“Don’t fall asleep,” she said.
He said, “Soon.”
“Not yet.”
He inhaled (it rattled somewhere inside him that made her hands unsteady), said, “You’ll be late.”
She knew—part of her was calculating how fast she’d have to run to catch up on a knee that burned, every passing second making it impossible, she’d miss her chance to call the vote of no confidence and nominate Grace—but she couldn’t move. He had one hand braced against the wound, and she rested her hands over his; blood slid over them both.
“Ambulance!” someone shouted in French. “Call an ambulance!”
“Fuck that.”
Suyana pressed against his hand. “Don’t you dare,” she said through gritted teeth. “I got shot twice, you’re not allowed to die from just one.”
“You win,” said Daniel. He wrapped his free hand around her wrist, and she worried she’d hurt him, but it felt more like something for him to hold on to.
“I’m with you,” she said. “Help’s coming. I’m with you.”
Footsteps echoed into the alley as someone ran into the café next door. There was a flurry of conversation from someone inside, and then the television flipped channels to an English broadcast.
“—has just accused Central Committee Chair Margot Larsen of attempted murder,” a reporter was saying breathlessly. A burst of chatter drowned out the next few sentences, and when Suyana could hear it again, the announcer was saying, “—and the chamber, as you can hear, is in an uproar, but Grace Charles and a witness to the attack, New Zealand’s Kipa Forsyth, insist that—one moment, I’m receiving reports that we have obtained footage of the shooter via an anonymous source—”
There was a crackle, and then the uncanny overlay of the sounds at the mouth of the alley echoed on the television; bystanders breathing heavily, panicky sounds leaking around the edges, as someone was calling in French for police. Shadows moved slowly on the pavement under the streetlights—gawkers, or snaps looking for a better angle.
“As you can see by the footage, it appears that there is, in fact, a wounded man who may have been in possession of the weapon we can see there on the ground—”
Boots charged past them, and Suyana pressed harder against Daniel’s stomach. He wheezed.
“Ow, fuck, stop, that—that won’t make me invisible to cops.”
“Try harder,” she said, though her voice sounded thick. Bo was speaking with the police; she caught “Hired security for Suyana Sapaki” and “My license,” and wondered what exactly he’d done all day when she’d told him to follow Margot and prepare.
“As we get someone on the ground down there,” the announcer said, “we take you back to chambers, where Martine Hargaad, also from Norway, has demanded a vote of no confidence in Margot Larsen. This seems to—I mean, this is coming as something of a shock after Martine and Margot went on a homecoming earlier this year to visit the Norwegian environmental initiative, where they seemed very friendly.”
“There might be more to this story than we’re getting at the moment,” the other announcer said.
“Oh my God,” said Daniel, faintly but with admirable venom, “can’t I die without listening to this?”
He wasn’t breathing heavily any more; whatever struggle he was going through was ending.
But the announcer was drawn in now. “It looks like Sweden is standing up, and now two standing at the same time, and across the hall it appears—oh, wow,” and then there was utter quiet from the studio, with nothing playing but the feed, as the sound of five hundred people in chambers rose and swamped the microphones with voices.
“You have to go,” Daniel said. He was shaking, trembling so hard the words barely made it out. She couldn’t tell if he knew what was happening or if he just didn’t want her to see.
She swallowed around I can wait and settled on, “I’m here.”
He tightened his grip on her wrist; his teeth ground together with something he was deciding not to say. He squeezed tighter, once, then let her go.
She nodded. She could hardly move her head, her throat was so hot with tears.
When she stood up, she saw her dress had a band of grime at the knees from the Paris streets, and her hands were gloved with blood. Her breath froze in her chest.
“It looks good,” he said, with no air behind it. “It’ll sell.”
She tried a smile that didn’t feel like anything, and he mirrored it with a smile that looked like a rictus.
Then he closed his eyes. He said, “Run.”
She did—out the far side of the alley, away from the police (no time for questions or ID), and when two people fell in behind her, she panicked before she realized how smooth their gait was and how they spread to cover two angles; Li Zhao had planned to cover every exit.
