The rough copy and the fair copy lay side by side on the chamber's table, open at the same place: Black Ridge, Pankrat's winter hut.
In the original, the winter hut had been referenced to an old larch. Prokop had made the entry and written his full name beside it. There was no larch in the fair copy: the reference had been measured from the edge of the belt, leaving the winter hut in the middle of state land. The correction had been made neatly but left unsigned.
"Under the register format, the names attached to corrections are consolidated into a single tally," the district clerk said uncertainly. But the format did not permit figures to be changed.
"The format removes the names," Prokop said. "But it does not allow the reference point to be changed. A person changed that figure. Ask who."
"A clerk's hand," the senior office clerk said with a shrug. "Look how many there are. They were all taught from the same copybooks."
And then Tyko rose at the general's table, where the apprentice clerks were keeping the record of the review.
He wore a state-issue jacket and an inkwell at his belt, and at first the chamber could not see what right an apprentice boy had to intervene. But he was the one keeping the record of the review, and under the regulations the recorder had the right to speak about documents.
"By your leave," Tyko said. His voice broke, and he began again: "By your leave. They weren't all taught the same way. In the party copybooks, the loop is plain, but in the register office copybooks it has a tail, and the downward stroke is made with pressure. I learned from the office copybooks, and I know this hand." He approached the table, picked up the sheet and traced a finger above the line without touching the paper. "Here is the loop, here is the tail, here is the pressure. This isn't a party hand. This is how they write in the register office. Put the notice to the hunter beside it and see for yourselves."
They put them side by side. They saw for themselves.
The tailed loop looked the same in the correction and the notice. The handwriting matched.
Evstigney was the next to approach the table.
He brought a heavy, iron-bound casket and laid eleven old sheets stained with bog water before the chamber. Beside them he placed his notebook, in which he had recorded the year, the belt, the substituted word and the office clerk for every case.
"The surveys are mine, the hands are mine, the sin is mine," he said. "But the words in them are not mine. Eleven sheets in twenty years, and one of the stock words was written into every one beforehand: burn, waste ground or locality. I kept them for my own trial. Better you judge them." He looked at the office men with sober fury. "I've served my sentence beside other men's markers. Now it's your turn."
The same tailed loop was found on the other sheets as well. One hand recurred in the office documents across twenty years.
"The fair copies were taken to the register office for winter verification," Prokop said. "The authors' names disappeared while the fair copy was still being prepared, because corrections were consolidated into a single tally. That meant any later correction was left unsigned. Over three seasons there were thirty-six such corrections, and one of them also changed a figure. The format was drawn up by the same office that sent out the stock words. It could make changes during the winter verification, and the fair copy kept no name of the person who made them."
The senior office clerk turned to Zotik, and now he was no longer polite.
"Does the party clerk attest that his rough copies are authentic?" he asked, enunciating every word. "Has the party clerk thought carefully? As I recall, the party clerk has a brother in the office's employ, and his term of employment ends in the spring. All sorts of things can happen to an employment come spring."
The threat was made in the presence of the chamber and the governor.
Zotik stood very straight.
"My brother's name is Prosha," he said. "Prokhor, in the official record. I spent three years collecting his redemption money and making myself useful. I carried papers, kept silent, consolidated entries according to the format." He laid his palm on the rough copies. "I attest that they are authentic. The hand in the correction is not mine and not the party's. Write, Tyko: the clerk Zotik attested before the chamber, full name given."
Tyko wrote it down. His pen did not tremble, but his chin did.
No one knew what would happen to Prosha's redemption now.
The governor's conference with Stroyev was brief.
The general spoke quietly, and the chamber could not hear the words. Stroyev took the consolidated sheet with the eleven belts and showed the governor the relevant place.
Then he rose.
"The Unified Survey finds as follows," he said in the voice used to read an oath. "First. Transactions concerning unsurveyed lands shall not be entered in the register: what has not been surveyed cannot be sold, because it does not exist in law. The Mezhenstev office's statements concerning unsurveyed land are declared void."
Mezhenstev swayed. With one sentence, Stroyev had nullified most of his small transactions throughout the province. The general punished the office not for its dishonesty, but because its schemes threatened the legality of the register.
"Second. The unsigned correction altering a figure shall be referred for inquiry as a forgery. The winter hut of the hunter Pankrat shall be restored to the sheet according to the original, with a notation in the corner, and entered in his name on the surveyor's testimony."
"Third."
Stroyev took up the pen.
The chamber watched as the head of the Unified Survey, in his own hand, placed a small settlement symbol by the old cutting and wrote its name beside it on the approved sheet of the register.
Burn.
"The Unified Survey acknowledges the error made in the twenty-second year: the party passed the settlement by in order to meet its deadline. The boundary witnesses shall be entered by name."
"There are witnesses," Prokop said.
He opened his father's chest before the chamber and took out the list of pupils: forty-six names in Evlampy's hand, arranged by year, with notes on where each had gone. The first living person on the list was Sekleta. She rose from the witnesses' bench and identified herself as she had all her life:
"Sekleta, the miller's widow. In Burn, I lived two doors down from the school."
She spoke of Burn as her village, not as burnt-over ground.
Two more people from the list whom Sekleta had found in the stockade rose after her: a man from the wagon train who could read syllable by syllable, and an old woman who remembered where the stove had stood in every yard. The pupils of the erased school testified to the boundaries of the erased village, and the district clerk entered their names in the register beside the teacher's.
Prokop waited for silence and did the last thing he owed.
"The chamber has heard that the survey passed Burn by because it was hurrying to meet its deadline," he said. "Now the chamber must learn how the surveyor managed to cross the bog in time. An eight-year-old boy showed him the short way in exchange for a spice cake. I was that boy. Because of me, the surveyor was able to pass the village by. I say this not to be forgiven, but to name my guilt. It was not only strangers who were to blame for the blank space left where Burn stood. I was to blame as well."
It became very quiet.
"What is your point?" the governor asked, almost irritated.
"The point is that I am about to ask the chamber to accept my guarantee," Prokop said. "Under the old code, a guarantor answers with his name and has no right to conceal anything. Here is my name, and the whole truth about me. Including that spice cake. Verify it."
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