The grey lamps burned without light.
They did not illuminate the streets. They made faces easier to account for. Beneath their glass, skin looked flat, voices sounded duller, and the documents in people's pockets grew heavier, as though the city were checking whether they had enough papers to go on.
Miren realised the preliminary audit had begun when the first passer-by looked at him and saw nothing.
He did not look away. He was not frightened. His gaze simply slid past, as it might pass over an empty shop window.
Then came another, followed by a lamp policeman whose detention sheet had borne Miren Ost's name only an hour ago. The policeman frowned, read the sheet, saw the empty space between Tilya Braks and Rona Veyr, shrugged and walked on.
"That's bad," Tilya said.
"How bad?"
She reached out and snapped her fingers directly in a passer-by's face.
The man blinked.
"Very. They see you as an obstruction."
Rona stood three paces from Miren, looking at him as she had in the morgue on the first night: intently and coldly, a short personal pistol in her palm. Her service weapon had been taken along with her right to testify, but the Veyr family was not accustomed to surrendering every weapon on command.
"Name yourself," she said.
Miren forced the words out:
"Miren Ost."
Her face did not change.
"Prove it."
He wanted to tell her about the morgue, the faceless body, her lamp ring, the grey notebook and her mother's card, which she had given to the bell. But as soon as he began to speak, every memory lost its detail and became a dry inventory, useless as proof.
The grey light did not erase facts. It took away a person's ability to prove that those facts belonged to him.
Rona opened her notebook. On the first page, in her own hand, was written: "If I fail to recognise Miren Ost, trust the facts, not the face."
Below it came the lines: the dead clerk, forty-seven living people, Lida and Mal, the broken ring, the House of Mourning, mother's card, Adal Rovik's sister, refusal to erase an enemy.
Rona read for a long time.
"I don't trust you," she said at last.
"Sensible."
"But I trust my own notes."
Tilya breathed out in relief.
She went over to Miren and thrust the stolen seal into his hand. Then she immediately snatched it back.
"No," she told herself. "You might turn out to be the one who takes it away."
"I've never taken the seal from you."
"The notebook says you threatened to three times."
"For form's sake."
Tilya frowned. For an instant, her old, almost familiar irritation appeared on her face, then went out at once. She did not remember Miren himself, only the way they usually argued. The grey light was trying to take even that.
Miren held out his hand, empty palm upwards.
"The first time you brought me a commission, you kept the seal in your left sleeve. You hid the money in your right because you thought I'd be watching the hand with the stolen seal."
Tilya stepped back half a pace.
"Is that in the notebook?"
Rona leafed through the pages.
"No."
Tilya looked at him for a long time. Then she pushed the seal into his palm and did not release it at once.
"Then hold on to it. But if you turn out not to be yourself, I'll steal it back along with your hand."
"Fair."
Someone in the street called Miren's name, and he turned too quickly. It was Lida. She stood at the entrance to the Lower Arches with Mal in her arms, looking straight at him without recognising him. She stubbornly believed the records of Miren's actions, though she no longer remembered the man himself.
"Are you the man who entered my son in the records?" she asked.
Miren had no time to answer. The archive voice answered for him:
"Function confirmed."
Mal began to cry. Not loudly, but Lida immediately drew him close, as though the stranger's voice had frightened the child.
"I didn't ask about the function," she said.
At those words the grey lamps flickered. Several passers-by stopped. Someone looked at Miren and frowned, as though the outline of a man had suddenly appeared in an empty place.
Rona quickly wrote in her notebook: "Lida Voss distinguishes the person from the function. The grey audit fails when someone remembers a specific act."
The ink in the notebook tried to change "person" to "object". Rona pressed her finger to the word, and the paper gave a quiet crunch.
"I don't know your face," she told Miren without looking up. "But I can see how hard the city is trying to stop anyone calling you a person. That is evidence in itself."
A strip of paper came loose from the grey lamp above. It drifted down to Miren's feet. An order was printed on it:
"Preliminary audit. Object Miren Ost: all documents, connections and private memories to be deemed temporarily unprovable. Object's voice to be transferred to the archive until the conclusion of the Midnight Census."
Miren wanted to laugh. He could not.
Another voice came from his throat, identical in timbre but dry and level, without a tremor or a faltering breath.
"I hereby confirm: object Miren Ost is not a necessary person if his function can be preserved."
Tilya stepped back.
Rona closed the notebook.
"What was that?"
Miren put a hand to his throat.
"The city is learning to speak in my voice."
The grey lamps flared brighter.
A single word appeared on each one:
"Approved."
Open in the reader