“So I’m tempting them to…”
“Tell us all their dirty secrets.” Hebrides rubbed his hands together. “Make them convince you. Landseer won’t get a return on his investment unless the Ospies win the election. So make them tell you how they’ll do it. The reports coming out of Nuesklend say the Ospies have the results sewn up. But no one’s talking; we don’t have proof enough to scuttle Acherby’s plans.”
“Ah,” said Cyril. “So I’m bait. A honeypot.”
“A moneypot, more like.” Hebrides laughed at his own joke. “Hold out, DePaul, like a blush boy playing for his rent. Hold out.”
“And Staetler. She’s given the all-clear?” Tatié had been unofficial. White work, they called it, for the paper between the lines. Unconstitutional, and dangerous. But with the permission of Staetler, Nuesklend’s governing primary …
“She’s promised to endorse our action during the endgame.” From the look on Culpepper’s face, she knew it wasn’t what Cyril wanted to hear. “But you understand, she can’t issue any official permissions. We aren’t sure who in her office or the Nuesklend Foxhole is on the Ospie payroll.”
The door swung inward and Memmediv entered, hip first, bearing a tray of cups, sugar, and a salver of cream. He set it down in the midst of a stiff silence, under the weight of a secret conversation obviously suspended. But working in Central, Cyril supposed, he must be used to that sort of thing. He managed it with grace.
“Thank you, Memmediv,” said Culpepper, her professional manner reassembled.
“No trouble.” He retreated and shut the heavy door behind him.
Hebrides settled onto a corner of Culpepper’s desk and dashed cream into one of the cups. “Doctor says to take it black,” he confided. “But when half the nation stands against you, I say take it however you damn well please.”
Cyril curled his hands around his own cup, breathing the dark scent deep down into his queasy center. “So,” he said. “I dangle a blank check in front of their noses and make them convince me. And you’re hoping to shut it down before things come to a head?”
“Ideally. You get the evidence; we bring an accusation. The regionalists mount a fraud suit against Acherby, destroy his political career, and get him thrown in the trap.”
“And what if I can’t get you anything until after the election?”
“Same story. Just riskier. Possession is nine-tenths, et cetera.” Culpepper hitched an ankle over her knee. Her trouser leg pulled up, showing a length of muted argyle sock.
“Can’t you just get Nuesklend’s Master of the Hounds on this? It sounds like a police matter to me. Or maybe ask parliament for election monitors?”
“Election monitors are out,” said Hebrides. “Tensions too high with the Ospie states.”
“Shake with the right, shoot with the left.” Cyril massaged his forehead, pressing on his tender sinuses. “And the police?”
“We strongly suspect the unionists have bought Nuesklend’s force,” Culpepper said. “It’s part of why they’re hurting for money. And party members aren’t afraid to wield a cudgel in service of the cause. They have intimidation down to an art form. Finding witnesses to testify will be a problem.”
“But I’m not allowed to be intimidated, am I?”
“Why?” asked Culpepper. “Are you?”
Cyril set down his coffee cup and took a deep drag on Josiah’s very fine cigarette. The smooth tobacco tasted of malt sugar. Closing his eyes, he pretended to savor it.
Fieldwork. The scar that split his belly itched. He fought to calm his heart rate, to put the terror of his last action out of his mind. This was a simple job, set up by someone else, already half-done. An easy entrée, for an experienced agent stepping back into harness. He’d been very good at this sort of thing, once. He realized he was still holding his breath, and forced himself to let it go slowly.
Mid-exhale, he opened his eyes, and met Culpepper’s gaze through the smoke. “Who’s my case officer?”
She finally smiled, barely, and there was an edge to it. “You’ll report to me. It’s a little bit beneath my purview, but I thought you’d appreciate the familiarity.”
“For old times’ sake?” Cyril ground out his straight. “You’re a treasure.”
It got him one of her rare smiles. He tried to match it and knew he hadn’t. Shaking hands with Hebrides, he excused himself, then retreated to the washroom. As soon as the door was closed and bolted, he stripped his jacket and loosened his tie, then collapsed against the toilet bowl and vomited.
