Amnesty

by Lara Elena Donnelly

  “When I … exited the foreign service,” she said, weighing each clause carefully, “the Ospies made a lot of my family’s missteps. My brother had been pressed into collusion. Blackmailed, really. Threatened. We were all under the impression they had executed him, in the end, but happily—” an inadequate adjective, which failed to convey any of the myriad complications Cyril’s reappearance had occasioned, including this one “—those rumors have proved false.”

  “That must have been a surprise,” said Frye. “He just … showed up?”

  “He did,” said Lillian. “And in the middle of the worst possible time. But that’s how he’s been since he was born. Mother went into labor when she was in the middle of a closing argument.”

  This got Lillian another small laugh. A modicum of tension went out of her shoulders, and she could feel the warmth of porcelain through her fingertips again.

  “Born a nuisance?” ventured Frye. She was smiling. Lillian began to breathe normally.

  “That’s Cyril. But like I said, I’m not running for prime minister. I can afford nuisances. You can’t. Or, if you’ve got them, you have to make people look the other way.”

  “And what do you suggest?”

  Stones, it felt good to be on solid ground again. She set Cyril aside, along with her cup and saucer. “You have more experience, a better campaign, better people behind you—you ought to win this election. But if you’re going to win against Saeger, you’ve got to get people angry about something. You need to make them cry. Get at their hearts and you can have them.”

  The mantel clock ticked loudly in the silence after Lillian wrapped up this little speech. Caught in consideration of the idea, Frye sat still as if she had been carved from wood. Only the glittering of half-closed eyes gave her away. Under that hooded gaze, Lillian felt doubt creep in at the edges of her confidence. Had she miscalculated? Did Frye dislike the approach she had outlined? Or had she made some other misstep and lost this opportunity?

  Then, softly, the candidate began to clap her hands. “Worthy of the stage,” she said.

  Lillian let out her breath and allowed herself a modest smile. “I’ve stood behind my fair share of podiums.”

  A soft knock on the parlor door heralded the maid, who bobbed a curtsy and said, “Lunch is served.”

  “Just in time,” said Frye. “Ambition makes me hungry.”

  PART

  2

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  Cyril watched his sister dart in and out like a stitching needle for the next few days. She spent hardly an hour in the house over the course of the week. And Jinadh worked late at … whatever it was he did. Some kind of newspaper job?

  At the end of the week, he made it home in time for an aperitif. Lillian was still out, making gears turn, but Stephen and Cyril were both in, and practicing a particular aspect of tradecraft: reassuring the target and soothing their suspicions.

  Stephen laid flat on the rug in the library, nose stuck in one of his assigned texts. Cyril was close at hand on the sofa, cigarette smoldering in the ashtray, the Clarion propped on his knee. He’d even shaved, and put on a clean undershirt and a cardigan Magnusson had unearthed for him. From the look on Jinadh’s face, the cardigan was his.

  “Don’t you two look cozy,” said Jinadh, when he had recovered his equilibrium after noticing the sweater. He poured himself a stingy drink and collapsed into an armchair, setting his feet on Stephen’s rear as though the boy were an ottoman.

  “Hey!” said Stephen, and wiggled out from beneath him.

  Jinadh asked something in Porashtu, to which Stephen responded, “A book, obviously.”

  Leaning forward, Jinadh tipped the cover to read it. “Kandeep,” he said, impressed.

  “It’s on my list,” said Stephen. “I thought it’d be boring but Uncle Cyril said he remembered it from school and it was the only thing he liked.”

  Over the rim of his glass, Jinadh cased Cyril with bloodshot eyes. “Really?”

  He shrugged. “It’s good.” This was true. Mazul Kandeep’s history of warfare and alliance between the southern continents had been the only book that kept Cyril halfway engaged in class discussion at Cantrell. It had given his teacher several weeks of false hope before the class moved on to less brutal and less interesting historical periods.

  “Hmm.” Jinadh put back a bit of his drink and sank farther into the upholstery. “I’m certainly pleased to see the house still standing, anyway.”

