The train entered St. Alden at dusk on the third day.
Sharlo had imagined he knew great cities. Across two lives, he considered himself immune to "large." Yet when the train passed through the final stone arch of the outer city and the capital spread whole across the window, he fell silent.
St. Alden stood on seven hills, like a colossal grey cake stacked in seven tiers. The cooking smoke of a million people stained the dusk blue-grey. Roofs surged rank upon rank from the feet of the hills to their summits. At the top, three structures pierced the haze in a great triangle: the black spires of the royal palace, the golden dome of the Archbishopric, and an iron-grey monolith in the shape of a square stele from which hung seventeen enormous bells—
Headquarters of the Vesper Bureau. People in the capital called it the Grand Belfry.
"See those seventeen bells?" Grey, unusually, played the guide. "One for each dead deity. When one's afterglow causes a major incident in the capital, that bell is rung. In my years at headquarters, I heard them three times. Each time, the newspaper had to print a supplement to the obituaries the next morning."
"Have all seventeen rung?" Sharlo asked.
"No. Two have been silent for three hundred years," Grey said. "The eighth, the Dreamwright—you know why now. And the seventeenth."
"Whose is the seventeenth?"
Grey looked at him but did not answer. At that moment the train entered the approach tunnel, darkening the carriage. In the darkness, the old inspector's voice sounded particularly level.
"The Worldcrosser's."
* * *
Someone already waited on the platform at Central Station.
No honour guard, no official carriage. An elderly woman stood alone beneath a platform lamp, wrapped in a black cloak washed almost pale and leaning on an ebony cane. She appeared past seventy. Silver hair was coiled into an immaculate knot; the wrinkles of her face had been cut deep and sharp, like an old document amended many times.
Grey stopped three paces away. For once, he straightened his collar and gave an old Bureau salute Sharlo had never seen.
"Director-General."
"Spare me." The old woman's voice was dry and crisp, like a tap on bronze. "Three days on a train. Don't give me ceremony." Her eyes passed over Grey to the two young people behind him. At that sweep, the hairs on Sharlo's neck stood to attention. There was no hostility in it. Only the pure professional act of weighing. Thirty years ago, those eyes had weighed suspects. Now they weighed them.
"Viola Raven." The old woman named her first. "Six years. Sleep debt. Made your reputation in the Hall of Names. I have read your physician's report. Headquarters Medical assumes your file tomorrow, with examinations every ten days. That is not care. It is asset management. The Vesper Bureau's assets are not permitted to break themselves."
Viola straightened. "Yes, Director-General."
"Sharlo Vane." The old woman's gaze moved to him and stayed for three full breaths. "Unclassifiable Number Three. I read the Relighting Day file seven times—seven because I disbelieved the first six." She approached by one step on her cane and lowered her voice. Something in it reminded Sharlo of the name wall in the Hall of Names: cold and heavy. "Young man, I am Odelle Duren. Forty years ago, when your uncle applied to investigate the Dawn Tower, the signature in the rejection field was mine."
Wind passed through the station.
"I will neither explain nor apologize," Director-General Duren said, looking straight at him. "The rejection balanced the accounts of its own time. One day I will settle that account, with forty years of interest, with you in person. Not today. Today you need know only one thing."
She turned and struck her cane once against the platform.
"Welcome to St. Alden. In this city, every welcome has a price." Without looking back, the old woman walked toward the exit. "Including mine. Keep up."
* * *
The Director-General's carriage crossed the capital at dusk while Duren delivered the first lesson to three provincials.
"Every rule you knew in Kandelburg is void here." The old woman reclined with her eyes closed, reciting what sounded like a lecture she had carried for fifty years. "In Kandelburg, the lines are visible: Church in one camp, authorities in another, Dirge Society underground. In St. Alden, there are no camps. There is only a web.
"Crown, Parliament, the three Church headquarters, seven great banks, newspapers, headquarters—each is kin to every other, and each passes every other a knife. Investigate a Church account and you do not move against the Church alone. You move against every node in the web that has ever eaten at the Church's table."
"Including headquarters itself." She opened her eyes to add it, her tone terrifyingly flat. "When the accounts lead to the Grand Belfry's door, do not stop. That is an order."
