Amnesty

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Amnesty Page 25

by Lara Elena Donnelly


  “Queen’s sake, just call me Opal.”

  “Opal. We’re both from the same world, or close to. And so I hope you’ll know it isn’t vanity when I say you must know who I was. Or you must at least have heard of me.”

  She sipped her coffee, making him wait for her answer. Then, swallowing, she nodded and said, “Yeah. I knew your name. And enough about you to steer well clear.”

  “Probably wise.” He removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I only bring it up to make a point.”

  “Which is?”

  “I was proud. Still am, with less reason. And I have rarely been a man to beg. But if you ask me to, I will prostrate myself. I will lie flat on the floor at your feet, and plead for your help like a Hearther penitent before an icon of my saint.”

  She considered him across the gray wood of the table, staring over the linen runner and the saltcellar, an ashtray full of butts. “Poetic. But then, you were in front of the curtain, not behind. Or up above. You know how to play to the punters.”

  “Almost my entire life has been an act of one sort or another,” he told her. “But not this.”

  She leaned back in her chair. Sunrise struggled through the overcast outside, limning the fine hairs that outlined the contours of her face. He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. Only stared as steam rose from her cup.

  If he had been on the boards, it would have been easy to slide from his chair. He would have been wearing pads over his knees, and the impact would not have sent a jolt through his bones straight into his teeth. Doctor Footlights would have cured his hangover, the ache in his heart, and the banging in his head.

  If he had been under a spotlight, he would have been someone else. Only putting on a show. But he wasn’t stagefolk anymore. He meant everything he did this time, and felt it.

  “Oh, for … Makricosta.” Saeger set her mug aside and held out her hands, as though she would grab him and stop him from taking the gesture any further.

  “Cordelia died fighting for the things she lost.” When was the last time he had wept? Is this what it had felt like? “Lillian put a whole new life together. But I didn’t have the courage to die or change, and now he’s the only thing that’s left for me.”

  “Get up,” said Saeger, voice ragged. “For Queen’s sake, get off the floor.”

  “Please,” he said, hanging his head and sinking lower. “I don’t know how else to say it. Please.”

  “All right,” she said. “All right,” and scooted back in her chair as if afraid he might fall forward into her lap. Instead, he sat on his heels and lifted his face, eyes closing in relief.

  “I’ll make a call,” she told him, standing up. Her palms she wiped on her thighs, as though they were soiled. “But not because it’s right, and not because of Delia. I’ll only help you two get out because this country ain’t got room for cowards anymore.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Magnusson knew his way around a range well enough, but he was no Bradley, to stretch meager supplies into a meal worthy of the linen it was set on. Still, he’d gotten up something edible for dinner.

  Lillian had no appetite for it, but Jinadh gave her that grandmother look he did so well, and so she managed a slice of toast and beans.

  At her left hand, Stephen chewed in silence. When had he last spoken to either of them? Really spoken, and not some sharp remark in response to a reasonable request. Was this only growing pains, or was something really wrong? How was she to know? And where would she find the skills to fix it, when everything was crumbling around her?

  “Have you done your reading this week?” she asked.

  Stephen looked up from his plate, food stuffed into one cheek, and didn’t answer.

  “We had a letter from the school; they’d like to schedule your assessment exams.”

  “Why bother?” he said, into his beans.

  “I’m sorry?”

  He swallowed, overdramatic, and jammed his fork into the baked potato on his plate. “You heard what I said.”

  “Stephen.” Jinadh laid his silverware down and glared at their son.

  “What?” asked Stephen, digging out a lump of potato and mashing it with his beans. “There’s no point in it. Everybody’ll hate me. I’ll never get into secondary, not after all this swineshit.”

  Jinadh scowled. «You will be respectful when you speak to your mother.»

  “Don’t turn all Porachin papu on me,” said Stephen. “You hate that. It’s why you rotten left.”

  Jinadh’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Lillian drew a breath, readying a scolding or an edict of banishment or some other castigation she never got to level, because glass shattering in the front hall cut her off.

