Amberlough Read online

  When she died of fever, he took what she’d left him and abandoned his father’s shipping company for the boards. All his love for Inita Sailer went into making a go of the Bumble Bee Cabaret and Night Club.

  “How’s the new routine?” he asked. “Speaking of dancing.”

  She shook her head. “I got it all down, but the orchestra’s having trouble.”

  Malcolm sat up and threw his legs over the edge of the bed. “I’ll ask Liesl about it.” He picked his watch up from the bedside and flipped it open. “Better be getting over there. Got a delivery coming in for the bar.”

  “Ytzak can take care of it,” said Cordelia, wrapping her arms around Malcolm and tangling her fingers in the dark hair across his chest. She tried to pull him back into bed, but he resisted.

  “No, he has the morning off—said his ma’s sick, but you know he’s courting that razor who plays bass in Canty’s band, and he was a little too eager to run out last night.”

  “So drag him in,” said Cordelia, hooking one leg over Malcolm’s thigh.

  He laughed and pinched her, but stood nonetheless. She let him go and collapsed against the bedspread, giving him her best pout.

  “You learned that one from Makricosta,” he said. “You know it won’t work on me.” Pulling a threadbare cotton undershirt over his head, he added, “You’re welcome to hang around here, if you like. But I won’t be back before curtain, almost sure.”

  Cordelia sighed. “You gonna ask me to run to the cleaners for your swags again?”

  “Be a swan?” He swooped in and kissed her cheek. “Tell Kieran to put it on the account.”

  “You owe him half a fortune this month already.”

  “He knows I’m good for it. Especially once this new show’s up and running.” Malcolm slipped his braces over one shoulder then the other, and hooked his jacket and hat down from the back of the bedroom door. “Later, spicecake.”

  “Remember to talk to Liesl!” she shouted after him. The downstairs door slammed, rattling the bottles of hair tonic and cheap cologne on Malcolm’s nightstand.

  Cordelia fluffed a ratty pillow and leaned back, staring at the cracked plaster ceiling. The Bee did a swift trade. Malcolm only lived in such a shambles because whatever he made running the theatre went right back into it.

  Not that she was complaining. Every stage-strutter in Amberlough wanted a spot on the Bee’s pine boards. Malcolm paid his performers better than any place in the city—still a pittance compared to salaryfolk, but Cordelia padded her pockets out with dealing a little bit of tar on the side. It wasn’t pretty work, but it was steady and it turned a profit.

  Speaking of, she was due to make a pickup from her man on the docks this afternoon. Malcolm didn’t clock she had a sideline, and wouldn’t approve. But he wouldn’t have to know, as long as she got him his swags on time, in fine condition.

  * * *

  Malcolm’s evening clothes hung from the luggage rail, swaying with the motion of the trolley. Rain struck the windows. Everything smelled woolly and damp. Cordelia was running late, but the commute was so cozy, she didn’t mind. It had been a good afternoon—the pickup went smooth, and after, she’d swung by Tory’s.

  He was tucked against her side now, warm and noisy, chatting on about … oh, who knew what. He talked all the rotten time. Half of it she didn’t clock, but the sound was pretty. He tried to keep his Currin burr tamped down, but it always came out when he got pinned about something or—and she’d been pleased to find this out—when he was in bed.

  Tory tugged her coat sleeve. “Our stop.” Passengers were standing in the aisle, taking down packages and purses, tying their scarves tighter and flipping their collars up against the rain. “Come on,” he said, jumping down from his seat. His head was on a level with the other passengers’ bellies, but the way they made space for him, you’d never know.

  They both stepped in the gutter, and Cordelia shrieked at the cold water soaking through her shoes. Tory waved her over the curb, toward a pair of wet metal chairs under the awning of a cafe. On the corner, a Hearther evangelist had set up a soapbox for his street sermon. He’d been a regular feature of Temple Street for going on two years now, trying to convert fallen stagefolk and the punters who came to cheer for them. Lately he’d taken to wearing a gray-and-white Ospie sash. Most of the Hearther congregations in town were backing the Ospies. Cordelia was fine with that. Keep the prissy people together and let them entertain themselves, however they proposed to. Folk in the theatre district had better things to do.

