Chapter 153: What Wasn’t Sand

The examination room of the Bureau of Bands had three furnaces, one long stone bench, a reading glass on an iron stand, and a clerk whose only job was the stores book.

"Everything the Bureau gives a maker is weighed out and weighed back," he told Hush, and turned the book round. "The chair signs for what comes back. You sign for what goes out."

Hush signed for one Bureau pinch of Well sand, weighed at forty on the stores scale and poured from a white jar sealed in green wax with a mountain and a pill.

He wore a plain grey hood pulled forward and a strip of grey cloth across his face from the nose down.

[False Face: Concealment active.]

The panel sat behind a table at the end of the room. On the left was a square grey woman with a silver band, an abacus and the face of someone who had never once been surprised by a number. The brass plate in front of her read ORLA BENN, ASSESSOR. On the right, a panel clerk to write down whatever she said. In the middle, in a green coat with a fresh flower in the buttonhole, Master Tarquin Veil.

[Tarquin Veil. Rank C. Hostility: 91%.]

"Master Hush." Tarquin rose and bowed, beautifully. "The crews in Port Myrrh sang songs about you."

"I’m told they sang badly." Hush kept his voice down.

"Terribly." Tarquin sat down again and smiled at the hood. "We’ll do this by the rules, Master Hush. Strictly by the rules. Then the maker shows his face when his pill is read."

Orla Benn kept her eyes on her abacus. "That’s the Assay’s rule, Master Veil. The Bureau licenses hands. It reads the pill, not the maker."

’The rule he pulled Seren’s hood off with.’ Aren kept still. ’He won’t get it in this room.’

The stores clerk called the first maker: "Hobb Marrin, of Ferrant." He was old, with a nose the color of a plum and burns up both wrists. The exam was the same for everyone: one Hide Pill, the cheapest pill in Solvane, with the Bureau’s lily, the Bureau’s furnace and one pinch of the Bureau’s sand. A maker who wanted to sell the high grades had to show the panel he could take even a Hide to grade four.

Hobb pressed with his whole face screwed up and carried the pill to the glass himself, holding it out in front of him with both hands.

Orla Benn read it at once. "Thirty-seven. Grade three. A four is thirty-five or under. Not passed."

Hobb stared at the glass. "I press thirty-two at home. With my own sand! Nine days on the road for this."

"Home sand is a lovely thing," Tarquin said gently. "Next season, Master Marrin."

Orla Benn moved two beads on her abacus. "Two licences in six years." She told it to the abacus, and her clerk wrote that down too.

Aren looked at the pinch of sand on his black slate.

He did not light the furnace. He bent over the slate first, because the jar it came from wore Veil wax.

’Fault Line.’

Faint lines came up in the slate under it, old scratches, the places where the stone would give if somebody dropped a hammer on it. Then they came up in the sand.

Some specks stayed dark, dull and whole. He had looked at a pinch of the real thing on Seren’s bench, from the jar under Tarquin’s floor, and not one speck of that had been about to break. Well sand never broke. That was why it could hold a press that would crack anything else.

The other specks were full of light. Every one of them was crossed with thin bright lines, sharp at the edges, ready to split if somebody leaned on it.

’Glass. Ground fine and mixed in. Two specks in three, maybe more.’

He looked up at the panel, then down at the slate again.

’Every maker who comes here presses ground glass into his pill for the Bureau, and the Bureau’s reading glass gives him a three, and he goes home thinking he’s a grade three maker. The Veils sell the Bureau its sand. Nobody passes that the Veils don’t teach.’

He took out a pill knife and began to sort.

It was slow, dull work. A speck of Well sand was finer than salt, and a pinch held hundreds. He touched each one with the point of the knife and moved it a finger’s width left if it was dark and a finger’s width right if it was lit.

After the first quarter of an hour Tarquin leaned back in his chair.

"Does the Bureau allow the maker to count his sand, Mistress Benn?"

"The rules say one pinch." She slid a bead along its wire. "They don’t say what he does with it."

"Then I hope Master Hush brought his supper." Tarquin turned to the clerk. "We close at the sixth bell, don’t we? Tell the porter not to lock him in."

The clerk laughed, because the chair had made a joke.

