Some of the people I escorted, I remembered coming into my gallery as children or young adults, but none of them remembered me. Scions of Hoegbotton’s mercantile empire, officials from foreign cities, even a nervous-looking emissary from Frankwrithe & Lewden (more than likely a hostage). I don’t know why I had to escort them, and I didn’t much care. (Lake’s agent probably feared they would get drunk and cause a scene.)

Then followed a period of rest for this old woman, where I just stood in the gallery room on the second floor and smiled at patrons of the arts as they glided by, drinks in hand. The artists had all joined the reverie on the ground floor, but I welcomed the respite by then.

The party had reached that unfamiliar point where, in contrast to past events, I stood outside of it, looking in. I was far away, and very tired, remembering with regret the cigar I had had to abandon when the artists showed up. Remembering that my brother was missing and feeling powerless to do anything about it.

There is, I have to say, a perfect anonymity at a party like that, in the role chosen for me. You can pretend by remaining silent that you are invisible and yet all-powerful. The way the conversation intermingles so that you do not hear any words, just a kind of spiraling hum, or babble, or crescendo—and you can then, if you listen hard, hear the individual words and phrases, but not in a way that makes any sense. Duncan was hundreds of feet below me by then, working his way to the heart of a mystery. I know he had to be because he was nowhere near me anymore (although closer than you think), and it seemed to me in that moment that he really wouldn’t be coming back.

And, also, I was thinking about how you can bring the hum, the babble, the crescendo low—bring it all low with a single accusation, a shout, a scream, perhaps even, yes, a shriek.

I might have stayed in that trance forever, enjoying a measure of melancholy contentment, if I had not heard someone, probably Sonter, say, “Mary Sabon is here” as he walked by the doorway.

The party jolted into focus again.

Sabon? Here? But she hadn’t been invited …

I surveyed the thinning gallery crowd. No sign of her. So she must be downstairs. I don’t know why my first thought was to hunt her down, but I got up, pushed through a wedge of drunk people, and escaped to the top of the marble staircase.