  Across the street from the preacher, the Bee stood tall between a wine bar and a casino, brighter than any other theatre on Baldwin Street. Brilliant swirls of white bulbs, lit against the gray afternoon, made the golden moulding of the marquee shine twice as bright. Richly illustrated posters glowed in their illuminated frames across the front of the building—Cordelia spied herself just to the left of the entrance, all red ringlets and black roses, her lips stung puffy by the swarm of gilt bees that spiraled around the poster border.

  “Check me,” said Cordelia, hauling down the collar of her dress. “No marks?”

  Tory looked over each shoulder, conspiratorial, and then buried his face in her chest. “No marks.” His voice was muffled.

  The preacher saw them, lifted an accusing finger, and started hammering hard on modesty and decency and good, upstanding citizens.

  Cordelia made a rude gesture at him, then grabbed Tory’s ears and hauled him out of her tits. “Stop it! Be serious.”

  “No marks,” he said again, brushing his thumb down her breastbone. “I know Malcolm does his damnedest to keep from splotching this bonny fair skin—”

  “Sometimes even his damnedest ain’t damned enough.”

  “—and I wouldn’t want to spoil it either. Besides, he might recognize the teeth marks.” Tory grinned like a nutcracker. “And jealous old Sailer wouldn’t stand for that.”

  Cordelia smoothed the damp garment bag over Malcolm’s tailcoat. “Let’s go in. Before we’re any later.”

  Tory stood on his tiptoes to kiss her, quickly, and then set off across the street with the preacher howling behind him. He caught her eye from beneath the marquee. Standing just under the illustrated Cordelia in her ring of black roses, he reached up and mimed pinching her nipples, where they would be beneath the garland of flowers. She made the same rude gesture at him she’d thrown at the Hearther. He laughed, then hauled open the heavy black-and-gold doors and disappeared, stumbling over the threshold.

  They weren’t supposed to go in through the front, but Malcolm held Tory pretty dear and let all sorts of his mischief slide. Cordelia didn’t feature him giving a pass for ducking under her skirt, but what he didn’t clock wouldn’t bruise him.

  She waited a moment longer, picking absently at the soggy edge of the garment bag. The rain slacked off, but a sudden wind off the harbor shook droplets from the budding plum trees, spattering the restaurant awning. Gathering up her purse and Malcolm’s swags, she waited for the street to clear, then dashed across between the puddles and slipped down the alley that ran along one side of the Bee.

  The stage door was propped open with a chair to let a breeze into the stuffy backstage corridors. Stella, one half of the twin acrobat and contortion act, sat in the chair smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Cordelia caught a sweet whiff of hash. Stella got bad butterflies—her sister Garlande was the showy one.

  “Sorry,” mumbled the acrobat, and stood aside to let Cordelia through. The corridor was mostly bare beams, a bit of plaster here and there, stairs leading up to the costume loft. A stagehand sat on the edge of the staircase, retaping Garlande’s trapeze and flirting with a seamstress making last-minute repairs. Someone was listening to a record; the shoddy walls muffled and distorted the strains of a smooth-voiced crooner. Sawdust and greasepaint musk hung in the air.

  She had to pass Malcolm’s office to get to her dressing room, and as she neared the open door, she braced herself for a hiding. But he
was already shouting at somebody, and it wasn’t her. The new tit singer, Thea Marlow, stood in front of Malcolm’s great scarred slab of a desk, hunched up like a naughty schoolchild waiting for the switch. So, Malcolm must have talked to Liesl, and the conductor had put the blame for the shoddy number on Thea. All things fair, she did have awful trouble with the key changes. Tit singer was a hard sort of job if you had half an interest in naked girls, and judging from Thea’s saucer-eyes whenever Cordelia went up onstage, she wasn’t cut out for the task.

  Cordelia hooked Malcolm’s swags onto the doorknob and tried to slip away, but he caught her. Instead of scolding her, he just said, “Delia, Antinou’s tonight? Tory’s treat—he owes me.”

  She didn’t want to think of all the dirty jokes the dwarf comedian would make of that. Instead she nodded, and blew Mal a kiss.

  * * *

  As Cyril was getting ready to leave for the day, his telephone brayed, startling him from his latest report out of the train yards.

