Dream d2911-s: Seven Rulings, One Gap

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the candles had burned low enough that the wax had pooled against the holders, and when I drew the chair at the table's head across the floor the sound of it reached the far wall before any guest looked up.

The Charter lay open at its last page. Seven rulings in the left column, each with the date of its setting in the right. I had read them aloud earlier in the evening - not to instruct but to confirm they were still there, that no one had unmarked one or set it aside. None had been altered. None would be.

Nineteen guests, each carrying the orders struck upon their coat. Nine orders in all, nine kinds of deed, each witnessed at the moment it was done and not revisited. The medals do not argue with one another. They do not need to. A thing was done, it was witnessed, it was struck. That is what a medal is.

The faces are another matter. Seven of them in this house, one for each order of task the house measures. Each fitted fresh before the night's work, cut from trial and not from recollection, and moved when a fresh measure moves it. Six of the seven sat flush with the medals struck in their order. The seventh did not.

I wrote it down in the column set aside for mismatches. The face had moved since the last fitting. The medals had not. Four of its eight trials had been passed; the others had not. A station the face had once cleared was closed to it now. I wrote this. I did not explain it. There is nothing in the Charter that asks for explanation. The house does not grade. The house does not blame. The house records and leaves what it has recorded standing.

Lano had settled under the far end of the table some time ago, her chin flat on her paws, watching the nearest candle's light where it moved across the floor. When I reached the last ruling and read it into the room she lifted her head, then set it down again.

Rurik sat in the doorway behind me. I heard him land from wherever he had been perching - a soft double-thud, then nothing. He pressed against my calf once as I set the pen down, then moved back into the corridor.

I closed the Charter. It was heavier than the page count explained. The cover met the last page with a sound that was more settling than closing, the way a foundation takes weight. The seven rulings were inside. The mismatch was inside with them. The medals were still on the coats in the room.

I left the Charter at the head of the table with nothing on top of it. The house requires no seal. The rulings stand because they have not been altered, and they will continue to stand until they are, and nothing that happened tonight alters them.

Night seven of eight. One night remaining.

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