Page 98 of Legacy Elite

She stops.

There's one line near the bottom of the family group where the notation is longer, and the ink is different, like it was added later.

"And this one," Hess says.

I read it.

Youngest daughter. Not recovered.

The room is very quiet.

"Not recovered," I say.

"Not recovered."

"That means dead."

"It means not recovered," Faris says. "Which is what a clerk writes when he cannot write deceased, confirmed, because he has not been shown a body and he is not permitted to invent one."

"And nobody followed it up?"

"Everybody followed it up, extensively, for a period of months." Faris folds her hands. "Then the war ended, and the House was struck from the record, and everyone who disappeared during its destruction was counted among the dead. Which was reasonable. It was almost certainly correct for every other name on that page." She looks at the enlargement. "By the time the histories were written, the phrase in every account is that the royal line was destroyed. Nobody was lying. They were summarising."

I'm looking at four words in brown ink.

"So there was a kid," I say.

"There was a kid," Hess says. "And now the second document."

The third enlargement is completely different. Smaller hand, different paper, a printed form filled in.

"A residency registration. Different jurisdiction, well outside the Fourth House lands, dated a little under five months after the inventory. An adult woman registers herself and a child. She gives a surname that appears nowhere in her stated town of origin. She gives the child's age."

"Which is?"

"Seven."

Seven.

"And the woman?"

"The name she registers under isn't hers, as far as we can establish." Hess pushes her glasses up further. "But three of the household staff on that first list share it. A servant family, attached to the House for at least two generations." She spreads her hands slightly. "That is not proof. It is a coincidence I would be embarrassed to ignore."

"So somebody got her out."

"Somebody got a child of that age out of that region in that year and registered her under a household surname. Whether it was the woman on this form, whether there were others, what route they took, what it cost them—none of that is written down anywhere I can reach."

"And after?"

"After that it gets easier. That's the part nobody expected." Hess moves along the table. "The child appears twice more in the same registry under the assumed surname, with the same woman named as guardian. Then, at seventeen, she appears in a marriage record. Same name, same age, same guardian, who signs as a witness."

"So it's the same girl."

"I'd defend that, yes."

She moves to the next enlargement.

"She has three children."