“What? You mean you don’t know? He didn’t say anything to you? Or maybe he hasn’t had a chance, since you haven’t bothered to speak to him since Solstice.”

He stopped walking, but kept his back to her. “Who said anything of the kind?”

The aquavit in her empty stomach made her unpleasantly dizzy, and she put a hand out to the iron fence of the—What? Cestinian embassy?—to keep her feet. “Nobody had to.”

She only caught the slight turn of his head because it put his spectacles at an angle to catch the stoplight up ahead. The signal blinked from red to green, eliding whatever expression he wore beneath the reflection. She didn’t have time to apologize before he stepped into the street and hailed a cab. But she had never intended to, anyway.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

Aristide could have humbled himself, to find out from Lillian where they were holding Cyril, and how to go about visiting. But that was asking quite a bit after their last interaction. After their last series of interactions.

So he got Daoud to do it for him.

This won him no admiration; in fact it earned him scorn, but that was nothing new. And gin repelled scorn like wax did water.

“The city jail,” said Daoud, when he got off the telephone. Aristide had heard Jinadh’s voice on the other end, and from what little of the quick and colloquial Porashtu he could catch, the conversation had been at least partly social. “Apparently Cordelia’s people caused some trouble at the nearest appropriate prison.”

“And who do I have to bribe to get in?”

“You are on the approved list already.”

That tripped him up. “Really? Why?”

Daoud shrugged, and it was not exactly all ignorance; at least one quarter had been given over to sarcasm. “Who knows. I certainly would not want you visiting me in prison.”

“That’s because you’ve never been.”

“Have you?”

Aristide had nothing to offer against that. He had never been caught. The thought of it curled his toes, and he drew his feet up onto the sofa. Drafts had penetrated even the steam-heated atmosphere of Sykes House, which for all its bad food and harassed service had at least started out pleasantly warm.

“Twist that valve, will you?” he asked Daoud, burrowing more deeply into the white fox collar of his dressing gown. “It’s freezing in here.”

Daoud glared at him, but knelt on the floor to do as he was asked. His flannel trousers, loose when standing, pulled tight across his rear. While he was facing the radiator, rather than Aristide, he asked, “When do you plan to go?”

“This afternoon, I suppose.”

“Will you want me?”