Northpoint journal, lights on the ice
Leaffall, the ninth day.

Clear sky. Cold enough to thicken the ink. I warmed the pot on the stove again.

At the second lamp change I saw lights over the far ice. Not our lights. Ours are green with a little pink at the edge, and they hang in the sky and take their time. These were white. Low in the north, past the last white hill. Three, then five. They moved all together, the way geese move, but faster. Then they were gone.

Lantern stood beside me at the rail. It did not look up. It looked at me and waited for an order. I said stay. It stayed.

I put it in the relay book and sent it south. It was at Vell before supper. Vell sent back: what are they? I sent back: not ours. Vell sent back: noted, keep watching.

So I keep watching. Lamps lit. Glass clean. Messages passed.

The tenth day. Nothing. Snow. Two foxes at the woodpile. I gave them the fish skins, as usual. The small one is getting bold. Lamps lit. Glass clean. Messages passed.

The eleventh day. The lights again, lower. Closer, maybe. It is hard to say how far away a light is when there is nothing near it to measure by. Lantern trimmed the wicks and cleaned the lamp glass. Then it cleaned the glass again, because I had not told it to stop.

Vell asks again what they are. I am sure everyone at Vell has an idea. I have one fact. They were not ours. That is all I will put in the book. Lamps lit. Glass clean. Messages passed.

The twelfth day. Nothing. I slept badly and I am cross about it. The foxes do not care. Good for the foxes. Lamps lit. Glass clean. Messages passed.
%%
Notice: the Deep Works below the ninth
NOTICE FROM THE MINE HALL AT COPPERHOLD

By order of the hall, the Deep Works are closed below the ninth level, from today.

No digging below the ninth. No hauling below the ninth. No apprentices sent below the ninth, alone or with a crew.

The gate on the ninth level will be locked. The key is kept at the hall. Do not ask for the key.

Pay for the lower crews goes on for one month. After that, come to the hall about work on the upper levels or at the smelters.

The hall does not know why the deep stone is warm. The hall does not know what the sound is. The hall will not guess, and asks the crews not to guess in the taverns either.

Keep the torches lit on the upper levels. If you find warm stone above the ninth, tell the hall at once.

Signed for the hall,
Gren Pickwell, shift master
%%
Letter: Tam to Mira, after the harvest
Dear Mira,

The beetroot is in. Most of it. Pip pulled the last row by itself while I fixed the cart wheel. It pulled every weed too, and one carrot that was not a weed. I told it carrots are not weeds. It looked at me the way you do.

Your letter came by the relay yesterday, all in pieces. The keeper at the ridge house wrote it out for me. He says the north line is slow. He says the lamps between here and you go dark some nights, and nobody knows why. Snow on the glass, I said. That is what you would say.

At the market in Three Wells everyone talks about your lights. Old Ruddy says they are falling stars, and he counted forty. A drover says they are fires on the ice. The tinker's boy says someone up there is looking for something they lost. I said my sister saw them, and my sister says they are not ours. Everyone went quiet. So I bought a pie.

Two families from the ridge have gone to Saltreach, the Barrows and the little Coopers. They say the ships there are bigger than barns. They asked me to come. I said who will sow the winter wheat? They said the apprentices. I said the apprentices do not know which field is mine. That is not true. Pip knows. But I am not leaving my wheat to Pip and a windmill.

Write when the line is clear. Tell me about the foxes. Tell me you are eating.

Your brother,
Tam

PS. I found your old scarf in the chest. I am wearing it. It smells of smoke and of you.
%%
Wren's notes on the grey cough
Lowmarsh. The healer's book. Wren.

The first one I wrote down: old Fen, the reed cutter. A dry cough, three weeks now. Tired. Sleeps in the day. In his cloth, a little grey, like ash from a cold fire. No fever.

The second: Lila Pond, eight years old. The same cough, the same grey. She says it tickles. She laughs, and then she coughs. Her mother is frightened. I told her mother the truth. I have not seen this before.

The third: Rook from the fish weir. The fourth: his wife. The fifth: a carter who came from Three Wells with salt.

I have now seen eleven. All the same. A dry cough, tiredness, the grey. Two had a small fever. Nobody has died of it. Nobody has got better, either. Fen says he feels the same as last week. He says the same is not bad, at his age.

Moss boils the water now, all of it, morning and evening. I showed it once. It does it right every time, and it never gets tired of it. I envy it.

What I have tried:
Honey in hot water. It helps the throat.
Steam from a pot, with a cloth over the head. It helps them sleep.
Sweet berry tea. It does nothing that I can see.
Mushroom stew. It does nothing for the cough, but people like it.

I will write each one down. I do not know what it is. I do not know where it comes from. People ask me every day. When I do not know, I say I do not know. It is the one thing a healer must never lie about.
%%
Honey cake, copied out again
Two cups of flour, from good wheat.
One cup of honey, warmed so it pours.
Three eggs. A little milk. A pinch of salt.
One apple, cut small, if it is autumn.

Beat the eggs and the honey until they are pale. Fold in the flour. Add milk until the batter drops from the spoon. Add the apple. Bake in a slow oven until a straw comes out clean.

Leave it a day before you cut it. It is better on the second day. It is best on the third day, if anyone lets it last that long.

Copied by Ina, clerk at Vell, for the recipe shelf. The old copy is spotted with butter, and nobody can read the honey line. We had a long talk about whether it was one cup or two. It is one. Two is too sweet. Pell the merchant says two, but Pell would put honey on a honey bun.

