His frown deepened. Perhaps, merriest joke of all, the letter had been misdelivered, the sender having used the wrong address. Only, it had no address on it. Which made him suspect his friends again. And might the attendant, if he went back to the post office, recall who had slipped the letter through the front slot of his box? He sighed. It was hopeless; such speculations only fed the- A pebble sailed through the open window and fell onto his lap. He started, then smiled and rose, the pebble falling to the floor. At the window, he looked down. Raffe stared up at him from the street: daring Raffe in her sarcastic red-and-green jacket.

"Good shot," he called down. He studied her face for any hint of complicity in a plot, found no mischief there, realized it meant nothing.

"We're headed for the Calf for the evening," Raffe shouted up at him. "Are you coming?"

Lake nodded. "Go on ahead. I'll be there soon."

Raffe smiled, waved, and continued on down the street.

Lake retreated into his room, put the letter back in its envelope, stuffed it all into an inner pocket, and retired to the bathroom down the hall, the better to freshen up for the night's festivities. As he washed his face and looked into the moss-tinged mirror, he considered whether he should re main mum or share the invitation. He had still not decided when he walked out onto the street and into the harsh light of late afternoon.

By the time he reached the Cafe of the Ruby-Throated Calf, Lake found that his fellow artists had, aided by large quant.i.ties of alcohol, adopted a cavalier att.i.tude toward the War of the Reds and the Greens. As a gang of Reds ran by, dressed in their patchwork crimson robes, his friends rose together, produced their red flags and cheered as boisterously as if at some sporting event. Lake had just taken a seat, generally ignored in the hub bub, when a gang of Greens trotted by in pursuit, and once again his friends rose, green flags in hand this time, and let out a roar of approval.

Lake smiled, Raffe giving him a quick elbow to the ribs before she turned back to her conversation, and he let the smell of coffee and chocolate work its magic. His leg ached, as it did sometimes when he was under stress, but otherwise, he had no complaints. The weather had remained pleasant, neither too warm nor too cold, and a breeze ruffled the branches of the potted zindel trees with their jade leaves. The trees formed minia ture forests around groups of tables, effectively blocking out rival conversations without blocking the street from view. Artists lounged in their iron latticework chairs or slouched over the black-framed round gla.s.s tables while imbibing a succession of exotic drinks and coffees. The night lanterns had just been turned on and the glow lent a cozy warmth to their own group, coc.o.o.ned as they were by the foliage and the soothing murmur of conversations.

The four sitting with Lake he counted as his closest friends: Raffe, Sonter, Kinsky, and Merrimount. The rest had become as interchange able as the bricks of Hoegbotton & Sons' many trading outposts, and about as interesting. At the moment, X, Y, and Z claimed the outer tables like petty island tyrants, their faces peering pale and glinty-eyed in at Lake's group, one ear to the inner conversation while at the same time trying to maintain an uneasy autonomy.

Merrimount, a handsome man with long, dark lashes and wide blue eyes, combined elements of painting and performance art in his work, his life itself a kind of performance art. Merrimount was Lake's on-again, off-again lover, and Lake shot him a raffish grin to let him know that, surely, they would be on-again soon? Merrimount ignored him. Last time they had seen each other, Lake had made Merri cry. "You want too much," Merri had said. "No one can give you that much love, not and still be human. Or sane." Raffe had told Lake to stay away from Merri but, painful as it was to admit, Lake knew Raffe meant he was bad for Merri.

Raffe, who sat next to Merrimount-a buffer between him and Lake-was a tall woman with long black hair and dark, expressive eyebrows that lent a needed intensity to her light green eyes. Raffe and Lake had become friends the day he arrived in Ambergris. She had found him on Alb.u.muth Boulevard , watching the crowds, an overwhelmed, almost defeated, look on his face. Raffe had let him stay with her for the three months it had taken him to find his city legs. She painted huge, swirling, pa.s.sionate city scapes in which the people all seemed caught in mid-step of some intricate and unbearably graceful dance. They sold well, and not just to tourists.

Lake said to Raffe, "Do you think it wise to be so . . . careless?"

"Why, whatever do you mean, Martin?" Raffe had a deep, distinctly feminine voice that he never tired of hearing.

The strong, gravely tones of Michael Kinsky, sitting on the other side of Merrimount, rumbled through Lake's answer: "He means, aren't we afraid of the donkey a.s.ses known as the Reds and the monkey b.u.t.ts known as the Greens."

