“They gave it to the Ospies,” said Stephen from the doorway. Cyril controlled his flinch, barely; it passed through his body like a sudden chill, leaving him shaky, but it didn’t show.
“The house,” Stephen went on. “Some Ospie family lived here, and another one at Carmody.”
“They stole the books?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. Sold a lot of the furniture I think, or just junked it. Maybe ran with it at the end. And what they didn’t grab or get rid of I guess went in the riots.” He kicked at the wainscoting, not quite hiding his expression. Cyril was certain that he could have, if he wanted to. But he was leaving an opening, a hint: a light shining under an unlocked door. He was begging to be asked a question.
Some of Cyril’s best and bravest informants had been Stephen’s age: arrogant boys and girls who were not quite, anymore. Children who stood teetering on the cusp of fully grown. Some of his most dangerous enemies had been the same. He had learned to get the information he needed from them, which required a different set of tactics than he used on people his own age and older.
They craved respect and responsibility. They despised dissembling above all things. Adults preferred comfortable lies and illusions; Cyril had been rudely disabused of this preference some eight years back, and so often found it easier to interact with his younger informants and interrogatees. Being frank with thirteen-year-olds got you the answer you wanted. Try it on their elders and you’d be rebuffed before you could get your breath back. Adults required wooing. People who had not quite become adults? They were desperate to woo.
“Lillian said you were in trouble at school.” He ran a hand along the marble mantelpiece. “What for?”
“Lillian,” said Stephen, with the relish of an angry child using a parent’s given name, “has some rotten gall, telling you that right out of the gate.”
“She’s always been like that,” said Cyril, settling easily into Stephen’s side of things. “A busybody. She knows what’s best for everyone.”
Stephen’s suspicion morphed from purely hostile to partly surprised. “I blew up a pencil sharpener.”
Cyril did not laugh, or scold. Just raised an eyebrow and asked “How?”
“Put some potassium in the shavings bin.”
“Which you got from…?”
“Chemistry cupboard.” Then, more defensively, “Puddle never locks it. It isn’t even like I broke in.”
“Puddle?” asked Cyril.
“Master Tuttle,” said Stephen. “Chemistry teacher. Complete fart.”
Ah. Pitiable professor. Student eager to impress his peers. Volatile combination. Rather like potassium and pencil shavings. “Did people laugh?”
Stephen scoffed. “Rotten fireworks. Best thing they’d seen since Millicent Rice mooned the headmaster.”
“Anyone hurt?”
The scoff faded into sullenness. “No.”
“Do you wish they had been?”
Stephen really looked at him, then. Not just a leery sideways glance, but a full-on stare. His nephew’s eyes were so dark they swallowed his pupils. Or perhaps his pupils were just that wide. Fear, excitement. Either would do it.
“No,” said Stephen, more softly this time, and then looked back at his feet.
For a precarious moment, Cyril thought that might be the end of things. He had just reached for another opener when Stephen looked up again and spoke.
“Mum won’t tell me outright, but … You were a spy. Weren’t you? Even before the Ospies. You did all kinds of dangerous stuff. With guns and all. And coded messages.”
“With guns and all,” said Cyril, keeping his irony close to his chest.
“What was it like?” asked Stephen. “Did you kill anybody?”
He thought of the ceremony tomorrow. Of Cordelia, and everyone like her who’d suffered for his cowardice. “I did.”
“What else?” asked Stephen, no longer sullen or arrogant, but deeply sincere. “Can you do poisons? What about microfilm? Did you ever have to go behind enemy lines?”
“Let’s just say that I could teach you how to build a better bomb,” said Cyril. “But more importantly, I can teach you not to get caught.”
* * *
A crowd gathered for the ceremony, despite the weather. Gray slush stood an inch deep over the bricks of the small park they’d made where Cyril had once sat with a cocktail and watched the curtain rise.
The space looked smaller than it had when the Bee filled it: grubby walls on three sides, without windows. A patch of low sky dragging its belly, threatening more snow. He lifted his collar, against the wind and any curious gazes that might come his way.
