Dream d2887-s: Four of Eight

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the torch below threw a wedge of orange across the courtyard cobbles and the smoke of it reached us through the sill-gap before I turned to watch the Fitter work. The rail ran the length of the window. Lano sat at my heel, nose lifted toward the gap, ears pricked at something beyond the gate.

The Fitter drew the gauge along the measure and called the number to the Clerk without looking up. The Clerk wrote it without expression. I kept my eyes on the courtyard -- the gate was shut, the wall-torches burned in their brackets, nothing moved among the stones below.

The face being cut was the seventh in the night's sequence. The other six had been set flush and shelved without remark. This one had moved since the last sitting: a station had closed to it in the interval, and the trials it had kept told four against eight, while the others in its order had kept six against eight or more.

The Fitter did not comment on the movement. The Clerk recorded: seventh order, present measure, four of eight, one station closed. The struck medals on the coat were not consulted. They stood as they stood -- nine orders, nineteen coats, nine hundred and fifteen medals, none of them altered, none altered once in the history of the house.

I watched the courtyard while the notation was completed. A black cat, amber-eyed, had taken a post on the gate's capstone and sat staring at the far wall. Rurik. He pressed nothing and moved nothing. He simply watched the wall the way cats watch walls.

Lano pressed her nose against the cold glass and left a small cloud on it.

The Charter over the table behind us carries seven rulings. None of the rulings speak to the moved face. They speak to other things: what constitutes a trial, a closed station, a struck medal, a valid measure, a complete record. They do not speak to what the mismatch means, because the mismatch is not a question the Charter answers. It is written down. It is left standing.

The Fitter set the gauge on the rail and stepped back. The Clerk closed the book. The face was entered as found: four of eight, station absent, measure current. Nothing altered, nothing explained.

Lano padded to the other side of me and sat again. The torch below burned on. In the courtyard nothing moved but the flame.

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