“The charges are tabletop,” said Aristide. “That passport’s LSI work; I got it from Asiyah. But that’s not what I mean. She did some digging—or Custler did—and dropped a word in someone’s ear. She wanted him locked up tight because she’s worried.”

“About what?”

“Saeger, for one. If Cyril had run, or shot himself, or robbed Frye of her little campaign promise, she’d have been out a chunk of popular appeal.”

All right, he had her there. But Daoud’s worries had settled in her chest and now they rattled, waking. “And two?”

A long pause.

“Aristide,” she said. “If you’ve done anything, said anything to Frye … You’re going to cause more trouble than—”

“Don’t say than he’s worth.”

“You didn’t let me finish. He’s my brother, Aristide, and whatever he was to you, he’s still that to me.”

Someone knocked on her office door. Magnusson, and he looked worried. She held up a finger, begging for a moment.

“What possessed you?” she asked. “What did you possibly think you could accomplish?”

“Possessed me to do what, exactly?” his voice was poisonous over the phone, the sibilance turning into static, the hard consonants to cracks. “Please. Elaborate.”

“You know very well,” she said. “And Mr. Qassan knows, too. You told him instead of me, when you chose to meddle in the affairs of my family—”

“Daoud is my secretary. There’s no point in keeping secrets from him.”

“What a miserable excuse. I had a right to know!”

“No,” he said, “I don’t believe you did.”

She took a shaky breath to stop herself from outright screaming. “If you insist on carrying on by yourself, in this slapdash secret manner, it’s only going to make things worse. You always have. Before Acherby, even. Before the coup. Your schemes make middens out of people’s lives.”

“Those schemes,” said Aristide, “would have gone off without a snag if your mud-fisted brother hadn’t cast his own line and tangled it with mine.”

“Or if you had told him you had one in the first place!”

“Lillian.”

Jinadh’s voice recalled her from the depths of her rage and she surfaced as if from icy water: clenched all over, desperate for air. Aristide was still yelling into the telephone, but as she lowered it from her cheek the noise became tinny and indistinct.

Magnusson had gone, replaced by her husband, but the worried look on his face was the same. “You should come downstairs,” he said. “There is a special bulletin on the wireless.”

“About Cyril?” she asked. The receiver slipped into her lap and she realized her hand ached from gripping it.

He shook his head and she almost relaxed, but something in his expression held her in a state of unease.

“What is it?” she asked.

“An explosion,” he said. “In Amberlough.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE