Dream d3138-s: What the Hands Remember

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the market court lay flat under a noon light that left nothing for shadow, and the worker at the corner stall did not look up once. She stacked the measuring weights by feel, one by one, setting each into the groove of the last, and the stack grew without her eyes touching it. I stood three stalls back with the tally-sheet across my forearm and watched.

The Tally-Reader was counting the stalls along the eastern arcade, murmuring under her breath in the way she does when the count is high but the doubt is higher. She did not round it. I heard her start again when a barrow passed between her and the far end.

Lano had found something in the gutter between two flagstones and nosed it loose: a coin-sized disc of pale stone, smooth on one face. She picked it up in her mouth, carried it a short distance, and dropped it beside a drain, then stood over it with her tail moving in small arcs.

The Anomaly-Hand crouched at the north-facing wall where the mortar had taken on a faint greenish cast in the cold stone. She traced the seam without touching it, her finger an inch from the surface, and made a note. The Relic-Watcher stood beside her and said nothing, recording the armature above the seam in the same silence he brings to the rest of them.

Rurik had gone ahead. I found him on the highest coping of the arcade entry, four metres up, watching the worker's hands. His tail moved once and then was still. He did not blink for a long time.

This is the seventh time the Larkmarket sheet has been opened. The first visit counted the stalls from the west entry; the return counts them from the east, and those two numbers must agree before the sheet closes. The Tally-Reader is checking whether they do. The worker below stacks her weights again and does not need to see what her hands already know.

The Horizon-Surveyor was at the far end, measuring where the arcade edge cut the line of the open square beyond. The Bedrock-Reader sat on the low step near the centre drain and pressed her palm flat to the paving stone. The Warden of the Deep Stratum stood near the north wall with his logbook open but was not writing, only watching the Anomaly-Hand trace the pale cyan seam.

The shadow was gone, and the work was happening anyway.

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