Armistice
Page 34
“How exciting,” she said. His hair was wet now with her tears. “Did you thank Ms. Lehane and Mr. Memmediv for picking you up from school?”
He pushed back from her embrace and gaped up at her. “They left my comics in the car. And Ms. Lehane made me poo in a field!” When she burst into helpless, tearful laughter once again he said, “It wasn’t funny. She said that’s how soldiers do it.”
“I’m sure it is,” she said, voice wobbling, drawing him close again.
Face tucked against her chest, he said, “Mr. Makricosta told me that there would be a war.”
The bottom dropped out of her stomach and she shot a very cold look indeed at Mr. Makricosta, where he was chatting with the concierge. He caught it and looked confused.
Just one more thing to explain to Stephen, then, in a long list of difficult subjects.
Over Stephen’s tangles of dirty hair, she saw Jinadh watching them, weight pitched forward onto the balls of his feet, like he wanted to join but couldn’t. Untangling one hand from the back of Stephen’s head, she beckoned to him. He staggered slightly, like a drunk or a sleepwalker, then caught himself and walked on with more composure.
“Stephen,” she said, when he was by her side. “Do you remember Mr. Addas?”
Wriggling from Lillian’s arms, Stephen looked up. His eyebrows knit together in a frown so like Jinadh’s she couldn’t believe he didn’t recognize the man who had made half of him; she would have thought it was like looking in a mirror.
“I think we met once,” he said. “At a party?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’d like to speak with you.”
Jinadh added, «We have some exciting news.»
The wrinkle between Stephen’s eyebrows deepened momentarily before he smoothed his expression into a mask of geniality. That talent he had from both of them, and she suspected it had gotten him out of lots of scrapes with authority at school.
She also suspected that right now, he was using it to put them at their ease, while gears turned inside his tousled head. How had he grown up so much like both of them, so far away, only knowing half the truth about himself?
It broke her heart that he had become so guarded, so soon, even as it choked her with pride.
«I’ve kept up my Porashtu,» he told Lillian. Then, to Jinadh, «Do you speak Geddan, Mr. Addas?»
“I do,” said Jinadh. “And I suspect that soon I will have to learn Asunese.”
“I know some!” said Stephen. “I had a friend at school who was from there.”
“Maybe you can teach me,” said Jinadh, and Lillian found that her heart wasn’t broken after all—only aching with fear and hope and a thousand other things she finally allowed herself to feel.
«Come on,» she said, letting it all show in the tremor of her voice, her outstretched, shaking hands. «Let’s go bend our knees and have a chat.»
* * *
This touching family drama was all very well, but Aristide had business to take care of.
Daoud had peeled off as soon as they struck the marble floor of the lobby, snatched a key from the concierge, and disappeared into the lift.
The concierge handed Aristide his own key and informed him of his suite number. When he arrived, he found Daoud nervously arranging piles of luggage.
“Did it all come through?” asked Aristide. “I’m sure they’ve lost something. They always do.”
Daoud brushed his hands together as though they were dusty from some kind of rural labor. «You are not seriously planning to take all of this with you,» he said, a caricature of criticism so elaborate Aristide suspected it might be a cover. «It’s folly even to go to Oyoti now. Folly to stay this far north. Perhaps we should go down to Rarom, take a house there, wait and see—»
“Where are you keeping that pistol I gave you?” Aristide asked, pouring himself a glass of fig brandy from the bar. He hadn’t had a drink since the Byeczik, and had started to notice a fine tremor in his hands. Better to still that before anyone else saw it, too.
“In my valise,” said Daoud, very quietly. As though he hoped Aristide wouldn’t hear him.
“Get it out now.” He lit a cigarette. “Put it in your pocket.” Smoke poured from his mouth on the plosives.
“I do not think that I will need a gun in Dadang,” said Daoud. It was not Aristide’s imagination: The humor in his tone verged on hysteria. “There is not a war yet.”
“And by the time you do need one, you ought to be comfortable carrying and drawing it.”
Daoud paused in his frantic arrangement of luggage and stood above his own cases, staring down at the leather and latches like he didn’t recognize what they were.
