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by Genevieve Valentine

  In the wake of the emergency election, Margot was charged with conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit fraud, and conspiracy to disrupt government procedure. But somehow, after such a long and fruitful friendship, America couldn’t find much legal fault with Margot over just one corpse. Even the countries that had wanted her gone were wary of any precedent that could come back to haunt them; this was a circumspect group. They objected just enough to make sure her removal from the public sphere would be too permanent to make good on any spite. She might have had to go to prison for the murder conspiracy if the UARC had agreed to bear witness, but Suyana had known as soon as they read the list of charges that she wouldn’t. To prove Margot knew about the bombing ahead of time, they’d have to track down Chordata, and an investigation of Chordata would turn up Suyana’s name.

  She swallowed a stone, and shook her head, and when Magnus looked at her long enough, she realized someone would need a reason and managed, “Our country’s been through so much, the last thing I want is for us to look like this is petty revenge. We put our faith in the International Assembly’s judicial procedure and thank the world for their support.”

  The statement got on the evening news in five languages. Her reputation was spreading.

  After the closed-door trial, so short they didn’t even pretend not to have come to a deal beforehand, Margot was barred from public service. She was serving a sentence for fraud, under house arrest in her Paris apartment for ten years. She had retained her personal aide—on the civilian side—and her private chef, who was forbidden from speaking to Margot and received her instructions through the aide. The two guards stationed outside her door wore suits rather than uniforms, out of respect for the residents in her historic-landmark building.

  If you wanted to go see her, all you had to do was have your name on a list. Suyana’s dress had a skirt like a bell, but the guard at the door only patted her thighs once from the outside, not quite looking at her, and went back to his conversation. She could have stored a pistol three different places and still made it inside. There were probably no cameras, then, to review their security performance and interrupt Margot’s privacy.

  She could kill Margot and both the guards, and be gone before anyone knew what had happened.

  In the first moment Margot saw Suyana, she looked as if she had the same concerns. Her hands curled around the arms of her easy chair (Suyana thought of Li Zhao), and she shifted her weight a little forward, so it would be easier to stand in case Suyana started shooting.

  “You can sit back down,” Suyana said. “I’ve never needed a gun to deal with you.”

  Margot raised an eyebrow. “So it’s going to be one of those visits.”

  “I’ve never made a visit like this.”

  “You will,” Margot said, indicating a chair opposite her absently, a hostess gesture that had yet to die. “Now that Grace has saddled you with the official title, you’ll have to make official visits to endless people in disgrace to decide if they’re enemies of the state. Always a mistake to be transparent. I only had to visit people worth my time.”

  “Maybe someday I’ll visit one of those.”

  Margot laughed like a door unlocked. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  The chair Margot had offered had no arms. Suyana sat in one that did, let her fingers drape off the edges.

  “I wanted to know when you first got involved with them.”

  “The attack on the mining office. It suggested a mole in the UARC delegation.”

  “But they never would have just let you join up.”

  “If you want to be in this job for long, you’ll learn how to be the sort of person people approach. They found me when the first plans were being drawn up for the joint research facilities.”

  “So those were bait.”

  A flicker of surprise. “No. They’re conservation efforts that look good to the press. God knows the IA needs it. Chordata just approached me because they think like you do. I let them, that was all. Their missteps are tragic. You’re well matched.”

  Margot had probably done her a favor. If they really turned on her as soon as they had another avenue of information from someone they should have suspected, it was because they were looking for a replacement, not an addition. Suyana had outlived their loyalty. Just as well it was over.

  Suyana was careful to avoid any mention of herself; it seemed important to be as far from this as possible. “And then you just let it burn?”

  Margot half lifted a hand like she was dropping garbage. “They’re less expensive than you think, and I didn’t expect you to turn to stone with Chordata. Something had to make you look guilty. Early results that came in from the facility were promising, though—the program should be continued there. I’m sure Grace can help you.”

  Suyana’s throat had swollen; she had to force a breath to get the words out—a mistake, the wrong time to ask for something when you had nothing to give, but it was too late. “How long after you killed Hakan did you realize the mole was really me, that first time?”

  It took a moment for the silence to settle; Margot’s expression was so foreign that Suyana couldn’t name it as pity until the center of her chest had already started caving in.

  “He knew it was only a matter of time,” Margot said eventually, like it helped—kindly, like it helped. “Every handler who chooses their own delegate gets myopic about them. He’d always wanted someone to rise.”

  And she had. He had been her check, and he had been removed, and this was what she’d become. (In some corner of her mind where nothing mattered, she wondered if Hakan had guessed what she’d been willing to hollow out just to lighten the load for the reach upward.)

  She thought about asking where the body was, but even if Margot knew, she didn’t want to hear it. It would be like asking if Margot remembered Li Zhao from twenty years ago just to see if she flinched. The body was where it was. You can’t bring it with you. Keep going. Reach up and pull.

  “So you tried to kill me? Twice?”

  “I thought this time, with you, Hakan might be on to something.” She glanced around her pretty prison. “I was right.”

