Armistice

by Lara Elena Donnelly

  “Have you arranged to meet with Memmediv again?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We’re seeing one another this evening.”

  “Good. If possible, I’d like your … associate to be our eyes at Hadhariti. Between the two of you, I want to find out what’s going on here and put a stop to it before it scratches me. This”—he tapped the photographs—“is a good start. Funny, that. Your old lover spying for you, while you spy on a new one.”

  Her urge was to snap at him; instead she spoke softly, with a half-raised hand to ward off what he had said. “I wouldn’t call him my lover.”

  “Which one?” asked Flagg, snake-smiling.

  Lillian bit the inside of her cheek and tasted blood.

  “I honestly don’t care what you call either of them.” Flagg crisply straightened the stack of photos and clipped them inside Lehane’s file. “As long as you wrestle some information out of one or the other, and soon.”

  She rose from her seat, too quickly. “I have a meeting.”

  Flagg’s short exhalation might have been a chuckle, in a more emotive man. “No, you don’t. But you have a job to do. And a son, who I know you’d like to see again. I’m sure he wants to see you.”

  Lillian’s wrath was usually a cold thing, channeled into implacable action like a glacier. But occasionally—such as now—it rose like a molten geyser. She capped it only by the grace of practice, but steam still leaked out when she said, “Have a care, Counselor.”

  If she had not been so angry, the look of surprise on his normally expressionless face would have frightened her. Instead she pushed just a little further. “You ought to be wary of alienating your assets. I’d have thought this whole affair would have driven that home.”

  He blinked and tilted his head, like a lizard focusing on something larger than itself. “Are you threatening me, Ms. DePaul?”

  “I wouldn’t dare,” she said, hand on the doorknob. “As you’re well aware, I have far too much at risk for that.”

  * * *

  She knew very little about Memmediv, except that he was clever enough to have fooled Flagg for this long. That meant he was clever indeed, and far less likely to fall for this ploy than Flagg thought.

  How, then, to gain his confidence, if that was possible at all?

  What did she know about him? That he was a little older than her, but new to the foreign service. That he had been a fox far longer than he had been a diplomat. That he had betrayed his country for the Ospies. That he was ready to betray the Ospies now for Tatié.

  That he was a man with a single goal, for which he would compromise all other loyalties.

  Perhaps they were not as dissimilar as they seemed.

  Myriad small crises kept her in the office until after dark. This close to the equator it came at the same time no matter what the season, which meant she rarely saw the sun. Not, given the temperature, that she minded.

  Despite handling several bouts of bad publicity over the course of the day—military exercises on the Lisoan border, a confirmed outbreak of typhus in the Cultham internment camps, and half the Geddan delegation walking out of the Tzietan peace talks—a small piston had been firing in the back of her mind, so that by the time she left the chancery she had begun to formulate a plan.

  If she had told Flagg what she planned to do he might have thrown her in a cell. She was fairly certain he had the power to do so, without the inconvenience of a warrant. Luckily, he hadn’t asked her how she planned to gain Memmediv’s confidence, only demanded that she deliver it.

  He cared about one thing, and one thing only? Well, so did she. She wasn’t a fox but she knew people; she knew narratives, and how emotional connections could be leveraged in service of a goal.

  Things would go one of two ways this evening. Either Flagg was right, and Memmediv was not as clever as she estimated, and she would end up doing just as Flagg wished. Or she was right, and she could play on the suspicion she had sensed in Anadh, after the premiere. If Memmediv had picked up on the false note in her amorous advance, she would hammer on it as loudly as she could, and show her cards. One often learned more about a new game playing with an open hand in the first round. The trick was to apply those lessons later when the stakes were high.

  Upon arriving home, she peeled off her blouse and skirt and even her slip. The dress she had in mind would not hide it, and in fact, the purposes it served were counter to her own.

