The Dark Lady

Lady.”
    “Let's discuss it calmly and rationally,” she said, flustered.
    “I mean no offense, Great Lady, but I would much prefer that you accept my resignation with all due haste, as I must write my Pattern Mother and put certain of my affairs in order before performing the ritual.”
    She stared at me silently for a moment. Then an expression of dawning comprehension briefly crossed her face, and she cleared her throat and spoke.
    “You could have taken your life last night,” she said, listening carefully to her own words as if each sentence might lead her to the next. “You could have done it this morning. And yet you came to my office first, and you insist that I accept your resignation.” She paused and looked intently into my eyes. “What if I refuse to accept your resignation, Leonardo?”
    “It had never occurred to me that you might not honor my request, Great Lady.”
    She continued staring at me. “Your House signed an exchange contract with Claiborne,” she said at last. “Your House, ” she repeated slowly, accentuating the word, “not you. What if I insist that you honor that commitment?”
    I sighed. “If you refuse my resignation, then I shall have to fulfill my House's obligation to you.”
    “And you won't kill yourself?”
    “I will not perform the ritual until my obligation to you is over.”
    “Then your resignation is refused,” she said decisively.
    “You are a very intelligent woman,” I said ruefully.
    “And you are a very live employee of the Claiborne Galleries,” she replied with a relieved smile. “At least for the next ten months.”
    “Nine months and twenty-three days,” I corrected her.
    “We'll discuss it further when we're both in better spirits,” she said. She exhaled deeply, as if dismissing the subject for the present. “In the meantime, you're going back to work for Malcolm Abercrombie.”
    “He will never take me back.”
    She grinned triumphantly. “He already has.”
    “But why?” I asked.
    She held up a small hologram of a painting. “Does the subject look familiar?” she asked.
    I stared at it. It was a portrait of Abercrombie's mysterious woman.
    “I recognize the model,” I replied. “But I have not seen this painting before.”
    “No one on Far London has.” She paused. “When Abercrombie contacted me yesterday to inform me that he had fired you, I of course demanded the reason. Once I found out that Venzia had approached you, it occurred to me that he wouldn't have done so unless he thought you had something— or could get something— that he needed. So I spent a few hours going through all the electronic brochures we receive each week for upcoming auctions and private sales, and I came up with this. ” She indicated the hologram. “Is this what he wants?”
    “Just the information, Great Lady,” I said. “Not the painting itself. He collects information about the woman the way Abercrombie collects her portraits.”
    “I wonder why?”
    “I do not know, Great Lady.”
    She paused, as if considering Venzia's interest, then shrugged. “At any rate, this portrait is being sold by Valentine Heath, a collector we've dealt with a number of times in the past. He prefers to sell directly to us, rather than go through the bother and uncertainty of an auction.” She paused. “When you arrived, I was telling Abercrombie that we'd found another portrait of his lady, and that a condition of our obtaining it for him was his willingness to rehire you and offer written apologies to you, Claiborne, and the House of Crsthionn.”
    “He is a proud man,” I said. “Surely he did not agree to your terms.”
    “He is also an obsessed man,” she replied.
    “He agreed?”
    She smiled. “He agreed. You're back in his employ.”
    “But I don't want to go back!” I blurted out, surprising myself with my audacity.
    “Surely it's preferable to suicide.”
    “Suicide is honorable,” I said. “There is nothing honorable about working for a man who holds me in contempt and thinks me a liar.”
    “Prove to him that he's wrong.”
    “But— ”
    “Look, Leonardo,” she interrupted. “Hector teases me because I'm always campaigning for our alien brothers, and in a way he's right: I make a lot of speeches and go on a lot of marches, but I never accomplish anything tangible. Well, this is my opportunity to actually do something, and teach a very distasteful man a very distasteful lesson at the same time.” She paused and smiled at