“People say all kinds of swineshit when their guts are on the ground.” He’d heard most of it firsthand. “I don’t think I want to know.”

“The last thing she said to me,” Aristide went on. It was as if Cyril hadn’t spoken, except for the graphite streak of stubbornness that colored Ari’s tone. “It was several years before she died, but … well, you of all people must understand how hard it is to get a letter out when you’re on the run.” On that, the graphite turned to steel. Cyril let it cut him, silently.

“She said she didn’t want to be forgotten. So much of what she did, she did in secret, and she told me she missed the applause.” Aristide tossed the remains of his lemon peel onto his plate and struggled for a moment with where to put his hands, finally folding them in his lap. “It won’t be what she wanted. People in suits making speeches about patriotism and bravery. Probably there won’t even be a band.”

“That’s why you should go.”

“I’ve let my trombone practice fall rather by the wayside, I’m afraid.”

“No, really.” Something sharp and unfamiliar stuck in his gut like he’d been impaled. It took a beat too long to realize he was jealous. Of Aristide, yes, for the opportunity to honor a friend who deserved it and more. But jealous of Cordelia, too. How must it have felt, to want folk to find out what you’d done? To take pride in your work?

How had it felt to be a hero?

“I honestly hadn’t planned on it.” Aristide swept his fingertips through condensation on the bar, leaving trails with beaded edges. “Would you come with me, if I did?”

It caught Cyril by surprise. He no longer understood the rhythm of Aristide’s caprice, if that was what this was.

Back to Gedda? Where neither of them had been in almost a decade? Back to whatever was left of everything they had destroyed?

The idea made Cyril itch all over, like a million mites were crawling on his skin. Blood pounded in the tips of his fingers and burned at the delicate arches of his ears. Every physical response he had learned to trust in years of gauging danger told him no, not this one. Do not go.

“All right,” he said. “Take me along.”

CHAPTER

FOUR

Martí left for Cantrell before dawn, estimating that she would return with Stephen in time for a late lunch. Bradley, the cook, had planned a menu of all his favorite foods, or near as he could come under the double strictures of the household budget and informal rationing imposed by the aftermath of conflict: price gouging, hoarding, ruined infrastructure.