  The neckline of this gown alone had earned it a place in the back of her clothespress. That, and its color. Lillian was partial to neutrals and, when an occasion called for something more lively, to any shade of blue bar the truly garish. This dress was dark red, reminiscent of an uncut garnet. The deep décolletage, embellished with a line of seed pearls, left the wings of her collarbones bare, and the flat plane of her sternum, hinting at the inner curves of her breasts. A drape of superfluous satin swept low across her back, showing the groove of her spine in its entirety. Against the black-scarlet fabric, the stretch of her exposed skin shone, luminous.

  She had bought the dress in an imprudent moment, nearly a decade ago, and worn it once to meet Jinadh in a hotel bar. She had felt nervous, then, and awkward, as she did now, but the dress had more than served its purpose. She didn’t hope to take things quite so far tonight, but she aimed to look as though she did.

  Before sitting at her vanity, she pulled the bell rope. Waleeda arrived as she was uncapping her lipstick—rarely used, and nearly full.

  «Yes, ma’am?»

  «Will you ask Amil to bring the car around?» The heat made the pigment soft, so that it swept slippery across her lips and left a thick coat of color. «I’m dining out this evening.»

  «Of course,» said Waleeda. And then, lingering a moment, «You look very beautiful, ma’am. May I ask, what’s the occasion?»

  «Just meeting a friend,» she said.

  Waleeda made a disbelieving sound through her nose, but let Lillian keep her secrets. When this incident got back to Flagg—Lillian was fairly certain that it would—he would know who she was bound to see.

  * * *

  Across the river, some miles east of the cliff’s edge, the night market was smaller and shabbier than in the middle of the city or down on the floodplain. Hookahs and liquor were cheap, and of no outstanding quality. Most of the storefronts—largely laundries, lunch counters, and bookies—were grated and dark by the time Lillian stepped from her car and sent Amil off on his own recognizance for the next hour or so.

  They had agreed on this place because it was discreet and out of the way. Though Flagg approved of their liaison, Lillian hoped to convince Memmediv he didn’t, or at least make a show of doing so.

  This time, when she arrived early, she was not preceded. She asked the proprietress for a corner table in the back, a shot of cheap whiskey, and a hookah, and she got them, in that order, in a relatively timely fashion.

  Tobacco haze hovered at head height, twisting and curling in the draft from the ceiling fans. Sinking into the cushioned bench, she kept well below it, where the air was more easily breathed. Women sat around the place, and a few men of dubious moral character, tucked into nooks much like Lillian’s, or at small round tables woven from reeds. These were liberally scorched where ashes had fallen on them. The patrons laughed and cursed, drinking beer and sorghum whiskey and small, strong cups of coffee.

  That had never been her, boasting in the bars and buying drinks for prostitutes—temple bells, she’d been raised by a lawyer and a diplomat. She had no reason to feel kinship with these women, no reason to feel so melancholy at their freedom. But her heart hurt, all the same. If not for a personal loss, for the general loss of a way of life. She remembered her school friends sneaking away to drink unchaperoned during holidays in the city; the sight of razors congregating on bar stoops, wreathed in cigarette smoke and swearing.

  She hadn’t been back to Gedda since things changed. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go. It was easier to ignore, so far away. Easier to do the
job they’d dragged her back for.

  Besides, how much more would it hurt her heart to return to Carmody, or the house on Coral Street, to be that much closer to Stephen and still unable to see him? How much would it hurt him, if he found out she had been nearby and hadn’t come to visit?

  She took a deep drag on the hookah’s hose, and the nicotine rush pushed the thoughts from her head for just a moment. Exhaling slowly, she let the smoke wreath her head.

  When it cleared, Memmediv stood in the doorway, squinting into the haze. He was already getting some dirty looks from the other clientele. Lillian put a hand on a passing coal-girl’s arm. «That man,» she said. «He’s with me. Bring him over?»

  The girl hesitated, looking Lillian’s clothes and complexion up and down with a critical eye until she took a coin from her clutch and offered it. The girl—who couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen—made the money disappear between her abi and her skin, then hurried to Memmediv’s side and thwacked his arm with the back of her knuckles. He started at the blow and Lillian laughed, smoke trickling from her nose. When the girl gestured toward her, she let the laughter settle into a small, coy smile.

