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Once he was sure he was well out of sight (he'd had enough conversations with Martine, no point pushing his luck), he wrote Bo back:
Don't know—can't tell mental state until I see footage/talk to Nicodema.

If Margot wasn't actually packing to head back to New York—if she was just sick of looking at Martine and planning to drown her sorrows back in Bergen—he'd be in trouble for jumping to conclusions, but he wasn't above using the benefit of the doubt to his advantage. He needed to see Suyana, and he didn't care what he told people in the meantime.

Strange to think about being the authority on Suyana. It happened, he knew; Kate sometimes called Bo to ask if Margot would be more likely to go to a state dinner or meet with the Committee on a pressing vote. Bo was a big game hunter, and it was his job to know. But Daniel had never forgotten the way Bo looked at Margot when she stood in a cramped little museum in Paris, being no one in particular. Was that how Daniel looked at Suyana, when no one was watching?

As soon as his phone rang, Daniel picked up and said, “Nice to meet you, Nicodema,” because of course it was—he'd had leverage. When he said, as if tallying numbers, “How much is she looking over her shoulder compared to yesterday?” and Nicodema answered, “I thought she'd made me and was going to tell her handler, that's how much,” Daniel guessed she had less than a day left until the meeting with Chordata. She'd stop casually looking around after that, since then it wouldn't matter who was watching.

He tried not to let it tire him, how much he knew about her. That was the advantage Daniel brought to the position.

So he told Nicodema, “She got like that in Paris, too, when she was trying to meet friends under Magnus's nose and he was making it difficult for her to go off itinerary. He's such an asshole—well, you probably know,” and Nicodema grunted. “She'll probably sneak away in the next day or two, and once she's got a little rebellion in, the nerves should stop. If she's still nervous two days from now, then something's wrong and you should get backup and run for the airport. Otherwise just keep your distance, and watch out for Magnus.”

“What about Ethan?”

He'd assumed Ethan had his own snap—he was A-list, and Daniel just figured Li Zhao had made plans for coverage and not told anyone else.
(Hiring freelancers for an assignment this big would be weird, but Daniel couldn't fault Li Zhao for avoiding whatever grief he'd give anyone she hired in-house.) But Nicodema was covering them both, and he wasn't going to waste a gift.

“Oh. Well, if it comes down to choosing, follow him. She's not going to do anything to risk that contract, but he's better off. He might have something going on the side. If he does, we should know.”

Lying directly was so much more productive than being relayed through techs. No wonder Li Zhao forbade it.

Somewhere behind him, Martine was drowning her guilt and waiting for the morning, when Ansfrida would pick her up and they'd drive away from the mountains and the scrub and the facility Martine hadn't been allowed to even see.

She wasn't used to being denied admission. She must be furious. If he approached her now, when she was half-drunk and angry, she might tell him anything. But Martine wasn't his problem, and he didn't dare look away from Margot. It had surprised Bo that she was changing her plans. Nothing about Margot should have been able to surprise Bo. Something big had changed. Whatever she was going to do, she'd decided, and there was no point waiting around.

At the door to her mother's building, Ethan took her hand (it was clammy, she was ashamed of herself, there was no reason to be nervous, it was her own mother).

“You know,” he said, glancing up at the tower of glass, “I think I need to swing by someplace and get a cup of coffee first. Can I bring you anything? It might be cold by the time I walk back, fair warning.”

Magnus had barely been able to talk the American cameras out of coming to take photos of the three of them having a family reunion; it was still definitively meant to be a visit for them both. Suyana had been given no time alone with her
mother, officially.

He was hiding something—he was running his thumb absently across the side of her finger, he only did that when he was in the middle of a lie—but she couldn't guess what it was, and she was too grateful to ask.

She turned into his chest and had wrapped her free arm around him before she could think better of it, and it must have been different from most of their embraces, because he hesitated a moment like she'd startled him before he hugged her back.