This is the fourth time this cake has been copied. Oren says that is more than any other recipe. When we seal the shelves, it goes in with the rest. Some of the clerks said it is a strange time to be copying cakes. Oren said it is the right time.
%%
Vell relay house, the morning call
Vell relay house. The morning call. There are thirty-four towers. Each morning we call the main ones, in order, and write down who answers.

First day.
Northpoint: no answer.
North road two: answers. Snow.
Kettle Ridge: answers. Wind.
Copperhold: answers. Gate shut.
Three Wells: answers. Fair plans.
Ambrook: answers. Honey for the ships.
Lowmarsh: answers. Keeper coughing.
Saltreach: answers. Ship three away.

Ninth day.
Northpoint: no answer.
North road two: no answer.
Kettle Ridge: answers, slow.
Copperhold: no answer.
Three Wells: answers.
Ambrook: answers.
Lowmarsh: no answer.
Saltreach: answers. Ship five has a keel.

The council asks me if the quiet moves from north to south. Mostly. Not quite. Lowmarsh closed because of the cough. Copperhold went before Kettle Ridge, and Kettle Ridge is nearer the north. So it is not a line. I do not know what it is. I keep calling. Brann, keeper.

Twelfth day.
Northpoint: no answer.
North road two: no answer.
Kettle Ridge: no answer.
Copperhold: no answer.
Three Wells: answers.
Ambrook: answers. They ask what is happening. We say we do not know.
Lowmarsh: no answer.
Saltreach: answers.

Fifteenth day.
Northpoint: no answer.
North road two:
%%
A letter from Bel to the archive
Dear archive,

My name is Bel. I live in Three Wells, behind the bakery, in the house with the blue door. I am nine. Teacher Sorrel says you keep everything people write. So I am writing to you, so you will keep me.

I saw the lights. Everyone says I did not, because I was supposed to be asleep. But I was at the window with Button, my cat, and I saw them. They were very far away, over the north. They were white and they went slowly. Then they stopped.

I think they were looking at us. Father says lights cannot look. But they stopped, and you only stop like that when you are looking at something. Button stopped too. Her tail went big.

Teacher says some people think they are falling stars. Falling stars do not stop. Pell the merchant says they are fires. Fires do not go in a line. Please write down that I think they were looking at us. Then if I am right, you will have it.

Other news. We have a new well bucket. Nim has a loose tooth. Mother is packing her bread tins and the good plates in straw, but she says we are not going anywhere, so I do not know why.

Please keep this letter safe. Please do not fold it too much.

From Bel

(Button says hello. She does not, but she would.)
%%
Corin's yard book, the big keels
Saltreach. The yard book. Corin.

Keel laid for the fourth big ship. Spruce from the north woods for the boards, oak for the ribs. Iron from Copperhold for the nails, when it comes. It comes slower now.

The big ships are three times as long as any boat I built before. They need ten times the wool for the sails. Each one holds forty families, with their sheep and their hens, if nobody is fussy.

People ask me why we build them. I build them because the harbor hall asked for them in spring and paid in emeralds. I asked the hall why. They said the fishing is poor, and the sea is wide, and it is time to look. That is a good enough answer for a shipwright. It is not a good enough answer for me at night.

The first big ship, the Gull, sailed at midsummer. The second, the Long Barrel, sailed in autumn. The third, the Ambrook Apple, sails when the wind turns. Nothing has come back. Nothing was expected back yet. There are no relays on the sea. A ship is quiet until it comes home.

Nobody here knows what is across the water. The old fishers say there is more water. The children say there is another Saltreach over there, with another Corin, building another ship to come here. I like that one best.

My hands hurt in the cold. Young Ned is good with the adze now.
%%
Deep Works journal, the humming
Copperhold. Hesk.

Nobody goes below the ninth now. The hall locked the gate. I still have my father's key to the old side door on the eighth. I have not used it. I am writing that down so that I do not use it.

Below the sixth it was always quiet. Only the water dripping. Now there is the hum. It comes at night, mostly. You do not hear it with your ears so much as with your teeth. Low and steady, like a hive inside a wall, or a big wheel far off, turning slowly. When the crews are working you cannot hear it at all. When we stop to eat, there it is.

When the hum is loud, I stop and put my hand flat on the wall. Now Clank does it too. It copies everything I do. So there are two of us standing with a hand on the wall, listening, and only one of us knows why. Some days I am not sure it is me.

Some say the hum started with the lights in the north. That is wrong. I heard it in spring, before anybody talked about lights. Some say the hum is why they are building the ships. I do not see how. A ship does not fix a hill.

My lads stand in the square with nothing to dig. Clank stood at the ninth gate for two days, because its last order down there was stay, and nobody gave it another. I went down and told it come. It came. It walked behind me all the way up, close, the way it did when it was new.

The coal went north in Leaffall, seventy sacks, the same as every year, with my note: Keep it lit. Hesk, Deep Works. Every year Mira sends back: Coal here. Thanks. Mira. This year nothing has come back.

I do not guess. I dig. When I cannot dig, I write. This is what I have.
%%
Drill notes: when nobody gives an order
Drill notes. Nessa, tutor, Vell. For the field apprentices going out this week.

We are short of time. Test every mind anyway. Never send an untested mind to the fields. Not even now. Especially not now.

Each apprentice going out gets the field drill one hundred more times. Wet plot, dry plot, ripe plot, bare plot. If the plot is ripe, harvest. If it is dry, water. If it is bare and wet, plant. It knows this already. Drill it again.

Then one new thing. Most people will be away for a while. So each apprentice must learn what to do when nobody gives an order.

