Dispatch from a Colored Room Read online

though I gave serious thought to doing it noticed. But perhaps it is best I held my ground.

  There was a piece of paper between his first and middle fingers. They twitched, offering it to me.

  The paper was printed on the letterhead of a press whose name I will not yet say; after the salutation, the first word was "Congratulations!" I read on to discover that this press was the printer of The Giant's Chair.

  For a moment, I was elated; the sum named in the letter was not as large as that Mme Brisbois named, but it would buy a week of rent or two of food. Then I returned to the world, where the editors of The Giant's Chair thought I lived at my old address, and the Dandelion Knight acted as my courier. "How did you get this?" I asked.

  "Is it real, should have been your first question," the Dandelion Knight said. "I found the letter at your old apartment. You'll never get the chance to stop running as long as you stay with that Desrosiers, you know."

  I stared at the letter, then at the Dandelion Knight, and asked "Why do you care?"

  "I love the poor," he said, "and doubly I love poets, for they are often the poorest of all—having neither money, nor the scales on their eyes that would free them to pursue it."

  Aimée, you are too young to know me, but when you know me, you will know I could not let that pass. "You are a flirt," I said, "and no subtle one. What use do you think I will be to you?"

  "What use a fresh-faced maiden to a strapping lad just freed into the world?"

  "I am a married man, sir, and my shoulders are wider than yours." (Ah, Aimée. Do you even remember the shoulders on which you wept, slept, vomited your mother's milk with smiling nonchalance?)

  "Well, that is all right, for I mean to love you less by a third part."

  For all my brashness in Aurcryn-Jon's face, I confess this sent an electric jolt down my spine, painful and paralyzing. The Dandelion Knight's staff was heavy, with a dull gleam; the hand that caressed it was long, but strong and hard. Then I understood his meaning, or guessed I did. "By my arithmetic, you mean to bring surcease to my poverty," I told him, "but not my poetry."

  "They tell me longshoremen have no head for figures," said the Dandelion Knight, "but I have never believed it!"

  "And how is it you intend to bring about this ebb in your affections?"

  "At last, the nut of the matter," he said. "Here is how."

  And he told me. But, Aimée, I cannot finish. I am standing at the Ashview station, waiting for the Snapdragon train to turn around in the station-yard and come my way. It is almost to the platform, uncoiling like a snake. I will let it swallow me whole, the first time in my life. I do not know whether Aurcryn-Jon's plan will bear fruit; but if it does, I will write to you and tell you of its flavor.

  This ought to be the end of the story for me, but lucky me, it isn't.

  I've never technically gotten to the bottom of this, but I can guess why Dawnroad made me designated body-woman to Aimée Leblanc. Aimée had gotten the drop on Dawnroad, you see, with the poem, and no one was quite sure how much of the night she'd remember or how she might represent the encounter. Meaning that, other than one another, there were two people who could embarrass the man in the bad skinjob and the man in the womb-wrenchingly exquisite bespoke suit: Aimée Leblanc and Catherine Pelerine (not my real name). Restrict Aimée's interactions within Dawnroad to me, and mine to her, and these men in their respective costumes solve two problems. Not for the long term, of course, but if you're Dawnroad Bank, you can get a bit of the distance by setting us up in an executive apartment in a company-owned building gratis, and seeing what we say to one another. That would, of course, be spying, but no one in this theater is too good for it and Dawnroad Bank isn't either.

  Another advantage of this arrangement: Dawnroad has someone who can encourage Aimée toward passivity in Greyking's affairs, persuade her (in rather gentler terms) that a junkie from the sixth is unlikely to derive enjoyment or success from running a business. If I'd cared to make more than a cursory attempt at that, it's a very different story you'd be hearing right now, and I probably wouldn't be telling it. But I saw steel in Aimée. I could tell she cared enough about her father's legacy that she'd learn whatever she needed to take the reins.

  When I say "setting us up," by the way, I really mean it; I took point on little Sim from dawntide wakings to night terrors. I had to. Thanks to my own hard dogsbodying, Aimée spent most of her day in meetings or in court, getting the distribution of assets sorted, as well as other things I'll talk about a bit later. Right now we have to talk about Elias.

