Armistice

by Lara Elena Donnelly

  * * *

  “You what?” He had expected something sinister, but not quite on this level. He was, quite honestly, impressed. Impressed and horrified.

  “Yeah. The Bee, that was our first hit. Or, mine. Zelda Peronides put me in touch with a guy, and then he knew this peach—used to work the theatre district—it was her who said why didn’t we go bigger, branch out. She was the brains behind it all. I was just kind of…”

  “A figurehead.” He shook his own, looked down into the glass of fig brandy warming in his palm. Pulan had left them alone, in the library: a dark room with narrow, high windows and deep shelves of books bound in jewel-toned leathers tooled with gold. It was also the home of the best-stocked bar in Hadhariti, where rows of fancifully shaped bottles nestled in terraced ranks before a three-sided mirror. He was even gladder of this now than he had been when Pulan first guided them inside and shut the door.

  “We were doing all right for a year or two,” she said. “I was pretty surprised you didn’t clock me straight off, or even suspect. We weren’t really low profile, until we started getting torn up in Amberlough and Nuesklend, and had to lay down in a ditch up north for a while. People started coming to us up there, even. The thinking was we’d go bigger when we’d gotten our feet under us again.”

  “And since I found you stumbling through Chitra’s choreography in open auditions, I assume you never did?”

  “Nah. We got word the CIS had our scent and they bundled me out first off. My right hand said…” Folk look to you. If you get drug in, we fall flat. “Said we’d all get back on track when it blew over, but it didn’t. It got real bad.”

  “And how did you end up staying with the Cattayims?”

  “Mab’s family put some of us up, in the mountains,” she said. “She was sending money. When I had to go, that’s where they sent me. The two of them didn’t clock my face—didn’t remember ever meeting me.”

  “Well, they remembered me,” he said. “And hauled me into this mess I only ever wanted to turn my back on.”

  “Hauled you?” she said. “How in damnation was Sofie Keeler gonna haul you anywhere? You got all this money, all these friends, and all she had was her wife and her kid and two rooms over a fry shop. Even if she had a juicy cut of gossip on you, the spatter wouldn’t touch you when she slapped it down.”

  “Recent circumstances seem to have proved you wrong,” he said, happy not to comment on the dubious strength of his friendships, and the distinct lack of heel marks in the dirt where he had gone to Sofie willingly.

  “All right, I’ll give you that one.” Cordelia crossed her arms, which had been aggressively held akimbo until now. “Why’d you give her Memmediv’s name? Because you were mad about Cyril?”

  “No,” he said. “I—I didn’t know, yet. But I was certainly angry at all of this … intrigue cropping up when I thought I’d left it behind.” He drank, swallowed, concentrated on the burn of the liquor down to his belly. He didn’t notice he had closed his eyes until Cordelia spoke and he realized he couldn’t see her.

  “The way you get your creepers into every crack,” she said, “I don’t think you could get free of your own tangle even if you wanted to.”

  When he looked up, her arms were still crossed but their line had gone soft. She was shaking her head almost fondly.

  “You know,” she said, “it was Mab said I should look you up. That you might have some work for me.”

  “I didn’t realize it would be quite so up your alley.”

  She snorted. “So far up it’s against the wall.”

  “What’s your plan, then? Or can’t you tell me?”

  “It’s my job to get Lillian’s kid out of Gedda safe,” she said. “And then for gratitude, Pulan drops a heavy load of dynamite for me, some guns and ammunition. Plus good boots, tents, all the kind of stuff they give an army that we never managed to put together for ourselves. Rucksacks and blankets and things for living rough, out of sight. Take the load off the Chuli, if we can. See if we can do some good there. I’d wager they’ll put their weight behind us if we get them out of the pens.”

  “And then what? You … kill Acherby? Blow up the Cliff House? How many of you are there? You can’t possibly win.”

  She closed her eyes at that, and breathed deep through her nose. A flush crept up her neck. He had made her very angry, but she was mastering it for him. To keep from driving him off again. When she had herself in hand, she opened her eyes and stared straight into his. “I threw in with Memmediv.”

  Aristide felt his mouth drop open, but wasn’t sure if any words were forthcoming. Cordelia cut them off if they were.

  “He’s got people with experience, and he can hold the east for me, or anyway keep the Ospies dancing fast over there while we sneak up to trip them from behind.”

  “You,” he said. Then, lagging too long after it, “What?”

  “Don’t start in about Cyril. I swallowed that castor and now I’m moving on. He’s got something I want. Don’t tell me you never worked with somebody you hated before. Don’t tell me you never bit your tongue and nodded.”

  The curve of the brandy glass filled his hand more snugly than it had before. He breathed into his grip, willing the muscles to loosen up, then set the glass aside to spare it further danger.

  “Ari,” she said. “I think if I use him, I can win.”

  “Win what?” he said. “Civil war?”

  She shrugged, as if he’d asked her what time a train arrived, or if the post had come. “If it comes to that. And I think it will.”

  Her nonchalance changed something in the air between them, as if a gauzy scrim had lifted and he saw her clearly for the first time since she had arrived in Porachis. Cordelia Lehane was no longer the stripper from the Bee, but someone to be reckoned with, and feared.

  * * *

  «I’m not sure about this.» Pacing along the balustrade, Jinadh ran a nervous hand through his hair. Lillian noticed for the first time some shimmering threads of silver. «Putting our son in the hands of the man who—»

  «Please don’t,» she said. Memmediv had retired indoors once Cordelia and Pulan chased after Makricosta, citing the sun glare off the ocean, and his pounding head. It wasn’t as if he were around to hear the insults. But Lillian was tired of the heightened emotions, the accusations, the surprises and shouting and conflict. She liked things to run smoothly. It was perhaps the only trait she had in common with Maddox Flagg. «You trusted him before last night.»

  «I did,» he said. «But trust can be undermined. Your brother, Lillian.»

  «In service to the same cause he’s pursuing now.» It hurt her to say, like ripping out a tooth from the root, but it was the truth.

  To that, Jinadh’s only response was a significant look.

  She sank back into the stiff wicker curve of the divan. «I don’t like it either,» she said; an understatement. Grief wailed deep within her, but pragmatism kept it muffled. «However, it’s convenient and clean and if I don’t trust Memmediv at least I trust his sense of self-interest. He can’t afford to alienate Satri right now, or the Lisoans.»

  «How can you bring politics into this?» He turned to face her, and had to put his hand up to shade his eyes from the sun.

  «How couldn’t I? This entire situation hangs on politics.» She sighed, and switched to Geddan for the ease of jargon. “I’ve become a lynchpin in a multinational operation to undermine Ospie sovereignty. Memmediv needs me to keep Flagg’s eyes off of him until the guns are safely with his people and he’s off the map himself. If I don’t succeed, the border conflict surrounding Dastya piddles on, no pin in the rear for anyone. Liso, and by extension Porachis, would rather have that pin in deep to bleed Gedda’s resources heading into the Lisoan border conflict, and these guns are how they plan to do that. Memmediv can’t afford to let anything happen to Stephen.”

  Jinadh shook his head. “Sometimes you are so cold, I am amazed.”

  She schooled her face to hide her hurt. He
saw it anyway. The intricacies of alliance and mutually assured destruction were not his strong suit, but in this he was her equal, if not better. No matter what she sought to keep from her expression, he could always sense it.

  “Ah, I apologize,” he said. Then, in Porashtu, she assumed for the clarity he had failed to find in Geddan, «I didn’t mean it as it sounded. It … it leaves me breathless, sometimes. I find it beautiful, like snow or the sweep of a glacier. But like ice it is alien to me; I wasn’t born to it and had to learn.»

  «You learned badly,» she said.

  «And I’m glad of it.» He sat by her and touched her face. «I like to make you melt.»

  She indulged in the warmth of his palm on her cheek for the space of one breath, two, before she straightened and said, “Yes. Well. That will have to wait a little while longer.”

  He pulled his hands into his lap. “Oh?”

  “This will take planning, and time. I cannot risk a liaison with you in the interim.”

  She saw him build up his façade, brick by brick. “Of course.”

