Chapter 116: The Fifth Copy

The attesting officer came down into Ardenmoor on the ninth of Pyrelon on a hired horse, wearing boots that had been bought for the road and not for a lane, and he got off at the trough because he was not sure where else to stop.

Nobody in the village had seen an officer of Deuna before. Nine households found something to do in the lane inside four minutes.

He took his hat off to Wenna Stoat. That was correct. Then he took it off to Tobin, and that was not, and the boy went the colour of the wall and stayed there for some time.

"Reyn Hollick. Attesting officer. This is the ninth of Pyrelon, three hundred and thirty-seven."

"It is," Wenna Stoat agreed.

"I say the date out loud. I've been told it's a habit and I've been told to lose it, and I'd rather have it than the other thing."

In the hour after that he told them he was twenty-three, that it was his fourth attestation, and that it was his first alone. None of that was meant to come out.

The work took four hours and should have taken one.

They did it at the chapel, because the register does not leave the chapel. Hollick asked whether that was a rule or a preference. He was told it was a rule, and he wrote that down as well.

Nara Wray read every one of the eleven entries aloud off her own fair copy. Hollick held the register open beside it.

After each entry he put her the form question. She answered it. He wrote her answer down before he went on to the next.

By the fourth entry the ganger was at the door making a face.

By the seventh he had said something about it out loud. Wenna Stoat took him outside. He came back in without the face.

Mataon watched from the end of the bench and kept his mouth shut for three hours and eleven minutes, and then did not.

"You can take the last four together. They're the same class of entry and the form allows a single question on a class."

Hollick put his pen down.

"Show me where it allows that."

"It's the practice. I've seen it done at four counters."

"That's not the same." The young man was not rude about it and he did not look up. "You've seen it done. I've read what it says. It allows a single question on a class where the entries are *made on one occasion*, and these were made across twenty-three years by two hands. That's four occasions at least and I'd want to say six."

There was a pause that Mataon felt in the back of his neck.

"Say the rest of it."

"There isn't any rest of it. It'd be quicker your way and it'd probably never be looked at, and if it were looked at, the whole document would come back and this woman would have written it twice."

"Yes."

"So I'll do it the long way and you can be bored, sir, and I'm sorry about the afternoon."

Nara Wray turned a page and did not lift her eyes off it.

"Don't call him sir. He's a subject at that quarry and he'll not thank you."

Hollick's hand stopped over the paper for about a second and a half.

Then it went on. He did not ask one question about it, then or later, and that was the moment Mataon decided he liked him.

The last four entries took another fifty minutes. She read them at the pace she had read the first seven, and her hand did not get worse.

At the end of it she signed her name. He put his endorsement under it and blew on the ink like a boy.

***

The document went out on the eleventh, sealed. It carried the officer's endorsement, the keeper's attestation, and eleven entries in a hand that had kept the Ardenmoor register for a hundred and nine years.

Wenna Stoat entered the carriage in the shop ledger and the ganger checked her arithmetic without being asked, and found it right, and said so at some length in order to have said something.

Four service copies with it. The carriage was paid to Marrow Hill and on from there.

Hollick stayed one night because there was nowhere to get to before dark. He ate at Wenna Stoat's table, paid the going rate, and was told off for offering more.

Halfway through the meal he worked out that the small animal under the bench was watching him and not the food. He looked at it for slightly too long. Then he decided against whatever he had been about to say. Barni approved of him for the rest of the evening on that basis alone.

He asked his question on the step at the end of it, standing up, with his hat already in his hand, in the manner of a man who has decided the whole evening will be spent working up to nine words.

"Is it true a supervisor at Sarrow turned down a district?"

Mataon did not move.

"Where did you hear that?"

"Everywhere. They're all saying it and none of them can tell you which district, and half of them say she was mad and half of them say something else." Hollick turned the hat round. "I've been in the service eleven weeks. I'd like to know whether that happens or whether it's a thing people tell you at the beginning."

"It happens."

"You know it happens."

"I know one." Mataon looked at the road. "And she'd hate that they're all saying it, and she'd hate more that they've got the district wrong, and I'm not going to correct anybody."

Reyn Hollick stood there for a moment. He looked at the road as well, because there was nowhere else to look.

