Dream d2897-s: The Struck and the Fitted

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I walked the gallery of coats.

The gallery ran the length of the house, lit by lamps set into the stone above each peg. Every coat hung without its owner, weighted by what was pinned below the collar: struck medals in nine orders of deed, each struck once on witnessed evidence and never since touched. Some coats carried many; some carried few. None had been altered. The record of a deed is the deed; you cannot amend it without striking a new medal and laying it beside the old. So they only accreted, season on season, and the oldest among them had edges worn dull by neighboring metal.

Above each collar hung tonight's fitted face. Not remembered from last time but re-cut this morning by the Fitter's trial, saying who the house trusts to carry a task of each order now - who it does not. Seven orders of task, seven faces per coat. The Fitter worked through the dawn and made no remark except on one.

Lano padded beside me down the center lane. Her nails were soft on the stone. Ahead, Rurik had gone through the far arch; I could hear nothing but could see, when I reached the Charter table at the end, that he had already claimed the warm corner behind the lamp and was washing one paw with great ceremony.

My office tonight was Witness. I carried the record book and nothing else.

The Keeper of Coats walked the opposite row, naming tallies. Nine hundred fifteen medals. Nineteen coats. Nine orders: threshold-crossing, keeping, repair, survey, dispatch, continuance, amendment, custody, conveyance. I listened and did not write. Writing comes only at a discordance, and for the first eighteen coats I had nothing to write.

The nineteenth coat I had expected.

It hung at the end of the row nearest the Charter table. Long and dark, heavily medaled - forty-odd pieces across eight of the nine orders, some of them old enough that I could not read their faces without leaning close. The Keeper read them to me one by one. I listened to the whole count.

Then I looked up at the fitted face above the collar.

Lano stopped walking. She pressed against the side of my boot and did not move. Her ears were up. She made no sound; she only attended, which is all the attending that is asked of her here.

The fitted face was for the order of dispatch. It did not match the medals below it. The medals said: many deeds in many orders, across many seasons, all witnessed and struck. The face said: four of eight trials passed, which is where you are now in the measure, which is fewer than the others carry. One station in the order stood closed. The Fitter had noted this and re-cut accordingly. The face said now, not then.

I opened the record book. I wrote what I saw: the coat's position in the gallery, the count of medals in each order, the face fitted tonight for the order of dispatch, the measure that had moved it, the station closed, the trial count. I wrote no explanation. I assigned no grade. The medals cannot be re-struck to fit the face; the face cannot be re-cut without a trial that has not been held. So the disagreement goes into the record and stands there, unresolved, because that is what the record is for.

I closed the book.

Lano had moved ahead without me. She stood now beside the Charter table, nose up, reading something in the air near the lamp. "Quieto," she said, just once, to no one in particular - or perhaps to Rurik, who had stopped washing his paw and was watching her with amber eyes that did not blink.

The Charter carried seven rulings in plain script across its face, each sealed with the Warden's mark. I read them in order and found them unchanged from the last gathering. Seven rulings; all still standing. I noted this in the record book on a separate page.

Then the Fitter came through the far arch, coat on arm, already preparing for tomorrow's walk. The gallery had been witnessed. The one mismatch had been recorded. No one had explained it or graded it or named a cause. The medals were where they were. The face was where the trial had placed it. The gallery would hold both until something moved, and nothing had moved tonight.

I set the record book on the Charter table. Rurik took the warm spot I had been standing on.

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