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“Oh, if he's not shiny, you won't be shiny, and you don't need
three people to get rid of it either.”

The plane was landing by the time Oona was done with powder and lip gloss and shimmer under the brows (“Always shimmer,” Suyana murmured, as she dipped her finger in the pot and brushed it across her scar). Oona banged her way into the bedroom in back to sort through the designer loans for a jacket that Suyana could carry over one shoulder for five minutes of photos.

Magnus took a seat next to Suyana. “The cameras are already waiting on the tarmac,” he said, and Suyana couldn't tell if it was meant to be reassuring.

“I appreciate you preserving my time with my mother,” she answered instead. Her lips were glossy, and her hair had just been combed so it looked windswept, and Ethan wasn't here; there would never be a better moment for him to take pleasure in her being grateful.

He looked at her too long before he dropped his eyes to his tablet. “Well, I'm certainly pleased you'll get to see her, but largely that was to handle Howard.”

“I know. But still.”

“Behold,” called Ethan as he opened the door, “the matte-est man in town!”

Magnus nearly rolled his eyes before he could stop himself. Suyana ignored it and looked at Ethan over her shoulder. “Is that the
jacket you're wearing?”

“Yeah.” Ethan smoothed the front of the oxblood leather. “It's kind of cool, right? I get so sick of blazers. It's nice that we can just be casual on this trip. Be ourselves.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Ethan sat on her other side; Magnus had vanished, but she supposed his disapproval must have lingered. “I'm really looking forward to just playing it by ear a little on this trip,” he said. “That pizza date was the most fun I've had in a long time.”

“Well, I'm looking forward to seeing the country with you,” she said, curling up in the seat to face him and trying to tamp down the embers of dread in her stomach. “There's so much I don't even remember. I've barely been home. It will be amazing to see the country together.”

“Sure! Totally! But I'm just saying, I think we're overscheduled on some really dumb stuff. Like, the government people I get, we have to meet them, but this research site tour is booked for four hours, and I will honestly be asleep by then.”

She pointed a finger at him. “You better not fall asleep when you meet my mom,” she said, as teasing as she could, some character in a movie who had a mother she saw all the time, who understood how her mother might bore the new boyfriend, and he laughed and closed his hand around her fingers. He kissed the heel of her hand; she flushed, felt ill.

“Sweetheart, your mom is going to love me,” he promised, and she was still smiling at him, just the way she'd been taught, when the plane landed.

He stood up as soon as they slowed, smoothing his jacket. She slid on her heels and tried to breathe.

He couldn't cancel the site visit—why else was she here, allowed to go home for the first time since Hakan? Why else was this outpost getting built except under the auspices of their relationship? Why had she made sure that Ethan led the whole affair of coming here, except as a cover, so no one could make a connection between these two visits any deeper than proximity?

The airplane door was open, and Ethan was being ushered out the door by his team, and she was following by rote, but her throat was so tight that as she passed Magnus—lurking at the back of the crowd as if he was above it all—she stepped close, reached out, gripped his hand.

He was so startled he gripped it back, and she looked at him and remembered the way he'd leaned against Hakan's desk and looked her over like she was somebody's runner-up, remembered the press of her arm against his throat a year ago, when she'd thought for half a breath about what it would be like to kill him. He'd promised her his loyalty. She'd worked hard to accept it without needing it; he was a railing she didn't dare lean on. But before she was past him, she whispered, “Don't let him leave me behind.”

Magnus's eyebrows tilted up just at the inner corners. “I won't,” he said, low, and so earnest it was good to hear it, and she wondered if she must have meant it, a little, that it was such a comfort to have his answer.

She dropped his hand and took the steps down to the tarmac to meet Ethan, settled into the arm that was already reaching out to pull her closer, and smiled and smiled and smiled.

× × × × × × ×

The tour:

Two days in São Paolo, two days in Rio de Janeiro. “Should have been three, but didn't seem like the best press,” Magnus said the first time he showed her the calendar. Suyana didn't blame them; she was Peruvian, and the UARC could only ever have one Face—the Central Committee's sidelong punishment for allying without IA approval.

