Amberlough Read online

  “Poor fox.”

  “Be honest, Cyril. You would take Tatié over the Hellican Islands. Even now.”

  He wouldn’t. He had learned: Better bored than dead.

  “Anyway. He’d been building an action for us, but the whole thing’s easily moved to a new agent.”

  “So you’re handing it to me.”

  A shallow nod. “The work name is Sebastian Landseer. A wool merchant. Bit of a playboy—never at home. Skiing in Ibet, snowbirding in the Porachin Gulf. Polo, yachting. You know.”

  “I begin to see your logic.”

  “In choosing you? Yes. It’s hard to teach someone that kind of privilege. I know what your parents settled on you in their will; very generous, given Lillian was the heir outright. You won’t have to pretend on this action. Not much, anyway.”

  “All right, all right.” She was going to make him ask. “Tell me, then. What’s going on?”

  “The election.”

  Cyril reached for the table lighter, finally remembering his cigarette. “Acherby won’t win.”

  “He will if he throws it.”

  “He won’t. Ada, he’s got a pry bar for a spine. He doesn’t bend for anything. Just bulls at it straight and hard until it breaks.”

  “He’ll bend for this. Three primary reps, and a majority in the lower assembly? Do you know what he could do with that?”

  “I have some idea.”

  “Be serious, DePaul. The Ospies want Amberlough knocked down—they think we’re impeding trade, sacrificing Gedda for the sake of state interest. Pinegrove and Moritz have already endorsed Acherby, and intelligence out of both capitals says they won’t stop there. They want to impeach Josiah.”

  Cyril froze with the lighter wick halfway to his mouth. The flame wavered in his caught breath. “Ada. There hasn’t been a primary impeached in forty years.”

  “You don’t need to give me a history lesson. I’m out of the schoolroom.”

  “Sorry.” He lit his cigarette and exhaled a thin, artful column of white. Josiah Hebrides had been Amberlough’s primary representative for six years, two-thirds of his allotted term, and the mayor of Amberlough City for eight years before that. He was crooked as a kinked zipper, but charming, and his equally unscrupulous constituents adored him. If he wanted an unprecedented second term as primary, he had only to reach out his hand and take it; none of Staetler’s nobility for him. “Stones, Ada. This is what you throw at me, first thing back?”

  “You’re a sharp fox, or you were. I’m confident. So don’t let me down.”

  “Thank you. That helps me relax.” Tension between his shoulder blades crept up the back of his neck, coiling into a headache.

  “I don’t want you to relax.” She tapped a column of ash into her empty coffee cup. “Do you know Konrad Van der Joost?”

  “Acherby’s assistant campaign manager.”

  “Courtesy title. He runs their intelligence operation.”

  Cyril rested his chin on the back of his hand. A small kiss of heat bloomed on his cheek near the tip of his cigarette. “Engage with him?”

  “You’ll have to.” She flipped her watch open and blanched. “Sacred arches, is it really? Look, I’ve got to dash.”

  “We haven’t finished.” But Cyril’s protest was halfhearted. The longer he put off his full briefing, the longer he could maintain his denial.

  “Come back tomorrow morning. Say half eight? I’ll have Hebrides in and all three of us can go over it. In the meantime, the Landseer letters.” She took a thick dossier from her desk drawer and flung it down. It hit the red leather with a smack and slid within Cyril’s reach. “Take a good look, when you get home. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Cross is back from Liso and I want to sit in on her debriefing.”

  “Get a few scraps of news from the old country?” It was a joke, in poor taste. Culpepper had never been to her ancestral homeland. Her parents were political dissidents who had fled from Liso long before the Spice War wrenched the north out of the king’s strangling grasp. Her surname had always been Culpepper, never Kuleppah—changed to avoid retribution, even so far from home. Cyril had seen the file.

  “I’ll scrap you,” she said. “Get out of here and do your job.”

  * * *

  He should have gone back to his flat and cracked the Landseer dossier, but thinking of it made him faintly ill. Instead, he stopped at a basement wine bar in Harbor Terrace and got pleasantly drunk on overpriced sherry, until the dinner rush pushed him up the narrow stairwell and into the wet dusk.