When nobody gives an order, the order is farm.
When the barn is full, the order is store.
When it is dark, the order is home. At first light, farm again.
When it does not know what to do, the order is stay.

Say the same words to each one, every time: keep the fields until we come back.

Some tutors ask me how long. I do not know how long. An apprentice does not need to know how long. It needs to know what to do tomorrow, and then the next tomorrow.

Check the copper joints. Oil the knees. Put a spare crystal in each barn, in the dry box, with its test score written on the lid. If a mind goes wrong, someone must find a tested one ready.

Do not send any apprentice north of Kettle Ridge. Do not send any into the Deep Works. Do not send any to Lowmarsh. These are not my rules. They came from the council. I have written them here so that they are written.

Last thing. Keep the torches lit around every barn. The night things trample the rows, and there will be nobody to chase them off.
%%
Rumors heard at the Halfway Inn
The Halfway Inn, on the Long Road. Written by Hobb, who keeps it.

Oren at Vell asked every innkeeper to write down what travelers say, true or not, and to mark it. So here it is. These are rumors. I mark the ones I believe, and that is not many.

A drover from the north road says the lights are fires on the ice. He says folk live up there that we never met, and they are burning all their winter wood at once. Rumor. He also says his cow can count.

A fisher from Saltreach says the big ships are not for fishing at all. She says the harbor hall knew something in spring, before any lights, before any cough. Rumor. She did not say what they knew. She did not know.

A tinker says the grey cough comes from the ships, from the tar. Another tinker at the same table says it comes from the Deep Works, from dust in the river. They argued until I put out the lamps. Rumor, both.

A carter says the Deep Works hum like a hive at night, and the miners will not go down. This one I believe. My cousin is a miner. He came up last month and has not gone down again.

A young couple going to the coast say a big ship came back in the night, half empty. The harbor hall sent it out again before dawn. Rumor. Corin the shipwright has stayed here twice since then. He would have said.

An old traveler says all this has happened before, long ago, before anyone wrote things down, and we came back from it. Rumor. Nobody can know that, because nobody wrote it down. That is what the archive is for.

The usual night things still come to the fence. We keep the torches lit. That has not changed.
%%
Northpoint journal, the south is quiet
Frost, the twentieth day. Or the twenty-first. I lost a day somewhere. If anyone finds it, it is mine.

No answer from tower two for six nights. Their lamp is dark. Ours is lit. Lantern lights it at the change, cleans the glass, and lights it again, every night, the way I taught it.

Vell will say Northpoint went quiet. I want it written that Northpoint did not go quiet. Northpoint is right here, being as loud as it can. The south went quiet.

The lights came again last night. Many, low over the ice, then up, then not there. Lantern did not look. It never looks at the sky. Our own lights have not come at all this year. I keep looking for the green. I did not know I would miss it.

I have read my own book back. I wrote: not ours. I will write it again, so nobody at Vell can say I changed my mind. They were not ours.

The coal has not come. Every autumn, seventy sacks, and the same note from Hesk: Keep it lit. Not this year. So we burn the woodpile, a little at a time. The bold fox used to sleep on it. I have named that fox Clerk, because it watches everything and does nothing.

I am well. I am eating. Tam, if this gets to you somehow, I am eating.

Tomorrow I will walk south to tower two and see why their lamp is dark. Lantern will stay and keep ours. I gave the order: stay. Keep the lamp lit until I come back.

Lamps lit. Glass clean.
%%
Ambrook bees, a thing that was fine
Ambrook. Ama, who keeps the bees on the north slope.

Everyone writes about strange things now. The clerks at Vell want everything. So here is a thing that was fine.

The bees were fine.

All summer they worked the apple blossom, then the meadow flowers, then the late flowers by the mill pond. Twelve hives. Two swarms, both caught. The comb was heavy and gold. Forty jars from the first cut, thirty from the second.

They were not quiet. They were not strange. They did not leave. I sat with them in the evenings, like I always do, and they went in and out, and came home before dark, and made the sound they always make.

The mill pond was fine. The apples were fine, too many of them, and nobody buying. The orchard smelled the way it smells every autumn, of cider and fallen apples.

Jory the miller wants me to go to Saltreach with his family. I said who will keep the bees? He said the bees keep themselves. That is true. It is also not the point.

I sent eight jars to Saltreach for the ships, because Corin asked, and because honey keeps a long time, and they may be a long time on the water.

Write this down at Vell: in Ambrook, this year, the bees were fine.
%%
Saltreach relay log, messages in
Saltreach relay house. Messages in, written down as they came. Kept by Dory, under old Harl.

From Vell: ships two and three to wait for wool from Kettle Ridge. The wool is on the road.

From Copperhold: no iron this month. Lower levels closed. Will send what we have from the

Called Copperhold again. No answer.

From Three Wells: the fair is on. Any Saltreach folk who want to come, come.

From Lowmarsh: relay house closing. The keeper is sick. We will open again when

From Vell: Northpoint quiet nine nights. Copperhold quiet. Keep your lamp lit. Write everything

From Vell, the next night: write everything down. The archive asks it. That is all.

From Ambrook: honey for the ships, eight jars, coming by cart. Tell Corin the apple ship needs a better name.

Old Harl says Copperhold went quiet before Northpoint did, whatever Vell says. He kept the book. It is in his book. I have looked.

To Vell: Saltreach is well. Ship four is done. Ship five has its keel. We have seen no lights. We hear no hum. Nobody here coughs. We have only the sea, and it is the same as it always was, and
%%
Oren: the order to seal the archive
To all clerks of the archive at Vell, from Oren.