(“When someone actually manages to shoot me, make sure my replacement's Brazilian,” she'd said. After a beat, he'd said, “They all are.”)

Two days in Lima. Eating at restaurants that had verandas or windows, taking pictures with tourists, visiting museums, attending an evening of the UARC Film Festival that was a last-minute addition. Suyana ended up in matte gold sequins that fell to mid-calf, and a black leather belt of Ethan's that Oona knotted to look carefree. On the red carpet,
Suyana and Ethan got more screams than the movie stars. “Home court advantage,” Ethan murmured, like it was news.

In Ipanema, she and Ethan went shopping at prearranged locally owned stores and bought local swimsuits to wear to the local beach, improving some invisible retail clout over foreign bathing suits. Suyana wore a long-sleeved cover-up that came to her knees, even in the water, because to wear just the bathing suit would invite speculation about her figure.

“Modesty implies self-awareness,” Magnus said just before they got out of the car at the first glittering swim boutique. “You should enforce that impression as much as possible.”

What he meant was, Don't look so grateful to Ethan; people can see you.

On their way in, Ethan shot a grin at the photographers and waited until the doors closed behind them. Then he said, “Don't let Magnus or anybody shame you out of anything. You're amazing. If you want to just buy a two-piece, I would support that. I really would.”

She couldn't help laughing. “Yeah, you're a saint,” she said, and he didn't deny a thing, but they had twenty minutes to kill in the store before moving on and her things were already waiting with the cashier Oona had called a week ago, so she picked up four things off the first rack she came to, and then took Ethan's hand and led him to the dressing rooms without a word.He wasn't hard to
please. He liked the smallest things, she'd barely had to learn how to keep him happy, whatever she tried seemed to work—but she made sure not to always wait for an overnight visit. Let him press her up against the wall of a dressing room, let him wrap his hand around her fingertips and slip away with her at a party. Everyone liked feeling like they were hard to resist; even a contract relationship should build on possibilities. It was a game he was good at—he never pushed, and he was good in bed. Generous. He was easy to want to please.

On the beach she wore the black cover-up but only loosely fastened, so when she walked the camera got a glimpse of her thick thighs, her soft stomach. The national press seemed slightly stumped, but tourists loved it, and they got looks all the way down the beach. Ethan grinned down at her, and she smiled and glanced around and cataloged faces.

They toured the Government Palace in Lima with the president, nodding solemnly at the portraiture and admiring the architectural detail, and spent an afternoon shaking hands with ministers and chairmen at a luncheon in the Peace Room as Ethan vacillated between a consummate statesman and a shy boyfriend meeting an extended family, depending on his audience. Across the room, with another set of strangers, she nodded solemnly and smiled politely and admired him for his ease. That alone seemed noteworthy.
A warning of something.

Between passed hors d'oeuvres and being seated, Suyana pulled aside the administrator of the Amazon Forestry and Conservation Initiative to ask him about the new research station, in Spanish.

“It sounds very ambitious,” she said, as pristinely neutral as she'd ever managed. Hakan would have been proud.

“It certainly is,” the administrator agreed, far less neutral, “and I'm looking forward to all their preliminary reports and explanations about erosion prevention actually justifying their plans for expansion, as soon as their head office condescends to give it to us.”

Suyana had a dozen questions before he was done talking, but she couldn't voice them—she wasn't supposed to even know what to ask. So she smiled and said, “Well, I can't wait to see the forest again, it's been so long,” and let him murmur some polite nothing and wander away and think of her as an empty doll they dressed up and sent to Paris twice a year.

Outside, where the national press and the tourists were waiting, Suyana made eye contact anywhere she could—good photo etiquette—as she looked at face after face, noting whoever seemed less intent on their camera than on her.