Kinsky had a wiry frame and a spa.r.s.e red beard. He made mosaics from discarded bits of stone, jewelry, and other gimcracks discovered on the city's streets. Kinsky had been well-liked by Voss Bender and Lake imagined the composer's death had dealt Kinsky's career a serious blow-although, as always, Kinsky's laconic demeanor appeared unruffled by catastrophe.

"We're not afraid of anything," Raffe said, raising her chin and putting her hands on her sides in mock bravado.

Edward Sonter, to Kinsky's right and Lake's immediate left, giggled. He had a horrible tendency to produce a high-pitched squeal of amuse ment, in total contrast to the sensuality of his art. Sonter made abstract pottery and sculptures, vaguely obscene in nature. His gangly frame and his face, in which the eyes floated unsteadily, could often be seen in the Religious Quarter, where his work enjoyed unusually brisk sales.

As if Sonter's giggle had been a signal, they began to talk careers, gauge the day's fortunes and misfortunes. They had tame material this time: a gallery owner-no one Lake knew-had been discovered selling wall s.p.a.ce in return for s.e.xual favors. Lake ordered a cup of coffee, with a chocolate chaser, and listened without enthusiasm.

Lake sensed familiar undercurrents of tension, as each artist sought to ferret out information about his or her fellows-weasels, bright-eyed and eager for the kill, that their own weasel selves might burn all the brighter. These tensions had eaten more than one conversation, leaving the table silent with barely suppressed hatred born of envy. Such a cruel and cutting silence had even eaten an artist or two. Personally, Lake enjoyed the tension because it rarely centered around him; he was by far the most obscure member of the inner circle, kept there by the strength of Raffe's patronage. Now, though, he felt a different tension, centered around the letter. It lay in a pocket against his chest like a second heart in his awareness of it.

As the shadows deepened into early dusk and the b.u.t.tery light of the lanterns on their delightfully curled bronze posts held back the night, the conversation, lubricated by wine, became to Lake's ears tantalizingly anonymous, as will happen in the company of people one is comfortable with, so that Lake could never remember exactly who had said what, or who had argued for what position. Lake later wondered if anything had been said, or if they had sat there, beautifully mute, while inside his head a conversation took place between Martin and Lake.

He spent the time contemplating the pleasures of reconciliation with Merri-drank in the twinned marvels of the man's perfect mouth, the compact, sinuous body. But Lake could not forget the letter. This, and his growing ennui, led him to direct the conversation toward a more timely subject: "I've heard it said that the Greens are disemboweling innocent folk near the docks, just off of Alb.u.muth. If they bleed red, they are de nounced as sympathizers against Voss Bender; if they bleed green, then their attackers apologize for the inconvenience and try to patch them up. Of course, if they bleed green, they're likely headed for the columbarium anyhow."

"Are you trying to disgust us?"

"It wouldn't surprise me if it were true-it seems in keeping with the man himself: self-proclaimed Dictator of Art, with heavy emphasis on 'Dic.' We all know he was a genius, but it's a good thing he's dead . . . unless one of you is a Green with a dagger . . . "

"Very funny."

"Certainly it is rare for a single artist to so thoroughly dominate the city's cultural life-"

"-Not to mention politics-"

("Who started the Reds and the Greens anyhow?") "And to be discussed so thoroughly, in so many cafes-"

("It started as an argument about the worth of Bender's music, between two professors of musicology on Trotten Street . Leave it to musicians to start a war over music; now that you're caught up, listen for G.o.d's sake!") "-Not to mention politics, you say. And isn't it a warning to us all that Art and Politics are like oil and water? To comment-"

"-'oil and water'? Now we understand why you're a painter."

"How clever."

"-as I said, to comment on it, perhaps, if forced to, but not to partici pate?"

"But if not Bender, then some bureaucratic business-man like Trillian. Trillian, the Great Banker. Sounds like an advertis.e.m.e.nt, not a leader. Surely, Merrimount, we're d.a.m.ned either way. And why not let the city run itself?"

"Oh-and it's done such a good job of that so far-"

"Off topic. We're b.l.o.o.d.y well off topic-again!"

"Ah, but what you two don't see is that it is precisely his audience's pa.s.sionate connection to his art-the fact that people believe the operas are the man-that has created the crisis!"

"Depends. I thought his death caused the crisis?"

At that moment, a group of Greens ran by. Lake, Merrimount, Kinsky, and Sonter all raised their green flags with a curious mixture of derision and drunken fervor. Raffe sat up and shouted after them, "He's dead! He's dead! He's dead!" Her face was flushed, her hair furiously tangled.

