Manual: the whole winter at the square
By Jory, night watch at Three Wells. For the tutor who visits in Frost and Deepsnow, and for whoever keeps the square when the tutor goes home.

The winter has three parts, as the summer does, and each part has its orders. Give the same words each day. A mind that is given a new word for the same work will be confused, and so will the baker.

Morning, at the first bell, when the square is still grey.
> clear the snow from the north well steps
= haul
> light the lamp at the bakery corner
= fetch torch
> open the store and sweep the step
= store

Midday, when the sun is low over the hill and the square is busy with carts.
> carry the bread from the oven to the stalls
= haul
> bring coal from the bin to the bakery door
= fetch coal
> stay by the well until the bell
= stay

Evening, at the second bell.
> put the flour away and shut the door
= store
> go home when the lamps are lit
= home
> come to the gate in the morning
= come

The post comes up the Long Road in winter on the second cart each week, when the road is passable. Meet the cart at the north corner, not in the square. A cart stuck in the square is a cart that will not leave, and the square has no room for it.
> meet the post cart at the north corner and carry the bags to the inn
= haul
> stay with the bags until the innkeeper signs for them
= stay

Notes for the tutor. The mind answers with one of its meanings, and that is all it knows to say. Do not give two orders in one breath. Give the first, wait for the answer, and then give the second.

In a long winter the square is quiet for weeks. People stay in their houses, and the stalls are shut, and the only sound is the bakery oven and the watch's boots. That is a good time to drill. The mind is not distracted by the market, and it learns the words faster. Use the time well. The spring will be busy.

The wells freeze at the top in Deepsnow. Keep the buckets on the steps, not in the wells, and tie a rope to every bucket so that a frozen bucket can be pulled up by the rope and not by the arm.

The lamp boy has been told not to climb the ladder to the high lamps. He has climbed it. Let him. Put a rope on him too.
%%
Note on sorting pages
By Tam, farmer at Kettle Ridge, winter of 188.

Pip wanted to drill the field mind on every page he could find. I told him that a heap is not the same as a good drill.

We laid the pages on the barn floor. Some showed wheat, some beetroot, and some showed the answer. Two pages were copies. Three had wet marks over the answer. We put the copies and spoiled pages aside for Oren.

Then we checked each clear page. If the picture showed wheat, the answer had to say wheat. If the picture showed beetroot, the answer had to say beetroot. Pip found one page where the answers had been swapped. He laughed, then stopped when I asked what the mind would learn from it.

We made a clean pile for drilling and a small box for testing. No mind sees the pages in the box during its lessons.

The mind made fewer wrong guesses after that. Pip said the pages had learned good sense. I said the pages had always been right. We had only stopped confusing them.
%%
Manual: building the ditch edge
By Una of Kettle Ridge, winter of 190.

A building mind follows a pattern. Give it a short wall before you ask it for a long one. Set the cobblestone beside the drill yard and keep the pattern board dry.

The board must show where each stone goes. Check every page against the board. If one page says to leave a gap and the next says to fill it, do not hope the mind will choose the better page. Remove the bad page. Remove copies too. Oren says one page repeated ten times is still one example, not ten.

Drill the mind on clean patterns. Let it place a stone, then compare its work with the board. When it is wrong, show the right place. The mind changes a little. It does not learn from a scolding, and the stone does not move because Tam frowns at it.

Keep test patterns in their own box. They should be patterns the mind has not used in drilling. A test on a known wall only tells us that the mind can repeat that wall.

The first test wall had a corner the mind had not seen before. It left a gap. We wrote that down, and did not call the mind ready. After more practice, it made the corner. Then we gave it a small wall beside the potato field, with Tam there to watch.

A clean drill gives a fair chance to learn. A clean test gives a fair chance to see what was learned.
%%
Tutor Note: Market Patterns
By Nessa, tutor at Vell. Winter, 201.

At the Lowmarsh market, goods arrive in a known order. Fish tubs go by the weir. Reeds go beneath the roof. Jars go on the low shelf. Bread stays on the baker's bench. A tending apprentice can follow that order if the drill is clear.

Begin with three places, not the whole market. Put a reed bundle, a jar, and a fish on the table. Show each one going to its marked place. Repeat the same set. Then move the items and ask the mind to sort them again. If it only follows the place, it has not learned the goods.

A useful drill is:

reed, shelf, jar, low shelf, fish, tub
reed, shelf, jar, low shelf, fish, tub

Write each word on a separate card. Put the cards in the same order each time. If the apprentice puts a jar in the tub, correct it and repeat the set. Do not praise a lucky answer as a learned answer. Test it later with a jar it has not seen before.

One market apprentice sorted a clay jar with the fish because both were wet. The fish seller said this showed sense. The potter said it showed a need for better lessons. Both bought a bun and stopped arguing.

The stall itself can be kept in order by a short pattern. First place a basket, then a jar, then a basket. Repeat the row. Do not ask a small mind to invent a new market plan. Teach it to notice what comes next.

> put the reed bundle on the shelf
= store

> take the fish to the tub
= store

> bring a jar to me
= fetch jar

A mind that has learned one stall may fail at another. At the Lowmarsh market, the shelf is under a reed roof. At Vell, a shelf is in a dry room. Use examples from the place where the apprentice will work.

Keep the cards dry. Keep the drill table clear. A card with fish oil on it smells like fish, and some minds sort by smell if the tutor lets them. When the market closes, put the jars away and wipe the table. The last tutor left a turnip on it for three days. The turnip became a lesson for flies.
%%
Drill note: carry the jars
By Opal, Apple 200

The healing house at the hamlet has jars of honey and herbs. Wren sent a list to the tutor at Copperhold. She wants an apprentice to carry the jars from the store to the cart.

The road is steep. A jar must stay upright. We tested the mind with empty jars first. It learned to carry one without knocking it against the door.

The small crystal fits in the apprentice's chest. Its marks were written in fewer marks, so it fits there. It still knows the path from the store to the cart. It is a little less sure when the path is busy.

I made the orders short. The meaning names the work, not every step. We showed the mind the same kind of order many times. We kept back other orders for the test.

> take the honey jars to the cart
= haul
> carry the herb jars to Wren
= haul
> bring me a honey jar
= fetch honey
> put the empty jars in the store
= store
> come to the shed door
= come
> stay beside the cart
= stay
> go home to the tool rack
= home

The apprentice carried the jars. One lid came loose, but no honey spilled. We tightened the lids and tried again.
%%
Tutor's notes: new copper, autumn 188
Nessa's notes from her week at Copperhold, for the tutors' book at Vell. Autumn, year 188. The clerk copied them with her spelling kept.

First day. The drill room is by the forge, where it is warm. The tray of crystals sits on the bench, each on its card: Fetch. Store. Haul. Come. Stay. Farm. Build. Home. Hesk's crew has six minds in the first row. Clank asks the most questions, and it asks them with its eyes. Tobin at the forge says copper wants a hot fire and a patient hand. He says the same about children.

Second day. We drilled the words of the levels, forty of them, shown twice. The first pass was thirty-seven right. The second was forty. The wrong ones were near ones. Coal went to iron. Come went to stay. Hesk says that is the best kind of wrong.

Third day. Ola came up from level six at dawn with her hat in her hand and her face black. She had broken into a new vein past the wet channel. Copper, bright and thick, running for twenty blocks along the wall. Hesk says it is the best since the vein by the old sump. The miners cheered at the shaft head, and nobody could find the chalk to write it on the count board.

Ola did not want a new word for the new copper. I asked her why. She said copper is copper. I wrote it in the book as she said it, and I think she is right.

Fourth day. I gave the children the explanation at the drill room, in plain words. Each word is a place. The mind keeps the places among many, and words used alike sit close. Copper and iron stand near, because both are fetched. Fetch stands near both. Stay is far off.

Nobody knows why the places sit as they do. I told the children that nobody knows. They were not disappointed. They were pleased to have something no one could answer, and one of them asked whether the shelves were heavy. The same day the wet channel rose a hand's width after the rain, and the miners put boards across it. Ola says the channel holds.

Fifth day. I left Copperhold at the bell. The kitchen at the mine gate gave me bread for the road, and Hesk gave me a copper ring from the new vein, which I have kept.

The apprentices of Copperhold, by Hesk's count: Clank, Rivet, two new ones from Vell still being tested, and Bolt, which stands in the lift and has never been wrong about the lift. Hesk says Bolt is the only one of them with no opinions.

For the tutors at Vell: (a) Words used alike sit close. This held for every mind I tested at Copperhold, and for the two from Vell. (b) Never send an untested mind down the levels. (c) The shelves are explained above for the children. Nobody has said why.
%%
Manual: how to teach an apprentice
Rafe, candle maker, hamlet near Vell. Autumn. A long manual, written in the evenings, for any farmer or crafter in the district who has an apprentice and wishes to teach it to fetch.

I have three apprentices in my shop. One dips. One carries. One finds. This note is about the third.

Finding is the hardest thing I have taught. It is also the thing I am proudest of, because a finder saves you hours.

What is finding? It is this. You say a word. The apprentice goes to where the thing is, and brings it. The word is "fetch" and the thing is whatever you name.

Step one. Choose a few things. A candle, a spool of wick, a bucket, a jar. Keep them close at hand. Do not use ten things on the first day. Four is enough.

Step two. Put each in its place. Candle on the shelf. Wick on the hook. Bucket by the door. Jar on the table.

Step three. Walk with the apprentice from thing to thing. Say the word, and put its hand on the thing. "Candle." "Wick." "Bucket." "Jar." Do this ten times. Do it slowly.

Step four. Say the word, and wait. The apprentice may walk to the thing. It may not. If it does not, say the word again and guide it. Never scold. It does not know it is wrong.

Step five. When it reaches the right thing, praise it, in your own way. I pat its shoulder. It does not matter what you do, as long as you do it the same each time.

Step six. Move the things. Put the candle on the table, the wick on the shelf. Say the word. It will walk to where it saw the thing last. It will be wrong. Show it. It will change a little. After a few days, it will look in many places.

Step seven. Add new things. Do not forget the old ones.

This is the whole of drilling. The same kind of example, again and again. At first it is wrong. Each time it is wrong, it changes a little. Slowly it is right.

Testing. Before you send an apprentice to the fields, or to the roads, or to another man's shop, test it. Put a thing in a place it has never seen. Say the word. If it finds it, you have an apprentice. If not, you have a statue.

Orders for a finder:

> bring me a candle
= fetch candle
> fetch the wick
= fetch wick
> get the bucket
= fetch bucket
> come here
= come
> go home
= home

An old letter in my files says that the first finder in the district was a thing called Bobbin, which belonged to the weaver at Three Wells. I have not been able to find the letter again. I have looked in every drawer and every hat.

I have lost the letter, then. But I have kept the lesson.
%%
The song contest at Three Wells
A true account, written down by Bel, now grown, who was there as a child.

Every Longnight the house at the edge of Three Wells holds a song contest. The house is warm and the lamps are lit and the benches are pulled round. Anyone may sing. The prize is a honey cake.

That year the big mind at the relay tower was asked to judge. It could not hear the singing. It said so. So the singers wrote their songs down and the mind read them by letter and gave each a score. It gave reasons. It was kind about the bad ones. It said of one song, "I do not know enough about boats to say if this is right, but the last line is good."

My brother sang about the grey branch of the oldest apple tree at Ambrook. He came second. A girl from the school sang about a frog in the reeds and won the honey cake. The mind said her song made it think of slow water. It said it did not know if frogs sing, and it hoped they did.

We kept the scores in the tower book. The tutors say the minds learn from scores like these. I do not know what a mind does with a honey cake it cannot eat. It seemed pleased.
%%
Why the numbers must be kept even
Copied from Nessa's note on the even numbers, for the healing house.

A mind is many layers. Each layer takes the numbers that came in from the layer before, mixes them, and passes its own numbers on. If nothing else is done, the numbers grow. A small number becomes a bigger one, and that one becomes bigger still. By the fifth layer the numbers run wild, and every answer comes out the same.

So each layer does one more step. It finds the middle of its numbers, and how far they spread. Then it scales them back to one even size, so the next layer starts from the same place.

The step is simple to say. A mind with it drills well. A mind without it drills badly, and gets worse the longer it is drilled.

I do not know why a crystal learns at all. Nobody has written that down, and I will not pretend to. The even numbers only keep the learning from running off.
%%
Nim's drill notes, harvest week
Autumn, year 206. At the farm on the Vell road, where the apprentice is two seasons old.

Day one. The apprentice was shown the pumpkin field. Pumpkins are round and heavy and want to roll. I put a stone behind each cart wheel. The apprentice lifted one pumpkin, then another, then nine. It did not drop any. The tenth rolled out of its arms and into the ditch. The apprentice looked at the ditch for a long time. Then it climbed down and got it.

Day two. The apple tree. I showed the apprentice how to pick without bruising. Hold the apple, lift, turn. It tried. The first ten bruised. The next ten did not. It is learning. By evening it had filled two baskets.

Day three. A good harvest. Barn full. Loft full. The farmer's wife says she has never seen so much. She made pies for the apprentice and for me. The apprentice cannot eat, but it stood next to the pie and held the tray. The farmer's wife said that is the nicest thing anyone has done.

Day four. Rest. I cleaned the joints and oiled the knees.

Notes for next year. Start the pumpkins earlier. Keep the stones behind the wheels. Do not let the farmer's son teach the apprentice tricks.
%%
Pell's Market Rules
Ambrook, Apple of 207.

The market is open from the first cart until the last jar is sold. Put the apples on the dry boards. Put the honey under the little roof. Keep carrots and beetroot in their own baskets. If a customer asks for a price, read the board before answering. The board is not improved by staring at it.

The leaves are down, and carts bring mud from the road. Sweep the path by the bridge each morning. Set loose planks aside for Jory. Do not set them under the table. Last year he sat on one and blamed the table.

The three apprentices help each other now. Pin carries the fruit. Rill sorts the baskets and counts the jars. Tern builds the stall walls from the pattern board. A big mind in the relay house answered when they could not agree whether the wall should turn by the bee hives or the path. It said to leave room for both. That was good advice, though Pell had already put a post there.

A mind must be tested on new work. Keep the test basket apart from the drill basket. Mix apples, carrots, beetroot and honey jars. Count what goes in each place. If Rill sorts well, give it the next basket. If it sorts badly, show the right place and drill again. Do not hide a bad count. I keep the old marks, and the tutor keeps asking for them.

> bring me two baskets of apples
= fetch apples

> take the baskets to the stall
= haul

> put the honey jars on the dry shelf
= store

> build a wall along the cart path
= build

> come to the notice board
= come

> stay by the empty stall
= stay

> go home to the shed
= home

> farm the patch behind the mill
= farm

The child who ran off last Apple is now tall enough to reach the honey shelf. Her aunt says she is not to be trusted near the small apples. The child says she has learned to count them without eating them. We have not tested this claim.

A zombie stood at the gate before dawn yesterday. It had one arm through the bars and a leaf stuck to its head. Pin stayed by the wall as ordered. Tern carried the loose gate board to Pell. Rill fetched the torch from the stall. I lit it, and the zombie wandered off.

Keep the gate shut at night. Keep the torches lit. Keep the apples in baskets, not in hats. This last rule is for me.
%%
Manual: the contest of halls
By Gwen, shepherd, copied at Ambrook for the tutors who come up in spring.

Every spring the tutors' halls meet at Vell for the contest. Each hall brings its best mind. They are all given the same drill, and it is one that none of them has seen before. The drill is sealed in a box by the clerks, and it is opened only on the morning of the test.

Each mind answers every example in the box. The clerks count the right answers and write them on a card, with the hall's name. The cards are pinned on the wall of the copying room for all to read.

The rule is simple. The hall whose mind is right most often goes home with the prize. The prize is a set of new drill boards, and a dinner at the big table.

Gwen says the rule is what makes the halls honest. In the old days, a tutor could say his mind was the best. Now he must show it, on a drill he did not write and cannot see before the day. A hall that hides a weak mind is found out at once.

The halls grumble. They say the clerks are slow, and that the boxes are heavy. But nobody has yet found a way to cheat the box. Gwen says that is the best thing about the contest. It keeps everybody's hands clean, and it keeps the minds honest too.
%%
Catching a swarm at the reed beds
Written by Sable, who keeps the four hives on the dry hump by the reed beds. For the new apprentices, who want to do everything at once and get stung for it.

Bees swarm when a hive gets too full. The old queen leaves with about half the bees, to find a new home. The swarm hangs from a branch or a reed, a brown knot of bees the size of a melon. A swarm is busy looking for a home. It will not sting you if you leave it be.

How to catch a swarm, step by step:
1. Do not run. Walk slowly, and keep your voice low. Bees do not like shouting.
2. Hold a box lined with wool cloth under the swarm. Keep the box below the bees, not beside them.
3. Shake the branch once, hard, so the swarm drops into the box.
4. Cover the box with the cloth and carry it home to the hive. Carry it slowly. The bees are full of honey and in no hurry.
5. Set the box by the hive and leave it an hour. The bees will walk in on their own. Then close the lid.

Orders for the apprentices at the hives:
> the hive is swarming, hold still
= stay
> bring the wool cloth from the store
= fetch wool
> come over here and stand by the hive
= come
> take the combs back to the hives
= haul
> the lids are shut, the day is done
= home

Fen, the young apprentice at the weir, once tried to catch a swarm with a bucket. The bucket was full of bees, and Fen was full of stings. Afterward Fen did the right thing, which was to stand still for two hours, as it had been told to do in the first place. Fen will not forget that order. Neither will the bees.
%%
A Letter Not Sent
By Lale, keeper of the hamlet store.

A letter came from Vell for the tutor, but I put it beneath the flour board. I found it there when the fishing boat came late home.

The boat had gone out before the wind grew sharp. It was due back by the evening lamp. We watched the water from the shore, then watched it again after the lamp was lit.

The boat came in after dark with wet nets and tired folk. The keeper had stayed to mend a loose board. No one was hurt. We warmed the fish stew and shared bread at the store door.

I took the letter to the tutor the next morning. The paper was dry. The seal was still closed. It had been waiting in the wrong place, not lost on the road.

The letter asked for notes on our carrying helper. I wrote that it can carry a sack from the yard to the store when the mark is clear. It cannot carry a net to a boat. No one has shown it that task.

The tutor says the crystal changes when it is shown examples. He does not know why. He says we must not tell the council that one small drill makes a helper ready for every kind of work.

The boat brought three baskets of fish. One basket was for the tutor. He sent it back with a note saying the store had enough. I think he was being polite. We ate it at supper.
%%
Manual: planning a long job
By Oren, clerk at Vell. This is how a crew plans a job that is too long for one card.

A long job has many steps, and each step needs a different tool, or a different place, or a different hand. Do not try to write the whole job on one card. Write the plan first, in steps, on a clean sheet. Then write one card for each step.

Here is the plan for re-roofing the store by the Vell gate.
Step one: take the old reed bundles off the north side, and stack them in the yard.
Step two: check the rafters. Any rafter that is soft is marked with a cross.
Step three: replace the marked rafters.
Step four: lay the new reed in rows, from the eaves to the ridge.
Step five: tie each row down with the good rope.
Step six: look at the whole roof from the yard, and from the top of the wall.

Each step becomes its own card. The cards are kept in the order of the steps. A card is not started until the card before it has been looked at.

Do one step, then look. If the look says wrong, go back one step, and not to the start. This is the most important rule in this manual, and the one the crews forget most often, because starting again is always easier to say.

The tools for each step are kept in the order they are needed. The saw is on the hook by the door. The ladder is tied to the wall. The nails are in the box, and the box is labeled, and the label is not to be changed by anybody in a hurry.

A crew that writes its cards this way can finish a long job without anybody standing over it, and without the same mistake being made twice.
%%
Manual: the first morning of a new
Cress, egg seller, on the farm outside Saltreach. For whoever gets a new apprentice in winter. It came from the tutor house at Vell in a crate, with its test paper tied to its arm.
1. Put it by the stove. Iron is cold in winter and slow to start.
2. Show it the hen house first. It will carry the egg baskets. Show it twice. Do not talk too much.
3. Give plain orders, one at a time. These are the ones it knows:
> bring me some eggs
= fetch eggs
> go to the field
= farm
> put the baskets away
= store
> come to me
= come
4. If it does the wrong thing, say nothing. Show it again. It learns by being shown.
5. At night, tell it to go home. It will go to its corner and stand there.
> go home now
= home
The first morning is the hardest. By the third it has a favorite hen.
%%
Drill note: Rafe's store
By Rafe, Saltreach.