The carriage turned onto the fourth hill. Sharlo lifted a corner of the curtain to study the street, and understood the true difference between the capital and Kandelburg.
Not the height of its buildings. The words above its people.
On Kandelburg's streets, ordinary people's amber writing was pale and thin—one or two lines about tonight's bacon or tomorrow's insoles. On the streets of the capital—even in the everyday market of the fourth hill—the words over every head were dense as cobwebs. Three lines overlapped above a flower girl: 【She will copy today's flower accounts to two recipients】. Five hovered above a gentleman walking his dog, the topmost reading: 【He will repeat what he sees today at the club】. Above a constable on patrol, so many words knotted together that they made a tiny tangle.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Copy. Repeat. Report. Almost everyone in this city watched someone or something for someone else.
"Raven." Sharlo let the curtain fall and lowered his voice. "What colour is this city through your eyes?"
Viola's pupils contracted slightly; their minute focusing had not stopped once on the journey.
"Lies," she said. "Not great lies. Everyday lies, polished by handling. Everyone tells them and everyone knows that everyone tells them. In Kandelburg, a lie flashes in my sight like a failing bulb. Here—" She paused to find an exact description. "Here, the whole street flashes at a uniform rate. So uniformly it appears not to flash at all."
Opposite them, Grey had said nothing. Sharlo glanced at the old inspector's head. Since the train entered the station, the tangle there had slowly and continuously thickened, like a pot of porridge returned to an old stove. The capital was Grey's former battlefield. Every street probably matched one knot in that tangle.
"Director-General," Grey said suddenly, "where has the Committee been quartered?"
"Third floor of the Grand Belfry's west annex. The former copying offices of Archives," Duren said. "I approved all six officers on your list without substitution. The desks and chairs date to the previous dynasty and let in the wind. Budget says funds arrive next quarter." The old woman opened her eyes; a dry, almost malicious smile touched her mouth. "In other words, headquarters gives you the following opening position: a broken room, six people, no funds, and a license capable of puncturing the Archbishopric. Familiar, Barnaby?"
"Familiar," Grey said. "Forty years ago, the old director gave the Three Belfry Fools exactly the same."
"Then you remember what he said."
"I do." Grey watched the seven-tiered city kindle its lights beyond the carriage. He recited the words one at a time, like an oath from forty years ago.
"'A broken room means no one covets it. Few people mean no one has infiltrated it. No money means no one can buy it. Children, this is the cleanest room in the capital. Go and investigate every dirty one, one by one.'"
* * *
Viola's intake examination was scheduled for their second day in the capital.
Headquarters Medical was ten times the establishment of the infirmary in Kandelburg: white tiles, brass instruments, seven varieties of candle test, three specialist physicians. After an entire morning of procedures, the conclusion filled one page and was read by the senior physician himself. The old doctor was famed throughout headquarters for his vicious tongue. When he finished, he fell silent for an uncharacteristic moment.
"Inspector Raven, two statements. The bad first: the total sleep debt is five percent larger than Kandelburg estimated. Your colleague's calculation was conservative. Long travel, unfamiliar surroundings, and the pressure of a summons by the Director-General all accrue interest."
"And the good?"
"The good is..." The old physician turned through his notes with a frown, as if reading figures he barely dared believe. "The rate of interest is slower than in any Wakebound case in the archive. Abnormally slow. With a six-year-old debt, your microsleeps should occur at three times their current frequency." He looked up. "Inspector, after Relighting Day in Kandelburg, what changed in your daily routine?"
Viola considered and answered exactly. "Motionless rest. Four hours each night. In addition..." She paused to choose her words. "A factor outside the medical history. I watched a play. I received a letter. It said: on the night I repay the debt and wish to sleep, tell the right person. Tell one dream, and gain one."
The old physician stared at her, eventually abandoned his questions, and wrote in the notes field a prescription he had never written in forty years of practice:
MAINTAIN PRESENT REGIMEN, INCLUDING FACTORS OUTSIDE MEDICAL HISTORY.
Leaving Medical, Viola folded and pocketed the sheet. To Sharlo, who waited outside, she reported only: "Asset, stable."
