The route sheet remained.
The governor read it out last, towards dusk, when the chamber was tired and wanted simple decisions: the belt of the Sayur clan's nomadic routes had not been surveyed by the deadline or signed by a surveyor and, under the regulations, was to be declared empty and distributed.
"It cannot be surveyed," the district clerk said. "It is winter. The routes are under ice and snow, and testimony cannot be gathered."
"Declare it empty," the head clerk repeated from behind the others. Mezhentsev had been silent since the returns were annulled, but his people continued to argue.
"The belt can be either empty or surveyed," the governor said heavily. "The law recognises no third possibility."
"The old code does," Prokop said.
Prokop came forward to the table, but did not speak first. He turned to Ayga and Saltu and stepped half a pace aside: they were the ones who had to tell of this route.
Ayga came before the chamber empty-handed. She had neither sheet nor journal. She stood at the table, laid her palms on the boards and began to name the places.
"Hungry Spring Riffle: one day's journey, running water, fish in a hungry year. The name is kept by Saltu, the elder, who received it from his father. Hill Where-the-Doe-Lay-Down: one day's journey, crusted snow until the sun is high. The name is kept by Ayga, who received it from her mother. Seven Smokes Pinewood: one day's journey, reindeer moss, firewood. The name is kept by a living person, and he has been named. Rotten Water Creek…"
Name by name, day by day, she recited the clan's entire autumn route: thirty-one days and thirty-one names. Each had a keeper and at least one witness. Saltu confirmed every name with a dip of his head, and the district clerk began writing them down out of habit.
"What is this?" the governor asked.
"A survey without a sheet," Prokop said. "Here, distance is measured in days of travel and the markers are the names of places. Every name has a keeper and a witness who heard it being passed on. The same three rules emerge: two people confirm the distance, every marker is set before a witness, and each new name is tied to the name of its new keeper. This land is not empty. It was simply surveyed differently."
"The register does not accept names without a sheet," the governor said.
The head clerk intervened again:
"Nor does it accept a guarantee from a man with nothing. A guarantor answers with his property and his rights. This man has neither rank, nor household, nor boundary rights: his seal has been taken from him. What will he answer with, Your Excellency, if a lie is found beneath the blank? He has nothing to lose."
"He has more to lose than any of us," Kapiton said suddenly from the witnesses' bench. The senior topographer rose, heavy and upright, with the party chest at his feet. "A man with nothing has one possession: his name. I measured eleven baselines with him, and my signatures stand beside his. If his name is not enough for the chamber, I put mine beside it. By the rule: two measure, two sign."
Frol rose silently after him and stood behind Kapiton's shoulder, as he had stood beside him at the measuring chain for thirty years.
"The register accepts a blank under guarantee," Prokop said. "Under the old code, a sheet may be submitted with a blank space if a guarantor signs it in his own name and answers with all his boundary rights for having concealed nothing. I am not concealing the route: I state plainly that it exists. I therefore ask that a blank space be left in the register along the belt of routes. A separate inventory records the route, thirty-one days long: all thirty-one names and their keepers. I stand as guarantor. If even one name proves false, exact the full penalty from me, as it was exacted from Luka Mernik."
"Mernik lied," Stroev said from his place. He did not rise. "You know how he ended."
"I know. The blank did not kill him. The lie beneath the blank did." Prokop looked across the chamber at the general. "There is no lie in my testimony. Verify every day's journey if you wish. Come, and the guides will lead you through every place named."
The governor was silent for a long time. Then he looked at Stroev: the decision rested with the head of the survey.
Stroev rose and went over to the route sheet. From the lake to the watershed stretched an unmarked belt without a single sign. The general studied it long and closely.
Everyone expected him to ask, "What is here?"
"Who answers for it?" Stroev asked.
"I do," Prokop said. "It is signed."
And he signed his full name across the blank space, without abbreviation. Once, for a spice cake, he had shown a surveyor the way past his own village. Now, with the same hand, he answered for a route he had not allowed to be erased from the map.
"The register accepts it," Stroev said. "The route sheet is submitted with a blank under guarantee. The inventory of names is to be appended to the register as a separate volume. The register is closed on time."
He turned to the governor and added in an even voice for the record:
"The Unified Survey is complete. One map."
Both could count the outcome as a victory. Stroev had obtained a single register completed on time. Prokop had secured Burn's return to the map and kept the clan's route from being declared empty. But to do it, Prokop had had to remain within Stroev's system, and the general had had to acknowledge a blank space on his map.
Mezhentsev left the review before the findings were announced. At the doors he stopped beside Prokop and said thoughtfully, without malice:
"A blank space secured by a name. Curious. A name on the land loses value more slowly than the land itself." He shook his head. "I shall come back in ten years or so and see what price you fetch."
He had lost a great many small deals across the province, but he was already considering where to begin the next one.
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