The last of the Greens turned at the sound of Raffe's voice, his face ghastly pale under the lamps. Lake saw that the man's hands dripped red. He forced Raffe to sit down: "Hush now, hush!" The man's gaze swept across their table, and then he was running after his comrades, soon out of sight.

"Yes, not so obvious, that's all."

"Their spies are everywhere."

"Why, I found one in my nose this morning while blowing it."

"The morning or the nose?"

Laughter, and then a voice from beyond the inner circle, m.u.f.fled by the dense shrubbery, offered, "It's not certain Bender is dead. The Greens claim he is alive."

"Ah yes." The inner circle deftly appropriated the topic, slamming like a rude, ma.s.sive door on the outer circle.

"Yes, he's alive."

"-or he's dead and coming back in a fortnight, just a bit rotted for the decay. Delay?"

"-no one's actually seen the body."

"-hush hush secrecy. Even his friends didn't see-"

"-and what we're witnessing is actually a coup."

"Coo coo."

"Shut up, you b.l.o.o.d.y pigeon."

"I'm not a pigeon-I'm a cuckoo."

"Bender hated pigeons."

"He hated cuckoos too."

"He was a cuckoo."

"Boo! Boo!"

"As if anyone really controls this city, anyway?"

"O fecund grand mother matron, Ambergris, bathed in the blood of versions under the gangrenous moon." Merrimount's melodramatic lilt was unmistakable, and Lake roused himself.

"Did I hear right?" Lake rubbed his ears. "Is this poetry? Verse? But what is this gristle: bathed in the blood of versions? Surely, my merry mount, you mean virgins. We all were one once-or had one once."

A roar of approval from the gallery.

But Merrimount countered: "No, no, my dear Lake, I meant versions-I protest. I meant versions: Bathed in the blood of the city's many versions of itself."

"A nice recovery"-Sonter again-"but I still think you're drunk."

At which point, Sonter and Merrimount fell out of the conversation, the two locked in an orbit of "version"/ "virgin" that, in all likelihood, would continue until the sun and moon fell out of the sky. Lake felt a twinge of jealousy.

Kinsky offered a smug smile, stood, stretched, and said, "I'm going to the opera. Anyone with me?"

A chorus of boos, accompanied by a series of "f.u.c.k off's!"

Kinsky, face ruddy, guffawed, threw down some coins for his bill, and stumbled off down the street which, despite the late hour, twitched and rustled with foot traffic.

"Watch out for the Reds, the Greens, and the Blues," Raffe shouted after him.

"The Blues?" Lake said, turning to Raffe.

"Yes. The Blues-you know. The sads."

"Funny. I think the Blues are more dangerous than the Greens and the Reds put together."

"Only the Browns are more deadly."

Lake laughed, stared after Kinsky. "He's not serious, is he?"

"No," Raffe said. "After all, if there is to be a ma.s.sacre, it will be at the opera. You'd think the theater owners, or even the actors, would have more sense and close down for a month."

"Shouldn't we leave the city? Just the two of us-and maybe Merrimount?"

Raffe snorted. "And maybe Merrimount? And where would we go? Morrow? The Court of the Kalif? Excuse me for saying so, but I'm broke."

Lake smirked. "Then why are you drinking so much."

"Seriously. Do you mean you'd pay for a trip?"

"No-I'm just as poor as you." Lake put down the drink. "But, I would pay for some advice."

"Eat healthy foods. Do your commissions on time. Don't let Merrimount back into your life."

"No, no. Not that kind of advice. More specific."

"About what?"

He leaned forward, said softly, "Have you ever received an anonymous commission?"

"How do you mean?"

"A letter appears in your post office box. It has no return address. Your address isn't on it. It's clearly from someone wealthy. It tells you to go to a certain place at a certain time. It mentions a masquerade."

Raffe frowned, the corners of her eyes narrowing. "You're serious."

"Yes."

"I've never gotten a commission like that. You have?"

"Yes. I think. I mean, I think it's a commission."

"May I see the letter."

Lake looked at her, his best friend, and somehow he couldn't share it with her.

"I don't have it with me."

"Liar!"

As he started to protest, she took his hand and said, "No, no-it's all right. I understand. I won't take an advantage from you. But you want advice on whether you should go?"

Lake nodded, too ashamed to look at her.

"It might be your big break-a major collector who wants to remain anonymous until he's cornered the market in Lake originals. Or . . . "

She paused and a great fear settled over Lake, a fear he knew could only overwhelm him so quickly because it had been there all along.

"Or?"

"It could be a . . . special a.s.signation."

"A what?"

"You don't know what I mean?"