The fog that evening was the colour of weak tea and carried the smell of the river—coal smoke, rotting kelp, and something older that no amount of dredging could remove. Arthur Blackwood stood at the gate of the Royal Liverpool Asylum for the Treatment of Nervous Disorders and watched the iron bars swallow the last of the daylight. He had been transferred from Scotland Yard three days ago on orders he did not understand, carrying a single letter of introduction and a list of three names. The letter was unsigned. The names were: Dr. Alistair Cross, Captain James Whitmore, and one patient designated only as Number Seven.

"Inspector?" A woman in a dark dress stood at the gate, her bonnet drawn low against the weather. She held a lantern with a steady hand, though the wind threatened to extinguish it. "They told me you were coming."

"I'm looking for Dr. Cross," Blackwood said. He tried to sound like a man who had done this before, like a detective who belonged in fog and iron gates. He had been a detective for two years. He had been a detective long enough to know that fog lied.

"Dr. Cross is in the west wing," she said. "He has been keeping company with Captain Whitmore. They sit together in the garden when the weather permits, which is to say they sit apart and stare at the same patch of dead grass and pretend it is enough."

Blackwood noted the way she said _pretend_. It was not an accusation. It was a statement of fact, the way one might say the river runs south.

The west wing smelled of carbolic acid and something that reminded him of the sea—though Liverpool was ten minutes from the Mersey, the smell was not quite the river smell. It was the smell of a ship that had been at sea too long, of salt and decay and things that had been left behind in ports he did not recognize.

Dr. Cross received him in an office lined with books whose spines had never been broken. He was a tall man with a pale face and hands that moved with the precise economy of a surgeon. He did not offer Blackwood a seat.

"You are from London," Cross said. It was not a question. "What have they sent you to find?"

Blackwood opened his pocket notebook. "Three names. Dr. Cross, Captain Whitmore, and a patient designated Number Seven."

Cross smiled, but it was the sort of smile one gives to a child who has asked why the sky is blue. "Captain Whitmore is confined to his room. He believes there is a person in his cabin. He has been building a wall in his room—bricks, Inspector, though I cannot account for the source of them. As for Number Seven—I do not know that patient. But I know the man who wrote your letter."

"And who is that?"

Cross looked at him for a long time. The lantern light caught something in his eyes—recognition? Fear? It was impossible to tell. "You met him this morning. You just do not remember."

The fog pressed against the window like a hand. Blackwood felt the first small fracture in the story he had told himself about why he was here.

[M1:8.8, M6:9.2, M5:8.5, M3:3.5, N1:0.20, N2:0.82, K1:0.88, K2:0.12, TI:87.5, Theta:165.2°]