  “A hard place to find,” he said, sitting not across from her but perpendicular, against the other half of the corner bench. Positioned this way, their knees were close enough to touch, so she closed the extra few inches.

  “You don’t come across the river much?”

  “Not in six months, no.” He took the hookah hose when she offered it, and she let it trail between her fingers. “I didn’t realize there was anything over here I might be interested in.”

  “Hm,” she said. “So this is new territory.” It was easier to flirt with him when she was furious with Flagg. Anger made her predatory. She put a hand on his thigh, echoing her advance of a few nights before, and slid it across the fine linen of his trousers. “Are you feeling adventurous?”

  He tilted his head back and she saw the angle of his jaw shift. Muscles in his throat contracted. As he exhaled, he made a soft sound and expelled a perfect smoke ring. Then he dropped his chin, blew the rest of the smoke out of his lungs, and shook his head.

  “Ms. DePaul, what are you doing?”

  She pressed a little harder on his leg, moved her hand a little higher. “It’s not obvious?” The smoke had made her voice deep; she sounded like a femme fatale from a pulpy wireless drama. It made her blush, though that wouldn’t be noticeable under the rouge.

  His laughter fell like ashes, soft and acrid. “Please. I have more practice at seductions like this than you do. Though you weren’t bad out of the gate.”

  The feeling that twinged in her stomach was akin to the shame of a lover truly spurned. Which was absurd, and disgusting, but this was a kind of hubris that kept little company with reason.

  “You might even have caught someone less astute,” Memmediv went on, “if you hadn’t pushed it so hard the second time around.”

  She let her wounded pride show in her posture, and pulled her hand from his leg. “But you asked to meet again.”

  “Because I have some questions,” he said. “Who put you up to it? Flagg? That stings. I thought he trusted me.”

  “Perhaps he shouldn’t,” said Lillian, and hoped it was the right thing. At least it wasn’t a full admission of guilt.

  “He certainly doesn’t wield the same amount of power over my actions as he seems to over yours. A honeypot? I thought you had more class.”

  This part was too easy to play, and almost rewarding. She let the cap off of her anger and spat it at him, sizzling. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I have some. What hold does he have over you, to make you do this?”

  It was easy, also, to let tears prick the inner corners of her eyes. But she didn’t speak, not until Memmediv’s expression softened into pity. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should not have put it quite so cruelly.”

  Then she did let her eyes close, her lips compress. “My son.” It came out hushed, trembling. She almost thought she’d overdone it, but Memmediv pressed a glass into her hand—the cheap whiskey she had ordered and never drunk. She did so now. It burned on the way down, lingering painfully behind her ribs.

  “My son,” she said again, clearing her throat. “He’s at school, in Gedda. Flagg wants me to … I don’t know when I’ll see him again, if I don’t…” She put her fingers to her lips, to stop the words from coming out. She wasn’t sure she was acting anymore.

  “Don’t what?” asked Memmediv.

  “He thinks … I don’t know what exactly. That you’re up to something.”

  Thoughtfully, Memmediv tapped the hookah hose against his chin. “And what do you think?”

  “I hardly know you. And honestly, I don’t care. I only want to see my son again. I’d agree to anything. I already have done.” She turned her face down, counterfeiting shame.

  “Understandable,” he said, and there was something in that single word that confirmed her suspicion, validated this mad plan.

  He sucked on the hose, drawing deeply. The flare of the coal illuminated his eyes, so she could see he was smiling even before he exhaled. “So Flagg has threatened your son.”

  “He has.” She clasped her hands around the empty shooter, and they slipped slightly in liquor that had dripped down to coat the outside of the glass.

  “And what incentive,” he asked, his consonants soft with smoke, “might mitigate that ultimatum?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re prepared to give?”

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  As Aristide had suspected she would, Pulan used her cousin as an excuse. He’d never seen her so solicitous.