  Stephen’s expression, at an angle visible to Cyril but hidden from Jinadh, was thunderous verging on tears. Cyril put this down to embarrassment. It was one thing to blow up a pencil sharpener for the entertainment of your classmates. It was another for your parents to make jokes about it while you were in exile pending possible expulsion.

  “Please,” said Cyril, stretching his legs out and sighing. “I’d never let him blow up his own house.”

  He had guessed on this one—that if he turned Jinadh’s joke around, made it about himself and not Stephen, he’d win some gratitude. And it worked; Stephen’s mouth twitched and he turned his face down toward his book.

  By contrast Jinadh looked off-balance, as if he hadn’t considered that Cyril might take responsibility for Stephen, or let him blow up other people’s houses.

  Smiling thinly, Cyril snapped the creases of his newspaper and pretended to resume reading he had never been doing in the first place.

  But Jinadh had gotten himself back in the saddle, and said, “If either of you are going to be arrested, at least wait for the arson until after Solstice? I do not want to make things awkward for our guests.”

  “Who’s coming?” Stephen put his book aside, curiosity overwhelming his pique. “Mummy’s work people?”

  “No,” said Jinadh, sounding slightly too pleased with himself and pointedly ignoring Cyril, who probably wasn’t going to like the answer. “Old friends.”

  “Yours?” asked Cyril.

  “Actually, yours.”

  The newspaper was loud in the silence, when he folded it and set it down. “Lillian agreed to this?”

  “Of course.” There was too much cheer in it, which meant there had been some argument. He wondered if her initial reluctance had been on his account or her own.

  But she had acquiesced in the end. And despite what he’d said to Stephen, about being ready for the moment the adults around him decided he couldn’t be fixed and had to be gotten rid of, he now found it was much worse to be dragged out of obscurity, roughly polished on somebody’s sleeve, and newly assessed as fixable after all.

  * * *

  It began to snow about halfway between Amberlough and Carmody. When the train pulled into the village station, Daoud and Aristide stepped onto a platform festooned with mistletoe and holly garlands, a wreath over the ticket counter and tinsel hanging from the clocks. It was still several days to Solstice, but the village was prepared well in advance. The smells of pine and coal smoke threaded through the air. Aristide breathed in, and felt the chill catch in his lungs.

  “Ah,” he said, when he had come out the other side of a wet and painful coughing fit. “The country. How invigorating.”

  Daoud checked his watch. “We are a little late. Lillian was going to send a car, correct? It should be here now.”

  A porter brought their bags, and they found a black auto waiting out front. A woman in a smartly pressed gray jacket leaned on the hood with a cigarette between gloved fingers.

  “You’re from Damesfort?” Aristide asked.

  Startled, she flicked her cigarette away. “Mr. Makricosta? Mr. Qassan? Sorry. Lost track of time. Help you with your bags?”

  “And your name?” asked Aristide, letting her take his larger case and heave it into the trunk.

  “You can call me Martí.”

  “Your surname?”

  “Yes, sir.” She opened the rear door for him, and held it for Daoud to climb in after.

  “That’s Tatien, right?”

 
“It’s as Geddan as I am,” she said, and put the car into gear. Her tone meant she was finished with the subject. Aristide pressed on.

  “Naturally. You were on this side of the border before the split? Or did you choose to emigrate after?”

  Her eyes nailed him from the rearview mirror. “Does it matter, if I can drive this car?”

  “Aristide,” said Daoud.

  “I’m only curious,” he said, to both of them. “I meant no offense.”

  “Of course not,” said Martí, and they drove on in silence.

  Only rarely, in the past, had his business taken him outside of Amberlough. He had certainly never driven in broad daylight through the rolling downs of Dameskill county. This late in the year everything was brown or gray, though the snow had started to stick in shady places, and to stone. Dry stack walls along the roads all bore a dusting. Ravens gleaned the fields. The last of the wild geese crossed the low gray sky, heading south for somewhere warmer.

