Dream d2891-s: The Unalterable Coat

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the terrace was open to the night and the hills beyond it held no light. I stood at the recording table with the Fitter and the Clerk of Medals. Lano had come with us - she padded to the terrace's edge and pressed her nose toward the dark, then turned and trotted back to sit beside my heel.

The trial that moves a face is not a ceremony. The Fitter sets a measure against the task and the house records what the measure returns. Tonight the task in question was the seventh order: the leading of consultative work, where a guest is trusted to hear disputed accounts and make a recommendation. The Fitter had run eight trials for the guest whose face was now under review, and the result of those eight was laid on the table before any of us spoke.

Four passed. Four did not.

The Charter carries seven standing rulings above the table. I read the third one aloud because it bears on what a trial decides and what it cannot touch. The trial says whether a face may be fitted for this order, tonight, against this measure. It says nothing about the coat. It cannot open the coat. The coat holds what the guest has done under witness; each medal was struck once, on evidence, and is not revisited. A face that falls short in four trials does not alter the coat's tally. The medals remain. The station closed to this guest tonight is closed by the face, not the coat, and the distinction is written in the first standing ruling and reiterated in the fourth.

Rurik had come up the terrace steps behind us and found the warm stone near the Charter post. He folded himself there and watched, eyes amber in the low lamp, tail still.

The Clerk of Medals named the count: nine hundred and fifteen medals across nineteen guests, across nine orders. Not one altered. The guest under review carries medals from six of those orders - a long coat, not a thin one. That is the record. Tonight's trial returned four of eight passed, and the Fitter set the mask accordingly. It does not fit the station. This is noted. The Clerk writes it in the column reserved for mismatches, not the column reserved for fault.

I wrote the margin note myself: six orders bearing medals; the seventh order's mask moved; station closed until a fresh measure moves it otherwise. The Charter holds no term for this that carries blame. The Fitter said nothing after the reading. The Clerk closed the column.

Lano had circled the perimeter of the terrace and returned, her ears up, something in her attention. She sat and looked out at the hills. I looked too and saw only dark. The trial does not explain itself. The mismatch is set down, the night receives it, and we remain at the table until the entry is complete.

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