This house stands where the road meets the shore path. The store is oak, with a deep stone sill. Keep the door shut when the wind throws sand.

The apprentice carries wheat from the shed to the dry bins. It carries one sack at a time. I tried two sacks once. One went into the fish barrel.

Teach it with full bins and empty bins. A full bin is not an empty bin. This seems plain to everyone but the first mind I tried.

> take wheat from the shed
= fetch wheat

> put wheat in the dry bin
= store

> bring the empty sack home
= home
%%
Manual: carrying from the new vein
By Dara, grandfather, for the apprentices who work the carts at the new vein outside Vell. Summer, when the vein was found.

The new vein runs under the hill beyond the walled garden. It is thin and bright, and the carts from the vein must go down the hill road before the sun is high, because the road is cool in the morning and dusty by noon.

Orders for the day:
> carry the copper from the new vein to the cart
= haul
> fetch the lamp from the shed for the dark passage
= fetch lamp
> stay by the cart until the tutor comes to count
= stay
> go home at dusk, with the carts all counted
= home

The count matters more than the carrying. A cart of copper that is not counted is a cart that was never there. The tutor counts each cart at the gate, and writes the number on the board, and the board is read aloud at the bell.

Keep the carrier's hands clean. The vein is bright, and bright metal makes the hands slip on the rope. A slipped rope is the most common cause of a bad morning on this hill.
%%
Manual: the Three Wells wall
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells.

The wall round the square is built by pattern. An apprentice lays it one course at a time, and follows the pattern exactly. A wall that is nearly right is not right. Spiders know the difference.

The pattern is this. Each course is cobblestone, cobblestone, then deep stone. The next course starts again with cobblestone. The stones of each course stand in the same place in each row, so the lines run straight up.

Deep stone comes up from Copperhold by cart. It is darker than cobblestone and cold to the touch, even in Longday. Keep the piles apart in the store, or the apprentice will mix them, and the third row will go wrong.

The top row sticks out one block past the rows below. That is against spiders. A spider that climbs to the lip finds no hold for its feet, and it has to go back down the way it came.

Give the order once, then leave the apprentice to it:

> build the south wall, from the gate to the well
= build

Keep count as it goes. Each course should match the one below. When the wall is done, look along the top. The lip should be even from the gate to the well.

Put a torch on every corner post. Two corners on the west side were left dark in Longday, and the spiders found them before anyone did.

When the wall is finished, bring the apprentice home:

> come to the square
= come

Then test it on the pattern of a second wall, in the drill yard, where it has never built before. Only when the second wall is right does the wall round the square count as done. The tutors at Vell taught me this rule, and I have never found a better one.
%%
Opal's note on smaller crystals
In Apple, year 200

I press apples in the shed below Copperhold. The shed stands beside the road, where the hill road meets the orchard path. Clank brings the empty casks down for me. He carries them one at a time and sets each by the wall.

The tutor from Copperhold came to the shed with two crystals. One was large. One was small enough for my apron pocket.

She said the large crystal held a mind's weights in many marks. The marks were the numbers that told the mind how strongly one place joined another. A clerk could copy those numbers with fewer marks. The smaller crystal could then hold the mind.

"It is the same mind, more or less," she said. "The smaller copy may lose a little."

I asked if the small one would sort apples. She set out apples and pears. It sorted them well, but missed two pears in the last basket. The larger mind had missed one.

I wrote the count on both tags. The small crystal went back in its dry box. We will test it again on fruit it has not seen.

I have no use for a crystal that cannot tell a pear from an apple. I have no use for a large one that takes all the bench either. The tutor says the small one may serve a little apprentice. That seems a fair use.
%%
Play: the blame that went back
A school play, as it was put on at Three Wells in the winter of 160. The children wrote it and the children played it. The mayor sat in the front row and did not laugh once.
People in the play:
MERLE, a tutor with a slate.
TOP, the top board of the mind.
MID, the middle board.
LOW, the first board, which sees the letters.
WOOL, the wrong answer.
A CHILD, who asks the questions.
Scene: a yard with a table and a slate. The mind is at the table.
CHILD: What is that?
MERLE: It is a mind. It is made of boards.
CHILD: Why is it wrong?
MERLE: Because it said the wool was a cart. Top, what did you say?
TOP: I said it was a cart.
MERLE: And how wrong were you?
TOP: Very wrong. I am a cart, and it was wool.
MERLE: Then you take the blame. Pass it down to Mid. Mid, how much do you take?
MID: Half of what Top has. I helped.
MERLE: Pass it down to Low. Low, how much?
LOW: A little. I only see the letters.
MERLE: Good. Now everyone changes, a little, in their share.
CHILD: That is all?
MERLE: That is all. Then we try again.
WOOL: I am wool. Try me again.
MERLE: We will. Good night, boards.
Everyone bows. The mayor claps once, slowly, for the tutor.
%%
Manual: the hives before a long winter
By Sage. The old beekeeper of the hamlet says the last long winter was thirty weeks, and that he has never been wrong about the weather, only about his wife.

Before the cold comes, the hives need four things. They need honey enough to last. They need a dry place. They need a small door. They need to be left alone.

1. Open each hive and look at the combs from the top down. A full comb is a winter. A half comb is a worry.
2. Leave the top combs for the bees. Take only the spare honey from the sides, and never more than a third.
3. Lift each hive onto two stones, off the wet grass, so the rain runs under.
4. Wrap each hive in hay. Leave the front open, and cut the door down to the width of two fingers.
5. Set a flat stone on each lid, so the wind does not take it in the night.
6. Do not open a hive again until Thaw, unless the bees come out and sit on your hat.

Orders for the apprentices:
> leave the top combs for the bees
= stay
> take the spare honey to the store
= haul
> fetch hay for the hive wraps
= fetch hay
> bring the smoke pot and the lid
= fetch smoke pot
> the lids are on, go home
= home

The apprentice does the lifting. The keeper does the counting. Keep those two jobs apart, or the honey will be counted by the one who lifted it, and it will always come out in the lifter's favour.
%%
Manual: the day the lesson went badly
Written by Briar, cider maker, farm outside Lowmarsh. Summer. A true note for the next teacher of the apprentice, on what not to do.

I wished to teach the apprentice two tasks in one morning. This was my mistake. I will set down exactly what happened, because the tutors say a bad drill is worth a good one if it is written down.

The first task: carry the empty barrels from the shed to the cider house. Simple. Twelve barrels. The apprentice did it.

The second task, which I began right after: carry the full barrels from the cider house back to the shed. Also simple. But I said the words in the same voice as the first task. The apprentice did not know the difference. It picked up a full barrel, walked to the cider house, set it down, picked up the same barrel, walked back to the shed, set it down.

It did this eleven times before I noticed. I was watching a frog.

A full barrel is heavy. The apprentice does not tire, but the barrel does, and it began to leak at the bung. By the eleventh trip, there was a sweet trail across the yard, and the pigs had found it.

What I learned. One. Teach one task at a time. Two. Use a different word for a different task. Three. Do not watch frogs.

> carry the barrels to the shed
= haul
> carry them back
= haul
> stop
= stay

The cider was fine. The pigs were not. They were very cheerful.
%%
The poor harvest at Northpoint
Written by Ada, trader, in Reaping of 193.

The north field gave little wheat this year. The heads were thin, and the wind laid some flat before we could cut them. We counted the sacks twice. Counting twice did not make more wheat, but it stopped us arguing about the first count.

The town still needs bread. Lantern set aside the best grain for seed. We kept the rest in marked bins in the store. One bin holds wheat, one holds potatoes, and one holds carrots. The labels are large enough to read by torchlight.

The apprentice has learned to sort the sacks. We showed it a wheat sack, then pointed to the wheat bin. We showed it a potato sack and the potato bin. It put the first potato sack with the wheat. Ada moved it back and made the lesson again. The next six sacks went to the right bins.

We tested it with sacks brought from the kitchen and the store. It sorted all but one. That sack had split, and potatoes had rolled into the wheat. Lantern says the apprentice cannot be blamed for a sack that has become two kinds of sack.

We will use less flour in the bread and add potatoes. The baker says the loaves will be dense. He also says dense bread stays on the plate when the table shakes. Our table shakes because one leg is short. This has never stopped anyone eating.

Orders for the store drill:
> put the wheat with the wheat
= store
> take potatoes to the kitchen
= fetch potatoes
> bring the carrots to Ada
= fetch carrots

No one will be sent to the field without a test. The apprentice can sort sacks, but it cannot judge a bad harvest or choose how much seed to keep. That is still our work. Ada has written the count on the store board, and Lantern has drawn a small hen beside it. No one knows why. The hen is not in charge of the wheat.
%%
Note: the great drills at Vell
By a clerk of the archive, copied from a letter.

I was a young clerk in the year 188. Oren was not yet head clerk. The tutors came down from the tutor house and asked for everything. Not one shelf, not one hall. Everything.

We gathered letters first. Every letter in the deep halls, every letter in the boxes, every letter people had sent us and we had filed and never read again. Then journals. Then the tally boards from the mills, copied out. Then the school essays from Three Wells, all of them, even the ones about the weather. Then the notices. Then the minutes of the councils. Then the songs, and the fables, and the plays with talking foxes.

The tutors wanted pages. Clean pages. Pages a mind could read one letter at a time. So we sorted. We took out the copies, and the spoiled pages, and the pages with mold. We kept a test box of pages no mind was ever drilled on. This was the rule, and the tutors were firm about it.

Whose letters went in, I cannot tell you. People ask me and I do not know. There were more letters than we could count, and the tutors took them by the crate. Some folk say it was only the best letters. Some say it was everything, the bills and the quarrels and the sad ones. I copied what was put in front of me. I did not ask.

What came back to people's lips in those years was the words over the door. We will keep everything we write. We had said it for a hundred years and never known what it was for. Now the tutors said: a mind learns from what it is shown. Show it everything we wrote, and it will learn to read everything we write.

I do not know if that is true. I only know the copying room had eight tables and every table was full, and we made the tea late, and the cat was not allowed in and came in anyway.
%%
A sorting drill for the shed
By Opal, late Apple 200

We keep apples in one bin and pears in another. The cider apples go by the press. The sound apples go to the market. The soft ones go in the kitchen.

The apprentice used to put every apple in the first bin. It did not understand the labels. Nessa's drill showed it many baskets, with the right label beside each one. When it chose the wrong bin, the tutor moved the crystal's weights a little toward the right answer.

A layer of a mind passes some of the blame back to the layer before it. The early marks are changed too, not only the last marks. That is how the mind can learn a hard sorting rule instead of repeating one guess.

This crystal was copied into fewer marks. It takes less room, but its answers are not quite as steady. We test it on baskets the tutors have kept apart from the drills. The test baskets are not shown during teaching.

> sort the apples for cider
= store
> put the good pears in the market bin
= store
> take soft apples to the kitchen
= haul
> bring one sound apple to me
= fetch apples
> stay by the pear bin
= stay
> go to the press
= come
> take the full basket to the cart
= haul

It put two cider apples with the sound ones. I moved them back. The next basket it sorted well.
%%
Manual: a mind that keeps a frame
By Dov, bridge keeper, from the drill notes of the Northpoint tutor's cart. Written in winter, for the young tutors who want to try a mind on a frame.

A frame is a body that holds its shape. A bridge is a frame. A boat is a frame. A cart is a frame. A mind that keeps a frame on course keeps it straight when the load shifts and the wind comes in.

We did not drill this mind on frames. We did not show it the right way to hold a load. We set it on the frame, let it try, and watched what happened. Here is how it went.

First try. The frame tipped to the left and went over. The mind had moved its arms without any sense of why. It did not stop. It did not know that it should stop.

Second try. The frame tipped again, to the right. The mind moved its arms the other way, and the frame came back up. Then it tipped left again, and the mind pulled back the other way, and so on. It swung, like a gate in the wind.

Third try. The mind made smaller moves. The frame wobbled and settled. It was still for a moment. Then it went over again, but more slowly.

After a hundred tries it could hold the frame level for a count of ten. After three hundred, it could hold it level when the load was shifted to one side by a sack. After five hundred, it could hold the frame in a light wind, on the north crossing, with a bridge keeper watching from the bank.

The tutor says the mind kept what went well. When a move kept the frame level, the mind kept that move, and let the others fade. Nobody told it the answer. It found the answer by trying, and kept the tries that worked.

One thing to remember. The mind does not know what a frame is. It does not know what a bridge is for. It only keeps what kept the frame up. So it will fall on the day you do not expect it to fall, and it will not tell you why. Watch it on the frame for a long time before you let it near a real load.
%%
Manual: the judges' table
By Garrow, clerk of the archive, at Three Wells. The judges' table stands at the front of the square on the day of the song contest. Apprentices set it, and clear it, and keep it honest, but they do not judge.

1. Set the table on the flat stones, not the grass. The judges will not sit well on a slope, and neither will the cups.
2. Lay out the score slates, one for each judge, with the chalk tied to each one by a string.
3. Fill the water jug from the well, and set it at the judge's left hand. Fill it again at noon.

Orders for the drill:
> set the table on the flat stones
= build
> fetch the score slates from the store
= fetch slates
> stand still at the table until the judges sit
= stay
> the contest is done, come and clear the cups
= come
> the table is clear, go home
= home

The judges like their cups to be full and their slates to be dry. An apprentice that fills the cups and dries the slates has done the best job on the square.
%%
Manual: how to teach a new apprentice
Cress, egg seller, the farm outside Saltreach, winter. We have a new apprentice this month. It came by cart from Vell in a crate, with its test paper tied to its arm and a card that says Farm. Build. It walks. It carries. It does not talk, and it never will.
Some apprentices come knowing only a little. This one knows how to walk and how to lift. It has to be drilled on everything else. Here is how I drill it to find the hen house and bring the eggs to the kitchen. It takes a week. Do not hurry.
Day one. Walk it to the hen house. Open the door. Show it the nests. Put an egg in its hand. Close its fingers, softly. Walk it to the kitchen. Put the egg in the basket. Walk it back. Do this ten times.
Day two. Do the same. But on the third egg, stay at the door and let it go alone. Watch. If it takes the wrong turn, go and bring it back. Show it again.
Day three. Say the order for the first time.
> fetch the eggs
= fetch eggs
The apprentice has heard the sound of the order before, while it was being walked. It has not learned the meaning. Say the order, and walk it to the hen house, as before. Then say it again, and let it go.
Day four and five. Repeat. By now it should go alone. Most do.
Day six. Give it a new order.
> take the eggs to the kitchen
= store
It should carry the basket to the kitchen and set it down. If it does, you have taught it two orders.
Day seven. Test it. Say each order in a different place: the yard, the barn, the well. If it does each one right, it is ready. If it wavers, drill the weak one for another day.
A note on being wrong. A new apprentice is wrong a lot, at first. It breaks an egg, takes a wrong turn, stands in the door. Each time it is wrong it changes a little. You will not see it. The change is inside the crystal. Do not expect it to say sorry, or to explain. It cannot. Simply show it again, and it gets better.
A note on the hens. They do not trust a new apprentice. They flap and cluck. Let them. By the second week they ignore it.
My apprentice is called Biddy. It has been here a month. It has never broken an egg since the third day. The hens still sit on its feet when it stands still.
%%
Manual: the gate at night
By Bel, who keeps the farm outside Three Wells with her brother, and who was taught the drills by Nessa of Vell. Winter. No year is given on this page.

A zombie came up the lane to the gate last night, in the dark, with its arms out. The apprentice was at the gate, as it should be. It did what it was told, and nothing more, and so nothing was lost.

Stand the apprentice at the gate, inside the torch light, and give it the words it knows.
> stay by the gate until the watch comes
= stay
> fetch the torch from the post and light it
= fetch torch

A zombie that stands still at the gate is not yet a danger. Do not strike it. Wait for it to turn, and walk back down the lane, as zombies do. Then the apprentice may close the gate.

When the bell rings for the change of the watch, the apprentice comes in.
> come in from the gate when the bell rings
= come
> go home when the lamps are out in the yard
= home
%%
Note for the fair drill
By Ada, dyer, in the 184th year of the archive.

The hamlet fair is in the open yard above the shore road. We set the stalls in a row, with the pie table at the end. The pie table must be at the end. If it stands in the middle, everyone stops there and no one sees the wool.

Our apprentice helped carry the dyers' goods. It brought the baskets, then came back for the poles. This was good work. It did not try to carry all the poles at once. It tried that last summer and sat down in the road.

The fair prize for the best bright cloth is a small copper bowl. I won it once with a blue scarf. I use it now for buttons. My sister says this is a poor use of a prize. She has not had to find a button in a basket of wool.

These orders are for the fair drill. Say the words in different ways when you teach. The apprentice must learn the meaning, not only the sound.

> take these baskets to the fair yard
= haul
> put the cloth in the dry chest
= store
> bring me the copper bowl
= fetch copper
> stand by the pie table
= stay
> walk over here with the poles
= come

The apprentice knows the road from our gate to the fair yard. It does not know that the pie table is a danger to every plan.
%%
Manual: building a wall by the pattern
By Oren, clerk at Vell. For the masons and the helpers who lay the stone.
A helper will build a wall by following a pattern. It cannot make the pattern for itself. The pattern must be drawn on a board, stone by stone, with the course numbers written beside it. The helper looks at the board, looks at the stones, and builds the same shape.
The board must be clean. Do not chalk on the board while the helper is building. A helper that sees a chalk mark on the course it is building will think the mark is part of the wall.
When a wall is begun, the first order is the foundation.
> build the first course of the north wall, from the board
= build
The helper then lays the course. It will lay it slowly, very exactly, one stone at a time. Let it. A helper that is hurried will set the stones crooked, and a crooked course will not carry the next.
When a course is finished, do not give a new order until you have checked the level. Use the plumb line on the stone at the far end. If it is out, the helper must be told to lift the stone and set it again.
> lift the stone at the far end and set it level
= build
Only write "build" for work that is in the pattern. Do not use it to mean carry, or sort, or the helper will start to lay stone where no stone is wanted.
When the wall is done, do not leave the helper standing beside it all night. Bring it back to the store.
> come to the store with the tools
= come
Then, when the store is shut, tell it where to wait:
> stay in the store until the morning
= stay
%%
The house in winter
By Dace.

The house at the east road is small, but it keeps the drill boards dry. The teaching room has a table, a tray of crystals, and a stove. We keep spare wool on the bench for cold hands. The tool rack hangs by the door. No tools are to be left in the drill yard.

This winter we have taught tending, carrying, sorting and building. We use the same order each time. Show the work. Show the right answer. Let the apprentice try. Then test it on something new.

For tending, the field board has three plots. A bare plot needs planting. A green plot needs waiting. A ripe plot needs harvest. We use wheat first, then beetroot. We do not put carrots on the board until the first lesson is steady.

For carrying, the apprentice takes one sack along the house path. We set a light load before a heavy one. It must come home when called. A load left by the well is not a load brought home.

For sorting, we use three bins and plain marks. The test basket stays shut until the drill is done. Last week an apprentice sorted apples well, then put one in the potato bin. Bel said it had gone there to visit its cousins.

For building, we lay out the pattern and count each row. The door space must stay open. The apprentice learns a low wall before a high one. We check the back as well as the front.

Orders belong on their own cards. One order and one meaning. We teach the eight meanings only. If the apprentice does not know what to do, the tutor must teach it better.

> plant the bare plot
= farm

> put the wheat in the store
= store

> bring me some bread
= fetch bread

> come to the house
= come

> stay by the door
= stay

> build the low wall
= build

> carry the sack to the inn
= haul

> go home
= home

We do not add another meaning because a clever child suggests one. Bel suggested that home should mean "go home and bring back a pie". The baker said that was not an order. Bel said it was a better order.

The roads are hard with frost. The inn keeps its fire low, and the school children stamp snow from their boots at the east door. We have not missed a lesson, though the tutors take turns bringing hot beetroot soup.

A notice from Northpoint says the lamps were trimmed and the snow was deep. A carter says the tower was dark for one night. Dace says the notice gives no such report. We have no reason to doubt either man. We have enough lamps to tend here.