The council has sent the order. We are to seal the archive.

I will give it to you the way it came: seal the archive, and before you seal it, write everything down.

Every clerk will take a table in the long hall. Write what you saw this year. Write what you heard. Write what you think, and say that it is what you think. If it is a rumor, write rumor at the top. If two people told you two different things, write both. Do not choose for the reader. We do not know what the reader will need.

Write plainly. Short lines, clear letters. Someone may read this who does not read well. Someone may read it who has never seen our letters before. Write for them.

Copy the old records that are fading. Copy the recipes, the songs, the school books and the drill notes. Copy the ledgers, even the dull ones. Especially the dull ones. Nobody writes down an ordinary day on purpose, and those are the days we will most want back.

When a shelf is done, wrap it in wool and wax cloth. When a stack is done, we close its door with clay. The reading room stays open as long as there is a clerk to sit in it.

We will not say why. The council has not said why. I asked them. They said: because we do not know what happens next. I think that is an honest answer. Write that down too.

Lamps out by the second bell. Tea in the small kitchen at noon. Do not bring tea into the stacks. I know who you are.

Oren
%%
Copperhold bakery, the warm floor
Rana's day book. The bakery on Low Street, Copperhold.

The floor of the bakery is warm. It started at the back wall, by the old cellar steps. Now it is warm all the way to the counter. The cat sleeps on it all day and will not move for anyone.

The bread rises faster now. I set the dough at night, and in the morning it is over the bowl and onto the shelf. I have made the best loaves of my life this month. Everyone says so.

My mother says a warm floor in Copperhold is not a good thing. She says the floor sits on the hill, and the hill sits on the Deep Works, and the Deep Works should be cold. She wants me to close the shop and go to her sister in Ambrook.

I said who will make the bread? She said the miners are not going down anyway. That is true. They come to the square in the morning and stand there, and they do not know what to do with their hands. So they buy bread. So I make bread.

At night, when the oven is cold, I put my ear to the floor. Sometimes I think I hear the hum the miners talk about. Sometimes I think it is only my own blood in my ear. I cannot tell. Nobody can tell me.

Today: forty loaves, twelve honey buns, two pies for the hall. Flour is low. Order more from Kettle Ridge, if anyone there is still selling.
%%
Wren's orders for Moss
Orders for Moss, while I am away. Pinned by the door.

Lila Pond will read this to you every morning. Lila, thank you. Read it slowly.

Moss. Every morning, fetch water from the clean well, not from the marsh. Boil it. Store it in the big jars.

Every day at noon, haul in wood from the shed. Then stay by the door. If someone comes with the cough, give them a jar of boiled water and a spoon of honey from the low shelf. Not the high shelf. The high shelf is mine.

Every evening, come in and bar the door. Keep the torch by the step lit.

Do not go into the marsh. Do not go up the river. Do not open the cupboard with the red cord. Lila, do not let Moss open the cupboard with the red cord.

I am going to Saltreach to look at the sailors. If the sailors cough, it may be the ships. If they do not, it may not be. That is how you find a thing out. You go and look.

I will be gone ten days. Maybe twelve. Keep the house until I come back.

Wren
%%
Notice: the autumn fair at Three Wells
NOTICE FROM THE MAYOR OF THREE WELLS

The autumn fair will be held as always, on the green, on the first fine day after the harvest moon.

There will be the pie table, the wool weighing, the pumpkin contest and the children's races. There will be music at night. The bell will be rung at noon.

Some have asked if the fair should go ahead this year. It should. Three Wells has held a fair every autumn for as long as anyone has written things down. We will not stop because people are worried. People are always worried. That is what fairs are for.

New rules, this year only:
Anyone with a cough will please stay home. The pie table will bring them a pie.
Travelers from Lowmarsh are welcome, and will sit at the north end, in the wind.
No talk of lights, ships or the Deep Works at the pie table. The pie table is for pies.

The pumpkin contest will be judged by weight, not by looks, after last year.

Keep the torches lit on the way home.

Dace, mayor
%%
Tam's farm book, Pip still weeding
Kettle Ridge. The farm book.

Wind from the north. Cold, even for Frost. The windmills turn all night, and nobody is grinding. The miller went to Saltreach with the others. He left the sails free so they would not tear.

Pip is still weeding. I have not told it to stop, and the weeds keep coming, so it keeps going. Row after row. It does the beetroot first, then the carrots. It does my rows and then the Barrows' rows, because the Barrows told it to before they left, and nobody has told it different.

No word from Mira since the short message that came in pieces. The ridge keeper says the north line is quiet. He says it the way you talk about the weather. Maybe it is the weather.

I went up to the relay house with a jar of beetroot. I sat with the keeper. We looked north a while. Nothing to see. Just the dark, and our lamp, and the keeper's cat.

Old Brin next door is staying too. He says he is too old for boats. Biscuit got out again this morning. Some things do not change.

I have decided. The winter wheat is sown. When the snow lets me, I will go north to Northpoint and see for myself, and tell Mira she is bad at writing letters.

If I go, Pip stays. Pip, keep the fields until I come back. You cannot read this. I am telling you anyway. Beetroot first, then the carrots. Do not pull the carrots.

The roof leaks over the bed. I moved the bed. That is how I fix things.
%%
Letter: Corin to Ilse, the Gull sails
Dear Ilse,

The Gull sailed this morning. I stood at the end of the long pier with Ned and watched until her sail was a white chip, then a speck, then only the sea.

