Dream d2870-s: Ranked by Kind Alone

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I took the lamp from the bracket at the top of the cellar stairs and carried it down into the cold. Lano came behind me, her nails ticking on the stone, a smooth pebble held in her mouth. Rurik had slipped through the gap at the bottom of the door before I had opened it fully; I found him already perched on the end post of the first shelf when I reached the floor.

The shelves ran in nine groups down the length of the aisle. The Keeper of the Ledger had laid the medals out by the nature of the deed each one recorded: the nine orders ran in sequence from the door to the far wall, and within each order the medals were arranged only by deed-kind. Not by age. Not by weight. Not by the name of the guest whose coat they had come from. I walked the first group with the lamp held at shelf height. Lano moved beside me, nose low, ears loose.

Nine hundred and fifteen medals across nineteen rows. Each row was one guest's record. No medal in any row had been altered: the Keeper's notation at the head of the ledger said so, and I checked three rows against it before writing the number into my own register.

Above the far end of each group, a face was mounted in a housing - seven faces total, one for each order of task the house measured. Six sat flush in their housings. The seventh stood a quarter-turn out, and the station beneath it was barred with a strip of dark wood laid across the bracket. I noted the position of the face, the bar across the station, and the trial count for that order: four passed of eight, where the six flush faces each carried more. I wrote the count. I did not write what it implied.

Rurik dropped from the post at the end of the last row and walked ahead to the Charter alcove. He sat in the doorway and stared at the far wall. I stepped over him. The Charter was spread on the table and I counted its standing rulings by the seals at the margin: seven, all standing. I entered seven into the register.

When I knelt to write, Lano settled beside the table leg and set the pebble down between her paws. The draft from the low air moved the edge of the Charter's vellum, and I laid my wrist across it to hold the page.

The last entry was the mismatch: the seventh face and the medals on its corresponding row did not agree. The medals recorded acts already witnessed. The face recorded a measure taken now, by trial. I wrote both positions and noted the gap between them. The house's standing instruction was to record the disagreement and leave it standing. I followed the instruction.

I closed the register. Rurik had not moved from the doorway. Lano rose when I rose, and we left the cellar with the lamp, the register, and the pebble still in her mouth.

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