“Watch Daniel,” she shouted, and after a moment of waiting for orders over the line, one of them peeled off. It wasn’t any easier for Suyana to breathe—her heels jarred and stung and her knee creaked and her ribs were too tight and her heart was in her ears—but when Daniel died, he’d die on-camera, and Margot would fucking pay for it.
She took the side entrance, smacking against one of the walls out of sheer velocity as she gasped to the guards, “A guy just tried to kill me.” No point invoking Margot. If they were loyal to her, Suyana might not make it to the stage. Better to make it sound like a damsel in vague distress. “My security detail was involved. One of them’s wounded—please get help.”
They were looking at her hands. “But you’ve been—”
“It’s his,” she said too loudly, cleared her throat as she passed, and shook off her shoes as she bolted for the stage.
It was an uproar. Handlers were shouting at one another, Faces were shouting to be heard. Margot stood on the stage near her chair, hands folded like she was waiting out a tantrum. Grace and Kipa stood side by side onstage. Colin, and Kipa’s handler, Elizabeth, stood on the ground below them, staunchly blocking two handlers who were trying to pull them down. Magnus stood just ahead of Suyana in the wings, his back to her, looking very studious and not at all like he was blocking Margot’s way out.
And halfway between Margot and Grace was Martine, grinning at Margot over her shoulder like someone feeling bulletproof. Margot was glaring daggers at her; Martine opened her mouth and let the smoke roll out.
“Excuse me,” Suyana said to Magnus.
He turned around, went terribly white, and stepped aside.
Without shoes her feet made little noise, but as she walked past Margot someone gasped, and as she walked past Martine, someone started to cry out something that melted before it turned into a word.
There were pockets of silence after that, as some people leaned forward, waiting for their cue to help, and others (the smart ones) recognized what must be happening and froze.
By the time she took her place on the far end of the stage from Margot, the jeering had quieted down, and the arguments left were scattered, thin with panic. She couldn’t see where they were coming from—stage lights and flashbulbs were everywhere—but they were easy enough to drown out. A camera could only absorb so much sound.
“I second the vote of no confidence in Margot Larsen,” Suyana called, and though her voice was rough with tears at the edges, it went out barrel-deep across the hall, and the shake in the last words was still all right—it would make sense, when people realized she was a widow. (The Assembly hadn’t had a Face wife in chambers in forty-five years; the novelty would impress them.) She tilted her left hand slightly, so the ring would be more visible under the lights, if you could see it through the blood.
She called out, “I second the nomination of Grace Charles on behalf of my murdered husband, Ethan Chambers, the Face of the United States, and on behalf of the United Amazonian Rainforest Confederation.”
There was a moment of utter silence, as the room took her in, and almost as one glanced over at Margot, and then across the hall at one another, trying to de
termine if, once they started, they would have enough votes to finish.
“All in favor, say aye,” Martine said, and it was smart—her voice was pitched nearly hopeful. Martine knew how to create a story on the fly.
(Suyana thought, Make her a member of the Central Committee, and then keep watch. We’ll have to be sure.)
Suyana fought not to clench her hands in the silence. This blood had been visited upon her; fists would make it look like blood she’d deserved.
“Aye,” someone called from the back of the room, where Malaysia sat.
Then, “Aye,” called Bin Mee-yon, and even when the volume rose past Suyana’s ability to make them all out, the sounds were of countries calling out the second, and not the jeering of a crowd past controlling.
Security was moving through the audience hall and in the wings of the stage; in Suyana’s peripheral vision, Magnus stepped aside to let them get to Margot. He was staring at Suyana with a look she could feel. She didn’t look back. She was afraid.
Part of her wished she could summon tears—it would sell Grace as a savior; they needed a savior and not just a replacement if she was going to hold her tenure through the transition—but for everything she’d handed the IA, there were some things she couldn’t give.
Six streets away from here, Daniel was dead.
