In the back seat of Hoegbotton’s Manzikert sat two rather reptilian-looking men, with slitted eyes and cruel, sensual mouths. Between them stood the urn with Bender’s ashes: a pompous, gold-plated monstrosity. It was their number—three—and Hoegbotton’s mannerisms that first roused Lake’s suspicions, but suspicions they remained, for he had no proof. No telltale feathers ensnarled for a week to now slowly spin and drift down from the guilty parties to Lake’s feet.

The rest of the ceremony was a blur for Lake. At the docks, community leaders including Kinsky, Hoegbotton conspicuously absent, mouthed comforting platitudes to memorialize the man, then took the urn from its platform, pried open the lid, and cast the ashes of the world’s greatest composer into the blue-brown waters of the Moth.

Voss Bender was dead.

Is my interpretation correct? I would like to think so, but one of the great challenges, the great allures, of a true work of art is that it either defies analysis or provides multiple theories for its existence. Further, I cannot fully explain the presence of the three birds, nor certain aspects of “Through His Eyes” with regard to the ring of red and the montage format.

Whatever the origin of and the statement made by “Invitation to a Beheading,” it marked the beginning of Lake’s illustrious career. Before, he had been an obscure painter. After, he would be classed among the greatest artists of the southern cities, his popularity as a painter soon to rival that of Bender as a composer. Lake would design wildly inventive sets for Bender operas and thus be responsible for an interpretive revival of those operas. He would be commissioned, albeit disastrously, to do commemorative work for Henry Hoegbotton, de facto ruler of Ambergris after Bender’s death. His illustrations for the Truffidians’ famous Journal of Samuel Tonsure would be revered as minor miracles of the engraver’s art. Exhibitions of his work would even grace the Court of the Kalif himself, while nearly every year publishers would release a new book of his popular prints and drawings. In a hundred ways, he would rejuvenate Ambergris’s cultural life and make it the wonder of the south. (In spite of which, he always seemed oddly annoyed, even stricken, by his success.) These facts are beyond doubt.

What, finally, was the mystery behind the letter held in the screaming man’s hand, the mystery of “Invitation to a Beheading,” we may never know.—From Janice Shriek’s A Short Overview of the Art of Martin Lake and His Invitation to a Beheading, for The Hoegbotton Guide to Ambergris, 5th edition.