  “What—?” Jinadh began, half rising. But he was interrupted by a loud series of bangs, like gunfire but not quite.

  Stephen was out of his chair before either of them, with the agility of the young and a mix of enthusiasm and relief that put a hot splash of anger through Lillian’s gut. Their house had just been attacked, or something of that stripe, and he was glad to get out of a scolding?

  And then she remembered he was thirteen, and a handful, and he would take any excuse to avoid a serious conversation.

  Jinadh got out after him and Lillian followed, smelling cordite. Magnusson met them still wearing an apron streaked with soapsuds. Cold wind howled into the front hall through the broken front window, tearing smoke from a set of exploded firecrackers. The tile was scorched, and the rug smoldering, but beyond the window nothing was damaged. Thanks be, the house hadn’t caught on fire.

  Stephen was already poking at the husks of the explosives. “Jumbos,” he said, eyes wide. “These are the big kind.”

  Lillian remembered a boy in Carmody who’d once stuffed a firecracker into a toad and hurled it after her as she ran. Nausea threatened, filling her mouth with spit.

  “Ma’am,” said Magnusson. “I’ll fetch a broom. And some cardboard for the window. Would you like me to ring the police?”

  “No,” she said, imagining the scene, the story in the papers, the satisfaction it might give the bomber. The ideas it might plant in other people’s heads. Better to keep this to themselves if they could. “But thank you. Stephen, put that down.”

  He had picked up a heavy stone from the center of the wreckage—smoking red paper, crumbling fuses, the tatters of a brown paper sack—and was weighing it in one hand. Soot streaked his palms.

  “Lillian,” said Jinadh, and inclined his chin toward the rock as though it deserved closer attention.

  It was jagged at the edges, gray and mostly flat. Limestone, maybe, or a chunk of cement. The detonating firecrackers had marked it in places, but not scorched the surface beyond recognition.

  Out of Gedda OSP rat, it said. Stephen flipped it over with blackened fingers. Parallel lines on the other side, hashed regularly along their length. Train tracks. Crude but recognizable. The Catwalk, or what Saeger’s supporters had made of it. That was who had bombed her home.

  A memory surfaced: Cordelia Lehane lingering in the gallery of the entrance hall at Hadhariti, her face gone pale with shock as the gruesome puzzle of Cyril’s past came together. Then, Lillian had compared her to a ghost, a haunting. She had been a piece of a lost world, and half lost herself: grieving, defeated, confused. For her—for all of them—the boundaries between friend and enemy, right and wrong, had been blurred by necessity.

  Alive, would she have thrown a bomb through the front windows of Coral Street? Lillian didn’t think so. It was death and narrative that had warped her memory into an avenging revenant. A poltergeist.

  Would Saeger herself have thrown this incendiary? Lillian thought back to their few interactions. The candidate stiff and formal in her gala dress, then burning with frustration in a basement pub, afraid that all her hopes for her country might be thwarted if she lost this election. She might not be a canny politician, but she knew firebombing people’s houses wouldn�
�t win her votes.

  Nobody Lillian knew had thrown this through her window. And no one who knew her. Someone had seen her as a symbol, too. To them this was just like defacing a monument, or tearing down a flag.

  * * *

  In bed, in the small hours, Lillian tucked her cold feet beneath Jinadh’s thigh and felt him flinch awake.

  “Sorry,” she said, and made to pull away.

  He laid his hand on her ankle underneath the covers and held her where she was. «They’ll warm up.»

  She chewed at her lip and felt dry skin split. After too many years in the tropics, she had forgotten how the cold could turn skin into paper, tearing where it creased. «Jinadh.»

  He made a sleepy sound.

  «Should we stay?»

  Silence.

  «In Gedda,» she said, in case he hadn’t clocked her.

  A pause, before he rolled over. In the dark, she could only make out the curve of his cheek against the lighter black, the reflection of faint moonlight in his eyes.

  «Do you want to leave?» he asked.