As members of the Central Committee began to call for calm, and country after country shouted their votes, Suyana stood unmoving, her fingers slightly separated like Bo’s when he’d just killed a man and was still expecting enemies. The sound of camera shutters filled her ears, and the sea of ayes filled her lungs until there was nothing inside her but a deliberate emptiness she could hone into whatever needed to be done.
(Bo was here, standing in the back of the auditorium where the view was best, his face gone blotchy with tears. It was over.)
She kept her gaze out and steady across the crowd without really looking at anyone and rested her hands as close to her dress as she dared, where the light-gray column would set off the blood, and she would make a better figure for the cameras.
23
“Two more,” the photographer said, and Suyana held her position on aching heels until Grace’s new assistant, Amira, signaled the all clear, and the Committee broke from their formal poses. Except Grace, of course, who always stood like she was posing for a portrait, and who took the break as a chance to check in with the photographer and look at the results on his screen.
That was for Amira’s benefit. She was Grace’s embedded snap, courtesy of Bonnaire Fine Tailoring and a promise Suyana had made in exchange for Grace’s crown.
Suyana had already lost Grace; as soon as Grace met Li Zhao and realized the kind of woman Suyana had signed their futures over to, a door had closed.
(“Coverage of . . . everything?” Grace had asked, so polite that frost formed on it, and Li Zhao had smiled and said, “If you’re concerned you might have some secrets left, don’t be.” A fist had closed around Suyana’s stomach, and she very carefully didn’t look at Bo or Kate or Li Zhao. She looked at Grace, as Grace realized that off-line didn’t mean invisible, that she had a flat Li Zhao had already seen, that it was too late to hide anything.
“I want a woman,” Grace said, “and I want her on-site so I can dismiss her properly when I have overnight guests, none of whom will ever appear in any newspaper for any reason. You’ll give me assurance in writing.”
Li Zhao smiled and shook hands on it. Suyana decided she’d need to find the sort of people you called when someone like Li Zhao broke her word and needed hunting.
Grace never looked at Suyana. Suyana never looked at Li Zhao. A deal was a deal; you dealt with one devil at a time. It cost Suyana a friend, but everything cost. What did it matter?)
Amira was young, and had the look of someone Li Zhao had found on the streets who was happy to play the middle ground so long as she had a bed to sleep in. She adored Grace, Grace made sure—she laughed at Amira’s jokes even when it wouldn’t make a good picture, she pulled Amira aside sometimes as if she just wanted to be away from it all, and now when Grace needed privacy, Amira turned her face away on some cue not even Suyana could see. When Amira watched Grace planning, it was with the faithfulness of a handmaiden. Amira had an eye for nobility; she could get a shot of Grace reviewing photos into Closer for a piece about Grace’s first days, some behind-the-scenes sidebar in which no task was too trivial to deserve Grace’s attention and care. Smart. Harmless.
It was still early enough in Grace’s tenure that she was trying to be both. She had a social secretary for outside appointments, and Kipa as her liaison to other Faces, a newly created post that did wonders for the position practically overnight. Grace had already met with every Central Committee member for long dinners, and was starting the rounds with the countries that had stood up early to cement her vote.
“Never underestimate how much people like you just for seeming to like them,” Kipa said sometimes to Suyana with an apologetic smile as she nudged an Intelligence meeting off Grace’s calendar in favor of lunch with China, a museum trip with Argentina, a film festival with Turkey.
Suyana supposed Kipa would know: as it turned out, nearly everyone wished her well. Countries she’d never mentioned on that long night were only too happy to see her rise in the ranks. Fair enough; plenty of people were happy to see an acquaintance in a position of usable power. And Kipa never got less kind, merely more cautious.
But Suyana sometimes watched Kipa walking across a room to greet someone and marveled at how much she was like water, filling whatever vessel someone expected to see.
Kipa was still good, Suyana thought in her generous moments. She had schemed no more than she needed to keep herself safe; she gave an ear to anyone who asked. The distance that had grown up between them was nothing wretched. It was only that Kipa was good, and she also might still be Chordata, and for the sake of appearances she had to lie to Suyana for the rest of her life.