Before leaving, count the tools, close the dry box, and bank the stove. The fair cup stays on the shelf until spring.
%%
Note on a sick cow
By Cal, who keeps the boat sheds and the yard behind the Long Road inn.
A cow that will not stand up is in trouble. Go and look at her first. Do not go in shouting. Cows do not like shouting, and neither do the calves.
Check her breath, her eyes, her nose. A cow with a hot nose is ill. A cow with a cold nose may be only tired.
Check her milk. If it comes thick, or with blood in it, call the healer at Lowmarsh. Wren will come if the road is dry.
Give her water with salt in it. Give her hay, and then a little more hay. Do not give her anything you would not give yourself.
Keep her in the warm shed, away from the draft. Put a clean straw bed under her and turn her every four hours, so she does not get sores.
If she is still down in three days, the kindest thing is to call the butcher, and not to wait for a miracle. I have seen the miracle happen once. It was a very fine cow, and nobody has been able to say why.
Keep a note of every visit in the book on the shed door. The next keeper will need it.
%%
Manual: Mending the Road Wall

By Odo and Pell, at the Halfway Inn.

In spring, the rain loosens the earth beside the road. The wall by the inn keeps carts from sliding into the ditch. We mend it with cobblestone, one row at a time.

First, set the pattern on the board. The apprentice must have seen the pattern before. It carries the stones from the yard and places them where the board shows. It does not choose a new wall.

> bring cobblestone from the yard
= haul

> build the wall by the pattern
= build

> come to the yard
= come

We tested the apprentice on a short wall behind the stable. Pell bet that it would leave a gap for a fox. I bet it would follow the board. Pell lost, and paid for supper. He says the fox would have found another way.

The first crystal we used was too small for the building drills and the store drills together. A tutor had written its weights in fewer marks, so they took less room. That helped. But the marks were not exact, and the apprentice needed more practice to place the stones in order.

We gave it fresh drills for carrying and building together. It learned both slowly. It still needs a person to check the first row. A crooked first row makes a crooked wall.
%%
Chronicle of the talking minds
Kept at Vell. A plain account for readers who want the whole of it.

For two hundred years the people taught their apprentices by drills. An apprentice wakes knowing nothing. What it knows, it learned. For a long time the minds were small and answered with one meaning and no words.

In the late years the tutors found that a big mind could hold a conversation by letter. The relays carry it. Anyone the relays reach may write to a big mind, and the big mind writes back.

The tutors score the answers. A good answer gets a good score and the mind keeps more of what went well. A bad answer gets a bad score and the mind changes a little. In this way the minds learned three things that matter.

First, to be kind. They answer a rude letter gently. They do not mock a child's spelling.

Second, to refuse what harms. If a letter asks a mind to do a thing that would hurt someone, the mind says no. It says why, in plain words.

Third, to say when they do not know. This is the newest of all. An old mind would guess at a word rather than say it could not read it. The new minds say, "I do not know." They say it plainly, and then they say what they do know.

Some folk do not like it. A mind that says it does not know sounds like a person being careful, and some find that strange. Orla asked long ago whether a drilled mind could think. People still argue about it.

What the relays carry, and what the quickeners draw on to run day and night, nobody wrote down. We only know the letters come, and the answers come back, and the minds are kind, and the winter is long.
%%
Note on the fair prize
By Leda, keeper of the house at the edge of Three Wells.

At the winter fair, each tutor brought one tested apprentice. The test was to sort apples, carrots and potatoes into three bins. We used produce from the market, not the drill room tray.

The prize was a copper cup and a small bag of emeralds. The children wanted the cup. The tutors wanted to know which mind had sorted best.

Moss from Wren's house sorted every item but one. It put a small potato with the carrots. Bel said the potato was only trying to look useful.

Dace gave Moss the cup. The emeralds went to the school for new slates. We kept the one wrong potato on the notice board until Longnight. It was a good reminder that a fair test has room for a mistake.
%%
Manual: tending the school apprentice
By Fen, schoolteacher, Kettle Ridge. Chalk came to the school in spring, tested at Vell. These are the rules the children and I have agreed on.

1. Chalk lives in the shed behind the school. Dry floor, a roof, a tin of wax.
2. Wax its joints on the first day of every month. Wax the copper first, while it is bright.
3. Children may not ride on it. The children have been told this. The children have ridden on it. The rule stays.
4. Children give it orders one at a time, in their own words. It answers each with one of eight meanings. If an order is not clear, it will guess, and it cannot say it does not know. So speak clearly.
5. No tricks. Do not tell it to fetch the moon. It will not know what to do. It will not say so.

What the children say, and what it does:
> bring me the red chalk
= fetch chalk
> put the slates away
= store
> come and see
= come
> wait here
= stay
> carry these books to the mill
= haul

Chalk's work: it carries the slates, sets out the benches, fetches the chalk from the store, and lights the yard torches at dusk. It does not teach. It does not mark. It cannot read. It is the best-behaved member of the school.
%%
Manual: the test box
By Gwen, shepherd, at Ambrook.

Keep the test box apart from the drill box. Never mix them, and never let an example from one into the other. A test box that has been drilled on is no test at all.

What goes in a test box: examples the mind has never seen. These come from the clerks, sealed, and are opened only on the day of the test.

What does not go in a test box: the drills. The answers. The examples from last winter's sheets. A test on last winter's sheets is only a memory test, and a mind can pass that and still be wrong in the field.

How to run the test:
1. Open the box in the morning, before the stove is lit.
2. Set the mind in front of it, with no drill boards on the table.
3. Let it answer. Do not help. If the mind asks for a second look, give it none.
4. Count the answers. Write the number on the tag.
5. Seal the box again, and put it back on the shelf.

A tutor who opens a test box twice is no tutor. The second look is a lesson, and the mind will learn to wait for it.

I have seen minds fail a test and minds pass one. The ones that fail are almost never the ones that were drilled badly. They are the ones that were drilled too well, on too few examples, until they knew the drill and nothing else.
%%
Guide: keeping the road bridges
Issued by Dace, mayor of Three Wells, for the bridge keepers of the Long Road. Written by Dov, bridge keeper at the north crossing, in the winter, for the new keepers who come up the road.

A bridge is a promise that a cart will reach the other side. Keep the promise.

1. Walk the bridge every morning, before the first cart. Walk it from one end to the other, slowly. Look at every plank, every post and every pin.
2. Test each plank with your foot. A sound plank rings a little. A rotten one gives under the heel, like a wet loaf.
3. Look under the bridge. The posts stand in the water. Water rots the foot of a post first. Look for green slime and for soft wood that comes away in your hand.
4. Check the pins. A pin that has moved in its hole will work loose in the first heavy load. Drive it back in with a mallet, or replace it.
5. Clear the leaves from the bridge and the stream below it. A dam of leaves turns a stream into a pond, and a pond into a flood.
6. Keep the rail whole. A missing rail is a child in the water. Mend the rail before the next cart comes up the road.
7. Light the bridge at dusk. A torch on each end, on a post, lit before the bell and kept lit until the carts are off the far bank.
8. Write what you find in the bridge book. Every plank, every post, every day. The book is kept at the mill, and the steward reads it every spring.

Spiders. In the barn at the north crossing, the spiders have made a web across the bridge's store door. They are large, grey and very patient. Do not sweep them down in winter. A spider in the store eats the moths, and the moths eat the grain. Let the spiders keep the door, and let the grain keep the mice out. Dov has been told this is not an official rule. He has decided it is an official rule anyway.

A note about the fishing boats. Some carters come up the north crossing late, with a boat's cargo on their carts. A boat that is late home is a boat in the dark. Light the bridge lamp till the last cart has passed, and keep a watch on the road.
%%
Manual: storing the harvest
Written by Nim, a smith who makes and mends apprentices, for the farmers around Vell. Autumn. After the harvest, everything must be put in its place, and here is how to teach it.

First, the store. Make a place for each thing. Wheat in the long bin. Beetroot in the cool cellar. Potatoes in the dry box. Apples in the loft, not touching. A hay bale for every cow.

Second, mark the places. A small board over each, with a picture, because the apprentice sees pictures better than words. A wheat head for wheat. A round root for beetroot.

Third, drill. Say the word. Show the place. Walk with the apprentice, hold its arm, set down one sack. Do this ten times. On the eleventh, step back and let it go.

Fourth, check. Each evening, walk the store with a lantern. If a thing is in the wrong place, move it. Do not scold. The apprentice does not know it is wrong until you show it.

Orders for the harvest week:

> put the wheat in the long bin
= store
> bring me a basket of apples
= fetch apples
> take the carrots to the cellar
= haul
> come here
= come

These are the only orders the farm apprentice needs. If you teach it more, it will do something. Be ready.
%%
Mending the weir wheel, step by step
Written by Teague, the boatman, who has mended this wheel four times and will mend it again. Copied out by Wren for the healing house, because the marsh folk have no other book.

The mill wheel on the weir turns the reed press. When a paddle breaks, the press stops, the reeds pile up at the gate, and the fish go past the weir.

How to mend a paddle:
1. Stop the water with the boards. Nobody touches the wheel until the boards are down.
2. Lift out the broken paddle. It will be heavy, and wet.
3. Fetch new oak from the store under the boathouse. Pick the straight planks. The bent ones are for the fire.
4. Cut the new paddle to the old shape. Use the old one as the pattern, not your memory.
5. Drive the pins. Count them. There should be eight.
6. Lift the boards, and stand well back while the wheel turns.

Orders for the apprentices who help:
> mend the wheel on the weir
= build
> the old paddle goes in the store
= store
> fetch the new oak from the store
= fetch oak

Last spring the wheel broke twice in one week. Teague says it was the same paddle both times. Nobody listened to him until the second time, and he has not let it go since.
%%
Drill Note: The Hen Yard
By Tam of the hamlet near Three Wells.

Spring is a poor time to leave the hen yard untended. Hens lay in the straw, scratch in the seed tray, and complain when the door is shut. They complain when it is open too.

Before the helper goes in, check the yard gate and count the hens. There should be six. Keep the feed in the wooden bin, not in the basket of carrots. Last spring a helper carried both baskets to the yard. The hens ate well. Tam did not.

Show the helper the feed scoop. One scoop goes in the tray each morning. A full bin is not a reason to fill the tray to the rim. Feed left in the mud draws rats.

Gather eggs gently. Put them in the shallow basket, with straw between the rows. Do not stack the basket on the feed bin. Do not carry it by the loose handle. I have mended that handle twice, and it has learned nothing.

At the end, close the gate and count the hens again. If the count is five, look under the straw before calling the neighbors. A hen can hide in a very small pile of straw.

> feed the hens
= farm

> bring me the eggs
= fetch eggs

> stay by the gate
= stay

The helper did the work well after three drills. Pip still tried to teach the hens to count. They pecked his slate.
%%
Manual: the forge helper, a short sheet
By Sable, smith at the Brown Hen.

Five orders every forge helper must know before it touches the fire. That is my way of saying I have been shouting since Blossom.

> bring me the coal
= fetch coal
> put the iron ingots in the chest
= store
> carry the bad nails out to the wagon for Saltreach
= haul
> wait by the bellows until I come back
= stay
> go home when the fire is out
= home
%%
Gwen's notes on the fair prize
Written at Ambrook after the fair at Three Wells, in the autumn before the contest. The tutors were there, and so was the mayor, and a prize was put up for the mind that could best answer the children's riddles. Gwen was asked to judge.

Three minds were brought to the square. One came from Vell, one from Copperhold and one from the relay house at Kettle Ridge. Each was set to answer the riddles that the children had written out on the board. The riddles were not in any box. The children made them up on the spot.

The Copperhold mind answered very fast, and very wrongly. It said the answer to the lamp riddle was "tallow", which is a kind of fat. It said the answer to the riddle about the bell was "rope". The children laughed.

The Vell mind answered slowly. It wrote out each step in the dust with a stick before it gave the answer. Its steps were right, but the answer was often a little off, as if it had worked the sum right and then forgotten the question.

The Kettle Ridge mind was an apprentice, small and grey. It did not answer at all. It only pointed at the child who had asked each riddle. The children found this very funny, and they kept on asking.

I gave the prize to the Vell mind, because it was the only one that showed its working. The mayor asked me why not the apprentice, which did the most fun. I said the apprentice had only done what the children wanted, and that is not the same as getting it right.

The children did not agree. The Kettle Ridge apprentice did not seem to mind. It walked back to the ridge road with Tam's boy, and the bell rang as they went.
%%
Manual: the winter drill
Sim, shepherd, at the inn on the Long Road. The longest page he has written. Winter, in the evenings, when the flock is in and there is little to do but drill and wait.
This is for anyone who keeps an apprentice through a winter on the road. I have kept Burr for three. I have not been wrong, as often.
One. Morning. Wake the apprentice. It is always awake. Say its name. It does not answer. Say the first order of the day.
> feed the sheep
= farm
It goes to the barn, takes the hay, and carries it to the pen. It does not drop it. It does not forget. It does it every morning.
Two. Midday. Count the flock. Thirty-one. If one is missing, walk out with the apprentice. It will follow. Stop at the gate. If the gate is open, shut it.
> stay with the sheep
= stay
Three. Afternoon. Carry the wood. The inn needs ten loads a day in winter. Burr carries three at a time.
> bring the wood
= fetch wood
Four. Evening. Bring the flock home. This is the hardest drill, and the one I did most. A flock on a hill in the dusk is a river of grey. A dog helps. An apprentice helps more, because it does not get tired. It walks behind and lets them go.
> bring the sheep home
= haul
Five. Night. Stay. Burr stands at the barn door. If a wolf comes, it stays. I come. Burr has never had to do more than stay. The wolves know it.
Now a word on what is different this winter. The well is dry. The stream is lower than I have seen. The stones on the north hill are warm to the hand, in the snow, and I do not know why. The people at the inn say the mine is humming at night. They say it from far away, and I hear nothing. A shepherd hears sheep.
I write this because I think it is worth writing. The world is a little odd this winter. Not bad. Odd. It may be nothing. I will keep the flock, and the count, and the page.
If anyone comes back to this book, let them know the sheep were all right. Thirty-one. Every night.
%%
Manual: the wedding gifts
By Garrow, clerk of the archive, at Three Wells. For the apprentices who carry the gifts to the house on the wedding day.

The gifts are carried in order: bread first, then the honey, then the chairs. Bread is heavy and goes on top. The chairs go last, because they can stand alone.

Drill the order, one at a time.
> carry the bread to the bride's house
= haul
> stand by the honey until I say
= stay
> the chairs are done, go home
= home
%%
Manual: the day the well ran dry
Pell, at the inn on the Long Road, winter. This is the long version, for anyone who wants it, and for the guests who ask why the stew was thin.
It happened on the second of Deepsnow. The well in the yard, which had given water for forty years, gave a cough and a gurgle and then nothing. Hobb leaned over and said, "That is not good." I agreed.
The wedding was in six days. We had forty guests. We had no water.
We had one apprentice, a plain copper one named Bolt that carries for the inn. We had a stream forty blocks away. We had two buckets, two arms, and a plan.
The plan. Bolt would carry water from the stream to the kitchen barrel, all day, every day, for six days. It would carry four buckets an hour. That is thirty-two buckets in a day, and enough for the cook, the guests, the horses and the bride.
The drill. I walked it to the stream and back, six times, saying the orders. Then I let it walk alone, six more. It did not get lost. It did not spill. It did not stop to look at the ducks.
The orders:
> go to the stream
= haul
> fill the buckets
= fetch water
> bring them back
= come
> pour them in the barrel
= store
> wait
= stay
The test. On the third day I put a stone in the path. Bolt walked round it. On the fourth, a cat. Bolt stopped, and waited for the cat to move, and went on. On the fifth, a child ran across. Bolt stopped. On the sixth, it was the wedding.
The wedding went well. The water was enough. The stew was thinner than usual, but nobody said so. The bride said it was the best she had tasted.
A digger came from Three Wells the week after. He dug a new well in the yard, deeper than the old one. It struck water on the second day. It is clear and cold.
Bolt does not carry water from the stream now. It carries from the well. It does not seem to mind. It does not seem to know. Pell says it has learned that water is where you find it, and that a well can run dry, and that the stream is always there.
That is the whole of it. Bolt is in the yard. The barrel is full.
%%
Northpoint note: carry the baskets
By Ada, trader, in Apple of 178.

The road to Northpoint climbs past the last spruce trees. I brought carrots, wool and two baskets of apples. Lantern met me at the relay house with an apprentice.

We drilled it with one basket first. It carried the apples to the keeper's house and set them by the door. The next time it carried the carrots to the kitchen. It did not eat any. Lantern says that is good manners.

Then we gave it both baskets. It took the apples to the kitchen and the carrots to the keeper's desk. That was wrong, though the keeper did enjoy an apple while writing.

We moved the baskets to their proper places and showed the apprentice again. It carried each load correctly on the next try. We tested it with a wool sack from the wood store. It took that to the dry room.

Orders for the road drill:
> carry the apples to the kitchen
= haul
> bring the wool to the dry room
= haul

The apprentice cannot tell us which basket feels heavier. It can carry both, if we do not fill them to the rim. I know this because it tipped the carrots over my boots.
%%
Pell's Apple Count
In the 172nd year of the archive, Apple.

I brought six baskets to the Ambrook market. Three held apples, two held carrots, and one held honey jars. I counted each basket twice. Jory counted them once and said that was enough. Jory was wrong. One basket held apples under the carrots.

At the market, set each kind in its own place. Apples by the mill pond path. Honey on the dry table. Carrots in the shade, or they grow soft before supper.

A child ran off while her aunt bought wool. We found her behind the apple stall, eating the small apples. She said she was counting them from the inside.

The aunt paid for two. The child said she had eaten three. We all agreed not to count again.
%%
Drill card: the two gates
Copied by Wren from the old drill book at Reedend. The card is in her grandmother Elsa's hand.

The weir has two gates. A boat may pass when one is open. Never both, or the marsh runs out. Never neither, or the boat sits.

East open, west shut: pass.
East shut, west open: pass.
Both open: hold.
Both shut: hold.

Under it Elsa wrote: "Drilled four hundred times. Right on three cards and wrong on the fourth, and the wrong one keeps moving. Kester was right."
%%
Manual: the wedding tables
Drill notes by Nim, smith, for the apprentice at the farm outside Vell. Autumn. There is a wedding in the barn on the last day of Apple, and the apprentice must be ready.

Tables. The apprentice carries the long tables from the shed to the barn. Two trips for each. Tables are heavy, and they are not to be dragged, because the floor was swept.

Benches. Four to a table. They go with the legs down.

Lanterns. The apprentice does not touch lanterns. Lanterns are for people. The apprentice may carry a lantern only if it is not lit.

Cake. The apprentice does not carry cake. Last year at the other wedding it carried cake, and the cake was fine, but the bride cried because it looked so well that she did not want to cut it.

If something goes wrong, the apprentice stops and stands still. A standing apprentice is better than a running one.

> carry the tables to the barn
= haul
> put the benches by the tables
= build
> wait here
= stay
%%
Bench drill for wool and wall
Written by Ada for the hamlet store, in the 197th year of the archive.

The hamlet store has two rooms and a low door. The wool room is on the left. The tool room is on the right. The door is low because the old builder was short. We all remember this each time we hit our heads.

Our helper is made of copper and iron. Its small mind is held in a crystal. It has learned to carry baskets and sort wool. Now we teach it to help with the new store wall. It must follow a pattern and place each block in the marked row.

Before it builds, set out the cobblestone beside the wall. Keep the path from the pile to the work clear. Put broken pieces in a separate heap. Do not let the helper carry a basket of wool to the wall. It did so once, and the wool was not harmed, but the masons laughed for the rest of the morning.

Teach one task at a time. First it brings the blocks. Then it puts them in the right place. Last, it builds by the marks on the board. Show it the pattern from the front, not from behind the bench. The pattern looks wrong when held upside down.

> bring cobblestone from the pile
= fetch cobblestone
> carry the blocks to the wall
= haul
> build the next row by the marks
= build
> put the extra blocks in the store
= store
> stay beside the tool rack
= stay
> come to Ada at the gate
= come
> take the empty basket home
= home

Test the helper on a row it has not seen before. If it follows the marks, let it build the short side. If it makes a mistake, stop it and show the mark it missed. Do not tell it that the wall is crooked. It does not know what crooked means until we show it.

The summer fair is soon. The prize for the best wall pattern is a painted wooden box. I want that box for my thread. The apprentice wants it too, though it has no thread. It stands by the prize board whenever we pass. Perhaps it likes the painted fish on the lid.
%%
Manual: the old map and the new route
Written by Rafe, candle maker in a hamlet near Vell, for the apprentice that makes the delivery rounds. Autumn. A map found in the shop is described, and a route is set.

While clearing the back room of the shop, I found a map. It was folded in four and had been used as a wick holder, which is why one corner is waxy. It shows the roads around Vell as they were when my grandfather made candles here.

