The Third Printing House did not look secret.
In Lambern, the most terrible places were rarely hidden. They operated under licence, paid taxes, admitted inspectors and kept a courteous doorman at the entrance. A secret room would have aroused suspicion, while most citizens had learnt to trust an official sign.
The sign over the Third Printing House read: "Kaspar Lom and Sons. Debt Ledgers, Marriage Contracts, Posthumous Inventories."
Kaspar had no sons. Miren knew that from the register. The word "Sons" was intended to inspire confidence in clients, and the law permitted the sign to remain unchanged for the sake of such a deception.
Rona led them through a side entrance, flashing her badge so quickly that the doorman had time to be frightened but not to read it. Tilya slipped between the stacks of paper first and vanished from sight. Marek remained outside. He claimed that one of his former identities owed money to this printing house and that he might be recognised.
Inside, machines thundered. Metal type jumped in its frames. The presses descended, rose and struck the paper again. Finished sheets emerged hot, smelling of oil and fresh ink.
Kaspar Lom stood beside the main press. He was a small man with large hands, dressed in an ink-spattered waistcoat. He showed no surprise at the sight of Rona, but Miren plainly frightened him.
"Are you frightened because I'm dead?" Miren asked.
Kaspar swallowed.
"I don't know what you mean."
"That's unfortunate. I don't know anything either. That's why I came to ask."
Rona laid her badge on the table.
"Forty-seven workers from the Lower Arches. Where are they?"
"If this concerns the transfer of debt, everything was done legally."
"We didn't ask whether it was legal. Where are the people?"
Kaspar glanced at the door behind the press. Too quickly. Tilya was already there.
The door led down into a stifling basement. Forty-seven people sat on benches along the walls, perhaps more. Some had numbered tags hanging from their necks. Lida Voss, a typesetter whose fingers were red with ink, held a sleeping child in her arms. Buckets of water stood on the floor beside loaves of black bread and stacks of forms.
They were not prisoners in chains.
It was worse.
They remained seated because they had been told that if they left before the procedure was complete, their children would inherit their debts and their bodies would be declared fugitive property.
The people were afraid even to rise from the benches and approach the door.
"Who signed the order?" Rona asked.
Kaspar said nothing.
Tilya emerged from the shadows carrying a large book. It was almost as tall as she was.
"Found it," she said.
Miren opened the debt ledger. The forty-seven surnames were neatly entered. Beside each was a notation: "died before collection". At the bottom of the page was a field for the transfer of the remaining labour.
And where Tilya Braks should have been, there was nothing.
The entry had not been crossed out, scraped away or concealed. It had never existed.
Tilya stared at the empty place for a long time, not daring to ask what it meant.
"I'm not there?"
Miren did not answer at once. This was one of those cruelties that no quick word could soften.
"You weren't written off," he said at last. "You were never entered."
She nodded slowly once, then pressed the stolen seal to her chest.
"So I can be sold?"
Kaspar whispered:
"Under the law, an unregistered child has no independent status."
Rona slammed him against the wall before Miren could decide whether he would have done it himself.
Upstairs, the presses went on thundering, drowning out the voices of the people in the basement.
Miren took a clean sheet. He already understood how to erase Kaspar from the register. All he had to do was link Tilya's empty place to the printer's signature, hold him responsible for the missing entry and transfer its consequences to the owner of the press. Kaspar would disappear quickly and, at first glance, justly.
The letter beneath his skin grew warm, as though in agreement.
His father had written: do not erase the living.
Kaspar was contemptible, corrupt and guilty, but he was still a living man.
Miren put not a sentence on the sheet, but a request. Then a second and a third. At his instruction, the press printed forty-seven certificates temporarily restoring status pending personal appearance. Rona signed them as inspector. One by one, the workers made crosses and left their fingerprints. Tilya ran between the press and the table, carrying the hot sheets. For the first time before her eyes, a document restored a person's rights instead of taking them away.
On the forty-seventh sheet, the press stopped.
The printing house fell silent.
Too silent for Lambern.
Applause came from above.
One man was clapping slowly and politely, without mockery. It was more frightening than mockery.
Adal Rovik descended the stairs accompanied by two secretaries. The Minister of the Census was shorter than Miren had expected and carried himself with alarming composure. He wore a grey coat and a silver chain of office. His tired face showed neither anger nor surprise.
He looked at the forty-seven sheets.
"Good work, Mr Ost."
Rona raised her pistol.
"Minister Rovik, you are charged with the unlawful write-off of living citizens."
"Inspector Veyr, these people were written off temporarily under a protective protocol. You intervened before the procedure was complete. I am not angry. Thanks to your error, we have identified a weakness in the documents."
He turned to Miren.
"You not only found a loophole, but used it without full clearance. And you did not erase the printer, though you could have. You are talented, Mr Ost, and your conscience still restrains you. A rare combination."
"I prefer the word 'morality'."
"Conscience is called morality until it is shown what threatens the entire city."
Rona did not lower her weapon.
"You are coming with us."
Rovik gave one of the secretaries a slight nod. The man unfolded a document bearing the Senate's red seal.
"Unfortunately, Mr Ost is no longer within your jurisdiction. By order of the Ministry of the Census, in view of his special legal status and the abilities he has demonstrated, he is hereby appointed Night Clerk of the Special Protocol."
Miren felt a second letter emerge beneath his skin.
I.
Rovik placed a new sheet before him.
It bore the same forty-seven names.
"Sign their deaths again," the minister said. "Correctly this time. Then I will explain why the city will survive only if certain people cease to be listed among the living."
Tilya slowly took shelter behind Miren's back.
The forty-seven people he had saved waited in silence for his decision.
Before Miren lay a sheet that needed only his signature.
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