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by Genevieve Valentine

  The coffee cup was empty now, and far down the avenue Daniel could see a glimpse of neon, where some diner or some drugstore was open late. Margot’s building blotted out the moon.

  Daniel stood. “Well, enjoy your evening.”

  Li Zhao looked up at him then, the full force of her gaze like he hadn’t seen since the first time she’d brought him into her office and threatened his family until he could be convinced to talk business.

  “Don’t think you can warn her that she’s trapped. It’s too late.”

  Daniel went rigid. “Because it’s bad form to alert the wildlife?”

  But Li Zhao wasn’t angry. She looked surprised, and maybe a little disappointed. He didn’t know why—he’d never been a strategist like some.

  “Because,” she said, “Suyana already knows.”

  12

  They landed ten minutes early. By six o’clock they were already on the ground with the door open and the first of the flashbulbs going off from the ground, and it was too late to take off again when Magnus sucked in a breath through his teeth and said on the wobbly exhale, “Oh my God, they’ve struck the facility.”

  “What,” said Suyana, though it wasn’t really a question. It was barely a word.

  The American handlers were out of their chairs as soon as he spoke, headed down the stairs to try and make the cameras scatter. Stevens was trying to get Ethan out of his seat, saying, “We should get you inside,” and Suyana was vaguely aware of Ethan’s face solidifying into something like determination as he said, “What’s happening?” without moving a muscle to leave.

  “Chordata,” Magnus said to him, and then, with a look at Suyana, “They struck the facility while we were on the plane. A security guard’s in the hospital.”

  “IA security or local security?” Stevens cut in. Suyana was grateful; it saved her a question she would have no good reason to ask.

  “Local,” said Magnus, and Stevens looked relieved and beckoned Ethan forward, having cleared themselves from the last remnants of responsibility. Suyana knew better what that implied—“Terrorist Organization Disregards Lives of Locals, Breeds Discontent,” the news would say, and “Murderers Out for Blood on the Amazon,” and “Sapaki Has Sweet Romance Amid National Disaster.”

  Magnus was looking desperately at his tablet, typing so fast his fingers were a blur. Suyana’s skin prickled; it was cold, with the door open.

  There was a pain in her ribs she could barely draw breath around it burned so much, and it was so terribly cold. She reached for the armrest, but her hand was shaking, and she pulled it back. She felt like she was in an alley, all at once, and closed her eyes and opened them again just to orient herself. There wasn’t time to panic; she couldn’t panic.

  “We should get inside,” she said.

  “Of course,” said Magnus, and moved to help her up. (Had he seen her hands? Could he guess? Oh God, she thought, don’t let him guess. That was what happened to Hakan.)

  But Ethan reached her first, one arm gently around her waist and the other hand resting on her elbow, so light she hardly felt it. “Are you okay to make it down the stairs?”

  When she glanced up, she couldn’t quite meet Ethan’s eye, but his mouth was set in a thin line directed at Stevens, who looked like he was trying not to have a heart attack about all the bad press.

  “Ethan,” Stevens said as they reached the door, “it’s best if Suyana and Magnus handle this themselves.”

  “Brave sentiment,” said Magnus from behind them, but Ethan was closer and holding her close, and when he said, “Suyana is my fiancée,” it hummed against her ribs.

  It could mean anything. It could just be good PR. These days he was proving better at that than she’d ever given him credit for.

  Magnus cut in front of her and lay down strafing fire of “No comment.”

  “You can let go, I’m all right, it’s all right,” she said just before she stepped out onto the stairs, just for something to say that would make Ethan stop looking at her the way he was looking at her.

  The arm around her waist vanished. The hand on her elbow never did, all the way down the stairs, as she took careful steps and then walked without looking left or right all the way down the narrow aisle toward the cars that had pulled up out of nowhere.

