Dream d2863-s: Nineteen at the Lamp

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the long hall was filling on the third night of eight, and I stood at the door with the Clerk of Count to mark the tally before the last seat was taken.

The coats came first - each one into the lamplight, each one already weighted before the guest beneath it had crossed the threshold. Lano was at my heel, ears up, nose working at the dark beyond the door where the last few had not yet come in. She did not go to them. She waited.

Rurik had arrived before any of the guests. He had taken the high shelf above the Charter table and sat in the amber of the lamp, tail hanging straight, watching each coat enter. He did not descend.

Nineteen. That was the count the Clerk called when the door was finally closed, and I entered it in the ledger: nineteen guests, nine orders of deed, nine hundred and fifteen struck medals between them. The Clerk read it back. No medal among them had been altered since its striking. The Clerk said this as a matter of record.

The face-fitters came after the count. Seven orders of task, seven faces, and the fitting went slowly because each face is re-cut from the measure of the night rather than carried over from a previous one. Six of the seven sat flush: the face said a thing, the medals said the same thing, the Clerk made a mark. Six times that.

The seventh did not.

The face said four trials passed of eight, and one station of that order was closed to the bearer. The medals on the coat said more than four. The Clerk entered the mismatch in the column kept for mismatches: face on one side, coat on the other, the distance between them measured and left standing. No explanation was entered. No entry in that column holds an explanation.

The Reader of Rulings rose and read the Charter: seven standing rulings, unchanged since their last reading. Lano had settled under the long table by then, chin on the stone floor between her paws, watching the feet pass. Rurik blinked once from his shelf and washed a paw.

The house was at count: nineteen.

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