He skidded to a halt, just short of the open end of the platform. A stiff breeze came up off the harbor, whistling through the aperture. He turned and saw his pursuers gaining. He had the gun half lifted—could already taste the steel and oil, faintly laced with his own sweat.
When he hit the ground, his own consciousness surprised him until, dizzily, he realized he had never put the pistol between his teeth. They already had him cuffed by then, the men who had come from behind, from the yards.
He cursed himself for stopping and turning, for not shooting while he ran.
“Swear all you like,” said one of his captors. “Won’t get you anywhere.”
Cyril took him up on it, spitting every foul word he knew until he broke down into helpless sobbing.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
Aristide had trouble on the train; his back ached, and the seats were hard. It had been too long since he did something uncomfortable: He had gotten soft. He promised himself five minutes of intense self-pity, then resolved to move on.
Once upon a time, he had been inured to indignity. With the boneless resignation of a dog, he had lain on hardwood floors, blanketless. He had slept his way through the ranks of producers and financiers it took to pay rent and earn a place onstage. He had cut throats and sold bad tar and done whatever it took to get ahead. Because he knew once he reached the top he would never have to do any of it again.
Yet here he was at forty-two or some odd years, crammed in third-class, headed back to the place he had done every demeaning thing on earth to escape.
He found five minutes of self-pity wouldn’t cover it.
When the train pulled into Farbourgh City, he stood and stretched and rubbed his dry eyes. He wanted nothing more than coffee and a newspaper, but he hadn’t the time. The local for Currin left in half an hour, and he still had to find his contact and give her instructions.
On the platform he pulled his collar up against the damp wind. The station here had a dark, flat roof that gave him no sense of the weather outside. Still, under the coal smoke he smelled rain. When he reached the doors of the station, it was indeed pissing down. A sea of black umbrellas ebbed and flowed in the open square, sifting around the stalls and carts of the Station Market.
Aristide had only seen this place once before, on his way out of Farbourgh. He remembered being astonished at the number of people, the goods on display. Now, it left him underwhelmed. Shabby merchants selling oily fried food and hard pasties … and there, just on the far side of the street from the station gates, a woman hunched underneath the awning of a fruit stall.
He browsed through her selection of pears, apples, and waxy oranges still green around the stems. Lifting a disappointing citrus, he said, “They’re fresher in Amberlough City.”
She looked up—not too sharply, but he had caught her attention.
“I get them straight off the boat,” she said. She had the velvet burr of an urban Farbourgere, colored with something foreign. “When they come up the river.”
“I know a man who can get you better,” he said.
“I got a man,” she said, irritated.
He let himself smile, slightly. “I know. You’ve got the best.”
She cocked her head, pinning him with a suspicious glance. Then, a faint dawn of comprehension. “They told me you’d come.”
She had no idea who he was, not really. She thought he was one of his own agents. So much the better. “Did they tell you what to do?”
She pulled a ragged brown envelope from beneath the grapes and handed it over. “Papers, and your ticket.”
He put it into his jacket, then handed her a folded bill. “Thank you. And the other thing?”
“The grease-paws at the garage have an auto ready for him.”
“He’ll be here soon,” said Ari. “Maybe tomorrow, maybe not for a week or so. He knows to look for you. He’ll make a gibe about the oranges; ask to see his scar.” He hadn’t prepped Cyril for that. Which meant no one else would be expecting it, if they turned up instead.
She made a face. “That’s a bit—”
“It will be right here.” Aristide drew a finger down his abdomen. “If he doesn’t have one, don’t tell him anything.”
A sharp whistle sliced the misty air. Aristide reached for his watch and realized he didn’t have one. He checked the clock above the station.
“Must run,” he told her. “Remember: the oranges, the scar.”
She gave him a sharp nod, and turned back to her wares.