Forty-two families on board. Sheep in the hold, hens in crates on the deck, a cat in every other basket. A boy at the back waved a red scarf. I waved back. Everyone on the pier waved back.

She is a good ship. I know every board in her. She will not leak unless someone is foolish, and the captain is not foolish. She is only careful, which is better.

You asked where they are going. I do not know. The harbor hall says out, and then on, until they find land. Then they will build a relay tower and send word back. I asked how a relay sends word across the sea. The hall said they will find a way. That is not an answer. But nobody has a better one.

Some families here say they will wait for word before they go. Some say they will go on the next ship. Some say they will not go at all. Mother says she was born in Saltreach and she will stay in Saltreach, and that is the end of it.

Come down to the coast if you can. Not to sail. Just to see me. I am building the second ship now. My hands are tired. It would be good to have someone to complain to who is not Ned.

Your brother,
Corin
%%
Kettle Ridge relay log, the north line
Kettle Ridge relay house. The north line.

Evening. Lamp lit. Called tower two on the north road. Answer. Called Northpoint through tower two: Good evening, Northpoint. Answer: Good evening, south. All well, snow, lights again, not ours. Passed it on to Vell.

Evening. Lamp lit. Tower two: answer. Called Northpoint: Good evening, Northpoint. No answer. Tower two says the Northpoint lamp is dark. Snow on the glass, maybe.

Evening. Tower two: answer. Northpoint: no answer. The tower two keeper says she saw a lamp at Northpoint late in the night, for a short time. Not the relay pattern. Just a lamp.

Evening. Tower two: answer. Northpoint: no answer. Sent to Vell: Northpoint quiet three nights.

Evening. Tower two: answer, slow. The keeper there says she will walk north when the wind drops. I said do not. She said someone has to.

Evening. Tower two: no answer.

Evening. Tower two: no answer. Our lamp burned all night anyway. If anyone is looking south, they will see us.

Evening. Tower two: no answer. Tam from the low farm came up to ask about his sister. I told him what I know, which is nothing. He sat with me a while and looked north. He left a jar of beetroot for the keepers.

Evening. Tower two: no answer. Vell asks us to keep calling. We keep calling.

Evening. Tower two: no answer.

Evening.
%%
Pell's ledger, rope and apples
The Long Road, autumn. Pell's ledger.

Kettle Ridge. Sold 3 pots, 2 lamps, 1 good knife. Bought 20 sacks of wheat, 1 emerald for 4 sacks. Cheap. Too cheap. Farmers are selling their seed wheat. That is not a good sign.

Three Wells. Sold rope, all of it, 12 coils at 2 emeralds a coil. Last spring rope was 1 emerald for 3 coils. Everybody wants rope. Everybody wants wax cloth. Nobody wants apples.

Copperhold. Did not go up. The road is closed at the lower bridge by order of the mine hall. A miner's wife came down and bought my last lamp oil with copper, not emeralds. I took it.

The council is buying iron. All of it, at any price, and nobody will say what for. The ships, they say. Ships need nails. Not that many nails.

Lowmarsh. Did not go in. Left salt at the edge stone with a note. A reed basket of eggs was left for me in return. Fair trade. Nobody came out. I heard coughing from the nearest house.

Saltreach. Sold nearly everything. Wool, rope, dried fish, and some of the apples at last, to folk going on the big ships. Bought nothing. There is nothing to buy. Everyone is selling their chairs.

Apples unsold: 2 barrels. Taking them home to Ambrook. Juna will make apple butter and complain about it.

Emeralds: 46. More than last year. I would trade them all for last year.
%%
Bel's school essay, what I will take
What I will take. By Bel.

We can each take one bag on the ship, and one book. Not three. One. Mother says one bag is enough for anyone. Father says one bag is not enough for Mother.

In my bag I will put:
My warm socks.
The blue cup.
My shell from the market.
Paper and a little ink, in the jar with the tight lid. I will write to the archive from the other side of the sea, if there is a relay there.
Button's brush.

Button cannot come. When Father brought the cart round, she went under the barn and would not come out. Father says cats know their own mind. Mother put a bowl of water and a bowl of fish by the back door. We will leave the back door open for her, so she can come in when it rains.

Nim is not going. Nim's family is staying, at least until spring. Nim promised to feed Button every day, and said it twice, so I know it is true.

Grandmother is not coming either. She lives at Lowmarsh, and she says she is too old for ships and too cross for coughs.

I am not frightened. I am a little frightened. Teacher says to write the truth in an essay, so that is the truth.

The book I will take is the school reader with the story of the fox and the lamp. I know it by heart. So I can read it to the little ones on the ship if they cry, and I can read it in the dark.
%%
Deep Works journal, the warm stone
The eleventh level. Hesk.

The stone is warm. Not hot. Warm like a bench in the sun. I put my hand on the deep stone at the end of the new cut and kept it there. Clank put its hand there too, because it copies me. Then it looked at its hand.

There is no sun down here. Below the sixth level it is all deep stone, and deep stone is always cold. Cold and quiet, nothing but the water dripping. It has been like that every year I have dug it, and every year my father dug it before me.

I told the shift boss. He put his hand on it and said huh. That is what shift bosses are for.

Next day. Warmer, I think. Hard to say. A hand is not a tool. So I left a pail of water by the cut overnight. In the morning it was not cold. It was the same as my tea when I forget it.

Clank dug the cut two more blocks. I told it to stop at the vein. It stopped at the vein. Good apprentice.

Some of the lads say it is an old coal fire in the rock, like the one under the east slope my grandfather talked about. Some say it is hot water far down, and we will hit it and drown. One said the hill is breathing. I sent him up to haul coal for a week. We do not need talk like that on the eleventh level.

