My main duty at the party? To herd the ruminant artists, to keep them happy. In the background, I would also help with the invitations, and in return, I would not only receive more money, but a promise of a position at a gallery—a promise I’m sure I must have known would never be kept, no matter what happened at the party. I was beyond that kind of respectability, and some part of me may even have been proud of that.

Four artists showed up for the party that night—any more and I wouldn’t have been able to handle them, or their egos. After all, I was getting close to an age when women of much greater strength than I had retired to an early dotage on some pleasure barge or houseboat sailing idyllic down the River Moth. I was also worried about my brother, and therefore not in the best of moods. I cannot say that I cared that much about party preparations or “reparations,” as I used to joke in the days before the party—with the cook, a sardonic man of my age who lifted my spirits and tried to lift my blouse on more than one occasion.

Lake had decided that the party should be held at the refurbished and renovated Hoegbotton Hotel. It had previously served as a glorified safe house, most active during Festival days, and thus had to be taken apart almost brick by brick to become a “hotel.” For example, such features as iron bars on guest room windows did not convey the right message. Nor, for that matter, did the “safety crawl spaces” that led to tunnels, that led to the River Moth. No, it had all been stripped away as if the gray caps and the Festival were now some remote happening—remote in time and space and even remotely unbelievable, from some period of ancient history that could not be verified by even the most reckless historian. A kind of silly rumor—a scary story told to children before bedtime by unenlightened parents. (I blame such innovations as the telephone. Such prosaic devices make it difficult for people to believe in the other until it stares them in the face and takes a swipe at them.)

To replace such outdated structures came wide staircases of marble bought from the Kalif at ridiculous prices and large glass windows that any lout with a plank of wood would find irresistible come Festival time. They had scented candles and handmade bedsheets made by the few Dogghe tribesmen who hadn’t been slaughtered by our ancestors, and chairs and tables crafted by carpenters from the Southern Isles. Every floor had its own telephone on a pedestal, conveniently located near the staircase. The smell of new stone, new furnishings, and clean sheets was so un-Ambergrisian that as soon as I stepped into the place, I knew no locals would be checking in for a night’s rest and relaxation.