Persona

by Genevieve Valentine

  Onca said, “Good luck, Lachesis.”

  × × × × × × ×

  On the street it was almost night; streetlights were flickering on, storefronts pulling their shutters, brasseries like lanterns.

  She struck out south. Daniel would have put himself in the center of the action, so the closer she got to the IA, the better chance she had of running into him.

  (Something else told her that, whether he hated her or not, he would be making it his business to know where she was as soon as he could.)

  If Magnus had reached his man, he’d be on the move too, trying to reach her.

  Whichever one of them reached her first, there would be work to do. If she was going to stand a chance of outmaneuvering the Committee and being reinstated, Suyana needed a corpse.

  She was going to get one.

  22

  Daniel was panicking.

  The man was walking in the wrong direction, they were parting ways; Bo would follow Margot wherever she was going, and Daniel would lose the stranger—the stranger he knew, he knew, had just been told to finish what he’d started with Suyana.

  It was the IA who’d tried to kill her.

  Bo had lingered in the crowd to watch Margot cross the bridge. Now he was coming back, nearly at Daniel’s side already. Any second, they’d be setting off to watch Margot meet some lesser diplomats and cover her tracks at some restaurant no one sane could afford, and go read quietly at home, waiting for news that this stranger had found Suyana and done the job.

  Daniel couldn’t breathe. When he turned to keep the stranger in sight, his vision swam.

  He spun through his options.

  He couldn’t take Bo in a fight. He could barely look Bo in the eye; Bo was closing in on six and a half feet in a frame like a cement block.

  Daniel could try to slip into the crowd, but the camera would give him away wherever he went, and it would be easy for Dev and Kate to have some field team intercept him. If he broke the camera, there was a chance—

  “Park, you awake?”

  Daniel blinked at Bo. “Just absorbed in the majesty of the church. Where are we heading?”

  But Bo was watching him with the look of a guy who’d woken up to a con.

  Don’t say we’re headed after Margot, Daniel thought. The moment you say that I have to run.

  Bo glanced over his shoulder at Margot, who was just visible on the far side of the river. Any second she’d be lost in the crowd. Then he looked back at Daniel.

  “Why don’t you tell me,” he said.

  For a second, Daniel was stunned. He probably couldn’t trust the offer; Bo was probably just trying to draw him in and then override him. But still. Still.

  Daniel was talking as soon as he could draw breath again, tripping over the words. “I know who she talked to—I remember that guy now that I’ve seen him, I remember him from the hotel, when she—I think he shot Suyana.”

  Bo raised his eyebrows. “I see.”

  Daniel steeled himself. Sometimes, either you had courage or you didn’t.

  “I need to follow this man to make sure nothing’s going to happen to Suyana, and if that means we have a problem, then that’s what it means.”

  The man was vanishing—he was almost out of Daniel’s periphery, any second he would be gone and Daniel would never find him again.

  Daniel took a step back and made fists at his sides.

  Bo tilted his head. The world slowed down as Daniel remembered that moment in Terrain when Bo had decided to be frightening. For someone like Bo, that’s all it took.

  Daniel prepared to run.

  Then Bo heaved the sigh of a martyr, pulled out his phone, and set off after the stranger.

  It took Daniel two heartbeats to realize what had happened, and another few to catch up; he was quick, but Bo was taller, and trying to gain ground.

  “—alley footage,” Bo was saying into the phone. “Right. The one Daniel was nosy about—nothing tripped the facial recognition, Dev, we only had half an inch of his face before. Daniel says this is the same guy, and he got a better look than the camera. If it’s not him, I’ll murder Daniel and keep you posted. Thanks.”

  “You think I’m full of shit.”

  “Very much,” Bo said placidly. “You’re nothing but an angle.”

  That hit home.

  “Wait,” Daniel said anyway (don’t take the truth lying down if you can help it), “somehow it’s shocking to you I might have wanted to be a snap so I could do all right for myself? Are you in this business for your health? Because—”

  “I’m in this business because it keeps me honest.”

