I know you're all just itching to hear how I, a little errand-girl at a bank, managed a drug-addled mother and her hyperactive three-year-old through five hours on or in between little bus, big bus, and rail, and I would love to tell you, but for the sake of getting to the point I'll skip it, except to note that the main branch of Dawnroad Bank is in the opposite fucking octant from the Ironweed Line, which doesn't sound like much unless you're the little errand-girl, the three-year-old is asleep, and the mother's lungs and muscles are too wrecked to carry the guy for any distance. What I didn't realize about someone who'd lived on the sixth all her life is that she's got two problems on the higher terraces -- first, she's too warm, and second, the air's too thin. Not too thin for her to live, but too thin for her to be comfortable. She gets distractible, fatigued. Third problem: The viascutes. The sixth is wide open, and the ways are only managed where there are a lot of people, the Old Port and Ashview and near Mauleneault. So I've got Sim on my shoulder, which would have been like lugging a sack of nails if a sack of nails kicked in its sleep, and meanwhile Aimee is fading in and out of consciousness and periodically decides that she knows where she's going and it's not where I'm going, and I can't count the number of times I nearly lose her down some new alleyway or maze because I can't chase her and she doesn't listen.

We all stink by this point, bear in mind. It's well past business hours and we've spent all our time in stations or communal seats; there is no cleanliness possible in this scenario, even if your favorite three-year-old hasn't gotten sweet and sour sauce all over everybody after a massacre of a dinner that years of drink has still failed to redact from my nightmares. 

Sorry, I think I just lost my place. Give me a second --

Right, so this is the condition in which we tromp into the main branch of Dawnroad Bank, which I'm sure I need not tell you is a luminous edifice, just a forest of columns, drawn up from the ground as though the earth itself had condescended to move its most beautiful cavern up where everyone could see. It's pre-Disjunction architecture, the lintel over the main door says "GALDRES LEAGUE," G-A-L-D-R-E-S whatever that means, as if, again, the stone itself had decided that this was what all passersby needed to read when they entered -- and who argues with stone? At any rate, here we tromp, into the main vestibule that's clearly been kept half-lit just for us, and a trim little gentleman in an impeccable grey suit, I almost murdered him for his suit then and there, is waiting there with a shit-eating little smile, like a genie who knows you're on your last wish and you really need a favor.

"Mlle Leblanc," he says to Aimee, who would look less like she were drooling if she were actually drooling. "And your son Sim, I presume." I apparently don't rate a greeting in this scenario, and I'm not sure if that should worry me. "President Salmant is most anxious to see you."

I wasn't drinking anything, of course, but I was so thirsty that I was thinking about drinking, and so in my head I spat it out.

I, bear in mind, had never laid eyes on anyone high-ranked enough to inhale in the presence of President Salmant. And -- look, here we all are, I'm obviously not invested in whatever cults of personality do or don't govern the brotherhood of financiers -- but, vagabonds and vavasours, you and I all know that this is not the sort of person who would get in trouble, should someone like me happen to disappear quietly in the middle of the night. 

And the genie in his beautiful suit gives me a smile that says he knows it. And Aimee nods agreeably and says "Me too." And the genie goes, and we follow.

There are stairs. We'll leave it at that. I learn that Sim's a bedwetter. Luckily I'm in back, so at least I'm the only one who almost breaks her neck when her bootheel slips in Sim's bedwet. Aimee has the genie's arm, or vice versa, and he supports her reeling form effortlessly, probably because she doesn't weigh anydamnthing. 

Where was I? Stairs, that was it. I was on stairs for a long time.

After stairs, we walk a ways in a stone womb, up to a funny sphincterlike aperture that's obviously had doors affixed to it at some relatively recent date -- it's the most out-of-place detail in the place, honestly, a round door that would be perfectly charming and graceful in any other context sitting in this amazing building like a turd in fine whisky. This is, of course, a big signifier, because there are no other doors in this place, and in every other part of the building they seem to have rolled with it, prizing beauty over privacy. But if President Salmant wants a door, President Salmant gets a door. 

At least I assume that's what's being said here. One problem with telling stories all the time: You start reading into things.

The genie detains us in an anteroom with a tray of canapes and a glass of water. At this point in my relationship with the genie, I know not to touch them. I try to salve my thirst and hate by letting myself go a little insane in my lust for the genie's incredibly beautiful suit, while Aimee shoves fake organ meat on toast down her throat with both hands. She's picking up crumbs with a moistened forefinger by the time the genie summons us into Salmant's office, and manages to trip over her feet twice on the way to the door. Her lips are starting to look blue, actually, but it's the middle of the night and we're on the President's doorstep, so there's no quitting now.

So here we are, in this palace of an office, a toddler, a junkie, and a dogsbody standing before President Salmant of Dawnroad Bank, king among financiers, and the first thing I notice is that the lamp on his desk isn't burning.

I know, this is awful scene-setting -- finally the man himself, right, and all I can talk about is whether the microbes in the flask on his desk are or aren't shitting plutonium, or whatever it is they do that makes them glow. But it's stark night out and there is no other light source near the desk -- which itself, by the way, is integral with the floor, a smoothly rising marble lip forming a pocket that's clearly far too tall for Salmant's knees -- and so, coming to my point, with the soft shadows from the far-away lamps, you can barely make out this guy's face.

So naturally I look hard at his face. 

You've all seen hasty skinjobs, I don't doubt, and you know what it's like. You might not notice if you passed one in the street, but look for more than a second and every millimeter holds a tell. The features don't sit right in the face; the motion of the muscles doesn't match the lines. 

"Mlle Leblanc," the meatpuppet says, leaning back, and everything about him screams it: He doesn't know how to modulate his voice to the resonances of the office, he's not accustomed to this posture of extreme authority, he's a bit too tall for the chair. They've plucked some sucker from middle management, slapped a short-term skinjob on to disguise his face, and sat him at Salmant's desk like a scratch and stricken child playing dress-up. 

I look at the genie and get a sharp look back. We're on the same side here, he's reminding me, and I literally blink when I remember that this is actually true.

"Greyking Books," the meatpuppet continues, "claims to hold the rights to a rather lucrative piece of intellectual property. On the one hand, this has attracted our interest in the account. On the other, we are concerned with the potential impact of its legal exposure. In fact, more than one lawsuit is currently in prosecution against Greyking Books, with a claim of prior art -- and we are informed that the Ministry of Culture is planning to file a suit on grounds that the art in question is in the public domain. I know it is a great deal to ask of a woman whose father died before her first year, but have you, or has your family, any record of the origination of that art?"

Now, this -- this sounds like a legitimate concern, and of course it is, but take a moment to contemplate the context. She stands before the president of the bank (or a poorly done simulacrum whomof), run ragged and barely in her skull, and hears that there's a problem with the account and that there's something you maybe could do to make it go away. But, of course, you can't do anything, you never could, and now you're going to have to tell the biggest name in the bank -- into whose office you've wandered, stinking and half out of your mind, with your toddler drooling on some peasant's shoulder -- that you can't help him out. It's a tactic, and once you know it's a tactic, every detail of the interaction suddenly takes on a stark tint of motivation. "You want to see the main branch, bitch? We'll show you the main branch."

I'm pure fury at this point; the inside of my cheek is bleeding. Aimee blinks once, twice, thrice, and between blinks her eyes are huge, but her pupils, despite the gloom, are tiny. And then something amazing happens.

She digs in the satchel by her side, where I thought all she had was food and toys for Sim, and she pulls out a sheaf of battered paper. I can see spidery handwriting on it, the ink faded but still legible. She shambles over to the immaculate desk, which makes the Salmant meatpuppet very nervous, but all she wants to do is slap the paper down. It obliges her, or me at any rate, with a satisfying rustle and thump.

"I thought you might be interested in this," she says. "When Pel said my father, I knew it was this. I didn't want to show it to her. Not out in my house. But here?" She rolls her eyes up at the vaulted ceiling. "This is the real thing."

The meatpuppet is totally wrong-footed by this point, but decides he ought to look it over; the genie does the same and, because I've realized that none of these people are actually empowered to punish me without going through channels, so do I. And there, with a date that's about contemporaneous with Aimee's birth, I read: