Don Baguette did not attend the Broadcast. He attended, instead, a meeting on Tier
Three in the private dining room of an establishment so exclusive that its name was known
only to those who had been invited, and those who had been invited had all been asked,
politely, not to repeat it. The room held twelve chairs. Eleven were occupied.
The twelfth chair was for whoever was going to bear the consequences of the
evening's news.
Baguette sat at the head of the table with the formal gravity of a man who has built
an empire and has the patience of someone who baked slowly at high heat. He was long,
pale gold, and slightly hardened at the crust — the result of decades in a city where softness
was a strategic error. His eleven guests were the operational leadership of the Grain Cartel:
the transit-lane coordinators, the forged-document division, the starch-trade oversight
committee. All people who had, until this evening, considered the crisis entirely
manageable.
The broadcast was playing on a small receiver in the corner of the room.
By the time Kale had read Article the Seventh, three of the eleven guests had placed
their glasses down with the careful deliberateness of people who are processing something
and will not speak until they are finished processing. By the time Avocado had read V's
letter, two more had done so. By the time Vinaigrette's founding charter was read aloud on
the broadcast — an addition that had not been planned, that Kale had decided to include in
the final hours before the broadcast began — Don Baguette himself placed his glass down.
DON BAGUETTE: "The Peeler Mafia's founding charter. V's fifth document. She
found the room."
His chief of operations — a hardened biscotti named Grimaldi who had been with
the Cartel for thirty years — looked at him across the table.
GRIMALDI: "The formal recognition provision in Article the Eighth — the Mafia
gets standing. The Spice Syndicate gets standing. The Can Folk get standing. The
Cartel is not mentioned."
DON BAGUETTE: "Because the Cartel did not ask for it. And because the Cartel
made a financial arrangement with the Frozen One, which the broadcast hath just
made entirely public, which meaneth the Cartel is, at this moment, the only
criminal organisation in Grovia that is both actively hostile to the new order and
visibly exposed."
A silence of considerable weight.
DON BAGUETTE: "Cornflake. The debt I held over Cornflake. The transit
corridor. Is it in the ledger?"
GRIMALDI: "If it was a Guild transaction, it could be."
DON BAGUETTE: "Then the debt is already public. Whether I call it in or not."
He sat with this for thirty seconds. Thirty seconds was, for Don Baguette, a very long
time to sit with anything. In thirty seconds he had, in his long career, decided to expand
the Cartel into three new transit corridors, consolidate two rival operations, and once —
this was the decision that had started his ascent — refuse a commission from the Frozen
One's predecessor that would have made the Grain Cartel the dominant criminal power in
Grovia at the cost of its independence. He had refused because he understood, at forty
years old, that dominance purchased with another party's money was not dominance. It
was employment.
He picked up his glass. He took a measured sip.
DON BAGUETTE: "Draft a letter to the New Accord committee. Express the
Grain Cartel's interest in participating in the formal economic frameworks the
new agreement will establish. Do not apologise. Do not explain. State an interest,
name our relevant capacities, and invite a meeting."
GRIMALDI: "Don. We have operated outside the official economy for a hundred
years."
DON BAGUETTE: "And for a hundred years, the official economy operated
without us, despite requiring us. The arrangement was never sustainable. The broadcast hath ended its useful life. Adapt, Grimaldi. The Cartel survives by
adapting. It always hath."
The meeting ended. The dining room emptied. Don Baguette remained for a
moment at the window, looking out over the lights of Tier Three. Somewhere above him,
Kale was at a microphone, finishing the broadcast. He listened to the last few minutes
through the small receiver in the corner.
She was reading Fennel's name. His full name. His service record. His private
archive work. The exact nature of his death. The names of those responsible. Don Baguette
had not commissioned the murder and had not known about it in advance. But he had
made a financial arrangement with the figure who had. He was, by proximity, part of the
same machinery that had killed an archivist who had been trying, alone and without
resources, to do the right thing.
He sat with this. Then he picked up the receiver and spoke to the broadcast's open
line.
DON BAGUETTE: "This is Don Baguette, Patriarch of the Grain Cartel. I am
going to say three things. Firstly: the debt Cornflake owes me is cancelled.
Secondly: the Grain Cartel had no involvement in the death of Archivist Fennel,
and we condemn it unequivocally. Thirdly: the Cartel will cooperate fully with
Investigator Asparagus's inquiry."
He replaced the receiver. He collected his coat. He left the private dining room of
the establishment with no public name, and walked out into the open streets of Tier Three,
where citizens of every description were standing in doorways and windows, listening to a
broadcast, deciding what kind of Grovia they wanted to wake up in the morning.
He walked home through them all, unaccosted, unacknowledged, and content, for
the first time in a very long time, with a decision he had made.