  It was one of the switchboard kids, a girl with a little bit of a lisp. “Mr. DePaul? The skull wants to see you.”

  “Thanks, Switcher.” By tradition, all the kids crammed in the exchange room were called Switcher. Cyril tipped the pages of the report into his briefcase and locked it up, then put his coat over his arm and went down the hall.

  Culpepper’s personal secretary, Vasily Memmediv, was in his late forties or early fifties, but his thick, dark hair was only barely touched with gray. The lines that marked his hawkish face cut hard and full of character at the edge of his nose and beneath his deeply set eyes. Cyril had briefly nursed a terrible passion for Memmediv, but rumors put him firmly loyal to Culpepper, in more ways than one.

  Cyril rested an elbow on the edge of Memmediv’s desk. “Switcher said the Skull wants to see me.”

  “Director Culpepper,” he said, “asked to see you, yes, before you left.” His Tatien accent had faded with time in the south, but still colored his speech with overemphasized vowels and swallowed, liquid consonants.

  As if speaking her name had summoned her, Culpepper’s voice rang out from the half-open door to her office. “Is that DePaul?”

  Before Memmediv could answer, Cyril cut in with, “Last time I checked.” He skirted the scowling secretary and crossed into Culpepper’s lair.

  She didn’t look up when he entered. “Don’t be flippant, DePaul. It’s unbecoming.”

  “Really?” He flung himself into the chair opposite hers. The vast, cluttered expanse of her desk stretched between them. “Usually people are charmed. Maybe you should get your head checked.”

  The Foxhole folk called her “the Skull” because she kept her hair shaved close. Bones and muscles showed sharply under the dark skin of her scalp. When she ground her teeth, as she was doing now, the grim movement of her jaw rippled beneath the faint shadow of razored curls. That was what they called her type, in the city: razors. Women in well-cut suits with their hair shorn close, posing and snarling at one another like big cats, their sparks tucked snug under their arms. He didn’t envy Vasily—razors tended to be as sharp in temperament as their namesake was in function.

  “You’ll need your head checked if you don’t shut up and pay attention,” said Culpepper. “I’ll put the dents in it personally.”

  Case in point. “Oh, Ada. I love it when you’re cruel.”

  She crossed her arms. “Less carrot, more stick? Is that the secret I’ve been missing all these years?”

  “I’m ruined for a soft hand, since early days. My first was whipper-in with the Carmody hunt.”

  “Spare me,” she said, falling against the high back of her chair. The leather upholstery creaked. “You’re saying if I slapped you around a little, your ragtaggers would finally get it together to burn Makricosta’s network?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. With the border tariffs so high, people like him are the only thing keeping us out of a civil war.” Besides, Aristide’s smuggling crews had taken on a little extra work ferrying refugees into the city. Ospie supporters—blackboots—roamed the streets in Farbourgh and Tatié, making life hard for immigrants, writers, radicals, wind worshippers, cultists of the Wandering Queen … The blackboots had their own little streets in Amberlough, too, but the ACPD didn’t like them, and they knew it.

  “I want to think,” said Culpepper, fingers at her temples, “that the stability of Gedda hinges on more than illegal commerce.”

  “Ada, if the northeast couldn’t sell through smugglers, they’d—”

  “Throw their lot in with the Ospies? Perhaps you haven’t noticed, DePaul, with your face between Makricosta’s thighs, but we’re past that point. Pinegrove and Moritz were both elected by overwhelming majorities, and the Ospies have been taking secondary seats left and right.”

  He let the sexual snipe slide by unaddressed. “I was going to say they might secede. Or worse, collude to overthrow the parliament.”

  “Secede? They need our docks. Until Moritz reaches some kind of agreement with the Tzietans, the harbor at Dastya is a war zone. Forget exporting overland. You saw today’s headlines: Westbound trains are targets for Tzietan terrorism. And Farbourgh is just a tragic novel in three volumes. Mountains, rocks, and blighted sheep. What would they do without federal aid? No, secession isn’t in the cards.”

  “So that leaves a coup.” He wanted her to laugh. She didn’t.