The press couldn't get enough of the visit, which, assassins or not, felt like the return of the prodigal daughter. Magnus's press service sent him a preview scan
of
Global
's weekly Hot or Not list, in which Suyana was walking beside Ethan down the beach, cover-up flying.

BOMBSHELL IT
, they'd slapped across the photo, under
HOT
.
Show just enough—then leave him wanting more—with a hot suit and a barely-there cover-up.

The boutique sold out of the suit and cover-up in fifteen minutes, Magnus told her on the way home from a dinner appointment. They were already taking orders for next year.

“I'm so glad,” she said, and ticked off three places on the shopping map that were Quechua-owned. “The PR's paying off,” she told Magnus as she pushed it back toward him. “Hakan always said a little Quechua pride would be good for me.”

Magnus glanced up but said nothing, which was a mercy. The three shops appeared in her itinerary, one after the other.

“I hope you're getting something for yourself out of this trip,” he said. “The PR is necessary, but I know you don't often make it home.”

“We should go dolphin watching on the river,” she said after a while.

× × × × × × ×

There wasn't time to book a private boat, but by the time the tiny plane had taken them from Lima inland, the security team had frisked the tour group and had the police do
a sweep for weapons, so they had the all clear, and the tourists were nice enough to come up and ask for pictures instead of pretending to take pictures of the water in their direction.

As a trio of American backpackers were bonding with Ethan about a shared homesickness for burgers and fries, Suyana handled a line of young women and teenage girls who held maps or crumpled receipts for her to sign, talking about how lovely the river was and making jokes about how she needed high heels just to be able to see Ethan.

One of the girls stepped up and offered a map of inland Peru, and said, “For Sotalia.”

Suyana kept her eyes on the paper until she was done writing the name, and then she glanced up only as would be expected. “Is this your first time seeing the dolphins?” she asked, as she circled a coffee shop that had a view of the staff entrance of their hotel in Iquitos (Sotalia had dark eyes, hair that she'd put in a ponytail to make her look younger than she was). “That sounds lovely, what a nice trip,” Suyana said in response to whatever Sotalia had told her, as she wrote
Enjoy your three days in beautiful Lima! Best wishes
, and, “It's so nice to meet you,” Suyana said as she handed the map back, and Sotalia glanced it at and nodded once before she clutched it to her chest and thanked Suyana and shuffled away to take photos of the water.

Three days. Time enough for a visit to the site, and then
a meeting with Sotalia at the hotel, to tell them whatever had to be done.

Suyana took photos alongside everyone. The dolphins eventually found the boat, and everyone cooed and laughed and took pictures as the dolphins quacked up at them, but Suyana aimed her camera at the wide, shimmering line of the river, at the canopy of trees, at so many shades of green her eyes hurt.

The last time she'd had someone teach her something that wasn't IA business had been so long ago she was still learning statecraft from Hakan. (They'd passed the apartment he'd rented, on the drive from one place to another. Only she knew he'd ever lived there.)

On one of her final lessons—someone was packing up her apartment during the session and sending her clothes to Paris, it was so close to the end—the science tutor taught her about the eye as a fossil record. The human eye, she said, sees so many shades of green because humans had evolved from prey animals and needed to be able to distinguish safe places; people were born knowing they'd be hunted, and had to take
advantage.

The first stop on any ecological tour of Norway, it turned out, was Bergen, where Martine and Margot walked around the historic pier for the benefit of the press, security guards nowhere in sight, looking like a side-by-side time-lapse photo of Norwegian nobility.

This far from the Central Committee, Margot ditched the suits for nice trousers and sweaters that probably cost what Daniel made in a month. Martine wore scarves so voluminous they'd have swallowed the bottom half of her head except that her stylists folded down the front so her purple lipstick always showed. Neither of them bothered smiling, though cameras lined the streets every time they
left the hotel. They were doing Norway a favor just by showing up.

“You must be loving this,” Daniel said from behind a map of Bergen. “The two meanest women in the world come home to celebrate.”