Dream d1761-s: Cart-Tracks and Deep Roots

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the lamps of Pewtergate had been lit so many evenings now that I no longer noticed their lighting - only their effect, the way blue dusk went amber-gold along the lower lanes before the sky itself had made up its mind.

The Builder found me at the corner of the moot hall, crouched over the flagstones where three roads met. She had her measuring cord out, one end pinned under her boot, and she was not measuring distance. She was measuring disturbance.

"Fresh," she said, without looking up. "Every approach. Someone brought heavy loads in within the last three days, maybe four. Not one road - all of them."

I opened the book of readings and noted it: not a single source but a convergence. Rurik sat on the hall's stone step above us, watching the lane to the north. His amber eyes moved once, tracking something I could not see, and then went still. He had been marking this corner since our second evening here; I had stopped questioning what he waited for.

The Weather Reader came from the square with her instruments under one arm and a long face. "Pressure's been building since yesterday's reading," she said. "This place is under load. Not storm-load - task-load. Something got decided and the decision hasn't finished arriving yet."

Lano nosed at the nearest cart-rut, sneezed hard, and sat back on her haunches with her ears perked. The rut was deep, damp clay pressed smooth. Verdad - the one word she could not speak but that I thought each time she confirmed something with her nose.

Inside the moot hall the petitions were stacked as they had been for two days: sealed, labeled, waiting for a reader. We had counted twelve yesterday. This morning there were nineteen. Someone was still writing them, somewhere in Pewtergate, and sending them here.

The Builder stood and rolled her cord. "We thought this was a stuck hinge," she said. "It isn't. It's a loaded beam. Different repair."

I wrote that down too. Day five of seven. We had arrived thinking we would read a settled place and move on. Pewtergate had kept expanding under our hands. The long tables in the workrooms were full each morning when we passed - different faces, sometimes, same work, each person with their own tools arranged just so. The place was not in distress. It was in motion, dense and deliberate motion, and the party was only now reaching the center of it.

Rurik dropped from the step and walked north without ceremony. We followed. The lamps held. The night had more to show us.