Cyril switched the set off and stared at him. Digging deep, Aristide summoned a trace of the man Malcolm Sailer had put behind a microphone. It powered one saucy shrug, and a “Don’t say I never did anything sweet for you, spicecake.”
It didn’t make Cyril smile, but it melted some of the ice out of his expression.
“I’m almost proud of him,” said Aristide, swaddling himself more tightly in the displaced bedclothes. “I wouldn’t have thought he’d have the nerve.”
“Perhaps he finally lost patience with you,” Cyril said. “You can be unbearably vexing.”
“Yes, but usually he just puts up with it.” Aristide paused. “Put up. Past tense.”
“Well.” Cyril stood and stretched, checked the clock. “You can be damned sure I won’t. Get dressed. We’ve got a ship to catch.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
Kostos walked Lillian out of the Icepick and flagged down a cab. He even tried to pay her fare.
“Please,” she said. “It’s not necessary.”
He waved her off. “Company funds. Let the boss slather on a little, will you? This whole interview racket is bringing in bread and cheese and he couldn’t be happier.”
“In that case, thank you.” She could still be gracious, even if she felt like she’d been peeled raw.
“No, thank you. That was a rotten aria in there. An eleven o’clock song and it’s only just gone nine.”
It felt long past midnight, and her patience with Kostos had been worn thin by an hour of invasive questions: Her childhood with Cyril; had they gotten along? What about their parents? Why did she think he had done what he did? How had she felt when she thought he was dead? When she learned he had survived? What were her thoughts on the proposed tribunals? Who had she supported before Frye put forward the idea? After? What about now, given the allegations against Frye? Had she known Aristide Makricosta well? What about Lehane?
She had answered, mostly, with honesty. It would do Cyril no harm now, and might even help. She had tried to keep the focus on the upcoming election—Sacred arches, only three weeks away!—subtly underlining Saeger’s suitability as a candidate without explicitly giving her support. The official endorsement of a DePaul wasn’t a burden Saeger needed to bear right now, even with her numbers ticking steadily up. An independent federal commission had begun to unearth some unsavory facts about the bombing at Frye’s warehouse, and the police response to it, and with every new revelation, Saeger gained in the polls.
Kostos caught Lillian at her tactics each time. He brought the questions back around to her brother, her family, and the sticky strings that tied them to the Ospies, the Catwalk, civil war. It was an hour of parry and failed riposte, fighting not to give ground and failing. She felt exhausted, as if she had really been on the strip.
“Who’s your next victim?” she asked.
“We’re gonna fill a couple slots with university folk and expert commentators while we work on this,” he said. “Any news from Higata?”
“She may come around to it,” said Lillian. “But she’s busy setting up a practice. I’m not sure when she’ll have the time.”
“She tell you to say that? Or you come up with it on your own?”
“I’m afraid it’s the truth,” said Lillian. “I seem to be telling a lot of that tonight.”
The cabby, still idling at the curb, cleared her throat.
“Sorry,” said Lillian, dropping into the seat. Kostos tipped his hat and shut the door on her.
Spring had made faint inroads in the city. Rain had melted most of the snow, except where it had been shoveled into truly giant heaps. Forsythia bloomed along the fencerows of Loendler Park. Some optimistic crocuses were creeping from the earth: feathery green leaves, and here and there a blossom baiting the frost.
In front of number twenty-four on Coral Street, there was still a bevy of reporters. Now that she’d let one draw first blood, she wondered if the others would tear in harder or perhaps back off.
This time she was prepared to meet them and didn’t steer the cabbie around the back. But she wasn’t prepared to take any more questions tonight, so she sorted through her masks and chose the one that made her unapproachable while still inviting empathy. A proud angle to the chin, but soft around the mouth and eyes.
Outside the cab, the street was chaos. If the neighbors didn’t already despise her, the flashbulbs would certainly do it. She walked through it like the Wandering Queen through a mountain gale, toward the front door, which opened for her. Magnusson stood framed at the top of the steps, in his impeccable necktie and tails. He’d been waiting by the front window, no doubt. Probably with a pulpy novel on his knee.
Maybe that was why he stayed on with her—never a dull moment in the DePaul household. It was near as he could come to living like Rita Ryder.
