At precisely nine o'clock on Monday morning, Sharlo stepped through the doors of the Vesper Bureau's district office. Viola was standing beneath the clock in the entrance hall. Her gaze dropped from the clock face to his, then returned to the clock.
"Nine o'clock and zero minutes," she said, with a trace of something almost like regret in her voice. "Your coffee budget survives."
"I reached the corner twenty minutes early," Sharlo said. "Had a wrap at the bakery, then timed my entrance by my watch. Arriving late is unseemly, arriving early looks obsequious, and punctuality is an art."
"Strike that sentence. Put the rest in your attendance report. Come with me. New case—or, strictly speaking, the tail end of an old one."
A blackboard hung in the conference room, several photographs pinned to it. The first made Sharlo's brows knit at once: Number 11, Tailor Street, the Wick Mercantile. Its shutters stood wide open. The shop was stripped bare, not a single candle left on its shelves, and the floor was clean enough to reflect a face.
"The operations team went to seal it at dawn the day after the premiere," Viola said, tapping the photograph with a pointer. "This was how they found it. Overnight, the goods, ledgers, claim chits, and shopkeeper all vanished. No signs of forced entry. No wheel tracks—and it was a rainy night. None of the neighbours heard a thing."
"Professional." Sharlo leaned closer to the photograph. "Worse than professional. What do you call this?"
"We call it 'striking the set,'" Grey answered. He had appeared in the doorway without either of them noticing, holding his perpetual cup of half-cold coffee. "Standard procedure when the Dirge Society abandons a site. Once a performance is over—or has gone wrong—the entire set disappears in a single night, as though it had never been built. In the capital twenty years ago, they stripped the interior of an entire building. They didn't even leave the wallpaper."
He walked to the blackboard and pinned a sheet beside the photograph. It was Sharlo's own closing report, with one line circled in red:
【A young customer of the Wick Mercantile bears this indication above his head: He will return in three days.】
"Three days." Grey tapped the line. "The night of the premiere was the eve of the third day. Which means—"
Sharlo's heart sank. "Today. He'll go back today, to a shop that's already empty."
"The Dirge Society struck the set, but they didn't clear out the audience," Grey said. "That boy is a fish they hooked but never had time to land. Today, he'll swim back into an empty pond on his own. I want the two of you waiting there—not to arrest him. To catch him."
Before dismissing the meeting, Grey added, "By the way, Raven, your application was approved."
Viola looked up.
"A citywide review of all recorded cases of fading." Grey slid a stamped document across to her. "The Bureau Council argued for two hours. In the end, the Compensation Division did the arithmetic and convinced them: average annual productivity lost per Faded victim, multiplied by the estimated number of victims. Investigating costs less than doing nothing. You get two clerks and three months."
That morning, while they waited for Mick, Viola spread the first batch of interview reports across a table in the bakery. Sharlo leaned over to read them. On the third page, his finger stopped.
Ferry landing. Sepp Mendel, sixty-one. Ferryman.
The landlady of the Anchor and Bell had mentioned him—old Sepp, whose wife had been dead ten years. Every year on the anniversary of her death, he rowed to the middle of the river and scattered flowers. This year, he had not gone. When asked why, he said he could not remember what reason there had ever been to go.
The final field of the interview record read: Subject's fading dated to approximately last winter, predating the Wick Mercantile's current harvesting cycle; classified as a preexisting case. No restoration response observed during the return of love-debts on the night of the premiere.
"No restoration response." Sharlo read the four words twice. "Meaning—it isn't coming back?"
"Meaning his share wasn't among those four hundred candles." Viola's voice was flat, as flat as a closing report. "The Wick Mercantile operated for six years. The premiere burned this year's stock. Whatever they took during the previous five years was shipped away long ago, used up, or stored somewhere we cannot find. When the fragment went dark, everything that could go home did. What couldn't go home has not even left us a trail to follow."
She turned the page. The interview list went on and on, each line another name, another date, another entry reading no restoration response.
"So this review isn't meant to save them," Sharlo said slowly.
"It's meant to keep the accounts," Viola said. "They no longer remember what they lost. Someone has to remember it for them. The ledger needs an entry that says: Something was stolen here. Otherwise, even the fact that they were robbed ceases to exist."
Sharlo looked out the window. A ferry crept across the misted canal, the old man at its oars stooped but steady, neither sorrowful nor glad.
He remembered Juliet on the charred stage saying, "The furnace had already burned through." He thought of the new names that would inevitably be added to the Lowtown list. He had won a premiere and won a crown, but the city's ledger was still packed line upon line with old debts that could never be recovered.
