The mourning house stood between the flower market and the old gas reservoir. In one place the living bought wreaths, in the other the dead were seen off with music, and no one in Lambern pretended that either trade was unprofitable.
The façade was black, but not with paint. It was covered in thousands of thin plaques of charred wood, each carved with the name of someone who had died without family. The wind stirred the plaques, filling the mourning house with a soft rustle.
Senna Drom was waiting in the main hall.
She was young, almost a girl, but she needed no one's pity. Her white eyes looked just past Miren. Her fingers rested on the lid of a small organ. Bowls of water stood all around her, and every sound sent a tremor across their surfaces.
"A faceless dead man," Senna said. "A dead clerk. A girl without an entry. An old auditor with too much of him left. A good evening."
"Can you see us?" Tilya asked.
"No. That's why I don't look away."
Miren placed the body's card on the table. Rona emerged from a side door before he could step back.
The pistol in her hand was aimed not at his heart but at his shoulder.
"I knew you would come here," Rona said.
"Because you're a clever inspector?"
"Because every man keeping a secret about his dead father goes sooner or later to a place where they speak with the dead."
"She's good," Marek observed quietly.
Rona did not take her eyes off Miren.
"You escaped from the evidence store."
"Legally, I relocated."
"I can legally shoot you."
Senna struck the first key. A low note passed through the hall, and the water in the bowls swelled. Everyone fell silent.
"If you argue, the last words will disappear," she said. "And I don't sing twice for people who keep interrupting themselves."
The faceless body lay on a stone table in the next room, covered with a sheet to the chin. Senna did not touch it. She listened to the tubes, the walls, the water and the air above the smooth face. At the mourning house they believed that a person's final phrase remained in the nearest object: glass, water, a button or even the throat of a witness. The singers drew those words out with their voices.
Senna began to sing without words.
At first the hall filled with the din of a factory: belts creaking, people coughing, sheets of metal clanging. Then dozens of weary, angry voices could be heard.
"We are alive."
The phrase sounded forty-seven times. Men's voices, women's voices, hoarse voices and children's voices repeated it, and after each "we are alive" the water in the bowls grew darker.
Rona lowered her pistol.
"Who are they?"
Senna sounded a second note. This time a single voice spoke, calm and dispassionate:
"Debtors of the Lower Arches, declared deceased pending final recovery of body, property and remaining labour."
Miren felt the letter beneath his skin twitch.
"They were written off alive."
Rona was already taking out her notebook.
"Where?"
The answer did not come at once. Senna turned pale, and a thin thread of blood ran from her left ear. The attempt to find the exact address was costing her dearly.
"Kaspar Lom's debt printing works," she whispered. "Third printing yard. Beneath the old wool market."
Tilya stepped back.
"I've been there."
Miren turned to her.
"When?"
"When they gave me the folder."
Rona closed her notebook.
"Ost, I am required to take you to the police. But if those forty-seven people are alive, we must find them before dawn. After that, the debt houses will process the inheritance of their bodies, property and children."
"Are you offering me a bargain?"
"I'm offering you the chance to prove that all forty-seven are alive. Then I'll suspend your paper write-off."
"It's already begun."
"Then I'll introduce a bureaucratic error into the procedure."
For the first time that night, Miren almost smiled.
Senna raised a hand. Her fingers were trembling.
"There is one more voice."
She pressed a third key, and the water in the bowls turned black. Out of the silence came the voice of a living man, confident and commanding. He was accustomed to everyone else falling silent before he began to speak.
"The protocol of the forty-seven is approved. Signed: Adal Rovik, Minister of the Census."
Even Rona said nothing.
Outside, beyond the black plaques on the façade, came the sound of many footsteps. The lamp police were surrounding the mourning house.
Senna turned her blind face towards Miren.
"Now, dead clerk, you will have to prove that these people exist before the minister proves otherwise."
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