Armistice Read online

  Tatié had gone Ospie on the strength of Acherby’s allusions to military strength, to state solidarity, to ending Amberlough and Nuesklend’s shipping monopolies. He kept that promise by dropping the state border tariffs. But there was no push to reclaim the old capital of Tatié, granted to Tzieta in a fifty-year-old treaty many Tatiens still refused to acknowledge.

  But why expend the effort of reclaiming that port, reasoned Acherby, when goods could flow freely throughout Unified Gedda? Dealing with domestic terrorism and a proxy war was probably more than enough to keep Acherby busy. So there were peace talks now with Tzieta, to the chagrin of many Tatiens who’d spilled blood into the cracked dry soil, hoping it would yield them a harbor. To the chagrin, she supposed, of Memmediv.

  “When Vasily felt the regionalist government had failed him, he betrayed them and threw in his lot with us. Now that the OSP is slacking in the yoke…”

  “You’re worried he’ll throw in with someone else. But who is there?”

  “Tatien separatists,” said Flagg. “There have been some murmurs of secession.”

  “He’d be a fool. The militia has gone federal.”

  “On paper. Do you really think he volunteered for this trip to Anadh because he likes the pictures? You can’t be entirely ignorant of Pulan Satri’s past.”

  “‘Past’ being the operative word. It was my understanding that once her father died she put all his assets into the studio.”

  “That doesn’t mean she isn’t meddling. It just means she’s learned to keep secrets. Or that others keep them for her.”

  “I assume you have eyes on her.”

  He closed his own. “It’s largely fallen under Memmediv’s purview. Another job he volunteered to take. And now you’re invited to her film premiere, last minute, and he raises his hand again.”

  It had been slowly dawning on Lillian, during this conversation, that they were not headed for her neighborhood, but out of the city. Equatorial evening had faded fully into night. They wound along the water, passing rice fields ready for the winter flood. Darkness pressed against the windows of the car.

  Lillian sank more deeply into her seat to hide the stiffness of her posture. Her hands she folded demurely in her lap, letting tension gather in her forearms instead of in her fists.

  “Are we taking the long way around?” she asked lightly.

  Flagg didn’t match her jocularity. “If what I suspect is true, I can’t trust my networks, or anyone in the office. No one who works in proximity to Memmediv.”

  “Which is why we’re having this conversation on the move, and not at the chancery.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the driver?” she asked, to delay what she knew must be coming.

  “Doesn’t speak Geddan.”

  “But you trust me,” she said.

  “I know exactly what you have at stake.”

  It took everything she had not to growl, tear at her hair. She bit the inside of her lower lip, catching the raw spot she resorted to when unwise words or actions threatened. “I’m afraid I’m not particularly close to your target.”

  “That can be changed,” said Flagg. “Beginning tomorrow night.”

  The bottom went out of Lillian’s stomach. “I’m a journalist,” she said, “a press secretary. Not a prostitute.”

  “You are whatever I need you to be!” Flagg rarely raised his voice, and the sound rooted Lillian to her seat. “He has given me an opportunity and I will not waste it.”

  “How can you suggest this?” she demanded. He went to temple every week. She’d seen him with a streak of ash on the back of each hand at high holidays, when he attended small-hours services in order not to miss work. He didn’t drink or smoke. As far as she knew—and she certainly didn’t want to know farther—he was faithful to his wife. “You’re a good Hearther.”

  “Yes, but you aren’t,” he said. “You should have no qualms. And, even if you do…” He reached into his jacket and produced an envelope, already opened.

  Lillian stared at the glued-down edges of the flap, the raw edge where the paper had met a blade.

  “It’s almost Solstice holidays,” said Flagg. “I assume you’d like to see him. And he’s heartily sick of Gedda.”

  Lillian removed a few folded sheets of letter paper. Stephen’s handwriting had improved since the beginning of the year. He despised practicing his penmanship, but here every serif and stem stood out crisp and straight against the grain of the paper. It was the written version of his best behavior, and it pled for a reward.