I do not know what it is. I know the stone is warm. My father would have put his hand on it and said huh, and gone on digging. Nobody asked me to write it down. I am writing it down.
%%
Notice: to all who are leaving
NOTICE TO ALL WHO ARE LEAVING FOR SALTREACH

From the council. Copied for the board at Three Wells by Dace.

If you are going on the ships, please do these things before you go.

Write your name, your family, your town and the day you left in the book at the town hall. The book goes to the archive. We want to know who went.

Leave your apprentices at work. Give each one its last order, and write the order on a card by the door: farm, store, or stay. Do not take apprentices on the ships. There is no room for them, and salt water is bad for copper.

Let your animals out, or give them to a neighbor who is staying. Leave the hens a way into the barn. Leave the cats a way into the house.

Put out the fire in the stove. Leave a torch lit by the door, if you have one to spare. The night things do not stop because we are busy.

Take warm clothes, dry food, a bowl and a spoon each, and one book. Not three. One.

Close your shutters. Do not lock your door. Someone may need your roof before you are back.

We do not say how long. We do not know how long.
%%
Oren's journal, a lamp in the window
My own book, not the archive's. Oren, Vell.

Ash and Lin argued again at supper about the order of things. Ash says the lights came first, then the hum, then the cough, then the ships. Lin says the ships were ordered first, in spring, before any of it. Ina says the cough was in Lowmarsh two winters ago, and nobody wrote it down, because it was only Lowmarsh.

I told them all to write it down, each in their own way, and sign it. We will not choose. A reader may know better than we do. Later, a reader may know more.

Shelves sealed so far: the oldest page, the letters, the school books. The recipe shelf is done. Ina put the honey cake on top.

I have done a thing against the rules. I left a lamp lit in the reading room, on the long table by the window, with oil for many nights. The rule says no flame in the archive after dark. I know the rule. I wrote the rule.

But if someone comes up the hill at night, looking for the door, I want them to see a light. I do not know who would come. Tam from Kettle Ridge, maybe, looking for word of his sister. I have filed so many of their letters that I feel I know them both. Or a child with a letter. Or anyone.

Tomorrow we close the east stacks. Then the north stacks. Then the great doors.

My hands are all ink. The clerks laugh at me. My hands have always been all ink. It is only that now nobody tells me to wash them.
%%
Wren's notes, water, ships and mines
Lowmarsh. More notes on the grey cough.

Thirty-one now. I have stopped giving each one its own page. Paper is short.

The water. Half the village says it is the water. So Moss boils all of it, and in this house we drink only boiled water. Moss has not been sick, but Moss is copper and iron and does not drink. I have the cough now, a little. I drank only boiled water. So I do not think it is the water. Or not only the water.

The ships. The Pond family says it came with the salt carts, from the sailors at Saltreach. But old Fen had the cough before the first big ship sailed. I wrote down the day. I have my book. They do not want to look at my book.

The mines. The river comes down from the hills past Copperhold. Some say the grey is dust from the Deep Works. Two miners came to me last week, both coughing. But the mine hall wrote to say that no miner at Copperhold has it. One of us is wrong. Maybe both.

Things I have seen and do not understand:
The cough is worse in the morning.
Children laugh when it starts. Then they stop laughing.
The grey in the cloth is darker on cold days.
Nobody who keeps bees has it. That may mean nothing. There are only four beekeepers.

Fen got better. Then he got it again. Lila Pond got better and has stayed better. She came by to show me her frog.

The frogs are loud this spring. That at least is right.
%%
Shepherd's tally, the high pasture
The high pasture above Kettle Ridge. Dunn, shepherd.

I count sheep. That is my work. So I counted the lights too.

First night: 7. Second night: none. Third night: 12. Fourth night: 31, in three groups. Then none for nine nights.

They were falling stars. I have watched the sky from this hill for forty years. Stars fall every autumn, a few at a time. These fell slower, and some of them fell up, which I grant is odd. But a star is a star. Folk want them to be something else because folk are frightened, and a frightened person wants a story.

The sheep did not care. The dogs barked on the third night, but the dogs bark at the moon.

Sheep: 140 in spring. 152 after lambing. 151 now, one lost on the cliff path. Not to the lights. To the cliff path. I want that written plainly, because the ridge has enough stories already.

The Barrows gave me their sheep before they went to Saltreach. So now I have 151 and 40. I count them all every evening. Somebody should still count something.

The windmills turn with nobody grinding. The sound is the same as always. I like the sound.
%%
Relay message for Tam, in pieces
Message from Northpoint for Tam at the low farm, Kettle Ridge. It came in pieces. Written out at the ridge house as it came.

Tam. A short one. Ten words cost an emerald, and the lamp oil is low. I am well. Lantern is well. The foxes are fat again, which means I am not.

Do not believe the market. Do not believe me either. I have not said anything. They were not ours. That is all I know, and all I will say on a line the whole road can read.

Stay with the wheat. Do not come north this winter. The road is bad, and you will lose a boot and blame me.

If the line goes quiet, it is snow on the glass. Lantern cleans it every night. Lantern never gets tired of it. I do.

Tell Pip carrots are not weeds. Tell the Barrows I still have their good pot. Tell them I
%%
Letter from Copperhold, the water jug
Dear Sela,

I cannot sleep, so I am writing to you by the stove.

At night the water in the jug has rings in it. Small rings, from the middle out, like when you tap the table. Nobody is tapping the table. Arlo says it is the carts on the road. There are no carts on the road at night. There are hardly any in the day.