  He really ought to go home and see to his post. Might even be able to trick himself into reading the Landseer letters, if he stuck them at the bottom of the pile. Swinging onto the next trolley headed up the Harbor line, he hung onto the railing until he could transfer north at Armament.

  Near the edge of Loendler Park, a shudder of awareness ran along the rows. Heads turned; people murmured. The woman in front of Cyril cranked her window open, and he heard chanting. Whistles. Hundreds of human voices raised, dissonant. The trolley rounded a shallow bend in the road and shuddered to a halt.

  The streetcars of Amberlough did not stop in the middle of their routes. Cyril was not alone when he got up from his seat to peer down the aisle.

  He couldn’t see much, not around his fellow passengers, and so he sat back down and turned the hand crank to open his own window. The sound of voices was much louder now, and when he removed his trilby and put his head outside, he saw dozens of people standing in the street, bent close to one another, turned black and yellow by the streetlights. Farther up, the crowd thickened, packing Armament Avenue from footpath to footpath, pressed against shopfronts and night-locked market gateways. Residents crowded the balconies above, and hung over their windowsills. Lit cigarettes spangled the dusk.

  The trolley driver stood and addressed his passengers. “Can’t go further, I’m afraid. You can either get off and walk, or ride back to Station Way.”

  “What’s happening?” asked a woman near the front of the car. She held her straw hat to her chest, glass cherries bright against her white shirtfront.

  The driver shrugged. “Probably just some of those artists causing mischief in the park again.”

  A group of students had staged a rather tasteless piece of performance art in the bandstand last month, but the crowd hadn’t been nearly so big.

  “What’ll it be?” the driver asked. “Walk or ride?”

  Most of the passengers remained sitting, content to catch the Station Way transfer, but Cyril’s flat was only a few blocks away. He settled his hat back on his head, gathered his overcoat and briefcase, and pushed to the rear doors.

  After the close, damp warmth of the streetcar, his first breath of outside air was refreshing. Then he shivered and paused to replace his overcoat and pull on his gloves, slotting his fingers together to push the leather into place. By the time he finished, the trolley was disappearing around the curve of the road.

  He slipped into the gossiping crowd and tapped a young razor on the shoulder. She turned, spat a mouthful of tobacco, and cased him with an appraising eye. “Yeah?”

  “What’s all this?” He waved vaguely at the people around them.

  She shrugged. “Heard there was a march in the park. Some kind of political thing.”

  “In aid of what?”

  “How am I supposed to know?” she snapped. “Just trying to get to my old auntie’s flat, aren’t I? And now I’m stuck in this mess.”

  Cyril tipped his hat and gave her his apologies, then pushed on, doling out “pardon me”s and dodging dirty looks as he maneuvered up the block toward Blossom Street.

  “Can’t get through up there!” someone called after him. He ignored them and shouldered on until he found himself at the edge of the park, and face-to-chest with an imposing police officer—one in a long, unbroken line across the pavement.

  “Sorry sir,” said the officer, through an impressive array of bristling facial hair. “Can’t let anyone past.”<
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  “Why not?”

  “Been an accident.” He had to raise his voice over a sudden swell of chanting from the park.

  “Accident? Someone told me there was a demonstration.”

  The officer’s neck went stiff. “Suppose you could call it that.”

  “Listen,” said Cyril, “I live just up the street. You can see my building from here.” He pointed over the officer’s epaulet.

  “I’m afraid I’m under orders, sir.”

  Though he was Master of the Hounds, Cyril couldn’t pull rank on an officer; the federal position wasn’t technically a part of the force. Shifting his briefcase from one hand to the next, he reached for his billfold. “And how much are those orders worth? Let’s say, thirty-five?” The officer turned red, but said nothing. “Fifty?”

  “Please, sir. I really can’t.”

  “Well,” said Cyril, irked to have found the one honest hound in all of Amberlough, “perhaps your friend here can.” He turned to the next officer in line. “This is ridiculous. I live right there. What’s going on that’s so damned important?” He slipped the woman a folded bill.

