They gave Ethan three days before the first real attempt.
Alistair called it mercy.
Marguerite called it stalling.
The method Idris taught him wasn't complicated in principle.
Sit.
Breathe.
And instead of pushing the coal down or shutting the door on it the way instinct demanded, open the door a crack and listen.
The way you'd listen at a wall to a conversation you weren't meant to hear.
The difficulty was entirely in the doing.
Every instinct in Ethan's body screamed that opening that door even slightly was the single stupidest thing a man in his position could attempt.
He did it anyway.
Because the alternative, as far as he could tell, was staying exactly this uncertain forever.
The first attempt gave him nothing but the taste of copper and a headache that lasted until evening.
The second, three days later, gave him something more.
A memory.
Or something close enough to one.
It wasn't his.
He saw a sky the wrong color, hanging low over architecture built by something that had never needed doors sized for two arms and two legs.
Then it vanished.
The third attempt came a week after that.
This time, he got a name.
Not the Cthu's name.
A place's.
"Karrathess."
The word left Ethan's mouth in the middle of the Cartographer's chamber.
Idris's brush stopped dead against the wall.
"Say that again."
"Karrathess."
The word sat strangely on Ethan's tongue, like it belonged to a language his mouth had never been built to speak.
"It's not a city."
He frowned, trying to hold onto the sensation.
"I don't have the word for what it is. A wound in something, maybe. The Cthu came through it."
He hesitated.
"Or out of it."
Idris slowly turned away from the wall.
"Which?"
"I don't know."
Ethan shook his head.
"I can't tell."
Idris set down his brush very carefully.
The way a man sets down something he's afraid of dropping.
"In eleven years," he said, "I've mapped every rumor, every half-remembered fever dream, every scrap of a name that's ever crossed a Taken's lips in this Vigil's custody."
He looked directly at Ethan.
"I have never once heard that word."
The room seemed quieter than before.
"Which means either you invented I twhich, given the specificity, seems unlikely or your passenger just told you something it was never supposed to be able to tell anyone."
"Why would it do that?"
"Because..."
Alistair's voice came from the doorway.
Ethan hadn't heard him enter.
"...it's not trying to escape you anymore."
Alistair stepped into the room.
"It's trying to use you."
He glanced at the coal in Ethan's chest as if he could somehow see through bone and skin.
"A door that can't be opened from one side is still a door if you can convince the thing on the other side to help you find the hinges."
Ethan didn't answer.
The coal beneath his ribs sat very still.
Listening.
The way it always listened.
For the first time since the pyre, Ethan wondered if the stillness wasn't defeat.
It might have been patience.
And if it was patience...
He turned the thought over carefully.
Then it meant the Cthu was learning to plan the same way he was.
Which meant, sooner or later, one of them was going to have to move first.