The floor is warm. Rana at the bakery says hers is warm too, and her bread has never been better. Everyone on Low Street buys her bread, and nobody talks about the floor.

Arlo has not been down since the hall shut the ninth gate. His level was the tenth. He goes to the square in the morning with the others. They stand there and talk about the old days, which were last spring.

I want to go to you at Vell. Arlo wants to go to the coast, to the ships. I said I will not sail. He said I will not stay. So we are both still here, which is the worst of both.

The children are fine. They think the hum is a game. They lie with their ears on the floor and tell each other what it sounds like. Little Wim says it sounds like someone humming with their mouth shut. He hums it for me. It is only Wim, humming.

I am frightened, Sela. I have never written that down before. Now it is written.

Write back. Tell me about your garden. Tell me something ordinary.

Mae
%%
Nessa's note on the tool rack
Left on the tool rack in the apprentice hall at Vell.

To the apprentices in this hall, and to whoever finds them.

These twelve are tested. Their scores are on the cards around their necks. Field drill, store drill, order drill. All passed. I tested them myself this morning, one more time. Never send an untested mind to the fields. I did not.

Their last order is farm. Their fields are the ones below the hill, from the road down to the river.

Keep the fields until we come back.

If you find them and you need them, they will take your orders. Speak plainly, in a few words. Bring me bread. Come here. Stay. If they do not understand, it is not their fault. Say it again, the same way.

If you find them and you do not need them, leave them be. They are happy in the fields. I know they do not know what happy is. They look it anyway.

Oil is in the blue jar. Spare crystals are in the dry box, tested, with the scores on the lids.

Nessa, tutor
%%
Northpoint relay book, Frost
Northpoint relay book. Kept by Mira.

Night 1. Lamp lit at the change. Sent to tower two: Good evening, south. All well, snow. Received: Good evening, Northpoint. All well.
Night 2. Lamp lit. Sent: all well, lights north, three. Received: noted.
Night 3. Lamp lit. Sent: all well. Received: Vell asks what lights. Sent: not ours.
Night 4. Lamp lit. Sent: Good evening, south. Received nothing. Tower two lamp dark.
Night 5. Lamp lit. Sent: Good evening, south. Twice. Received nothing.
Night 6. Lamp lit. Sent: Northpoint here. Received nothing. Lantern cleaned our glass. I cleaned it after. It was already clean.
Night 7. Lamp lit. Sent: Good evening, south. Received nothing. Lights north, many, low. Then gone.
Night 8. Lamp not lit, to save oil. Lantern lit it anyway. So: lamp lit. I did not stop it.
Night 9. Lamp lit. Sent: Good evening, south. Mira here. Lantern here. Two foxes here. Received nothing.
Night 10. Lamp lit. Walking south to tower two at first light. Order to Lantern: stay, and keep the lamp lit until I come back.
Night 11. Lamp lit.
Night 12. Lamp lit.
Night 13. Lamp lit.
Night 14. Lamp
%%
Letter: Pell to Juna, from the road
Dear Juna,

I am at the Halfway Inn, two days from home. Hobb says hello, and says you still owe him a jar of the dark honey.

The road is quiet. Everyone I pass is going the same way, to Saltreach, with carts full of chairs they will have to sell when they get there.

Here is the gossip, since you will ask. I do not believe most of it.

At Kettle Ridge they say the north line went quiet because of snow on the lamps.
At Three Wells they say it was the lights.
At Copperhold, the few still there say the hill hums because the miners dug too deep for the ship iron.
At Saltreach they say the miners dug deep long before the ships, and the hall knew, and that is why the ships were built.
At Lowmarsh nobody says anything, because nobody comes out.

Everyone is sure. Nobody agrees. I have been a merchant long enough to know what that means. It means nobody knows.

Barley is lame in the left fore again, so we go slowly. Tell Tilly I have a shell for her, and that Bumble is not to go near Ama's hives without her.

Do not go to Saltreach without me. I will be home before the frost. Keep a lamp in the window so I can find the lane.

Pell
%%
Lowmarsh notice: the grey cough
NOTICE. LOWMARSH. THE GREY COUGH.

From Wren, healer, to the whole village.

If you cough and there is grey in the cloth, stay at home. Do not go to the market. Do not go to the fish weir. Send your apprentice with word, and I will come to you.

Boil your water. All of it. I do not know that the water is the cause. I know that boiled water hurts nobody.

Cover your mouth when you cough. Wash your hands in hot water. Open your shutters on dry days.

Honey helps the throat. Steam helps the sleep. There is no cure that I know of. If anyone tells you of a cure, come and tell me. I will try it, and I will tell you the truth about it.

Do not blame the Pond family. Do not blame the salt carts. Do not blame the miners. I do not know where it comes from. Neither do you.

The relay house is closed while the keeper is sick. Messages for the healer can be left at the edge stone.
%%
Letter: Hesk to the mine hall
To the mine hall at Copperhold, from Hesk.

Here is the side door key. It was my father's. It opens the old door on the eighth level, the one that goes down past the ninth gate by the back way. I have not used it. I am giving it back so that I never do.

My crew has gone to Saltreach. Corin wants hands that know hard work. Corin says a ship is only a roof turned upside down, and miners know how to hold up a roof.

My sister Rue writes from Ambrook that I should come to her. I will, when the pumps can look after themselves. Somebody has to mind the pumps on the first level, or the water comes up into the town wells.

