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“True,” Marla said. “The Cornerstone is there?”
“Among the trees.”
“How do we get to the island? I could probably leap over the water in a couple of the
thinner places, but I assume you have another way?”
“There are two bridges,” Finch said. “The rustic and the roman. But we’re not going to
take either of them. Because there’s a third bridge.” Finch glanced around, then waved
his hand, casting a curtain of obscurement over the three of them—now the eyes of any
observers would just…slide away from them. He made another gesture. “There.”
A gently arcing footbridge was revealed, made of rough timbers tied with twine, and
with handrails of gleaming copper, stretching from the bank before them to the slope of
Strawberry Hill. “After you,” Marla said, and Finch crossed the bridge, his feet not
making any sound at all on the splintery wooden boards.
The island hill was heavily wooded at that point, though it appeared more sparse
elsewhere, and Marla stayed close to Finch as he went into the trees. They trudged up
the steep slope for what seemed to Marla a very long time, especially since it was such a
small island. “Are you screwing around with Euclidean norms?” she asked, kicking a
low branch out of her way, making it snap under her boot.
“There’s a certain amount of topological crumpling going on, yes,” Finch said. “We
don’t want people tripping over the Cornerstone by accident, so the hill is folded in on
itself a bit, with the stone tucked away within.”
“This is too much like really being in the woods,” Marla said, gritting her teeth. Every
brush of a leaf against the skin of her forearms felt like the skittering of insects, and
didn’t they have poison oak out here? She was an urban creature, and her years as chief
sorcerer of Felport had intensified that intrinsic sympathy—in a way, she was her city,
and she did not feel at home in even so circumscribed a piece of wilderness as this. She
glanced behind her, where Rondeau was walking placidly along, hands in his pockets,
knees going steadily up and down like he was on a StairMaster or something. Looking
past him, Marla saw nothing but blue sky, no skyscrapers. The folded space had
obscured any view of buildings. Marla clamped down on her rising panic, annoyed at
her own reactions. She hadn’t been in among the trees like this since she was a kid in
Indiana, and she was distressed to find herself so discomforted by the experience—it
seemed like a dangerous chink in her armor.
“The clearing is just up ahead,” Finch said, puffing a little, and Marla felt a little glee
over that, at least—she was in better shape than he was. She walked in her city every
day, but she suspected that Finch did most of his business in the same aerie where he
fucked the ghosts of his enemies.
Marla hurried forward, walking beside Finch, and they passed from the trees into the
clearing together.