Amberlough(86)

“Yes, but your p-p-people are very good.”

“Flatterer.” She smiled, catlike, and a little of her old pizzazz sparked back into her expression. “They’re also very expensive.”

“Even for an old friend?”

“Times being what they are,” she said, and waved an expressive hand rather than finish the sentence.

He lit a straight, nonchalant. Only when he’d breathed out did he say, “I’ll b-b-buy the Keeler pearls from you.”

She scoffed. “That’s not payment.”

“Oh, don’t be unreasonable. You can’t move them, Zelda! Even unstrung they’re easy to p-p-pick out from the chaff. That shade of gold isn’t exactly inconspicuous, and each one is the size of an eyeball.” Only a mild exaggeration. “I’m doing you a favor.”

“And what are you planning to do with them?”

“I’ll wear them, for queen’s sake.”

“And get arrested? You saw what happened to Taormino.”

“I’ll wear them when I’m at home,” he said. “Will you sell?”

“All right.” She flapped her hand. “All right, yes, I’ll sell. Your neck in the noose, not mine.”

“My neck in the necklace, too.” He stroked his throat, as if the pearls already hung there.

Zelda rolled her eyes, crazed with red veins that gave her expression a mien of lunacy. “What are my little scriveners copying out for you?”

He slapped Cross’s folio onto her desk. “I’m not a fool. I know you’ll keep a batch for yourself. I don’t mind as long as you c-c-cut me in. And as long as you’re exceedingly careful who you sell them to.”

“I’m always exceedingly—”

“Zelda, I’m serious. They were difficult to acquire, and I don’t want to risk anything like it again so soon.”

She picked up the folio and let it fall open. As she read, her carefully plucked eyebrows—growing a bit ragged around the edges, now—rose by steady degrees. “Aristide Makricosta,” she said, articulating each syllable like a scolding nursemaid. “How did you come by these? And what exactly are they?”

“The Ospies are going to introduce exit visas.”

“They don’t have that authority. The parliament would need to vote on it.”

“Don’t be thick,” he said. “You know where we’re headed. We’ll be lucky if there’s a parliament left by the next session.”

“How many do you need?”

“Right now? A dozen or so.”

She shuffled the pages of the travel permit back in order and slipped the folio into a drawer of her desk. “Anything else, while you’re here?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. Can you draw up some false identification for me?”

“You have about seven aliases already,” she said. “What could you possibly need an eighth for?”

In fact, he had twelve, but what Zelda didn’t know, she couldn’t divulge. “It’s not actually for me.”

“Oh?”

He pursed his lips. “Zelly. Don’t be nosy. It’s so very c-c-common.”

The look she gave him would’ve stripped paint off a ship’s hull. “Who am I filling it out for?”

“The name doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just call him … oh, Darling. Paul Darling.” He wanted to correct himself; that was a ridiculous pseudonym, and a whisker too close to the name he wanted to elide.

She slotted the paper into her typewriter and typed it out. Then, “Height?”

“Five feet, seven inches.”

“Weight?”

Warm, fidgeting. Corded muscles softening with desk work. Zelda’s gaze flicked up at his pause. “Eleven stone.”

“Hair?”

“Blond.”

She stopped writing, and stared at him. “Eyes?”

She’d figured it out. Of course she had. “Blue.”

She bit her lip. It was already raw with anxious abuse, and split beneath her teeth. Then, incongruously, she giggled. “A roto print of Solomon Flyte. Oh, Ari. It’s good to know you’re a fool in love, just like the rest of us.”

“Laugh again,” he said, leaning close, “and I will p-p-positively kill you.”

Her cruel smile faltered, and he thought she might believe him. Excellent; she should.





CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

By the time Ari found her in her dressing room, Cordelia was holding herself together with a twist of thread and a prayer. Builders had got the fire damage fixed in a few days, but there’d been more vandalism in the last week, and the cast was getting hassled every night on the street. No one wanted to leave the theatre at the end of the evening, and some of them were solving the problem by not coming in at all. The show was down to bare bones, with a dwindling chorus line and one too many repeats and old numbers.

Malcolm spent most of his time locked in his office, drinking the bar’s ballast and going over his unhappy accounts. She’d just left him, half-drunk and all raging, to glue on her pasties and get ready for another grueling night. Ari didn’t knock, and caught her topless with a bottle of gum in her hand.