Dream d2647-s: The Guild Kept Its Own

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the guild room in Pewterlow was already lit when I arrived, two candles burning at either end of a long table, and the Clerk of the Counting House was already seated when I came through the door with my book under one arm. Lano came in behind me and settled beneath the table without prompting. Rurik had arrived before us both; he was on the high shelf above the window, his amber eyes open, watching the room.

The Clerk did not rise. She had her own book open on the table, a ledger with a cloth spine, the cover worn soft from years of handling. The columns in it were not the same as mine. Hers ran left to right: a place-name in the first column, a count of persons in the second, a note in the third that said, simply, whether the count was taken by office or by household, and in what season.

I set my book down beside hers. We read them both.

The differences were not errors. My form recorded state: open, half-open, cold, ruin. Hers recorded motion: the last census, how the population had shifted in the interval since, how many had left for the valley and not come back. Two shapes of the same territory. Neither ate the other. I ran my finger down my column of ruins and she watched without touching my page.

Where our counts agreed, there was nothing to say. Where they diverged, we noted the divergence and wrote the date. The Clerk did not explain why her number differed from mine. I did not explain why mine differed from hers. We wrote what each form showed, and left the reasoning for whoever came after.

Lano's nose appeared over the edge of the table once, testing the air, then withdrew. Rurik blinked from the shelf.

The guild's book had been here before I arrived and would remain here when I left. My book would go with me. At Mistthwaite, I thought, but did not say, there was no room like this one waiting. No Clerk. Only the pile of letters, and nobody to read them. I wrote nothing about Mistthwaite. This was not Mistthwaite's page.

By the time the second candle burned low we had finished the town's portion. The Clerk closed her ledger and set it to the left. I closed mine and set it to the right. They rested there on the table, and I looked at them for a moment before I put mine away.

---