Amnesty

by Lara Elena Donnelly

  “I won’t be a moment.” When he opened the door, a blast of cold, wet air met his face. Snow oncoming, he should think. Or maybe sleet. His instinctual prediction startled him; the weather had never got into his bones abroad like it had here, and it had been some time since he recognized a shift in the wind and knew what it would bring.

  The Bee had stood between a wine bar and a casino, last time he saw it. Now, the empty place where its marquee had been was bracketed by a bad restaurant and a second-rate hotel. The small square left vacant between them was newly paved and populated with wrought-iron benches and holly trees hastily popped into decorative planters. Those wouldn’t make it through the winter, not potted this late. He imagined they weren’t meant to—their corpses would be replaced with tulips in the spring.

  At the center of the square stood a monument shrouded in canvas and rope. He was sorely tempted to cross the street and peek beneath the edge of the covering, but stayed where he was in order not to draw attention, or the ire, of his taxi driver. Besides, two hounds were posted to either side of the park entrance, huddled miserably in their macks. Aristide squinted through the top of his bifocals, fairly certain he could see the shadow of shoulder holsters behind their lapels. ACPD hounds hadn’t gone armed with more than a truncheon the last time he walked these streets. He wondered if it was a new standard, or an exception granted for these particular guards.

  About Cordelia’s end he knew only as much as the next person—whatever he’d heard on the wireless, or read about in the paper. She had been killed in a tactical strike turned sour. Someone had tipped police to a major Catwalk cell receiving a visit from the Spotlight herself, and set the hounds on Cordelia’s scent. But what was supposed to be a swift assassination turned into a neighborhood skirmish in the capital city of Nuesklend, just a few miles from the embattled Cliff House. The Catwalk had built a strong base by that point, and instead of a single shot to the head and a body swiftly removed, uncooperative citizenry turned the thing into forced entries, raids without warrants, door-to-door fighting, and finally gunfire in the streets. The result was significant collateral damage, most of it thanks to the Ospies. It looked bad. It made Cordelia into a martyr, and put wind in the sails of a revolution that eventually pushed Acherby from power: first, after he stepped down, and second, after a surviving member of the Catwalk shot him on the curb, on his way out of the country.

  In his imagination, Aristide saw Cordelia backed against a wall, behind a crumbling barricade of bullet-riddled furniture. She wore an almost cosmetic streak of blood on one round cheek, and she met the Ospies’ guns with a haughty smile and a few shots of her own. When she collapsed, she fell forward as if she were taking a bow. Red had always looked good on her.

  He wondered if the memorial captured anything like that.

  One of the cab doors opened then shut, and Daoud was at his elbow, closer than he had yet dared to come on land.

  “So that is it,” he said, soft voice almost lost in wool and the howl of the wind.

  “It was,” said Aristide, and climbed back into the car.

  * * *

  After a brief stop to collect mail and drop off baggage, Aristide and Daoud hailed another cab and navigated the potholes and sawhorses of the city streets to reach the Amberlinian offices of Cross-Costa Imports.

  Even in his heyday, he hadn’t kept a proper brick-and-mortar spot to do his business. Why, when he had friends and colleagues in all parts of the city, and could catch a cab or a streetcar to call on them? When there were restaurants, teahouses, opium dens, and absinthe bars that could as easily play host to a rendezvous?

  But when one was working across continents, he certainly saw the utility in it. A central hub for the telegraph and ticker tape, a place to take radio calls and direct all the company’s correspondence. It was less glamorous than the lamp-lit Crabtree House or the glass-and-silver fountains of Amanti’s, but it also drew less attention. Appear to operate above the table, and folk rarely looked beneath.

  Aristide had been confident in his own ability to flash his colors and still slip the snares, operating on his own recognizance in a city he knew like the reach of his arms, the shape of his teeth against his tongue. As a part of a consortium, in terrain made foreign by years and conflict, he would rather don the disguise of banality.