  The words were sharper than Daniel had heard from Bo, and Bo was slowing down, looking at him like someone who wasn’t going to allow misinterpretation.

  Daniel wondered what Bo had been doing before this; what he had been when Li Zhao found him. It didn’t look good that Bo welcomed the idea of being under surveillance because it was safer for him than being left to his own devices.

  “Understood,” Daniel said finally.

  “The thing is,” Bo said, “if you’re lying, you’ll be sorry—you don’t want to know what happens if Li Zhao declares you persona non grata. She was IA trained; she knows how to erase problems.”

  Shit. The Assembly. Daniel pushed back a moment of queasiness. It made sense that those who burn out and never make Face would want to make use of the things they’d been taught, and Assembly handler was a tougher gig than freelance paparazzo. Still, strange to realize how many snakes that place could breed.

  With something that might have looked like embarrassment on someone else, Bo shrugged and finished, “And if you’re right, I’d be sorry to miss the story, so you’ve lucked out.”

  It was a good answer, a fair answer. But Daniel suspected Bo had made an exception in his principles, and that was what it really came down to.

  “Who did you lose on a story?”

  He regretted it as soon as it was out.

  Bo looked at him. Daniel watched his expressions cycle through surprise and confusion and anger, and a long, frightening moment when Bo looked about to confide. But then Bo turned his back and picked up the pace.

  Daniel caught up, wondering who Bo hadn’t looked out for at the moment he should have.

  “You don’t engage. You’re a journalist, not a knight. Don’t get delusions.”

  “You got it,” said Daniel, and the lie sounded so casual Bo didn’t even look over.

  Now that they were following the stranger, Daniel could almost breathe again. At least he wouldn’t have to wonder what had happened to Suyana; whatever it was, it would play out in front of him, soon.

  And whatever she needed, he’d do.

  He owed her. He was sorry. He could go the rest of his life and never forget the courtyard of the café as she put her hand out like his shield, in those little hours when she had wanted to believe him.

  × × × × × × ×

  Kate sent the photos over in a message with the header, “Monsieur Goes to Spy School.”

  It was odd to look at them. The ID for Daniel’s photos was only a number; when the text resolved into focus in the caption he felt for an instant like something was missing.

  Made sense, though. Daniel could only imagine what happened if a snap agency got raided by IA troops, and they were able to track you down.

  (What if you escaped when you were just a string of numbers? Were there snaps wandering the world, seeking stories out of habit, taking photos no one ever saw?)

  There was nothing in his shots that caught a window, but the footage flipped to the security cameras of the hotel, and the man who ducked out of the building across the way was the stranger from Notre-Dame. The innocuous cant of his shoulders would have given him away to Daniel even if his face hadn’t.

  “Positive ID,” Bo told Kate. Daniel was struck that Bo would so openly admit it, before he remembered that the self-lionizing unlicensed press were better off being honest with each ot
her. He’d been among diplomats too long.

  “We’ll maintain visual for now, and see how it plays out.” There was a beat. “No, no need to send anyone else. Not worth it.”

  Daniel couldn’t tell if that was for his benefit, or because Bo thought he was lying.

  Either way, it was just as well. If anything happened now, he’d only have to worry about getting one person out of the way.

  × × × × × × ×

  For an hour, the stranger walked vaguely northwest.

  Occasionally he stopped to chat on the phone, or to look in a shop window; finally, he stopped in a café and ordered an espresso, leaning against the counter and flipping idly through a magazine.

  Daniel gritted his teeth. “Any chance he knows and he’s baiting us?”

  Bo shook his head. “Nobody baiting you is this obvious about it.”

  They were at the corner of the block. Daniel could just see him in the reflection of the open glass door of the café. Bo had his eye on the back entrance, just in case the guy pulled a runner.

