Persona (11 page)

“We're here,” she said.

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“We know where you are,” the woman said. “We'll have someone make contact with you once you're on the move, at a point where you can provide us with the card as a gesture of good faith. If we like what you provide us, we'll make an offer of employment.”

“What if I can't provide?”

“That's probably not in either of our best interests.”

He didn't doubt that for a second.

(On the other side of the door, Suyana was talking with Onca in a low voice; decisions were being made.)

“All right,” he said, his stomach churning. “I'll keep my eyes open for any of Ethan's business that seems interesting.”

The woman said, “We're after Sapaki.”

His mouth went dry. He hung up.

Suyana opened the door.

The IA annual portrait had to be taken in the Palais Garnier, because nothing else would hold them all, but at the request of several national press outlets, for the most recent portrait a few weeks back they'd been arranged in rows in the orchestra section instead of on bleachers on the stage. It made for a more regal picture.

“Thank God,” Ethan had said to Satoshi as they settled in. He'd forgotten to undo the button on his blazer, and it was straining across his shoulders. “Those bleachers reminded me of high school.”

“You've never seen a high school,” Martine said from the row behind him. “Stop pretending to be populist.”

Suyana was seated a few rows behind them, between the Netherlands and India—strategically less desirable than among the Big Nine, but from here she could watch the whole expanse of formal suits and carefully selected cocktail dresses, which was always illuminating. The IA floor was regimented; it was different, watching Iceland's and Turkey's Faces chatting from adjacent seats as their handlers stood helpless along the far aisles, clenching their fists at the possibility of untoward statecraft they couldn't wade in to prevent. Stylists moved quickly through the rows, silhouetted like puppeteers as they arranged the last of everyone's hair.

“I've seen the inside of a lot of high schools, Martine.”

“Movies don't count,” said Grace from beside Martine. Down the row, China and Italy laughed. So did Ethan.

“I mean I go on a lot of school visits,” he said. “School visits count!”

“And so populist,” said Suyana.

Ethan and Grace both turned to look at her; Ethan with raised eyebrows and the ghost of a smile, and Grace with an expression Suyana couldn't determine before she turned away.

“Okay, places!” someone called. On stage, three dozen photographers took up positions behind their cameras; the stylists melted away.

Suyana took off the leaf-printed jacket she'd been given. The shirt underneath was plain and black. From the sidelines, Magnus started to say something, and settled for looking strained. When Suyana sat back in her seat, she saw that Margot had come onstage and was watching her, unblinking.

“Members of the International Assembly,” she said, and everybody in the room fell silent. Ethan, midjoke with Grace, froze, still twisted around in his seat, as if afraid to interrupt her by turning to face front.

“Thank you for being here today, and congratulations on another productive year. For those who have been here before, welcome back. Your exemplary work has been much appreciated.”

Down toward the front of the orchestra, Korea's Hae Soo-jin shifted in her seat. Margot never looked down, but one corner of her mouth turned up.

Martine and Grace exchanged a glance. Suyana wondered what Hae Soo-jin had done.

Still twisted to face them, Ethan mouthed, “What happened?” Suyana couldn't hear Grace's response, but Ethan made a pained, sympathetic face.

Suyana thought about the contract Ethan needed to sign; the contract Magnus said didn't have enough appeal.

“For those who are taking their first portrait, it's a pleasure to have you in the Assembly. Let's all work toward a better world again this year.” Margot stepped off the stage even before the applause could really get going. Suyana appreciated that. Margot was a monster for power, but at least she didn't bother grubbing for approval.

“All right, let's rehearse,” the stage manager called, and clapped her hands. Before he turned around, Ethan gave Suyana another look, a longer look.

She pulled out her tablet and made an adjustment to her calendar. Global news updates would have to wait.

She was going to a party.

Magnus had written her three messages telling her to put the jacket back on. The last one just said, “National identity, please,” and Suyana had to fight not to make a face. She kept the jacket off.

