She turned to the guard who lurked in the corner and lifted her shoulders in a beseeching shrug. He rolled his eyes and looked pointedly in the other direction, so she opened the case she didn’t often use and picked two straights from inside of it. One of them, she supposed, could have secreted a lock pick, but Cyril leaned in for her to light his rather than stashing it on his person.

As if he could—he had no pockets now to fill with odds and ends. Only a drab green smock and loose trousers. He hadn’t shaved since his arrest, and the skin below his eyes hung empty and bruised as if something had drained from beneath it.

“We’ll need to clean you up a bit before your arraignment,” she said.

That got a laugh out of him, smoky and bitter. “I don’t think it’ll do much good.”

“It will make me feel better,” she said. “Will you at least consider that?”

He looked around for somewhere to tap off the spent end of his straight. Lillian, momentarily at a loss, fished a handkerchief from her pocket just in time. A spray of ash fell across the linen, obscuring the monogram and freckling the painted steel tabletop.

“Sorry,” he said, touching the rolled hem of the hankie. It put their hands close together. She almost covered his with her own.

“Do you think there’s going to be an arraignment?” he asked. “Or a trial? Or is this just the prelude to the wall and the squad and a hole through my head?”

She fought the urge to cover her mouth, controlling her nausea by force of will. “You were arrested for fraud, Cyril. That’s hardly a cause for summary execution.”

“No,” he said. “But treason might be. And who knows what other charges they’ll heap on when we get to the real reason I’m in here. You know the fraud is an excuse, Lil.”

“Do they let you read the news?”

“A day or two late,” he said. “But I’m keen enough to catch a whiff when something smells off.”

She wanted to tell him whose fault it really was: his arrest, the bombing. She wanted him to hate Makricosta as much as she did. But the guard in the corner had two ears and a mouth, and Lillian’s profession had taught her to be wary of spreading a story without intense analysis of the consequences. Instinct told her the effect would be destabilizing. She thought of the chanting students, Saeger’s forceful voice through the wireless, Frye’s newly revealed ruthlessness. Bombs, riots, anarchy.

Enough chasms had opened up beneath her lately; she needed solid earth to stand on or she’d never get anywhere she wanted to be.

“What are we going to do?” she asked. It could have meant any number of things, but Cyril only heard one.