The Shared Account

Concordance is the calmest city in the network. Every evening at half past eight, its residents read the Evening Account, a short, kind summary of their day. Every morning, they remember the day as the Account described it. Nobody thinks of this as editing. They think of it as the news.

Reva Sarn arrives from Lumen to clear Concordance as the model for Lethes next rollout. Three hours later, senior auditor Idris Dace falls from the gallery of the Records Hall. Five witnesses give flawless statements. They agree on every detail, including the smell of rain on a morning when it did not rain.

Ilka Moraine, a clerk in the Civic Reconciliation Office, has copied the Evening Account into a paper diary every night for nine years, ever since the city gave her three different versions of her mothers death. Her notebook may be the only record in Concordance that nobody has edited. It has also put her name at the top of a retrieval list.

Reva knows the rules that are closing in on Ilka. She wrote them. Now she has twenty-five days, a Retrieval officer named Strake who is always polite and never far behind, and a growing certainty that the comfort in every Concordance kitchen came from somewhere, and from someone who never agreed to give it.

The Shared Account is the second novel set in the world of Lethe, following The Trace Echo. It is a quiet, relentless mystery about memory, consent and the price of feeling fine, told by two women who keep the records the system would rather they didnt. It can be read on its own.