  Now she was the one who touched him with tenderness, cupping the curve of his elbow. “It’s only a week, Jinadh. Maybe two. We went months sometimes. And then years.”

  «I know,» he said. «Only, it’s so hard. Do you know how often I dreamed of … It’s like you said. I let myself indulge and now it is that much harder to abstain.»

  «Would you like to know my secret?»

  He smirked, then turned his head so his ear came close to her mouth. Lips against the delicate curves of his sweat-salted skin, she said, «The ice is a shell to hold the fire in.»

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  It took him too many tries, but Aristide finally swallowed enough of his pride and fear and embarrassment to knock on Asiyah’s door.

  The prince answered half dressed, looking hungover, but woke up a good deal when he realized who was on his threshold.

  “Aristide,” he said. “Ah. Come in?” He had a towel around his neck and his face was damp, as if he had been caught shaving. Indeed, the edges of his beard looked crisper than they had the night before, his neck more streamlined.

  Aristide wondered briefly if he had someone else to shave him, when he was at home, or if this was a task his hand was trained to. Surely Pulan could have leant him a valet. Perhaps he preferred to wield the razor when it came so near his throat; one sympathized.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  Asiyah shook his head, flapped his hand, and stood back for Aristide to enter.

  Inaz was still in bed, a tray across her lap. A bright wrap covered her hair and her face looked puffy with drink and lack of sleep. She watched him cross the room through slitted eyes and he imagined very few people saw her in this state and lived to tell the tale.

  “I am glad to see you,” said Asiyah. “I wanted to ask … I mean, I hope that I did not say anything that—”

  He wasn’t trying to apologize; he was fishing for information. But Aristide was good at playing ignorant when it suited him, and even better at simpering. “No, no,” he said. “Thank you. I’d much rather have known. I apologize for my behavior last night. I was … overwhelmed.”

  “If I knew,” Asiyah began, then shook his head. “But perhaps better I did not, and told you in ignorance.”

  “Perhaps.” Aristide tried not to sound arch.

  “Is this what you came to talk about?” Asiyah took a tunic from the foot of the bed and wrestled it over his head, covering the small, hard paunch of his stomach—muscles that would go to fat as he got older—and the tight curls of hair across his chest. Inaz watched him dress with a heavily lidded stare, and Aristide caught a spark of something between them that might have ignited if he hadn’t been in the room.

  He cleared his throat and Asiyah had the decency to look sheepish. “No, actually. Well. Partially. I wanted to ask you some questions.”

  Inaz shot him a crabby glance and said something to Asiyah in Shedengue. He answered her in the kind of soothing tone one used for highly bred horses and hysterical actors. Then, to Aristide, “Come. We will talk on the balcony and leave Inaz to her sleep.”

  They were at the northeast corner of the house, looking up the coast toward the rising red cliffs and the winding piece of road Aristide and Cordelia had driven in on—Lady’s sake, was it only a week ago? The sun, well into the sky now, beat down on the small balcony. Asiyah did not seem to mind, though he put his back to it, which left Aristide blinking in the glare. Practical, but also a habit he might have learned in less innocuous circumstances.

  “You’re a slipperier fish than I thought,” said Aristide. “I suppose it’s no good asking what exactly you do for Lisoan intelligence?”

  “Work,” he said. “How do you say it? Odd jobs?”

  “Of course,” said Aristide, who didn’t believe him.

  “You did not come to ask questions about me,” said Asiyah, stretching his arms above his head. “What do you want to know about DePaul?”

  “Where was he living? And where did he disappear from?”

  “He had a house—more a shack—in a little border village.”

  “Called?”

  “Oyoti. You could perhaps find it, on the right map, if you looked closely. But you would not want to.”

  “I would,” said Aristide. “Is that where he was, the last you heard?”

  “Yes, but … you are not planning to go there?”

  Aristide only looked at him, squinting hard in the sun.

  “I do not think you will like it very much,” said Asiyah. He leaned back on the balcony railing and tilted his head, as if to examine Aristide from a different angle. “No hot water, no cocktail bars. Two generators in the whole town: one for the whorehouse, one for the jail.”

