A novel · A registry file

Filed UnderNo One

by David Silva

She kept the country’s secrets. The country kept one — about her.

For eleven years, Margaret Vane sat at the Registry and decided what the country was allowed to see — and, more quietly, what could go unwatched. She drew the blind spots herself. Then she found a ledger that kills the living by filing them as dead. She did the correct thing. She reported it. Now she has been struck from every register that ever held her name. For eleven weeks she is no one.

For anyone who has ever had to prove they were real.