“I’m not going to.”

Clarence sighed. “You always want people to like you.”

“Yeah,” the king replied, sitting down in his chair by the window. “Of course I do. Doesn’t everyone?”

“Sometimes a leader has to make difficult decisions. Decisions that might be unpopular.”

The king thought for a moment. “Don’t think I have.”

“In which case you’ve been fortunate.”

“Or maybe this city’s just very well run, eh?” And with that the king opened the newspaper. It was a good edition. Lots of coverage of the funerals, and there was a long article about a day in the life of a materials courier. He read the entire paper from front to back, then went back and skimmed it again. He asked Clarence if previous editions of the newspaper were stored anywhere.

“No, Your Highness,” Clarence replied.

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Why?”

The king shook the newspaper. “The whole history of the city is in these.”

“The history is all in the public records—”

“But that’s just old maps and planning decisions—I’m talking about this.” The king turned the newspaper to the article about the courier. “Stories about real people and how they lived—people are more important than buildings. There’s so much that no one will know about if we don’t keep these. Right, that’s it—we’re starting a newspaper archive.”

“We’d need a lot of space—”

“We’ve got a lot of space. What’s the problem? You don’t usually need convincing about new building projects.”

“No, but we already have so many construction sites in operation—”

The king snapped his fingers. “I know—they’re building new offices for the newspaper, right?”

“Well . . . yes, but it’s been delayed by—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know—but they are moving out of the old offices. So when they move into the new place, the old offices can be the archives.”

“Well . . . if you’re sure—”

“I am. I think it’s a good idea.” The king held up today’s edition. “And we can start with this one.”

* * *

“Sorry, are you busy?” asked Carter as he entered Iona’s office to find her with an exercise book open on her desk and two piles of similar books on either side of it.

“Just marking,” Iona replied. But the truth was she had not done any marking for several minutes. Instead she had been staring at the open book while replaying last night’s conversation with Alyssa in her head; thinking ahead to their session tonight; and writing the word concrete on a piece of scrap paper, wondering if she had spelled it correctly. Without drawing undue attention Iona reached out, screwed up the scrap paper, and tossed it in her wastebasket.

“This’ll only take a moment and then I’ll get out of your hair,” said Carter, placing a copy of this week’s newspaper on her desk. “Have you seen it yet?”

“Seen what?” Iona peered at the front page, which featured a report from Weston’s funeral. Initially she assumed it had made the front page because of the strange events at the end but she quickly realized the report made no mention of this at all. The funeral was the lead story purely because of Weston’s public standing and the circumstances of his death, and although it was a nice gesture the result was a completely uneventful piece of writing.