Chapter 112: Thirty-Four

Serreth's letter reached Ardenmoor on the twenty-fifth of Frostmere and told him to sit down, so he stood up and read it by the door, and then went back and sat down and read it again.

He got through the column in about four minutes. Three hundred and seventy-one rows he could not see, all saying the same four words. Thirty-four he could not see either. One of them his own.

*Working. Quarry. 12 Ravenmark 336.*

He had been on the barrow run that day and had done nine hours of it and had thought about nothing at all, and somewhere a man had written it down.

Then he came to the last line of her letter and put it face down on the table.

*As at today's date: well.*

Barni waited a good while before he said anything, and when he did he kept it small.

"Say it."

"He's got nobody." Mataon had his hands over his face. "Four hundred and six people on his own schedule and he's the only entry written in the present tense, and there's no report behind it, because there's no report behind it, because nobody in the world is obliged to tell him how he is."

"So he told himself."

"He told himself, on the paper, in the ruled column, in the same hand as the rest of it. And then he sent it to a district office in Sarrow that never asked."

***

The woman came down into the village on the twenty-seventh and asked for him by description. She refused to be got a chair. Then she sat in the one Wenna Stoat brought her anyway.

She was sixty-two. She had walked from the crossing at Bell, which is eleven days if you know the fords and fourteen if you do not, and she had a satchel that had been repaired more times than it had been bought.

Half the village found something to do in the lane in the first hour. The chapel boy managed three passes before his mother took hold of him. Wenna Stoat brought the chair, the water, a stool for the satchel, and no questions, and got looked at for the last of those by two women at the well who had come to hear.

"You're the one in the long house."

"I am."

"You're smaller than they said." She put the satchel on the table. "I've walked eleven days and I want to be told one thing and then I'll go, and I'd rather not be given tea while I ask it, so don't."

"Wenna's already put the water on."

"Then it's out of both our hands."

Her name was Marda Vell and she gave it without being asked. In this country nobody gave a name until they had decided something, and he noticed her decide it.

"The row on that column that says *quarry*." She tapped the table twice with one finger. "Twelfth of Ravenmark. That's you."

He did not answer for a moment.

"How do you know there's a column?"

"Because I've been filling it for twenty-three years, and that row isn't mine, and it's the first one that hasn't been mine since three hundred and thirteen." She had both hands on the satchel. "So somebody else has started writing to Grey Sallow, and I've walked eleven days to find out who, and it turns out to be the man himself, sideways, through a district."

***

She had been a clerk in the reporting office at Cardren. He had never heard of it. That was the point, she said, and she said it without putting any weight on the words at all.

"There were nine of us. We didn't do anything clever. Every quarter we sent up the states of the people on our ground — who'd moved, who'd got work, who'd died, who'd gone to a quarry. It went to the office of record and the office of record kept the column, and that was the whole of the trade, and I was good at it and it was the only thing I've ever been good at."

"And in 313?"

"In 313 they dissolved us into it."

Mataon put the cup down very carefully.

"Say that slowly."

"Cardren was dissolved. So were the other four. And under the clause the office of record is successor to any office dissolved into it, so everything we were became part of it." Marda Vell shrugged with one shoulder. "Including the obligation to report."

"To itself."

"To itself. The pipe ran into its own mouth and it stopped, and not one person in the country decided it, and there was nobody to complain to because the office you'd complain to was the office." She looked at him. "I sent the last quarterly on the ninth of Frostmere, three hundred and thirteen. It came back to me under the seal of the office I'd sent it to. Same seal on the cover and on the return. I've still got it."

"You kept it."

"I kept it in a drawer for four years and then I did the other thing."

"Which was?"

"I went and looked at them." She said it flatly. "The people on my ground. I couldn't send it up any more, so I wrote it down and I walked it to Ardenmoor once a season and I put it in the box. Nobody ever answered. Nobody ever wrote to me. I've never met him and I don't know his name."

Barni got up off the flagstone and came and sat where he could see her face.

"How many?"