“Thank you,” she said, as he closed the door against the crowd outside. Their questions faded into a disappointed murmur beyond the stained-glass panels of the vestibule.
“Not at all.”
“Dinner?”
“There’s a plate kept warm for you. And, ma’am, if you have time tomorrow, I received several notices of interest from qualified cooks. With excellent references.”
“Of course,” she said. “I would be delighted to speak with them.”
The staff wouldn’t grow much beyond that, for now, but thanks to Makricosta’s largesse she could at least take the burden of feeding the family off Magnusson’s back. If she or Jinadh had ever tried, they’d have set number twenty-four on fire. Like talking about money, she had not been raised to feel at home in the kitchen.
Magnusson took her coat and scarf. “Mr. Addas is in the library with Stephen. I regret that I cannot attend to drinks, but—”
She flapped a hand. “You have plenty to do. I can pour a tumbler of whiskey myself.”
“Of course, ma’am.” And then he was gone, and she was off to find her family.
The radio was turned to a station conspicuously different from the one she had just spoken on, playing a bit of—oh, she’d always been bad at composers, but it sounded like Innevin. Soft piano music in three-four time.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” she said, collapsing onto the sofa beside Jinadh. He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her, briefly. Enough that she knew the change of station had only occurred after she spoke. He had heard every word of it.
“Any good news?” she asked. “I don’t want to hear the other stuff.”
“Beastie?” Jinadh stretched out one leg to jostle Stephen’s foot. He was sprawled across the rug, reading a comic book. Now that his exams were over he’d returned to less academic fare.
“Oh, yeah.” He sat up and snatched something from the end table. “This came.”
Lillian took the envelope from him—torn hastily at the top, which meant Jinadh had let him open it. The Cantrell seal at the flap told her what it was, and if it was good news …
Dear Ms. DePaul and Mr. Addas,
We are pleased to inform you that your son, Stephen DePaul, has, after due consideration, been readmitted to The Youth Academy at Cantrell.
It went on in the same vein, with instructions for payment, registration, and the beginning of classes. Payment she could make, again thanks to Makricosta. All she had traded him was her only brother.
Cyril had always been a hassle. A nightmare. A mess in need of sweeping, mopping, tidying up. But in that, he had been dependable. A constant. A foil she could always count on. Guilt made her chest ache. Was that really all she had used him for? Was that the only reason she would miss him? Because without him she had no way to downplay her own flaws?
No. But it was the reason that occurred to her first, because of what their parents had made them. And what she had made herself.
But their parents had not prepared them for this Gedda—the Ospies, the war, the chaos in its wake. Their lessons and their expectations had to be set aside. Maybe now, Lillian could simply miss
Cyril as a sister missed a brother she would never see again.
Under the guise of a headache, she pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. If she used the motion to wipe away tears, she was practiced at hiding it. When she blinked her vision clear, she saw Stephen flopped back onto the floor, nose buried in the three-color adventures of—
“What’s that you’re reading?” she asked, proud that her voice didn’t quaver.
Stephen rolled his eyes at her and said, “Mind your own.”
Her first instinct was a sharp rebuke, but she caught it before it flew. He reminded her of Cyril, yes. But she wouldn’t treat him the way Cyril had been treated. He wasn’t her legacy; he was her son.
She poked his belly with her toe, and when he scowled and rolled away she said, “Believe me, I am.”
* * *
The Ao Hinso was not what Cyril had expected. The passageways smelled of mold and fermented cabbage, and the cramped cabin would never have fit a cot. At least there was a porthole, which they kept open when the weather held. Brine and diesel blew in on the breeze. Cyril thought of the Alain de Nils perfume he’d streaked across Cordelia’s wrist so long ago, and the glittering party where they’d encountered Aristide, his eyes done up in kohl.
The memory contrasted sharply with their current circumstances.
They’d been on the Ao Hinso nearly a week now, and its shabbiness had grown familiar, almost comforting. Besides, Cyril had lived with much worse.
But Aristide had chosen this. So when Cyril was first confronted with their second-rate surroundings, he’d observed them in surprise and said, “It doesn’t seem very…” then waved a hand rather than find a word.
“Chic?” asked Ari. “No. But it’s what we can afford and still avoid fleas.”
“Afford? Aren’t you some kind of criminal tycoon?”