  But the stranger didn’t have the look of a man who suspected anything. He looked like a hunter in a blind who was just waiting for his prey to wander past.

  Where was Suyana, that this stranger seemed in no hurry to seek her out?

  Maybe she’d worked a deal, Daniel thought. That’s what diplomats did. Maybe the IA had made her a promise. Maybe she was on her way back in, and Magnus had welcomed her with open arms and didn’t know she’d never make it home. Magnus might have made a deal with the IA. Snakes made deals as well as anyone else.

  (Daniel hoped, for Magnus’s sake, that that wasn’t what had happened. He had a feeling Suyana would as soon have Magnus’s head as his apology.)

  “He’s gone,” Bo said.

  Daniel looked up out of instinct, but the window was empty. “You’re kidding.”

  Bo pulled out his phone, and even a few feet away Daniel could hear Kate laughing.

  × × × × × × ×

  By the time they were back on his trail fifteen minutes later, Daniel’s throat was sour and he felt like his breath was always on the verge of giving out.

  Now the stranger had more purpose. Time was somehow running out in a way it hadn’t before. He’d gotten sight of what he wanted.

  Daniel wondered how much it cost to tap into security cameras along the major roads, and sneak a peek at the feed. He wondered how long it took someone to walk from the Chordata safe house back to this neighborhood.

  “He’s going to intercept her,” Daniel said. “We have to keep up.”

  They were falling in two blocks behind the stranger, keeping pace. Bo glanced over.

  “It’s a guess,” Daniel said.

  “You lie better when you hate the person you’re lying to,” Bo said.

  Daniel wasn’t going to argue; he bit back a smile.

  Bo picked up the pace—not enough to be alarming, but enough to keep the distance just short of two streets, in case the stranger tried to shake them.

  But he was keeping to the main streets, without a care in the world.

  (They’d lost him for fifteen minutes. Daniel had the feeling that he’d been off the street cameras because he’d taken a detour to get rid of someone. So long as it wasn’t Suyana he didn’t care.)

  “Park,” Bo said, “slow down.”

  But he couldn’t.

  The stranger was adjusting something inside his blazer, glancing for an instant over his shoulder at the street, as if gauging how fast he could dodge traffic when he needed to make a break for it. He didn’t look behind him. Whatever was about to happen, the stranger wasn’t concerned.

  Why should he be? Suyana was alone.

  “Park,” Bo hissed, but Daniel recognized this street—they had skidded across it together yesterday, his hand around her shoulders slipping from the blood, his heart pounding in his ears.

  The stranger was heading for the hotel.

  He vanished around a corner, but Daniel took a hard left, paralleling him. Now that he knew, it was an easy thing to backtrack, to run down the cobbled alleys and cut him off.

  Faster, he thought. Faster, you’ll miss it, you’ll be too late.

  He took a turn so fast that he crashed into the far wall and had to brace himself, shaking his head to clear it, his feet tangling until he could right himself.

  Ahead was the restaurant, and behind it the hotel. The little dead end here was too open, and the stranger came into sight before Daniel could think better of it and hide.

  Daniel stayed closer to the buildings, but made a beeline not even the stranger could mistake.

  The man looked over, frowning for a second, trying to place a face he barely recognized.

  (He doesn’t know, Daniel thought, he never really saw me—I was just some kid with his head down who grabbed his quarry out from under him.)

  Then something from the other side of the courtyard caught the stranger’s eye, and he glanced away.

  Daniel followed the stranger’s gaze as Suyana moved out from the alley on the far side of the little square and stepped into sight.

  Her hair was a mess and she was still wearing what she’d worn to Terrain and the dark circles under her eyes were nearly black, but she was standing under her own power. She looked warily pleased to see the stranger, as if she’d wanted better but would settle for this escort home.

  She hadn’t moved from the mouth of the alley, and seemed poised to run for it if things went sour. She was cautious, now that she was alone.

