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until she reached out and took it back.
    â€œI can skip the committee meeting,” Suyana said. “I’d prefer a news update.”
    â€œAn agenda item we’ve actually planned for. How novel,” Magnus said, but he was already reaching for a folder at the far edge of his desk, and Suyana sat at the cramped table and armed herself against surprise.
    Ã— × × × × × ×
    Most of the time you volunteered on a committee was justifying the time and money being spent on you. Suyana had been asked to be on the Cultural Heritage Committee after she returned from the Incident (which was the way everyone inside the IA talked about it, except Kipa, who always called it “your captivity” in a way that sounded both patently false and the kind of solemn that comes with a saint).
    Since Suyana’s first year in the IA, she’d tried to work just hard enough that no one resented her presence, and not hard enough to raise eyebrows. She’d attended the Taste of a Hundred Lands fund-raiser, speaking briefly about mazamorra corn pudding to a group of people who were paying four hundred dollars a plate to listen to her be pleasant. She’d helped draft a plan for a Cultural Grievance Committee to which marginalized groups could appeal without having to first declare themselves at war with theirgovernment. “A move toward mediation, rather than confrontation,” she’d written, because if there was one thing politicians liked hearing, it was the idea of a middle ground.
    Murat Eren had been the draftee to present it to the Assembly for ratification (Suyana wanted nothing to do with any of that). He had dark eyes and a sweetly sly expression that blesses one diplomat in a thousand; the Assembly was scheduled to vote in Paris a month from now. Suyana was very nearly proud.
    The trick to the rest of it was lying low when you had to. When France and Sweden nominated themselves as the Cultural Heritage delegates to the International Exchange Conference, Suyana arranged a “Ten Great Things About Being a Girlfriend” interview with Elite the afternoon of the vote. France and Sweden were Big Nine; she couldn’t quite bring herself to vote for them, but you didn’t vote against them. She and Magnus had worked out ten things that were mildly infuriating to them both; Magnus tapped his stylus too fast against the desk whenever he said things like, “The way he smiles when you wear the necklace he bought you.”
    But she didn’t want to think about necklaces any more than Magnus did, when the time came. She’d had one once, it hadn’t gone well, and there was no point reminding anyone. She’d made the number three thing “The way he’s so proud of my accomplishments”instead.
    For a second the interviewer paused, and Suyana wondered if she’d blown it. Then the woman grinned and said, “Oh God, that’s so sexy. I love a sensitive guy, I always guessed that about him,” and waxed for a while about the merits of a supportive boyfriend. When the interview came out, they’d run a sidebar of Ethan’s casual outfits and explained how each one proved his sensitive side.
    Ã— × × × × × ×
    In the morning, after the trainer and breakfast, Oona dropped in to make sure Suyana’s eyes looked as awake as possible—eyedrops, white liner inside the lids, shimmer under the brows, and past that Suyana lost track and just held still with her eyes closed.
    â€œInside date or outside?” Oona asked, Suyana’s chin in one hand and her brush pushing against Suyana’s eye socket with the other. Suyana sometimes felt guilty that she thought of Oona mostly as a blur of orange and gold from behind closed eyes.
    â€œOutside.”
    â€œUgh, God knows why, midday light is so punishing.” Something was rubbed into her cheeks, presumably to help prevent the sun from