Armistice by Lara Elena Donnelly

Author:Lara Elena Donnelly [Donnelly, Lara Elena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250173560
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2018-05-14T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

Memmediv came through for Lillian. It took him two days, during which she must have lost half a stone sweating, but he got her a memo through interdepartmental mail. Its origin in Regional Affairs excused its vagueness to prying eyes, but Lillian read it and knew she was in.

“Rinda,” she said, and her secretary appeared. “I’ll be leaving early tomorrow afternoon. Mr. Odell will be acting as my deputy. Will you send him in, please, so that I can brief him?”

Odell was competent enough she wouldn’t have to worry about anything but the worst public relations disaster. And she suspected, with Tzietan peace negotiations stalled and most of Porachis flat on its back at the dragging end of the dry season, that it would be a slow weekend for news.

She could have simply sent Odell a memo of his own. But a little show had been necessary, to draw Flagg’s eyes, and Rinda was prompt in her reporting. Less than an hour later Flagg called her to his office. Memmediv was conspicuously absent.

“I’ve sent him on an errand,” Flagg said, when Lillian’s eyes strayed to his empty desk. “The rewards of caution may not always be obvious, but they can certainly be vital at times like these.” He held his office door for her, and she reluctantly stepped into the stuffy inner sanctum of the foxes’ den.

“Memmediv has asked for some time off. Apparently he’s taking a long weekend. With a mistress, he implied. It was a rather vulgar conversation, so I didn’t ask too many questions.”

“That seems counter to your profession,” said Lillian.

“Rest assured that I would have pried, if I hadn’t already heard that you are also leaving at the end of the week, and that you won’t be in at all over the weekend, or even available by phone. I had a hunch that your holiday plans might intersect.”

“How astute of you,” she said. “Almost as if this is your job, and not Regional Affairs at all, whatever that might be.”

Flagg’s eyes narrowed, and she regretted her piquancy. She needed to play along for a little while yet.

“Where is he taking you?” Flagg asked.

Her regret evaporated at the expression on his face when she told him, replaced by an ember’s glow of satisfaction behind her ribs. Not because she had exceeded his expectations for her, wiling her way into Memmediv’s confidence and Pulan’s inner sanctum, but because now, it was all for her, and he had no idea.

“Into the heart of the bramble,” he said. Lillian could very easily imagine him rubbing his hands together, a melodramatic stage villain, but he kept them laced in front of him on his desk. “Very good. I take it this means things have been cleared up with Sofie Keeler?”

“For the time being. She wouldn’t give me much information, but I bought us a week or two. Then we’ll have to do something more drastic.” Likely more drastic than he conceived of.

“Well,” he said, unlacing his hands to straighten a stack of papers that had not needed it.

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