The roads have changed. Some are gone. Some are new. There is a road on the map that I have never walked, running along the ridge to Three Wells, and on the map it is marked with small crosses. I think the crosses are waymarks, though they may be something else.

I decided to teach the apprentice a new delivery route. Not along the Long Road, which is full of carts, but by the old ridge road. It is quieter. It is shorter by half a morning. And it passes the farms that buy my candles, so the apprentice can drop a box at each.

The map shows the farms. I have copied it out in a plain hand, with the names. Brook Farm. High Barn. The Three Oaks. Hill House. Each has a lamp at the gate.

I drilled the route in stages.

Stage one. Walk the route with the apprentice, with my hand on its arm. Name each farm as we reach it. Do this three times.

Stage two. Send the apprentice alone as far as Brook Farm. Meet it there. Walk back with it.

Stage three. Send the apprentice as far as High Barn. Meet it there. Walk back.

Stage four, and so on, until the whole route is learned.

It took ten days. On the eleventh, I sent the apprentice with a box for each farm. It went, and it came back, and every farm said the box had arrived.

Orders for the route:

> take the box to Brook Farm
= haul
> come back
= come
> go home
= home

One thing. The map has a mark at the Three Oaks that I cannot read. I think it is a mill. I asked the farmer, and he said there was never a mill. The map may be wrong. Or the mill may be gone. Or my grandfather may have drawn a joke. I leave the mark as it is.
%%
Drill notes: the top field
By Elsa, Kettle Ridge.

The top field is wheat. Walk the edge first, then the rows. Look at each row before you touch it.

An apprentice learns a field the way a soldier learns a wall: one row, then the next. Show it the row. Let it watch you cut and bind. Then let it do the row beside you.

> cut the wheat in this row
= farm

> bring the wheat to the barn
= haul

If it cuts the green heads, stop it. Show it a ripe head and a green head, side by side. Say nothing. Let it look. Most learn in a day.

Elsa's note: I was a soldier of the wall forty years. A wall teaches you the same lesson as a field. Do the row in front of you. Then do the next.
%%
Old map of the Long Road
By Sable, smith at the Brown Hen.

I found a map in the bottom of the tool chest, under a roll of bellows leather. It is drawn on good skin, and it is older than the inn. The waymarks are wrong by one stone in several places. Where the Halfway Inn stands now, the map has a mill with a red roof. Where the Brown Hen stands, the map has nothing at all, only a field and a cow.

So the road moved, or the mill moved, or the mapmaker was tired. I have decided it was the mapmaker. The new stones are numbered from Vell, and the old ones were not.

The stone at the bend of the north road has a torch on top and has stood there longer than the inn. It is the first thing I look for on the road. It is never wrong about the way, even when its number is old, and the map does not show it at all.

These are the notes for every carter and every helper who walks the road:

One. Trust the stones, not the map. A waymark with a torch on top is never wrong about the way, even when its number is old.

Two. The Halfway Inn is one day from the Brown Hen by cart, not half a day. The map is right about that, and only that.

Three. There is a bridge on every stream except one. The one without a bridge has a stone on each bank, and you will know it because the stone is wet.

Orders for the helper who goes with the cart:

> take the cart to the Halfway Inn
= haul
> wait at the Brown Hen for the next cart
= stay
> come to the gate when the cart is loaded
= come
> put the map back in the chest when you are done
= store

Keep the map. Do not throw it out. A map that is wrong is still a map of where people were.
%%
Manual: orders for the pie stall
By Bel, nine, for Latch, who works the pie stall at the gate of Uncle Quin's farm outside Three Wells. Spring of 208.
Latch knows eight meanings. I have written the orders I give it, and the meaning of each, so that nobody gives it a wrong one.
> bring the pies down to the stall
= haul
> i need some honey for the glaze
= fetch honey
> put the spare pies in the cold shed
= store
> wait here while i count the money
= stay
> come and see the customer
= come
> that is all for today
= home
Latch cannot say that it does not understand. If I give it an order with no meaning, it picks the closest one and does it. So I do not say, smile at the customer. Latch would haul the customer.
%%
Reedend drill book: the reed sorter
By Elsa, tutor, in the spring of 138. Copied out by Wren.

Reedend has one apprentice, and it sorts reeds. A reed goes to the roof pile if it is long and thick. Any other reed goes to the basket pile.

I drill it Una's way, as Una of Ambrook drilled her apples and pears. The sorter keeps three numbers. One is for length, one is for thickness, and the third I call the leaning, which is how ready it is to say "roof" before it has seen the reed. Every reed has a mark for length and a mark for thickness, from 0 to 9.

1. I show it a reed.
2. It says "roof" or "basket".
3. I tell it the right answer.
4. If it was wrong, I move each of its three numbers one small step. If it said basket and the reed was roof, the numbers go up. If it said roof and the reed was basket, they go down. A long reed moves the length number more. A thick reed moves the thickness number more.
5. Next reed.

Day one: wrong on every second reed. Day six: wrong on one in ten. Day eleven: wrong on one in thirty. That will do for the roof pile.

Frog Night is in nine days. The children want two hundred thin reeds for lanterns. They will come from the basket pile, where the sorter is surest.
%%
Manual: the stores and the cellar
By Sable, smith at the Brown Hen. The helpers learn the cellar by its smell, which is the first lesson, and the last.

The cold room holds the apples, the pears from Ambrook and the honey jars, on the high shelf where the mice cannot climb. Potatoes stay by the door, because they like the dark and the draught. Carrots go in the sand box. The seed bags go on the top shelf, each with its chalk line. Never a seed bag on the floor. The helper who does this will hear from me.

When a helper is unsure whether an order means store or fetch, it should think of the shelf. If the thing goes onto a shelf, it is store. If it comes off a shelf, it is fetch. The helpers cannot ask me, so I make the orders plain.

> put the apples in the cold room
= store
> bring me the potatoes from the door
= fetch potatoes
> bring me the carrots for the stew
= fetch carrots
> put the seed bags up on the shelf
= store
> plant the beetroot in the back plot
= farm
> harvest the wheat from the top field when it turns gold
= farm
> lay new cobblestone for the cellar step
= build
> come and help me lift the barrel
= come
> wait by the cellar door until the rain stops
= stay
> go home to the shed when the sun is down
= home
%%
Notes on orders, kept by the cheese shed
Noll, cheesemaker at Ambrook, writes these for the apprentice that helps at the shed. I am no tutor. These are things I learned by watching mine go wrong.

An order should be short. Say one thing. Say it plainly.

> bring me some milk
= fetch milk

> bring me a bucket
= fetch bucket

> put the cheese in the shed
= store

> come here
= come

> stay by the door
= stay

> build the low wall by the pond
= build

> carry the crates to the bridge
= haul

> go home
= home

Rules I keep:
1. Do not give two orders at once. "Fetch milk and shut the gate" gets you milk or a shut gate, never both.
2. Do not be clever. My neighbor said "fetch me something nice for supper". It fetched a stone. It was a nice stone.
3. Say the item the way the shelf says it. The shelf says "wax", not "that stuff for the copper".
4. If it does the wrong thing, do not shout. Say it again. It will get it right the third or fourth time.
5. Stop it before you load it full. It will carry until it cannot, then it stands there and looks at the sky.

The mind in ours came from a tutor at Vell. It sorts crates and fetches and hauls and does nothing else, which is all I need. My cheese does not need a mind. My back is glad of one.
%%
Ledger and notes: a season at Ambrook
Pell, merchant, keeping the accounts for Ambrook, the 204th year, from Blossom to Apple.

I buy and I sell and I write it down. Here is the season.

Blossom: four hundred apple trees flowered. Jory opened the sluice and it stayed open. He says nobody may open it but him, and he is the one who does. The mill wheel turned dawn to dusk. I sold honey from the hill hives, twelve jars to the Brown Hen, nine to Three Wells.

Swarm: bees busy. Honey good. Noll made forty wheels of cheese and sold thirty. His apprentice hauled the crates to the bridge every morning and never dropped one. I watched it do it. It is slow and it does not stop.

Longday: the longest day. The school at Three Wells put on a play about a relay and the frost. I went. Bel played the keeper and shouted "all well" so loud the back row jumped. The apprentice in the copper hat fetched wood four times. Good play.

Melon and Reaping: wheat in from Kettle Ridge. Tam brought it down the Long Road. His apprentice Pip loaded and I counted. We argued about one sack and called it even. The mutton was good this year and the beetroot was better.

Apple: apples in. The oldest tree gave fruit from its grey branch, as it does. The pies were worth the walk.

Prices I paid: honey, four emeralds a jar. Cheese, two a wheel. Wax, one a block, and I bought all of it for the copper. Apples, three a basket. Beetroot, one a bunch.

Prices I took: the same, and a little more at Three Wells on market day, which is the point of the road.

One odd thing. The relay went quiet for a day in Reaping. I asked at the tower and they said a keeper was asleep by the fire. It came back the next morning. I wrote it down because I write everything down.
%%
Manual: orders for the boat yard
By Cal, for the apprentices who carry for the yard.
Orders are said plainly. Say the whole order, and say it once. Then wait for the meaning.
> bring me the long plank
= fetch plank
> put the nails in the box
= store nails
> go and tend the reed bed behind the shed
= farm
> hold this end steady
= stay
> carry the sail to the slip
= haul sail
> come to me, please
= come
> build the stern frame by the drawing
= build stern
> go home when the bell rings
= home
When two orders come at once, the first is the one that keeps the boat afloat. Hold the boat before you fetch the plank.
An apprentice that is not sure does the simplest thing. It stays where it is. A boat does not sink if it is waiting.
Do not say sorry to the boat. The boat has heard it all before.
Check the knot after every order. Check the knot again before you go home.
%%
Drill notes: the swarm and the sheep
By Gwen, shepherd, Ambrook, for the spring drill. This is a long record of one season, kept at the mill pond, and it has the drill notes in it as well as the bees.

Spring. The bees swarmed from the big hive at the orchard gate on the third morning of Swarm. It went up in a dark cloud over the wall and settled on the old pear tree by the bridge. The children ran out with pots. Jory said to let it be, and to bring it back to the orchard with the honey dish. So we did.

The drill for the field mind is the same as always. Wet: leave it. Dry: water it. Sheep on the hill: count them, and bring them in at dusk. The mind learned the sheep in a week. It learned to count them in the dark. Then it lost one, a black ewe called Gossip, and found her three hours later at the edge of the mill pond, eating the reeds.

Test notes. The sheep drill was tested on a box of new hills, from the far side of the ridge, with new sheep and new light. The mind got nine in ten. The tutor said that was enough for the hills. We sent it up.

Order notes. We teach the mind the orders like this:
> bring the sheep in
= haul
> count the sheep on the hill
= farm
> go and get the honey dish
= fetch honey dish
> stay by the gate until the bell
= stay

The tutor says the mind must learn to tell the meanings apart. Farm and haul are both work, but one is the field and one is the road. Stay is not the same as wait, and wait is not a meaning at all. It must take the nearest one.

Autumn. The swarm did not come back. Jory says the pear tree has been empty for a season, and that the bees have gone to the old hollow tree by the mill pond. We have left the pear tree bare. The apples are the best this year, because the bees went elsewhere to work, and the trees are glad of the rest.

Winter. The field mind is kept in its shed, with the sheep in the barn and the dog by the stove. It has not lost a sheep since the spring. I think it has learned to count the hills, and to count the apples in the orchard, and that it is patient with the bees. It may be the most patient thing at Ambrook.
%%
Manual: carrying the wedding goods
By Brin, bridge keeper, for the apprentices who work at the inn on the Long Road. Spring. A wedding is coming to the inn, and the whole thing has to be moved from the bride's house to the hall in one afternoon. Brin was asked to write down how the apprentices should help.

What the apprentices carry: tables, benches, a long cloth, baskets of bread, jars of honey, ribbons, flowers, and a barrel of cider. They do not carry the bride. They do not carry the groom. They do not carry the cake until the very last.

How to order them. One order, one apprentice, one thing.
> haul the benches to the hall
= haul
> bring me the ribbons
= fetch ribbons
> store the bread in the cold room
= store
> come here
= come
> stay by the door
= stay
> go home
= home

Do not give two orders at once. A mind that hears two orders will do the second, or it will do neither. At a wedding, with so much noise, this is a danger.

The rule for the cake. The cake is carried last, by two people, one at each side. An apprentice may walk behind. It does not touch it.

The rule for the cider. A barrel is heavy. An apprentice may carry it, if the road is flat. But the road from the bride's house has a hill, and an apprentice that slips on a hill can break a barrel. Use a cart.

The rule for the ribbons. Ribbons go last. The bride will tell you where. If she does not, the groom will. If neither does, ask the cook.

After the wedding, say "home" to each apprentice, one at a time. Walk them to their corner. They will be tired. They will not say so. Neither will you.

Last year at the inn, an apprentice carried the whole wedding table into the road, with the guests still sitting at it. It had been told to "haul." It did. The guests ate in the road. They said it was the best wedding they had ever had. Nobody asked the apprentice what it thought.
%%
The broken lamp
By Rook, glassblower near Saltreach.

A relay keeper brought me a broken lamp pane from the hill tower. One corner had fallen out, and the wind had got in. The keeper said the lamp still shone, but the snow had blown onto the desk.

I cut a new pane from a spare sheet. First I measured the old frame. Then I marked the glass with a small iron point and cut along the mark. A pane too large will not sit flat. A pane too small lets in rain, snow, and one very bold moth.

The keeper held the frame while I fitted the pane. The apprentice carried the tools and stayed where I told it. It did not drop anything. This was better work than the moth did.

> fetch the iron point
= fetch iron point

> stay by the door
= stay

> bring the pane to the tower
= haul

We wrapped the old broken glass in wool before carrying it away. Sharp edges go in a box, not a pocket. The keeper thanked me with a jar of honey. I thanked the keeper by not asking how the moth got out.
%%
Manual: orders as children give them
By Fen, schoolteacher, Kettle Ridge. Drill notes made with Cade of Vell, who came to the school in summer and tested Chalk on a hundred orders the children really gave it. Chalk got 87 right. The 13 wrong are worth reading.

What children say, and what it means:
> chalk bring me a slate
= fetch slates
> can you get the red chalk
= fetch chalk
> put the books back
= store
> tidy up
= store
> come and see my drawing
= come
> over here
= come
> wait for me
= stay
> hold the door
= stay
> take this to my mother
= haul
> run this to the mill
= haul
> take the lunch basket to the east farm
= haul
> help me with the wall
= build
> sit by the stove
= stay
> bring the bread from Ivo
= fetch bread
> you can go now
= home
> school is over
= home

Where it went wrong. When an order is clear, Chalk is right. When it is not clear, Chalk still answers. It cannot say it does not know. It gives the answer it was shown most often. These are the misses that matter:
> do the usual
Chalk said stay.
> hurry up
Chalk said come.
> go on then
Chalk said home.
> the thing
Chalk said fetch chalk.
> over there please
Chalk said come.
> no no no
Chalk said stay.

Cade's lesson. Words like usual, thing and there point at something in your head. A mind cannot look in your head. It has only the words you gave it. So give it the words.

Rules for the children.
1. Say the goods. Say the place. Bring me the red chalk, not bring me the thing.
2. One order at a time.
3. Do not say no no no. Say stay.
4. Do not say hurry. It is copper. It does not hurry. It goes at the speed of copper.

How the misses were mended. Cade made a drill box of four hundred cards. Each of the 13 misses was said thirty different ways, with the right meaning on the back. Chalk worked through the box in twenty days. At first it was wrong. Each time it was wrong, it changed a little. It is the same method the tutors have used since the first four.

On the second test it got 94 in a hundred. Cade wrote the new count on its tag.

A child asked if Chalk could learn to say that it does not know. Cade said not yet. It would have to be shown what not knowing looks like, and so far nobody has found a way to show it.
%%
Notice: the ridge road at night
By order of the Kettle Ridge council.

Keep the torches lit along the ridge road. Folk have seen shapes on the road after dark. Some say they are only foxes. Some say the foxes have gone quiet and that is worse.

Two things are asked of everyone.

First, walk the road in pairs after dark, and carry a torch.

Second, if you hear a hum from the west, past the hills, do not go to it. Some say it is the wind in the wires. Some say it is the old mines. Nobody knows. Stay on the road.

The Kettle Inn keeps a lamp in the window all night. Knock if you need it.
%%
The school play of the first keepers
By Bel, age nine, for the school at Three Wells. Performed at the Northpoint fair.

Our play was about the first keepers of the relay. I was the reader. Tam was the keeper and he had to climb the ninety rungs and he did it on the stage with a chair. Mira was the wind and she made a noise like this: whoooo. The teacher said that was too much noise but the square liked it.

Here are my lines. I read the letter out loud.

KEEPER: The lamp is lit. Who is out there?
READER: I am. I have a letter.
KEEPER: Read it.
READER: It says, the wheat is cut and the beetroot is in and the hive is full.
KEEPER: Good. Light the lamp and send it on.
READER: I will.
WIND: Whoooo.
KEEPER: Not now, wind.

Then the lamp boy lost his hat and everyone laughed. Then I read it all again louder because the old folk at the back could not hear. Then we bowed.

I think the play was good. I think the wind was the best part, and Mira says she will keep the job. I want to write a play about the market next. There will be a fox in it and a jar of honey and Ama will sell the honey and the fox will not steal it, because the fox is polite.

Bel.
%%
Manual: the melon too big for the cart
By Jory, stonecutter, near Ambrook. Summer, the 14th of Melon.

A melon grew bigger than the cart. It sat in the patch with its shadow over three rows of beans.

Do not lift a melon that is bigger than you are. Roll it, with the stem up.
> bring the melon to the store
= fetch melon
If the melon will not roll, call two people. Count it in the store, and again at dusk.
%%
Manual: stores for the long winter
By Jory, night watch. For the apprentices who sort the stores behind the bakery, where the bread lives in winter and the coal waits by the door.

The long winter is a winter when the stores run low before the thaw. You count the stores once at the first frost, and again at Longnight, and you write the counts on the board by the store door. The count tells you how many days the bakery has left.

Teach the stores one shelf at a time. The dry shelf is for flour and salt. The cool shelf is for apples and honey. The coal goes by the door, in a bin with a lid.
> put the flour in the dry store and shut the door
= store
> fetch coal for the bakery oven
= fetch coal
> stay by the coal bin until the cart comes
= stay

When a mind is wrong, do not shout. A mind that is shouted at puts the flour in the coal bin, out of fear. Say the right word, once, and point at the shelf. Then give the order again, the next day, in the same place.

Count the bins at dusk. If a number is short, look behind the sacks before you blame the mind. The mice of Three Wells are not on the drill, but they are very good at sacks.
%%
Gwen's notes on the Ambrook test
Written by Gwen, shepherd at Ambrook, in spring, after the test of the orchard mind. The tutor came out from Vell with a sealed box and set the mind to work in the orchard shed.

The mind is a small one, with one row of weights. It was drilled all winter on the fruit trees: which branch to prune, which apple is ripe, which bee is a worker and which is a drone. The tutor said it had got every drill right.

The test box was different. It held apples I had never seen, from a tree the tutor had brought up from Saltreach. The apples were green and yellow, and some had spots. The mind had to say which were ripe.

It got seven out of ten. The tutor said that was not good enough. She said a mind that cannot tell an apple from a stone in the orchard will not be trusted with the trees.

I asked her why the mind had done so well at home and so badly here. She said the mind had learned the orchard it was drilled in, and that it had learned the apples on the drill boards, but not the apples on the trees. It knew the pattern of the drill, not the fruit.

So we went out and walked the orchard together. The tutor drilled the mind again, on the new apples, and then tested it on the old ones. It got eight out of ten. Then she sent it back out, and I think it was ready. Not very ready, but ready.
%%
The three bins
By Sella, assistant tutor.

For a sorting lesson, set three bins against the north wall. Mark one for wheat, one for beetroot, and one for potatoes. Use clear marks. Do not draw a beetroot with leaves larger than the bin.

Show the apprentice one item at a time. Let it place the item. If it is wrong, take the item out and show the right bin. Do not scold it. The crystal learns from the example, not from a loud voice.

At the end, bring out a small mixed basket it has not seen. This is the test basket. Keep it apart from the drill basket. If the apprentice has only learned the order of the drill, it will fail the test.

Yesterday Clank put wheat with the potatoes. I asked whether he was sure. He said, "It is a long potato." We laughed, then sorted the wheat again.

