Icon by Genevieve Valentine Page A

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 asher mother knew.
    Suyana had let her mother look; she knew more about her chances of coming home again.
    Ã— × × × × × ×
    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 theedges 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 askedif 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.
    â€œJust 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.
    (The last