  This officer, younger and slighter than her stubborn colleague, was also more susceptible to bribery. She made the money disappear. “OSP demonstration,” she said. “Got a bit nasty. Some hecklers broke in and beat one of the unionists bad. Turned into a brawl, and now we’ve got orders to keep everyone out who’s not a party member.”

  “For fifty, will you pretend I’m an Ospie?” Cyril gave the woman a smile that should’ve been charming, but probably came off more like a teeth-baring grimace. His face felt stiff with frustration.

  The younger officer looked sideways at her neighbor, who was silently projecting a air of deep disapproval.

  “I really can’t, sir,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry.”

  Cyril let his shoulders slump forward. “Fine. Good luck with this wreck.” He turned away and moved back through the crowd.

  Halfway down the block, he body-checked a man in a heavy overcoat who was paying more attention to the police blockade ahead than he was to the two feet in front of him. Cyril staggered back, and the man caught him and set him straight.

  “So sorry,” he said. “Careless of me. Are you all right?”

  “Fine, fine.” Cyril smoothed the front of his coat. “You’re in an awful hurry for nothing, I’m afraid. They’re not letting anyone through.”

  “Not anyone?”

  “See that?” Cyril pointed. “I live just there.”

  “Awful. And they wouldn’t budge for anything?”

  “Not for fifty crisp slices.”

  The stranger sighed. “Well, I suppose it’s all to the good. I’d rather an upstanding hound any day of the week.”

  Cyril laughed. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Deadly so. You’d prefer the agents of justice roll over for a little bit of pin money?”

  “If it would get me home with my feet up.” Cyril squinted at the man in front of him. “Where did you say you were headed, exactly?”

  “The rally, of course.” He flipped open his coat to show a gray-and-white cockade pinned in his buttonhole. “Election’s coming up. We’ve got to support our people in Nuesklend. Acherby’s fighting for all of us, not just the western constituency. For honest, upright folk who are sick of the way things are. Sick of the graft and embezzlement and the coastal blockade. People ought to know we’ve got a vocal presence, even in Amberlough.”

  “Vocal, certainly. Caterwauling, even.” Cyril snapped up the collar of his coat and turned away. “Excuse me.”

  “That’s right, walk away.” The man’s shout followed him down the street. “Afraid of a little civil discourse? Afraid we might be right?”

  He knew he shouldn’t, but he turned and shouted back. “If you want to scare me, do a little better in the polls.”

  The man turned red, and blustered, and Cyril left him there before he could come up with a response. Bitterly, he reflected that the polls didn’t matter anyway, if what Culpepper had told him was true. It gave him a modicum of pleasure to realize he had misled the man; the hounds had said they would let Ospies through, but this fellow would probably turn around and go home.

  Unfortunately, Cyril didn’t have that option. Without the prospect of a change of clothes and a tumbler of rye with his landlord’s excellent supper, exhaustion and disgust threatened to break over him like a gray wave. Nothing for it but to keep moving. His post would have to wait. He made his slow way back to the edge of the crowd and followed the streetcar tracks to Buttermarket.

  The sky lowered, threatening more rain. He sat on a bench under the meager shelter of a budding pear tree, briefcase on his knees, waiting for the southbound trolley that would take him to the Harbor line, to Temple Street, and the Bumble Bee Cabaret.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  From the stage, Aristide couldn’t see much of the audience. Not with the spotlight in his eyes, striking sparkles off his jeweled false lashes. But he could hear their thunderous applause. Pleasure curled through his middle, and he took a bow.

  The curtains, heavy swathes of black velvet, fell between him and his admirers. He blinked, still dazzled by the spot, and waited for the lights to come up onstage. Before he could quite see again, he heard Malcolm snarl at one of the chorus dancers, then her despairing wail as she burst into tears. Well, she’d tripped up her half of the kick line. What did she expect?

  He let his hands uncurl from the warm metal of the microphone stand and took a deep breath.

  “Almost makes you wish we weren’t switching up the shows.” Malcolm was next to him suddenly, standing with his weight on one leg, arms crossed. His biceps, strong from hauling ropes and set pieces during strike and rehearsals, were cleanly outlined by the black wool of his tailcoat. He reeked of aftershave and whiskey.