  Turning off the main road, the driver took them over a small stone bridge across a deep ditch, onto a gravel lane. A pair of gates stood open at the bridge’s far end, admitting the car to the DePaul estate.

  The lane was a long, winding affair of white gravel, and the house appeared from behind a hill like a bank of fog. The sun found its way through the clouds for a moment and struck the gray-white granite at a sharp angle, limning the eaves and edges in silver. It was a very grand piece of architecture.

  Aristide hated to be nervous. It made him feel weak and foolish.

  «It’s not quite Hadhariti, is it?» asked Daoud, and his mischief had an air of consolation to it, as if he knew Aristide’s heart. That only made Aristide feel worse.

  «You be polite,» he said. «Please.»

  «If you’ll do the same.» Daoud crossed his arms.

  Martí parked the car and opened the door. Her bow was stiff, and she made no small talk. That was fine. Aristide didn’t feel quite capable of reciprocating, at the moment.

  The two big doors at the top of the steps swung open, showing Lillian at their center in gray flannel trousers and a cabled sweater of heather tweed. It was early in the afternoon, but she already had a cocktail in her hand. Aristide wondered if it was festive or medicinal.

  “There you are,” she said, coming down to greet them. She had on sheepskin slippers, he realized, and was stepping carefully in order not to slide on the stone. When she reached the gravel she stopped and held out her free hand in a hybrid gesture that seemed to invite both kisses and a bag to carry. Aristide settled for the former, as Martí seemed to have the latter under control. Lillian’s wry smile was too like her brother’s. In the past it would have cut him cleanly, a sorrow he understood. Now it left a ragged wound, and he had to hold back a grimace.

  “The boys are in the back,” she said. “Jinadh is testing his throwing arm.”

  “Hm?” Daoud cocked his head. “His—”

  Before he could finish, a gun discharged very nearby. Lillian didn’t flinch; Aristide did, and saw Daoud do the same. Both of them regained their composure before Aristide’s next heartbeat. Exposure didn’t inure one to the initial shock of unexpected gunfire, but it did teach quick recovery time.

  “Trap,” said Lillian. “The coveys are barren, I’m afraid—the, um … the interim occupants didn’t keep the grounds up. But Cyril found a pile of clay pigeons in the garden shed and Stephen had never—”

  Another shot rang through the still, cold air. Sparrows took off from a leafless tree by the stream.

  “Anyway. Come in and get warm. There’s punch. Mother and Daddy used to keep a big bowl on for weeks at the holidays. It’s a bit extravagant, I suppose, but I thought we’d ask Bradley to revive the tradition.” That dull knife of a smile again. She knew they’d need the social lubricant.

  Aristide took his punch from a tray proffered by the—butler? Footman? How did one tell them apart? He’d only learned by exposure at Hadhariti—and followed Lillian into the house.

  The hall was not much warmer than the outside, despite a large fire in a massive hearth at the other end. Even here, shots from outside were audible.

  “It’s warmer in the drawing room,” she said, and led them through a set of heavy doors. Aristide noted that the gilding on the panel edges was peeling. And there was a moth hole in Lillian’s sweater, showing pale skin between the frayed ends of the yarn.

  Old money shabbiness. Maybe. Not very many people in Gedda were doing well, these days. And what had she meant about interim occupants?

  The punch, at least, was strong and sweet.

  It was warmer in the drawing room, though barely. Daoud went to the fireplace to chafe his hands. Lillian hovered, not quite visibly nervous. Aristide set his punch on the sideboard. A good two hundred years old, probably, and with those lines it looked like a Marquette. In his limited experience dealing antiques—some fraudulent, some genuine—it should have been part of a set, but none of the other pieces were present. In fact, the furniture was a hodgepodge, some of it better suited to a boudoir or a billiards room.

  The house was big enough that he imagined it had both. But he also imagined they stood empty now, pillaged of their furnishings. He had begun to get a sense of just how things hung at Damesfort.