* * *
The platform at Beckover was exactly as he remembered it, though the boards were newer: just a pallet set up by the tracks to keep travelers’ feet out of the mud. He was the only person disembarking. The train sighed steam and pulled away with a groan of steel on steel, leaving Aristide standing alone in the dusk. It came quickly in the Currin Pass, especially at the waning end of summer. As soon as the sun slipped behind the peaks of the Culthams, the temperature dropped and the air turned heavy with dew. Gentian light softened the edges of the crags and made the streams run black and spangled. A distant herd of sheep—pale smears in the gloom—trotted home over the tussocks of tangled grass that grew up the steep hillsides.
Time telescoped; he was a boy again, filled with the urgent despair of the young. He turned back to the tracks, but the train was gone. All that remained to him was the muddy road switchbacking up the mountain. He shouldered his bag and started up the path to his father’s house.
It was exactly as small as he remembered it, and even shabbier. The dirty thatch needed changing, and the whole structure sagged in the center like a swaybacked horse. The single step was splattered with bird droppings and lichen. Aristide took it like a gallows march and put his hands to the door, letting his forehead fall against the damp-slimed wood and chipping paint. The hinges squeaked, and he went forward into darkness.
Fumbling, he found an oil lamp on the table and lit it, with a match from the dwindling pack Cyril had sent from the Stevedore. He set the chimney over the wick and the flame leapt up, showing swathes of cobwebs. A bird stirred in the rafters.
The mattress in the corner was old and flat, and when Aristide sat on it, the rope ties of the bed frame creaked. A few drops of rain rustled on the thatch, building into a steady patter.
It was colder inside than out, but he had no peat for the stove. Tomorrow. He would do that tomorrow. The thought filled him with exhaustion. He had not dug peat in almost thirty years; he had promised that he never would again.
He had escaped this house once, and he would do it once more. It would be easier. He was wiser now, and he would not be alone.
Closing his fist on the grubby pack of matches, he curled around his clenched hand and shut his eyes. Fully dressed and freezing cold, he lay awake and waited for morning.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
Cyril lost track of time; they left him in a windowless white room and didn’t turn off the light. A fly had got in somehow, and careened against the bare bulb over and over and over again.
He thought it had been about a day. He was hungry, his throat dry, whole body aching. But when the blackboots came to haul him out, he fought, and they weren’t gentle either. By the time they dragged him up the stairs, he could hardly see for the blood pouring into his eyes. Blinking the sting of salt away, he found himself in a chair opposite Van der Joost. In the back corner of the room, a thin man with rolled-up sleeves picked at a loose thread in his shirttail.
“Mr. DePaul,” said Van der Joost. “I’m glad you made it to our meeting after all.”
“Veedge,” said Cyril, and spat blood on the table.
Van der Joost cleared his throat and smoothed a stray wisp of thin hair back into place. “You didn’t hide Moore and Massey’s bodies very well. In a hurry, were you?”
“You could say that.”
“You must have been a very good agent, once.”
“You’ve read my file,” said Cyril.
/> “Indeed.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think your poor sister will be awfully upset if you disappear.”
A spike of fear, honed with guilt, stabbed him through. He hadn’t reached out to her, first because he wanted to get out of this mess himself. She wouldn’t have to sneak him dinner this time. Then, when it was too late, he didn’t ask because he didn’t want to tar her with his own treachery, his own failings. Well, she’d been splashed with that brush anyway, and now it was too late to warn her.
“Better than if I’d been hanged for treason,” he said, with sour humor dredged up from somewhere in his cramping gut. “It’d wreck her diplomatic career.”
“You should’ve thought of that before you leaked confidential documents to a black market profiteer.”
Cyril snorted. A dizzying trickle of blood made its way from somewhere high in his nose and slipped over his lip, into his mouth. “I haven’t even confessed.”
“I think we can both agree your attempted flight was confession enough.”
“So you’re gonna bag me and tag me?” Van der Joost’s bland face assumed an expression of distaste at Cyril’s purposefully coarse language. “I’m a little disappointed in your—”
The blow to the back of his head wasn’t really a surprise. He’d been expecting it since he sat down, with the thin man lurking behind him. Pinpricks of white and purple-black sparked across his field of vision. He forced a smile and felt his swollen lip crack.