“Go on,” he said into her hair after a moment. “She's been waiting a long time to see you.”

Fondness choked her, anger choked her, relief choked her. “Enjoy your coffee,” she said, sounding to her own ears like she was already miles away, and she watched him until he disappeared from sight.

She stood a moment longer, steeling herself, until she caught a glimpse of the woman—early thirties, sturdy-looking, careful red lipstick, clothes deliberately nondescript—who hovered between steps a moment before she moved to follow Ethan, turning slowly so as not to jostle the camera.

× × × × × × ×

Her mother answered the door with the smile she always wore for the UARC photographers on their annual visit to her apartment to record an evening-news Happy Birthday to her daughter—fixed, polite, beatific. Her graying hair was pulled
back in a braid, and she wore some clothes that Magnus must have sent ahead new, because she was tugging on the hem of her blouse even as she started her greeting in English.

When she saw that Suyana was alone, her expression dropped into the smile Suyana remembered, smaller and closer to real.

“Daughter,” she said in Quechua, and Suyana was surprised she remembered the word; it fell through her, clattering against her ribs.

Suyana hugged her (she was as tall as her mother, when had that happened?), said, “I hope you're well” in Spanish, and then, before her mother could answer her, “Do people visit you? Your friends?”

Are you lonely, she couldn't ask. Are you sick? Do you miss me? Don't say you miss me, it couldn't be true. I'm not even the daughter you said good-bye to a decade ago. You're my mother, can't you tell?

Her mother nodded yes, stepped out of the hug like she was shy, and gestured vaguely into the living room. It was large and light, and Magnus must have continued to bribe whoever Hakan had originally bribed to get her this apartment, because the paint was fresh and the furniture was new. Her mother looked rested and healthy, and that was good. It made Suyana less guilty.

“Come sit,” her mother said after a silence awkwardly
long. “I made lunch. I thought your boyfriend would be here—is this too much food? Is he not coming?”

She meant, Did I do something? Suyana's throat was tight. “No, he's coming. He'll be here soon. Sit down and tell me everything.”

Her mother was well fed. Her mother had joined a church committee to organize a school for children in the slums outside town. Her mother had gone to the Heritage Festival during the summer. She was thinking of going to see Machu Picchu with three of the women from her church.

“I've always wanted to see it,” her mother said, and Suyana thought about the postcards in the town square when she was too young to understand anything at all, except the anger that sometimes pooled in her fingertips when she thought about her mother.

“It will be beautiful,” she said, made her smile wider than it needed to be. “I'll get you a new camera to take with you.”

Her mother demurred—Suyana did enough, it was already too much—but her mouth turned up at one edge. Suyana nodded, falsely solemn, said that maybe she would just look, just to see if there was a camera on sale somewhere.

The bell rang.

“That's Ethan,” Suyana said, standing as her mother stood, but her mother put a hand on her shoulder so firmly
that she sat back down. From this angle, her mother's eyes were as sharp as she remembered.

“Is he the reason you're unhappy?”

Suyana couldn't breathe. She couldn't feel the tips of her fingers. Her spine was going to fall to pieces. She was ten years old, and all her skill at lying escaped her.

“No,” she said.

And it must have been true, or true enough, because after a moment her mother nodded, and went to open the door.

× × × × × × ×

Later, in bed, she said, “Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” Ethan said, in the lecherous drawl he only used when he was teasing, and she flicked him on the shoulder so hard he yelped through his laughter.

She'd tried to think of it as an operation, at the beginning. To go through the motions she'd seen in movies (and in the other sort of movies) and play at it all. It had been pure, clinically productive in its strangeness—she felt remote and sharp during sex, noting responses and trying to decide how to set a pattern that could sustain itself for however long this contract needed to go on.

But the day had come when he moved his hands somewhere and breathed something into her skin and it all felt better, felt
more
, and now the line between Necessary and her own weakness was a lot less clean.