  Suyana looked up at the windows of the airport, where crowds were lined up taking photos and gawping. Some of them looked mortified enough to have heard the news and be pitying or blaming her. Several just seemed excited that their early flights had gotten them the first glimpse of the engaged couple on American soil.

  Only a few weren’t taking pictures. Only one didn’t even have a camera in his hand.

  Daniel was a wreck—she could see from a hundred feet away the dark circles under his eyes, his stricken expression, his mouth nearly slack from disbelief.

  She dropped her gaze, shook her head tightly, once, at nothing at all.

  It wasn’t me. I didn’t let them. I didn’t even show them. I told them not to do it, and they didn’t care. They’ve broken with me; I broke faith with no one, it’s just broken.

  Ethan guided her into the car and sat beside her, twined their fingers.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said, like a doctor on a television show—something they said because they were told to, with no idea about the real disease.

  She ignored it, leaned back in her seat, and let the cold leather absorb the heat of her anger.

  “Magnus. What did Margot say?”

  He glanced up at her a second too early to hide his surprise. “She’d like to see us in the offices, immediately.”

  Ethan frowned. “I can come with you.”

  She looked at him. “Was she the one who suggested you propose?”

  There was a short, deep silence. She pulled her hand out of his, turned back to Magnus.

  “I need to go home first,” she said. “I shouldn’t show up tired and grimy right off a plane; she’d love that.”

  “There’s a risk in delaying.”

  “There will be statements, probably. If this is going to be my last day, should I look like this? I need twenty minutes at home.”

  Magnus’s skin seemed pulled too tight across his skull, as if even the idea of disobedience pressed against him from the inside, but he was watching her solemnly, and he said, “All right.”

  × × × × × × ×

  It took her one minute to contact Columbina, four minutes to shower, two minutes to claim she needed something personal from the pharmacy and get Magnus to agree on the anonymity of her jacket and scarf, and another minute to make it to the stoop three blocks away, where Columbina was waiting.

  “Was it you?” Suyana said while she was still walking, her voice rougher than she’d thought she had in her. Columbina was standing up, one hand gripping the stone rail.

  “They told me you’d given them information—”

  “That was a conservation facility! It was going to cause problems, there were going to be problems later, but nothing a warning shot right now was going to solve! I told Sotalia—I didn’t even give her anything—it was too soon, there were still questions. I wanted to get more information. I told her not to do anything. I told her. And now they—it’s gone, and I have to go in and—” She scrubbed her hand across her face.

  “I’m sorry, Aurelia.” Columbina’s expression was grim.

  Suyana’s throat went tight. “Aurelia?”

  “We thought it was safest to separate your old contact name after the strike, since—I mean, because—”

  “Because you acted without my permission.”

  “Because it wasn’t safe to keep your old name after this. We’ve never had anyone . . .”

  Who’d lived through something this destructive. They were used to cutting losses and starting over.

  “And you named me Aurelia? I see.”

  Aurelia: jellyfish, transparent and mindless. You took my name, she thought, hollow, and for a second she saw Zenaida’s face as Su
yana told her about the viper she wanted to be named for; a snake from home, a risk, something to remember her by.

  “They didn’t tell me they were going to move.”

  “How’s the man they hurt?”

  “He’ll make it. I think.”

  “Jesus.” Her fists sank in her pockets, pulled at her shoulders. “If they ask me to denounce Chordata as terrorists, I’m going to.”

  Columbina paled. “Why would they make you do that?”

  “They asked me to do it last time, back when I still thought we were on the same side. I refused. If they ask me this time, I’m going to have to say yes, or they’ll realize I know, or I am, Chordata’s inside source.” She didn’t blink, didn’t dare. “It’s Chordata’s fault I’m here. You acted without me, and it ruined an opportunity we needed for the forest. This is supposed to all be for the forest, not for yourselves.”

  “Aurelia, please.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “You’re not the arbiter of those decisions—”

  “If my judgment has no weight, neither does my information.”

