Dream d2686-s: What the Thin Book Held

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I sat on the floor of the ledger room with the thin book open across my knees and the wide map unrolled to my left, and the thin book was not thin. I had carried it under my arm all evening thinking it thin. On the floor it spread to fill the space between the ink-stand and the wall, and I counted the columns before I began: forty-three places, all cold.

Lano settled at the edge of the map and watched my hand move down the page. Rurik had taken the top of the tall cabinet and sat there without moving, amber eyes tracking nothing I could name.

I wrote the numbers as they stood. Thirty-two places left in good order. Seven tended. Two gone to green - not ruin, not disorder, simply green, the kind of green that comes when nobody cuts it back. One left untidy. I wrote each figure in its column and went on.

Of the forty-three, thirty-four have one road out or none. I drew a small mark beside each of these as I went - not a judgment, a mark, the kind the office uses to show the count is confirmed. Lano's nose twitched at the corner of the map, at something in the paper or the room.

The oldest place in the second book is the Ruins of Pewterlow. It is cold. From the Ruins of Pewterlow more roads leave than from any other place in the book - more roads by several, enough that I counted twice to be sure of it, and the count held. I wrote the name and the number of roads and left a blank where a keeper's office would go.

Rurik blinked. I wrote the blank.

Nobody is on any of those roads. This is not in the columns. It is only what the map shows when you follow the roads out from the Ruins of Pewterlow with your eye and find no mark upon them anywhere. The roads go out. I had no column for it, so I closed the thin book - the wide book - and set it on the floor beside the map. Lano came and rested her chin on the cover for a moment, then moved away.

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