It was still useful, she told herself often. Lying all the time means you have no room for error. If you both believe something enough, then your mark will start making excuses if they catch you in a mistake. (“Strange girl,” Ethan said sometimes, early on, when she'd broken the lovebird act with a direct question or a stony face. Then he'd shake his head fondly, lean in to kiss her temple, and go to bed beside her. He'd never had a troubled night's sleep, not once in a year.)

“I mean it,” she said. “It was good to see my mother. Thank you.”

He blinked over at her, trying to smother a yawn. “Did she like me?”

“Everyone likes you, Ethan. Go to sleep.”

He snorted. “So she hated me.”

Suyana rested her hand across Ethan's eyes. He laughed quietly, just his shoulders shaking against the mattress for a second, before he closed his eyes. His eyelashes brushed the palm of her hand.

Her mother actually hadn't said a word about Ethan, who had been careful to go downstairs early and call the car too, to give them a few more minutes together. Her mother had just taken her by the shoulders and looked at her a long time. She didn't say she was saving up, but it had been five years, and might be five more, so far as
her mother knew.

Suyana had let her mother look; she knew more about her chances of coming home again.

× × × × × × ×

At the outdoor folk music concert someone arranged for their last night in Lima, Suyana and Ethan stood at the front of the crowd like it was a pleasant festival they'd just stumbled upon and they were enjoying it too much to even see the cameras.

It was a night full of acting. The two men behind them pretended not to be UARC police, and the crowd pretended Suyana and Ethan were just like them, that no one had been searched on their way in to make sure they weren't carrying any political paraphernalia.

The Americans rented a conference suite in the nearest hotel as a staging area. Oona had made sure to take up as much space on the table as Ethan's team, even though she'd only brought two outfits. When Magnus raised an eyebrow at the light packing, Oona had said, “Well,
some
people are able to make a decision early and know what will look good,” and then had pointedly finished slapping Suyana's belt buckle shut. It was as big as Suyana's hand, and it locked in place with a sound like a prison door.

Magnus had watched Suyana in the mirror, glancing past her every so often to where Ethan's team was sweeping his face with powder, carefully smudging black pencil at the
edges of his eyes.

(Whenever his team did that, Ethan scraped his knuckles there before following her to bed, like he hoped she'd think he was a different person in bed than he was when he smiled for the cameras. If she was sure there was a difference between the two, she might have found it revealing. If she cared about him, she might have found it affecting. She liked him better with it on.)

She caught Ethan's gaze in the mirror and smiled when he smiled. But it was the flat one he gave when he wanted to end a conversation, and when Ethan couldn't see her any more, she'd looked Magnus in the eye until he looked away.

Then Suyana had lifted Oona's pass card from the back of the chair and tucked it inside the belt, and on the way out of the hotel and through the handful of autograph-seekers, she had passed it to the woman wearing a Dolphin Watch sweatshirt who handed her the map she'd autographed for Sotalia and said, “Sign it for Maria, please.”

Suyana waited nearly two hours, swaying in time with the crowd, not really hearing any of the music (trying especially hard not to hear the one or two songs that reminded her of home). When everyone seemed lulled but not yet bored, she ducked out of the festivities, waving Ethan and Oona to stay.

Even then, a bodyguard followed her straight through the lobby and down the hall until she cleared her throat and asked
if he'd particularly mind standing outside the conference suite while she handled her personal affairs. As soon as he guessed her meaning, he hemmed and stammered in that way men often did when women talked about bodily functions, and took up a very studious position in front of the outer door.

Sotalia was waiting in the conference room bathroom, well out of sight of the main door, sitting on the counter and swinging her legs idly. She wore a maid's uniform, and there was a cleaning trolley beside her.

“Just in case,” she said when Suyana looked her over, and turned on the water in the sink. Sotalia was young. Suyana didn't quite know what to make of someone so young being the contact for an operation as dangerous as this, but Columbina had seemed sure of her. Her dark hair was shot through with red in the sickly light from the bathroom, like the plumage of a bird.