“There,” he said, tossing a bit of bloody, displaced hair out of his eyes. “That’s more like it.”
“Some things have come to light,” said Van der Joost, “regarding Aristide Makricosta’s involvement with a certain employee of the FOCIS. One Finn Lourdes. A friend of yours, I think?”
Cyril turned his face away. The thin man pushed it back.
“I knew him.”
“‘Knew’?”
Cyril didn’t say anything. A slash of movement in the corner of his eye gave him half a second’s warning. The fist in his hair hurt, but he managed to angle his chin so he hit the table with the meat of his cheek and not his nose.
“Hmm.” Van der Joost watched him as he recovered from the blow. “I was hoping we could make this quick. I have a lunchtime meeting. However…” He looked over Cyril’s shoulder. “Rehimov, will you see to him? I’ll be back in a few hours to check on your progress.”
Whatever motion the thin man made, it must have satisfied Van der Joost. He gathered his leather datebook and pen and set his hat on his head. “I’ll be seeing you, Mr. DePaul.”
“See me? Sure.” Grinning hurt his face. The satisfaction was worth the pain. “But you won’t hear a thing.”
* * *
Cordelia stayed in Malcolm’s flat overnight. It wasn’t like she wanted to, but it was wet out on the street. Besides, if they weren’t after her yet, they would be soon. She needed to keep hidden. And more than that, she needed a day or two to lick her wounds.
So she closed the bedroom door and shoved a blanket underneath it, trying to keep out the stink of blood and shit. Raiding Mal’s drawers gave her enough white cotton for a bandage. Nauseous to the bottom of her stomach, she used her teeth to unwrap the grimy cloth from her cut-up fingers. Dried blood made the fabric stiff, and flaked off in rusty crumbs as she peeled the layers away. As she got closer to the skin, the blood was fresher, sticky and bitter. She gagged, but kept pulling cloth away.
The wounds were clean, at least, and she meant to keep them that way. She took Malcolm’s good belt from its peg on the door and put it between her teeth. In the washroom, she turned the taps to hot and bathed the stubs of her fingers with lye soap. By the time she was done, she’d bitten straight through the leather.
Like a dead woman, she slept flat on her back without a twitch. When she woke, it was light out—the middle of the morning, from Malcolm’s clock, but it probably needed winding. She lay in his bed, smelling him: sweat and hair tonic and cheap cologne. If she closed her eyes, it almost seemed like …
No. She sat up, gasping at the grinding pain in her chest, and put her feet over the edge of the bed. She wouldn’t close her eyes, and she couldn’t play pretend.
She’d always kept a compact in Malcolm’s bedside drawer, and it was still there (next to a wad of cash she wasn’t too proud to snatch). The bed of powder was cracked, but the makeup covered the worst of her bruises. There would be plenty of people walking around the city with rammed-in faces today, anyhow. The fingers were easy, too. She hauled Malcolm’s khaki overcoat from its hook; the pockets were deep. Her eye-catching hair she twisted up and covered with Malcolm’s brown felt hat. Pulling it low to hide her face, she made for the door.
Though she tried not to look, she couldn’t walk out on him like that. Not when she was leaving him for the last time. Swallowing against the smell, she stepped into the kitchenette. The blood on the floor had dried tacky and tarry brown. There were already flies. Though Malcolm had shoved the gun in his mouth and kept his face of a piece, she couldn’t pretend he was sleeping, or passed out.
Picking up the paper in front of him, she stared at his picture. He looked so tired. When she touched the newsprint, at least his cheek wasn’t cold. She didn’t want to feel him like that, when he’d always been hot as a radiator to the touch. As she ran her fingers over the photo, something in the column caught her eye.
“A cinema.” She shook her head, disbelieving. “An Ospie picture palace. You stone-sucking half-wit.” It sounded angrier than she’d meant it to, but she’d realized what she wanted to do, and the rage felt good.