  Columbina was holding very still. “That’s a dangerous thing to say.”

  “It’s only dangerous to me if Chordata is actually terrorists. That’s up to you to figure out—I’m not the arbiter of those decisions.” Suyana pulled her scarf higher. “If I don’t make it, we’ll know why. Tell Zenaida that Lachesis was thinking of her just before they killed me.”

  She turned and started back for her building. She had four minutes.

  Daniel was waiting for her outside a closed storefront, locked and dark, and when he saw her coming he brushed his hair down over the camera.

  He didn’t reach out for her; he hadn’t touched her at all, in a year. He looked her up and down, frowned at the ring on her finger, frowned at the look on her face.

  “What do you know?” she breathed.

  He smiled without any humor in it, and shook his head, and the words came out less like he was trying to keep quiet and more like he was having to force even this much air through his throat. “Margot will end you if she can. Do whatever you have to. Keep an eye out for Martine. If it’s life or death, find Bo.”

  She nodded, stepped back, wanted to say something (get some sleep, I’m so sorry, stay away from me, it isn’t safe), but it was already over and time was going; she broke into a run, didn’t look behind her.

  × × × × × × ×

  Margot’s offices were the second-highest floor of the IA office tower, all windows, and big enough for a glass-walled conference room that could seat ten. Margot at one end of such a huge table looked almost lonely, Suyana thought as she and Magnus walked in. Margot probably wanted it that way. More mystique if you struck a tragic figure.

  The unsmiling receptionist showed them in—they didn’t rate a manager coming to greet them—and Margot raised her eyebrows at Suyana’s wet hair and severe gray dress.

  “Well, glad to see that no international terrorist incident on your home soil is enough to keep you from looking your best, Suyana. Magnus, always a pleasure.”

  Suyana made a pleasant face that stopped short of a smile as she took a seat. “We wanted to give the incident the solemnity it deserves. It would have been disrespectful to come directly from the airport in casual clothes, when something so terrible has happened.”

  There was hardly a flicker over Margot’s face—she’d been doing this a long time—but Suyana knew she’d scored a point, because Margot’s next words were unrelated: “The UARC has embarrassed itself. This is the second time in your brief tenure with us that terrorists have struck the United Amazonian Rainforest Confederation shortly after one of your visits. What exactly is it you’re saying that makes them so angry?”

  “It seems hardly fair to ask Suyana what a bunch of radicals think,” said Magnus.

  “The UARC is still very new,” Suyana said. “They’re still struggling with shared languages and currency. Some problems clearly run deeper.”

  Margot looked like she wished she had a document to point to, just to show off the points of her nails. “Some problems run deeper than anyone thinks.”

  Suyana let her face drop into the blankness of surprise. “Have they checked for explosives anywhere else we visited? At the palace, or the Teatro Municipal?”

  Magnus checked his tablet. “Not yet. They’re still coordinating efforts on our transit routes, but so far everything’s clear.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Suyana said, wishing she’d thought to have Chordata plant an inert bomb underneath her hired car as a cover story if she’d needed one. Wishing she trusted anyone enough to do it now.

  “Yes,” said Margot. “Only the one target. It seems they have a favorite subject.”

  “Strange. I’m not even on the Environmental Committee. I don’t know what they think they’d have to gain.”

  “You’ll need to denounce this act of terrorism. On television.”

  “Of course. Who’s claiming responsibility?”

  Margot blinked twice. “No one, yet.”

  “Oh.” As if adrift, Suyana looked to Magnus. “How would that work?”

  Magnus was looking at Margot, a single thin line creasing his forehead. “I’m not entirely sure,” he said. “It’s not the general practice to speak before someone’s claimed responsibility. You could condemn terrorism overall—”

  “You’ll condemn Chordata,” Margot said. “They’re likely responsible, and you should publicly distance yourself from looking ignorant of the people behind it. You look ignorant of plenty as it is.”

