Amberlough(23)

“Did you know.” Cyril choked, swallowed, and tried again. “Did you know, it’s even odds on your life when they pull your belly open and find your guts torn apart?”

Aristide did not let his hand stray down to the tough length of scarring that bisected Cyril’s middle, but some small movement must have telegraphed his curiosity. Cyril exhaled: not quite laughter, but not a sigh.

“They told me they had to pull everything out into a bucket and scrub my insides clean with salt water. My belly was filled with shit. If I had gone another day like that, I would have died.”

Aristide wondered what, or who, had come so close to ending Cyril’s life. The scar had been fresh when they met, but they were more careful with their mysteries then. “Darling,” he said, “I’m sure this time—”

“I never used to think about it.” Cyril’s interjection came fast, like he had to speak before he could stop to think about it. “Dying. I suppose I didn’t think I would. And then I almost did, and I realized I … Ari, I’m not sure I want to do it anymore.”

Uncomfortable with this sudden breakdown in their careful protocol, and trying for levity, Aristide said, “I rather think it’s the sort of thing you can only do once.”

“That wasn’t what I…” Cyril shook his head. “No. Never mind.”

Ashamed, Aristide pulled Cyril closer; close enough to feel the edges of his shoulder blades when he breathed. “I’m sorry. Facetious remarks are a nasty habit to break.” He buried his nose in Cyril’s hair, breathing in the scents of cigarettes and sage. “It will be fine, I’m sure. Nobody’s going to kill you. It’s just a little bit of politics: flirtation and double-talk.”

“Maybe they ought to send you.”

“Cheeky.” Aristide’s lips brushed the fine stubble at the base of Cyril’s skull, snipped short by the barber. “This is politics. I loathe politics.” It got him a laugh, at least. “You’ll handle it beautifully, whatever it is. The Ospies haven’t got a chance.”





CHAPTER

SEVEN

Cyril’s rooms in Nuesklend were freezing. Ocean currents kept the west coast temperate during the winter, but did nothing for the damp cold that pervaded every stone. And the capital was practically made of the stuff. Quarried from the Cultham Mountains, the gray slabs breathed mineral chill. Cyril tipped the bellhop who brought up his luggage, but didn’t let the man take his hat or overcoat.

He drew a chair up to the radiator and set his feet on the metal only to find it cold. Cursing, he searched for the valve, already fed up with Nuesklend.

On the long train ride from Amberlough City, where the false trail of Landseer’s journey left off and Cyril’s real one began, he’d composed a set of letters letting his correspondents know he had arrived in Nuesklend. When the train stopped at the state line in the village of Büllen, Cyril asked about good hotels in the capital, and had them wire ahead to the best one they could find.

On arrival, he’d posted the letters at the desk, collected his keys, and asked for a bath before bed. Outside his window, the last shreds of sunset colored the horizon. The sea was a dark plane, and seemed still until Cyril closed his eyes and listened. Waves struck the gravel shore and receded, rhythmic as breath.

The attendant who came to run his bath left a letter on the card table. Before Cyril abandoned himself to soap and steam, he slit the seal on the envelope and read his correspondence. From Rotherhite: an invitation to lunch at his club tomorrow. He’d got that one off fast. They really were slavering after Landseer’s money. Well, if they’d bought the whole of Nuesklend’s police force, or even just the capital hounds, they’d be nearly skint.

Cyril left his response for the morning, dropped his traveling clothes in a heap on the washroom floor, and sank into the deep brass tub.

*

Rotherhite’s club, the Klipsee, was farther up from the hotel on the steep cliff road that wound around the capital’s heart. Cyril, his legs still cramped from traveling, chose to walk it. A changeable sky spat brief showers, but the wind precluded an umbrella. He turned up his collar and tried to keep to sheltered side streets. Still, every now and then his route afforded him an ocean vista of frothing waves and gray rocks like broken teeth. Across the widemouthed harbor, where the wharves clung to a crimp of stone, dozens of ships rocked at their berths.

Ospie propaganda painted Nuesklend and Amberlough as wicked twins, exclusive economic gatekeepers; but in this colorless limpet of a city, Cyril saw nothing that reminded him of home.

He arrived at the Klipsee raw-cheeked but refreshed, in body if not in spirit, and gave his name. It wasn’t the first time he’d called himself Landseer—he’d been using it with every ticket taker and customs clerk on his journey west—but it felt different now, and it got a different reaction. Obsequious staff showed him to a quiet, dark-paneled room, offering him coffee, brandy, and some sort of absurdly red local liqueur.

Two men arrived shortly after Cyril’s coffee. A tall, underweight character with a severe mustache—“Willem Rotherhite. It’s good to meet you at last, Mr. Landseer!”—and a doughy man with a bland round face and thinning hair. Cyril recognized him, from the photograph in his file, but let himself be introduced.

“This is Konrad Van der Joost,” said Rotherhite. “An associate of mine.”