  The line of Flagg’s mouth shifted subtly. In someone with a stronger affect it would have been a smile, though not a kind one. “Negotiations with Tzieta are due to wrap up around Solstice if everything goes according to plan. I’d like to put a stop to this interference before then. If Memmediv succeeds in supplying weapons to the separatists, it will put paid to any possibility of an armistice. Gedda cannot sustain conflict on three fronts. We can’t mop up the Catwalk, grapple with Liso, and fight a civil war.”

  “So it’s on my shoulders,” she said. “Keep the peace, see my son?”

  “If you have something for me by the end of Cantrell’s autumn term, I might have something for you.”

  She put the letter into the inner pocket of her jacket, where it crackled against her breast.

  “Oh, and Ms. DePaul,” said Flagg. “It would be … deeply embarrassing if your assignment came to light. I’d like to clean up everything quietly, and keep an appearance of order. As far as my superiors at home are concerned, you’re still just the press attaché, and Memmediv still my loyal deputy.”

  “Of course,” she said, and wished that it were true.

  * * *

  Flagg dropped her by the front steps of her house. Though other parts of Myazbah were probably bustling with markets and nightlife, her street was silent but for locusts and the occasional trill of a nightingale.

  She hoped her majordomo, Waleeda, hadn’t waited up for her, especially after the long detour. Lillian had kept her awake late into the night too often by necessity; she would have hated to do it for nothing, too. In all likelihood, Waleeda was on someone’s payroll, along with the rest of Lillian’s staff, but that was all the more reason to treat her with respect. Sour milk didn’t make cats smile.

  Instead of letting herself in through the front door, she unlocked the gate at the side of the house and slipped down a cool, narrow passageway into the courtyard. Fountain echoes plashed from the archways, rippling through the night-thick scent of jasmine.

  Exhaling, she sank onto one of the benches under a curtain of ornamental oregano. In recent years, the courtyard had become her favorite part of the house. It gave her hope that somewhere, deep behind the walls she’d erected, underneath the urgency and fear, was something quiet and beautiful.

  She took Stephen’s letter from her pocket and smoothed the paper over one knee.

  Dear Mummy, he began, and immediately launched into a blow-by-blow of the end-of-term bowling match, which his team had won in no small part due to his own keen eye and devastating hooks.

  Lillian snorted. He had certainly inherited his father’s modesty—meaning, exactly none. The thought sobered her. She went on reading with a heavier heart, a less steady hand.

  Stephen’s letters in his first year—small missives scrawled in block letters—had been straightforward begging: Mummy, I miss you. When can I come home? Now his tactics had evolved to include bargaining and manipulation.

  Must I stay with Mrs. Hallerlight again at Solstice? he wrote. She serves potatoes and burnt mutton every night and the house is very damp and cold. At the end of summer I asked her did I have to come again and she said it was up to you and that you are very busy and I would be in the way.

  It was a skillful play—he was the son of a diplomat and a courtier after all, and strategy was in his blood. But he needn’t have made it. She wanted him back on this shore, even just for Solstice holidays.

  Given the choi
ce, Lillian would have sent him to school at Cantrell anyway; DePaul children had always gone. Her own name was engraved onto a debate society plaque in the trophy hall. On the wall of the head’s office, she and Cyril both appeared in group photographs of graduating students gowned in black. Her father had gone, as had her famous grandmother (there was a beautiful oil portrait of the latter in the library, where she had endowed a history collection).

  But Lillian had not been given a choice. Flagg’s first move, upon arrival, was to pluck Stephen from Lillian’s home and deposit him behind the high brick walls of Gedda’s most prestigious school. Since then, she’d seen him a handful of times, always with the unspoken reminder that those visits were by the grace of the OSP, and if she desired them to continue she would smile and nod and occasionally pay a call on his father, to jerk the reins and let him know he didn’t have his head.

  She worried about how the other children at Cantrell might treat her son. She and Cyril had both been bullied some about the Spice War. Their grandmother had made strong allies with her decisive actions, but bitter enemies as well. And Cyril had made an ass of himself at university; tongues had wagged. Thankfully he’d plunged into such obscurity afterward that most of the scandal dissipated. She hated to be grateful for that: If he’d continued to stumble in public spheres, she might still have some family left.