  Three knuckles cracked against the arms of her chair. Don’t lean forward, she thought, whatever you do. “Why couldn’t you just fucking leave me alone?”

  “Suyana. You’ve been a terrorist agent for a decade. They didn’t even have to wait for you to make it to the IA to recruit you. Was I supposed to trust your mercy and good sense?”

  She wanted Margot in a prison. She wanted cement walls and a gated door and a long corridor empty of inmates so that Margot would hear no human voice but hers for the next ten years, and every time Suyana turned her back, Margot would have to decide if today was the day she begged.

  “Who else have you disappeared?”

  One corner of her mouth ticked up, dropped. “I’ve been in the IA thirty years.”

  “And now?”

  It was both sides this time, curling up like smoke. “Oh, I’m just a private citizen. That body count’s yours now.” Shadow crawled across the green carpet in front of Suyana, until Margot’s apartment looked like the edge of the sea.

  (Suyana had hung placid in the water as Grace took her seat. Suyana had stretched a hundred threads with stingers at the end of them; she’d asked Bo how you hired killers.

  The police had found Columbina a few weeks back. Mugging gone sour, they’d said. They’d never found who did it.

  “I’m concerned about Columbina,” Grace had started a week later, and when Suyana said, “Don’t be,” Grace had understood, and looked at Suyana the way she’d looked when Suyana had promised to put her at the head of the table and keep her there. Suyana suspected it was the only way Grace would ever see her again.

  Margot would understand, when they talked about it. It would happen someday; who else did Suyana have?)

  “I have to say, if you plan to make it very long, Miss Sapaki, I would suggest a little subtlety.”
>
  She’d gotten everything she wanted from Margot without any subtlety at all, but that wasn’t something you brought to someone’s attention when they were giving you information. Poisonous knowledge was still knowledge. She pressed the side of her tongue in between the wide comfort of her molars until the skin gave way.

  By the time she was calm again, it was too long a pause to fill with a cutting remark. She could have blown up in temper and sworn never to come back, just to give Margot the satisfaction the next time she came, but that would require a better liar than Suyana was. Martine could do it, maybe; Kipa could do it so well no one would ever find out she’d been playacting. But Margot had apparently always been beyond Suyana’s ability to fool.

  So she stood up and left without a word or a look behind her. There was no convincing her this was the last time (Margot had too much information Suyana wanted, and it would be doled out until the day her sentence ended), but let Margot wonder how long it would be before she came back—whether she was leaving in shame or in anger or if something had suddenly occurred to her that would burn someone’s tenure to the ground. Let Margot decide how much she’d have to give up next time to get Suyana to stay.

  No point in making a scene. Margot was a resource. This was a conservation effort.

  She picked the splinters from under her fingernails before anyone else got home.

  × × × × × × ×

  Grace sat at the meeting room table in the chair closest to the door, next to Martine. Suyana sat where she could see all the angles of entry; no point pretending it wasn’t her place. Kipa came in a few moments later and said something in Grace’s ear before she took her seat and pulled out her tablet. Kipa must have a new contact too. Suyana couldn’t ask her. Kipa hadn’t looked at her in weeks. It didn’t matter.

  “Where do we stand with Argentina?”

  “Hello to you, too, Suyana,” said Grace, with a smile and a glance at Martine.

  “Hello, Grace. I’m concerned about Argentina. They were late to stand up for you during the vote, and since then they’ve gone suspiciously quiet on the floor. I want to make sure they’re not regretting their vote. We can’t afford any sense that people could be drawn into some other recall vote on the side.”

  “I’m sure not,” said Grace, but this time when she looked at Martine, Martine looked at Suyana and then out the window, and said, “They have been quiet.”

  “I’ll schedule a dinner as soon as I can,” said Kipa, scrolling through.

  “Not tonight,” said Martine. “She’s having dinner with me.”

  Grace laughed. Suyana didn’t know why; Martine was dead serious.

  Kipa was smiling. “Well—she knows you, Martine, and she’s so busy.”

  “I bet,” said Martine.

  “I want to make sure everyone feels they’re being heard.”

  “Sure.”

  “So maybe we could look at next week?”

  “Kipa, you’ll keep my dinner with Grace tonight or I’ll poison your food.”

  Kipa grinned for a second before she laughed, like Martine had passed a test, and the laugh was as genuine as Kipa’s laugh had ever been. Grace laughed too, and leaned in to look at the calendar Kipa was holding out. Across Kipa’s turned back, Martine looked over at Suyana with a face Suyana was coming to know, and sparked the fake cigarette in her pocket before it was even all the way to her lips.

  × × × × × × ×

  “Stevens sent me a very polite, horrible message wondering how long you intend to wear the ring,” Magnus said.

  They were at home, and nightfall made her feel almost at ease with Magnus, so she was able to give that notice the expression it deserved.

  “That’s what I said,” Magnus assured her. “In the nicest possible way. You’re a widow until you decide to stop.”

  She heard the question in it. “I’ll give it up in New York next year, when everything’s settled. Right now it’s useful for Grace, and for Leili.”