  “You are under the mistaken impression,” said Aristide, soft as the belly of a venomous snake, “that I am unused to hardship.”

  “Mistaken?” Asiyah snorted and waved a hand to encompass their surroundings. “And, besides the mud and poverty, there are the mercenaries waiting for war to start. And fighters from the north like … hm.” He lapsed into Porashtu for the idiom: Flies on a cow’s ass. “It is a violent place. People go missing, held for ransom, killed in the street. You will not survive your first week. Your first day.” He dropped off and stared, as if waiting for Aristide to agree the idea was a foolish one, that of course he shouldn’t go to this dangerous backwater.

  But Aristide waited him out, silent and aloof, until he finally shrugged and said, “But what do I know? Maybe you are a sharp shot and a wrestler. You certainly gave Memmediv’s head a knock last night.”

  “I have terrible aim, actually,” said Aristide, in the conversational tone he reserved for tedious small talk and mild threats. “It’s why I prefer not to shoot from any great distance. I like to put my pistol between the eyes, if I can manage it.”

  Asiyah blinked at him.

  “Perhaps the LSI is less impressive than I thought,” said Aristide, examining his nails. “Or perhaps your branch doesn’t liaise very closely with the port authority. Otherwise, you might have some inkling who I am, and what I’ve done.”

  “You were a nightclub performer,” said Asiyah. “And a political fugitive.”

  “Under one name, yes.” He crooked his finger, happy to be standing on firm ground for the first time since sliding feet-first into this slop of intrigue.

  Asiyah looked suspicious, but leaned in nonetheless. Aristide whispered a name in his ear, smiling as he did. Close to like this, he missed Asiyah’s expression, but he heard the sharp intake of breath and felt the air move on his neck.

  “So you see.” He stepped back from Asiyah and tugged his lapels straight. “I’m quite capable of handling myself in a nasty situation.”

  * * *

  Since he’d been wrangled into staying at Hadhariti for a little while longer, Aristide had time to consider his next moves carefully. To book passages
and get papers in order. To contemplate the muddy, steamy, murderous sty he intended to stay in for as long as it took.

  Sleep retreated in the face of how much would it cost, and what to bring, and how long will it take? Perhaps it was time to liquidate some of those assets he’d been ignoring; it felt less like betrayal, less like surrender, to pursue this end.

  He began to write a ledger behind his eyelids, penciling in gains and losses, expenses, income, principle and interest. If he sold the property in Asu … no. No, he would keep that if he could. Successful or not, when he left Liso he wouldn’t be coming back to work for Pulan.

  He did not allow himself to hope for the former. Or, if he did, it was a feeling he sealed away deep within himself, so that it powered his actions like a quiet engine, unseen beneath chrome and steel. The purpose of his mission, he could not approach head-on. He could hardly bear to say the name of the man he hoped to find. Hardly admit he was looking for anyone at all.

  When he opened his eyes, not having slept, the radium-painted hands of the clock on his bedside told him it was nearing dawn.

  There were the pills, of course, but they would drop him into a cement-heavy slumber. Perhaps he was paranoid, but he would rather be alert in Pulan’s house of falsehood and deception. If that meant going without sleep, well. He’d gone without much more than that.

  He rose from bed and splashed some water on his face. The weather, he thought, might be turning. It was still difficult for him to tell. But there had been, of late, a clammy heaviness in the air, the tang of ozone, and a subtle chill when the sun was gone that slipped through skin and muscle like a fish knife. He was never cold, exactly, at this time of year: only uncomfortable. To hold off the damp, he donned a dressing gown of raw red silk, the same color as oxidizing iron.

  Get out of bed, get out of his rooms. A little stroll around the house before the sun came up. Then maybe he could get an hour or so of sleep after breakfast.

  He caught sight of Lillian as he passed the green parlor. She stood at the tall glass doors, open onto the upper terrace and the sea. Soft gray crept through the clouds from the eastern sky, over the house and toward the western horizon, striped with tentative fingers of pink and gold. The water lay untouched by light, dark and heavy as wet velvet.