Dream d1716-s: Mist, Roles, and Lantern Glass

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the river mist hadn't lifted by the time we set out from the wayhouse, and Ironbrook looked different under it - softened, the lamp-posts ringed in yellow haloes, the cobblestones dark and close-grained underfoot. Lano moved ahead of us along the main thoroughfare, nose grazing the ground, reading the same streets I was trying to read with my eyes. She paused at each doorway as if taking an inventory.

The Lamplighter found us before we found her. She was working her way down the row with an oil-can and a rag, checking wicks that hadn't needed checking, and she looked up without surprise. "Readers," she said. It was not a question. The Builder asked how long she'd held the route; the Lamplighter told her, in numbers of winters, the way people here seemed to count everything. The Builder nodded and wrote nothing down, but I saw her eyes move to the lamp-brackets, checking their set in the stone.

We followed the Lamplighter's route until the street opened onto the brook itself - a clean channel, banked in dressed stone, sluice-gates at even intervals. The Brook-warden was there in oilskin, reading his own instruments: staff-gauge, current-markers, a leather notebook not unlike mine. The Weather Reader greeted him as a colleague. He showed her his tide-marks from the last three seasons; she showed him her barometric log from the road. They spoke in measurements for a while, and I recorded what I could follow.

Lano sat at the water's edge, ears forward, watching something move under the surface.

By midday we had reached the Schoolkeeper's hall. She met us on the step and offered cider, which we accepted. The hall was airy, long benches, windows fitted with oiled paper that let in a diffuse grey light. "You'll want to see the register," she said to me, not a question either. Ironbrook had a habit of knowing what visitors needed before they asked. The register was thorough: every skill held in the settlement, every gap, a column for things once known and since lost.

The Weather Reader read it over my shoulder and said quietly: "They've been noting the losses too. That's rare."

The Builder looked up from the doorframe she'd been examining. "Clean joints," she said. "Someone built this to outlast whoever built it."

Rurik had not entered the hall. He sat on the outer step in the mist, amber eyes on the street. Lano trotted out and settled beside him, and I watched them there - cat and dog at a threshold - while the Schoolkeeper poured another round of cider and the river ran its quiet count outside.