* * *
Culpepper gave him samples of Landseer’s handwriting to copy, and he spent a few hours covering pages and pages with the back-slanting script. His eyes hurt and his wrist was cramped, and he wasn’t getting any better at it. Besides, the sun was out at last, shining on the spires and naked treetops of the university. He didn’t want his back to the window. He wanted the sun and clear air.
The lift shuddered to a halt at the third floor. That redheaded boy—Finn Lourdes, wasn’t it?—got on with hat in hand, shapeless greatcoat unbuttoned at the front to reveal his shabby suit, worn to a shine. He nodded at Cyril, politely, but seemed to catch halfway through the gesture, like a faulty piece of clockwork.
“Here, now.” He leaned forward in concern, and his forelock flopped into his eyes. They were slate gray, generously ringed in blue. “Are you all right? You look bashed.”
Sacred arches, Cyril must look dire, if the accountants were catching him out. “Late night,” he said. “And a little too much of the green witch.”
“Ah, that explains it.” He pushed his hair back. It was unstyled and wanted a cut, though its copper brilliance distracted from its disarray. “You look like you’re about to drop.”
“I am,” said Cyril, and Finn laughed.
“Finn Lourdes,” said the younger man, holding out a hand. “I don’t believe we’ve ever met, not properly. You were pretty far gone with the morphine, last time.” He had the soft, rolling accent of an urban Farbourgere. Pleasant to listen to.
Cyril shifted greatcoat and briefcase. Finn’s handshake was good. Cyril held it a moment longer than necessary. Finn had soft palms, but for a scrivener’s callous on his pointer finger, black with an ink stain. As their shake lengthened, a flush started across the bridge of Finn’s nose, rising up his cheeks.
“Cyril DePaul.” He broke the handshake and eye contact and took his card case from his breast pocket.
“A pleasure.” Finn took a card, scanned the front, then slid it into the battered leather folio he held under one arm. Spiraling a finger to indicate the building around them, he asked, “Making a break from this tomb?”
“Hah.” Cyril let himself half-smile. “I suppose you could say that. You?”
“Actually…” Finn looked over his shoulder, as if he suspected eavesdroppers. “Yes. I’ve told them I’ve got a doctor’s appointment. Don’t let on. It’s just, it’s been raining for ages, and the sun’s finally out…” He cocked his head, watching Cyril from beneath strong brows like gulls’ wings. “I was thinking I might go down to the harbor for lunch, watch the boats come in. Say, you wouldn’t join me, would you?”
Cyril must not have kept the dubious expression from his face, because Finn blanched and stammered and said, “Only, if you’ve got somewhere else to be, or if you’re too tired, I understand—”
Finn seemed sweet, but Cyril didn’t do sweet. “Is this a pickup?” he asked, more sharply than he meant to. Exhaustion made him blunt.
Finn went from sick white to burning redhead blush in less than a space of a breath. “Oh! Oh, no, I—it’s just it’s nice out, and you seem so … well.” He checked himself. “I’m sorry. Please, don’t pay me any mind.”
The hectic color in Finn’s cheeks shamed Cyril, and suddenly he felt small and mean. The lift doors opened onto the ground floor. Before Finn could rush off in embarrassment, Cyril stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Where to?”
Finn started, then smi
led. “Nowhere special. There’s a little place I like near the spillway. Cheap oysters, but they won’t kill you.”
* * *
It wasn’t quite a dive, but it wasn’t what Cyril was accustomed to, either. Finn advised against the establishment’s liquor, so Cyril had beer, which was surprisingly good.
Finn’s shabby suit and shiny elbows fit snugly into the ambiance, and when Cyril caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror behind the bar, he admitted they probably wouldn’t have let him through the door at Sola’s. Bags under his eyes, patchy stubble, rumpled suit. No wonder Finn had worried about him on the lift.
“You’re fifth floor, right?” Finn spooned horseradish into another fan-shaped shell. These were big, earthy Amberlough Phrynes—cheap local oysters, not the sweet, small, dearly expensive west coasters.
Cyril nodded. “A paper pusher. Rather like you, I expect. A lot of budgets.”
“I thought fifth floor was supposed to be thrilling,” said Finn. “Espionage and cloak-and-dagger and things like that. Like in the novels.”