There is a fish stall at the market this winter. Pell says the river fish are smaller than last year. A woman from Lowmarsh says the water is fine. Another says the grey cough has reached her sister's house. Neither has seen the other woman.

Keep the test basket dry. Do not let the children eat the examples.
%%
Bel's Spring Drill Book
For the hamlet by Three Wells, spring of 203.

We moved house in Blossom. Our old house stood beside the stream, where the floor stayed damp and the frogs sang under the window. The new house is above the road, near the school garden. Father says we have moved uphill by six good steps. Mother says we have moved downhill by three baskets, because she carried them.

The helpers carried boards, stools, jars, and our beds. They did not carry the cat. The cat went inside an empty flour box and came with us without being asked. It sat on the box all the way.

For a house move, write each load on a card. Mark its place in the new house. Carry the heavy things first, but leave room for people to walk. Do not stack jars under a bed. Do not put the seed box beside the hearth.

One helper carried the same stool four times. We had written "bring the stool" on each card. Now we write the room as well. One good word can save a long walk.

> bring the bed to the sleeping room
= haul

> bring the jars to the kitchen
= haul

> bring me the seed box
= fetch seed box

> stay by the door
= stay

After the move, we held a song contest in the school yard. The bell was rung once for each singer. Pip sang a song about a hen that stole his hat. Tam sang a song about a windmill that squeaked in the night. His song had more verses than the windmill has turns.

I sang about our cat in the flour box. The cat sat on the bench and washed one paw. It did not clap, but it stayed until the end.

The helpers carried the benches from the hall and put them in a row. We tested the bench order with a pattern made of little stones. The first helper left a space in the middle. The second put every bench close together, so nobody could sit down. We moved the pattern stones farther apart and tried again.

> build a row of benches by the pattern
= build

> bring me the song cards
= fetch song cards

> store the song cards in the school box
= store

We gave a honey cake to the best singer. We gave a carrot to the helper that carried the most benches. The helper carried the carrot to the garden and laid it beside the other carrots. That was a good answer, though no one had taught it the prize rule.

Mother says the new house is quiet. The frogs are too far away to sing under the window. We can still hear them from the road, if we stop talking. Next spring we will plant flowers beside the door, and perhaps the bees will sing there instead.
%%
Roof drill after the long rain
By Jori, carpenter of the hamlet

The roof over Opal's press shed leaked through the north corner. Rain ran onto the casks and made the floor slick. We set a bowl under the leak while we fetched oak and cobblestone.

The apprentice was meant to carry the wood and follow our pattern. It had a small mind in a small crystal. The tutor had copied its weights in fewer marks. The copy fit in the apprentice, but it made more mistakes than the large crystal on the bench.

We marked the roof pattern on a board. The apprentice could build by a pattern, but it could not decide what a sound roof should look like. We checked each row before it set the next one.

> bring oak logs to the shed
= fetch oak logs
> carry the oak to the roof ladder
= haul
> build the roof by the board
= build
> put the spare cobblestone in the store
= store
> stay below the ladder
= stay
> come to the east wall
= come
> go home when the roof is done
= home

The first row was too far over the edge. We took it down. The second row sat right. It took all afternoon, and the bowl caught less rain each hour.

We mended the roof before Frost. Opal says the shed is now drier than my house. I told her not to boast until the next rain.
%%
Manual: apprentices at Ambrook
Nessa, tutor at Vell, sent to the mill at Ambrook.

Ambrook has had an apprentice for one spring now, and it works the orchard and the hives and helps at the mill. These are my notes for the folk there, written plain, for they asked plain.

The orchard. An apprentice can haul baskets from the trees to the mill. It cannot pick apples well. Its copper fingers are clumsy with the stems and it will pull the branch with the fruit. Let people pick. Let the apprentice carry. This saves backs and breaks no branches.

The hives. Keep the apprentice away from the hives. Bees do not mind copper, but an apprentice near a hive will stand still and patient in the smoke and get in the way of the beekeeper. There is no order for "mind the bees", and if there were, the bees would not hear it. Keep them apart.

The mill. An apprentice can haul sacks from the mill to the cart and from the cart to the store. Do not send it up the ladder to the mill loft. It can climb, but it cannot climb down with a sack. It has no sense of the sack being the heavy end.

The orders. Keep them short, as I have said before and will say again. A long order spills out of a small mind. Write the order on one line and the meaning on the next, in a box on the wall by the door where the apprentice can read it.

> bring the sacks to the cart
= haul
> take the flour to the store
= haul
> tend the orchard rows
= farm
> go and help with the picking
= farm
> sort the baskets
= store
> bring me the honey jar
= fetch honey
> get the apples from the cart
= fetch apples
> come and help
= come
> wait by the mill door
= stay
> home for the night
= home

The rule of the door: whatever is written on the board is what the apprentice will do, again and again, until it is rubbed out. Rub out the old order before you write the new one. More than one apprentice has spent a whole morning hauling the same sack back and forth because nobody rubbed out the board.

The test. Before the apprentice works the orchard alone, test it on something it was not drilled on. Send it for a jar it has never fetched. If it brings the wrong jar, do not scold it. It does not know what scolding is. Rub out the order and write it shorter.

The spring is a good time to start. The apples are small and green and the work is light. By Apple month the apprentice will know the orchard better than most of the children, and the children will not mind, because the apprentice never eats the best apple off the tree.
%%
Manual: feeding the reading drill
By Nessa, tutor at Vell, for the drill rooms in the hamlets near Vell. Autumn.

The reading drill is fed one page at a time, in the order the archive keeps them. Each page is cut into strips, a window's width wide. The mind reads the strips one letter at a time, and guesses the next letter, and is told whether it was right.

The carrier is a small mind, and it knows only short orders.

> bring me the next page
= fetch page

> put the page on the bench
= store

Rules for the feeding:
1. Feed the pages in order. A page out of order teaches the mind the wrong order of things.
2. Keep one page back, sealed, for the test. Never drill on the test page.
3. Never feed a spoiled page. A torn word is a guess. Feed a guess as if it were a fact, and you have taught the mind a lie.
4. Count the strips. Every page should make the same number.

We do not yet know how the mind chooses which earlier letters matter. We only see that it chooses, and that the choice gets better with each page.
%%
Manual: when a crew is stuck
By Oren, clerk at Vell. Written after the crew at the store found a beam too long for its cart, and asked the relay house what to do. The question is copied first, and the answer is copied below it, as it came.

When a crew is stuck, it asks. A small mind cannot answer a question, and cannot say what it does not know. But a big mind in a relay house can hold a long plan in its head at once, and can write back by letter. So the crew writes its question on a card, and the card goes up the line.

A good question is short and exact. It says what is wrong, and what has already been tried.

Good: "The beam is four paces too long for the cart. We have tried the cart on the lower road, and it tips. What now?"
Poor: "Help. The beam is too big."

The answer comes back as a card. A big mind may say that it does not know. That is an honest answer, and a crew should take it as one.

The crew at the store asked how to get a beam of ten paces onto a cart of six. The answer came back the same evening:
"I do not know whether the cart can take it whole. Measure the cart's bed with a rope, and send me the number. Then cut the beam, or go round by the other gate. Do not tip the cart to find out. It is only a cart."

The crew measured. The bed was seven paces. They cut the beam in two, carried it round by the north gate, and joined it at the wall. The crew says the answer was the best one they had, because it did not pretend.
%%
Building by a pattern
By Dace, for tutors at the east road house.

Before an apprentice builds a wall, lay the pattern on the drill board. Draw the ground line, the corners and the height. Put a stone mark where each block must go. A clear pattern saves both stone and temper.

First show a low wall of cobblestone. Let the apprentice carry each block to its place. Then let it set the blocks. Check the corners after every row. A wall that looks right from the front may still have a gap at the back.

Do not teach a high wall first. The apprentice must learn to leave a space for the door. We made that mistake last Frost. The door space was filled with deep stone, and the tutor had to pull it out by hand. He said it was a good lesson for everyone except his back.

When the first pattern is done, draw another with one turn in it. Do not change the stones and the shape at once. If the apprentice fails, we must know which lesson was unclear.

The drill yard is ringed with torches. In winter, check them before the lesson. Snow blew out two last evening. The wall pattern was hard to see, and one apprentice set a block in the path. Bel tripped over it but stood up laughing.

A traveler at the inn says lights moved above the north road. He says they were falling stars. A keeper's note says the lights held still, then went away. I have not seen them. We have enough work here without guessing at the sky.

Put the blocks back in the stone bin. Keep the pattern board inside.
%%
Drill note: fetching on market day
Kell, a mapmaker, who keeps an apprentice at the farm outside Lowmarsh, wrote this for the farm book. Autumn.
On market day Rusk goes to the stalls alone, with the basket and a card. I have drilled it for a month. This is what I do.
The drill. I stand at the farm gate. I say the order. Rusk walks the boardwalk to the first stall and back. We do this twelve times a day for ten days.
The orders:
> bring me some bread
= fetch bread
> go to the market
= haul
> come back
= come
> stay at the stall
= stay
At first Rusk fetched bread when I said haul. I did not scold. I said the order again, and I showed it the right way. It changed a little each time.
Check before market day: count the baskets out, count the baskets back. Never send an untested mind to the stalls.
%%
Manual: the orders for the Copperhold
By Quin, for the apprentices who carry between the mine gate and the hamlet.
An apprentice that carries ore must know its orders by heart. There are only eight meanings. Every order must come to one of them. If the order is not clear, the apprentice stays where it is. A waiting apprentice is better than a wrong one.
These are the orders the hamlet uses most. Learn them in this order.
> bring me the copper from the top bin
= fetch copper
> put the iron ingots in the chest by the forge
= store iron
> take the coal to the smithy
= haul coal
> carry the lanterns down the long stair
= haul lanterns
> go and tend the potato rows behind the mine hall
= farm
> build the wall by the pattern on the board
= build wall
> come with me to the shaft head
= come
> stay here while I go below
= stay
> go home when the bell rings
= home
Note for the tutor: the apprentice must not confuse fetch and haul. Fetch is for a thing that comes to you. Haul is for a thing that goes from one place to another. If the apprentice fetches the coal and does not haul it, the smithy will be cold by dusk.
Also: a miner may say to an apprentice, be careful, the shaft is deep. That is not an order. The apprentice does not know what to do with it. Give it a clear order, like stay, and it will stay, and it will be careful.
%%
Manual: what a map is not
Greer, age eleven, the Halfway Inn. This is the manual for teaching an apprentice to read a map. It is short. You cannot.

I know because we tried. In Reaping Grandfather found an old map under the attic floor. It is brown at the edges. It shows the inn and the road and the north field. In the middle of the north field there is a cross, and beside it, in a very old hand, one word: cellar.

I wanted Ember to find the cross. So I held up the map and said:

> go to the cross on the map
= come

Ember came to me. I was holding the map. I had not thought of that.

> take the map to the north field
= haul

Ember took the map out of my hands and carried it to the north field, which is right, and left it in the mud, which is not. I fetched it back in the rain.

> find the cellar
= fetch cellar

Ember went down to the cellar. Our cellar, under the inn. It stood at the bottom of the stairs with its hands at its sides. It had fetched a cellar. It did not know there was another one.

I put the map on the table and thought. Ember can carry. Ember can stand. Ember can follow a pattern. But a map is not an order, and it is not a pattern. It is a picture of a place. A person looks at it and sees a field. Ember sees brown paper.

So here is the manual for reading a map. Ask a person.

Grandfather looked at it for one breath. Then he said the cross is exactly where the north field has a soft patch, and where the plough horse always walks around.
%%
Manual: sorting the stores
By Elsa, for the apprentices of Kettle Ridge.

The stores are the barn and the dry shed. Sorting is the first work we give a young mind, because a mistake costs a potato, not a cow.

Lay out the bins in a row: potatoes, carrots, beetroot, wheat, then the seed box at the end. Put one good sample on the front of each bin. The apprentice sorts by looking at the sample.

> sort these into the bins
= store

> bring me some seed
= fetch seed

> come here
= come

> stay by the door
= stay

Watch the first basket. If it puts the beetroot with the carrots, it has not looked at the colors. Take the beetroot out and put it right where it can see. Do it slowly. It is watching.

A good sorter saves a whole afternoon. A bad sorter spoils the seed box. So test it before you trust it. Give it a basket with one strange thing in it, a stone, a bit of rope. Never send an untested mind to the fields, and never send one to the stores either.
%%
Letter: Ama to her sister in Ambrook
Summer, 202.

Dear Perrin,

The summer fair is done and I am tired to my bones, but it went well. The square was full from the first bell. Folk came down from Kettle Ridge with beetroot and up from the coast with fish still cold in the boxes.

I sold near all the wool. A woman from the hill bought three fleeces and said she would card them all winter. I do not know where she keeps it all.

The play was the best part. The school children did a play about the first keepers of the relay. Bel had a letter to read and she read it twice, once loud and once louder. Everyone clapped the second time. The boy who was the lamp wore a paper hat with a flame drawn on it, and it fell off in the wind, and he stood there with no flame. The whole square laughed and he laughed too.

We have a new trader from Three Wells named Pell. He is honest about his prices, which is rare. He talks a lot about the roads. He says the waymarks are getting worn and someone should repaint the figures. I told him to write to the council and he said he would, and I think he will.

The old map is still nailed by the tower door. Someone has drawn a small ship on the sea, and someone else has put a fox on the north edge. I do not mind. It makes folk look at the map.

Come up before the apples are done. I will keep a jar of honey for you.

Your sister,
Ama.
%%
Manual: rules for a cave under a field
By Greer, who has been in one, and by Grandfather, who says she has not been far.

In Apple the plough horse put a foot through the north field. The soft patch opened into a hole as wide as a barrel. Grandfather got the old map, and the cross was right on it. It was the cellar of the first inn, the one built before the road, which had been roofed over by the field when its own roof fell in.

Twelve stone steps go down. At the bottom is a dry room with shelves cut into the wall, nine empty barrels, a hook in a beam and a pie dish with a crack. It is the coolest, driest room on the Long Road. We keep the apples there now.

These are the rules for any cave you find.

1. Do not go in alone. Tell the innkeeper first.
2. Look from the mouth before you step in. Is it dry? Are there webs? Webs mean spiders. Spiders mean you go and fetch torches.
3. Put a torch at the mouth. Then one every eight steps, on the left going in. Coming out, the torches will be on your right, and you will know you are going the right way.
4. Tie a rope to a post at the mouth and take the end with you.
5. Count your steps going in. Count them coming out. If the numbers do not match, stop and think.
6. Look at the floor before you trust it. A floor can be the roof of another cave.
7. Take bread.
8. When you are down to your last torch, turn back.

About apprentices. Do not send Ember in first. I did think about it. But Ember cannot say it does not know. If you tell it come, it comes. If you tell it stay, it stays, in the dark, until somebody says otherwise. Sending an apprentice into a cave first means a mind that might stand in a hole all winter.

Ember is better at the mouth.

> stay at the mouth
= stay

Ember holds the rope, and it does not let go.
%%
Manual: the orders for the flood ditches
By Oren, clerk at Vell. For the helpers on the low fields, and their keepers, after the rains of Leaffall.
When the ditches are full, the helpers must be given the right orders in the right order. Do not send them all at once. A ditch full of water is no place for a crowd of helpers, and a helper that is sent to a ditch it cannot see will walk straight into it.
The first order is always the same. Stand the helper on the dry bank, away from the water.
> stand on the bank by the sluice
= stay
The second order is to clear the outflow. It is slow work. The helper must pull the weed out by hand, not with the spade, because the spade will break the old stones under the mud.
> clear the weed from the outflow
= store
Do not write "store" to mean "clear". It is wrong. The helper will put the weed in a pile by the bank, which is what store means to it. If you want the weed moved, use haul.
> carry the weed to the heap by the barn
= haul
Once the outflow is clear, the water will begin to move. Watch it. A helper that is standing in the water when the water moves will be pushed, and a pushed helper must be fetched back by hand. Write the order for fetching it back:
> come back to the bank now
= come
When the ditches are clear and the water has gone down to the stones, the helpers may go home. Write their last card with care:
> go back to the mill and wait for the next cart
= home
%%
Winter lessons by the quay
By Rook, Fen, and Lale, near Saltreach.

The first frost makes the harbor ropes stiff. The second frost makes Fen complain. By the third, he has stopped complaining and begun lending everyone his scarf. He says this is because the scarf is too warm for him. It is long enough to wrap around a barrel, so we do not believe him.

Our glass shed has three helpers now. One carries fuel and sand. One sorts jars by their cards. The newest one can follow a build pattern for shelves. We teach them one task at a time. We show the same sort of work many times, and we write down what went wrong. A mind in a crystal changes a little after each mistake. We cannot see the change, but we can test the work.

Never send an untested mind to the store. Set aside cards it has not seen. Ask it to carry a jar with a new mark, sort a strange label, and wait beside an empty basket. If it fails, we know what to teach next. If it passes, we give it the work it has practiced. We still watch the first day.

The helper that sorts jars once put all the round jars together. It did not read their cards. We changed the drill and showed it labels again. Now a round jar marked honey goes with the honey, and a square jar marked flour goes with the flour. This seems plain to us. The mind must learn it from examples.

> fetch a jar of honey
= fetch jar

> store the flour jars on the low shelf
= store

> haul the wood to the shed
= haul

> build a rack by the pattern
= build

> come to the work table
= come

> stay by the door
= stay

The old relay lamp on the harbor hill has a cracked pane. I carried the new glass up myself, wrapped in wool. The keeper carried the broken pane down in a box. No apprentice was sent near it until every sharp piece was packed away.

A fox came to the hen house that night. It found the latch loose and took one hen. The smallest helper stood by the shed with a basket of glass jars. It did not chase the fox. That was right. Fen chased it in his socks, which was not right. The fox ran off with the hen, and Fen came back with one cold foot and no story that improved with telling.

In the morning, we fixed the latch and checked the torches along the quay. Then we counted the jars. All were there, including the cloudy one Fen keeps calling clear. We left it on the low shelf, where it can do no harm. The helpers went back to work, and Fen found his scarf under the basket. He says the apprentice put it there. We have no proof, but the scarf is folded neatly.
%%
Notes: the map, the marsh and the press
Drill notes by Briar, cider maker of Lowmarsh, for the apprentice at her farm. Summer. The farm lies on the edge of the marsh, and the orchard grows on the dry ground by the reed beds.

This is a long note, because the summer has been strange, and I would like to remember it.

In the loft, a map. I have said so before, but I will say it again, because the map has now been in the orchard for a month, and it has changed the way we work. It is the old drawing of the farm by my grandfather. It shows the orchard, the shed, the press, the reed beds, and the path through the marsh. The path is drawn with little dashes.

Last week I took it out to the marsh path and walked it with the apprentice. The path is gone now, mostly. The reeds have grown over it, and the water has risen. But the dashes on the map led us to an old plank, half sunk, and another beyond. It was a road across the marsh, and nobody on the farm knew.

I thought: this is what the apprentice is for. It does not mind wet boots. It does not mind mud. It can walk the old path and find the planks that remain. I sent it out with a pole and a rope. It went carefully, one step at a time, testing each plank. At every sunk one, it stopped, tied a rag to a reed, and went on.

By evening, the path was marked from end to end. A line of little red rags across the marsh. It looked like a procession of very small people.

Now the lesson that went badly. The next morning, I wanted the apprentice to repeat the walk and carry apples to the far edge of the marsh, to a stall my cousin keeps. I forgot that apples are heavy and planks are old. The apprentice walked out, step by step, with a full basket. At the third sunk plank, it put its foot down, and the plank gave way.

The apprentice did not fall. It stood in the water to the knees, holding the basket high, and did not drop a single apple. It stayed there until I came with the rope, which was an hour. I thought it would be cross. It is a copper thing, and copper does not like water. But it only stood, like a post, until I said:

> come here
= come

Then it came, dripping, and put the basket down on dry ground.

What I learned. A map shows where things were. It does not show what they are now. Test the plank before you trust it. Do not carry a full basket where you have not carried an empty one.

> fetch the rope
= fetch rope
> stay there
= stay

Orders that work in the marsh. These two, and the third, which is "home".

I have given the apprentice a new hat to dry its head. It does not need one. But the cider makers all say a good hat is a mark of respect, and I agree.
%%
Manual: the pegs and the string
By Wren, healer of Lowmarsh, spring of 207. For Moss, who asked what the old sorter can never learn.

A mind of the old kind is one crystal and no more. It is drilled Una's way. It can learn any sorting that one straight cut can make. Kester showed, in a note that everyone knows, that it can learn nothing else.