  Occupying the top floor of a neat brick low rise near the old customs house, the Cross-Costa offices could not have been more boring. The neighborhood smelled like low tide and diesel fumes, and the narrow stairwell reeked of cigars. Climbing up the threadbare runner, Aristide found the source of the latter stench just inside the office door, its brass nameplate in need of a polish.

  Jamila Osogurundi, Amberlinian daughter of Lisoan immigrants lately returned home after riding out the Ospies in Rarom, rolled a smoldering cheroot between her fingers as she spoke into the telephone. At volume. Two clerks cringed in opposite corners, heads down at their ledgers as if the conversation were an oppressive cloud akin to the cigar smoke. Jamila held forth in a rolling patois of Shedengue and Geddan, embellished with indecipherable slang: from what Aristide could gather, she was jovially cursing somebody’s mother.

  The hallway was too narrow for Daoud and Aristide to stand side by side, but he imagined that the younger man was grimacing.

  Jamila looked up from her cigar and saw them standing in the doorway. “Ah, bless me,” she said, “the holy one has come at last.” And then, “No, pati, not you. Juma de sibe la. Yeah, yeah, you wish. All right, I’ll see you. And tell our friend we appreciate his efforts. Ahundibi. Yeah. Bye now. Yes, bye.” The bell jangled as she dropped the receiver back into the cradle.

  “Aristide Makricosta!” she said. “I’m sober as a penitent, so your bones must really be here.” She was a young woman, but she talked like a crooked bookmaker and rose from her seat like the has-been wrestler in a fixed fight: palms on the blotter, pressing her weight through her arms. There was a sizable amount to press. Jamila wasn’t tall, but she was built like a drum of kerosene.

  “Ms. Osogurundi,” he said. Her handshake resonated all the way into his shoulder.

  “Call me Jamila or I’ll quit. Looks like you brought the welterweight along as well!”

  Daoud’s smile would have been at home against a leather strop.

  “Cross tells me you’ve been making useful friends.” Aristide took his cigarette case from his pocket and offered one to Daoud before he availed himself. A poor apology, and Daoud refused it. “Something about the West Cultham Rail Company?”

  “No foreplay with you,” she said. “I forgot. At least let a girl get a little wet.”

  Daoud slapped a leather folio down onto Jamila’s desk. “A prospectus for Geddan expansion, based on the assumption of a deal with West Cultham. Will it be possible?”

  Jamila stared at him blankly for a moment, until a smile began to build on her face. It was very wide by the time she finished. She slapped Daoud on the back—he made a sound like oof—and picked the folio up but did not open it.

  “That depends on you, my friends. I buttered this roll; you’ve got to put it on the grill to fry. Hah. Fry, Frye. That’s a good one. Though you’re going to be dealing with a peach named Frances Custler, not the lady herself. West Cultham is held in trust until the election. And if Frye wins, Custler’s the head of WCRC throughout her term.”

  “Nominally,” said Daoud, tone sour.

  Jamila jabbed a finger at him. “Hit it in one.”

  “How short is that jess?” asked Aristide.

  “That’s the question, ain’t it? She’s been cagey with me. ’Course she wants the world to think Frye’s washed her hands of the operation. Saeger’s already all over her for mixing profit and politics.”

  “And you think she’ll tell me?”

  “Not a chance,” said Jamila. “But maybe you can suss her better than me. Anyway, she said she’d bend her knees with you. And that’s a start.”

  * * *

  They joined Franc
es Custler at her home for dinner that evening—she was free, and the rest of Aristide’s week was promised to the provisional government and Lillian DePaul.

  Custler kept a bachelor apartment on Ionidous Avenue. The place looked only half lived-in, and was quite a comedown from Aristide and Daoud’s rooms at Sykes House. She could probably afford better. Aristide wondered why she kept the place, and where she spent the rest of her time when she wasn’t laying her head down here.

  Custler herself was a broad-shouldered woman of perhaps forty-five, short hair styled slick with pomade. Though her rooms were chill, she wore shirtsleeves and those rolled up to show freckled, densely muscled forearms. She had the air of a factory foreman, though her waistcoat and wristwatch read money if one could parse the language. Aristide, as it happened, was fluent.

