The faceless boy was taken to a mourning house, because the morgue would not accept anyone still considered alive.
Brunn Kal sent a note through the tube: "I work with honest dead men. Your newsboy is still arguing."
Miren read the note twice. It was no help at all, but Brunn's irritated tone was familiar and faintly reassuring.
The newsboy sat on a chair between bowls of water in the black mourning room. His face had returned, but remained blank. His eyes blinked, his lips moved with his breathing, his skin twitched from the cold, yet the boy responded to nothing.
Senna stood beside him and did not sing.
"Why?" Miren asked.
"I hear only the last words of the dead. And he's still alive."
"Then what's wrong with him?"
"I don't know."
"Is he still human?"
Senna turned her blind face towards him.
"Do you really want me to answer for the whole city?"
Miren did not want to place that responsibility on Senna, but he had no answer of his own.
Rona brought the grey notebook. Since the warning about midnight had appeared in it, she had not let it out of her hands. A fine black border had emerged on every page, though it had not been there that morning. Rona did not know whether the border protected what had been written or, on the contrary, prevented it from vanishing from the pages.
"The newsboy's name is Perr," she said. "Registered. An orphan. Works for three newspapers. Last ate this morning."
"Who saw his face disappear?"
"A crowd."
"A crowd makes a poor witness."
"But a loud one."
Miren sat opposite Perr. He did not question the boy at once, but placed some bread before him. Perr stared at the food for a long time, unable to bring himself to take a piece.
"Eat," Miren said.
The boy took the bread. Bit into it. Began to cry.
Rona wrote: "Cries when eating. Living response."
Miren smiled almost imperceptibly.
Then the bread in Perr's hand blackened with letters. They appeared across the crust, the crumb and his fingers:
"Witness absent."
Pain pierced Miren's wrist. M, I, R burned so brightly that it seemed the ink was about to break through the skin. He saw three sheets before him, though there were none on the table.
In the first, he was a coward. This Miren proposed fleeing the city while Rona still remembered his face, and hiding Tilya in the tubes.
In the second, he was a criminal. This Miren knew how to declare Otto Krey, the debt houses and a pair of senators responsible for the appearance of the faceless. Not kill them. Simply declare their versions obsolete, as Rovik would have done.
In the third, he was dead. This Miren spoke more calmly than either of the others: it was easier for a dead man to bear someone else's pain, because he no longer feared for himself.
Each version offered a useful solution and tried to take possession of his hand.
"Ost," Rona called.
He found himself holding a pen above her notebook. The beginning of an order had already appeared on the blank page:
"Rona Veyr is released from participation in the case for the protection of life, memory and…"
He snatched his hand back so sharply that the pen fell.
"What is that?" Rona asked.
"A good idea."
"A bad answer."
"That's what it seemed until I read what I'd managed to write."
She read the unfinished formula and went pale, not with fear but with anger.
"You wanted to erase my involvement?"
"One of my versions did."
"A convenient excuse. You can always say another version was to blame."
She was right. If Miren began blaming his other versions, he would soon become just like Rovik, only without the ministerial coat.
Miren tore out the page and ripped it in two. The notebook jerked in Rona's hands as if resisting.
"I won't do it," he said.
"Why not?"
"Because I have no right to decide for you."
Rona watched him for a long time. Water murmured in the bowls. Perr quietly chewed the bread, from which the letters had already vanished.
"Now that sounds like a request for trust," Rona said at last.
Senna laid her fingers on the lid of the organ.
"Now we can listen."
She did not sing loudly. This time the sound was thin, almost childlike, and instead of darkening, the water in the bowls broke into fine ripples. Perr closed his eyes. Another voice came from his throat: high, boyish, not the voice of a newsboy.
"Adalik, don't give away my card. If they forget me, you'll remember for both of us."
Rona stopped writing.
Miren slowly raised his eyes to Senna.
"Adalik?" Tilya repeated from the corner.
Senna nodded.
"That was what Adal Rovik was called before the First Audit."
Which meant that the minister had either lied about the transition error or did not himself understand why a record of a faceless man had appeared.
Outside, every gas lamp went out at once.
Not one. Not one district.
All Lambern sank into darkness.
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