  Daniel’s lungs went tight, and he moved forward before he could even think about the stupidity of what he was doing, getting in front of another bullet.

  But he’d made a promise. He owed her.

  The stranger, torn between keeping an eye on his target and determining whose side Daniel was on, hesitated a moment—it was all Daniel needed. He doubled his pace.

  He’d nearly reached them, when Suyana looked over and saw him.

  23

  How difficult it was to walk: very. Even with a few hours’ rest, she wondered if she’d done too much damage to her leg, and she’d carry a limp with her for a year or two after this was over.

  How difficult it was to walk down the center of the wide, lazy boulevards without keeping to the shadows, so that the man who was looking for her could find her: nearly impossible. Once or twice she’d panicked, and had to drop off the avenues and take the warrens of back streets until she could breathe again before heading back to the high roads.

  How difficult it was to return to the hotel for their meeting, and be in the shadows of the place where she’d nearly died:

  Suyana didn’t make it.

  She got as far as the restaurant, even as far as slipping in the kitchen door and snagging the first knife she found, just in case. (No one looked up. Brown-skinned, apologetic-looking kitchen staff didn’t register here either.)

  But she meant to keep going through to the hotel, and her feet just wouldn’t go. She stayed in the alley, one cramped block away, while she waited to be found, shivering so hard that her legs could hardly hold her.

  How difficult it was to see Daniel again:

  She turned to stone.

  × × × × × × ×

  Her mind tried to parse everything you’d notice about any enemy, if he was gaining on you.

  His weapons (no camera, but he was a snap, there had to be one somewhere); his armor (the same coat, stiff at the shoulder with her dried blood if you knew where to look—whatever his new friends had done, they hadn’t clothed him); his manner.

  And there she stuttered and stopped, because his manner was terror.

  There were a lot of emotions that could be pretended. Love, annoyance, coldness, complacence; they could be as convincing as the real when applied correctly. More than real. She’d seen all of it. She lived among artists. Daniel was a master of the craft.

  If he’d met her any other way, she would have hated him still. She had a knife with his name on it. I
f he’d appeared with his arms open to embrace her, she’d have killed him.

  But there was no mistaking terror. False terror always looked like pantomime. Real terror blew your pupils wide, and made your fingertips stiff, laced your jaw up tight.

  (She’d seen terror back home, when police broke up protests; she’d seen it in the mirror the night she spent in prison, when she thought she was going to disappear.)

  Daniel was terrified now, and whatever he feared, he was searching for her.

  She’d been ready to kill him for what he’d done. Right now, he looked ready to die.

  He skidded to a stop in the center of the open square, but his right ankle locked up, and he half crashed to the ground, supporting himself on his arms and scrabbling to get back up.

  He hadn’t even called her name; he was just looking at her as if he was barely in time. Her stomach sank.

  Daniel was twisting as he stood, focused on something else.

  She followed his gaze and saw a man (Magnus’s man?) moving forward as if time was short and he wanted to get it over with.

  The stranger was sliding something back inside his jacket, chest-high.

  A gun, she thought. He had a gun. He was planning to use it on her. That was what Daniel knew. Her hands spasmed.

  Magnus had told him she’d be easy to find, and so his man had found her, and now he meant to clean up someone’s mess, under someone’s orders.

  (Oh Magnus, she thought, as dizzy as if she’d been struck in the temple. Not you. Please not you.)

  She breathed in—how long had she been holding her breath? How many seconds had passed while she was trapped in her body?—and saw that it was too late for her to run. The stranger was bearing down on Daniel.

  The two of them were swallowed in a blur of motion; Daniel was swinging the stranger off balance, yanking at his jacket, the stranger’s fists flying.

  Then she heard the crack of an elbow against a skull, and Daniel made one sickening whimper before he dropped like a stone.

  Suyana’s mouth went dry.

  The stranger stood up and stepped out of the puddle of what had been Daniel.