Dream d2920-s: The Unagreed Line

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the courtyard held the last of the day's light in its stones and the great doors were already beginning their slow close. I stood at the table the house sets for this occasion and Lano sat near my right foot, her nose lifted once toward the gap between the doors and then dropped.

The work of this house is clerical. The Registrar called the roll of nineteen guests in the order of their first admittance, and I followed with the ledger. Nine orders of deed. Nine hundred and fifteen struck medals, not one of them altered since the day it was cast. When a correction becomes necessary, the house adds a medal beside the old one and lets both stand. The old medal does not change. That is the house rule, and it has not moved.

Seven faces were fitted for the night, one for each order of task the house measures. Six of them sat where the trials had put them, flush against the current measure. I read them in sequence and marked each as clear. Lano's tail moved once, slow, against the stone.

The seventh was the one I had been asked to record.

The guest with the seventh fitted face had passed four of their eight trials. The station in question was closed to them. The others who held fitted faces had passed more trials in that same order, and the station remained open to them. The face the house cut for this guest tonight said: not this one. The medals on their coat said something older, something done, something witnessed. The two records did not meet.

The Registrar did not interpret this. Neither did I. I wrote the count at the top of the column: six flush, one not. Below that I wrote the particulars of the seventh as they stood: four of eight, station closed, measure moved since the last fitting. I did not write why. There is no why in this ledger.

Rurik had come in from somewhere and settled on the far corner of the table, his amber eyes on the doors, not on the page.

The Charter over the table carries seven standing rulings. They were there when I arrived. I looked at them in the way you look at a thing that does not require your attention.

The doors came together with less sound than I expected, more a settling than a close. The light went with them and the Registrar lit the lamp at the table pole. I blotted the line and set the pen down. The mismatch was written. It was not agreed to. It was not disagreed with. It stood in the state in which it stood, which is all a record of this kind can hold.

Lano pressed close against my ankle for a moment and then lay down.

The question the mismatch carries, the one between the struck medal and the re-cut face, the one neither the medals nor the trial can answer by themselves, that question stayed at the table when the doors closed. I left it there. No trial had been called.

---