“I’m fine. Has she got this right? I’m not allowed in there?”

“Nobody is allowed in—”

“I’m the king.”

“The situation in here is delicate—”

“I know it is—let me in.”

“Why?” said another voice: the voice of Clarence. He slipped through the gap between Saori’s legs and peered up at the king.

“What are you doing here?” asked the king.

“I’m overseeing the disposal.”

“Did you tell them not to let me in?”

“I only thought it would distress you—”

“What are you hiding from me?”

“Nothing. What are you doing here?”

“I’m going to do this myself. Feed him into the furnace myself. So I know he’s really gone.”

Clarence laughed.

“Don’t laugh,” said the king. “I didn’t see him die. I want to know he’s gone—I want to see him before he’s burned and I want to burn him.”

“Don’t you trust me to handle it?”

“I don’t want you doing everything for me.”

“You can’t do it all on your own.”

“Look, this is the only way I’ll feel safe—I’m seeing, like, threats everywhere now and the only way I’ll get back to how things were is if I—” The king became conscious that he should not have this argument in front of the bureau’s employees. He looked up and addressed Saori. “I’m coming in and I’m doing this.”

Saori nodded. “As you wish, Your Highness—but just wait here while I sweep the building for potential threats, please.”

* * *

Iona and Alyssa had parted ways because Alyssa was going down to the city to collect another corpse, a citizen who had died under curious circumstances. After the Weston fiasco she thought it best to do it herself rather than send a citizen. Iona paused at the edge of the mine and looked back at the city, and a thought that had been nagging at her for a couple of hours now fully unfurled itself in her mind.

Iona had worked all her life as an architect and teacher of architecture. Her colleagues were architects or teachers or both. The people she taught went on to become architects, planners, and builders—those were the three subjects offered at the school and most students did a mix of them. Other people worked in the city’s timber industry—planting trees, felling them, and sawing them up for building purposes. The mining industry, digging for stone, was smaller but still significant. There were also decorators and furniture crafters, the skills for which were learned on an apprenticeship basis.

Nearly everyone Iona knew fell under one of these categories. Further to this she could make a fair estimate of how many people were employed in making new buildings. All the other people she encountered in her daily life worked in government or service jobs, running the city—and having designed so many government buildings she had a good idea of how many people worked in them. She added all this up.

Whichever way she cut it, she had no idea what at least half the population of the city did. Did they just do nothing? What were they for?