“Unless you don’t want to carry it at all,” said Aristide, giving him the out he so obviously, desperately wanted. “Are you having second thoughts? If that’s the case, it would be better to decide now.”
“I—” Knuckles to his lips, he glared at the top of his smallest suitcase.
“It’s real to you now, isn’t it?” said Aristide softly. The first effects of the brandy on his empty stomach made him charitable, empathetic.
«Do not shame me,» Daoud said, voice quavering. Surrounded by stacked trunks beneath a vaulted ceiling held aloft by columns, lit by rays from narrow windows tall as two men, he looked even more diminutive than usual: a slender figure surrounded by something so much larger than himself.
“I wasn’t going to,” said Aristide, which was as much pragmatism as it was kindness. He would rather Daoud falter now, and leave him to his own devices, than follow him into the jungle and fall apart. “Didi, this is like nothing you’ve ever done before. It’s going to be terrifying, I won’t lie to you. The only question is whether you’re ready to try it.”
“How can I possibly know a thing like that?”
Aristide, perched on the sofa with one ankle over his knee, stared at the boy for a long moment, then patted the upholstery beside him, careful not to scatter ash. “Come here.”
Daoud’s eyes were suspicious.
“I’m not … oh, Lady’s sake, I want to tell you something. It might help. But I don’t want to shout across the room.”
Daoud settled on the sofa with a safe six inches between their knees. Aristide turned toward him and said, keenly conscious of his own age and the absurdity of his gravitas, “You’ll never know. I didn’t. And I was younger than you by almost a decade when I made my decision.”
Daoud had clocked Aristide’s rare candid mood. “To do what?”
“Well, I didn’t go into a war zone,” said Aristide. “But I certainly flung myself off some kind of cliff. I spent my childhood chasing after sheep and chafing under my father’s orders, and I hated it so much I dove headlong into Amberlough City without the slightest idea of how hard it would be. And believe me, it was worse than you imagine.”
“You are not helping,” said Daoud.
“Listen to me, you runty cade,” said Aristide, loosening the jess he kept around the ankle of his burr. “I’m saying ye’ve got more than I ever had: Ye know what ye’re about to do’ll be hard, and you’ve got me to tell ye how hard, exactly. Ye’ve got somebody to snatch your braces and haul you back to standing and believe me, I will. I won’t leave ye wailing in the mud; ye’re no good to me there.”
Daoud’s expression had lost some of its terror. In its place, bemusement. “Your voice,” he said. “Why did it—”
“To prove a point.” Aristide fell back into the clotted cream of his Central City intonations. “This may be harder for you than it was for me—at least in my case I was used to hardship, of a different kind.”
“Life has been cruel enough to me,” said Daoud.
“Of course it has, according to your metrics. Are you ready for those metrics to change? They will, drastically. It might not be a bad thing. It wasn’t, for me; it put things in perspective. But some people prefer to live without that particular asset. The only question is, are you one of them?”
Daoud’s liquid eye
s hardened to volcanic glass. “And if I’m not?”
“Then you’d better get that pistol out of your valise and put it in your pocket now.”
His frown deepened, but he let out a long breath Aristide suspected he had been holding. Then he rose from the sofa and went to his luggage. Unerring, he chose the piece he needed and had the pistol out within a moment. He weighed it in his hand, then fit it neatly into the inner pocket of his jacket. The linen, already wrinkled, neatly hid the shape of the gun.
“Right,” said Aristide. “Now, let’s go hunting.”
ALSO BY LARA ELENA DONNELLY
Amberlough
Praise for Lara Donnelly’s Amberlough
“An astonishing first novel!”
—Ellen Kushner, World Fantasy Award–winning author
“Amberlough grabbed me from the first page. It is beautiful, all too real, and full of pain. Read it. It will change you.”
—Mary Robinette Kowal, Hugo Award–winning author
“Sparkling with slang, full of riotous characters, and dripping with intrigue, Amberlough is a dazzling romp through a tumultuous, ravishing world.”
—Robert Jackson Bennett, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award and the Edgar Award
“Terrific! Very Evelyn Waugh meets The Sandbaggers.”
