This was the problem with food aid sent to violent places—it turned essentials into bargaining chips, so that rice and palm oil meant guns, power, territory. “You want me to cut off the people who are causing you problems.”

“That is … correct, mostly. Yes.”

“Anyone in particular?” In his head, he began to run through a list of their higher-profile customers, but the car pulled to a stop and Asiyah put a hand to his knee.

“Not now, Aristide. We will talk business later. Over dinner, maybe? Perhaps tomorrow. Now, you have time to sleep. To … prepare.” Asiyah gave him a card. “Ring when you are ready.”

Aristide put the card into his jacket pocket without looking at it; afraid if he knew the number, he might dial immediately. Also afraid that if he held it any longer, he would fling it as far from his person as possible, to save himself this reckoning.

CHAPTER

TWO

The house on Coral Street was cold and empty, running on bare-bones staff, most of the rooms shut. Like the street itself, and the city: still recovering from strife and civil war.

“Ma’am.” Magnusson the butler swung the front door open to admit her, like a clockwork figurine timed to her arrival. The effect was rather spoiled by the reading glasses on a chain around his neck. A well-thumbed copy of Rita Ryder and the Red Midnight peeped out from one of the cubbies beneath the bench in the vestibule.

Lillian hadn’t wanted to keep two houses at once, on an interim government salary that wouldn’t last past the upcoming election. Nor could she truly afford folk to run them. But while Damesfort was less badly damaged, and a necessary retreat at the weekends, she still needed a place in the city to sleep. Heating a bedroom in the house was cheaper than long-term residence at a hotel, even if the place depressed her. And with her schedule, and Jinadh’s, staff was a necessity.

Both the town and country houses had been given to mid-level Ospie ministers of some stripe or another. They’d redecorated, rearranged, sold off priceless antiques. The bottom floor of the house on Coral Street had been ransacked during riots, but the upper floors were still livable, barely. They’d had enough money to clean out the ground-floor library and put a desk in it, though the room was still empty of books.

The Ospies had scratched up every aspect of her life. But now at least she was in residence, and when she was settled and could afford it, she would put things right.

“How was your appointment with Ms. Higata?” asked Magnusson, taking her coat and briefcase.