At the fourth bell the heap on the right was taller than the heap on the left, and Hobb Marrin had come back from the door to watch. He stood behind the bench with his hat in his hands. Tarquin had stopped looking at the heaps.

"Apprentices in our house learn the Hide in a week," Tarquin said to the room. "This one is going to take a month."

At the fifth bell Aren put the knife down.

The left heap was small and dull. The right heap was more than twice its size and glittered under the lamp.

He lit the Bureau’s furnace with its own cores, ground its lily himself, cold and fine, one pinch at a time, while Tarquin sighed and Orla Benn moved no beads at all. He boiled and skimmed. When the mix went the color of weak tea, he tipped in the small dull heap, all but one speck that he left alone at the edge of the slate, spread his hands over the pot and pressed with nothing.

The furnace gave one short white flare and went dark.

[Hide Pill. Result: Refined. Impurities: 17%.]

He set it on the glass with its little brass spoon, and Orla Benn bent over the stand.

"Seventeen," she read.

The panel clerk’s pen stopped.

"Grade six. On a Hide Pill." She turned three pages of a ledger chained to the table, and ran her finger down a column. "The best Hide this Bureau has ever recorded is thirty. Veil make." She looked up at the hood and could not hold it, and frowned at her own eyes for it. "Passed."

"Foundation pills stop at four," Hobb said, to nobody.

Tarquin’s flower was in his fingers, twisted half off. He put it back in his buttonhole.

"Well. The Bureau will issue the..."

Hush picked up the slate and set it on the panel’s table in front of him, with the glittering heap in the middle.

"Your sand, Master. I’ve given back what wasn’t sand."

Then Tarquin laughed. "Sand is sand, Master Hush. Some of it is ground less well than the rest. If you want to make a show of it..."

Hush took one speck from the heap on the point of his knife, laid it on the bare stone and pressed it with the flat of the blade. It broke with a small, clear tick. He moved the knife to the dull speck he had kept back at the edge of the slate and pressed again, harder. Nothing happened. He leaned on it until the knife bent, and the speck sat under it, whole.

Hobb Marrin made a noise in his throat. Then he leaned over the table, pinched three specks from the glittering heap and crushed them under his thumbnail. Tick. Tick. Tick.

"Glass! I’ve paid for three exams in this room."

Orla Benn looked at Tarquin, then at the white jar with the green wax, then at the stores clerk. "Weigh it."

The clerk weighed it. Twenty-seven on the scale, out of the forty in the book.

"I’d like a receipt," Hush said.

"A receipt," Tarquin repeated.

"The book says forty went out. Thirteen were sand. I’m returning twenty-seven, and I’d like it written down what they are." Hush nodded at the clerk. "The chair signs for what comes back."

Tarquin looked at the clerk, at the old maker from Ferrant with glass on his thumbnail, and at the assessor with her abacus. Three witnesses, and a ledger chained to the table.

Orla Benn pushed the stores book across to him and held out her own pen.

"Write it plainly, Master Veil. Then I’ll seal the jar for the Bureau to test."

He wrote it plainly, in his round, careful hand. Returned by the maker Hush, from the Bureau’s sand: twenty-seven parts of forty, ground glass. He signed it. The clerk copied it onto a slip, Tarquin signed that too, and Orla Benn pressed the Bureau’s seal into the wax at the bottom. The slip went across the table to the hood.

’From the Bureau’s sand, not the Veils’. He’s already choosing which stores clerk hangs for it.’ Aren put the slip in the Deep Purse, with the other two pages in that hand.

Hobb Marrin leaned across the bench, still holding his hat. "Master Hush. How much to sort mine?"

"Ask for a slate and a knife. It takes two bells."

Orla Benn stamped the licence without looking at the chair. Hush, maker. All grades. Fee paid by the House of Brother Coin. Then she wrapped the white jar in a cloth, tied the cloth and sealed the knot herself.

Tarquin stood up. He came round the table to give Hush his licence with his own hand, because the chair always did, and for a moment they were close enough that nobody else could hear him.

"Pills split on the Treasurer’s glass, Master Hush." It came out soft and pleasant. "I’d hate yours to."

[Tarquin Veil. Hostility: 91% → 98%.]

"Then I’ll press it where nobody can pour waste in it."

Tarquin went out with his coat open and the flower in his hand, and the clerk began, with great care, to look at nothing.