He wondered how many people Lillian could afford to keep on, if it was poached chicken for dinner and that a luxury. And if she could afford it, how many was it seemly to employ, if she didn’t want her neighbors to talk? Or did they talk already?

What was life like, for Lillian in Gedda? Did the DePaul name carry authority anymore, or had his bad behavior stripped it of that? From what little he’d bothered to ask Aristide, and the equally scant information Ari volunteered, it was public knowledge that he’d thrown in with the Ospies, and also public knowledge he had thrown them over in turn. Public knowledge, but also old news, eclipsed by bombings, strife, and civil war.

“I told Stephen he could wait up to meet you.” Lillian flexed a nervous hand inside her glove, pressing the opposite thumb into her palm so the leather creaked around it. “I hope that’s all right.”

“How old is he now?”

“Thirteen. And a nightmare. He…” Her gaze cut to him, sideways. Since that moment at the bottom of the airplane stairs, she hadn’t been able to face him eye-to-eye. “He’s in some trouble at school. It … well, it was familiar ground. Sometimes he reminds me of … you know.”

She’d better hope he didn’t turn out anything like Cyril, unless she looked forward to losing him one way or another.

The front doors swung open. A silhouette on the doorstep half-bowed. Cyril stared beyond the butler—too young to be someone he remembered, or who remembered him—into the front hall.

The tile was the same: white and cobalt, with small gold accents. But it was chipped in places now, and not kept as clean as he remembered. There had been potted palms when he was young: one beneath each archway. Without them the marble looked austere. Each pillar bore a lily-shaped sconce, though some were broken. The chandelier, unchanged, glimmered at the end of its chain. At the far end of the hall, made giant by perspective, a Y-shaped staircase curled up to the second-floor gallery.

Golden light spilled down the broad front steps to touch his shoes. They didn’t quite fit. Blisters, at least, felt familiar.

“Cyril,” said Lillian, his name catching behind her teeth as though she had forgotten how to say it. She had reached the top of the steps, and paused in the unwinding of her scarf when she saw he had not followed. “Come inside. Your teeth are chattering.”

He hadn’t realized how the chill had gotten into him. In the sweltering north of Liso he’d forgotten what it was, to feel the cold. In the shelter of the house, bare degrees warmer than the night, tension wanted to leak from him. He wouldn’t let it. Without that ache of fear in his muscles, they might not hold him up.