The Ambergris Tourism Board—caught between their dead dog slogans and their sense of profit, between my protestations of being “confused” as to the message we were trying to convey and their certainty that I’d known exactly what I was doing—contemplated firing me, but couldn’t quite summon the nerve.

Most days since, I’ve been glad they didn’t.

5

Sometimes—only sometimes—I wonder who I am writing this account for. Who will read this? Will they care? I am past the delusion that I’m writing an afterword for Duncan’s The Early History of Ambergris, and I suspect that you, dear reader, if you’ve come this far, are past that delusion as well.

Sometimes, I think I’m writing out of anger and sadness, out of a sense of injustice—a sense that my life, that my brother’s life, should have been easier, that we should have been more successful. At other times, I think I’m writing this account to preserve some part of me after I’m gone. Or that I am in some sense trying to write past those bodies in the Cathedral, or my red ribbons for wrists, or Duncan’s heartbreak.

There are certainly those who would prefer I not write this account—they’d prefer to have the same image of Janice they’ve always had, the same thoughts about Duncan. A more full-bodied likeness would ruin all of the stylization they’ve spent years accreting to both of us. (Who are these people, so intent on our ruin? Your oft-mentioned flesh necklace? Janice, no one cares enough to create an image of us—and they haven’t for years.)

Then there are those who simply hate what Duncan represents, those who cannot accept the truth and thus must reject the messenger along with the message. It’s common enough in life, isn’t it? Mary is a prime example. She’s still waiting there, at the party, but I honestly don’t want to write about that yet. There are more important things to discuss first, and it’s possible I won’t have time to finish this account, but I’ll soldier on because there’s nothing left to do.

A gate. A mirror. A door.

Somewhere there’s a door, surely?

One afternoon, after I had guided a family from Stockton on a tour centered around Trillian the Great Banker, Sirin appeared at the head of the stairs leading to the second floor. He beckoned to me with one long, graceful finger, and disappeared up the steps.

His office was the same as it had always been, down to the butterfly paradise residing in glass flasks at his back.

“I have a job for Duncan,” he said, without preamble, smiling from behind his desk.

At the time, Duncan hadn’t yet begun to “benefit” from the pittance Frankwrithe & Lewden would pay him for the infamous omnibus and still made his marginal living editing the AFTOIS newsletter for a Lacond whose health had begun to fail. So the money would come in handy. But I couldn’t imagine that Sirin, whose current fortunes depended on the continued publication of the great Mary Sabon, would have anything of value for Duncan.