Ulven

FROM THE MANUSCRIPT · READING EXCERPT

Enter the story

Someone had moved the coastline four finger-widths east.

Taryn Solah lifted the sheet against the window. Afternoon light showed through the thinnest patches. The change was small enough that somebody looking for the familiar lines of the western harbor might not notice it. A narrow stretch of coast had been inked in a continuous stroke where her original survey used a broken one. The copied shore ended at a headland she had never measured.

The copyist was still at the table, cleaning a pen.

“Where did you get the rest of this line?” Taryn asked.

The young man looked up. “From your eastern account.”

“My account stops there.”

“It did. But the last fair copy—”

“May I see it?”

He lifted a bound volume from the end of the desk. Taryn opened it to the marked page and found her own handwriting under a second set of strokes. The ink was darker. Somebody had used a straightedge to continue the coast until it reached a line of small islands. It looked convincing. Taryn could almost remember drawing it, which made the forgery of certainty more irritating than an obvious mistake would have been.

“Who made this correction?”

The copyist touched the edge of the book. “I don't know. The volume arrived from the records office yesterday. I was told to work from the most recent approved sheet.”

“Did it come with an amendment?”

He shook his head.

“Then you've copied something that isn't approved.”

A flush spread up his neck. “I've already made six.”

“We can fix six.”

“Eleven,” he admitted.

“That will take longer.”

Taryn laid the book beside her field case and compared its marginal numbers with the earlier copy she had brought. The added coastline began exactly where her measurements ended and her speculation began. Whoever had made the addition knew how to turn her uncertainty into a line that seemed as firm as the harbor wall below them.

Three years had passed since she returned from the eastern shore. She had spent much of those years correcting her account of the journey, a task made slower by the number of people who preferred a clean explanation to a page that admitted what nobody knew. Her own notes were not immune. She had found mistakes in them. Ridlee had found more. She had corrected each one, left the old reading visible where it mattered, and signed the change.

This one carried no name.

A chair scraped near the far wall. Mareth Veylan stood with a coil of damp cord over one shoulder and inspected the disputed sheet without asking for it. His hair had grayed further at the temples. Otherwise he seemed determined to make time work harder than it had to.

“Has the coast moved again?” he asked.

“Only on paper.”

“It's usually cheaper that way.”

“It won't be if somebody uses it to sound the eastern channel.”

Mareth leaned close enough to see the last dotted section beneath the darker stroke. He put a broad finger beside the junction, careful not to touch the ink. “Your original break is still there.”

“Yes.”

“Then whoever extended it wasn't trying very hard to conceal it.”

“Or expected nobody to look.”

The copyist set down his pen. “I looked.”

“You followed the instructions you were given,” Taryn said. “We're asking who wrote them.”

That helped only a little. The young man began gathering the eleven sheets into a stack with their corners aligned. Taryn let him. She had learned that telling somebody not to worry was an efficient way to make them worry more.

Rowla arrived carrying a narrow case of copied inscriptions and two rolls of clean paper under one arm. She took one look at Taryn's face and set everything on a dry bench.

“Who have we offended?”

“Possibly nobody. Somebody has corrected the coast beyond our measurements.”

“That's generous of them.”

“I thought so.”

Rowla examined the page. Her light-brown braid had loosened in the damp air, and a strand of hair lay against her cheek. She pushed it back without moving her other hand from the paper. “The line is continuous.”

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End of excerpt. This site presents a selection from the manuscript.