I took the passport back. “You let him pass, as you rightly should, and then no one stood before you.”

They both stared blankly ahead. I went inside.

The entryway was dim, the walls painted red and green and pink in tight patterns, making the entryway appear as though covered with the scales of a wild, unknown creature.

Though councilmen passed me as I made my way through the building, following the maps in my mind, I did what I had done in the Ward, which was to wish that they didn’t see me, to make them forget me … which, I realized, as I became more practiced in doing it, was not quite forgetting but rather giving them an invented memory of a moment so quickly passed that it came to occupy the present in their minds.

I made my way to the library, where green flames burned in oil lamps and the books were so beautifully encased in rich leather that each row of books looked as though it were a jeweled strip of vitreous enamel. Red-robed readers sat at polished wooden desks, drinking from pots of pink tea. When they looked up, I made them remember me differently, to be what they expected to see, but it felt harder. Their faces frowned, and their minds seemed to tug away from the thoughts I gave them, so that I had to be more forceful with my wishing, sterner in my construction of the vision of me they were supposed to believe. Eventually, their eyes fogged over and they went back to their books.

I approached a councilman who was shelving books and appeared to be in charge of the library. “I am looking for a book very special to the Lord Protector,” I told him. “A history of the city.”

His narrow eyes studied me, confused. “That book is only for the Lord Protector to read.”

I replaced his memory of the person standing before him. “I am the Lord Protector.”

“Oh, yes. Forgive me, my lord. Of course you are. I will fetch the book for you now. There is memory elixir for you while you wait, though I know my lord never needs it.”

He set a glass pot of pink tea before me as I sat at a table. There were other, drained pots, and a little stack of glass cups that looked like a froth of bubbles. The man bustled away.

A memory elixir.

I glanced around the library at all the people reading, drinking their tea. Was that my blood in their glasses, drained from me when I was imprisoned?