  Here's your mise-en-scene: Pel, at the desk in the study, poring through a corporate law book she literally had to steal from the legal department's library and lining it up with the hazy sentiments expressed in the note that stood in for Gauthier Leblanc's last will and testament, as well as a number of highly technical communications from Greyking's board of directors. Pel, trying her best to ignore Sim, who's tearing around what passes for the living room, though Aimée in her free moments has gone so adorably sparrowshit with buying toys for her insane bedwetting son that no "living" is possible therein. Pel, absorbed enough in her work that she does not hear the door open in what is in retrospect a highly suspicious silence, but not so conscientious that she can't hear the more thunderous silence of Sim freezing on the spot.

  "Hello?" comes an unfamiliar voice from the living room, which does of course open on the hallway. I'm out there like a fucking shot, because I'd better be, and there we have Elias, not that he's introduced himself yet. Here's a concept I'll float to those assembled: Superficially clean. That means a suit very much as shit as mine, though it takes a moment to tell because it's stiff and crisp, which is to say never before worn; close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and beard that you somehow know were huge enough to house griffon chicks not long ago; red-scrubbed skin that's gone dark grey under, with dirt ground in for good; the smell of soap a thin film over the not-yet-gone smell of not bathing for a long, long time. I do not perceive these individual things instantly, but the gist comes before the particulars, and I know that this man does not belong here, has probably never set foot on the second terrace. He smiles at me with a sincerity so winning I want to cut him right then and there. "Elias Charbon. Aimée's uncle, or as good as, Sim's great-uncle."

  "Neither Gauthier nor Ciel Leblanc had a brother named Elias," I say, not yet losing my cool. How did he get past security? It doesn't look like he's fought, no skinned knuckles, blood, rumpled clothes—but he's strongly built, carries himself lightly; he could have fought and won.

  "What would you know about it?"

  "Am I wrong?"

  He grunts. I get the sense he doesn't know he's done it, like he doesn't realize it wasn't in his head. "I served with Gauthier in the 7th Ashview. Look that up, if you know so much. I took care of Ciel and Aimée since he scarpered."

  "Prove it fast."

  He holds up a scrap of papers he's had in his two fingers the whole time. "Heliotype," he says. "Me, Ciel, and Aimée; Sim's in the belly, maybe you can see him. Who are you?"

  I take the heliotype and immediately my eyes prick with tears. Or at least I feel like they should. It's him and Aimée, that's for sure, not so pregnant that I'd have noticed without the hint; Elias has longer hair, rattier clothes. There's an older woman, about his age, with them as well. I see Aimée in her face. Aimée looks sixty times stronger and happier than I've ever seen her, even at her best. Elias looks smug. Ciel, as Elias called her, looks like she's onto him. "Catherine Pelerine," I say, not doing Elias the courtesy I do you. "I'm happy to answer to 'Mlle Pelerine,' M Charbon. I work for Dawnroad Bank. May I inquire about your business at Mlle Leblanc's domicile?"

  He bristles at my tone. "I'm here to see my grandnephew and talk to my niece." This is true, but words cannot describe how incomplete it is. Not that I know anything, at this point; I can just tell. Whatever drove him here, it wasn't concern for his charges. Everything in his body tells me that he thinks Aimée and Sim are a way to
something he wants, and I'm an obstacle. "If Aimée's not around, I'll take Sim for a bit of a jaunt and come back when she is."

  I sorely want to ask Sim whether he actually wants to go with this person, if only because he's been so still since Elias came in that I can't imagine he'd possibly say yes. But it's cruel to pit a child against his elder, and I don't need a three-year-old to do my job. "I can't release Mlle Leblanc's child to a stranger, sir, no matter how many heliotypes he shows me."

  "I'm practically his father!"

  There isn't any point in saying again what I've said already, so I give him a cool stare and dare him to escalate the scene.

  His eyes bulge, his face reddens, his lips twitch as though to skin back—but he doesn't explode. Instead he closes the distance between us with three quick steps. I hear air rush into Sim's lungs through his nostrils. Elias gives me what's meant to be a dangerous smile; he does a pretty good job. But he's breathing hard, he's sweating and grinding his teeth. He's not used to the air up here. He can push himself better than Aimée could, but he's hit his tolerance for acullico and used up most of the energy it bought him. Then again, he's still standing, and he's taller and heavier than I am. He leans in to whisper in my ear and I force myself not to step back.

  "The