  Leili had arrived in the middle of the chaos that first morning in chambers, and Suyana realized Magnus had been right about her when Stevens caught her up on what had happened in a few breathless sentences, clearly guiding America away from the mess as soon as some method could be established, and instead Leili had walked onstage in front of live worldwide cameras to meet Suyana.

  It had been a hug rather than a handshake—Suyana didn’t blame her, with the blood—and Leili had said, “On behalf of the United States, I’m so sorry for your loss. He was always so kind to me,” with her voice trembling at the end, and looked down at Suyana’s hands like it was Ethan’s blood. (Suyana would have ruined it, if she’d been able to speak.)

  The cameras had loved it all. If Margot had stood a chance at defending Ethan’s disappearance at the tribunal before that, it vanished after the new American Face consoled the grieving widow.

  Suyana was planning a trip to Tivoli with Leili after the Paris session broke for holidays. There was no question of Suyana going home; they were sending a new Face to replace her (Brazilian, apparently, and charming), and her services were no longer domestically required. It stung less than she’d feared. As director of intelligence, it was better not to have a place that mattered more than another. Better not to have anything to hold on to.

  She couldn’t actually enjoy herself at Tivoli either, of course—she was a widow for a while, and there was a period of mourning to observe. But so far the only times she and Leili had been photographed together were on the IA stage and at Ethan’s funeral, back in some United States desert. That image was useful, but it had to change, slowly, before the public decided she was too busy mourning to be doing her job. At Tivoli, she could smile as Leili enjoyed herself, and stand in flattering light looking like the battle-­hardened guardian of the next generation, and it would work just as well for what they needed it to do. Letting go of grief and becoming unknowable, one photo op at a time.

  (Daniel had been cremated, after the HERO BYSTANDER MURDERED BY BLOODTHIRSTY DICTATOR headlines had calmed down and no one would care what happened to him. Suyana had thought of putting his ashes in the courtyard of her building, but it seemed presumptive. She’d given all but a lipstick-case’s worth to Bo. He told her he and Kate and Li Zhao had scattered most of them in the Seine; she didn’t ask about the rest. Her lipstick-case’s worth had been buried under a loose cobblestone of an alley next to a little hotel no one thought of very much.)

  “I suspect Leili will be asking for a change of handlers soon,” Magnus said, satisfied with his deductions. He’d resigned from the UARC diplomatic office to assist her in her new position. He hadn’t told her until it was over; she’d accepted his offer without asking him why.

  “How?”

  “She’ll stage some girlish whim that will cast this whole lot out and give her a chance to hire some people who are slightly better at keeping their Face alive.”

  Suyana’s throat had gone dry. It happened a lot, these days, when she thought about Ethan or Daniel, or Kipa, or Chordata, or all the altars people made for themselves to sacrifice on.

  “Magnus.” He looked up. “I never thanked you for your help, with—that day we built the vote.”

  His expression was tinged with something softer these days than just circumspection—not quite fondness, but close. “I know you aren’t likely to believe it, but it was my pleasure.”

  Their new flat (they had moved up in the world again) opened onto a view of the quiet green courtyard below, trees and birds and all, and Suyana looked out at it until her vision blurred and she’d built up the courage to hear the worst.

  “Who appointed you?”

  He set down his tablet and sat back in his chair, and she watched him and prepared to spot the lie when he said he’d been approached by the Staffing Committee by chance, or whatever other lie Margot had told him to say.

  He said, “Hakan.”

  There had been a time she’d have hit him for that. Even now she felt slightly like a traitor
just for sitting still. But when she stared at him, he only shrugged.

  “That’s a cruel thing to say.” She felt so old, and it was a hard name to hear.

  “But it’s true.” He watched her, steady and earnest and with that knack he had for seeming somehow beleaguered in the midst of peace and plenty. “He called me a month or so before . . . he disappeared. He’d known me when I washed out of IA training and knew I was looking for a way in on the handling side. He was afraid something was going to happen to him, he said, and afraid Margot would put someone of her choice in his office. He wanted someone who seemed amenable to suggestion and made Margot comfortable, so she wouldn’t feel the need to replace whoever followed him with someone else she chose.”

  As if from underwater, she said, “But he had no pull over the Staffing Committee.”

  “I’m a little insulted you think I don’t know how to rig interviews in my favor.”

  She cleared her throat. “Did he—did he ever say—”

  “He never told me anything, if he knew. I have some guesses—don’t look at me that way, Suyana, I’m not asking any questions—but he kept his own counsel.”

  She was nodding; she couldn’t stop nodding. “You never said.”

  “If I had told you, before all of this, ‘Don’t worry, you can trust me, Hakan knew you could,’ what would you have done?”

  The silence answered him, and the edges of his mouth thinned even as he raised his eyebrows and dropped them again, putting himself silently in his place. “It was bad enough to demonstrate loyalty before the assassination attempt; you wouldn’t hear it. After that it was hopeless. I was very nearly grateful to Margot when she came after you again, honestly. I never thought you’d trust me enough to ask for help.”