Dream d2903-s: Where the Numbers Disagree

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the cold came first - a draft from somewhere at the far end, carrying the smell of old wool and tallow, and Lano lifted her nose to it before I could place it myself.

It was the seventh night of eight, and the house had settled into the particular quiet a count acquires near its close. The row of coats ran the full length of the long wall - nineteen of them, each hung with the medals struck in its keeping. Nine orders. Nine kinds of work the medals can record. The oldest sat alongside the newest with equal finality; not one had been altered, not one medal re-struck to suit a later reading.

The Steward walked the row with the ledger open, and I followed a pace behind. Lano padded alongside, her nails soft on the stone, pausing when I paused, nose pressed briefly near the hem of each coat before we moved on. Rurik had taken a high perch at the far end and watched from there with half-closed amber eyes, his tail hanging still.

The work was this. The house fits seven faces each night, one for each order of task it measures. A face is not carried from one night to the next; it is re-cut by fresh trial, by what a fresh measure finds. Six of the seven faces lay flush with their coat that night. The Steward marked each of those six with a single line in the ledger and moved past without comment.

He stopped before the seventh.

I stopped with him. Lano sat down beside my foot. The coat in question carried eight trial-marks for the order in question; four of them had passed, four had not. The fitted face said the station for this order was closed. The medals said what had happened and nothing further - they cannot speak to a station, only to a deed already done and witnessed. The mismatch was entered in the ledger: a coat that carries what it carries, a face that reads as it reads, and the two no longer in agreement. The station remains closed. The trial that would move the face has not happened. The notation was filed and the page turned.

I held the count when we reached the end of the row: 915 medals across the nineteen coats, 7 faces fitted for the night, 6 of them flush, 1 carrying an open mismatch the eighth night will also carry if nothing between now and then moves.

The Charter hung on the far wall above the ledge where Rurik had settled, its seven rulings unchanged. He did not look at it.

We turned back toward the warmth. Lano trotted ahead, made a small sound low in her throat - "quieto" - and waited at the door.

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