  And if Cyril hadn’t operated in the shadows, she wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with. His copy of her will had a sealed letter appended to it, addressed to Stephen. Even her brother hadn’t known what it contained. But the seal had not been sacred to the foxes who went through his things after he died, and the contents of the letter skyrocketed through several security clearances to land on the desk of Maddox Flagg, the new CIS station chief in Myazbah.

  Children were tactless, and his classmates would ask Stephen awkward questions. If your mummy is Geddan why are you so dark? Why did she send you so far away? Where’s your daddy? Is he Porachin?

  Only some of his answers would be lies, and he wouldn’t know the difference because she had never told him. Because she lived, he would never see the letter. Because Cyril died, Flagg had. And now, because she’d loved the wrong man once and he had given her a child, she would pretend to love another and hope he told her secrets she could exchange for her son.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  From his post in the dormer window of Pulan’s boudoir, Aristide puffed out an irritated breath. “We need to go, Pulan, or we won’t get to the city in time to change or eat. If you take much longer, you’ll miss your own rotten film.” Below, in the turnaround, Daoud was directing a chauffeur twice his size in the loading of baggage. Aristide saw his own set of heliotrope leather on the gravel, and Daoud’s smaller, plainer cases stacked on top of it. He hoped he’d remembered everything, but if he hadn’t, toothbrushes and underthings could always be acquired in Anadh.

  “My film is not rotten. Every early review has called Katunjaan a resounding success.” Pulan uncapped a tube of lipstick, examined it, and then swapped it for a different shade.

  Aristide rolled his eyes. He had finished dressing twenty minutes ago and been packed since last night. Pulan’s dawdling and lengthy preparations left him partly gratified, but faintly vexed. Was this what other people felt like when he made them wait?

  “Idiom,” he said. “I apologize.” Pulan was fluent in Geddan, but sometimes missed the subtleties. “Please, can we leave? The sooner this day is over, the sooner I can hang myself from the closet rail.” Not that he would—it was such an ignominious end. Pills or a revolver, please.

  “While that would certainly excite the tabloids and garner excellent press coverage,” she said, “I would really prefer you sink yourself into a morass of sex, drugs, and drink.”

  “Is that your way of saying that you’d miss me?”

  She rose from her vanity in a rustle of silk. “It is my way of saying I would rather not find out.”

  “Well, you’ll have to do without me for a week or so, at least. I’ve made a slew of reservations in Anadh. I’m very much looking forward to my holiday once this hideous ordeal is over.”

  “Honestly,” she said, picking up her small valise. “You are not the greater loss. The boys the agency sends are never as good as Daoud.”

  “The services that he provides to me,” said Aristide, “will render me far less peevish upon my return.”

  “And that is the only reason I gave him leave to go. You have been an absolute…” She pursed her lips. “Monstrosity?”

  “Monstrosity,” he agreed.

  “Working on this film.”

  “I told you I never wanted to be in charge of it,” he spat. If he counted up how often he’d said these same words, in exactly this tone … “I don’t know why you insisted.”

  “Because you’re Geddan,” she said, also for the thousandth time. “An expatriate, forced from your home. It’s romantic. People love it.”

  “I know,” he said, not happily. Production and the ensuing tabloid scramble had been an utter trial, which he endured like a hair-shirted Hearther penitent streaked in ashes, starving on a cold stone floor. Eating well and sleeping on silk sheets, yes, but agony of the mind and soul could spoil even the richest luxuries. “Why the Spice War? Why not a love story, or a musical comedy? I could have been working on anything.”

  “I know you do not read the news,” she said, “and have an unhealthy aversion to the wireless, but the current political situation cannot have evaded you entirely. Liso is nearly ready to go to war again; there is fighting on the border every day. It’s topical. Besides, Inaz needed to do something dramatic; people were starting to think she could only play insipid and sexy. But she is excellent as General Ojo.”

