Armistice

by Lara Elena Donnelly

  Perhaps, then, Aristide didn’t need to go through Pulan’s papers on his own. Perhaps Asiyah was plucking exactly what he needed from the stack, and it would just be a matter of charm and a little social lubricant to ease it out. These skills, at least, he had not let grow rusty.

  The door to Pulan’s office opened and shut again, and Asiyah’s footsteps and whistling filled the corridor.

  «Your Highness,» he said, mocking Yasullah’s pouty tone.

  Asiyah started like he’d stepped on something sharp, and paused in the doorway. Once he’d shaken off his shock he grinned and leaned on the frame. «Aristide! Inaz is already headed to Hadhariti. If she gets there before you she’ll never let you forget it.»

  «I had a little work to do,» he said.

  «I will let you get back to it, then.» Asiyah made to leave, but Aristide flapped one hand and took off his sunglasses, which up to this point he had not removed.

  «No, no,» he said. «I am finished, almost. Do you want to have a drink with me? Reza’s is quiet, at this time.»

  Asiyah cocked his head, not quite succeeding in masking his quizzical expression with an air of consideration. «All right. I have an hour or so.»

  Aristide gauged the remnants of his own hangover, calculated how many cocktails it would take for Asiyah to grow indiscreet, and thought he might last at least that long.

  * * *

  Three drinks in, they had exhausted their small talk and industry gossip. Aristide had bought the first round and the most recent, which meant he’d had three tonics, only one of them with gin, while Asiyah thought he’d had three whiskey cocktails but had really drunk one single bracketed by double pours.

  It was time to make a move.

  He slipped his cigarette case from his pocket—ugly scuff on the leather; this was the problem with white, but it looked so chic—and flipped it open.

  “Straight?” he asked Asiyah, offering.

  “Thank you, yes.” He deliberated a moment in choosing, and fumbled the straight as he withdrew it from the band. Perfect.

  Aristide lit Asiyah’s cigarette with a match from a book he’d taken from the bar—his blue enamel lighter had disappeared at some point during the previous night, probably into the bellhop’s pocket, along with the generous tip she had taken for herself—then put the flame to his own.

  In the silence as they both drew, Aristide heard someone open the piano lid, and the first jangling notes of some popular song he wouldn’t know. Asiyah hummed a few bars, then lost the thread and took another drag on his borrowed cigarette.

  «So,» said Aristide, gingerly stepping back into Porashtu. When Asiyah spoke, Aristide didn’t want him to think too hard, which if he was forced into his third language, he certainly would. «Inaz is going to Pulan’s house. There are more things at Hadhariti than pictures, these days. She is a part of that, or no?»

  Asiyah exhaled a thin stream of smoke, considering the curls and tendrils as they rose toward the ceiling. When he’d blown it all out, he took a clean breath and said, «Pulan told me you didn’t know about it.»

  «I am not an idiot.» Aristide tilted his glass so the ice clinked. «Princes and picture stars? Fine. But Geddans? No.»

  «There is a Geddan sitting right here.»

  «I do not work with the … the … » He flicked his fingers in frustration and said “embassy,” in Geddan. «I am not so dangerous, for her.»

  «And you would not believe me,» asked Asiyah, «if I told you Memmediv was a fan?»

  At that, Aristide only smiled, and ashed his cigarette. Too bemused to convey his sentiments properly in Porashtu, he said, “She didn’t invite Lillian for the papers, did she?”

  Asiyah snorted; smoke came from his nostrils. «Heavens’ eyes, of course she did. Though she only had the idea after I asked to meet Memmediv in person.»

  «The idea was yours?»

  «I like to see a person’s face before the deal is done,» said Asiyah. «Maybe that’s old-fashioned, but … » His straight had burned down to his fingers, and he paused to bury the smoldering butt in the ashtray. «I had heard some things about him, and I wanted to look into his eyes.»

  «So you trust him now?»

  «Hell’s breath, no. He’s a tree viper, hanging over all our heads. The trick will be to do a deal before he decides someone else is better worth his time. Do you know how many people he has—»

  Aristide didn’t catch the word, and shook his head. Asiyah took it for an answer to his question, and went on.