  She hesitated, though she had asked the question. «It does make sense. If Stephen doesn’t get back into Cantrell, nothing keeps us here except your job.»

  «I can’t ask to be transferred again so soon. Especially not right now, with … these complications. I can’t expect special treatment; the opposite, perhaps.»

  «Could you not just speak to them? Explain this is a matter of—» She let it hang, implying rocks through the window, firecrackers smoking on the rug. All the things that might come afterward, much worse.

  «I think it will have to be something more extreme than this, for me to make that argument. And I’d prefer not to reach that point.»

  «You don’t want to leave?» She pushed herself up on one elbow. «But you hate it here.»

  «I like my work,» he said. «I like Siebenthal’s, and the Observer. I don’t want to lose this job, and I don’t want to start again with nothing. Especially not now, with Stephen … » A flash of light as he cast up his eyes, toward the bedroom ceiling or the heavens. «I don’t think it is a good time to put him through another transition.»

  «And you think he will fare any better here? School will be … he will not have an easy time.»

  «None of us will have an easy time,» he said. «No matter what we do. And our finances won’t support a move.»

  «We could sell the house. Or … or Damesfort.» She said it swiftly so her aching throat wouldn’t close around the words.

  He looked at her gravely. «Lillian. The estate?»

  “Hang the estate. It’s only property.” But her voice broke when she said it, cracking against memories of hide-and-seek, fresh strawberries, the last time her family had been under one roof and some semblance of happy.

  «You’re the one who doesn’t want to leave,» he said. «We could have stayed in Sunho, but you wanted to come back. You started to talk about it the day Acherby’s government fell.»

  Heat crept up her cheeks, and she cursed and welcomed it equally. No one but Jinadh could make her blush like this. Rarely did anyone matter enough to her that they could make her feel ashamed. “I’m so sorry.” She sagged back into the pillows, hiding her face against the flannel case. «I didn’t know how badly it would go. And I dragged you into it.»

  «I was not dragged,» he said. «I have learned to dig in my heels, a little bit. I’m here because I love you, and it made you happy to come home. Heaven’s eyes see my own home is far from perfect, but if the same thing were somehow possible for me … » His voice hitched, there, threatening to come apart as hers had. «I would hope for the same consideration from you.»

  It never would be, though: Porachis was lost to him forever. He had wanted so badly to escape, but she knew there were things and people that he missed, that he would likely never see again. Her compassion and loyalty would never be tested as his had. She reached for his hand under the covers, and his grip made her bones ache.

  «You will have to work,» he said.

  «I know.»

  «What will you do?» And then, with a tinge of despair, «Will anyone take you?»

  Head heavy on the pillow, she wondered the same thing.

  * * *

  Jinadh fell asleep again easily. Lillian, less so. The sound of breaking glass played in her memory like a skipping record. Every breath convinced her there was still gunpowder in the air.

  Maybe if she read a little bit, or just went down to lie on the sofa in the library. Sometimes a change in scenery killed her insomnia. The cushions weren’t as soft as the bed, but she didn’t need comfort: only distraction.

  The draft bit at her elbows, and she dug for the quilted dressing gown she kept folded at the foot of the bed, beneath the covers where it would stay warm. Slippers, too—she anticipated the icy floor with dread. It was warmer here than in Carmody, but barely.

  When the library door swung open she met the wary eyes of her son, who had apparently heard her coming in time to scramble up from the sofa, but not in time to do much else. He held the afghan to his chest with two tight fists and stared at her.

  “Steenie,” she said, one hand over her heart. “Temple bells, you scared me.”

  “Sorry,” he said. Slowly he grew less frozen, and she realized she had scared him, too, though he was not going to admit it.

  “Can I sit with you?” she asked, a little awkward in asking permission. If he had been younger, sweeter, his growing limbs less sharply lined in firelight, she would have simply sat beside him. “I can’t get to sleep.”

  He nodded, and settled uneasily onto the sofa.

  She took the arm opposite, a safe several feet between them. “You couldn’t sleep, either?”

