By the time Magnusson returned with the liquor, she had got Daoud settled into the straight-backed dining room chair, and was leaning one hip on the corner of the desk. Magnusson poured two glasses and left the decanter.

“Now,” she said, once Daoud had gotten a swallow down his throat. “What’s the problem?”

He pulled an envelope from inside his coat and dropped it onto his knees. “Severance pay, of a sort. I … I am still employed by Cross-Costa, but Aristide…” His face crumpled.

Lillian drank her whiskey to give herself time and then, as tenderly as she could manage: “Threw you over?”

His free hand made a fist, grinding into the top of his thigh. «Nothing so simple as that.»

He was too far away to comfort easily with touch, and anyway, now he looked too proud. Lillian set aside her glass and pressed her fingers to her lips, half in thought and half in sympathy.

«I’m sorry,» she said, joining him in Porashtu.

He shook his head. «No, it was long past time. I needed … we needed to end it. Still, I should be furious. I am furious. But also, terrified.»

«Of what?»

«Ms. DePaul—»

«Lillian,» she insisted. They had been through enough for that.

«Lillian. He’s already done something very foolish for your brother … »

«And you think he is going to do something else.»

He closed his eyes, and she saw the lids were shiny with fatigue, stained purple and threaded with broken blood vessels. «I know he is.»

She waited. He was going to tell her, or he wouldn’t have come.

«When they take Cyril to the courthouse, Aristide has … I was not part of this. I only booked their passages, found room in a hotel. I rang up some of Pulan’s people, and put him in touch with—»

«Daoud.»

She saw him right his wobbling voice, steady his panic. «They’re going to run.»

“Sorry?” she said. Then, «Wait, no. Please, don’t tell me. I can’t … the fewer people who know, it is better.»

Roughly, he wiped at his cheek with the back of his hand. “I apologize,” he said. «But I can’t talk to him anymore. And I needed to talk to someone. What do I do? I don’t know what to do.»

The edge of the desk pressed into the backs of her thighs as her weight sank into it. Defeated? Relieved? It was hard to tell the difference. «Why do you need to do anything?»

Daoud stared at her, poleaxed. «He’s … he’s going to be arrested.»