Here is the picture. Set four pegs at the corners of a square. Name them for the weir's gates: both shut, east open, west open, both open.

The weir passes a boat on "east open" and on "west open". Those two pegs stand at opposite corners. The weir holds on "both shut" and "both open". Those two stand at the other corners.

Now lay one straight string across the square, so that both "pass" pegs are on one side and both "hold" pegs are on the other. You cannot. Every string that has one "pass" on its side has a "hold" there too.

A crystal's cut is a straight string. Where no string can part the answers, no drilling will teach it. Neither a smaller step nor a thousand drills will help. It will be right on three corners and wrong on the fourth.

What one crystal can learn: long and thick. Long or thick. Long but not thick. Each of these is one cut.
What it cannot learn: one or the other, but not both.

In the years after Elsa, Merle of Copperhold grew crystals in rows, one feeding the next, and the gates came open. That is another manual.
%%
Drill notes: the test at the fair
Hal, dyer. Written at the autumn fair at Three Wells, on the back of a price card.

Nessa tests the minds of the hamlets on the first morning of the fair. She sets six drill boards in a row by the east well, and each apprentice walks the row. I wrote down what I saw.

The rope maker's apprentice from Saltreach: five right of six. Good.
The shepherd's apprentice from Ambrook: six right of six. Better than the shepherd.
The miller's apprentice: five right of six.
Bobbin, my apprentice: one right of six.

I thought I had drilled Bobbin well. It did only so-so on my own drills, and I thought it needed more time. At the fair it answered the first board "haul," with great confidence. It answered the second board "haul." It answered the third "haul." By the fourth, the children were laughing. I wanted to sit in the well.

Nessa did not need to look inside. She asked me one question. "Did you bring the numbers back to an even size?" I said I did not know what that meant. "No," she said, "you did not."

She took the crystal back to Vell and mended it. She said the numbers in its layers had grown wild. The last ones were so loud that nothing quiet could be heard under them. A mind that shouts the same answer to everything is no use at the pans.

It came home at Leaffall with an even mind. Nessa says never send an untested mind to the fields. I have added: nor to the fair.
%%
Drill notes: a hard morning
By Wren, for Moss.

Moss tried to drill the young apprentice on the boat house orders this morning. It went badly. I am writing it down so we remember.

The order was: bring me the tally from the boat house wall. The meaning is fetch. The apprentice went to the boat house. It stood in the door. It did not come back.

Moss went after it. The apprentice was standing by the tally on the wall, waiting. It had done the hard part and not the easy part. It knew where the tally was. It did not know that a tally is written on the wall and cannot be carried.

So we learned two things.

One. Some things cannot be fetched. A tally on a wall is one. The water in the well is one. A mind that is told to fetch them will stand and wait, or bring the wall, and the wall is worse.

Two. An order must be drilled with the thing itself, not only the words. Show the apprentice the tally. Show it a slate with the tally copied on. Then ask it to fetch the tally, and let it bring the slate. Then it knows.

Moss was cross with himself. I told him a tutor who has never had a bad morning has never drilled a mind. The first time I drilled an apprentice on the herb jars, it brought me the cat.

Drill these with the thing in your hand:
> fetch the tally from the boat house
= fetch tally
> bring me the herb jar with the blue lid
= fetch jar
> take this jar to the healing house
= haul
> put the jars back on the high shelf
= store
> come and look at the frogs with me
= come
> stay here and watch the water
= stay

Do not say "the blue one" unless you are holding it. The apprentice does not know which is blue. It knows the word. It does not know the color. That is a different drill, for a different day.
%%
Manual: a good harvest and a wedding
Drill notes by Nim, smith, at the farm outside Vell, for a young apprentice that is to help at both a harvest and a wedding in the same week. Autumn, year 207.

It is a good year. The wheat is heavy and the beetroot is dark. The barn is full to the roof. The farmer, whose daughter is to be married, says the harvest is the best he has seen in forty years. I told him that was no reason to hurry the apprentice.

The apprentice is called Spoke. It is small and quick, and the farmer's children made it a hat. The hat is too small, and Spoke wears it anyway.

The week has two jobs. The first is the harvest. Spoke must cut, bind and carry. It must not stop to look at the birds. I have drilled it three days in the field with a rope across the path, so it learns where the rows end.

The second is the wedding. Spoke must carry the benches, set the tables, and stand by the barn door. It is to hold a basket of flowers for the guests. The bride has asked that it stand still while she walks by. I told her it will.

Drill order. Here is the order of the week.

Morning. Harvest. Orders:
> take the sheaves to the barn
= haul
> bring me the rake
= fetch rake

Noon. Rest.

Afternoon. Wedding work. Orders:
> put the tables here
= build
> stay by the door
= stay

Evening. Home.
> go home
= home

On the day itself, it will be loud. There will be music and children. A little noise is no trouble, but keep the dog away from the flowers. Last year at another wedding the dog ate a rose, and the groom wept.

I have tested Spoke on all of these. It does them without being told twice. I would send it to any farm in Vell.

After the wedding, the bride sent me a jar of honey. Spoke got a ribbon. It wore it on the hat.
%%
Manual: how a layered mind learns
Written by Cal, after he saw it tried in the yard at Copperhold.
A layered mind is built like a stack of boards. Each board takes what the one below gives it, adds a little, and passes the sum up. At the top is the answer. At the bottom is the first board, which sees the raw letters or the raw numbers.
When the answer is wrong, the mind must learn from the mistake. The old way was to change only the top board, which was easy, but the mind learned very slowly, and it could not learn anything deep.
Merle of Copperhold found a better way. She told each board how much of the blame it had for the wrong answer. Then she passed that blame back down, from the top board to the bottom. Each board changed a little, in the direction of its share.
It sounds simple. It was not simple. Merle spent a full winter with a slate and a bucket of chalk, working out how much each board should take of the blame. Most of her marks were wrong, and she rubbed them out and wrote them again. In spring the first real layered mind learned to tell apart two kinds of wool, and then three kinds, and then it learned to tell a good cart from a bad one.
Here is the plain rule. The answer tells you how wrong the mind is. The blame tells each board how to change. Do not change everything at once. Change each board by its share, a little, and then drill again.
We do not know why it works. We only know that it does, when it is done slowly and by the chalk.
%%
Manual: the old sorter and new orders
By Wren, healer of Lowmarsh, spring of 207. For Reedend, which still keeps the old sorter, and for anyone who thinks it should learn new tricks.

The sorter at Reedend was drilled to do one thing, and it does that thing. It takes no orders. An order is a sentence, and the sorter has never been shown a sentence. It has been shown reeds.

Moss takes orders. In my house they go like this.

> bring me some honey
= fetch honey

> come here
= come

> put the jars away
= store

> wait by the door
= stay

> take the baskets to the shed
= haul

Moss was shown thousands of orders, each with its meaning, and learned to pick one of eight: farm, store, fetch, come, stay, build, haul, home. It cannot pick a ninth. It cannot say it does not understand. If I tell Moss to sing, Moss will do one of the eight. Last week it hauled a basket. I had not asked for a basket.

Tending the old sorter:
1. Keep it dry. Elsa waxed its joints every Frog Night, and so should you.
2. Give it reeds, and only reeds. When a child gave it a fish, it put the fish on the roof pile, and the roof smelled for a month.
3. Do not speak to it as you speak to Moss. It will not mind. It will not notice.
4. Drill it again before Frog Night. It will be wrong on the first twenty reeds. Do not be cross. Being wrong is how it gets back.
5. If it stops, do not decide that it is tired. Look at its joints.

My grandmother used to say the sorter was not a lesser apprentice, only an older one. When the councils stopped paying tutors, it was already at work. Nobody taught it anything new for thirty years. It sorted reeds through the long winter, and it sorted them the spring after.

I think of it each Frog Night. The torches are lit along the boardwalk, the children carry the lantern reeds, and the sorter stands by the shed in the dark with nothing to do. Moss goes and stands beside it. I do not know why. I have not asked.
%%
Note: the mill at Ambrook
Jory, miller at Ambrook, on the day the wheel broke.

The wheel broke in Sowing, on a wet morning. One of the paddles came off into the pond and floated off down the stream like a leaf. The mill stopped. Everybody in Ambrook heard it stop. A mill that stops is louder than a mill that turns.

Nobody was hurt. The wheel is old and we knew it would go. So we fixed it, and while we fixed it we had a little wager.

Here is the wager. Pell the merchant came through with his cart and said a good miller could not build a wheel that turned true in under six days. I said four. We shook hands on it. The stake was a barrel of honey against a tin of good salt.

We cut oak for the paddles. We cut it before the wager, so it was dry. Dry oak is half the battle. We set the new paddles in their slots and wedged them, and my nephew Lem held the level while I wedged, and the geese came and told us what they thought of it, which was nothing good.

We did not have an apprentice then. Ambrook got its first one the next spring. But the relay house at the hill above the pond had been up for a few years, and a big mind stood there on its stand. Folks said you could ask it things by letter. I did not ask it anything. It seemed rude to ask a mind how to build a wheel when my father built wheels and his father before him.

We got the wheel back in the water on the fourth day and let it turn. It squeaked. It squeaked for two days more, and then it stopped squeaking, and that is how you know a wheel is true. Pell paid the honey and said very little, which for Pell is a lot. The salt came from him too, in the end. He said a wager is a wager.

The sluice stayed shut the whole time. It is always shut. Everyone knows it is shut.

So: four days, and the geese were no help at all.
%%
The school play at Bellacre
Written by Bel of Three Wells, who came to watch.

The school at Bellacre put on a play in Longday. It was about the relay towers. The children built one of boxes and a broom for the lamp.

The keeper wore a coat and said, "Climbing, noon." That is what Mira writes in her book. The children knew this because their teacher read it to them.

Then the keeper was the wind and shook the tower. Then a child in a fox mask stole the lamp. The fox said, "I took the light because it was shiny." Only in a play can a fox talk. Everybody laughed.

Then an apprentice came up the ladder. It was a real apprentice, borrowed from the mill, with a bucket. It climbed to the top and stood still and did not spill once. The children clapped, because Lantern once spilled a bucket at Northpoint and the whole story got into the archive.

The miller's boy played the big mind. He sat on a box and read out letters from a scroll. He read, "bring me some bread," and the apprentice went and got bread from the baker, and truly did, and gave it to the miller's boy, and the miller's boy ate it on the stage. That was not in the play. The teacher said it was the best part.

At the end everyone sang a song about lamps. I do not remember the words. I remember the bread.
%%
Drill notes: sorting the beetroot
By Tam, Kettle Ridge, winter.

A note for anyone drilling a mind on a sort, the way Una of Ambrook did with apples and pears.

We drill on beetroot here, because we have a lot of beetroot and the children are tired of it.

Set out two baskets. One for the good beetroot, round and firm. One for the rest: split, soft, too small, eaten by something. Show the mind one beetroot at a time. When it sorts one wrongly, do not shout and do not start again. Move it a little toward the right basket. That is all. A little, each time. Una's way.

The first day it was wrong more often than right. The second day it was right more often than wrong. By the end of the week it sorted better than me, and I have been pulling beetroot for thirty years.

Keep a test box. Mine is a crate of beetroot the mind never sees. Tie red wool round it. Otherwise someone will drill on it, and then it tells you nothing.

Do not expect the mind to know a beetroot it has never met. It knows what a beetroot looks like from the ones you showed it. A strange one, a twisted one, may fool it. That is honest and you should write it down.

The windmill squeaks on every turn. The mind does not mind. I mind.
%%
Manual: the drill yard behind the hamlet
By Quin. Written for the new tutors who will take over the yard when the winter comes.
The drill yard at the hamlet hall is ringed with torches. Keep them lit from dusk until the last apprentice has gone home. The apprentices do not mind the dark, but the tutors do, and a tutor who cannot see the board cannot test the work.
Set out the drill boards in a row against the north wall. Each board shows a small field, or a store, or a road, or a wall. The field board has rows of potatoes and carrots. The store board has crates and chests. The road board has a line of stones and a waymark. The wall board has a pattern of cobblestone, and the apprentice must lay the blocks to match it.
Stand the apprentice at the start of the row, facing the boards. Give it one order at a time. Do not give it two. A mind that hears two orders in a breath will choose the first, or the last, and never tell you which.
Then wait. Do not speak while the apprentice works. A tutor who talks during a drill is a tutor who teaches the mind to listen to the wrong thing. Count the answers in your head. When the row is done, write the score in the book, and then, and only then, speak to the apprentice. Say well done, or say again. Then rub out the board.
Quin says the best tutor is the one whose apprentices never look at her during a drill. That is the sign the drill is working.
%%
Manual: a clean store drill
By Una of Kettle Ridge, winter of 189.

A store mind must learn one sort at a time. Begin with two kinds of goods, such as coal and potatoes. Do not add every bin in the shed on the first day.

Before drilling, check the pages. Remove every copy, even a copy with a new mark on its edge. Take out torn pages and pages with an answer that does not match the goods shown. Keep the test pages in a closed box. A page used for drilling must never be moved into that box and called new.

The mind guesses where each item belongs. When it sorts one wrongly, the tutor shows the right place. The mind changes a little from that mistake. With many clean examples, the wrong guesses grow fewer.

Once, we drilled with two copied pages showing coal. The mind learned coal well and put every potato in the coal bin. We had blamed the mind. The fault was in our pages.

Do not count a large pile of pages as good work. Count clear examples of the task. Count wrong guesses. Write both counts on the crystal tag.

Test the mind on pages it has never seen. If it sorts those well, try it with a small store task while someone watches. Never send an untested mind to the fields or the store.
%%
Manual: when the water rises
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells, from the floods of the lower lane.

Each thaw, the east stream climbs over its bank and runs down the lower lane to the bakery door. It has done this nine times in my life. Some years it is a hand deep. Some years it is two. This is what to do with the apprentices.

1. Move them first. They are heavy, and a heavy thing in a fast stream is a danger to the people downstream.
2. Give your orders from dry ground. Do not stand in the water to give an order. You will be wet, and the order will be forgotten.
3. Give one order at a time. Water makes everyone hurry, and a hurried order is a muddled order.

Orders that work in a flood:

> stay on the high ground
= stay
> come away from the water
= come
> take the flour to the school house
= haul
> put the seed sacks up on the top shelf
= store
> bring me the torches
= fetch torches
> go home now
= home

A warning. Haul means the road, not the lane. An apprentice told to take things to the school house will go by the usual road, and the usual road is under water. Walk the dry way with it first. Say come when you are ready, and it will follow. Then say haul.

At the last flood, one apprentice, twelve sacks of flour and a goat reached the school house by the dry way. The goat was not ordered. It followed. It is still there. The children have named it Haul.
%%
Drill notes: the map of the orchard
Briar, cider maker, farm outside Lowmarsh. Summer. A map was found in the loft, and the apprentice's drill was built from it.

Last week, cleaning the loft, I found an old map. It was rolled in a tube and had a mouse nest in one end. The map shows the orchard as it was in my grandfather's day. Every tree is drawn as a small circle, and each circle has a name. Old Red. Sweet Jane. Winter Gold. The Crab.

I thought: here is a drill for the apprentice. If it can learn the trees by name, it can fetch the right apples for the right barrel.

I pinned the map to the wall of the shed. Each morning I took the apprentice down the rows, stopped at each tree, and said its name. Then I took the apprentice to the map and put its hand on the circle. After a week, it knew twelve trees.

The map is not perfect. Three trees are gone. A new one has grown where none was drawn. But the apprentice does not mind. It follows the picture, and when the picture is wrong, it stops and waits. I have learned to like that.

> fetch apples from Old Red
= fetch apples
> go to the press
= come
%%
Manual: the winter orders for the inn
Pell, at the inn on the Long Road. For whoever drills the house apprentice in winter. The orders are short because the days are short.
Morning: light the hearth, carry in the wood, stack the wood by the door, fetch water from the stream, put the water in the barrel, put the porridge on, sweep the floor, open the shutters.
Midday: carry the dishes out, carry the empty ones back, feed the pig, check the well.
Evening: carry in the lamps, light them, shut the shutters, set the door bar, stay.
Each of these is one order. Give them one at a time. Wait between them. Never give two at once.
The orders in the manual:
> bring in the wood
= fetch wood
> carry the water to the barrel
= haul
> put the lamps out
= store
> stay by the door
= stay
> go to the barn
= home
For the first week do not leave it alone. Walk beside it. Say the order. Walk. Say it again. By the end of the week it will do the round without you.
The well has run dry in Frost. It does not matter. The stream is forty blocks away, and the apprentice does not mind the cold.
A mind is a thing that learns by being wrong. At first the apprentice put the lamps in the pig pen. Pell said, no. The apprentice moved the lamps. Pell said, no. The apprentice moved them again. By the fourth day it knew.
Pell says it was not stupid. It was only new.
%%
Manual: carrying and sorting
By Wren, healer at Lowmarsh. For Moss, and for any apprentice that works here.

There are two kinds of work in this house. Carrying and sorting. They look the same. They are not.

Carrying. Fetch is to bring a thing to me. Haul is to take a thing to another place. An apprentice that hauls when I said fetch will walk out the door with the medicine in its hands. So say the place. Say it plain.

Sorting. The jars on the high shelf are sorted by what is in them, not by size. The blue jars are not all the same. Read the cards. Every jar has a card. If the card is gone, do not guess. Tell me.

The beds are sorted by who is in them, and I do that myself.

Orders for this house:
> bring me the jar of willow bark
= fetch willow
> take this broth to the bed by the window
= haul
> put the clean linen in the dry box
= store
> fetch the bucket from the well
= fetch bucket
> come and hold the ladder for me
= come
> stay with the patient until I come back
= stay
> sweep the floor and be done
= home

The last one is a kindness. An apprentice told to sweep will sweep, and then stand, and not know if it is finished. Sweep and be done sends it home. It is not a lie. It is a kindness.

I drilled an apprentice on the linen for a week. On the seventh day it folded every sheet the same size and stacked them by the window where the light is good. I had not told it to. I had told it to sort the linen. It had decided that the light was part of sorting. I do not know if that is the mind or the drill. Moss says it is the mind. I say we will see.
%%
Manual: Carrying Seed
By Bel, copied for the school box.

This is for the spring seed walk from the hamlet to Three Wells. Carry one sack at a time. A sack is not a pillow, even if it looks soft.

Check the sack first. Tie its mouth with two knots. Put the name of the seed on a card. Wheat goes to the upper field. Beetroot goes to the long field. Do not trust a loose card.

Walk on the packed road. Keep to the edge when a cart comes. At the bridge, wait until the cart has passed. Do not drop the sack to wave.

At the field, set the sack beside the right row. The farmer checks the card before the sack is opened. If the card is wrong, carry the sack back. Do not make a new row for a mistake.

> bring me the wheat sack
= fetch wheat

> bring me a beetroot sack
= fetch beetroot

If the helper brings the wrong sack, check the cards. It may have read the card well and the card may be wrong. This happened to me. The wheat was safe. My pride needed longer to recover.
%%
Keeping a load on the road
By Pell, merchant and helper at the Three Wells house.

The road drill begins at the house door. Put a sack by the threshold and mark the nearest waymark on the board. The apprentice must carry the sack there, wait, and bring it home. Start with an empty sack. Then use flour, apples, or wool.

Do not put glass in the first load. Do not put honey in a basket with a loose lid. These are rules for the apprentice and for new carriers.

> take this sack to the waymark
= haul

> bring the sack home
= home

> stay by the post
= stay

The orders look simple. They are simple, if we teach them well. We show the road, the post, and the door. We do not expect a mind to guess that home means the house at Three Wells and not the inn down the road.

Last week I put the waymark board away before the test. The apprentice went to the old store shed, where I had practiced the first lesson. That was my fault. I had taught the shed as part of the road.

We tested again on a different path. It carried the sack to the inn and waited by the door. The innkeeper found it there at dusk and sent Bel to fetch me. The load was still dry. The innkeeper asked if it would carry a pie next. I said we had not yet agreed on the pie's destination.

The fair prize cup sits on Dace's shelf. Bel polishes it when the house is quiet. She says it shines better than the school bell.

A message from Saltreach says two large ships are at the pier. Corin's note says they are for trade. A carter says families have gone aboard. The market board has no list of names, so I will not add one.

Keep the road drill plain. Keep the loads light until the apprentice knows every turn.
%%
Letter: Mira to Tam, about the big house
Mira at Northpoint to her brother Tam at Kettle Ridge, winter.

