Sonter looked ancient and creaky, like a narrow, withered boat with bad caulking—on the verge of a watery death, perhaps. A decade spent on an island in the middle of the River Moth had done him no favors. Kinsky had become broad and looked defeated but brave, the gray circles under his eyes negated by an animation lacking from the others. Constance maintained a look of perpetual outrage that made me roll my eyes before I could help myself. Only Raffe, though aging—and, I realized with a shock, probably my own age—appeared in any way serene or accepting of Fate.

I greeted them. They were polite. That was all I expected from them.

Raffe said to me, “You look tired. Can we help with anything?”

Which comment, for some reason, made me want to cry.

I took them upstairs to the temporary gallery—a room converted from its original function as a bar. The lighting was all wrong and I hadn’t been able to hang the paintings the way I would have liked due to an incompetent helper, but at least a small throng had gathered there already. I don’t remember my welcoming speech, I just know that, for a moment, an emotion welled up in my throat that came close to affection for those I was introducing. After all, they were survivors just like me. They were also artists, and for twenty years of my life all I had done was introduce artists. Was there a sad twinge for my lost gallery? Of course, but these days there is a sad twinge about everything—to the point that I begin to wonder if it’s my heart that’s gone bad, rather than anything to do with my memories.

Besides, it can’t be avoided. Bonmot once told me, “If you don’t feel a certain sadness toward the past, then you probably don’t understand it.”

After my introduction and short speeches by the artists, the adoring if small-in-numbers public pushed forward to engage the Obscure, Sonter somehow evading the crush and coming up to me.

“I heard Mary Sabon will be here tonight,” he said. “Is that true?”

The peace I had been experiencing left me.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “I didn’t see her on the guest list.”

That had been my one petty triumph—I’d managed through sleight of hand to get Mary Sabon uninvited from Lake’s party, said sleight of hand involving an unmailed invitation and a sidewalk gutter leading to the nether depths. Somewhere down there a gray cap might be clutching that invitation as I write this account. It might be its most treasured possession.