"They said something else about her too," he said. "That she'd got a reason and wouldn't say it, and there's a lot of guessing about what it was. Some of it's stupid."

"Most of it will be."

"It's not a debt, is it. Whatever it was."

Mataon turned round on the step at that, and looked at a boy in a hired coat for slightly longer than was polite, and then let it go.

"Right," he said. Then he put his hat on. "Eleventh of Pyrelon, three hundred and thirty-seven. Attestation completed and the party paid nothing over the schedule."

He mounted up badly and went off north and did not look back, because he had clearly been told not to.

***

The fifth copy took Mataon two evenings and it was the shortest thing he had written all year.

He wrote four drafts and burned three. A woman at Sarrow had taught him that without meaning to.

He told her nothing she had not worked out for herself. He did not thank her for the twenty-three years, because a man who thanks somebody for twenty-three years is putting a price on them.

*This is a copy of a document filed on the central roll on the eleventh of Pyrelon, three hundred and thirty-seven. It has no legal effect. You are not required to do anything about it and nothing in it asks you for anything.*

*Eleven people in one parish, in nine houses, died over twenty-three years. The office was not told about any of them. It has now been told, by the parish, over the keeper's own hand.*

*It is sent to you because your name is not on it and there was no lawful way to put it there.*

*You have written to that box for twenty-three years. This is not an answer and I am not the person who owes you one. It is only a copy. It is yours.*

[Ardenmoor — 9-14 Pyrelon, 337 A.Z. — Days 507-512]

[REYN HOLLICK — b. 12 Sylphenia, circuit 1, 268 A.Z. — THE QUILL. Age 23. Attesting officer, eleven weeks in the service, fourth attestation and first alone. Says the date out loud before he writes it. Shadow of the Quill: writes it down before he has understood it — which is exactly what he refuses to do.]

[THE ATTESTATION took four hours and should have taken one. Eleven entries read aloud, the form question put after each, the answer written before moving on.]

[MATAON OFFERED A SHORTCUT AND WAS WRONG. A single question on a class is allowed only where the entries were made ON ONE OCCASION. These were made across twenty-three years by two hands. Hollick refused it and was correct, and Mataon took the correction.]

[Nara Wray, without looking up: *Don't call him sir. He's a subject at that quarry.* Hollick's hand stopped for a second and a half and he never asked about it.]

[FILED 11 Pyrelon 337. Sealed. Officer's endorsement, keeper's attestation, eleven entries in the Ardenmoor register hand. Four service copies. Carriage paid.]

[SERRETH'S REFUSAL HAS BECOME A STORY among junior clerks across the service. Nobody has the district right. Mataon will not correct anybody.]

[THE FIFTH COPY — sent to Marda Vell. No legal effect. It asks her for nothing and does not thank her for twenty-three years.]

[Level 43 — held]

[STR 23 · AGI 19 · END 33 · INT 48 · PER 51 · WIL 56]

[Reserved Mana: 7 — First Exception, open, day 334]

It reached her at the crossing at Bell on the twenty-seventh, at the counter, in the middle of the afternoon.

She was in there about a lamp. She had been in there about the same lamp twice already that season and the clerk had a view about it that he kept behind his teeth.

The clerk had to say her name twice, because she had gone eleven paces past him before it landed that he meant her.

She took it outside. At the end of the wall she stopped and stood with it.

Then she turned it over and looked at the front again. She did that twice more before she opened it. A man carting turf watched her do it and thought nothing of it at all.

*Marda Vell. At Bell crossing, or thereabouts.*

Twenty-three years she had put paper into a box in a lane four hundred miles from here. Four times a year. Fifty-eight seasons, she had counted once and never counted again.

Nothing had ever come back. She had stopped expecting it in about the sixth year and had stopped noticing that she had stopped, and that was the part she had never said out loud to anybody, including the man at Ardenmoor who had asked her a fair question at a table and got a short answer.

She read the four paragraphs standing.

Then she read the second one again, the one with the eleven in it. Eleven was a number she could check, and she was going to check it.

Then she folded it along the crease it came with. She put it inside her coat and not in the satchel.

Then she went and finished at the counter, and bought thread she did not need.