Dream d2862-s: Medals at the Threshold

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the great doors of the house stood open against the night, and the Doorward's voice carried across the courtyard in a way that said plainly: not the name of any face, but the name of what had been done.

I sat at the long table with the ledger open. The Charter rested to my left, its seven rulings legible in the lamplight. Lano had claimed a flagstone near the far wall where some warmth still rose; she lay with her chin forward and her ears lifting each time the Doorward's voice came through the open doors.

The first guest came in from the courtyard and the Doorward named the coat: what orders of deed it held, and in what count. Seven orders carried across the nineteen who would come tonight, nine orders in all the Charter tracked - but no guest held every one. I wrote what was spoken and set my pen down. The face fitted to the guest by tonight's measure was not the first entry. The coat was. That was how the house worked on these nights.

One by one they came. Between each announcement the courtyard was quiet and then the Doorward's voice again, and then footsteps on stone. Lano's ears tracked each one without lifting her head. Rurik had come in at some point without announcement and was on the high sill of the east window, watching, his tail still.

The Charter's seven rulings did not change between guests. I ran my eye down them when a coat's orders touched a ruling's domain, only to note the contact, not to judge it.

By the time the fourteenth guest crossed the threshold the tally stood at some hundreds. The Doorward named the coat: eight trial-marks in the seventh order, four carrying the seal of passage. The face fitted for that order had been moved this measuring-night - one station closed to it, another assigned. The medals on the coat said what the coat said. The fitted face said what it said. I wrote both in their own columns and wrote nothing in the column that would have held an explanation, because that column did not exist in this ledger. The mismatch was set down the way all mismatches are set down here: as a standing record, not a verdict. The coat could not be re-struck without a deed yet to be witnessed. The face could not be re-cut without a trial yet to be run.

The guest took their place at the table. I did not look up.

Five more, after that. The Doorward's voice, the footsteps, the orders named, the entry made. When the nineteenth guest was announced and across the threshold I set my pen down and summed the columns. Nine hundred and fifteen medals across nineteen coats. Nine orders of deed in all the Charter tracked. Seven faces fitted for the night, six sitting level against their measure. One that did not.

I closed the ledger on the second night's count. The Charter's seven rulings remained above the page, unchanged. Rurik dropped from the sill without a sound and slipped toward the inner door.

Lano rose from the warm stone, stood a moment in the middle of the long hall, and from somewhere in her chest, quieta - once, soft, into the settling dark.

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