It alarmed Aristide more than it should have, to know there had been other possibilities. “And I can see him? Speak with him?”

“I would not tell you to fly to Dadang, if you could not. But better to wait—it is only half past five now. Most people are not awake. Take a short sleep. Eat breakfast.”

“Is there a good hotel near … wherever it is?”

“Mm-hm.” Asiyah slid the divider between the backseat and the driver and said something in Shedengue that Aristide only minimally understood—an order by the sound of it, but a polite one. She answered, one word, and he slid the panel back into place.

Aristide swallowed hard, tasting coffee already gone sour behind his teeth. “Thank you,” he said. “For all of this.” That kind of thing only came out of his mouth with ease onstage, and he hadn’t faced an audience in a long time. The more he meant the sentiments, the more they stuck in his craw. This time they left his throat aching.

Asiyah made a wordless sound: an acknowledgment of the gratitude that didn’t accept it.

Well, he’d suspected as much, but it was still a relief to find this wasn’t charity. “What is it?”

“I do not do this for you,” said Asiyah. “Do you understand? I can only bring you in because he has already been debriefed. Even now, it is not something I should do. But.”

“You want something from me.” Slipping into the negotiation was the most comfortable he’d felt since Daoud knocked on his door to tell him who was on the line. “Go on. What is it?”

Asiyah had the grace to look into his lap, aiming an abashed smile at the gilded hem of his tunic where it stretched across his knees. “The aid shipments.”

It had only been a matter of time, and the war was winding down now anyway. “Ah well,” said Aristide. “The revenue from black market beans wouldn’t have lasted forever. I’ll wrap up the operation when I get back to Rarom.” As he said it, it caught him by surprise. As if, after whatever happened today, he would return so easily to daily life. As if, perhaps, this were not real at all, but a strange dream from which he would wake disoriented beneath the mosquito netting of his bedroom, in the airy stucco house on Blatti Azhed. The flight had certainly felt like a nightmare, and the lingering effects of too much gin put every word and action at a slight remove from reality.

Asiyah’s smile faltered, then fell. “It is … no. It is more complicated. I do not need for you to stop. Only to work with me. To be more … strategic?”