“Neither of us are exactly pariahs,” Lillian had told him the night before, when she brought down some blankets for him to use. “They ran a couple of exposés when I first came back from Asu—I gave one or two interviews. Everyone wanted something juicy, a big tell-all, but I tried to keep it bland. Mostly about family and patriotism. People don’t care about you if you’re boring.”
“And me? I imagine my story’s a little harder to downplay.”
Her smile looked more like a wince. “Well, it’s been quite a while since your photo ran, and you … don’t quite match it anymore. Still, I’d keep a low profile.”
“You aren’t,” he said, trying to decide if he recognized the pattern of the quilt she spread across the sofa. Family heirloom? Or newer acquisition?
“My situation’s a little more sympathetic than yours, I think.” She smoothed wrinkles from the quilt. “I didn’t hand the police over to the Ospies like a rotten key to the city.”
“Is that what the article said?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “It’s what I read in your file when they told me you were dead and I’d end up the same if I didn’t play along.” She smacked his pillow, fluffing it. “The papers made it sound a little more tabletop.”
“Like?”
“‘Though he showed early promise brokering an understanding between Acherby’s government and the ACPD, DePaul nevertheless proved to be dangerously unreliable, owing his loyalty not to his country but to his own deviance.’ That kind of thing.”
When he asked what the Ospies had printed about her, she asked if she could turn the light off. He said yes, though he hadn’t undressed or even gotten under the covers.
They hadn’t spoken much at breakfast, or in the car on the way to Temple Street. When Lillian hit the slushy ground she was already on some other level, assembled to wage a charming war. Cyril became an afterthought, and he was grateful for that. Standing at the edge of the crowd, he looked up and down Temple Street. It had always seemed a little seedy in the daytime, then, or at least out of its element. Now it just looked sad. That could have been the weight of winter dragging on the city, but he didn’t think so.
The speeches started—he heard applause, the squeal of a microphone—and he turned half-reluctantly from the damp, cold set piece of the street. No one he recognized. Nobody he could imagine Cordelia having known. Not even—Who was it? He’d been poking at the newspapers by the hearth last night, in the small hours when he couldn’t sleep. Saeger. Opal Saeger. Cordelia’s right hand, apparently. Old Catwalk folk, probably still smelled like cordite. The logical choice to speak at this half wake, half aggrandizement. Except she was running for prime minister, and the provisional government couldn’t appear to favor one candidate over the other.
She’d be here, though. Lillian had said as much at breakfast while she tiptoed around speaking directly to Cyril. Jinadh made a sarcastic remark in Porashtu, and Lillian sighed and said, in a long-suffering tone, “I believe it translates as ‘brown-nosing,’” which was how Cyril learned his sister was after some attention from Saeger.
“This isn’t the kind of thing that would appeal to Frye’s base,” said Lillian. “But she needs to branch out if she wants to win. I told her as much when we spoke at the Parks Foundation fundraiser.”
That was Lillian: hands in every pie to the wri
sts.
Now Honora Simons took to the podium for her turn to speak: grief and hope, duty to the memories of the deceased. Cyril vaguely remembered Lillian mentioning her in letters from school. Had she visited Damesfort one summer? Her pat phrases were followed by applause, which faded into an expectant hush when she failed to leave the stage.
“So far,” she said, “our speakers have been officials, politicians, and policy makers. People who are helping to rebuild our nation, in what we hope was the image carried in the hearts of those we honor here today.”
He wondered if Lillian had written this speech. She would deploy cloying sentiment if she thought it would stick. Honora’s syrupy delivery wasn’t doing it any favors.
“Now,” she went on, “I have the solemn privilege of introducing a man who was there at the inception of the Catwalk—”
Cyril realized who was about to speak, and wondered if what she had said was true.
“—Who knew Cordelia Lehane as an everyday acquaintance before we knew her as a leader.” Honora was positively gleeful, and hiding it poorly. “A man who shared a stage with her, and can speak about her not as a figurehead but as a friend. Distinguished guests, I give you: Aristide Makricosta.”
