Attention drawn down, Aristide saw there were scars across his shins as well. These were worse than the incidental marks on his forearms: raised, twisted lesions that still looked painful, even healed.

“It rained,” said Cyril. “Or I’d be dead. Only time I was ever glad it did, in that jungle.”

Aristide made himself look up, meet Cyril’s eyes with indifference. He wouldn’t let himself show pity. He couldn’t even feel it, really: just the cold, dull ache of horror.

“He said he can rush it for an extra ten thousand mitu.” Cyril turned and started back into the fitting room. “Be done in a couple of days. You’re paying, right?”

It was like watching him drop sandbags between them, or lay bricks. Aristide got out his billfold, and went to settle up while Cyril slid into his clothes.

Daoud rang the hotel that afternoon. The concierge put the call through to the room while Cyril was sleeping, which he had been since they got back from the tailor. Badly. When he was still, Aristide suspected he wasn’t resting but awake and alert and actively avoiding interaction. When he truly slept, it was obvious, because he had dreams. They did not sound pleasant.

So when the phone rang, and the concierge told him who it was, Aristide shut the door to the bedroom and sat on the freshly turned-down sheets. Mosquito netting drifted in the breeze from the open window. The coastal weather was temperate; pleasant even in the early summer. It tempted one to think of home, but if one was careful, one never did. Memories of Loendler Park at lilac time were inevitably shattered by the errant palm frond or shrieking monkey, and the realization that in Gedda, the seasons ran opposite. Frost would have killed the lilac leaves long ago.

In Rarom, at a higher altitude, nights could get positively chilly even when the rest of the country was sweating through the dry season. Daoud still had the down comforter on his bed. Aristide was not proud that he knew that.

“Good afternoon,” he said, toeing off his loafers. “How’s business in the sunny south?”

“Cross wants to know when you are coming back.” Daoud’s tone was tart, just this side of needling. “We have some lucrative offers on the table and she needs your signature to go ahead.”

“Can you suspend operations for a few days? Let me wrap things up in Dadang and I’ll explain it all when I get back.”

“Cross will not like that.”

“Well, we’re equal partners. That just means I need a tiebreaker. And I can count on you, can’t I?” A cheap maneuver—a cut to the hamstring, a blow to the groin. But Aristide had always fought dirty.