  “You’re right, you know.” She sighed. “I’d love to tear you up and down over Makricosta—don’t give me that look. How much does he pay you to keep his business out of your reports? Or is it just the sex? Or—mother and sons, don’t tell me you’re in love.”

  Cyril snorted. “Ada.”

  “He’s bent stronger rods, don’t doubt it.”

  “You should really think about things like that before you say them.”

  “You weren’t even supposed to have contact with him—Cyril, I’m serious, stop laughing. Division heads run agents, they don’t pretend to be them.”

  “I was! I—I am. Ada, nobody knew how deep he had his hooks into the market, and we wouldn’t have found out if … His name kept coming up in dispatches, all right? And none of my foxes could get close to him. Or he made it worth their while not to.”

  “But you’ve gotten very close indeed. Good job.”

  “What happened to tearing me up and down?”

  “Oh, I’m pinned about it; don’t think I’m not. But it proves you still know your way around fieldwork.”

  Cyril’s hand jumped. He covered by reaching for his cigarette case. Culpepper pretended not to notice, but she couldn’t fool him. They knew each other too well. Before she was the Skull, implacable Queen of the Foxhole, Culpepper had been Cyril’s case officer. Good work saw her promoted to assistant director, and then director, of the Amberlough chapter of the FOCIS while he was still out running under a work name.

  “Look, Cyril.” Culpepper sighed and put her hand over her eyes. “With the job you’ve been doing lately—or haven’t been doing, more like—we both know you’re not cut out to play division head; you don’t have the right temperament. I want to send you back into the field.”

  He was going to be sick. He could feel the bile creeping up the back of his throat.

  “You’re what, thirty-five?” Culpepper, who was herself perhaps twenty years older, looked him up and down. “You’re too young to be behind a desk. You should be out earning your position, not rotting in it. You know Yeffa, over in personnel? We ran her until she was in her sixties.”

  Cyril put a straight to his lips but didn’t light it, not trusting his traitorous hands. His current title—Master of the Hounds, Central slang for the division head who played police puppeteer—was guilt-reeking restitution, a courtesy Culpepper had paid him when his last action went sour.

  “Besides,” she said, still talking, in that too-casual way that flagged all her serious conversations, “you’re probably bored to tears.”

  Bored. Once, it would have been true. Bored
om was Cyril’s chief failing. He’d been bored as a child, and it had made him mischievous. He’d been bored at university, and it had nearly gotten him expelled; only the timely intervention of one of Culpepper’s talent spotters had saved him from being sent down in ignominy. And he had been bored behind the desk, a disinterested operator directing the moves and countermoves of domestic espionage. Smugglers and tax dodges, money laundering and corruption. Old hat to any Amberlinian. Bored, but afraid, wretched with cowardly self-loathing and the pain of convalescence. Bored, until Ari had made things interesting.

  “Cyril.”

  His attention whipped back to Culpepper, who hadn’t stopped talking. “Sorry. What?”

  “Bascombe’s gone.”

  “Ira? How?”

  She locked eyes with him. “Tatié was your purview once. How do you think?

  “Dead?”

  She shook her head: half rue, half negation. “Just … gone. Tatié’s Foxhole is getting smart. They know we aren’t keen on the whole Dastya for Tatié gambit; think how much tax revenue Amberlough would lose if Tatié didn’t rely on shipping down the Heyn.”

  “Shake with the right, shoot with the left?”

  “And use a good suppressor, exactly. They learned from … last time. No trace. No messy politicking. But they know we know. And that we’ll feel the squeeze.”

  Mother’s tits, he would defect to Liso if she tried to send him back. Taking over for Bascombe, he’d be running a network, rather than doing the work direct. But barely safer, for that. It was unofficial cover, spying on the other states within Gedda; if they caught you, you were on your own.

  His throat already felt thick with the dust of no-man’s-land: those blasted, burnt steppes between the orchards and the sea. He was back amongst the tattered khaki ranks of Tatié’s armed forces, in the stuffy chambers of cigarillo-smoking officers. Dry earth and endless sky, the smell of blood and cordite …

  “But you’re not headed east,” said Culpepper, snapping the thread of his memories. From the ill-concealed pity on her face, she knew what he’d been thinking. “We’re promoting one of our Hellican operatives—”