Dream d2883-s: The Struck and the Cut

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the fitting-room was lit by a single lamp above the worktable, and along the wall, on pegs of pale wood, the faces hung.

I counted them as I always do when entering a room of this kind: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven. The Fitter did not look up. Lano padded in behind me, her nails quiet on the stone floor, and she pressed close against my leg before settling at the edge of the lamplight to watch.

The faces are not faces of persons. They are the measures the house has agreed to carry: one for each order of task it knows how to weigh. The Fitter cuts them fresh each night by trial - not from memory, not from sentiment, but from the evidence the trials leave behind. I took my place at the counting table.

Across the room the Charter hung level, its rulings written in a hand older than mine. I counted those too: seven. I did not touch the parchment.

The Clerk set the night's record before me. I opened it. The medals - 915 of them, across 19 offices, in 9 orders of deed - were listed in columns, each struck on witnessed evidence, none ever altered. A correction in this house is only ever a new medal laid beside the old. They accumulate. That is their law.

The faces do not accumulate. Six of the seven hung flush with their measure tonight. I set my marker beside each in turn. Lano's ears had perked before I reached the end of the row. She was already watching the seventh peg.

I left it for last.

The face there had moved since the previous reading. The Fitter had recut it - not arbitrarily, but because the trials had moved, and the measure follows the trials. Where each of the other six had passed six or more of its eight trials, this one had passed four. The station it once covered was now closed to it. I wrote the number in the column without comment.

Rurik came through the gap at the base of the door and took the warm place below the lamp. He looked at the seventh face with slow amber eyes, then looked away.

The record says what it says: medals cannot be recut to agree with a moved face, and a moved face cannot be held still to agree with the medals. Both accounts are true. Both sit on the table. The disagreement is written down and left standing, which is exactly where it belongs in a room of this kind.

I noted the count at the foot of the page: seven. Below that, the tally the house keeps for the gathering at large - 915 medals, 19 offices, 9 orders. Charter rulings: seven, unchanged.

I closed the book. Lano stood when I stood, and we left the Fitter to the lamp.

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