By evening, two versions of what had happened were circulating through Lambern.
According to the first, forty-seven workers had miraculously returned from the dead because a dead clerk had found a loophole in the law. That was the story told in the Lower Arches, beside cauldrons of cheap stew, outside laundries and beside gas pipes where children warmed their hands. People spoke the word 'miracle' cautiously, but with hope.
In the second version, forty-seven debtors had committed fraud, Inspector Rona Veyr had aided a dead falsifier, and the city was threatened by a rebellion of unpaid bodies. That was the version printed in the evening papers of the Upper Bridges.
Rovik did not forbid anyone to tell the first version. He made sure every evening paper printed the second.
The papers appeared with headlines equally convenient for Rovik:
"DEAD CLERK BRINGS DEBTS BACK TO LIFE"
"LOWER ARCHES DEMAND RIGHT NOT TO PAY"
"MINISTRY OF THE CENSUS PREVENTS CHAOS OF VERSIONS"
Miren read the newspapers in a tea shop. They would not let him sit at a table: the dead were not entitled to crockery. Rona drank tea from a tin mug at the counter, while Tilya ostentatiously ate a stolen bun where everyone could see her.
"He is not accusing you of murder," Rona said.
"Because murder has to be proved."
"And 'chaos of versions' sounds as though nothing needs proving."
Tilya licked her fingers.
"I like the first paper better. You sound more frightening in that one."
"Thank you."
"It was not a compliment. Newspapers sell better with frightening people in them."
Miren set the paper aside. To make the citizens believe the workers, he had to force the debt houses to choose aloud between two answers, both of them costly.
He went not to a newspaper office, but to a debt house.
The debt houses of Lambern stood on the clean Middle Streets. Inside, they smelt of wax and leather folders. Miren entered with forty-seven copies of the restored testimonies and a single question.
Behind the counter, a manager in thin gloves was opening letters with a sharp knife. Lida stood beside him, the skin of her bare hands cracked, clutching her testimony so tightly that the ink stained her thumb.
"If these people were dead, who inherited their debts?"
The manager, a thin man with the eyelashes of a porcelain doll, looked at Rona.
"This is a provocation."
"It is an account," Rona said.
"Inspector Veyr has been deprived of the right to give testimony."
"But I can still read perfectly well."
Miren laid the first sheet on the counter. Lida Voss. Debt for lodgings, ink, the child's treatment and the quota she had failed to meet after giving birth. The contract stated that after a debtor's death, their body, remaining labour and property passed to the debt house. But if the death was registered before the transfer, the debt was considered discharged.
The manager was the first to understand where Miren was leading.
If the forty-seven were dead, their debts had died with them.
If the forty-seven were living, the debt houses had unlawfully detained living people.
Whatever the answer, the debt houses lost money.
By midnight, a new rumour was spreading through the city:
"The dead do not pay."
In the Lower Arches, the words were repeated first in whispers, then with laughter, and finally turned into a song. Workers who only yesterday had been afraid to leave the cellar now stood outside the doors of the debt houses and demanded that their debts be annulled. Lida Voss held Mal in her arms and showed her neighbours the sheet on which his name had been entered separately from her obligations.
"Look," she told the boy, though he did not yet understand. "Here, you belong to yourself."
Miren remembered those words.
An hour later, Rovik answered not with soldiers and arrests, but with new wording.
Ministry notices appeared on the walls: "Persons restored through contaminated testimony shall be deemed disputed pending completion of the review. Transactions with them, marriages, employment, complaints and receipt of inheritances are temporarily not recommended."
They were not forbidden to live. But after such a notice, no one would want to employ them, enter into transactions with them or accept their complaints.
"That is how he works," Rona said. "He does not kill a person. He makes everyone afraid to deal with them."
Miren looked at the notice. The third letter beneath his skin itched, reminding him of the version ready to serve Rovik.
In the crowd by the wall, a newspaper boy suddenly stopped. His mouth opened, and he spoke in the voices of three newspapers at once:
"Disputed persons. Disputed persons. Disputed persons demand the right to be considered persons."
The people laughed, thinking the boy was mocking the headlines.
Then his face became smooth.
The laughter stopped.
He continued speaking without lips, without eyes, without expression:
"The city edition awaits correction. Witnesses absent. Fields open."
Miren stepped forward.
The faceless boy turned his smooth face towards him and spoke in Miren's own voice:
"After midnight, I cannot be trusted."
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