Dream d2864-s: Nine Hundred Fifteen

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Steward stood at the head of the hall steps and called the count aloud into the torchlit courtyard, and I stood in the crossing line as the stone gate held its shadow behind us all.

Nineteen coats in the yard. The Steward moved along them with no instrument save his eyes, reading each row of struck medals in turn and naming the order aloud - nine orders of deed, each with its mark - and when he reached the last coat he turned to face the hall and said the number plainly into the dark: nine hundred and fifteen. The hall received it without ceremony. Lano sat near the gate post with her nose tipped toward the nearest torch and did not move.

The Keeper of Faces entered from the long hall and laid seven fitted faces on the table, one for each order the house measures. Six lay flat and flush against the cloth without adjustment. The seventh rested at a slight angle. The Keeper noted the angle without touching it further, then wrote down the station now closed to it - one station, no more - and beside that the count: four of eight trials passed, where the others had passed more. The mismatch was entered beneath the date. No cause was appended. The medals cannot be re-struck into a different shape, and the face cannot be re-cut without a trial that has not happened, so the line read only: moved. The pen was set down.

The Charter hung above the table, heavy cloth with stitched hem, and I counted seven standing rulings along its edge. No one read them aloud. A ruling held does not require reading.

Rurik slipped through the gap at the hinge side of the doorway and took a high shelf near the tally board. He sat with amber eyes fixed on the Keeper's hand while the final line was drawn. He did not blink until the pen lifted. Then he looked away, as though completion were the only moment worth watching and everything after it belonged to someone else.

The Steward closed the ledger. I stood at the long hall's edge and watched Lano pad once along the line of empty coat-hooks, then curl at the base of the steps near the lowest torch. Fifteen medals on the nearest coat. Nine orders. Not one of them altered. Struck once on witnessed evidence and never touched afterward. That is the only way it is done in this house, and the house has always been slow and certain about it.

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