—John Chu, Hugo Award–winning author
“What a rich and melancholy book; so tragic, so gay!”
—Kai Ashante Wilson, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards finalist
“James Bond by way of Oscar Wilde.”
—Holly Black
“This is the book we need right now. Amberlough is a gorgeous, crucial reminder that even when the fascists take over, people will fight back—no matter how flawed or frightened or damaged they might be, or how much they risk by doing so.”
—Sam J. Miller, finalist for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards and winner of the Shirley Jackson Award
“Amberlough offers a sharp, lush, sensual espionage cabaret, a Weimar world of lovers, criminals, and spies all floating toward the fire.”
—Max Gladstone, Hugo and LAMBDA Literary Award finalist
“Be careful or you too will be lost in the whirl of the kind of glamour familiar in 1930s Shanghai or Weimar-era Berlin. Powerfully seductive and wrenching.”
—Fran Wilde, author of Horizon
“A glittering cabaret of a novel, with show-stopping language on every page.”
—Lev AC Rosen, author of Depth
“Sexy and suspenseful, with characters who play for keeps, Donnelly’s debut novel mixes secrets, spying, and outlawed love like a perfectly made cocktail … one that seduces before hitting you with an unforgettable kick.”
—A. M. Dellamonica, LAMBDA Literary Award finalist
“Lust and betrayal, intrigue and treachery, feints within feints within feints—Amberlough will keep readers up late into the night.”
—D. B. Jackson, author of the Thieftaker Chronicles
“Weirdly elegant, wholly engaging. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Josh Lanyon, USA Book News Award for GLBT Fiction and an Eppie Award winner
“If you put David Bowie, China Miéville, and Shakespeare in Love into a blender, you might get something as rich and frothy as Amberlough. An intricate tale of society where nothing is as it seems, and where the political is all too personal.”
—Cecilia Tan, author of the Struck by Lightning series
“Donnelly blends romance and tragedy, evoking gilded-age glamour and the thrill of a spy adventure, in this impressive debut. As heartbreaking as it is satisfying.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Striking debut brings a complex world of politics, espionage, and cabaret life to full vision.”
—Library Journal (starred review, Debut of the Month)
“A sense of inevitable loss and futility permeates this rich drama. The fascists may never be defeated but only escaped—if the characters are willing to abandon the people they love. That dilemma will haunt them, as it haunts the reader.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A timely novel exploring the roots of hatred, nationalism, and fascism, while at the same time celebrating the diversity, love, romance, fashion, and joy the world is capable of producing, Donnelly’s Amberlough is a thrill and a wonder from start to finish.”
—Book Riot
“Immensely compelling. Full of color and verve and poor life decisions on the part of the characters—full of humanity. If this is how Donnelly is running out of the debut gate, I want to read many more novels from her pen.”
—Liz Bourke, Tor.com
“A hefty novel full of fascinating characters exploring oversized topics such as sexuality, music, culture, fascism, nationalism, class wars, revolution, and love. Donnelly’s exuberant and complicated espionage thriller is a delicious adventure that smoothly addresses timely topics such as diversity, nationalism, corruption, and repression.”
—Shelf Awareness
“If you want reminder of a forgotten era of history overshadowed by the horrors that came afterward, give Amberlough a try.”
—Amazing Stories
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LARA ELENA DONNELLY is a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, as well as the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers, where she now volunteers as onsite staff. In her meager spare time, she cooks, draws, sings, and swing dances. After an idyllic, small-town Ohio childhood, she spent time in Louisville, Kentucky. She currently resides in Harlem, a stone’s throw from Hamilton’s house.
Visit her online at laradonnelly.com, or sign up for email updates here.
Facebook: facebook.com/laraelenadonnelly
Twitter: @larazontally
Instagram: instagram.com/larazontally
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Map
Epigraphs
Part 1
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Part 2
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Part 3
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Also by Lara Elena Donnelly
Praise for Lara Donnelly’s Amberlough
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ARMISTICE
Copyright © 2018 by Lara Elena Donnelly
All rights reserved.
Cover art and design by Vault49
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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k, NY 10010
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Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-17356-0 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-250-17355-3 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250173553
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First Edition: May 2018