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The first thing he noticed was that the road no longer matched the road in his head. He had walked this stretch a hundred times, in summer and in mud-season, and he could have drawn the curve of it from memory with his eyes closed. The curve was wrong. Not dramatically — a degree, maybe two — but a cartographer notices a degree the way a musician notices a flat string. The apprentice noticed too. She walked beside him without speaking, her sketchbook closed under her arm, the pencil he had given her tucked behind her ear like a feather she had not earned. He liked her better for not pretending she hadn’t noticed. “What was the second line of the summons?” she asked, finally. “The roads will be different than you remember.” “Different how?” “I don’t know yet.” She thought about that. “And the fourth?” “Do not look at the river.” They walked in silence for a while. The wind off the eastern fields smelled like rain that had not yet decided whether to fall. Far ahead, where the road bent down toward the bridge, he could already see the glint of water through the trees. “Sir,” she said, “I think the river has a sound.” He listened. She was right. There was a sound — not the rush of water but a kind of soft attentiveness, the sound of something that had noticed them and was waiting to see what they did about it. He kept his eyes on the road. “When we cross the bridge,” he said, quietly, “you walk in front of me. Look at your boots. Count to two hundred. Do not look up. Do not look left. If I stop walking, you keep walking.” “And if you don’t come across?” He didn’t answer. The bridge was longer than he remembered. ...

The summons came folded inside a piece of parchment that was, itself, also blank. Idris turned it over in his hands twice before he noticed the seal — pressed into the lower corner with so little ink that it might have been mistaken for a fingerprint. The seal of the Ministry of Borders. Underneath, a name he had not expected to read again. Halberd Renn. Minister, Second Secretariat. Halberd Renn had drowned in the Eastern Reach six winters ago. There had been a procession. Idris remembered the procession because it had rained, and the standards had bled their dye into the cobblestones, and afterward the road in front of the ministry had been faintly blue for a week. He read the summons three times. There were only four lines. Come at once. Bring no instruments. The roads will be different than you remember. Trust the apprentice. Do not look at the river. He folded the parchment back along its creases. The apprentice was watching him from the doorway with the terrible patience of someone who had not yet been told what was happening, but had already guessed. “Pack a bag,” he said. “We’re going to the capital.” “Sir.” She hesitated. “The river is between us and the capital.” “I know.” “Are we going to look at it?” He thought about that for a long moment. “No,” he said. “We are absolutely not.” ...

The bell that rang at the third hour was meant for fires, not maps. Idris was already awake when it began, hunched over a sketch of the salt road by the light of a single lamp, when the pewter dome above the hall started its slow, embarrassed clang. He counted to seven before he stood, because seven was the count for fire, and by the eighth strike he had decided that whoever was pulling the rope had lost their mind. Then the apprentice came running, and he saw her face, and he understood that someone had not lost their mind at all. “They’re all gone, sir,” she said. “Every one.” He followed her down the spiral. The vault door stood open — not forced, simply open, as though someone inside had walked out and forgotten to close it. The maps were on their racks, exactly where they belonged. The seals were unbroken. The wax was cold. The parchment was empty. He pulled out the great chart of the southern provinces, the one that had taken his predecessor eleven years to compile, and held it up to the lamp. Nothing. No coastline. No rivers. Not even the watermark of the cartography guild, which had been pressed into the sheet before any ink ever touched it. “Sir,” the apprentice said, very quietly, “what does it mean?” He had no answer. He had, in fact, only a question, and it was not one he wanted to ask aloud. If the maps no longer remember the empire, he thought, does the empire still remember itself? ...