Councilor Varn arrived at three o'clock precisely, which told me everything about his relationship to truth. Punctuality in the Literal District is not courtesy—it is demonstration. To arrive early suggests uncertainty; to arrive late, disrespect; to arrive exactly on time proves that one's internal clock matches external reality. Varn needed to prove things matched. This would make him either an excellent client or a catastrophic one.
He entered my office with the rigid posture of a man who had never allowed himself to curve. His suit was gray, not charcoal or slate or any of the Figurative Quarter's evocative shades, but gray—the color of concrete, of official documents, of statements that required no interpretation. His lie-creatures, if he had any, would be somewhere else. Men like Varn paid others to carry their monsters.
"Resemblance," he said, using my professional name. I had stopped answering to my birth designation years ago, when I realized that "Sem" felt more like a fragment than a person. "I've heard you can make truth do what you need."
"I can help you speak accurately," I corrected. "Truth does what it does. I merely prevent it from doing harm."
He sat in the client chair without examining it. Most first-time clients noticed the chair—it was shaped like a question mark, upholstered in fabric that shifted between blue and gray depending on how you looked at it. Varn looked at nothing but me. His eyes were the color of official seals, pressed into flesh with bureaucratic precision.
"The Inquiry convenes in nine days," he said. "They will ask about the East District renovation funds. They will ask about the contractor selection process. They will ask about my relationship with a woman named Cora Vane."
"And the accurate answers to these questions?"
"The funds were allocated according to procedure." His barometric pressure didn't shift. I felt it immediately—this was a man who had learned to believe his own constructions. "The contractor was selected through competitive bidding. I have no relationship with Cora Vane.
"I waited. The humidity in the room held steady at fifty-eight percent. No Fib-sprites manifested. Either Varn was innocent, which seemed statistically unlikely for a Literal District politician, or he had achieved something I had rarely encountered: genuine belief in technically accurate statements.
"Tell me about procedure," I said.
"The Municipal Allocation Code, Section 44.7, subsection B. Funds designated for infrastructure improvement may be redirected to administrative oversight if the projected completion timeline exceeds eighteen months. The East District project was projected at nineteen months. I authorized the redirection. The funds were allocated according to procedure."
"And the contractor?"
"Competitive bidding occurred. Three firms submitted proposals. The selection committee, which I chaired, evaluated them according to seventeen weighted criteria. Meridian Construction scored highest. They were selected."
"And Cora Vane?"
"I have never met her.
"The humidity dropped two points. There it was—not a lie, precisely, but a narrowing. I had learned to read these microclimates. Varn was telling the truth as he had constructed it, but the construction was fragile. It would hold under direct questioning, but it might not survive repetition, context, the accidents of conversation that turn statements into stories.
"Let me tell you what will happen," I said. "The Inquiry will ask these questions. You will answer exactly as you've answered me. No creatures will manifest. You will be technically innocent. Then you will go home, and you will tell your wife about your day. You will tell her the same words, in a different context, with different emphasis. And that is when your monsters will come."
Varn's pressure spiked. Fear, I diagnosed. Fear of being understood.
"My wife is not relevant to this consultation."
"Your wife is the only relevant factor. The Veracitors know this. They will have someone watching your home, waiting for you to relax your precision. The Lie Economy doesn't care about technical accuracy. It cares about social truth—the gap between what you claim and what you believe, between what you believe and what others perceive.
"I stood and walked to my window. The rain had stopped, but the glass still held its words. I had wiped them away twice; they reformed within the hour. Like a memory of rain. I was trying not to think about what that meant.
"The Municipal Allocation Code," I said. "Section 44.7, subsection B. It permits redirection to administrative oversight. But the funds weren't redirected to oversight, were they? They went to a subsidiary of Meridian Construction. A consulting firm. Whose principal consultant is Cora Vane.
"Silence. Then: "How do you know this?"
"I don't. I'm guessing. But my guesses about financial crimes are usually accurate, and your atmospheric pressure just dropped ten points." I turned to face him. "Here's what we're going to do. You're going to tell the truth. Not the technical truth—the actual truth. And then we're going to find a way to say it that doesn't generate creatures."
"I'll be arrested."
"You'll be vulnerable. There's a difference. The Veracitors can't act on accurate statements alone. They need evidence of intent to deceive. They need your words to spawn monsters. We're going to give them words that don't."
It took four hours. Varn resisted at first, then surrendered with the relief of a man who had been holding his breath for years. The truth emerged in fragments: the affair with Cora Vane, the consulting firm as a funnel for redirected funds, the selection committee weighted toward Meridian through criteria Varn himself had designed. Not corruption, precisely—optimization. The system permitted these maneuvers. The system encouraged them. The system only punished those who failed to manage their metaphors.
We crafted his testimony statement by statement. Not "I did not embezzle" but "The funds remained within municipal oversight structures." Not "I have no relationship with Cora Vane" but "My relationship with Ms. Vane is defined by professional consultation." Not "I am innocent" but "I have operated within the boundaries of permissible interpretation.
"When he left, at seven o'clock precisely, I felt his pressure system stabilize. He believed he was safe. He believed he had purchased safety from me, the truth consultant with the mysterious immunity, the woman who could make language behave.
I believed it too. The humidity held steady. No creatures manifested in my office. I had done good work, I told myself. I had managed the weather.
I did not know that Varn's wife, Elara, was already preparing his favorite meal. I did not know that he would repeat my crafted phrases to her, seeking her approval, her pride, her relief that the Inquiry would go well. I did not know that the context would shift, that "professional consultation" would sound, in the intimacy of their marriage, exactly like the lie it was designed to circumvent.
I did not know that Elara Varn would die at 9:47 PM, crushed by a Deception-beast that manifested in their bedroom, summoned not by Varn's testimony but by his repetition of it.
I did not know that the creature would leave traces of my atmospheric signature in its dissipation.
I did not know that I had killed her.