Cyril laughed into his beer, tried not to think about the packet of Landseer’s false papers locked in his desk. Exhaustion sank its claws into his back, pushed his shoulders forward. “I hate to disappoint you.”
“No glamour at all, then?”
“Well. I wouldn’t say that.” Cyril spread butter across a slice of brown bread, but saw white greasepaint shining on the angles of Aristide’s face, light through the rising effervescence of champagne. Damnation. What was he going to tell Aristide?
“Anything would be more exciting than the old adding machine,” said Finn. “Believe me, I’m good at what I do, but mercy! It’s unbelievably dull.”
“Even with all the Foxhole’s little secrets passing under your nose?”
“Secrets turn tiresome faster than you’d think.”
“Pithy,” said Cyril.
“I didn’t mean it as an epigram.” Finn tipped the last oyster down his throat, then wiped his fingers and face with a cheap brown paper napkin. He signaled the bartender, and Cyril reached for his billfold.
“Oh, my treat,” said Finn.
“No,” said Cyril, “really.”
Finn shook his head, once, decisively. “I said the oysters were cheap. I made the invitation, and I’m paying. You make an invitation, you can pay.”
Cyril raised the last of his beer. “Until the next time, then.”
Finn smiled, and tipped his empty pint glass in acknowledgment of the toast.
CHAPTER
FIVE
“Queen’s sake, Tory, not here!” Cordelia shoved Tory away, looking over her shoulder to make sure no one had seen him reach up her skirt.
“Why not?” He leaned against the bannister of the backstage stairway. “You’ve got ten minutes and an empty dressing room.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I don’t got my cap with me, and I ain’t having your kids.”
“I’ve got a mouth and two hands, Delly.” He wiggled his fingers. “Quit makin’ excuses.”
“Tory, Malcolm ain’t stupid. I know he looks it, and Mother knows he acts it half the time, but he’s not gonna—Tory!” She slapped his hands away.
“Ach, he’ll be caught up flaying Thea alive. If that girl’s job lasts out the day, call me a trout and salt me.” He lowered his eyelashes and the pitch of his voice, walking his fingers up her thigh. “Come on. Let’s give old Sailer good reason to be jealous.”
She sighed. “Oh, damnation. All right. Come on.” She took his hand and pulled him down the hall, toward her dressing room. Backstage was quiet—it was still early in the day, and Malcolm had only called a rehearsal for the orchestra, with Thea and Cordelia, to work on their one iffy number. Cordelia had a ten-minute break while Liesl drilled Thea on her key changes. Tory was here because he wanted to be, and Malcolm wasn’t pinned about it.
As soon as she closed the door of her dressing room, Tory grabbed her waistband and hauled her close, pressing his nose into the groove of her spine and taking a deep breath. She could feel the air move on her skin, through the cheap wool. His hands swept up the fronts of her legs, catching on her skirt, slipping beneath it.
“Tory,” she said, and he murmured into her blouse. “Tory, you don’t mind me doing what I do. Right?”
“Stripping?” He drew away and pushed at her hips until she turned to face him. “There’s far worse you could do. You haven’t ever killed anybody with it. And if you have, you can’t hold yourself responsible for them that’s got weak hearts.”
“No,” she said, tracing his chin with a thoughtful finger. “I meant with Malcolm. And any others that come along.” She made herself laugh, a little. “And they do tend to.”
He chuckled and grabbed her rear. Bending down, he pressed his face into the divot of her groin. “Delly,” he said, “you’re a big girl, and you like your fun.” The pressure of his weight pushed her back, and she fell into her makeup chair. It started to spin, but he stopped it. “If I minded—” He flipped up the edge of her skirt, and ducked under. “—I’d already be gone.”
His fingers crept to the tops of her stockings, found the edge of her panties, and pushed them aside. She dug her varnished nails deep into the scarred leather of the upholstery. Tory’s breath warmed her skin. She felt a flush rise up her neck, across her chest, and lifted a hand to touch her breast. She crossed her ankles across Tory’s back, sliding down in her seat into the slippery heat of his mouth.
Five minutes later, she had her blouse unbuttoned, and one shoe half-hanging from her big toe. Tory was pulling himself off with his face still pressed between her thighs. Her breath was dry and ragged, her hands curled into fists. Tossing her head back, she caught a flash of her own red face in the mirror. And then Malcolm opened the door without knocking, already halfway through whatever sentence he meant for her to hear.
