Dream d2220-s: What They Will Not Talk About

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the city smelled of sawdust and warm iron when I stepped out of the lodging at the hour before the lights thinned. Day three. I knew the rhythm now - the workshop on the east wall started earliest, a percussive tapping that the Weather Reader had already learned to read: four taps meant the night shift was settling in, a long pause meant the piece was difficult.

The Builder walked ahead of me, already in conversation with one of the city's six principal hands - a woman who ran what they called the hall of indices, where everything that arrived was given a slot before it was allowed to stay. She explained this without pride, the way people explain things they do not question. Rurik padded beside me, head low, watching the indexer's hands as she spoke.

I opened the ledger on a low wall and began the tally. "Six," I said aloud, because I had learned three settlements ago that the wish to round up crept in quietly if I counted in silence. "Six hands at the founding. Six." The Weather Reader, already cross-legged on the wall's cap-stone with her instruments unrolled, glanced over without comment. She had heard me do this.

The city was clean. That was the correct word - not decorated, not prosperous in any showy way, but arranged with a care that showed someone had thought about what each space was for and had kept it that way. Five complaints on the books, which I noted under condition. Not many for a place this old, but five meant something was not resolved; I put a small mark beside each without guessing what they were.

What they were not talking about was harder to record. The indexer had gone quiet when the Builder asked about the east annex. The hall of receivers - a low building I could see from where I sat - had its shutters drawn in a way that struck me as deliberate.

Then Lano's ears went flat.

She had been lying near my feet, the grey pellet-stone tucked against her paw. Now she stood, very still, and gave a single low bark she did not repeat. She was looking at the hall of receivers.

One of the workers came out at a half-run and spoke to the Builder in low tones, showing a strip of paper with columns of marks I couldn't read from the wall. The Weather Reader was already rolling up her instruments. Rurik moved to Lano's shoulder, and the two of them stood together in the way they did when a thing had no clear source.

The shutters on the hall stayed down. Whatever the receivers had caught, it matched nothing on any chart the indexer recognized. The city was deciding.

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