Did the envelope contain a commission? He took it out of his pocket, weighed it in his hand. Not heavy. A single sheet of paper? The indifferent light of his apartment made the maroon envelope almost black. The seal still scintillated so beautifully in his artist’s imagination that he hesitated to break it. Reluctantly—his fingers must be coerced into such an action—he broke the seal, opened the flap, and pulled out a sheet of parchment paper shot through with crimson threads. Words had been printed on the paper in a gold-orange ink, followed by the same mask symbol found on the seal. He skimmed the words several times, as if by rapid review he might discover some hidden message, some hint of closure. But the words only deepened the mystery:

Invitation to a Beheading

You Are Invited to Attend:

45 Archmont Lane

7:30 in the evening

25th Day of This Month

Please arrive in costume

Lake stared at the message. A masquerade, but to what purpose? He suppressed an impulse to laugh and instead walked over to the balcony and opened the windows, letting in fresh air. The sudden chaos of voices from below, the rough sounds of street traffic—on foot, on horses, or in motored vehicles—gave Lake a comforting sense of community, as if he were debating the mystery of the message with the world.

From his balcony window he could see, on the right, a green-tinged slice of the valley, while straight ahead the spires and domes of the Religious Quarter burned white, gold, and silver. To the left, the solid red brick and orange marble of more apartment buildings.

Lake liked the view. It reminded him that he had survived three years in a city notorious for devouring innocents whole. Not famous, true, but not dead or defeated either. Indeed, he took a perverse pleasure from enduring and withstanding the city’s countless petty cruelties, for he believed it made him stronger. One day he might rule the city, for certainly it had not ruled him.

And now this—this letter that seemed to have come from the city itself. Surely it was the work of one of his artist friends—Kinsky, Raffe, or that ruinous old scoundrel, Sonter? A practical joke, perhaps even Merrimount’s doing? “Invitation to a Beheading.” What could it mean? He vaguely remembered a book, a fiction, with that title, written by Sirin, wasn’t it? Sirin, whose pseudonyms spread through the pages of literary journals like some mad yet strangely wonderful disease.

But perhaps it meant nothing at all and “they” intended that he waste so much time studying it that he would be late finishing his commissions.