  «I had the whole story from an old FOCIS agent, who ended up in Liso after the Ospies took over and did a bit of counterintelligence work for us.»

  «Was it Merrilee Cross?» Aristide asked. He’d heard from her once—a letter, sent shortly after his name began to crop up in Porachin papers, feeling him out on renewing their trade in tar. He’d responded, curtly, that she had the wrong address, and never received another note on that subject or any other.

  «No,» said Asiyah. «Though I do know her. Talking about tree vipers, that woman is a dragon among snakes. You have met?»

  «We worked together, in Gedda.»

  «Ah well, she’s causing some problems for the port authority in Mbarada. But it’s not my … oh, in Porashtu, not my peas to shell? Is that what they say?»

  Aristide shrugged. «But Memmediv. You heard bad things?»

  «Just that he is as likely to shake your hand as stab you; whichever will get him what he wants. No … » Asiyah thumped his chest with his hand. «No center. For instance—oh, this is delicious—» He had begun, ever so slightly, to slur his words, and Aristide had to work hard to follow him. «The man who told me all this, Memmediv had blown his cover, gotten him arrested, nearly killed. Knew he’d done it, too; proud of his work. And just last week, after Pulan’s premiere, you know what happens? This fellow’s sister tries to drop down on him.»

  Aristide, who had been just raising the last of his cigarette to his lips, felt it beginning to burn the skin of his knuckles. Still, he did not move. “His sister,” he repeated. The pain of the ember against his flesh was distant, some other man’s petty problem.

  “Lillian DePaul, yes.” Asiyah’s eyebrows furrowed, and he fell back into Porashtu. «Memmediv thought it was funny. She was trying to … we call it an ant trap? I think the word in Geddan is … » He snapped his fingers and said, “Ah, honeypot.” Then, «Something sweet, you know, to draw the vermin close. She was not very good at it. He thought it was hysterical, and turned it right around on her.»

  «You knew Lillian’s brother?»

  «He never gave us his real name; called himself Paul Darling. But we figured it out eventually, and anyway, they look like twins.»

  What Aristide should be gathering from this information was that Asiyah was more deeply enmeshed in the Lisoan intelligence operation than he had heretofore realized. Instead, he had forgotten to breathe for so long that his last drag of tobacco was beginning to ache in his lungs. He let it out and asked, voice just on the verge of shaking, “And where is he now?”

  Asiyah shrugged, then glanced down. “Your straight, Aristide, it’s—”

  Aristide cast the butt of his cigarette thoughtlessly into the ashtray, scattering sparks. “DePaul,” he snapped, too loud. “Where is he now?”

  “No—I do not know. I—” He shook his head, as if the Geddan words were distracting flies. «We think he was captured, or maybe killed, running an operation on the border about a year ago. Why? Did you have ties to him as well?»

  Aristide could feel the burnt flesh on his fingers, now, stinging and insistent and painful out of proportion to its size.

  “Just one.” He struck his knees, getting up from the table. He didn’t even remember deciding to stand.

  “Aristide?” Asiyah half-rose, but Aristide waved him away.

  “No,” he said. “No, it’s fine. I simply … please excuse me.”

  And then he was out the door, blinking in the sunlight, and suddenly in the seat of hi
s car. He was less capable of driving now than he had been the night before, yet he punched the starter, and laid down a layer of rubber squealing away from the curb.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  There was a breath of rain-smell on the air: the scorching end of the dry season about to break, perhaps, or perhaps just teasing. Lillian savored a sneaky cigarette on the balcony of the Agaz, listening to the murmur of diners around her, the bubbling of hookahs and drunken laughter.

  She had bought the pack of straights at a tobacconist on the way here. The craving had struck her as she passed the shop, and she’d put it down swiftly, as she did most cravings that might get her into trouble.

  But then, at the end of the block, she’d had to pause at a streetlight. And there, waiting for traffic, she thought, Oh after all, why not? She was meeting Memmediv for yet another faux-clandestine exchange, at his behest. He wouldn’t give three bits if she smoked.

