Chapter 95: Nobody Ever Made One
The answer came in on the fifteenth of Sylphenia at about eleven in the morning, and Mataon was in the queue when it arrived, and he knew it had arrived because the whole building changed its mind about what it was doing.
Two years, to the day.
He had put on his other shirt for it. He understood that this was ridiculous and had done it anyway.
***
Officer Rethe came down and stood at the end of the fourth counter. She had no business doing that, and the young clerk did not ask her to move.
"It came in the general packet," she said. "One sheet. It’s yours, you’ll be given it, and I’m going to stand here while you read it. If anybody wants to write that down, they may."
"Why?"
"Because I read you sixty-one clauses in a room upstairs on the thirteenth of Ravenmark, and I haven’t slept properly since, and I’d like to see the end of it."
The young clerk put the sheet on the counter and turned it round.
It was one page. It was in the second hand. It had a reference at the top and the seven characters at the foot and a date, and between them there were four sentences.
*The subject asks what is the prescribed form of the certificate of discharge, and where it may be obtained.*
*This office has searched. There is no prescribed form. The instrument at schedule four of the discharge provisions requires a certificate in the prescribed form, and no form has been prescribed by the centre or by any office, in the two hundred and eleven years since the provision was made.*
*This office is therefore unable to issue a certificate of discharge to any subject, and has never issued one, and could not have done.*
*The subject is answered.*
Nobody in the office said anything for a while.
Mataon read it three times. Then he put both hands flat on either side of it and stood there with his head down and did not move for long enough that the young clerk started to reach across the counter and then thought better of it.
"Read it out," said Rethe.
"I don’t think I can."
"Then I will," she said, "because I’ve read four hundred worse things out loud in this building and I’m not letting the best one go past in silence."
She picked it up and read it in the voice she used for clauses, flat, at a speed a man could follow, and did not hurry the parts that were hard.
When she got to *and could not have done* the third counter had stopped working, and by *the subject is answered* there were about thirty people in that room not moving.
She put it back down on the counter.
"That’s an answer," she said. "Complete, honest, sufficient, to the question asked. No failure in it, no delay, no evasion, no note. He answered inside sixty days and he answered properly, and I’d defend every word of it at any hearing in this country."
"Yes."
"Say the rest."
Mataon lifted his head.
"He’s certified in writing, over the seal of an office of record, that no subject of Deuna has ever been able to be discharged," he said. "Because the paper doesn’t exist. Because nobody made it. For two hundred and eleven years."
"And where does that sheet go?"
"To the central roll."
"To the central roll," Rethe agreed. "In the general return, in the ordinary way, with about nine hundred others, on the first of Pyrelon."
They gave him a copy and he paid four coppers for it and it went against the line.
Barni was on the step and had been since ten.
"Say it."
"I asked where a piece of paper was kept," Mataon said. "And a man I’ve never met wrote back to tell me that nobody in the history of this country has ever made one, and he signed it with the seal of the office that owns me, and it goes on the public roll in fourteen days."
"And?"
"And it’s not a note of failure. It’s better than a note of failure." He sat down on the step next to Orvek, who had come out of the crowd and not gone anywhere. "A note says an office didn’t answer. This says the discharge doesn’t exist. It’s a finding, and the office found it against itself, and it’s in its own hand and it can’t be taken back."
Barni put his chin on his paws and left it there a while. He did that when he wanted a silence to be his and not somebody else’s.
"Two hundred years," he said.
"A hundred and ninety-two, less two months and forty-six coppers."
"That wasn’t a question about your line."
"I know what it was." Mataon looked at the square. "Everybody on that crew is paying down a debt that has never once, in eleven generations, ended in a piece of paper saying it was paid. Tal’s grandmother started a sum that nobody has ever been able to finish. Not because they didn’t pay. Because there was nothing to hand them at the end."
Orvek got the slate out and wrote two words and did not turn it round for a moment, and then he did.
*They knew.*
"Somebody knew. Somebody wrote *the prescribed form* two hundred and eleven years ago and then never prescribed one. There’s no telling now whether that was a lazy afternoon or a decision, and I’d very much like it to have been a decision."