  He glared at her, and she relapsed into silence. Sitting near him was a privilege. She had not been given leave to speak.

  In the quiet that fell between them she heard the radio on low—a late-night drama of hushed voices, faint sound effects. Probably something she wouldn’t have let him listen to, if he had asked. Now, she let it go. It seemed less important than it might have, under different circumstances.

  She wanted very badly to fill the silence; she had never been good at letting other people speak first. But a growing tension from the other side of the sofa told her Stephen was incubating something important, so she bit the inside of her cheek and stared into the coals.

  “They just wanted to scare us,” he said, and it sounded like he was trying to convince himself. “They could have made a real bomb. They could have blown up the house.”

  A gunshot from the radio, and a woman’s exaggerated scream. Both of them jumped. Lillian let out a nervous huff of laughter, and suddenly—

  “It wasn’t Uncle Cyril,” he said. “The police car. It was me.”

  She blessed her exhaustion; it kept everything she might have felt far away, behind a fog. Fear, surprise, outrage. All she could manage was a sigh, and her hand cupped to catch her falling head. “That’s a bit bigger than a pencil sharpener.”

  “I didn’t think it would stop them or anything.” He didn’t look at her as he spoke, and she was glad; his anger would have burnt hotter than the hearth into which it was directed. “I just wanted … it wasn’t fair. And I knew how to do it, so I did.”

  “You knew how … Cyril, I suppose.” He didn’t answer that. She didn’t need him to. “Someone could have been hurt,” she said. “Killed.”

  This time he did turn toward her, and gave her a look that made her feel she’d missed a lesson and just given an unpardonably stupid answer to an easy question.

  “I knew what I was doing,” he said. Not arrogantly, but with affronted confidence. “Uncle Cyril taught me. I did it right.”

  “You blew up a car, Steenie.” And then, mother love her, she began to laugh.

  He regarded her suspiciously until she wiped her eyes, and then asked, “Aren’t you angry?”

  “I’m furious,” she said. “I just … Oh, holy stones. You didn’t
think at all.” Her head fell back against the upholstery, giving her a good view of the ceiling and the dusty medallion around the lamp. In the quiet, she could hear the squeak of coals shifting in the grate.

  Stephen, perhaps knocked off his high ground by her hysterics, pulled himself out of his slouch and drew his knees to his chest. “If I don’t go back to school, what will you do with me?”

  She paused, considered, and wondered where this was headed. “Well. If you can’t finish out the year at Cantrell—which I hope you’ll be able to do—there are still any number of secondary schools I’m sure would take you. If not in Gedda, then abroad.”

  “You’re going to send me away?”

  “That isn’t what I said at all.”

  He had found a moth hole in the afghan and begun to fret with it, worsening the damage.

  “What’s this about?” she asked. “Really.”

  “Uncle Cyril,” he began, and of course it was. “He told me when he messed things up, at school, Granddad sort of … packed him off. And that’s how he ended up how he is. That Granddad made him be a spy and all.”

  “What did he tell you?” She had been smart enough to guess at half of it—that her father had something to do with Cyril being packed off to train as a kit for the FOCIS. Now it sounded like Stephen knew the whole. She felt cheated, somehow. And exiled from her own family history. She felt less like a DePaul, for only finding this out now. She felt less like Cyril’s sister, and it hurt more than she might have thought.

  Stephen finally met her eyes. “That Granddad gave up on him after he was nearly tossed from school. Because of that stuff in Tatié—the teacher who spotted him and all. He made a deal to keep him out of jail, so the family wouldn’t look bad.” After a long pause on Lillian’s part, he said, “Didn’t you know?”

  The simple answer was yes, of course. But she hadn’t, really; none of the details. And she hadn’t ever asked.

  Cyril had been in Tatié, a school trip. She had been home after her first assignment. After three years pushing paper and supporting the beleaguered consul in Gurunda-rai—her father could have seen her placed somewhere more comfortable, but he insisted the experience would build skill and character, and he’d been right—she had only wanted a peaceful summer before her next foray.

 

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