The opening

I want it noted that I found the box by accident, and that I opened it on purpose, and that I understand the difference matters.

It was lead-lined, which is how I knew it was a crime before I knew it was anything else. Nothing honest is lead-lined. Lead is the one thing the Ledger cannot see through. Owning it in quantity is a listed offense.

Inside was a cold-storage core, the old kind, hand-sealed. Someone had written on it in actual ink, in a hand that pressed hard enough to score the casing:

A.V. — the unedited account.

I have read the histories. Everyone has read the histories; that is what histories are for. I know how the Lion War ended and who ended it and what we owe him. There is no A.V. in any of it.

That should have been the end. I want that noted too. I put the box back. I went home. I lay in the dark doing the thing you are not supposed to notice yourself doing, which is checking your own memory for the binds.

The next night I went back with a reader old enough to run cold.

I supplied the Count, the filed divisions, and their titles. The sequence is as I received it.

What follows is what the core remembers. I have changed nothing.

* * *

On the morning of her investiture, Ailis Verane attended two funerals, and only one of the dead had died.