As the crowd had stood longer and longer in the cold, their feet in icy puddles, audience response to the speakers had flagged. It picked up now, noticeably, though the clapping had a heavy, flat tone: Everyone was wearing gloves. Honora returned to her seat, ceding the microphone to Aristide.
He looked, somehow, warmer and more comfortable than the rest of them, as though he had been carried in a litter over the slush and wore long underwear of a better quality. A life onstage, Cyril supposed, had prepared him for this moment. And probably a significant amount of brandy.
He did not seem to have trained in the same school as the other speakers. There was no hesitancy as he approached the lectern, nor any reverence. “I wouldn’t have called her an everyday acquaintance,” he said, taking a satin rope from a silent stagehand. The rope he would pull to reveal the memorial. “More late nights and weekends.”
Startled laughter.
“Nor, I think, would I have called her a friend. Not at first. She could chafe; she didn’t have an easy personality. I think sometimes more curse words passed between us than pleasantries.”
Some of the laughter had become uneasy. But Aristide, like a sailor testing the wind and moving to suit, shifted his weight and changed his tack.
“But,” he said, growing serious, “when called upon to perform a difficult task—last-minute choreography, or taking on the dangerous burdens of a friend—that difficulty revealed itself as stubborn strength of character.”
Cyril thought of her again, weeping with rage as she refused what he’d offered her—a spot working for the Ospies, which he’d thought would keep her safe. Strength of character, of course. And conviction. And in the end, she’d even been right.
“It is not easy,” Aristide went on, “to destroy your life. To coat the things you love in kerosene and light a match. To wire the halls of your heart with dynamite and flip the switch. The pain does not pale, even when viewed in the light of a greater purpose.”
Gulls cried in the quiet; Aristide had made the crowd forget their restlessness, so they stood silent beneath the cloud of their own breath. An image, in the shiny black and white of rotogravure, hung in Cyril’s mind: flames curling through the wrought-iron balconies of Aristide’s Baldwin Street apartment building.
“Cordelia’s aims were great,” said Aristide, into the quiet. “And she believed that they were worth every sacrifice she made. That does not mean they did not hurt.”
Expectation hung in the air like the exhalations of the audience, everyone waiting for Aristide to say something more. Only Cyril was unsurprised when he gave an odd little shrug, and pulled the rope.
CHAPTER
TEN
The speech was hideously genuine, but Aristide felt he owed Cordelia that much. He’d shown himself just across the aisle from sober to get through the thing. If … what was the woman’s name? Honora. Yes. If Honora or any of the other grandees had taken exception to his consumption of three martinis and a sizable digestif over the course of their painful luncheon, nobody had mentioned it.
The monument wasn’t quite as awful as his speech had been, but he didn’t think Cordelia would have liked it. The stone obelisk and copper plaque were too tasteful and staid. She’d have wanted gold plate twenty feet tall, tits out and flag flying.
He hadn’t let himself look at the crowd closely while speaking; instead he’d used the old trick of staring just beyond the last row. It made everyone feel as though you were looking straight at them, albeit from a noble distance with your chin cocked high. Embarrassment would have made him fumble, if he’d seen any familiar faces.
Lillian had rung the hotel the night before to say she’d see him at the reception after, but wouldn’t have much time to chat. He made sympathetic noises and accepted her apology, trying to decide if he felt grateful to be spared her small talk.
“Frye was at the speeches,” said Daoud, as they drew up to the curb outside the Matrons’ Benevolent Society. “I saw her arrive, while you were waiting to go on. I believe she will be here as well.”
“A bold move,” said Aristide, who had spent the last few days catching up on current events.
Daoud shrugged. “Beside the point. You should speak with her.”
“Test the jess she has on Custler, you mean. I don’t think I’ll exactly be cutting a deal in the MBS ballroom, not when her company’s held in trust.”
“Just talk to her,” said Daoud, sounding tired.
