In the end he turned to Jamila, explaining the situation in sufficiently veiled terms. Because she was clever and keen, she read the white between the words and clocked he was up to something not quite tabletop.

“You want to catch her a little loose, hang around the Corderey. I’ve got a pair of eyes on the waitstaff says she spends a few evenings and most late nights holed up in a private room. And she actually works. No whoring or booze like most of the big fish with their names in the book.”

“Thank you,” said Aristide. Then, belatedly, “Do I need my name in the book?”

The telephone line made Jamila’s laughter into white noise. “I’ll make the call. It’ll be written down by the time you get there.”

And it was. He felt a twinge of guilt, remembering everything Daoud had said about others suffering for his schemes and knowing that Jamila would undoubtedly be one of them.

The Corderey had bay windows overlooking the south end of Talbert, near Staunton Street. Neither the club nor the neighborhood had received much of Aristide’s attention in his day—he had more to do with the docks, the theatres, and folk with money who skirted the crumbling edge of respectability. Members of the Corderey had never so much as glanced over that cliff; they were too far inland to know that it existed. Likewise most of them had never been backstage; they sat in the balconies and watched through opera glasses.

Still, from Aristide’s limited exposure—an afternoon stroll along Talbert beneath the skeptical gazes of old money at lunch—the block and the bay windows hadn’t changed much. The Corderey had probably skated along through the Ospies much as it had under dozens of regionalist administrations. The places and mechanisms of power rarely changed; only the folk who wielded it. And those rarely.

He presented himself at the door in a sober suit of tobacco brown, swaddled in a cream-colored scarf and vicuña coat. The mink had been left at home in deference to the atmosphere of the club. His fedora—rabbit felt with an unfinished brim—still got him a raised eyebrow at the cloakroom.

Settling into an armchair in one of the bay windows, Aristide ordered a brandy from a passing waiter. Shortly thereafter, a different waiter arrived with his drink on a tray.

“Compliments of Ms. Osogurundi,” he said. “If you’ll come with me?”

Dispatching half of his brandy before he rose, Aristide fell in line behind the neatly pressed young man and followed him through the narrow halls of the Corderey.

His escort stopped at a door deep down a third-floor passage and knocked softly before opening it.

“I didn’t order anything.” Frye sounded irritated. “Didn’t even pull the rope.”