“Not for the company,” said Daoud, still slightly sour. “But I think Mr. Makricosta would tell you a different story.”

“Cheer up, Didi,” said Aristide. “You were never worried about me anyway. If I recall correctly, all your care was for Cross-Costa.”

Jamila’s good humor began to drain at this exchange, replaced by suspicion. “What are you two jawing about?”

“That bombing was not Catwalk,” said Daoud. “It was a cover-up.”

“What for?” She put down the scrap of flatbread still in her hand and leaned in on her elbows.

“Blackmail,” said Aristide, at the same time Daoud said, “Stupidity.”

Jamila surveyed each of them, ran a thumb beneath her nose, and then sat back. “All right. Sick it up.”

“This—” Daoud cast a withering glance in Aristide’s direction. His first few obscenities and aspersions were such technical Porashtu Aristide didn’t catch them, but he latched onto the sentence when Daoud levered himself back into Geddan with “dizzy, prick-led moron threatened Emmeline Frye with exposure. The results being, there is now no more tar to expose.”

“Please don’t forget she was knocking her second-in-command,” said Aristide, too helpful, verging on sarcastic. “I would never have made such a pedestrian attempt as Daoud describes.”

“Nor will I forget the cash-out,” said Daoud, rising to meet Aristide’s faux-pleasantry with a steel-edged smile. “All his shares, Jamila. And the money went to Frye’s campaign.”

“You wanted a puppet,” she said, crossing her arms. “Why?”

Aristide opened his mouth, but Daoud slipped in before he could say anything.

“Cyril DePaul, infamous Ospie collaborator, and brand-new resident of some rat-infested jail in Amberlough. Haven’t you heard? Mr. Makricosta does not prefer a safe and comfortable love affair. He prefers to be dragged through shit in the gutters, whipped and spat on all the way.”

“As you well know,” said Aristide, “I prefer to do the whipping.”

Jamila sucked on this for a moment, much as she might have a piece of bone with particularly sticky marrow. Then she said, “That sculler on the radio? The one they arrested a while back?”

Excruciatingly courteous, Aristide opened a hand to Daoud, inviting him to speak first. He was rewarded with festering silence and had to answer for himself. “The very same.”

“Men.” Jamila shook her head. “Anything to shuck an oyster.”

Neither of them deigned, or dared, reply.

Daoud rather conspicuously spent the rest of the day running errands. Aristide spent it with a bottle and a book, one of which got more attention than the other.

He dwelt, drunkenly, on Cyril’s choked-off In the photo, you looked so … What? So happy? He had been numb or miserable for much of his time with Pulan. Forbidding? Surely not.

But however he had looked, it sent Cyril into the depths of the Lisoan jungle, almost losing him forever. Twice would be too many times.