  The DePauls’ country home was situated at the inner curve of a valley, hidden from the road by a hillside but set far enough above the lowland for a view, which the drawing room windows showed to great advantage. A winter-brown lawn swept down from the house to the stream he’d seen earlier, which wound its way through copses of bare trees. Thin smudges of smoke rose from the village, hidden by a small wood on the other side of the snow-dusted fields at the valley floor.

  Much closer at hand, perhaps ten yards from the house, stood a small group: Jinadh by a stack of pigeons, Stephen bowed awkwardly around the stock of a shotgun, and Cyril smoking beside him. They all wore brown-and-gray country clothes. Cyril had gone so far as to snag a flat cap crookedly on his skull. Aristide wondered where he’d gotten the clothes, which almost fit him.

  Jinadh wound up and flung a target high over the fields. Stephen followed with the heavy gun, too slow. He missed. Jinadh said something inaudible through the distance and the glass, but his expression was readable: encouragement, perhaps a little desperation. His breath clouded as he spoke. He looked cold. Stephen, on the other hand, looked stubborn. Until Cyril tapped his shoulder and held a hand out for the gun.

  After watching Stephen struggle with its weight, Aristide found the grace with which Cyril handled the weapon almost uncanny. He took it one-handed from his nephew and broke it without hesitation. Stephen handed him two shells from the pocket of his own jacket.

  Cyril tucked his cigarette grimly into one corner of his mouth, loaded the gun, and snapped the barrel back together.

  Jinadh watched all this without expression, without breaking focus to stamp his feet or breathe into cupped palms. If he moved at all, it was only to grow stiff and start to frown. Now Cyril turned to him and cocked his head, indicating he should throw a pigeon.

  His expression closed as swiftly and as surely as the shotgun’s barrel, but not fast enough to hide the irritation that flashed across his face. He tried to smile. Cyril tried it back at him. Neither quite managed, though Cyril’s attempt at least had the benefit of irony.

  With time-consuming care, Jinadh selected two targets from the pile. Unperturbed, Cyril held the gun against the leather patch on his shoulder, motionless and patient. If he found the weight cumbersome, it didn’t show. His eyes were locked on the middle distance. The only thing that moved, finally, was his mouth, to speak one short word.

  This time, when Jinadh threw the pigeon, he put his back into it. Cyril tracked the target and pulled the trigger. The pigeon disappeared, snuffed from the sky, leaving only a trailing cloud of smoke.

  The second target followed so closely that Jinadh must have thrown it before Cyril shot the first. But slick as greasepaint in summer, Cyril traced its pat
h over the trees and blasted it from the sky.

  He handed the gun back to Stephen, who staggered under its weight, then took his burnt-down cigarette from the corner of his mouth. Licking his thumb, he pinched the ember out and put the butt into his pocket.

  * * *

  Dusk came quickly, silencing the gunshots. Lillian’s pulse jumped in the quiet; there was an awkward situation in the offing, and she would have to manage it. From what she’d seen of the afternoon’s sport, her brother had not endeared himself to her husband.

  Stephen was another story, though. Since the dedication ceremony, and their subsequent days together mewed up in Coral Street, Stephen and Cyril had developed exactly the sort of bond Lillian had thought—and hoped—they might. And that would endear Cyril to Jinadh even less than his own surliness.

  Typical Cyril. A charmer when he needed it, he could switch the power on like a man with a generator. But it must burn up fuel he didn’t have right now; the light behind his eyes was fitful at best.

  A door slammed on the other side of the house, and what trivial conversation they had managed—“Is that sideboard a Marquette?” “Why yes. A wedding gift to Grandmama, I think. Pity to have lost the rest.”—died at the sound. The void was filled with the clatter of footsteps and voices, indistinct but growing louder. Mostly Stephen’s. Jinadh now and then.

  “We’re in the drawing room,” she called, though the door was shut against the draft. Magnusson would tell them, if they couldn’t hear her.

  Sure enough, moments later the door opened to admit the sportsmen, still in their damp tweeds. The snow had begun to fall in earnest toward the end of the day and soaked them through. It was falling still; light from inside caught the flakes that came closest to the windowpanes.