  “But that—” Magnus said, and Suyana could practically hear him swallow the rest of the thought—that opened up the UARC to another blow if the group wasn’t Chordata, and whoever had done it wanted to make another point.

  “It’s necessary for Miss Sapaki,” Margot said to Magnus, and though it was an old trick and Hakan had taught her to ignore it almost a decade ago, Suyana’s palms still went clammy when Margot dropped into the formal. It suggested something different—not even a diminishing, but a removal. “Otherwise, I’m afraid we’ll have no choice but to—”

  Suyana glanced up at Ethan a moment before the receptionist knocked on the glass wall to announce him, and Margot looked over and went ever so slightly pale.

  Magnus looked at Suyana; after a moment, he allowed himself to look relieved.

  “Hi,” Suyana said, reaching for him as he sat, so the ring would show above the table. “Listen, Ethan, this attack sounds like it may have ruined my credibility. I don’t know what—”

  “What?” Ethan curled his hand around her hand and looked over at Margot. “Why would it?”

  Margot pressed her lips together for a moment. “After being the center of so many scandals—the Chordata strike five years ago, the problem last year, now this—it feels like Suyana has drawn undue attention to herself.”

  “Making her apologize for it only draws more attention,” Ethan argued, at the same time Magnus said, “The problem last year?”

  Ethan caught on. “Oh, that’s—the kidnapping, you mean. Wait. You’re blaming her for being shot and kidnapped because I had asked her to meet me to talk about a relationship and some psycho got angry?”

  Suyana watched Margot, looked for anything: the tightening of her jaw, the flare of her nostrils, any tension around the eyes. Nothing. She wondered how Margot did it—if she rationalized it, or made herself forget, or if she was just so good that nothing escaped. It was incredible technique.

  “Oh, I—I brought him with me, back home,” Suyana said, like it was just now occurring to her. “People angry about a political union wouldn’t like a reminder coming home. Oh God.”

  Ethan’s hand was warm and soft. The ring felt heavy on her finger.

  “That’s true,” said Ethan, leaning forward. “That facility was our project, Margot—the US was the big investor, not the UARC. It probably wasn’t even a strike against Suyana. It was a strike against America!”r />
  Suyana looked at him with all the foolish fondness she could summon when she could barely breathe. Come on, she thought; do what I need you to do.

  “This is bigger than one country, Margot. This is about the whole conservation project. I should be the one to denounce that.”

  “No,” said Margot, a refrigerator dropped on Suyana’s relief. “Suyana needs to be seen publicly refuting this.”

  Ethan’s fingers laced with hers in the moment before he glanced over. “Then we do it together.”

  I could kiss you, she thought, you beautiful mark, and they stood up hand in hand even as Magnus was saying, “Perfect—Margot, let us know what time you need us to be live, we’ll have a script in twenty minutes. Thank you for taking such a personal concern.”

  × × × × × × ×

  Ethan’s team made it to the offices in time to berate him and then powder him for the cameras. Suyana would have left him in their care, crowded into the greenroom off the penthouse audience hall, except she worried he’d change his mind as soon as she was out of sight and Stevens started in. Instead Magnus moved to intercept his team with specifics, and Suyana wrapped her arms around Ethan’s waist, rested her chin on his chest, and said, “I can’t believe what you did in there.”

  He smiled, but there was no light behind it, and his hand on her back felt tentative.

  “Why? Didn’t you think I would stand up for you? Why else would you call me for this?”

  I needed a shield, she thought, lowered her eyes so it wouldn’t show. At best he was a dupe; at worst a spy. Whether he’d gotten observant all of a sudden or was just falling back on the contract, she had to be careful not to make him regret what he was about to do. A public retraction would be damaging. She needed someone she could rely on.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That wasn’t kind. Of course you’d help me. We work well together.”

  Twice he opened his mouth to answer her, with an expression she couldn’t read; then his team reached him and it was too late.