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to his lungs. “I’m expecting news from someone.”
    She frowned. Then she said, “So why aren’t youwith her?”
    It had somehow never occurred to him that Suyana must have explained him away enough to avoid disaster. It should have—there was obviously a reason Martine hadn’t gone to the national press with an exposé on snaps sneaking into the Faces’ inner sanctums, and her goodwill toward the press wasn’t it—but he couldn’t picture Suyana and Martine having a civil conversation for long enough. Good for them, he thought vaguely, above the drum of his pulse.
    He said, “Couldn’t resist a chance to see you in your element, I guess.”
    Martine shot him a look that made him feel like the false ashes from her cigarette—that hatred that came right before someone admitted something, and before he could think, he brushed his hair down over the camera to obscure her.
    It took Martine all of two seconds to figure everything out, and she lit up as soon as she realized it, positively delighted in her disdain. “Wait. What the fuck do you all think I’m going to be doing up here that’s more important than the show she’s putting on down there?”
    He needed to run—he needed to get out of here before she got bored with him or before he told her anything he couldn’t justify—but he couldn’t afford to make her angry, and he was too stung to lie. “Nothing, apparently. You smile and pretend you can stand Margot, and I watch you andworry about somebody else.”
    She tapped the cigarette off; it became a shivering ember between her fingers, an aftereffect of her grin. “Oh, friend, that Amazon’s going to eat you alive.”
    Daniel had no argument to make. He’d been doing the math on that for a year.
    â€œTomorrow we’re taking separate cars to Dovrefjell,” she said, so casually it sounded at first like she was making travel plans with him. “There’s a photo op outside. Then Margot tours the site, and I go right to the Kongsvold Hotel and drink myself stupid overnight. Then I go to Oslo and party for a week and pretend I care about ecology for an hour or two a day during meetings. My laziness about it all will get me a place in the Central Committee, once Spain gets off his ass and retires as press liaison. Who knows from there?”
    She slid the cigarette back into her pocket, kept two fingers on the tip like it was a homing beacon. “And I don’t care about anything she’s asked me to do. I’d agree to worse things than ignorance. But if she wants me out of the way for that site visit, and I’m the one she trusts , then I don’t know what that means for the other site.”
    When she turned to look at him, her irises vanished into the wash of blue light above her. She looked blank-eyed and distant and helpless as a ghost. He wished he’d left the camera clear; he was missing a beautiful shot.
    â€œI’m going to be here for a few hours,” she said. “You can try to follow me if you want, but you won’t get in. This place has standards. Have a good night watching for me and worry­ing.”
    The door closed behind her. If the bodyguard came out to clean up, Daniel didn’t stick around to see it.

8
    Oona dressed her in white and blue for the visit.
    â€œYou should look like the evening sky coming down to bless whatever cement block they’re taking you to,” she said as she plaited Suyana’s hair into a single complicated knot at the back of her neck.
    â€œIt’s an ecological research facility.”
    â€œGod, we’d better get you some jewelry, then. And a jacket.”
    From the dining table of the suite, Magnus smiled down at his paperwork.
    She ended up in a navy-blue silk jumpsuit that looked like a sleeveless mockery of a scientist’s smock, and a white linen jacket that only made it worse, and Magnus