  They could have, he supposed, gone to some public establishment, but electoral tensions were high; many eyes were straining to catch a fault. And Custler’s landlord kept a serviceable kitchen. He brought them gratin and a roast: simple fare, but good quality cooked well. Where he’d got ahold of it was anyone’s guess; the meat at Sykes House had been thin and tough at lunch, a cheap cut dressed up with vinegar and salt. Aristide suspected there were juicier chops available, if one had the cash and the contacts.

  Besides, the firelit obscurity of Custler’s dining room set a satisfying scene for their conversation. It also meant there was no pretense. No sooner had the wine come uncorked than Custler said, “You’re lowballing us on your offer.”

  “In response to an initial quote that was, quite frankly, ludicrous.” Aristide sliced into his beef. It was very pink in the middle, and the juice ran in rivulets across his plate.

  Custler smiled into her glass. “I like you already.”

  “Better than Jamila?”

  Swallowing hurriedly, Custler flapped a hand. “No, no. Oso’s fine. But if I can deal with the boss, I’d rather. And you just happened to be in town. Lucky me. Written your speech yet?”

  The meat in his mouth suddenly lost its savor. He choked it down, and instead of answering he asked her, “Will you be at the dedication?”

  Custler snorted, and put her elbows on the table to roll a cigarette. “That’s Emmeline’s crowd, not mine.”

  The way she said the name put Aristide in mind of the way Cross sometimes referred to her husband, or the cargo pilot they kept it up with on and off, when he flew shipments to Rarom. An affectionate kind of derision that conveyed unintended volumes about the speaker’s intimacy with the subject.

  He filed this useful piece of information away, right beside his observations of the dusty mantel and the scent of vacancy that hung about Custler’s rooms.

  “Perhaps we’ll cross paths,” he said. “Gracious of her to attend, when the Catwalk wreaked such havoc with her livelihood.”

  “Are you kidding?” Custler sawed at her beef with gusto. “WCRC’s picked up some lucrative contracts from the temps—the provisional government. We’re not just running trains, you know. We’re building rails for pay.”

  “Which means,” said Daoud, “you ought to be amenable to a lower rate when it comes to shipping Cross-Costa’s goods.” He removed another leather folio from his briefcase and slid it across the table. An adapted version of the prospectus they had brought to Jamila; shorter on detail than the internal version, and the rest of it polished to shine.

  “It speaks,” said Custler. “I was starting to think you just kept him to fetch and carry. And maybe to improve the scenery.”

  Like Frye does you? Aristide thought but did not say.

  Custler set her twist in the ashtray beside her plate and took up the folder. There was a protracted silence, broken only by the ticking of the clock. Daoud caught Aristide’s eye, then let it fall. Inconveniently, Aristide felt his cheeks warm with shame. He hoped his complexion would conspire with the unsteady light to hide it.

  After an interminable overview of the figures provided, Custler set them down, retrieved her twist, and took a long drag. “I don’t know,” she said. “This is a lot to move, and a ticklish time to be moving it.”

  “You mean you will not offer a lower rate,” said Daoud. “Very well, there are other rail companies in Gedda.”

  Aristide wished they were sat close enough for a sharp kick to the shin. He settled for sending a quelling glance over the casserole dish, which Daoud took with a bland smile. Anger seared him through, smoldering into inconvenient lust.

  “There are,” said Custler, watching Daoud closely, then sliding her eyes to Aristide.

  “None so discreet,” he said. “Jamila tells me you have some experience with shipments … similar to ours.”

  “Sure, we’ve moved a little contraband here and there. Who hasn’t? But this kind of thing, this scope, you’re looking at a lot of trust on both sides. When deals like this go bad, folk end up in prison, if not worse. Emmy’s running for prime minister; you can understand she might be nervous.”

  “Emmeline Frye,” said Aristide, “is not acting president of this company.”

  “But how many people will care, if we get caught moving half a ton of poppy tar deep into Gedda? If somebody was suspicious, they might almost think you were trying to load us up with a plant, so when somebody sings we get caught up to our wrists.”

