This deception continued for over three years, to the continued glorification of Janice Shriek, with rarely even the warmth of reflected light for poor Duncan. Hoegbotton did pay very well, and I dutifully gave Duncan sometimes as much as three-fourths of our earnings. (H&S could afford to pay well—not only were its trading activities booming, but it had managed to make inroads into the Southern jungles, and to consolidate control of almost all trade entering Ambergris. This was no benevolent organization, but perhaps being an anonymous thrall was better than the alternative.)

I suppose for this reason alone Duncan would have continued to supply his work for my byline. But we eventually put a stop to it anyway. I believe it was because my own instability made him yearn for stability of his own. When your sister continually looks pale as death, throws up on a regular basis, introduces you to a new boyfriend every other week, and is given to uncontrollable shaking, you begin to wonder how long it will be before people stop assigning her freelance work. (Not true—you flatter yourself. There were two reasons. First, I was sick of writing fluff. You try writing seventy-five articles on vacation opportunities in the Southern Islands and you will have written a new definition of boredom. Vomiting would be the least of your worries. Second, freelancing did not appeal because there was no set schedule, and I could never know when you might have work for me. Third, I began to see that this facile copy writing was taking a lot of energy away from my underground inquiries, which became more urgent the more it seemed that the symptoms I’d manifested after coming aboveground were not going away.)

Besides, Sirin, now my editor at Hoegbotton, had published all manner of pamphlets early in his career, passing off fiction as nonfiction and nonfiction as fiction; when his readers could not tell the difference between the two, it filled him with a nonsensical glee. Several times, he wrote an essay in a periodical, a scathing review of it under a pen name, then a letter to the editor under yet another pen name, this alter-alter ego defending Sirin’s original point. In short, Sirin was as apt to ape a novel in his essays as to mummify a treatise in his fancies. He was also a scrupulous rewriter of other writers’ work, always sensitive to a change in tone or style, and drove Duncan to near insanity with his relentless line edits. With such an editor, it would not have been long before Sirin sniffed out the hoax. (I’m sure he sniffed out the hoax from nearly the beginning but chose not to say anything. What did it matter to him who wrote what so long as someone wrote it?)