10.

A Voice in the Margin

The deep Archive, Requiem City — month 3, AGH 200

Josephine had finished the account, but she was still waiting for Enoch to come back.

She knew he would not. The mind had told her, and she had written it. She kept wanting another visit to turn up between the last two leaves: the blue coat in the doorway, somebody finally bringing glasses.

On the working contents she wrote When Everyone Chose Their Ruler.

“Read me that,” the mind said.

She did.

“With the year.”

“Nine. When Everyone Chose Their Ruler.”

Jo put the pen down. “I know who could vote.”

The light moved along the wall. It waited.

“Guilds and property. I haven't forgotten.”

“And Clavadin?”

“I know that too.”

She looked at the words. They would have been a handsome line in the clean contents. Better than a description of somebody rebuilding a list while his friend stopped visiting.

“It's the promise of it,” she said.

“It says it happened.”

“A heading doesn't have to contain the whole story.”

“This one contains rather more.”

Jo picked up the pen and struck through Everyone. She read what was left, then crossed out the whole line.

“The Seat,” she said. “Not the Crown.”

“Yes.”

Above it she wrote The Vote for the Seat. It said almost nothing, but said it accurately.

“I wanted him to get something for it,” she said.

“Prue voted.”

“I wrote that part.”

“Then use it. Aldric Gives the Widow Her Vote.”

Jo wrote the new line below the old one. It was better to look at. She had reached the last word before her pen stopped.

“Gives?”

“Would you prefer grants?”

She pulled the earlier leaves out from under the account's ending. The cord she'd tied round them had curled one corner; she flattened it with the back of her hand and found Prue arriving at the public hour.

“Here.” She put a finger beside the line about the deed. “She already had the property. These are her receipts.”

“He kept her on the roll.”

“That isn't what you told me to write.”

The mind was quiet. Jo had dipped the pen again without noticing.

“You liked that line,” she said.

“So did you.”

“Until I reached the end.”

“You could have read faster.”

She laughed once, unwillingly, and crossed it out.

They tried again. Jo made it shorter. The mind wanted Aldric's name in it, which she had no objection to. She read it aloud with the year before copying it onto the clean contents leaf.

9 — Aldric Stoneheart: the disputed voter roll and its funding.

“That sounds like something I'd be sent upstairs to fetch.”

“Could you fetch it?”

“Very efficiently.”

She blotted the line. The two rejected headings remained on the working leaf, still legible through their strokes. She laid it beneath the clean contents rather than among the finished account.

“Enoch could at least have drunk the wine,” she said.

The mind did not supply another ending.

Jo waited for the ink to dry before turning the page.