Dream d2878-s: Six Flush, One Apart

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the lantern garden was open for the second night of six, and I stood at the gate with the Registrar while the Fitter worked at the long table under the hung lights.

Each guest came to the table in turn. The Fitter had the measures from that night's trials and cut a face to fit what the trials said, not what the coat said. The coat carried the medals, and the medals never changed. That was the standing rule of the house. Seven stations, seven faces, each one re-cut from fresh trial each night, each one saying only who is trusted to lead work of that kind tonight and who is not. The measure was tonight's measure. The face came from tonight only.

Lano padded between the lantern posts, nose down, ears lifting at each new guest as they passed. She settled near the Fitter's table and lay with her chin on the path stones, watching the work.

Nineteen guests carried coats between them, 915 struck medals across the nine orders of deed, not one mark altered since its striking. I watched the Fitter cut the seventh face and set it down beside the first six. Six lay flush with their measure. The trials and the medals in agreement, or near enough that the Charter found no flag for it. The seventh did not. The guest with the seventh face had passed four of eight trials where the others had passed more. One station was closed to them on tonight's reading.

The Registrar opened the ledger and wrote it down. I read the line as the ink dried: the face, the measure, the station closed, the trial count. No gloss on it. The medals on the coat were what they were - struck on witnessed evidence, never touched again. The face was what tonight's trial said it was. The disagreement between them was now in the record, and the record was what the house had.

The Charter over the table held seven standing rulings, and none of them spoke to this. They did not need to. A mismatch is a thing written down, nothing more.

Rurik had taken the warm place on the garden wall above the table, amber eyes open, watching the Fitter's hands without blinking. When the seventh face was folded into the ledger he turned his gaze to the far end of the path and was still.

I sealed the night's work and carried it to the keeping shelf. Lano rose and followed me along the lit path, a small stone in her mouth, trotting quietly at my heel until the last lantern was behind us.

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