"Raven," he said, "when we're done with this case, make me a copy of that list."
"What do you want it for?"
"I'll put it on the Daydream Agency wall," Sharlo said. "Daydream takes the things no one else will touch. That wall of names will be the most neglected case in all Kandelburg."
* * *
Tailor Street conducted business as usual that morning. Tailors pressed clothes in their doorways, steam mingling with the fog until the whole street seemed steeped in warmth. A seal from the Vesper Bureau's Cover Division had been pasted across the door of Number 11.
It read, "Proprietor Retired. Premises to Let," in a cheerfully indolent hand that carried no trace of officialdom.
Sharlo sat in his usual place at the bakery across the street, Viola beside him, a pot of tea between them. This time they did not have to play an engaged couple. Their parts were two small tradespeople waiting to view the premises.
At eleven twenty, the young man arrived.
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He was still dressed like an apprentice, his cap pulled low. He paced past the end of the street twice before working up the nerve to approach Number 11. When he saw the words "Premises to Let," his whole body went rigid.
It was not disappointment. Sharlo could see that clearly. It was panic bordering on annihilation, like a man who had finally found the courage to jump into a river only to discover the riverbed dry.
Sharlo set down his teacup and went outside.
"The notice is a fake," he said from behind the young man. "The authorities sealed the shop. The candle seller ran."
The young man spun around, his face draining white. "Who—who are you?"
"You came here at half past four the Wednesday before last," Sharlo said. "You told them you weren't buying wax. Someone at the docks had said this place took things—things people didn't want anymore. The shopkeeper sent you away and told you to come back in three days. Today is the third day."
The young man's throat bobbed. He turned to run. Sharlo did not stop him. He only said one thing.
"What you wanted to sell—I'm guessing it had something to do with your brother."
The young man stopped as though nailed to the ground.
* * *
His name was Mick. He was seventeen, an apprentice at a boilerworks. His younger brother, Tommy, had been fourteen and worked at the same factory as a feeder boy.
Forty days ago, a steam pipe on Boiler Number Three had burst directly above the feed passage. The factory awarded six gold crowns in compensation, then deducted "apportioned responsibility for improper operation." The family received two.
"My mam's bedridden." Mick sat in a corner of the bakery, both hands wrapped around the hot cocoa Sharlo had bought him, his eyes fixed on the eddy in the cup. "The factory says if I make trouble, they'll cancel my apprenticeship. I can't make trouble. I work eleven hours in the day, then at night I have to wash Mam, cook, and do the sums. But—"
His hands began to shake, sending ripples across the cocoa.
"But Tommy waits outside the boiler room every night for me to finish. Every day when I walk out that door, he's still standing there. I know he isn't there, sir. I'm not mad. I know he's only in my head. But he's there all the same, in that old jacket of mine, the sleeves too long and rolled up three times—" Mick's voice broke apart.
"I can't work anymore. Whenever I see sleeves rolled three times, I can't work. Someone at the docks said there was a place that took this. Took grief. I thought if I sold it, I could work properly and look after Mam properly. That isn't a bad thing, is it? It can't be a bad thing..."
The bakery had fallen very quiet. Viola sat two paces away, perfectly still.
Sharlo looked above Mick's head. A faint line of amber text hovered there, no different from the countless thousands of other little lines throughout the city:
【He will keep carrying the burden until the day he can carry it no longer.】
"Mick," Sharlo said slowly, "I'm not going to preach at you. I'll reckon up an account instead. You're an apprentice. You understand accounts."
He raised one finger.
"The thing you want to sell is called 'grief' on the open market. But it isn't grief. You see Tommy waiting outside every night, wearing that jacket with the sleeves rolled three times. That isn't grief. That's you still remembering he rolled his sleeves three times. Grief is the interest, Mick. The principal is that you remember him."
Mick looked up.
"When you sell grief, they don't take the interest. They take the principal. Once the sale goes through, you'll leave the boiler room and the doorway will be spotless. Nothing there at all. You'll feel so much lighter. Your mam will mention Tommy, and you'll say, Oh, Tommy. Who was he again? There'll be a name on the books, the way you remember a number."
Sharlo paused. "I've met someone who completed the sale, Mick. Last month, three stops east of this street, a man sold his fiancee. His life is perfectly stable now. Stable as a page with nothing left to write."
Mick's tears struck the cocoa.
"But I really can't keep working," he whispered.
"I know," Sharlo said. "So here's another arrangement. First, the Agency will take your brother's case, including the factory's claim about 'apportioned responsibility.' No fee from you. We'll charge the boilerworks once we recover the compensation. Second—" He took a silver candle from his pocket and pushed it across the table.
