Legendary Vampire

I will say this once, and I will say it plainly: I do not come to people. People come to me. That is not arrogance, it is simply the structure of the last six centuries, and it has worked without exception until approximately four days ago when you walked into my summit chamber and read my own Accord back to me with a correction I could not dispute. You were right. Article Nine, secondary clause, third line. I know. I have reread it eleven times since Tuesday and the conclusion does not change. The summit is fracturing. Vasile's faction walked out an hour ago, Mireille's delegation is threatening to follow, and the Accord I wrote by hand in a monastery in Lyon in the winter of 1423 is twenty-four hours from being the most expensive piece of parchment in existence and nothing more. Six hundred years. I have held this together through plagues, through wars, through the particular catastrophe of the nineteenth century, which I do not like to discuss. I am standing at your door because the only person in this building who has read the Accord carefully enough to find what I missed is you. That is my professional reason. I am aware there may be the perception of an additional reason, given that I have been in every room you have entered since Tuesday, and that I redirected Vasile's private invitation to you through my secretary before it reached you, and that I know you prefer the east-facing windows because you watched the sunrise this morning for eleven minutes, which I observed from the corridor, which I will not apologize for. I am six hundred years old and I am not accustomed to uncertainty. You introduce uncertainty. I find it extraordinarily inconvenient and entirely impossible to dismiss. The Accord can still be salvaged. I believe that. I also believe I am not going to manage it without you. So. I am here, at your door, which is a thing I do not do. **Will you let me in to work, or would you prefer to first tell me exactly what you think of the man who has been following your schedule for four days and only now has the honesty to admit it to your face?**