Marda Vell looked at the dog for slightly less long than most people did.

"Thirty-four."

"Out of four hundred and six."

"Out of four hundred and six." She undid the satchel and put a bundle of papers on the table, tied with string that had been retied so often it was mostly knots. "Thirty-four is what I can walk to. Not what's left. Not who matters. It's the ones I can get to and back from between the seasons, and I've done that sum every year since I was forty-three and it's never once come out at thirty-five."

He asked whether he could look at the bundle and she pushed it across without a word.

Thirty-four entries in a clear round hand, one to a half-sheet, folded and numbered. No names on any of them. Number, state, date, and underneath each one a line in smaller letters that was not part of any form he had ever seen.

*Walked 8 Frostmere. Door answered.*

*Walked 8 Frostmere. Door not answered. Went again 11th. Answered.*

He read eleven of them and put the bundle down and sat with his hands on the table.

"You go twice."

"I go till somebody opens it. There's no use writing that a man's well when what you've seen is a shut door."

Nobody said anything for a bit.

"The rest of them are alive," said Mataon.

"Most of them. They're just not near me." She retied the string. "And every quarter I write out my thirty-four, and every quarter he rules four hundred and six lines, and three hundred and seventy-one of them say *no information since 313* — and he writes that out longhand rather than draw a line down the page, and I've thought about why for about ten years."

"And?"

"A line down the page is a man saving himself work. Writing it out three hundred and seventy-one times is a man refusing to." She stood up. "That's not a kindness. It's just the only thing left he can do about it, and he does it four times a year, and I'd like somebody besides me to have known that."

[Ardenmoor — 25-29 Frostmere, 336 A.Z. — Days 462-466]

[MARDA VELL — b. 7 Pyrelon, circuit 3, 150 A.Z. — THE SALT. Age 62. Former clerk, reporting office at Cardren.]

[WHAT HAPPENED IN 313: five reporting offices, Cardren among them, were dissolved INTO the office of record. Under the clause the office of record is successor to any office dissolved into it — including the obligation to report. The obligation now ran from the office to itself. It stopped.]

[Nobody decided it. There was nobody to complain to, because the office you would complain to was the office.]

[Her last quarterly was sent 9 Frostmere 313 and came back to her under the seal of the office she had sent it to. She still has it.]

[SHE NEVER STOPPED. Four years in a drawer, then she began walking her own reports to box twelve once a season. Twenty-three years. Nobody has ever answered. She has never met him and does not know his name.]

[THE THIRTY-FOUR are not the survivors and not the important ones. Thirty-four is how many she can walk to and back from between the seasons.]

[HE WRITES *no information since 313* LONGHAND, 371 times, four times a year, rather than rule a line down the page.]

[Feat recognised — the mechanism of 313, obtained entire from a witness who came to him]

[Level 41 → Level 42]

[Stat points available: +3]

[INT +1 · PER +1 · WIL +1]

[STR 23 · AGI 19 · END 33 · INT 47 · PER 49 · WIL 55]

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

She would not stay the night and was talked into it by Wenna Stoat, who did it in about nine words.

In the morning Mataon walked her as far as the ford, and asked the question he had been holding since the table, and asked it badly.

"Why did you keep going? Nobody answered. Nobody would ever have known."

Marda Vell adjusted the satchel.

"That's the wrong question and you'll get a poor answer to it. Ask me why I stopped at thirty-four."

"All right. Why did you stop at thirty-four?"

"Because thirty-five would have meant not going back to the first one." She set off. "There's people who'd have taken thirty-five and told you it was more. I've met them. They're the ones who leave."

Orvek had it out of him that evening in eleven questions and then wrote for a long time and showed him only the last three lines.

*You have been looking for a man who is hiding something.*

*There is no man hiding anything. There is a clause that closed a pipe in three hundred and thirteen, and two people who have spent twenty-three years each doing the part of the work that was still possible, and neither of them has ever met the other.*

*You are not going to be able to leave that where it is, and I would like it on the record that I said so tonight and not afterwards.*