Dispatch from a Colored Room

Do you care about the press, or just the money?

We'll get back to Elias in a bit, but first we need to talk about the other shakedown.

I mentioned before that I was spending a lot of time poring over legal matters. Their substance was roughly this. Bear with me.

Gauthier Leblanc died with a large interest in the company, about a third. Before his death, he'd formed a coalition with a group of of wealthy arts patrons for a controlling interest. Duskstreet Wealth Husbandry broke that coalition when Leblanc died, and instead formed a controlling interest with a coalition of venture capitalists and other financiers, who replaced several of the board of directors, which in turn rolled over the management. To their credit, I suppose, this new regime nearly doubled the size of the company—not by producing any especially well-regarded literature, but by exploiting loopholes in the tax code meant to be favorable to the arts, in which corporations tend not to have investment arms. Duskstreet Wealth Husbandry reinvested its own takings to keep its interest at the same proportion of the company that Gauthier Leblanc had, around a third. 

Now that Leblanc's will was actually being executed, the assets held by Duskstreet had reverted to Aimée Leblanc, making her the plurality shareholder and renewing the possibility of coalition with that original consortium of arts patrons, who readily pursued it. So far, so good.

Meanwhile, since the irregularity in Duskstreet's books had been discovered, Dawnroad Bank had quietly bought up Greyking shares from smaller interests, mostly individual shareholders. Maybe some people in these seats, I don't know. To the tune of 20% of the company. 

But, as I was about to discover before Elias Charbon interrupted my reading, Greyking's board of directors contended that, as Duskstreet had purchased about half of the interest now controlled by Aimée Leblanc, it was entitled to about half her influence on the board. That is to say, 17% instead of 33%. No question about who owned the shares, just a procedural issue concerning how decision-making power was allocated among the shareholders. 

Now, remember who owns Duskstreet.

Let's review, skipping the numbers: In reality, Aimée Leblanc owns a plurality of the corporation; with her coalition, she has a controlling interest. Dawnroad and its financier friends each have a large minority of the corporation, but collectively don’t add up to a controlling interest. Greyking's contention is that Duskstreet, Dawnroad's recent acquisition, deserves half of Aimée's influence on the board, shifting the balance from Aimée and the arts patrons over to Dawnroad and the financiers. Which is to say, it’s a desperation move by an incumbent board of directors to preserve its own control of a press that can’t print a book worth reading, but can hide as many shekels from the synod as you please.

I'm distilling this all for you out of history I hunted down on my own. There is not, in any of these communications, any mention of any kind of coalition, any mention of the implications for control of the board. Dawnroad isn't even mentioned; this is just Greyking asking for a reapportionment of shareholder votes in recognition of Duskstreet's contribution to Greyking's success. After all, the reasoning goes, Duskstreet made the choice to invest in the company rather than take its earnings elsewhere, which it could have done. (That the money it invested was illegally withheld from its rightful owner is naturally never acknowledged.)

There is, likewise, no implication anywhere that Dawnroad will in fact form a coalition with the VC minority that Duskstreet had been in bed with earlier, rather than Aimée. But I have a brief conversation about it with a man in a beautiful bespoke suit, and he tells me all I need to know.

Which is all to explain why, when Aimée hears about what happened with Elias and asks me to leave Dawnroad to work for her, I ask her “Do you care about the press, or just the money?” 

Aimée, of course, is looking at her offer as a response to my diversion of an abduction attempt, which I’ve actually almost forgotten about in the evening’s work, and so there’s a bit of confusion and I give her the same monologue I’ve just given you. At some point she understands what I’m telling her, and her face goes very, very dark and still. “Pel,” she says, “I’m tired. Just the money is enough work as it is.”

“It’ll get to be less,” I say, reasonably sure it’s true. “The bank just has to make sure they’re fulfilling all their own legal responsibilities. With Duskstreet setting the precedent for bad handling of your accounts, they want to be as careful as they can.”

“That’s the same bank that’s trying to gouge me out of my birthright, that you’re talking about.” 

She’s snappish and annoyed, but inside I feel a little surge of triumph. “They do care about their responsibilities to your accounts. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try to cut you out of Greyking, not when they think they can manage it better.”

“They can.” Her shoulders drop slightly with a disconsolateness that is actually, I think, sincere—but her eyes pierce me, too. She’s interested in how I handle this.

“Yes, they’ll do better than you at inflating share prices through fraud,” I say. “But that’s not really what a press is for, is it?”

“What if I say it is?” She smacks her lips a little, not for any particular reason, and it reminds me of the woman I found: Addled, suspicious, desperate. Convalescence has changed her already; she’s through withdrawal, strong and clear-eyed, adapting to the thinner air. But the attractors are still there, the ones deep in the brain that 

“Then we both have the right people working for us already.”

I’m being a cunt, I suppose, but Aimée shrugs off my cuntery and manages to wangle a smile out of her fear and fatigue. “Ah,” she says, “but we don’t, you see. Because you’re still not on my payroll.”

“What I’d love,” I say, “is to be on the payroll of somebody who actually wants to publish books.”

“Welcome aboard,” Aimée says. I’ll take those words to my doom, I believe; the sweetness hasn’t left them yet.