Aristide made a theatrical moue. “Of course I’ll talk to her. It’s a party. But I do worry if I buttonhole her for a little jaw, we might get a few sideways glances.”
Daoud cased Aristide with a crook to his lips. “You? Everyone will think you are only socializing.”
“You have a poor understanding of my position in Gedda.”
“I have a very good understanding of your position tonight,” said Daoud, and for half a moment Aristide thought it was an innuendo. But Daoud continued, unaware of Aristide’s discomfort and—hang it—faint arousal.
“These people,” said Daoud, “are thinking of you as a symbol. To them, who you were is dead. Now you are … a memory. A moving picture.”
“Apropos,” said Aristide. “I suppose they must have lost track of me after I stopped making films with Pulan. If any of this crowd ever watched them to begin with.” He rubbed a hand down the back of his neck, which failed to soothe the tension gathered there.
“Time to go in,” said Daoud. “And do not start drinking before you have found some food.”
His brief spike of lust had been fading, but Daoud’s flippancy blew sudden air into the heart of the embers. “Don’t presume,” said Aristide, voice low and devoid of mirth. Alarm passed through Daoud’s black eyes, like the orange glow of heat moving through a bed of coals. Aristide was going to do something shameful later this evening. But for now, he had business to attend to.
The Matrons’ Benevolent Society was a relic of old Amberlough the Ospies hadn’t quashed—or at any rate, they’d left the gilding on the walls and no one had put plain plaster over the moulding. How the benevolent matrons had fared, Aristide wasn’t so sure.
He parted with his mink at the coat check, loading it into the arms of a girl who didn’t look large enough to bear its weight, and ascended the curve of a recently scrubbed marble staircase. The whole place had the air of being hastily cleaned—under the wax and lemon oil, he could still smell dust and damp, a little mildew.
The sound of chatter tumbled down the bannister toward him and he rose to meet it, emerging on a landing outside two double doors thrown open onto the reception.
The room was littered with those impractically small tables caterers always set up at things like this; the tall ones at a good height for nobody, that filled with clutter every
fifteen minutes and had to be cleared. If you put your drink down on one of those, it would disappear as soon as you turned your back. He planned to keep firm hold of his, and drain each glass before it left his fingers.
Very few people were in white tie, and Aristide’s tuxedo felt less daring than he had hoped. Ten years ago it would have been all tails and winged collars. Some guests wore international dress—tunics and dhoti, sashes and fustanellas. There were women in jackets and trousers, too, some with other women on their arms. More than one man wore lipstick and rouge. The razors and blushboys were making their presence felt: loud laughter, languid hands.
Aristide wondered how many of the more … colorful guests had been invited specifically to put on this show. He couldn’t have been the only adornment to these proceedings. Why did the provisional government feel a need to hammer the point home? Or perhaps Honora had only wanted a theme for her party: The Ospies are most certainly gone.
He wasn’t sure how many people were convinced. Colors were thin on the floor, and where they appeared they were muted with gray or brown: earth tones, sepia, subdued shades. Few jewels, and nothing ostentatious. Nobody here wanted to disrespect the memory of the dead they’d gathered to honor, but it seemed to go deeper than that; people still carried the weight of fear.
Before he could begin to feel morose, Aristide turned to Daoud and said, “Find Frye for me, will you? While I find the bar.” As he turned toward his mission, Daoud caught his elbow.
“There,” he said, and gestured. It was not the sort of party where one pointed fingers.
She stood at a distance of about twenty yards, caught in what looked like three separate conversations. A woman of medium height made imposing by tall pumps, she was older than Aristide by perhaps ten years. Silver hair was piled on her head, held with simple pins. Sun had turned her skin to supple leather, warm with a tan even in the winter, tightly creased at the corners of her eyes. She wore a mauve dress that showed a softly wrinkled décolletage, spotted with freckles, framing a single sapphire ringed in seed-sized diamonds. An antique, by the setting, but a fine one. Purchased at auction, perhaps. Camouflage for new money.
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