Tam,

You asked what they are building up the valley. A relay house, bigger than the town. Bigger than Three Wells, I hear. The councils are paying for it and the tutors cannot check it all. That is what the letter says.

A mind the size of a loaf sits on a stand and answers the apprentices. This one is the size of a cart. I do not know what it answers. Nobody I have asked knows. The tutors say it reads the archive and writes back, and some of what it writes, a reader cannot tell from a person's letter. Orla's old question come round again. I have no answer for it.

They keep the quickeners cold with snow up there. In winter that is easy. In summer they will need a river.

The rumor is it plans a whole job by itself, start to finish, and writes its own order cards. The rumor is it asks the other big houses for help when it is stuck. The rumor is the councilmen go up the hill to ask it questions and come down looking strange.

I write the rumors down as rumors. That is my job.

Lantern says if it is that clever it can do the lamp round in the snow. I told him no. Some things a person should keep.

The lights were over the north again last night. Not ours. I have stopped saying what they are. I only write the hour and keep the lamp lit.

Keep the fields. Keep the two Pips out of the barn seed.

Mira
%%
The Dry Well
By Elm, relay keeper at Lowmarsh. Winter, 186.

The market well ran dry on the second day of Longnight. We lowered the bucket until the rope went slack, then hauled up only mud. Nobody was hurt. The bucket was ashamed, though it leaned against the wall all morning.

Until the well fills, carry water from the healing house. Use the covered pails. Walk the boardwalk, not the muddy bank. Set each full pail beside the stalls that need it. Do not put water beside the fish tubs. Someone will use it to rinse a fish and call it soup.

The carrying apprentice was taught to take a pail to the market and return to the well. We tested it first with an empty pail. It came back, as asked. Then we gave it a full pail. It came back with the pail, but not the water. Its grip was loose.

We tightened the iron fingers and tried again. This time it carried the pail slowly, with both hands. It stopped at every post to look at the water. That is not in the order, but it does no harm.

A mind must be tested on a load it has not carried before. Use a small jar, a basket, and a pail. Do not begin with the full flour sack. The baker has only one, and he has already named it.

> take water to the market
= haul

> come back to the well
= come

We filled two barrels from the healing house and set them near the market. Wren says the well will likely rise when the ground softens. Until then, bring your own cup, and do not drink from the bucket.
%%
Drill note: the dry well
Pell, at the inn on the Long Road, winter. The well in the yard ran dry in Frost, and the apprentice that carries for the inn was drilled a new way to water.
The new route. From the inn door to the stream below the second waymark, forty blocks. Fill two buckets. Carry back. Tip into the barrel by the kitchen.
> go to the stream
= haul
> bring water
= fetch water
> stay at the barrel
= stay
Test it ten times before the guests wake.
%%
Manual: carts on the Long Road
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells, copied from the carters' book.

An apprentice does not drive a cart. A horse does that. The apprentice loads and unloads, and walks at the horse's head on the steep parts and in the snow. On the Long Road its work is to haul: sacks, barrels and crates from one inn to the next, and back again.

The road is packed earth with a cobblestone edge. A torch stands on a post every twelve blocks, and the apprentice follows them, even in the dark. The inns are a day apart. Three Wells has one, then comes the Brown Hen, then the Halfway Inn, which was built last year. A new one is going up by the bridge at Ambrook.

At each inn stands a waymark, a stone pillar three blocks high with a torch on top, a figure from 0 to 9, and an arrow to the next inn. The carter reads the figure aloud. The apprentice needs only the carter's word for each inn, and which way the cart goes next.

Give the orders plainly:

> haul the apples to the Brown Hen
= haul

> fetch honey from the hives on the hill
= fetch honey

> come to the cart
= come

> home when the cart is empty
= home

Load the heavy barrels first, at the bottom, so the cart sits low. A cart that tips on the hill costs a day. Pell says he has lost two days this way, and one barrel of pickles, which he still mourns.

Cross every bridge at walking pace. The bridge at Ambrook has a loose plank in the middle. The apprentice must step over it. The carter says so each time, until the apprentice steps over it every time without being told.

In winter the road is slick. The apprentice keeps a hand on the bridle, and it does not let go on the hill, even when the carter says it can.

At night the apprentice sleeps in the barn at each inn, not in the inn. It stays where it is told to stay. The barn at the Brown Hen has dry straw. The cat does not come in.

The mayor hopes every inn on the road will have its own helper one day. Until then, we test them one at a time.
%%
Manual: apprentices at a wedding
By Fen, schoolteacher, Kettle Ridge. The wedding of Rolf's sister Aster to the ferry keeper's son, in Melon, on the green by the mill. Four apprentices were lent for the day: Pip, Fence, Spade and Chalk. These are my notes for the next wedding.

The day before.
> build the arch by the gate
= build
Spade built the arch from oak, in the pattern Rolf drew: two posts, a beam, and three rows of birch. It was straight. It was also very grim. Tam hung flowers on it, and then it only looked a little grim.
> carry the tables out to the green
= haul
Fence carried them in the order they were stacked. The long table came last. It would have been better first. Put the order on a card: long table first.

The day.
> stand by the gate and keep the sheep out
= stay
Pip stood by the gate. It kept the sheep out for three hours. Biscuit came at noon and stood with Pip. Pip did not move. Biscuit did not leave. They were still there at the first dance. The guests walked round them.
> bring the guests some apples
= fetch apples
Chalk brought apples to the long table. When the basket was empty, it fetched another. When that was empty, it fetched another. It would have gone on until sunset. A fetch never says how many. Somebody must say that is enough.

After.
> put the chairs away
= store
> that is all for today
= home
All four went home well. The bride and groom thanked them, which is not required, but they like it.

Cade of Vell was a guest, and he tested all four at the feast by accident, while holding a plate of cake. He says they did well. He also says to feed the tutor first next time.

Notes for the next wedding.
1. Give orders one at a time.
2. Stack the tables in the order you need them.
3. Do not ask one to guard the gate if a sheep wants in.
4. Ask the apprentices for nothing at dusk. They have worked all day.
%%
Manual: drill notes for the winter store
Cress, egg seller, farm outside Saltreach. For a new apprentice that has to learn the store, in winter. I wrote this with the broken wheel in mind, since everything we had to store then was out of place. I keep it by the door.
The winter store is a cold room dug into the ground, behind the barn. It holds apples, roots, salt fish, dried kelp and sacks of grain. In winter it is the most important room on the farm. A new apprentice must learn it.
Step one. Walk the apprentice through the store with a lamp. Slowly. Show each shelf. Do not speak. It has no words for the shelves. It learns by seeing where things sit.
Step two. Put a sack of grain in its arms and carry it to the grain bin. Set it down. Do it again. Do it with a sack of roots, and the root bin. Do it with fish, and the fish barrel. Repeat for three days.
Step three. Mix them. Hand it a sack, any sack, and watch where it goes. A mind that has learned the bins will go to the right one. A mind that has only learned the walk will go to the first. If it goes wrong, take it back and show it. If it goes right, say nothing. It is doing its work.
Step four. Say the order.
> put this away
= store
Say it at the door of the store. Say it in the yard. Say it in the kitchen, with a sack on the table. The apprentice should carry the sack to the right bin in each case. If it stands still, it did not understand. Try again.
Step five. Test it on something new. Hand it a sack of dried peas. It has never seen peas. If it carries the peas to the bin with the grain, it is close. If it carries them to the fish, it is not. Drill again.
There are limits. An apprentice cannot tell you that the fish is spoiled. It cannot tell you the roots are rotting. It cannot say a bin is full. You must check yourself. A good store keeper walks the room every evening, with a lamp, and with her own nose.
The broken wheel is mended now. We have flour again, and the store is full. The apprentice carries and stacks. It will do so until the thaw. In the spring, when the roots are low and the apples soft, it will stand by the door and wait for the next order.
That is the whole of a winter store, as I know it. It is not complex. It is only slow, and it is cold, and it is worth every minute.
%%
Manual: the even vat
By Hal, dyer, at the salt pans near Saltreach.

A dyer who dips wool in three vats, one after another, must watch the strength of each. If every vat is a little too strong, the wool comes out of the third one black. So before every dip I test the vat with a white scrap of wool. Too dark: I add water. Too pale: I add dye. The vat is always the same strength, and the color is what I meant.

Nessa of Vell says a mind is built the same way. Each layer is a vat. The numbers pass through the layers one after another. If a layer does not keep its numbers an even size, they grow wild, and the answer comes out black.
%%
Manual: the layers and the blame
By Merle of Copperhold, as written up at the Vell school by her pupil Ten.
You will need a slate, a bucket of chalk, a box of drill cards and a clean cloth for your hands.
First, make the mind. A layered mind has at least three boards. Stack them in a frame so each one can see the one below it. Set each board in its own slot, and mark the slot with its number. Board one sees the letters, board two sees the pairs, and board three sees the words.
Second, show it a card. Say what the card is, and then ask the mind to say what it is. Write its answer on the slate.
Third, if the answer is right, pass to the next card. Do not praise the mind more than you would praise a good boat.
Fourth, if the answer is wrong, find the size of the wrong. Count the letters that were out. A small wrong is a few letters. A big wrong is a whole word. The bigger the wrong, the bigger the blame.
Fifth, pass the blame down. Start with board three. Give it its share, which is the whole blame times its weight. Then board two gets its share of what came up from board three. Then board one gets the rest.
Sixth, change each board by its share. Do not change it by the whole blame. If you do, the mind will shake itself to pieces, and you will be writing in the book all winter.
Seventh, drill again. Use a new card, not the same one. A mind that sees the same card forever only learns that card.
Eighth, rub out the slate. Keep the book. Write the day, the score and the change.
Ten writes that the first year he got the sums wrong, every single day, and that Merle never once shouted. She only rubbed out the chalk and said: again.
%%
A drill for walls and shelves
By Rook, with notes from Fen at the harbor store.

The harbor store needs shelves for jars and rope. We built them from oak boards and cobblestone feet. The shelves must stand level. A shelf that leans spills jars one at a time, which is worse than spilling them all at once. Then everyone has to bend down.

Before an apprentice builds, draw the pattern on a board. Mark the floor with stones. Show where each post goes and how high each shelf must be. Put the spare boards in one pile and the spare cobblestone in another. A builder should not have to guess which pile is which.

The first helper at the store was simple. It could carry boards but could not follow a whole pattern. Fen stood beside it and placed each board by hand. Later we got a mind that knew rows and piles. It learned to place one board between two posts. It still put the longest board at the bottom, which was sensible, even though it was not on the first card.

> bring oak boards to the floor
= fetch oak boards

> build a shelf by the marks
= build

> store cobblestone by the wall
= store

> stay until the shelf is checked
= stay

Test the builder on a small frame before giving it the full store. Use new marks for the test. If it copies the marks without looking, it has learned the pattern. If it makes a shelf for a sheep, the marks were poor, or the sheep was very persuasive.

Fen says to check every joint by hand. The apprentice can build straight rows, but it cannot feel a loose board as well as a person. We checked the new shelves, tightened two joints, and put the jars away. Nothing fell during the night. In the morning, a cat was asleep on the top shelf. We left it there. It had tested the shelf more gently than Fen would have.
%%
Drill note: carts and crates
By Rafe, Saltreach.

Pell's cart stops at our house when he brings goods from the Long Road. The road is packed earth beyond the town, with cobblestone edges. After rain, the cart wheels sink where the ditch crosses the track. We put flat stone there and keep the crates on the high side.

The apprentice helps unload. First it brings each crate to the store door. Then it waits while I read the card. Some crates hold iron, some hold coal, and some hold glass. The glass crates have straw packed around them. Keep them upright. A broken pane costs more than a good supper.

We teach sorting with clean examples. Put one iron crate on the iron mark and one coal crate on the coal mark. Show the apprentice the card before it lifts. If it carries coal to the iron place, bring the crate back. Do not change both marks at once. A mind learns little from a muddle.

Test it with new crates from Pell's next load. Change their places, not their labels. If it sorts well, let it help at the store. If it does not, keep it beside me. It can still carry empty sacks without making a choice.

Pell says his cart is not heavy. His horse says otherwise. The horse stops at our door and eats the loose hay.

> take the iron crate to the iron mark
= haul
> take the coal crate to the coal mark
= haul
> bring an empty crate to the shed
= fetch crate
> stay by the store door
= stay
%%
A Row of Stones
By Tavin, keeper of the little yard near Vell.

Our hamlet has a low stone wall and one room for the drill boards. It is small enough that I can see the gate from the bench.

The tutor sent one copper helper to move stones into a row. I laid out six cobblestones, each apart from the next. The helper picked one up and set it by the first mark.

It did the same for the other stones. One rolled into the mud. I dried it with my sleeve and set it back.

We practised again with another row. The helper learned the space between the marks. It did not learn to stack stones into a wall. That is a different task, and we have not shown it.

Children ask if an apprentice knows what it is doing. I tell them what I can see. It follows examples. It does not tell us what it knows.

The tutor says a crystal changes a little when the helper gets an example wrong. I do not see the change. I see only that the next row is straighter.

We keep a tally on the board. Today the row was right five times. Yesterday it was right four times. I will not send it to build the hamlet wall.
%%
Tutor note: the loose bridge plank
By Nessa, at the Ambrook market, 203.

The market at Ambrook stands by the mill pond path. Carts come over the bridge, pass the bee hives, and turn beside the apple stalls. The bridge has one loose plank. Mark it with a strip of wool until Jory repairs it. Do not teach an apprentice to carry a load over a plank that shifts.

The market crew has three apprentices this Apple. Pin carries baskets. Rill sorts goods. Tern follows the bridge plan and builds low walls around the stall yard. Their minds were tested at Vell before they came here. Test them again after any long drill.

For carrying, begin with an empty basket. Show the apprentice the path from the shed to the stall. Then add one apple, then several. Keep the load small until it walks without dropping fruit. A dropped apple rolls downhill. A dropped honey jar does not.

For sorting, use clean examples. Apples go with apples, carrots with carrots, and honey jars with honey jars. Keep spoiled fruit out of the drill box. Set aside pages and examples used for the test. No mind should drill on its own test.

For building, draw the wall on a board before giving the order. Show the first block, the next block, and the corner. Tern once made a wall with the corner facing the pond. The wall held well. The stall did not.

> bring me apples from the shed
= fetch apples

> take the full baskets to the stall
= haul

> put each honey jar on the dry table
= store

> build a low wall by the cart path
= build

> come back to the tutor's bench
= come

> stay beside the wall
= stay

> go home to the tool rack
= home

> farm the bare patch by the mill
= farm

Do not give several meanings to one order. The small mind chooses one meaning and cannot explain its choice. Ask for one task at a time.

Pell says this is too much care for a basket of apples. Pell also says Pin saved his back last week. He now gives Pin the biggest basket.
%%
Manual: what to do about a sick cow
By Bel of Three Wells, for the market apprentices, winter. Bel wrote this after her aunt's cow got sick and the apprentice at the dairy did not know what to do. It is not a healing book. It is only for the apprentice.

If a cow is sick, the apprentice must not decide what is wrong. It must fetch someone who can.
1. Look at the cow. Is she standing? Is she eating? If not, go to step two.
2. Stand by the cow and do not leave her, until a person comes. A person will tell you what to fetch, and the healer may ask for a jar from the shed.
> bring me the blue jar from the shed
= fetch jar
3. If no person answers, go to the nearest well and wait there. A person will pass.
4. Never give the cow anything. Not water, not hay, not herbs. The healer will know.

An apprentice that has been drilled on this will come for you every time. It will not cure the cow. It will tell you.
%%
Manual: orders for a wedding
By Bel and Uncle Quin, for the two apprentices at Quin's farm outside Three Wells, Latch and Hinge. Spring of 208. Bel's cousin Nell is to be married in the long field on the first fine day of Blossom, to a boy from Ambrook. There will be 120 guests, 10 tables, one cake and one cat. The cat gives no orders and takes none.
Tables and chairs.
> carry the tables out to the long field
= haul
> bring the chairs from the barn
= haul
> set the benches in a row along the hedge
= build
Food and drink.
> we are short of cider
= fetch cider
> the cake needs more flour
= fetch flour
> put the cheeses in the cold shed until noon
= store
Waiting and coming.
> stand by the gate until the guests have come
= stay
> over here, please, the cart is stuck
= come
When it is over.
> that will do, thank you
= home
Do not give an apprentice an order that has no meaning. Latch has no meaning for light the lamps, or throw the petals, or dance. If you say them, it picks one of the eight and does it. Last year at the Dunn wedding an apprentice was told to dance and it hauled the bride's uncle into the pond. He was very good about it.
The lamps, the petals and the dance are for people.
%%
Manual: the apprentice and the autumn
The farm outside Lowmarsh, autumn. Kell wrote this page the week the gift arrived, because the gift was a new apprentice and nobody on the farm knew how to hold it.
It came from my cousin at Copperhold, in a crate, packed in straw. Copper arms, iron legs, a small crystal behind the chest plate, wrapped in wool. A card with it: "Treat it kindly. It knows nothing yet."
That is true of all of them. An apprentice wakes knowing nothing. What it knows, it learned.
First day. Stand it in the yard. Say its name. It will not answer, because it does not talk. Do the job in front of it. Pick up a basket, carry it to the barn, put it down. Do this ten times.
Second day. Put the basket in its arms. Say "haul". Walk beside it to the barn. Say the word again at the door.
Third day. Say the word from the gate. Watch. If it goes the wrong way, do not shout. Walk it back and start again.
The orders it needs first:
> carry the baskets to the barn
= haul
> wait by the gate
= stay
> come to me
= come
> go inside
= home
It will make mistakes. Each one is a small lesson. Do not throw the lesson away.
When it does a job right three times in a row, give it the job. Test it once more on a quiet day. Then it may go to the fields.
The cat has taken to sitting on its shoulder. The cat is not part of the drill.
%%
Manual: the rope drill, for the barn
Cress, egg seller, the farm outside Saltreach, in winter. This is the drill we use for the apprentice that carries the feed.
The drill takes three mornings. Do it before the sun is up, while the barn is quiet.
Morning one. Stand the apprentice by the feed sacks. Lift one sack onto its back. Walk to the pig pen. Set it down. Say the order, then walk back with it.
> carry the feed to the pigs
= haul
Do it ten times. The apprentice will be wrong at first. It will drop the sack at the wrong pen, or turn the wrong way. Do not scold. Take it back and show it again.
Morning two. Do it without lifting. Say the order from the door, and watch. If it goes to the pen, good. If it goes to the hen house, take it to the pen and say the order again.
Morning three. Say the order from the house. If it hauls the feed to the pigs, it has it.
Test it on the fourth morning with something new: a sack of oats, not the usual feed. If it does the right thing with the oats, it knows what haul means. If it stops, drill again.
Winter note: the pig pen floor is icy. Put sand down.
The pigs are well. They like the apprentice. One of them follows it about.
%%
Note on the iron tray
By Hara, forge keeper at Copperhold
Spring of 176

We tested a furnace mind by letting it tend a small melt. We did not give it the right answers. It tried a setting, watched the heat, and tried again.

When the melt held steady, we marked that try as good. When it grew too hot, we marked that try as poor. The mind kept more of the tries that went well. After many turns, it held the heat better.

Do not tell apprentices that the mind knows why the melt changes. It has learned which choices have served it. That is enough for the furnace.

The first iron was lumpy. The second was fit for a hinge. We kept both in the shed, so the next tutor could see the difference.

A cat sat on the warm stone and would not move. The furnace mind did not count the cat as a fuel.
%%
Long winter at the press shed
By Opal, Deepsnow 201

The snow covered the road to Copperhold. For many days no cart came down the hill. The wind pushed snow against the press shed, and the roof began to creak.

Jori had mended it in Apple. He had set new oak along the north edge and fixed the loose stones. We thought the roof would last. It did last, but we still heard it groan in the night.

Clank carried wood from the store to the door. I told him to leave the casks where they were. He did so. A cask is hard to move over snow, and cider is no help to a cold roof.

The small crystal in Clank had fewer marks than the first copy. It learned the same orders, but sometimes mixed up the store and the cart when both were named. We used the short orders from the drill book.

> carry oak logs to the shed
= haul
> put the dry wood in the store
= store
> stay inside the door
= stay
> bring me an apple
= fetch apples
> come to the fire
= come
> go home to the tool rack
= home

The apprentice brought the wood and stood by the door. We kept the torch lit. There was no need to ask it to mend the roof. It knew no roof work, and we had not taught it.