  The cigarettes were not particularly good. Not as good as she remembered cigarettes being, when she smoked more regularly. And that would have been … oh, before Stephen was born. But it was less the quality of the tobacco that made her shiver with delight, and more the transgression.

  And that, she knew, was dangerous. She’d been treading an edge for some time now. She had thought, after her last tear-up with Jinadh, that she was back on steady ground. But she found herself wondering where he’d gone afterward, what he planned to do. Part of this was worry—surely he wouldn’t scratch her, would he? Not after what she’d said?—but part of it was just wistfulness. She felt a little like she had … Lady’s name, was it almost ten years ago now? When she’d look at the cut of a man’s tunic and think, That would look good on Jinadh. When the play of sun on a fountain made her wish Jinadh was there to admire it with her. When she used to rearrange the puzzle pieces of their affair and hope that she could make it all fit neatly, somehow. Make it work.

  She hadn’t found a way in time. Jinadh had been ready to leave for Gedda the day she told him she was pregnant. He’d been, quite honestly, ready to leave long before that. She sometimes wondered if it wasn’t her foreignness, the fact that she came from a place that might not strangle him, that had attracted him to her.

  But, at the time, Porachis hadn’t strangled her. She had loved her job; she remembered what that felt like, and almost wished she didn’t. She had hoped, perhaps, to move up the ladder, maybe to an ambassadorship someday, in Porachis—she had plenty of experience—or in her father’s old post in the Niori peninsula. If she was clever, and skilled, because she didn’t believe in luck, maybe she would be assigned to Cestina, or Ibet. One of the plum postings.

  At the time, the thought of leaving made her heart leap to her throat; the thought of partnership, of interdependence. She was not used to any check upon her actions, to seeking a second opinion.

  Deep down, in dark moments, she sneered at her own cowardice; Jinadh had been safe, as a lover, because their affair could never end in commitment. Could never strangle her.

  So instead of eloping, she plucked a convenient father from the rumor mill: a foreign affairs correspondent of whom she’d been fond, but who had always hoped for more from her than she quite wanted to give. She’d let him have it finally, just once, before she started to show.

  He was killed in a pipe bomb explosion in a Dastyan café a few months later. She hated to be grateful for that, but it did make things simple.

  Stones, if she kept in this line of thought much longer she was going to need a drink to go with the straight. Luckily, when she pushed away from the balcony railing, she spotted Memmediv coming through the dining room and toward the double doors, a glass in each hand.

  “A gin gimlet,” he said. “I remembered, from the premiere. Or if you’d prefer whiskey…” He tilted the other glass.

  “I’ll take the gin,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Memmediv handed the glass over, then freed his own cigarette case from his pocket. He deftly maneuvered it open one-handed, pushed a straight free with his thumb, and caught it in his lips. “Light?” he asked, around the paper.

  Lillian leaned in to touch the ember of her cigarette to the end of his. He took a deep breath, and then let it out in an uneven shudder. The raggedness of his breath was the only sign she had of an upset before he said, low-voiced, “We have a serious problem.”

  She tried to look nervous instead of relieved. “Sit down at least. Standing here isn’t making us inconspicuous.”

  They took a pair of tall chairs in the corner by the railing, so that the roar of the lower cataract cloaked their conversation. Mist settled on the fine hairs of Lillian’s arms and cooled the back of her neck. It glistened on the black and silver of Memmediv’s hair, beading on his pomade. Now that she was facing him head-on, and he had shed the last of the mask he’d worn in, she could see the worry lines between his strong, dark brows.

  “All right,” she said, putting out the butt of her straight in the ashtray. “What kind of problem?”

  “It is so prosaic, I am almost ashamed to admit. But, blackmail.”

  “Well.” Lillian lifted her glass. Before she drank, she spoke to the slice of lime: “There’s something to be said for tradition, I suppose.”

  “There’s a woman we have in custody,” he said, unsmiling. “Mab Cattayim. Here, in Porachis. There might have been questions about jurisdiction, but it was done very quietly.”

