“Dibs?” Perry frowned. “Why do you get dibs on one?”
“As one of the candidates in the initial debate over who the child’s father was, I got to contribute a name. But you weren’t around twenty-one years ago. Tough luck.”
Perry did not answer, for I had drawn close enough to be inspected. His face grew slack before me, a distanced awe, like a child gaping at a cobra in a zoo. “Incredible. Madame really does collect the worst of us.” More words were on his lips, but others snuffed them.
“Twenty-nine years!” It was a woman’s scream, shrill through the closed and paneled doors.
A man’s voice followed. “Bryar! It’s not as if I conspired against you personally.”
“Twenty-nine years you’ve been controlling the CFB and you never said a word to me! Not one!”
“Her Excellency Cousin Chairwoman Bryar Kosala,” the crier announced, finishing just as she burst in, a tidal wave of satin and accusations.
“You knew!” she shrieked. “And now you’re too coward to show your face!”
“My Lord,” the crier called behind her, “the Compte Déguisé.”
This title heralded, not a man, but two servants wheeling a chaise. A manikin lounged in it, sporting a coat of green velvet, a burgundy-violet waistcoat, a strip of black mask, and, through loudspeakers, the voice of the Anonymous. “Bryar, be sensible!” he pleaded, desperation clear despite the computer’s modulation. “You know I’m not hiding from you, I’m hiding from the Outsider. You expect me to reveal myself now, of all times?”
Faust laughed even as Perry scowled.
“It’s not as if I actively conspired to take control of the CFB,” the Anonymous continued. “It’s Dana? and Julia Doria-Pamphili you should be angry at, they’re the ones who actually tried to take it away from me and use it for their own ends. I didn’t take it to abuse it, and really I didn’t even take it, I … inherited it.”
“Inherited?”
“Exactly. This isn’t about us, Bryar. The Anonymous has directed the CFB for over a century, and I’ve been the Anonymous a lot longer than we’ve been together.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” Her voice cracked. “Not only has the person I loved been secretly dictating my political actions for thirty years, but other people I didn’t even know were doing it before them!”
The manikin’s bearers fled before Bryar’s wrath like hounds from a whip, leaving the chaise and toy Anonymous to plead alone. “What was I supposed to do? It’s not a system either of us could fix.”
“How about, ‘By the way, darling, your life is a lie’?” Faust cut in, smiling.
The bouquets of lace and satin which dripped from the half-sleeves of Kosala’s gown were not cut to accommodate the brandishing of fists. “Felix, I swear, if the words ‘I knew the whole time’ come out of your mouth, I’ll show you something your numbers say I shouldn’t be capable of! Probably involving my foot and bits of you that don’t want to meet it!”
Faust swished his dregs. “I can see why Madame wanted Mycroft here as chaperone tonight. Mycroft, pour the Chairwoman a glass of sherry, would you? There’s a good monster. Perry, care for seconds?”
“Perry?” Bryar realized only now that the quiet figure half screened by tiers of canapés was neither Spain nor MASON. “Why didn’t you tell us Perry was already here?”
The Outsider tiptoed forward. “Sorry this is coming on an awkward night.”
I had never seen Bryar’s eyes so cold.
Perry managed not to wince. “Good to see you, Chair Kosala. I know you know this already, but you look wonderful in a dress.” He paused, hoping for a smile. None came. “And that’s the Anonymous over the intercom?”
“We say Déguisé here,” Faust corrected, “the Comte Déguisé. Déguisé, may I present Prime Minister Perry.”
Silence is harshest when the speaker has no real face.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Monsieur le Compte.” Prime Minister Perry gave ample pause, but the voice behind the puppet did not stir. “I realize,” he almost stammered, “it will take you longer than the others to trust me, but I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to actually be able to talk to you, negotiate with you, get input. I’ve admired you my whole life. You’re the voice of sense in all this.” Again the Prime Minister paused, tense hands fidgeting with the buttons on his pocket flaps, but, again, silence. “And you control the CFB?” he continued. “That’s strange news. It’s not a problem if you’re a Cousin, but you’re not a Cousin, are you?”
“That matter is not for you to worry about,” the Anonymous warned. “It is between Chair Kosala and myself. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, My Lord Count,” Faust corrected. “The forms don’t all drop just because you’re inside, Mister Prime Minister.”
“Of course, Headmaster. My apolog—”
“His Grace,” the crier interrupted, “Ganymede Jean-Louis de la Trémo?lle, Duc de Thouars, Prince de Talmond, President of the Humanists, with His Excellency Chief Executive Director Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi, and Her Highness Dana? Marie-Anne de la Trémo?lle Mitsubishi, Princesse de la Trémo?lle et de Talmond.”
If divine Aurora, called Eos by we from whom the Romans stole her, limped to Olympus freshly wounded by a dart from vengeful Aphrodite, and crossed Zeus’s threshold leaning one arm on Helios her golden brother, and the other on her dark companion Night, so her rosy dawn veil was framed by soft darkness on one side and sun-fire on the other, I doubt if even virgin Artemis could resist a blush. Perry staggered at the sight, and his gaping face glowed in the light reflected by Dana?’s kimono, which shimmered with the subtle, mingling colors of the dawn, each thread awakened to brightness by reflections from Ganymede’s gold as he pressed against her, careful as a guide dog. Andō, on her other side, had one arm locked around her waist, the loose black of his formal hakama and kimono darkening his limbs like storm clouds. Even I staggered.
“You’re sure you want do this?” Ganymede settled his sister onto a sofa with meticulous care, like a gardener transplanting roses. “You don’t have to stay tonight if you don’t want to.”
“I should be here.” She pulled the pair of them down around her like shells around a tender scallop. “I must greet our guest.”
No starving man has ever stalked a loaf of bread so fixedly as Perry’s eyes locked on Dana?. “I hope I’m more than just a one-night guest, Princesse,” he corrected, tripping over the syllables. “But are you all right? You seem unwell.”
“My wife is tired.” Her husband sat forward, blocking as much of Dana? as possible from the Outsider’s view. “That is all. Mycroft, brandy.”
I delivered the glass to the Duke, who held it as his sister alternated between timid sips and resting her head against his golden coat. No, tonight’s coat was something more than gold. Have you seen yellow diamonds, reader? The sunburst brightness that mocks gold, “You dull, opaque old metal, you’re barely fine enough to coat the outside of my treasure box, while I, I capture the light itself, slice it into shards and turn it into me!”
I have spoken with several doctors hoping one could identify this prescient illness which affected Dana? before the day’s dooms showed their faces. One proposed anemia, another that she sensed the anxieties of her adopted children, but I suspect it is simply a sensitivity, like orchids, or old men’s knees which tremble at the scent of danger in Fate’s breath. The skill is natural enough in this creature, who maintains herself ever on exhaustion’s threshold, so her favorite weapons, hysteria and fainting, remain keen.
“His Majesty,” the crier began anew, “Isabel Carlos II, King of Castile, of Aragon, of Navarre, of León, of Galicia, of Granada, of the Canary Islands, of Jaén, of Córdoba, of