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Emilia came to Tombs [1] in the twelfth year of the interregnum It was the first time in history a critic had been assigned to the city A chilly place split over the St Laurent, it is very small as cities go, even in the north, and not much accustomed to visits by anyone important   Our city has long, lonely nights, and its forest seems very close; bawdy is the word that best describes the character of its artistic spirit Its first citizens are fishermen and foresters, and their deeds are recounted in drafty little taverns with the same gusto accorded to the heroes of antiquity   Therefore the appointment of an official critic was greeted with understandable trepidation on the part of our artists, poets, and cooks Tombs adores its connection to the rustic and was perhaps unwilling to finally, formally relinquish that connection, though it has been a place of generally cosmopolitan values for a long time   When Emilia arrived, she was treated with the honur due her office, but scepticism of her duties and even her character circulated through society Was she in some way defective? For what other reason would she be sent to us, a timber boomtown nearly in the wilderness?   She came through the Bonette notch in October by caribou-driven sledge, a great dark vessel of oak with silver jangles that for a few weeks lingered in our streets like her chaperone After making her introductions, she set up a little storefront office near my own shop on the Rue Sirona, had a very elegant sign painted with her official seal, and settled in for the winter I was doing a brisk business that season selling fraudulent ceramics, and I had nothing but pity for the young critic She was invited nowhere; she saw almost no one   A newly-appointed critic could reasonably expect that the people of Tombs would clamour for her approval If they received it, she would give them a seal carved from amarite, the lesser gemstone so blue it is almost black Of course the value of the seal is not in the material of