  “What? That’s madness.” Let him think this was fresh news to her.

  “I was completely ignorant of all of this. Flagg has frozen me out, it seems. But not you. He trusts you.”

  “You want me to do something for you.”

  “I need you to,” he said. He finally did drink his whiskey, in one swallow. “Cattayim has a wife, in Berer. Sofie. I don’t know how she found my name, but she did, and now she’s leaning on me.”

  “And what did she have to say?”

  “She wanted to know what had happened to Mab. Wanted her freed, really. And she knew about Satri.”

  “How much?” asked Lillian, who still didn’t have details about the arms deal, or all of its participants, and sensed an opening.

  “Enough to ruin everything,” he said, dashing her hopes. “She told me the story was with a friend of hers, a journalist. If I don’t help her, the whole country finds out the CIS has arrested a Geddan political refugee outside of their jurisdiction. Chaos in the chancery. Close scrutiny from here and from home. Scrutiny my current position will not bear. I will lose all of my progress. I’ll probably be recalled, with Flagg, and who knows what you’ll be left with. A press nightmare. Certainly not your son.”

  “Which paper?”

  “The Call,” he said. “Out of Berer.”

  “Nobody reads that rag,” said Lillian, with false bravado. As if bravery could make it true.

  “Somebody will,” he said. “A story like that will break in the bigger papers eventually, and make it to the wireless. You know it will.”

  Flagg was not going to be pleased.

  “Find me something,” said Memmediv. “Anything Flagg will tell you. I just need a scrap or two, to keep her happy until things wrap up with Satri. Then I couldn’t care less what the papers print. Buy me some time.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  * * *

  “This,” said Flagg, “is not ideal.”

  Lillian pulled minutely on the hem of her skirt, fussing with it in order to avoid looking at Flagg’s bloodless face. “No. It certainly isn’t.”

  “And he has no idea how she connected him with this government’s activities on foreign soil?”

  “Or, he knows and he isn’t saying.” The thought had entered her mind in the dead hours she should have spent sleeping, and had instead spent sitting in the garden, hoping for a breeze and divine inspiration.

  “Do you have someone in mind?” he asked, too sharply.

  She sighed. “No. I’m only chasing a runaway s
pool, which I can hardly afford to do.” She looked pointedly at the clock on Flagg’s desk. “This entire assignment is eating up time and resources I should be spending making sure Gedda doesn’t look like a midden heap in front of hostile foreign powers. Especially if something like this is ripening on the branch and ready to fall.”

  “It can’t,” he said flatly. “This story cannot break. Do you understand?”

  “Well then you’d better release this woman from wherever you’ve got her locked away. Unless you’ve already killed her?” She hadn’t meant to say it with such pique, but it was too late to haul the words back in.

  Flagg’s lip curled. “Out of the question. She’ll go back to Gedda to stand trial. She and Sofie Keeler are both here illegally. Porachis would have deported them years ago if they had merited a second glance.”

  “They’ll merit a second glance now,” she said. “Look at Makricosta. The worse we treat people, the softer they land in our enemies’ beds.”

  “Not if this is handled correctly,” said Flagg.

  “And how do you plan to handle Keeler, if you aren’t acceding to her demands?” Flagg had never once called Sofie “Cattayim,” and she didn’t know if he would acknowledge the name, or even realize which of the women she was referring to.

  “I’m not handling her,” said Flagg. “You are. You’re the press attaché; she’s talking to the papers.”

  “With all due respect.” It did not sound as though she had any respect left in her. When had she grown so irritated with him? So vexed that it almost drowned her fear? “This is clearly a matter for your department. You got yourselves into it. What am I meant to do to get you out?”

  “Kill the story,” Flagg snarled. “I don’t care how, but kill it. I can’t afford something like this right now.”

  That was new: Flagg admitting fallibility. It might have scared her, once. Now, she saw soft belly where his armor had come askew and wondered if a pike might strike that spot; if the dragon could perhaps be slain. If there was some way out of this, after all.