"This isn't charity. It's an advance. The Daydream Detective Agency needs an errand boy two afternoons a week, at six copper tinders a shift. The work is delivering papers and buying wraps while we're on surveillance. Do you want the job?"
Mick stared at the silver candle for a long time. He reached for it, then drew back. "Sir, why are you helping me?"
"Because someone helped me the same way," Sharlo said. "He's missing now, and I'm minding his shop for him. Call it settling his account on his behalf."
* * *
That afternoon, Sharlo took Mick to the boilerworks.
They were not going there to raise a scene. Sharlo made that clear. "A scene is the least useful thing in the world. The factory isn't afraid of loud voices. It's afraid of paper. Today, we won't say one threatening word. We'll only look, ask, and record."
The boilerworks stood in the deepest reaches of the harbour district, six great chimneys feeding smoke into the fog day and night. The gatekeeper barred their way. Sharlo handed him a calling card—an old Daydream Detective Agency card, printed in old Vane's day and yellowed with age—and added, "We have been retained by the Ophir Bill Office to verify the insurance settlement documents relating to your Boiler Number Three."
Every word of that was true. When Thomas heard about Mick, he had voluntarily dug out the factory's insurance policies handled through his office. Mr. Ophir's way of repaying a favour was admirably plain: he copied out three years of the boilerworks' premium statements, claims records, and inspection certificates for Sharlo, all in a hand so neat it might have been printed.
The paperwork concealed an interesting fact. Four months before the accident, someone had submitted a repair request for Boiler Number Three's steam pipe. The application read, "Pipe wall bulging. Recommend shutting down boiler and replacing pipe."
The approval field contained only three words: Defer. Production urgent.
"The factory awarded Mick's family six gold crowns, then cut it to two for 'improper operation.'" On the journey back, Sharlo tucked the copies into his document case. "But if this inspection request reaches the Labour Inspectorate, they won't owe six crowns. They'll owe sixty, plus a shutdown order. Remember this, Mick: they made those deductions because they were wagering that you couldn't read, that you wouldn't dare investigate, and that you were too busy to have time for pain."
Mick clenched his fists until the knuckles whitened. "Then let's go to the Inspectorate right now—"
"No. If we go now, the factory can replace the paperwork overnight." Sharlo shook his head.
"First we copy it, then verify it. Once it's verified, Thomas will put it through the Bill Office's formal evidentiary-registration process in triplicate: one copy at the Bureau, one at his office, and one in the Agency archive. After all three are lodged, then we submit it to the Inspectorate. Once we do, the factory won't be able to alter a word. This is the rule of our trade, Mick: until evidence is lodged, justice is only noise."
Mick nodded without quite understanding. After a few steps, he said abruptly, "Sir, Tommy was always saying he wanted me to stop tending boilers someday and get a desk job." He looked down at his ink-stained fingers after an afternoon spent copying documents. "Does copying paperwork count as a desk job?"
"It does," Sharlo said. "And you did well. Better than I did the first time. I copied every date into the wrong row, and my uncle made me do the whole thing over three times."
That was a lie. Sharlo had been fast and accurate the first time he copied case files. But Mick needed this lie, and it was the sort Sharlo had never felt the least burden about telling in either of his lives.
* * *
As Mick was leaving, he stopped in the doorway as though something had just occurred to him. He turned, took something from an inner pocket, and placed it on the desk.
"Sir, there's one more thing. After the shop closed... someone came looking for me."
It was a calling card of cream-coloured stock, exquisitely printed. At its centre, a magpie folded its wings, a ring held in its beak. Two lines of small type appeared below:
The Magpie Pawnshop. Number 3, Riverbend Street.
Pawn what you love. Redeem what you need.
"A lady," Mick said. "A very pleasant lady. She waited outside the factory for me to finish and said she 'dealt in old goods.' She said the shop on Tailor Street had closed, but the business was still open. She said—" He swallowed.
"She said, Young man, when you pawn grief with us, you can still redeem it. Come whenever you've thought it through."
Sharlo held the card between his fingers. Its surface was faintly slick. When he brought it close, he caught a trace of a familiar scent.
Beeswax.
Viola had already opened the notebook she carried with her. "Number 3, Riverbend Street. I reviewed the new-business registry this morning. That pawnshop was registered on Thursday the week before last."
Sharlo looked up.
Thursday the week before last. The day after the premiere. The same morning the Wick Mercantile had vanished without a trace.
"They struck one set." He turned the card over. The back was blank, clean as a fresh page of script. "Then built another across the river."