* * *
Their quarters stood behind the Grand Belfry in Clockmakers' Lane, a quiet old street inhabited mostly by craftspeople who serviced the clocks of headquarters. They were assigned a two-story house at the end: reception rooms below, three bedrooms above, old solid furniture, and a vigorous stove.
Next door lived an elderly clockmaking couple named Ott. On their first evening, old Mr. Ott hobbled over to knock, bringing a mantel clock the size of his palm—"An empty house can't hear ticking, and then it never sleeps soundly"—and explaining the rules of Clockmakers' Lane. No hammering iron after nightfall. No singing exercises, because "a craftsperson's ears are precious." The bakery at the mouth of the lane closed every third day. And "if any of the Grand Belfry's seventeen bells rings at night, don't come out for the spectacle. Shut the windows tight. It's an old saying. Don't ask why."
Mrs. Ott expressed welcome another way. After circling Viola twice, she declared in anguish that the girl was "thin as a pendulum." Thereafter, every two days a warm earthenware pot appeared on the house's door handle: stew, thick soup, or wheat porridge sweetened with honey. At first Viola declined twice in the language prescribed by regulation. The third time, Sharlo saw her carry the pot into the kitchen and write one careful line in her record book: "Number Seven, Clockmakers' Lane. Mrs. Ott. Owed: three meals. This debt must be repaid in due course."
"You can't repay that account," Sharlo said. "That sort of old lady answers ten dinners with twenty."
"Then I will keep owing," Viola said, closing the book. "And keep repaying. You said that at the wedding."
Sharlo paused, then smiled. So she had entered that sentence too.
The first letters from Kandelburg arrived on the fifth day.
Mick's ran to six pages. He had circled and corrected every misspelling himself; the night-school lessons were plainly worthwhile. The letter gave an account: the agency operated as usual; two follow-up entries had been added to the wall of names; Mrs. Porter had enough coal through early spring; Master Selden sent word that the Dawn Tower's two new apprentices had "acceptable legs and far too much mouth." Also, the landlady of the Anchor and Bell said the man who owed her money would not escape by going to the capital; interest accrued at Kandelburg rates.
At the end, the boy wrote in his neatest hand: Sir, if the capital case requires errands, send a letter. My legs are fast. P.S. Send one if it does not require errands too.
Mrs. Porter had written no letter; the old woman had no patience for pens. But the parcel contained two large packages of honey cakes. Beneath them was a note with one line, the strokes so thick they might have been made with a rolling pin:
EAT AT EVERY MEAL. LIE TO ME AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS.
That night, the stove burned high in the house on Clockmakers' Lane. Sharlo read the letter twice and pinned the note to the kitchen wall. Across the miles from the list wall in the Kandelburg agency, this wall held a different kind of account.
It was late when the luggage was finally unpacked. In his bedroom, Sharlo reached the last layer of one bundle and stopped.
Something he had not packed lay at the bottom.
A stiff paper card. Tea-coloured. It showed a young man with a pack upon his back stepping beyond the edge of a cliff. His face was blank. Above his head was the number 0.
The Curtainbreaker card. He distinctly remembered it tucked into the black notebook, which was now inside his coat. He opened the book. The card was there, safely marking the page for Dreamless Street.
He looked again at the one in the bundle. Two cards, identical.
No, not identical. He brought the new one to the lamp and turned it over. There was writing on the back in the meticulous hand he had known for twenty-two years. But this time, not three words. One line:
The plays in the capital are older than Kandelburg's. Before seeing a play, go and see the Realmweight.
—Your uncle
Sharlo sat beneath the lamp for a long time, holding the card.
Outside, the capital's night floated on a million lamps. On the highest of the seven hills, the black spires of the royal palace stood silent. Beneath those spires, according to every map, deep in the palace foundations, rested the sacred object on which the kingdom had been founded—the thing written into the national anthem, cast upon the royal arms, known to every child and seen by no one:
The First King's Realmweight.
The Realmweight can uphold the Sable Sovereign—and overturn him.
The fifteenth of the Seventeen Dirges lay buried beneath the city.