Ari opened a piece of his luggage, which occupied most of the room, and located his cigarette case and lighter. Purple enamel, golden braid. Cyril remembered wanting to lick the gleaming lighter in his stuffy Lisoan safe house, amazed something so beautiful could still exist.
The memory recalled a more recent one: the taste of the tender skin beneath Ari’s jaw. The metallic tang of his sweat.
Ari lit a straight and savored it, eyes closed. “Not anymore.”
Cyril took a straight from the case, too, and plucked the lighter from Aristide’s fingertips, startling him from his contemplation.
“I wasn’t being facetious when I said you’d bankrupt your sister. And me, too. A lot of it went to Frye’s campaign; I was trying to set her up as a sort of puppet, I suppose. Lillian will get a little bit of it, and the rest went to pay our way out of that wreck.” He gestured eloquently with his cigarette, indicating Gedda, though by Cyril’s reckoning he was actually pointing northeast. “There’s enough to get us where we’re going, and a house to live in once we’re there. And what I do have will go further than it might elsewhere.”
“Mother and sons, we aren’t going back to Liso, are we? I know they owe me a pension but I’d rather—”
“No, no.” Aristide waved smoke from his face. “After Daoud’s little sojourn into radio journalism, my manger there is well and truly shat-upon. Cross would probably hire a hit man the moment she heard I was back in the country. Perhaps you can collect that living from abroad?”
“Really,” said Cyril. “Where are we going?”
Ari took another drag and his eyes lost their cynical squint. A little of that old emcee’s lyricism came into his voice: Central City cream poured over stagefolk charm.
“There’s a bungalow,” he said. “On a red sand beach in Ishin Sao. I should have sold it years ago, but … It’s just outside a village, on a road that will take you to Oizhan if you’ve got bus fare or a motorbike.”
“You’ve been there?”
“No,” he admitted, smiling ruefully. “But the letting agent told me it was quiet, lovely, close enough to the city for comfort, but far enough there won’t be tourists wandering the streets. A few folk from around the world, but largely locals.”
“It could be a midden heap.”
“It’s not,” said Aristide, with the peaceful conviction of a martyr.
“Still, I wager we won’t be lighting up absinthe at any mirrored bars.” Not that he was particularly eager to reenter that world. Only that it was the one he knew; the one he could place Aristide within. Beyond the confines of the Foxhole and the Bee, he didn’t know who they were to one another.
Aristide snorted. “I only ever drank it on fire because it made a good show for the punters. And besides, Malcolm served cheap absinthe. You shouldn’t light up something good. Shouldn’t even add a sugar cube.” The sibilance of the Central City lingered on his palate, and his wrist beneath the cigarette grew languid.
Perhaps it wasn’t all gone, after all. “Will you do it now?” asked Cyril.
Aristide raised an eyebrow. They were thicker now, and had started to get ragged at the edges during the trek across Tatié. But the angle was familiar. Cyril, filled with sudden daring, kissed the apex of its arch.
“The stutter,” he said, his lips close to Ari’s skin.
“D-D-Darling.” Aristide pulled back and stared him in the eyes. “I’m sure I d-d-don’t know what you mean.”
ALSO BY LARA ELENA DONNELLY
Amberlough
Armistice
PRAISE FOR THE AMBERLOUGH DOSSIER TRILOGY
“Terrific! Very Evelyn Waugh meets The Sandbaggers.”
—John Chu, Hugo Award–winning author
“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 … 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.”
—Josh Lanyon, USA Book News Award for GLBT Fiction and 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.”
—Cecilia Tan, author of the Struck by Lightning series
“Various rumors, rescues, and releases coincide toward the book’s end— always believably, always unpredictably, and always in a superbly written, Art Deco–inspired atmosphere of louche extravagance.”
—The Seattle Review of Books
“A sense of inevitable loss and futility permeates this rich drama.”
—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
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 is now a volunteer staff member. She is the author of the Amberlough Dossier, beginning with the Nebula and Lambda Award–nominated Amberlough. At present she resides in Harlem, with a cheesemonger-slash-filmmaker. Her neighbors are Alexander Hamilton and the Royal Tenenbaums.
Visit her online at laradonnelly.com, or sign up for email updates here.
@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
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Part 2
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Part 3
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Also by Lara Elena Donnelly
Praise for the Amberlough Dossier Trilogy
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.
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