Dropping the paper, she knelt to pry the gun from Malcolm’s death-hard grip. As she uncurled each cold finger, she gritted her teeth and told him, “You always gave up on your fights too soon.”
* * *
The chemist round the corner let her stand behind his rows of pills and powders and use his ’phone to call up Zelda Peronides. No one answered at the shop or the docks, so she tried the emergency exchange Ari had given her and told her never, ever to use. Not even in an emergency, if she could help it. It got her a gruff male voice, two rounds of pass codes, and eventually, the woman herself.
“Who is this again?” Zelda’s voice was rough and deep—Cordelia figured she sounded about the same. Too much action, too little sleep.
“Ari’s red-haired friend. We only met once or twice. But I got a little project and I need some help.”
“Is there money in it?”
“Some.”
“Will I laugh or cry when you tell me how much?”
“Depends how much you need it.”
With a lot of exhausting double-talk, they set up a meeting that night on the edge of the southwest quarter; not quite in Eel Town, but not quite respectable, either. Cordelia killed time nursing one long pint in a dark booth at the Hare’s Tail, alternating with some laudanum she’d pocketed at the chemist.
After the sun went down, she made her way to a nameless dive off Solemnity Street. Zelda sat in the back, dressed in frumpy dark clothes, peering over a glass.
“Ah yes,” she said. “I remember you. Ari’s runner. The stripper at the Bee.”
“I’m flattered.” She wasn’t.
“What happened to your hands?”
“Busted.” Cordelia lifted her broken wrist, swollen where her fingers peeked out from the splint. Then, her other hand. “Cut.”
“Hmm.” Zelda pursed her lips. “And what exactly do you need?”
“Dynamite.”
“Of course you do. How much money have you got?”
Cordelia plunked most of Malcolm’s cash down on the table. It wasn’t a lot, and she’d skimmed some off the top just in case she needed it later. Zelda thumbed through the stack and made a face.
“This would buy you approximately enough to detonate a birdhouse. And I imagine you’re aiming for something a little larger than that.”
Cordelia ground her teeth. “All right. How much?”
“For what? The capitol building? Bythesea Station? Whatever it is, you can’t afford it.”
“Just give me a number. I’ll make it work.”
Zelda folded her hands and stared across the table, looking at Cordelia like she was a crossword, and there were a couple letters missing from the toughest answer.
“I know I shouldn’t ask,” she said at last. “And you certainly don’t have to say. But does it have to do with that little Ospie facelift they’re proposing for the Bee?”
“Mother’s tits.” Cordelia sagged. “Did everybody know but me?”
“They were keeping it rather quiet, darling.” Ice rattled as Zelda tipped her glass. “Though I must say I’m surprised that Ari didn’t tell you.”
Cordelia was more surprised—and shattered—that Malcolm hadn’t said a word. She wondered if he’d known when they were fighting, and held it back to spite her. Or if he’d only found out once they were sparking again, and wouldn’t tell her out of fear she’d leave.
“Lady’s name, it will be grim.” Zelda lit a cigarette, then offered one to Cordelia, who snatched it so fast she had to apologize.
“What will?” she asked, once she’d taken a drag. Breathing deep made her sore chest scream, but the shag sent waves of dizzy relief through the rest of her body.
“The blackboots showing patriotic flickers there. The Bee was the very best of its kind.” Zelda sighed smoke. “I wish I could see it all as it was, one more time, before…” She spoke the last of her sentence with her mouth around her straight, and broke off to inhale.
Cordelia knew an opening when she saw it. She leaned close enough she could hear the soft furze of burning paper. “Well, you can’t. And you won’t for a while. Maybe forever.”
“No. You’re right.” Zelda stared at the red tip of her cigarette, and the light of it made her dark eyes glisten like oil. “There’s a story they tell in Hyrosia, about a queen who built the most beautiful palace in all the world. She filled it with exquisite art and rare animals, and a harem of a thousand perfect catamites. It was paradise on earth. Until a neighboring queen grew jealous and attacked.”
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