He pulled another cigarette from the lidded basket on the table and lit it from the end of his expiring straight, which he snuck into the pocket of his waistcoat with the four others he’d already smoked this morning. They’d dug up a gnarled old three-piece linen affair for him, somewhere. Just for this meeting, he suspected. To make him feel more comfortable? Rotten parody. It fit badly. He’d have been more at ease in a tunic and drawstring trousers. Though anything was better than the rags they’d stripped him out of on arrival.

Aristide reached for the cigarette basket.

“They didn’t leave me any matches,” said Cyril. “No knives, either. Nothing interesting.”

“Why?” asked Ari. “Would you have … gotten up to mischief?” He stumbled on the playfulness. Cyril analyzed the possible tracks his sentence might have taken: Set the house on fire? Done yourself harm?

He analyzed his own answers, and decided not to provide any of them. Only a smile screwed ratchet-tight.

Aristide took a lighter from his jacket pocket and tapped it on the table with a painful, pointed flourish. It was a beautiful object: purple enamel with gold braiding at the cap. Something Cyril would have teased him for, an age ago. Now he had an absurd urge to snatch it, weigh it in his hand, put his tongue to its vivid smoothness. Instead he watched, dry-mouthed, as Aristide lit his straight with hands that trembled, almost imperceptibly.

Ari with unsteady hands. What kind of world had he come back to?

“What happened then?” Smoke barely softened the edges of Ari’s words, which were surprisingly curt. Well, Cyril could play that game; had been, since the door opened. Get the barricades up and dig your heels into the mud.

“I’ve already been debriefed, Aristide.” He crossed his arms. “Why are you here?”

“Someone needed to come, and I was closest. I had my secretary send a cable to your sister. Lucky thing we’ve kept in touch.”

Sacred arches. “You’ve met Lillian?” It was too much to ask: return to a world where social interactions weren’t predicated on strength, arms, information. Readjust. Meet your old lover; the one you’d almost … well. And then find out that, while you’d been embedded in purgatory, he’d been jawing with your sister? “I’ll wager that went well.”

“Better than it might have,” said Aristide. There was a world of subtext in the angle of his wrist, the way he stared at the ash on his straight. Silence built like a fogbank, precariously caught on craggy hills. Just before it culminated in something smothering, Aristide blew it away with a change of topic, a change of tone. “I looked for you, you know.”

Cyril tipped his head to the side, inviting the rest without evincing any particular interest.