scurrying about in all the little nooks and crannies of the city, invisible unless you knew where to look. A panopticon, of sorts. And I wasn’t certain Philippa couldn’t know. “None of us are lucky,” I said. “Not here. I’ll walk with you, Philippa—but I want it to be on damn equal footing. No dragging out my life to use against me unless you tell me something of yours, first. You have your eyes everywhere, but here we’ll exchange an eye for an eye.”

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She gave me an easy grin. “But of course. I do not mean to impose on you, Starling, not any more than you yourself would wish me to. And Tze.” She fixed him with a glare, one with more venom in it than she’d ever given me. “Do what Starling tells you and do not dare harm her charge.”

“Absolutely. Yes.”

“Come along, then, Starling.” And she took me by the hand.

We did what I so rarely had the opportunity to do anymore: we ascended through the city, instead of disappearing into its shadowed depths. The morgue sat in no great place of honor, but Philippa knew all the stairways tucked into clean, unknown portions of the city, their railings well-kept and the steps themselves even and rarely trodden. I began to feel more and more out of place in my grimy coat and shoes which were still stained with Dalelan’s blood, as though I were dragging my base troubles into these gilded, aloof streets. Philippa fit in—but she was a chimera who could do so anywhere.

And still there was farther to go. I let Philippa do the talking for the gated neighborhoods whose guards regarded me suspiciously, like a dog she was dragging in out from the cold. I let her do the talking at the skyscraper’s entrance, its sprawling gold mosaic illustrating a grasping hand reaching for the sky. Philippa knew the doorman, apparently, spent minutes bantering with him about his art and his nightmare. I let them talk.

Nobody lived in this building. Nobody remembered why it’d been built, either, why it was still polished—except that it was ours, now, and like a dilapidated and powerless royal family, the city clung onto its shiny relics simply because it had to. More than that: because the waking world had their skyscrapers. Literature and art and music all filtered through into the Outscape through dreams, the characters that populated humanity’s imagination drawn from the stories they created for one another. It only made sense that the city of nightmares would start to resemble their cities, too.

Our cities. Their cities. I was still never sure which group I truly belonged to.

We stepped into the elevator, which hummed and shuddered as it began to ascend. It was a small space, pressing the two of us up against one another. “What do you think you will see, when we reach the top?” Philippa asked.

“The city?”

She scoffed. “Obviously. What of it will you see?”

“Everything. More than usual. Down in the streets you only see the next turn, hear the footsteps coming when they’re usually too close to avoid. Up here you’d see everything—so long as the fog is clear—but you wouldn’t be able to make out the details. Only big movements,” I said. “Only when something starts changing and it’s obvious everywhere.”

Now she nodded with approval, and I hated the way I longed for it. “And the city has started changing, Starling.”

“I knew that. You knew that. Is that all we’re here to see?”

The doors opened. Wind whipped along the balcony, whirling in small eddies where it met the ornately engraved railing posts. The spire of the building continued above us, but for all intents and purposes Philippa and I were as elevated as it was possible to achieve in the Outscape. Below us, the city spread out like a scale model of itself, disappearing into the dark reaches of the ocean at its edges. A few clouds skulked about its edges, but otherwise it was as clear as I’d ever seen it. “It is quite the sight to see. Something to hold onto.”

“Is this what you think of the city, Philippa? Do you see it in your head like this, all laid out, all the chess pieces moving where you think they will?” I was nearly shouting just to make myself heard. “What do you want from it?”

“Must I want anything?”

“Everyone does. I—you can’t be any different.”

“Someday you will find yourself wrong on that. Give us our due. But that is not why I brought you here.” She sighed. “I want to ask about us, Starling. What we are, here—or what we can be.”