Dream d1763-s: Last Entry, Open Road

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the morning bell at Pewtergate had not yet rung when I sat down to write the final entry in the book of readings. The courtyard outside the window was empty except for Rurik, who had already positioned himself at the arch of the city gate, facing outward. He did not look back. He never does, on departure days.

The Builder came in from the structural quarter still carrying her plumb bob, letting it swing from two fingers. She set it on the table beside my ink pot without a word, then dropped into the chair across from me and read over my shoulder as I wrote. I could feel her correcting sentences in her head. When I reached the line about the storage arches holding at full load, she made a small sound of satisfaction that I knew meant I had gotten it right.

The Weather Reader arrived last, smelling of the open air. She had gone out early to take a final barometric reading from the high terrace where Pewtergate keeps its oldest pressure instruments, the ones sealed in glass so thick you can barely read them. She set her notebook on the table next to mine, tapped a number she had circled twice. Falling, she said, not yet dramatic. The road will be dry until midday.

I asked if we had left anything unread.

She considered. The mill district, she said. But the Foreman knows what we saw there. He will carry it forward.

The Lamplighter found us before we shouldered our packs. She came with a small clay cylinder, sealed at both ends, the kind Pewtergate uses to protect written messages from rain. Inside, she told me, was a copy of the petition the Archivists had finally agreed to submit. She said nothing else. She pressed it into my hands and stepped back, and that was the whole farewell.

Lano had been patient through all of it, sitting near the door with her nose toward the courtyard. When I closed the book of readings and slid it into its sleeve, her ears came up. She was on her feet before I finished buckling my pack.

We walked out through the gate in a loose line. Rurik moved first, as I knew he would, and without ceremony. The city's noise fell behind us by degrees: the creak of the wheel-crane at the water dock, a voice calling a number across a yard, the bell finally ringing the hour. Pewtergate stayed bright even as we turned our backs to it.

The Weather Reader said: falling pressure, dry road, no wind yet. Good enough, the Builder answered.

I held the clay cylinder inside my coat where I could feel it. One node still dark ahead of us, and the road telling us nothing yet about what we would find when we arrived.