The King Has Borrowed All Our Names

How it begins

Nell forgot her mother's name while writing the king's.

The royal register lay open beneath her hand. Gold ink, clean parchment, a ceremony repeated often enough to become another item before lunch.

She remembered her mother's face. The chipped blue cup she used. The way she held a door for a person carrying too much.

The name had gone.

Across the hall, the king lifted a ceremonial knife and pressed it against his palm.

No wound appeared.

Applause filled the room.

Nell looked down at the register.

Beside the king's name, a new line shone faintly. The letters were familiar without becoming readable, like a word seen through water.

She shut the book.

Her supervisor touched her elbow.

“Not yet.”

“I need a moment.”

“The crown needs the next entry.”

For fourteen years, Nell had registered voluntary civic contributions. Names lent to the ruler. A little shared strength, returned through the safety of the border. That was the account given to children before their first signature.

She had believed it because the country had enemies and the king remained uninjured.

At the servants' door waited a man carrying a physician's bag.

He watched the register, not the throne.

Nell met him in the gallery.

“Do you know what's happening?”

“Yes.”

“Why come to me?”

“Because yesterday you still wrote your mother's name on the visit request.”

She gripped the book harder.

His name was Arun Fen. He treated people along a border the royal maps described as secure. Three of his patients could no longer be called for an appointment because nobody remembered what to call.

Nell opened the register again.

The gold line moved.

Somewhere inside the closed hall, applause rose for another impossible wound.

For the first time, she wondered whether a country could remain safe while its people became harder and harder to find.