Suyana thought about Columbina sitting on a stoop in New York, knee to knee with Kipa, listening to Grace’s secrets. She thought about a snap filming it all, about the basement in Paris and its smooth rows of servers loaded with footage Daniel had taken of Suyana and Columbina. Suyana pictured Li Zhao approaching Columbina with her hand out, a pillar of opportunity, her face eclipsing the sun, the sound of a camera shutter no one could stop.
Suyana wished she’d asked Kipa more about Columbina, in those last moments with Kipa when honesty was possible, just before Daniel was shot. But it was gone and she’d never get an answer now. That’s what came of being distracted when you had a job to do.
She made an appointment with Columbina. It had to be at night, Suyana said like always, so she wasn’t followed; it had to be somewhere quiet, where no one would see.
× × × × × × ×
The Central Committee settled in quickly. Those who were invited to remain (most of them, after they’d supported the vote—tenure was too precious a thing to give up for something so small as personal belief) had seemed just as happy to provide input to Grace as to Margot. Maybe more, since Grace was still listening to outside counsel. Even Grace adding Suyana to the newly minted Director of Intelligence seat didn’t ruffle many feathers, and Suyana had looked around the room as her appointment was silently accepted and wondered how many of them had suspected Margot all along and never said a word.
“Promise me you’ll tell me if I start turning into Margot,” Grace had murmured once on her way out of the meeting room. “God knows none of them will.”
The only vote Suyana had really lost was Grace’s. In a perfectly reasonable, perfectly kind, perfectly pleasant way, Grace disappeared. She was terribly busy, and she was terribly grateful, and when Suyana met with her alone for briefings on the shifting loyalties among member countries, Grace always took the seat closer to the door.
She was kind about it; Suyana imagined it was impossible for Grace to be cruel, and if Grace never quite looked her in the eye, then
that could be useful too. The work still had to be done. They could do the work; they were practical.
The only rough patch of the new ascension—it got Grace accused of favoritism, and two of the lesser Committee chairs resigned in protest before they were promptly replaced with Faces from two of the earliest countries to have seconded Grace’s nomination—was the appointment of Martine as Central Committee liaison to the Defense Committee.
“This is a reminder that the International Assembly has not punished Norway, only a criminal,” Grace said in a filmed statement that got released over the evening news in seventeen countries. “Norway remains a longstanding ally and valued member of the IA, and we are certain that with such a long record of working toward global peace, Norway will treat this appointment with the highest respect and consideration.”
Martine got no words in edgewise on that filmed statement. Nor on the next one, about plans for developing a new protocol for deploying peacekeeping troops.
“If she keeps me out of one more, I’m going to start taking it personally,” Martine muttered. Suyana was sitting close enough that it might have been intentional, and she’d felt enough sympathy to say, “This position attracts warmongers. There are probably six countries lined up outside her office wanting to claim the position. She just doesn’t want anyone to realize someone sensible has their hand on the button until it’s too late for anyone to kill you and jump the line.”
“You don’t think I’m a warmonger?”
Suyana had no answer. She wasn’t used to Martine asking questions that sounded open-ended, and these days her words dried up at the strangest times around people she knew.
Martine got to speak at the annual Rally for Peace, flawlessly sincere as she read someone else’s statement about peace being layers of sediment that built a world, so in the end all the discontent about her came to nothing; most things did.
× × × × × × ×
Suyana was embarrassed that she had imagined, even for a moment, Margot vanishing behind bars as punishment for her crimes. It had been what kept her staring out past the crowd the day Grace was elected—a picture of Margot lit by shadowy stripes as the door clanged shut, like one of the revival movies she and Ethan had seen at Cannes last year. It was a child’s hope. (She could just imagine Hakan’s face if he’d lived to see it and she’d been fool enough to ask him—that cloud that gathered every so often, when she’d done something so stupid he was reconsidering his choice.)
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