“—she was a man I’d cut the oysters off her, and then she might hit those high no—Queen’s cunt, Delia!”
Tory startled beneath her skirt, then froze. Cordelia blinked once, twice, watching the color drain from Malcolm’s face.
“I thought you were rehearsing,” she said, stupidly.
“Delia,” he said again, and his voice was dangerously even. Then, he looked down and lost his composure completely. “Tory MacIntyre, you son of a half-price whore! Get out of there!”
Tory flipped back Cordelia’s skirt like it was a curtain and he was making a casual entrance onto the stage. “Sailer,” he said. “Didn’t expect you to finish with that poor girl so soon. From what Delly’s said, I hadn’t got you pegged as a sprinter.”
Malcolm’s pallor evaporated in the heat of a sudden, furious flush. He reached out, unseeing, towards the shelf where Cordelia kept her wigs and headdresses. There was a fifth of gin there, and an empty tumbler. Malcolm’s hand closed around the glass, and he hurled it at the wall. It shattered, and Cordelia took a moment to be grateful he hadn’t thrown the bottle.
* * *
“What, I ain’t enough for you?” Malcolm threw himself into his chair. She’d cajoled him into his own office, where at least anything he broke would belong to him.
“We’re friends, Mal. Tory and I are good friends.”
“You’re knockin’ him.”
“Why do you care? We ain’t married.”
He crushed an invoice in his fist. “Is that what you want?”
“Oh for pity’s sake.” She rolled her eyes. “No one in their right mind would take you home.”
“You can turn that one around,” said Malcolm, sneering.
Cordelia opened her mouth to reply, but the door to Malcolm’s office swung open and Aristide Makricosta looked in, flicking a damp ringlet from his face. “I heard you sacked the tit singer,” he said. “I’ll fill in, but I expect a b-b-bonus.” He pulled the door to, and his footsteps echoed down the hallway.
Malcolm swept the ruined paper into the wastebasket. “Like he needs it.”
“Why do y
ou put up with him at all?” Cordelia flicked her fingers, as if cleaning them of dirt. “He’s a certified prick.”
Malcolm reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a battered cigarette. He made her wait while he lit it, took a deep drag, and blew the smoke straight up at the ceiling. Stubble shadowed the column of his throat. “Because he brings in the punters with the deep pockets.”
“Oh, and me?”
“You just reach in and make ’em pay.”
“Get hanged.” Slamming the door, she stalked back to her dressing room. It was one scrap too many. On top of being interrupted with Tory, on top of the fight with Malcolm, she was behind on rent. Tips had been harder to come by, with all the punters on edge. The number of sour faces she’d seen, the number of whispers about the election … It ought to be illegal to sell newspapers on Temple Street. Ruined business for the entertainment trade.
She borrowed a broom from Lucia, the old caretaker, and swept up the shattered glass in her dressing room. Two bits she couldn’t afford sent Tito scrambling down toward the boardwalk for a bite of whatever the food carts were selling.
Backstage started to fill up with cast and stagehands. Cordelia stripped off her street clothes and hung them on the coat hooks behind the door. Goosebumps broke out on her bare skin—Malcolm must have axed the boiler for the season. Pinch-pocket miser.
She was gluing on her pasties over nipples stiff with cold when Tito returned holding a greasy paper bag.
“Barley fritters all right?” he asked. “Stuffed with eel.”
“Suits like a tailor,” she said. “Take one yourself.”
He reached a hand in the bag, took his due, and handed it over. She had to put down her second pasty to take it.
Tito didn’t look away, and she wouldn’t have minded, except he said, “Heard you had a scrap with Mr. Sailer.”
“And if I did, I did.” She held the bag of fritters in front of her chest. “Now get away and do what you’re paid to.”
When she had her pasties and merkin fixed tight, she scarfed the fritters and knotted herself into her dressing gown. Settled in her makeup chair, she tried to put Malcolm and Tory and Tito out of her mind. Men. Mother’s tits! She scowled in the mirror, then smoothed her expression and started layering on the powder.
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