  She was that. And a stunning contrast to grande dame Phoebe Francis, cast opposite as Geddan strategist Margaretta DePaul.

  Three-odd years into his tenure as a director at Hadhariti Studios, Aristide had thought he had his feet under him. But Pulan yanked the runner from beneath him on this one. A special project for him, she said. Only he could do it justice. He wanted to do her some justice, when he found out. The rough kind.

  Pulan didn’t know much about what had chased him out of Gedda. She certainly didn’t know about Cyril. And he wasn’t going to invite her pity any more than he had, showing up on her doorstep unemployed and stateless. So he clenched his jaw and made the film. And he made it well.

  The Ospies, of course, were seething mad but had to hide it for diplomacy’s sake. Pulan was just making pictures, which was not against the law in any reasonable country. And while Caleb Acherby’s government in Gedda might have tightened its fist on artistic expression and political criticism, in Porachis, a film about the Spice War was just exotic historical entertainment.

  Except that it very much wasn’t. Plausible deniability was a grand disguise for pointed commentary. Acherby had abandoned several of his campaign promises in favor of expanding interference on the border between the Kingdom of Liso and the ostensible democracy in the north. On the face of it, a crackdown on the narcotics trade, but Aristide smelled retribution in the wind. There had been some kind of hairy situation in the news last month that nearly led to blows, but he’d kept well away from it. Suffice to say, a popular Porachin film painting antique royalists in a romantic light was the last thing the Ospies wanted with tensions running high.

  The alliance between Liso and Porachis was centuries old, bound by marriages and soaked in blood. Modernity had transformed this into treaties and carefully neutral statements, but deep down, if you crossed Porachis, you crossed Liso, and vice versa. Nowadays, that meant the monarchy—Gedda had been in the Porachin black books since it first bungled its way into the Spice War, and especially after it brokered the partition of Liso into two halves, wresting the north from the royal family’s control and helping it build what passed for a democracy on good days.

  In a funny way, Aristide had Cyril’s family to thank for his asylum
.

  Daoud was waiting for them on the steps, his linen trousers rumpled, a smear of dust on the knitted yellow cotton of his vest. Aristide rarely saw him in Porachin clothes, and suspected it had something to do with his stature, his looks, and his place in society. As a slender young man with camel lashes and a mouth like a ripe fig, who had aspirations toward other people’s respect, Daoud seemed to have landed on masculine, foreign tailoring as a device for demanding what so few people gave him.

  It flattered his figure, at any rate.

  His rolled-back sleeves revealed delicate forearms lined with the tendons of a practiced typist, and a utilitarian wristwatch of leather and steel. This he checked, ostentatiously, as Aristide and Pulan stepped into the stifling heat of the afternoon.

  “I thought you were never coming,” he said, in Geddan rather than Porashtu. That meant he was livid, and wanted to make sure Aristide understood. “Pramit has been burning petrol for nearly twenty minutes, idling out here.”

  “Terribly sorry.” Aristide tapped Daoud’s horrible timepiece with a fingernail. They’d have to do some shopping in Anadh, if he survived this night. “Someone had to powder her nose, and for once, it wasn’t me.”

  Daoud shot a poisonous look at Pulan, whose innocent shrug belonged on a doe-eyed ingénue rather than a forty-year-old executive. “The pair of you!” He threw up his hands and ushered them to the car.

  * * *

  “You ought to slow down,” said Daoud, putting his hand on the base of Aristide’s cocktail glass. He kept his voice low, pitched to slide beneath the laughter and conversation of their dinner companions, and spoke in Geddan against the sibilance of their Porashtu. “I will not be on the red carpet to catch you if you stumble.”

  Irritated, Aristide slipped the glass free of his grip. “Prince Asiyah isn’t exactly demonstrating restraint.”

  “His Royal Highness has Inaz to lean on.” Daoud plucked the martini from Aristide’s grip and swapped it with his own glass of water.

  At the other end of the table Prince Asiyah Sekibou, two-bit scion many heirs removed from the Lisoan throne, threw back another shot of sorghum whiskey and settled his mistress more snugly against his side.