The Company of Others

In the Republic of Pairs, no one faces consequence alone. That is the law.

Every citizen is bonded to another. Every account is shared. Solitude is the one poverty the law recognizes. And for the first time, the traveler whom no instrument could ever read becomes legible: through someone else's burned hand, felt in his own.

Sorel mends clocks, has just been widowed by the state's own arithmetic, and crosses a border no one is supposed to cross, in the company of a man the borders keep taking.

What follows is the quietest love story on the map. It is told in wound clocks; in Holm, the choir state, where nothing true may be said by one voice alone; in Rondel, where children move to new households every month and one child keeps a ledger of the promises adults make; and in Vale, the country without farewells, where the roads heal over behind whoever leaves.

Every country so far has asked what he is. These four ask something harder: is understanding someone the same as keeping them company?

The Company of Others is Book Two of A Map of Other Laws. The account is still being kept. The column for true promises is still open.