It was spring, and everyone was trying not to look intimidating; the Netherlands, India, and most of the rest of the row were in pastels. When the picture came out, Suyana was a negative space—black hair, black shirt—that tugged the eye.

“That was lucky,” said Magnus when he saw it, with a sidelong look at her, which was as close as he got to praising her.

“Margot thought so too,” Suyana said, which was as close as she got to confiding in him.

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Terrain's facade was flush with the unbroken off-white line of buildings in its narrow street; the green door was so dark it was almost black. If you passed it, you'd think it was an old townhouse, and not wonder for a second about what was going on inside.

That was because places like Terrain could afford not to advertise.

“You're heading for the seventh door on the left,” she told Daniel.

Daniel followed her gaze. “Looks deserted.”

“That's the idea.” She took the scarf from her neck and let it fall open at her waist.

When she tried to wrap the ends behind her back, there was a jolt of pain up her arm. She hissed and froze—she couldn't afford to make anything worse, she'd be bleeding all over the kitchen.

Then Daniel was behind her, his fingers nudging hers out of the way (they were cold).

“What's the idea here?” he asked quietly.

“Apron.”

The fabric pulled tight around her waist as he knotted it; his knuckles brushed her back. When she looked at him over her shoulder (she didn't know what she was looking for), he didn't quite meet her eye.

“I'm going through the kitchen. Nobody pays attention to barbacks.” She hoped. “You get to lie your way in from the front.”

“Wonderful.” He straightened his shoulders, ran his tongue over his teeth. “How private is it? Just Faces? Members only?”

“Not quite, but the people who go there don't want to draw attention.”

“Damn, and I was going to pass myself off as a gossip columnist.”

“Don't joke. They caught a snap in there, once—he left on a stretcher.”

For a second he went totally still. “More fool him, then.”

“Well, he tried to get secrets out of Martine. You don't get much more foolish than that.”

He pulled an agreeable face. He had a very agreeable face, when he wanted to. Then he sobered. “What happens if I don't get in?”

“Wait for me here. I'll meet you as soon as I can.”

She hoped he was smart enough not to stick around. Tonight wasn't going to get any easier.

He did Suyana the courtesy of pretending he hadn't already come to the same conclusion, but when he spoke his voice was a little tight. “What if I do get in?”

“Then I owe you a drink.”

He looked at her, on the verge of saying something. Then he closed his mouth, shook his head. “Good luck.”

She saluted him with two fingers at her temple as she turned and headed for the alley.

It was a quick stop at the corner tabac to pick up some milk and then hobble as fast as she could to the kitchen door of Terrain, head down and looking harried, one of the dozens of brown people who worked there and were so interchangeable to the people in charge that they hadn't bothered to replace the dead batteries in the security cameras.

She'd noticed that the first time she'd ever been here, more than two years ago. By then, she was good at looking for a quick escape.

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As soon as she was in the kitchen, someone snatched the bottle out of her hands. She kept her head down, waited for someone to blow her cover.

“Get up there with the food!” he snapped in Spanish. “Table five!”

Well, that worked, she thought, picking up the tray.

Still. She'd been here three weeks ago as a guest at the portrait afterparty. There was some small pang, thinking how hard she worked to make the UARC respectable in the IA, how many times someone had braided beads and feathers into her hair when the cameras would be on, how easy it was to become invisible as soon as some assumptions were made.

But now wasn't the time to look a gift horse in the mouth. Her anger would hold.

She grabbed the tray and balanced it on her shoulder with her good hand. She could manage—she'd gone through three years of deportment in the posture yoke. She could balance a tray up a flight of stairs.

The music was vibrating through the soles of her boots when she was halfway up. By the time she reached the back bar, it was shaking her to the teeth. It had to be her nerves. The music hadn't seemed this loud the last time she'd come here. She was trembling and hot with terror; her bun was searing on the back of her neck.