Clank stays with me. Its order is stay, at the pump house. It does not complain about the hum. It does not complain about anything. If I go, its order stays the same. Do not move it. Do not send it below.

The stone at the pump house is warm now. I told you this before. I am telling you again, because you did not write it down last time.

The hum was loud last night. Then it stopped, all at once, for about ten breaths. Then it started again. I do not know which was worse.

Hesk
%%
Chalk on the north waymark
Copied by Tobin, carter, from the waymark stone on the north road, between tower two and Northpoint. Oren at Vell asks us to write down everything we see. So here it is.

I was taking lamp oil up to Northpoint. I turned back at the waymark because of the snow. The oil is still in my cart.

There were two notes in chalk on the stone, under the little roof where the rain does not reach.

The upper one said:
Gone south to tower two. Lantern keeps the lamp. Back in three days. M.

The lower one, in a different hand, said:
Gone north to Northpoint. Pip keeps the fields. Key under the step. If you pass here, go home and wait for me. T.

I do not know which was written first. Both were old. The chalk had gone soft at the edges.

On a clear night you can see the Northpoint lamp from the waymark. I looked for it. It was snowing. I could not see anything, either way.

I left the notes as they were. I put a small stone on top of the waymark, the way we do, to say someone passed and read it.
%%
Oren's list: what goes in the stacks
What goes into the sealed stacks. Oren's list, checked twice.

Everything. Forty-one thousand records and more. But in this order, so the clerks stop asking me.

First the oldest page, alone, in its own box.
Then the letters, all of them. The love letters too.
Then the school books, the essays and the sums, even the wrong sums.
Then the recipes, with the honey cake on top. Ina insists.
Then the songs and the ledgers. Pell's ledgers are the neatest. Mine are the second neatest.
Then the manuals and the drill notes, with Nessa's last notes on top.
Then the relay logs, every tower, as far as each one goes.
Then the notices, copied from the boards.
Then the healer's notes from Lowmarsh. Wren sent them in wax cloth, with a note: this is what I saw, not what I know.
Then the rumors, in their own box, marked rumor.
Then the things that fit nowhere. A child's drawing of a ship. A fox hair from Northpoint, folded in paper, sent as a joke. A pressed flower from Ambrook.
Last, this list.

Ash wanted the late records together on one shelf, in order, so a reader could follow them. I said we do not know the order. They go in with the ordinary days, mixed in, the way they came to us.
%%
Wren's notes, after Saltreach
Lowmarsh. Notes, after Saltreach.

I went to Saltreach to look at the sailors. I looked at forty of them. Thirty-seven had no cough. Three had it, a little. All three had come to Lowmarsh in the summer, for the fishing.

So it is not the ships. Or not only the ships.

At Saltreach I saw a girl with the cough who has never left the harbor. She has never drunk marsh water. She has never met a miner. Her mother sells rope.

So it is not the water. Or not only. It is not the mines. Or not only.

Moss kept the house well. The jars were full of boiled water, and the torch by the step was lit. Lila read the orders every morning. She says Moss nodded each time. Moss does not nod. I did not tell her that.

Fewer people are coughing in the village now. Eleven, down from thirty-one. Some got better. Some went to the ships. Old Fen died in the first hard frost. He had the cough. He also had ninety winters. I will not write that the cough did it, because I do not know.

Corin asked after his friend Ossie. I told him Ossie coughs, but is well enough to complain about it.

I still do not know what it is. I write that again, because people keep asking, and I want my answer to be the same every time.
%%
Corin's yard book, a small boat
Saltreach. The yard book. Corin.

Ship seven, the Lamp, sailed on the morning tide. Thirty-six families. Fewer than before, and not because there was less room.

The yard is quiet. There is timber for one more big ship, maybe. There is no iron. Copperhold sends nothing at all.

The hall asked if I can build an eighth. I said with what. They said with what you have. That is how shipwrights have always worked, so I said yes.

But today I did not work on the eighth. Today I built a small boat, a fishing boat of the old kind. Oak ribs, spruce boards, one mast. It took the whole day, and it was the best day I have had in a year. Marit mended an old net for it and would not take an emerald.

Somebody should still fish. Somebody should still go out in the morning and come back in the evening with cod and a sunburn and a story. That is what boats are for. Boats come back.

Nothing has come back from the big ships. Not one word. The hall says it is too soon. It has been more than a year since the Gull. The sea is wide. Nobody knows how wide.

I have named the small boat the Ilse, after my sister. She will laugh at me. I hope she laughs at me soon.
%%
The notice board at Three Wells, copied
The notice board at Three Wells, copied for the archive word for word, as it stood. Ina, clerk.

Fair is still on. First fine day after the harvest moon. Dace.
Under it, in chalk: What fair? Nobody is here.
Under that, in another hand: We are here. Bring a pie.

Gone to Saltreach for ship five. The Cobbs, all six. The hens are with old Ruddy.

Lost: grey cat, white paws, answers to Button, but only when she wants to. She lives at the blue door behind the bakery. The door is open. Please do not close it.

To whoever has my good saw: you can keep it. Merrick.

School is open. Sorrel.

Wanted: news from Copperhold. Anyone. My son worked the tenth level. His name is Arlo. Write here.
Under it: Copperhold relay is quiet. Sorry.
Under that: Saw Arlo at the Halfway Inn, going to the coast, well and eating. Rumor, but I think true.

Honey for sale, Ambrook dark. Ask at the bakery.

Has anyone seen the north lamps lit? Anyone at all?
Nothing written under it.

For sale: one cart, one wheel short. Cheap.

Keep the torches lit. Dace.