*Why?*
"Because a decision has a person in it," said Mataon, "and I’ve got no idea what to do about an afternoon."
Ilma Serreth came out at half past twelve with her coat on and her office bag and did not stop at the step.
She walked past them across the square, and Mataon did not call after her, and Barni’s ears went right forward and stayed there.
She got about twenty yards across the wet stones and then turned round, and the whole square was watching her by then and she knew it.
"I’m going to Marrow Hill," she said. "There’s a district officer there who’s known me eleven years. He’ll tell me not to, and I’m going to sit in front of him and let him."
"That’s not an answer."
"No, it isn’t." She adjusted the bag. "I spent six days looking for a reason not to and I found four, and every one of them was about me. I’ve been reading about myself for six days and I’ve got extremely tired of the subject."
"Serreth—"
"Don’t." She said it without heat. "I’ve watched you refuse to ask me for eleven days, and I want you to know it didn’t work, and that I noticed it not working, and that I’m doing it anyway. It’s a review on own motion. My paper, my name, and my four rooms I’m not going to get."
"When?"
"I’ll lodge it on the twenty-second. The class of error is established, it’s in his own hand, and I’ve drafted it four times and the fourth one is short." She started walking again, and then stopped again, and this time she did not turn round. "And I want one thing from you and it isn’t thanks."
"Name it."
"When they open that schedule, and they will, because a review on own motion gets answered or it goes to the centre, there’ll be four hundred and six names in it, and you’re going to want the ones that are yours." She stood in the middle of the square with her back to him. "Don’t. All of them or none. I’m not spending a district on forty-four."
[Sarrow — 15 Sylphenia, 335 A.Z. — Day 242]
[SQ-334-Sarrow-11 — ANSWERED at day sixty. In time, complete, and sufficient. No note of failure.]
[FINDING, certified over the seal of an office of record: there is no prescribed form of the certificate of discharge. None has been prescribed by the centre or by any office in the 211 years since the provision was made.]
[Consequence: no subject of Deuna has ever been discharged, or could have been.]
[The answer goes to the central roll in the general return, 1 Pyrelon 335 — 15 days.]
[Ilma Serreth, supervisor, Sarrow: review on own motion to be lodged 22 Sylphenia. Class of error established. Cost: her career.]
[Condition: all four hundred and six, or none.]
[Level 36 → Level 37]
[Stat points available: +3]
[Basis: an answer that could not be given without becoming a finding]
[INT +1 · PER +1 · WIL +1]
[STR 22 · AGI 19 · END 31 · INT 42 · PER 42 · WIL 48]
[Reserved Mana: 7 — First Exception, open, day 201]
[Two years in Gaiark, to the day.]
***
That night he wrote for four hours, which he had not done since the border, and at the end of it he had one page that he kept and eleven that he did not.
The page said:
*Fourteen days until it goes onto the roll. Seven days until Serreth lodges. Sixteen days to Ardenmoor, where there is a shelf and a keeper and a book.*
*He answered me honestly and it cost him more than silence would have, and he had six weeks to write a worse answer and did not.*
*Two hands. One paid for a stone in 325. One wrote four sentences today. Neither of them stopped.*
*Ask Serreth what a review on own motion actually opens. Ask Ithred what happens to a house that buys into an office under review. Ask Tal what his grandmother’s line was at when she started.*
*And go to Ardenmoor.*
Almina said, "You have not written the last one."
"Which one?"
"The one you have been carrying since the fourteenth of Ravenmark and have not put on a page in five months."
Mataon put the pen down.
"No," he said. "I haven’t."
"Then say it to me, and I will not repeat it, and it will not be evidence."
He sat for a while with his hands on the table.
"I want to know what he thinks he’s doing," said Mataon. "Not what he did. Not what’s in the drawer. I’ve got four hundred and six people, two kind things, and nineteen years of silence, and I’ve no idea at all what that man believes he’s for. And I’ve started being afraid that when I find out, it’ll be something I understand."