Terrain's designers had tried to strike a balance between the sleek modernity that made people feel like the booze was worth the journey, and the colonial-era nostalgia that made people feel smug about having the chance to pay through the nose for it: dark wood floors, leather sofas, curtains in deep-green velvet, and sharp-angled chandeliers suspended above the dance floor out of reach. (No one swung from the chandeliers at Terrain. There were other clubs in Paris if you wanted to be tacky.)

Just past the curtains where Suyana stood was the long tortoiseshell bar that curved the length of one wall, and then the dance floor with tables studding the edge, and at the far side of the room, one step up from the crowd, the faux-antique booths and low sectionals where Faces held court when they came calling.

As soon as she set the tray down, a waiter scooped it up from the other side, handed her his empty one, and headed back out. Suyana wiped it down just to look busy, and peered across the dance floor.

Come on, Kipa, she thought, do me a favor and don't be dancing.

Kipa was young, and quiet by nature (unfortunate for a Face, but New Zealand must have their reasons). It meant she was just as likely to be dragged reluctantly onto the dance floor as to demur. If she was dancing in a clump of Faces, this was going to be a disaster.

Suyana didn't tend to call attention like some—when Martine or Grace took the dance floor, a circle opened up around them—but once you were declared kidnapped and your embassy cut you loose on the evening news, you probably got famous fast.

Half the reason she'd sent Daniel to the front was in the hope he'd cause a scene and draw attention. She couldn't afford to be noticed before she found Kipa.

But there she was, slouched in a banquette in the abandoned Faces mezzanine. Relief flooded Suyana; Kipa having been disappeared would be too much to take.

Kipa was a slight, wiry figure, and even with her face obscured by her dark hair Suyana knew she was torn, trying to decide if it was worth braving the dance floor.

That was how Suyana had found her to be about most things: always on the verge but undecided. She'd recommended against Kipa when Zenaida brought her up.

(“We're not supposed to pollute the waters,” she'd said, “but I was curious what you thought about a Passerine in the fold.”

Passerines—the order of songbirds, thousands and thousands of species. Chordata used Passerine for most of its low-level informants; they sweetly sang to their contacts whatever it was they knew, and no one ever suspected. They differentiated after that, in ways Suyana wasn't told; she wondered which genus Kipa would be known by. What did you call a bird that wouldn't survive the winter?

“If you're asking me, you already know what I think,” Suyana had said, flinching away from a perfume that smelled like flowers two weeks decayed. Zenaida
hmmm
ed and reached for a bottle of Hierophant, shaped like a throne and costing more than Suyana made in a week; it smelled like marble floors and the mint that grew in the mountains back home, and Suyana excused herself before she was tempted to buy it.

What Zenaida had really been telling her, Suyana realized now:
Look out for her
.)

Suyana and Kipa were friendly, as much as you could be in the IA, and Kipa was the right sort of person for diplomacy based on kindness, but Chordata was dangerous work, and they'd found her too soon.

Chordata hadn't listened. Kipa had campaigned in New Zealand for marine preserves, and supported a bill that gave tax breaks to solar and wind power. It was a gesture of good faith as far as Chordata was concerned—if she'd campaign at home, she'd campaign in chambers—and they needed everyone they could find.

But Suyana knew what was working against someone trying to keep their head above water in the IA. Kipa's predecessor, Alex, had campaigned for Maori reparations, to the point of starting a petition among Faces to make an amendment to the IA Declaration recognizing any indigenous population that wanted to sue their government.

Suyana hadn't joined. Hakan had given it his blessing—some Quechua pride might up her approval numbers at home. But Suyana knew what Hakan didn't, and she couldn't risk being on anyone's radar. Moles kept their heads down.

It came to nothing. As Suyana guessed, calls to action weren't what the IA was looking to hear from its Faces, and when Alex tried to bring the motion to vote, the cameras were turned off, the session postponed, and Margot and the Committee visited New Zealand's handler.