  Jinadh was, by all accounts, a particular favorite of the queen in much the same way a small dog or precocious child might be, and therefore worth a certain amount of flattery. Besides, he had a sharp pen when it came to his society columns. All of the brown-nosing his presence required usually put Pulan in a foul temper, as he was younger than her and a man besides. Under normal circumstances, Aristide was happy to pick loose threads with her behind Jinadh’s back, having too often read speculations about himself beneath the latter’s byline.

  This time when Jinadh left, Aristide didn’t feel much like gossiping. Pulan had used the long visit to put off whatever confrontation Aristide would have liked to bring to the forefront. Which meant it festered and turned rancid, worsened by Jinadh’s prodding.

  He tried to wheedle stories about Gedda out of Aristide, and chased Cordelia around half the estate until she snapped at him, in fine form rife with the curses of Kipler’s Mew, and locked herself in her room.

  After perhaps forty-eight hours, he finally left them alone. Aristide might have aged ten years in that time. He felt tired. He felt stupid and extraneous, faintly ill, and wholly disgusted with himself. He had trusted Pulan when she told him she was done. Since when had trust become a habit with him?

  Perhaps when he burned his old life, he’d burned his old habits, too. If this development was any indication, he’d better start combing through the ashes for useful fragments the flames had missed.

  A knock on the door brought him back to his coffee, his crumbs, himself. He had taken his afternoon meal alone, barricaded inside his rooms. “What?” he barked, sinking more deeply into his chair.

  “The post.” It was Daoud. “You received a letter.” He had a sour expression on his face, as if he was not pleased to be yoked with this duty. Usually when he brought Aristide’s mail it meant a little naughtiness before afternoon meetings, but he had stuck close by Pulan behind the suppressing fire of Jinadh’s militant socializing.

  He held the letter out, but Aristide hesitated. He was used to business correspondence, which in the film world meant too-familiar invitations to lunch, desperately cheerful pleas, or gushing praise with a crumb of a request buried deep within it. Beyond that, it was bills and the occasional interview request. Nothing he w
anted to deal with now.

  But this, when he looked at it more closely, didn’t resemble any of the things he wanted to avoid. It was a thin envelope, cheap paper wrinkled from its rough passage in a mail sack. The handwritten address, slanting gently upward, was in Geddan script.

  The few letters he’d gotten from Geddan acquaintances, he had not been happy to read.

  “It is not a snake,” said Daoud, flapping it at him. “It will not bite you.”

  “Unlike some other creatures of my acquaintance.” He couldn’t quite make it flirtatious; it mostly came out accusatory.

  «You usually deserve it.» Pitched at a low grumble, in Porashtu, it wasn’t meant for Aristide. “When you are done with that, Pulan wants to see you.” Then he was gone, closing the door none too gently.

  Aristide held the envelope at arm’s length and squinted until the letters grew sharp, then gave up and scrabbled behind his back for his spectacles, which he’d left lying on his desk amidst the dirty dishes.

  By the slant and curl of the penmanship, he guessed the author had been schooled in the art; likely they came from wealth. By the slight smear of the ink, they were left-handed. Aristide ran quickly through a list of Geddan acquaintances he could call up at short notice. None seemed likely, and he didn’t recognize the handwriting.

  Inside was a single sheet of paper bearing a few lines of the same. The message gave him nothing but an address in Anadh, a time, and an imperative:

  We must speak.

  -Sofie Cattayim

  At least it didn’t say I need your help, though he imagined that was what it meant.

  He knew the name. Cattayim. A Chuli name, unusual outside Farbourgh, let alone in Porachis. More than that, it was familiar. Why did he know that name? Then it struck him.

  In Geddan tradition, spouses took the surname of the eldest person in the union, whether that union was between two or more. And Mab Cattayim was the eldest spouse of those three hapless newlyweds he’d sent packing to Porachis in the failing days of regionalist Gedda. The letter was from Sofie Keeler.

  He balled it up and threw it, hard.