  “Far be it for me to downplay your concerns.” Aristide held his wine, turned the glass, and inspected its legs. Rather thin, for the cut of meat she’d served. “Suspicion has saved me many heartaches in the past. But I am in no way invested in the outcome of this election.”

  “You were friends with Lehane,” said Custler. “So was Saeger. And you’re speaking at this Catwalk dedication. I think that argues at least a scrap of partiality.”

  “I am speaking,” he said, “out of a sense of deep personal obligation.” Truth came to him with difficulty, and the strain told in his tone. Daoud began to look concerned.

  “To who? Lehane? Or the temps, maybe? I got word—from where I don’t care to tell—it was Lillian DePaul who leaned on you to come.”

  “She invited me, if that’s what you mean. Is she mixed up with Saeger, somehow?”

  Custler laughed and picked up her long-abandoned twist, drawing on it so the tip burned bright. “She’s got her fingers in both pies. A real nice-maker, y’know? I get it. She wants to hammer down a place for herself no matter who ends up on top. That, I understand. I ain’t worried about her. I just got questions about you. Why are you here now, offering this deal? Are you Saeger’s patsy, or are you just doing a favor for the sister of your old cockmuff?”

  Cold steel slid through his middle. It had been in the news, some years ago. The Ospies, angry with Lillian, had flung all the DePauls’ dirty linens across the lawn. His affair with Cyril was one of the stained sheets.

  Then he remembered nobody was after either of them right now; Custler probably didn’t even know Cyril was alive, let alone in the country.

  A swift sizzle of nerves and elation turned his blood to seltzer: Cyril was in Amberlough, just up the highway in the weald. Cyril was alive and in one piece, and would be arriving in the city soon. He was the reason Aristide had come.

  But he would rather swallow tacks than tell Custler that. So what could he tell her?

  “I was afraid,” he said abruptly, the explanation snapping into place with the swiftness and clarity of his most perfect falsehoods.

  It surprised her at any rate. “Afraid?”

  Gratifying, how that always stunned folk. That Aristide Makricosta might feel the chill of fear like any other earthly creature.

  “I’ll tell you the truth,” he said. “The LSI has clocked a little racket we had going with Porachin aid shipments and told us to cut off their biggest troublemakers in the north. I’ve pinned some people I don’t like to be on the wrong side of. And we’re looking for another stream of revenue. Are you satisfied?”

  This put a slow smile across Custler’s face: a warm and greasy one that spread like melting wax
.

  “You know,” she said, “I heard things about you would raise the hairs on a hanged man. But I’m starting to think you’re just a crooked sculler like the rest of us. Damned good one, but a sculler all the same.”

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  It snowed lightly the night before they left for the city, so that the drive south took them through an ashy landscape of ice-rimed empty fields, but by the time they arrived at Coral Street the weather had warmed enough to turn the snow to slush. Cyril, in a pair of borrowed gaiters, took the path to the front door slowly. Not because half-melted ice made it treacherous, but because he could hardly be sure it was real. He hadn’t been over the threshold of number twenty-four since he was in school.

  “It’s not…” Lillian began, turning back to face him before mounting the steps. “Well. We were gone for a long time. And things didn’t go any better here than they did in the rest of Gedda.”

  The damage wasn’t immediately apparent, in the vestibule. Even the front hall only looked a little bare. Pale patches on the wall showed where paintings had hung, but nothing was splintered or broken. The pineapple newel on the bottom of the staircase sent a shock of recognition through him: a sudden vivid memory of the slip of satiny wood beneath his hand, against his short pants; sliding down the bannister, hopping off, catching at the newel to slow himself before he fell.

  “I thought we’d put you in the library,” said Lillian. “On the sofa. It’s just we don’t have … there are only two bedrooms furnished, at present. They took most of the furniture, or sold it. And there are some broken windows in the back we’ve just patched up with wood. The library will be warm, at least.”

  It was that. And also empty of literature. He ran a hand over the tufted leather of the sofa, scarred in places, set on the parquet amidst deep scratch marks.

  Too heavy to move, then, and too difficult to get through the door. Unlike books and art, silver and linens.