Rovik invited them to a closed session by means of a note that appeared on the inside of the archive door.
"If you have already found the city's signature, come. I will show you what it is trying to hide."
Rona suggested they stay away. Tilya suggested they go and steal something. Miren decided to go and hear Rovik out.
The session took place not in the Senate but beneath it, in a windowless room. An entire wall was taken up by a map of Lambern made of glass and copper veins. In the dark, the map glowed from within. The Lower Arches were red, the Middle Streets yellow, the Upper Bridges pale blue. Beneath the Lower Arches gaped a black fissure that looked less like a chasm than a torn field on a page.
Elza Mott sat at the table with two senators Miren knew from tax cases. Otto Krey stood by the wall, determined not to look at Rona.
A thin lamp-police file lay in front of Otto. Miren saw the name Veyr on the cover.
Rona saw her surname too.
At last Otto looked up at her.
"Inspector Veyr. Before the session begins, the commission is prepared to restore part of your right to give evidence."
"In exchange for what?"
"In exchange for surrendering the illegal record from the bell printing works and renouncing the private report created after the lamp seal was contaminated."
Rona said nothing.
Otto opened the file. Inside lay a copy of that same post-mortem card for her mother, but now every line had been filled in. Clean paper, a crisp seal, not a single blemish.
"Your family's honour will be fully restored," he said. "Your mother will remain on the official list of those faithful to the light. After a review, you will be able to return to duty."
Tilya, who was standing by the door pretending not to pick the lock of a nearby cabinet, whispered:
"Are they selling her her mum?"
No one answered.
Rona stared at the copy of the card and struggled not to reach for it. Not out of vanity, and not for the sake of her post. The card promised to restore to her mother a comprehensible, officially recognised account of her death, even if it was false.
"And if I refuse?" Rona asked.
Otto closed the file.
"Then your mother will remain a disputed person from the First Audit. And you may inherit not her honour, but her conflicting version."
Rona took out the grey notebook and laid it on the table beside the file.
"My mother was already a disputed person," she said. "You simply called it loyalty."
Then she took Otto's file, pulled out the copy of the card and tore it along the fold.
"Now begin the session."
Otto went pale, as though she had slapped him.
Rovik placed a small card on the table.
The card belonged to a child. Its edges were frayed and the letters had faded, but the inscription was still legible:
"Adal Rovik's sister. Obsolete version, not to be restored."
There was no name. All the First Audit had left of Rovik's sister was a designation of kinship.
"I kept the card illegally," Rovik said. "If the commission had found it, I would have been declared the bearer of a conflicting version. I was twelve."
Rona answered coldly:
"Your pain does not make you right."
"No. But it does not allow me to forget that this can happen again."
He touched the map. The black fissure widened. Within it, lines of events shifted constantly: vanishing, returning, changing places. On the map the Lower Arches would blaze, then would never have existed, then would become a cemetery, then would turn into a wealthy district with strangers' names on the doors.
The glass of the map grew so hot that the air above it shimmered. The room filled with the smell of dust and searing copper, and one of the senators drew his hand away from the table for fear of being burnt.
When Rovik turned his gaze to the fissure, the child's card remained at the edge of the table. Rona did not reach for it at once. She merely placed the grey notebook beside it and covered her mother's torn card with her palm. The notebook's cover shifted by the thickness of a fingernail. The corner of the child's card vanished beneath the grey leather binding.
Miren saw the movement only because he was watching hands, not faces.
At the door, Tilya stopped picking at the cabinet lock and, for the first time during the session, became utterly still.
"Those Outside the Page do not want to kill us," Rovik said. "Killing is too definite. They want every event to have so many versions that none of them can become reality. The First Audit closed the fissure by leaving a single version. A cruel one, but internally consistent."
"A false one," Miren said.
"The gas lines, registers and laws have rested on that lie for a century. Remove it all at once, and everything will collapse."
Elza Mott rubbed her temple wearily.
"Minister, get to the point."
Rovik nodded.
"In four days the fissure will open again. The Midnight Census will hold the city together if the disputed zones are simplified in advance. There are already too many contradictory records in the Lower Arches: unregistered children, reinstated debtors, illegal workers, people without a light inspection. Their bodies can be preserved, but not all their versions."
"And you will choose the convenient ones," Rona said.
"I will choose the compatible ones."
"Compatible with the Upper Bridges, naturally," Tilya said.
Rovik did not answer.
He turned to Miren.
"You think I want you to agree with me. No. I need someone who, instead of expressing outrage, will propose another way to hold the city together. If you cannot, I will carry out the simplification according to my plan."
"How many?"
"Forty thousand unregistered, disputed and conflicting versions."
Rona gripped the grey notebook.
"People."
Rovik looked at her almost gently.
"If you continue calling every version a person, the city will not survive the night."
"If you stop, it will already have ceased to be a city."
This time Rovik said nothing.
Miren looked at the map and finally understood the whole trap. Removing Rovik would not be enough: the fissure would not vanish with the minister. A simple exposé would not help either. If they destroyed the old order before finding another way to hold the city together, Lambern would perish.
They had to hold more than one version, keep them from tearing one another apart and not surrender people to the void.
A bell somewhere beneath them struck once.
An inscription appeared over the Lower Arches on the map:
"Preliminary simplification will begin with the House of Mourning."
Senna.
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