  “You don’t think the p-p-punters would get tired of the same show all year round?” Aristide ducked his head and lifted away the towering powdered wig he wore for the last half of the first act. His emcee was a languid fop with a dry, pointed sense of humor and a tendency toward glamour that bordered on carnivalesque. Really, he was playing himself, in gilded heels and face paint.

  “I think they wouldn’t,” said Malcolm, “but Lady knows we would.”

  Aristide picked an invisible bit of fluff from Malcolm’s lapel. “If you insist,” he said, and floated off to his dressing room on the echoes of applause.

  The Bee employed a card boy to circulate during the first act, collecting names in labeled boxes for each star performer. At the interval, cast members made rounds among their admirers. It was a way to collect tips, free drinks, and goodwill. Malcolm harped on them every night to flirt like blush boys, though he was comically jealous and turned an alarming shade of red if he caught Cordelia sitting in anybody’s lap.

  Before Aristide could address the formidable stack of cards on his makeup table tonight, he had to get through the woman waiting on his chaise longue.

  “Merrilee,” he said. “Back from Liso already?”

  “It’s been two years.” Her heart-shaped face was deeply tanned, and the equatorial sun had bleached her salt-and-pepper hair white at the tips. “Or hadn’t you noticed all those pretty profits rolling in?”

  Merrilee Cross represented Aristide’s interests in southern Liso, where Gedda had very little influence since the disaster of the Spice War. Twenty-some years ago, in an ill-conceived bid for influence in a resource-wealthy nation crippled by repressive monarchy, Gedda had put an army on the ground in Liso to shore up a nascent revolution. Like quicksand, or a pit of tar, the situation had grown deadlier and more difficult the longer Gedda was involved.

  The federal government sank money and soldiers into the mess in alarming quantity. Most of the money came from the national treasury’s tax revenue—all four states poured their income into the enterprise, which put a squeeze on the southwest but positively crippled the northeast—and
most of the soldiers were Tatien. They had the training, unlike the rest of the nation. But it was Amberlinian strategist General Margaretta DePaul who wrangled a somewhat … hollow victory for Gedda. Related to Cyril somehow, no doubt, and a divisive public figure to put it mildly.

  Her solution to the military crisis left Farbourgh bankrupt and Tatié furious, contributing to the nation’s current troubles with the Ospies. The army pulled out of Liso, leaving a partition in its wake. Northern Liso still traded and politicked with Gedda, but the south was where the poppies grew.

  Luckily, smuggling could be a lucrative sideline for a secret agent, as long as Ada Culpepper didn’t pick up on it.

  “Is this just a social call?” asked Aristide. He set his wig on its stand and pulled the stocking cap from his pin curls. “I’m sorry to say my evening is already sp-p-poken for.”

  Cross picked up the stack of cards. “Impressive. Taormino’s little contribution would outfit a few of her larger divisions. You must have important things to talk about.”

  “Merrilee, I’m wounded. You know I am imp-p-possibly incorruptible.” He took the police commissioner’s card from her hand. It was pinned to a thick wad of folded bills.

  “What’s this?” She slipped the second card from the pile—this one in heavyweight satin cream. As she turned it, Aristide caught a glimpse of blue-black copperplate, deeply embossed. He knew that card.

  Cross tched. “Speaking of incorruptible. How is Culpepper’s golden boy? And what is his card doing in your dressing room?”

  Aristide knew his smile looked lecherous, and didn’t care a fig. “Mr. DePaul is … somewhat t-t-tarnished since you last encountered him, shall we say?”

  “Wrong precious metal,” she said. “Gold don’t tarnish.”

  “I’m a t-t-terribly bad influence.”

  She laughed like a dog: wide mouthed and panting, more exhalation than sound. One hand in the air, she said, “I’ll testify in court. Tell me, is he a hard knock? Always thought he was fine, but I couldn’t get him to look twice.”

  He took Cyril’s card from her. “Did you need something, Miss Cross?”