Prokop travelled to Pereymishche with passing convoys, and where there were none, alone, hauling his father's chest on a hunter's sledge.
By the register's deadline, the winter road had been well packed. One after another, convoys carrying sheets, chests and journals made their way to the stockade. Parties were arriving for the review from across the eastern taiga, and the former surveyor walked among them unnoticed.
On the third day, at a roadside shelter where the wagoners were warming themselves, he heard his own story.
"…and this surveyor throws down his seal and says, 'Ain't surveying empty ground,'" a wagoner recounted, blowing on his tea. "One of those erased folk. Years ago they entered his village as a burn, and it turned his mind: they say he measured the whole belt three times over, kept looking for the truth."
"And where is he now?"
"Where do you think. Gone."
Prokop sat in a corner of the shelter, unshaven, his sheepskin coat crusted with frost, and listened to the story of his own disappearance. It was almost true. Only one thing was missing: where he was going.
He was not entirely sure of that himself.
Those entitled to speak at the review were officers of the Survey, sureties, contractors and witnesses. He no longer had rank. A man erased from the lists would not be admitted as a surety. That left the right of a witness. At night, to the creak of the sledge, Prokop recalled the relevant line of the regulations: any person whose name appears in the survey journals beneath a measurement or correction may be admitted as a witness.
His name stood beneath the first correction to the belt. The blind ranging pole, Dry Portage, Kapiton's hand: porter P. Vershinin.
In the draft.
In the fair copy, that passage had been reduced to a total, and his name had disappeared in the copying. Under the regulations, the drafts were taken to the review with the fair copies as authentic appendices to the lists. The party clerks were responsible for them.
The entry that gave him the right to speak at the review was travelling to Pereymishche in a waxed wrapper, against Zotik's chest, beside the letters to his brother.
Prokop walked and thought of his father.
For twenty years his father had travelled this road with petitions. He had stood in shelters like these, warmed his hands by the fire and perhaps heard the same conversations. Every time he entered the chancery, he came as a petitioner: he asked those who had taken something from him to give it back. A petitioner depends on whether anyone chooses to hear him.
Prokop was not going there to ask.
A witness does not ask. He states his name and says what he measured and what he saw. His testimony must be accepted regardless of rank, because the regulations demand it. Stroev could not abolish that rule without breaking his own regulations.
The difference seemed slight, but his whole life now depended on it.
On the last stage before the stockade, a reindeer team caught up with him.
He heard it behind him in the dry clicking of hooves and stepped off the winter road to let it pass. The team drew level with him and stopped. Aiga sat on the sledge in a travelling reindeer-skin coat, her face darkened by the headwind.
For several moments they looked at each other in silence.
"Get in," she said. "You won't reach the review in time on foot."
Prokop did not move.
"You said I no longer existed for you."
"You don't," Aiga agreed. "I haven't come for you. I am going to the review. The clan needs a voice among the papers, not a kind-hearted champion. Grandfather sent me as a witness: I guided the survey, and my name is in the hiring journal. I do not need you, former surveyor."
She shifted on the sledge to make room.
"But a sledge runs more evenly with two. Get in. This is not forgiveness."
Prokop tied the little sledge carrying the chest behind hers and climbed aboard.
The reindeer set off. The team raced towards the stockade, where long tables for the sheets of the Unified Survey were already being knocked together in the square before the governor's offices.
Somewhere ahead, in a convoy, travelled the drafts bearing his name.
Somewhere ahead, Zotik was deciding where he would stand.
Somewhere ahead, Stroev already knew they were coming and did nothing to stop them.
Prokop sat on someone else's sledge beside a woman who had not forgiven him, but had come for him all the same. He held his father's chest on his knees and felt he was in his place. For the first time since the day the chancery refused to restore Burn. Perhaps for the first time since he was eight.
A man erased from the lists was travelling to the review to defend those who had also been erased.
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