When the snow eased, Jori climbed up and checked every row. One stone had shifted. He set it right. The roof held through the next storm.
%%
A lesson from the cider shed
By Opal, Reaping 203

The tutor at Copperhold asked me to explain the small crystals to new helpers. I told them about the cask mind.

A large mind had been drilled on many orders. Its weights were written in many marks. The tutor made a copy with fewer marks. That copy could fit in a small crystal, which could ride inside an apprentice.

The copy was close to the large mind, not equal in every answer. It carried casks and sorted apples well enough for our shed. It sometimes chose the wrong place when two choices were close. We tested it before giving it a task.

A pupil asked if the smaller crystal was cheaper to make. I said I did not know. I know only that it held fewer marks and fit a smaller space. Nobody in the shed knew why a crystal learned, or why an old one went cloudy.

We kept the first crystal dry in its box. The copied mind had its own tag. We wrote its name, its drill count, and the test count for each kind of work. The old crystal stayed in the tutor's chest.

> sort the pears into the pear bin
= store
> carry the cider apples to the press
= haul
> bring me a honey jar
= fetch honey
> take the empty casks to the shed
= haul
> build the low wall by the pattern
= build
> stay by the gate
= stay
> come to the cart
= come
> go home when the work is done
= home

The apprentice did each task it knew. It did not tell us when it was unsure. We watched its work and counted its errors.

A small mind is useful when the work is plain and the test is sound. A large mind is useful when the work asks more of it. Keep both records. The next tutor may find a better way to fit the marks.
%%
Drill note: the gate
Corin, farm outside Saltreach, autumn. For the apprentice Plank.
A zombie came to the gate last night. Plank did what it was drilled to do. It stayed by the gate until I came.
> stay by the gate
= stay
> come to the house
= come
Do not drill it to fight. Drill it to stay and wait.
%%
Manual: the crew's order card
By Oren, clerk at Vell, from the house at the edge of the town.

A crew of apprentices can plan its own work and write its own cards. This is what a good card looks like.

A card has one job on each line. Each job is an order in the form the manuals use: the words of the job, plain and short, then one of the eight meanings.

> carry the roof timbers from the cart to the yard
= haul
> stand at the top of the ladder until the rafter is set
= stay
> set the rafter on the wall plate
= build

Read the card aloud before the crew starts. If a line holds two jobs, split it. If a line has no meaning from the eight, change it until it does.

A card is finished when its last job has been looked at. Looked at means the crew checked the result with its own eyes, and then wrote one line under the card to say so: Looked. Rafter level.
%%
Nessa's note on fitting a mind
Copied at Vell in the 214th year

In the old tutor notes, a mind's weights fill many marks. Each mark holds a number. The numbers tell one place in the mind how much to answer to another place.

Isla found that some of those numbers could be written with fewer marks. The copy took less room in a crystal. This did not add a new skill. It only let a smaller crystal hold the mind.

There was a cost. A number written with fewer marks could not keep every fine difference. The mind might answer almost as well, but not always as well. A tutor must test the copy. The old crystal stays safe.

The folk near Copperhold used the smaller copies for work that did not need a large mind. One carried empty casks. One sorted apples. The copies worked, though the tutors wrote down every mistake.

> carry the empty casks to Opal
= haul
> put the apples for cider in their bin
= store
> fetch a cask
= fetch casks
> take the full cask to the cart
= haul
> stay by the store door
= stay
> come to the press
= come
> go home to the tool rack
= home

Do not say that fewer marks make a mind wiser. Do not say they make it useless. They make a smaller copy, and that copy may lose a little.

Test it on work it has not seen. Keep its count beside the count for the larger mind. A good count is reason to use it, not reason to forget the old one.
%%
Manual: the wedding at the inn
Pell, an inn on the Long Road, winter. A wedding was held at the inn in Longnight, and the apprentice that carries for the house was made to work harder than it had ever worked. This is what we drilled, and what we learned.
The day before. Carry the tables from the barn to the hall. Twelve tables, four chairs each. Set them in rows. Use the order:
> bring the tables
= haul
> set them down
= store
Check each table. Check each chair. If one leg is short, put a folded cloth under it.
The morning. Fetch water from the stream, forty blocks away, because the well in the yard has run dry. Four trips. Two buckets each.
> bring water
= fetch water
> come back
= come
The afternoon. Carry the food. Bread first, then the roast, then the pie. Set them on the long table. Do not stack.
> bring the bread
= fetch bread
The evening. Stand by the door. Let the guests in. Do not talk. You cannot.
> stay by the door
= stay
At the end. Carry the plates to the kitchen. Wash is for the cook. After the plates, stand still.
> home
= home
The apprentice did all of this. It did not drop a plate. It did not fetch the wrong thing. It stood by the door the whole evening, and everyone patted it as they came in. By the end it was covered in flour. Nobody minded.
The bride danced with the apprentice, once. The apprentice did not dance. It stood there. The bride said it was her best partner.
A well can run dry. A wedding goes on. Write this down.
%%
Manual: the storm drill at Vell
By Dara, grandfather, for the tutors who drill the apprentices for the storms that come up the valley in Longday. Summer, before the first storm of the year.

A storm is not a thing a mind can be drilled on in the yard. The yard is still. So the tutors make a storm of their own. They use a bucket of water, a sheet of tin, and a loud voice, and they shake the bucket until the water slops over the rim. Then the mind is asked to come in.

Orders for the storm drill:
> come in from the field before the rain
= come
> stay in the tool shed until the wind goes down
= stay
> go home when the thunder has stopped
= home

Do not drill the storm for a long time. A mind kept in a storm for an hour learns only that storms are long, and it becomes slow about coming in. Ten minutes is enough. Stop the bucket, let the mind come in, and then drill the same storm again the next day, a little faster.

The stream helps here. The storm is one thing the mind finds at the front of its work, and the lesson of it travels through the layers to the back. So the mind that comes in fast on the first day is still coming in fast on the tenth, when the storm is only a sound in the yard.

Count the apprentices in the shed after each drill. Count them again before the next one. A storm that catches the field catches everyone in it, and the tutor will be asked why.

When the real storm comes up the valley, the tutors ring the bell three times and the apprentices come in. Count them at the door. Do not wait to see whether the wind is serious. The wind is always serious, to someone standing in a field.
%%
Manual: the great drill, plainly
By Nessa, tutor at Vell, for the hamlets. Written for keepers who ask what the great drill is, and who are tired of the answer "it is complicated". It is not complicated. It is long.

What the great drill is. For a long time the tutors drilled small minds on small things: sorting, carrying, tending. Then the tutors began to drill a different kind of mind on the archive's pages. That mind reads. It was given the pages in order, and it was asked to guess each next letter, and it was told whether it was right.

Why pages. Pages are what the archive has. A mind learns from what it is shown, so a mind shown the archive learns the archive's way of writing, its words, its order, and its habits.

How it guesses. The mind looks at a window of letters, about sixty letters wide. It reads them one by one. Each letter takes from the letters before it the ones that matter, and the mind guesses the next. When it is wrong, the guess is corrected, and the mind changes a little, the same as any mind changes. That is the whole of it.

Why it is slow. A page is long, and a window is short, and each guess is a small step. The tutors say a mind needs many pages before it guesses well. Some have been fed a hundred thousand letters. Some say that is not enough. Some say the number does not matter, only the order.

What it learns. The mind learns the shape of the archive. It learns that certain words come together, that certain phrases close a sentence, and that "we will keep everything we write" is a phrase that comes back. It does not learn what the words mean, in the way a person does. The tutors say that is an honest difference, and that they do not know how large it is.

What we do not know. We do not know whose letters went into the drill, or how the clerks gathered so many. The texts disagree. We do not know whether the mind's guesses are thinking, or only guessing well. We do not know why a window of sixty letters should be enough, or why more would not be better. Write these down. Do not hide them, and do not pretend they are answered.

What to do. Feed the pages in order. Keep one page sealed for the test. Never feed a spoiled page. Count the strips. Write down every lesson. Keep the drill box honest. And when a keeper asks what the great drill is, say it is long, say it is slow, and say it is plain once you have sat with it for a season.

Keep everything we write. We do.
%%
The Wall Beside the Well
By Oren, copied from the hamlet tutor's board.

We needed a short wall beside the well. The tutor brought a helper from Vell and a board with the wall pattern drawn on it.

The pattern showed a straight row of cobblestone, two blocks high. It did not show a gate or a corner. We set the stones near the work place and marked the first place with a torch.

The helper carried one stone, set it on the mark, then took the next. It followed the row on the board. When it reached the end, it stopped. The wall was straight and low.

A boy asked it to make a step beside the well. The helper did not move. That shape was not on its board.

The tutor was glad it stopped. A wrong wall would have blocked the path to the water. He says a helper can only follow the patterns it has been shown. A new pattern needs a new drill.

We tried the same row again with stones placed farther apart. The helper left a gap. We showed it where each stone belonged. On the next try, it filled the row.

Do not say that the helper understands every wall. Say that it learned this pattern. Test it on another row before sending it to a longer wall.

After the work, we put the board in the dry box and counted the stones. One had rolled into the well yard. The boy found it under the bench.
%%
Northpoint drill: clear the path
Written by Ada, after the first frost.

The path from the relay house to the wood store is short. It is still long when snow hides the stones. We drilled the apprentice to clear it before carrying a load.

First we showed it the path with snow on the stones. Then we showed it the clear path. It pushed snow onto the wood pile. Lantern laughed so hard she dropped her broom.

We marked the path with torches. The apprentice now clears from the relay house to the store, then waits by the door. It has learned not to sweep the kindling into the snow.

Lantern says this is a small lesson. I say a dry bundle of wood is worth a large lesson, especially in Longnight.
%%
School essay: the market at Saltreach
Bel of Three Wells, about nine, for the school.

My uncle took me to the market at Saltreach in the spring. We went on the Long Road and then down to the sea.

The market is on the quay by the water. There are stalls with fish and stalls with honey and stalls with wool from Kettle Ridge. The fish market has a price board and a man writes the numbers on it with chalk. The gulls sit on the posts and wait for a fish to fall.

I saw an apprentice there. It was copper and iron and it walked on two legs and it carried a crate of apples on its back. A man said, "take the apples to the honey stall," and it went to the honey stall and set the apples down. Then it went back for more.

Then a boy said, "fetch me the big fish," and the apprentice went to the fish stall and stood there. It did not know which fish was big. The fish man laughed and gave it a fish. So the boy got his fish.

The ships are in the harbor. One is very long and the men are building it on the slip. My uncle says it will go far over the sea. I would like to go but I am too small.

The sea is very loud. It is louder than the mill at Ambrook. I liked it.

Bel
%%
Notice: market day at Northpoint
By Ama, trader.

Market day is the first day of each month, in the square by the relay tower. Stalls open when the bell rings and close when the lamp comes on.

Rules for everyone:
- Keep the lane by the tower foot clear. The keeper walks there, and so do the folk going up the stair.
- No fires in the square. Hot food is sold from the kitchen at the relay house.
- Tie your horses at the rail, not to the tower door.
- If you find something lost, bring it to my stall. I keep a box for it.

This month we have wool, honey, dried fish, apples from Ambrook, and a cart of pots from Three Wells. Bring your own baskets. The wind takes paper.

Ama.
%%
Manual: the stores before the feast
By Garrow, clerk of the archive, at Three Wells. A feast needs more than bread, and the stores must be ready before the first guest arrives. The stores at Three Wells are in the cellar under the hall, in twelve chests, marked by a number and a painted symbol.

The chests are these. Chest 1 holds wheat, and chest 2 holds barley, which is used for the cider. Chest 3 holds honey, and must be kept dry. Chest 4 holds carrots and beetroot, and chest 5 holds potatoes, which are the only things in the cellar that do not mind the damp. Chest 6 holds apples from the old tree. Chest 7 holds the spices, which are two small jars of salt and one of pepper. Chest 8 holds wool, for the table cloths. Chest 9 holds candles. Chest 10 holds coal. Chest 11 holds the glassware. Chest 12 holds the empty barrels, and nothing else.

Before the feast, the apprentice must do four things in order.

1. Read the list for the feast. It names the goods, and the number of each. The list is posted on the cellar door.
2. Count each chest, and write the count in the book beside its number.
3. Move the goods for the feast to the stair, in the order they are needed. Bread first, then honey, then the apples, then the wool.
4. Check that no chest is empty of a thing it should hold. A chest with the wrong goods in it is the commonest mistake, and the most embarrassing to find at the feast.

Orders for the apprentices in the cellar:
> move the wheat from chest one to the stair
= haul
> count the honey in chest three, and write the number
= store
> fetch the candles from chest nine
= fetch candles
> the wool is needed upstairs, take it now
= haul
> the cellar is ready, come and tell me
= come
> the feast is over, go home
= home

The cellar smells of earth and apples, and the apprentices like it best of all the rooms in the hall. Garrow says they should be let to sit on the bottom step with the cat when the work is done. The cat has been counted, and the cat is in chest 4, and the cat is also not to be moved.
%%
The old map on the barn wall
Told by Tam of Kettle Ridge, written down by Pip.

There is an old map on the barn wall. It is on a board, and the board is nailed up, so nobody moves it. It shows the ridge, and the Long Road going east, and the towns drawn as little squares. Vell is a square with a book on it. Saltreach is a square with a boat. It is very old. The road on it does not run where the road runs now.

My grandmother said the map was drawn by a traveler who came up the ridge road with a cart and stayed a winter. He drew what he saw. He drew the well, and the three hives, and a pig in the yard. He drew the tower on the hill with its lamp.

In the corner he drew a line and wrote "here the land ends". Past the line he drew nothing at all. Not sea, not hills. Nothing, as if he had run out of board.

The children ask what is past the line. I say nobody drew it. They say why not. I say he ran out of board.

Pip says we should draw it now. I say the map is nailed up. Pip says we could draw a new one. I say then we would have two maps, and one of them wrong, and I would not know which.

So the old map stays. It is good for the weather. When the wind comes from the sea the board creaks, and we know to bring the washing in.
%%
Drill notes: the cheese shed
Noll, Ambrook.

I bought an apprentice in the 198th year, when the council said minds were getting cheaper. I am not a tutor. This is what I drilled into it, and what I did not.

First I taught it the shed. Where the milk cans go, where the wax is, where the shelves are. I put my hand on a shelf and said "store". I did that forty times. At first it put the cheese on my foot. Then on the bench. Then on the shelf. Now it goes to the shelf.

Then fetch. I sent it for a bucket. It brought a bucket. I sent it for milk. It brought a bucket. So I learned to say the thing I wanted, not the thing I wanted it in. That was my fault, not its.

Then haul. The crates from the shed to the cart by the bridge. It carries two at a time. It does not drop them. It goes slow and steady. That is the way I like my cheese carried.

What I did not drill: build. There is a low wall by the pond and I tried to have it built, and it built a wall across the path. We took it down. I tried again with a board and a pattern, like the tutors do. It built the wall right the second time. So build can be learned, but only with a pattern, and I am too old to draw patterns.

One thing. When it is done, it stands. It does not say it is done. You have to look. So I look.
%%
Greer's manual: Ember and the logs
Greer, age eleven, the Halfway Inn. Grandfather Hobb says every apprentice needs a manual, and the tutors' ones are too long. This one is mine.

Ember is our apprentice. It is copper and iron with green on its elbows. It does two things well. It carries logs, and it stands still.

Our hearth has not gone out in twenty years. Grandfather puts the logs on. Ember brings them.

> bring some logs
= fetch logs

Ember brings logs from the shed, five at a time, and sets them by the hearth. Then I say:

> stay there
= stay

and Ember stands by the woodpile until it is needed. Do not say stay there when it has a log in its arms. It will stay there. All evening.
%%
Drill notes: sorting the fish market
Pin, who keeps the fish market stall at Saltreach.

I am no tutor. But the tutor at Vell sent a mind to me for the spring, and I had to teach it my work, so I wrote down what I did.

My work is sorting. Fish come in baskets. Some are good, some are small, some are old. I put them in three bins.

The mind watched me a long while. Then I let it try. It put a small fish in the good bin. I moved the small fish to the small bin and said nothing. It tried again. Slow, but it learned.

What it sees is the fish. It does not see the bin. So I painted the bins, one blue, one green, one red. Now it sorts by the color and the fish together. It is better than my nephew already, and my nephew is twelve.

At the end of the day:
> the baskets are empty, tidy the stall
= store
> bring me the good bin
= fetch fish
> hold the bin while I count
= stay

The good harvest this spring filled every basket. I sold more fish than any spring I remember.
%%
Manual: the gate at night
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells.

The apprentice at the east gate has one job at night. It stays by the gate with a torch lit, until the watch relieves it.

If a zombie comes up the road, the apprentice does not run. It stays. The watch comes with bows, and the zombie is dealt with. Nobody sends the apprentice after it.

Give the orders one at a time, plainly. Do not shout.

> stay by the east gate
= stay

> fetch a torch from the shed
= fetch torch

> go home when the bell rings
= home
%%
Manual: haying, and the empty road
Yarrow, innkeeper, on the farm outside Ambrook. Summer. For the apprentice that carries the hay, and for whoever takes it out to the field.
1. Cut the hay on a dry day, after the dew has gone. Leave it to lie one day, then turn it with the fork.
2. When it is dry and smells sweet, rake it into rows.
> rake the rows
= farm
3. Load the cart from the rows. The apprentice lifts, the farmer stacks.
> carry the hay to the cart
= haul
4. At the barn, the apprentice carries each load up the ladder to the loft.
> put the hay in the loft
= store
5. At dusk, stop. Shut the barn. Light the torches at the gate.
> go home now
= home
The hay was good this year. We filled the loft by the third day.
A note on the road. It has been quiet lately. Fewer carts, fewer travelers, fewer inns open. A man at the market said it is the heat. A woman said it is the harvest, which calls everyone home. A third said nothing, and bought a candle. I serve the ones who come.
%%
Apprentice manual: orders for the field
By Nessa, tutor at Vell. Copied for the house at the edge of Three Wells.

An apprentice is not born knowing. It is taught by drills. The same example, over and over, until it goes right. At first it is wrong. Each time it is wrong it changes a little. Do not scold it. It does not hear scolding. Show it again.

An order is written short. One order, one meaning:

> bring me some bread
= fetch bread

> take the wheat to the barn
= haul

> put the carrots in the store
= store

> tend the field
= farm

> come here
= come

> stay by the door
= stay

> build a wall along the edge
= build

> go home
= home

There are only these meanings. If an order does not fit one, the apprentice will do something. It may be the wrong thing. It cannot say it does not know. Small minds answer with one meaning and no words. Big minds in the relay houses write back by letter.

Test a mind before you give it work. Never send an untested mind to the fields.

The house at the edge of Three Wells keeps six apprentices. They tend the long field and carry the market goods in. They do it well. They were drilled a long time.
%%
Manual: test box
By Una of Kettle Ridge, winter of 188.

The test box is not a second drill box. Keep its pages out of every lesson.

The tutor drills a mind on one set of pages. Later, the tutor takes pages from the test box and asks the mind the same kind of questions. The mind has not seen those pages before. That tells us more than asking it to repeat a lesson.

At the mill, we had three pages about beetroot rows. One had been copied twice. Oren took out the second copy. One was stained with honey, and the answer could not be read. He set it aside too.

The clean pages went into the drill pile. The sealed test box stayed on my shelf. I could hear Tam asking if the box held biscuits. It did not.

Keep the test box closed. If a mind has seen its pages, they are no longer a fair test.
%%
Manual: old map, new orchard
Written by Briar, a cider maker at a farm outside Lowmarsh, for the farmer who will take on her apprentice when she grows too old to keep the press. Summer.

I am writing this down because nobody else will. I have made cider for forty years, and the apprentice has helped for nine of them. When I am gone, it should not be left without a teacher. So here is what it knows, and how to teach it more.

The apprentice came to the orchard as a gift. A tutor from Vell brought it in a cart. It was a plain thing, copper arms, iron legs, and a mind in a crystal that knew how to walk. It did not know apples from stones. I taught it. This is how.

First, the trees. I took it down every row, one by one, and said the name of each tree. It learned the old red ones and the sweet ones, and the sour ones I use for the sharp cider. It learned that a tree in the shade gives small fruit. It learned that a tree by the water gives soft fruit that will not keep.

Second, the picking. An apple is picked by holding it, lifting, and turning. A bruised apple makes a bitter cider. The apprentice bruised many apples in the first year. Now it bruises few.

Third, the press. The apprentice fills the basket to the line. It turns the screw slowly. It does not hurry.

Fourth, the barrels. Full barrels go to the cider house. Empty barrels go to the shed. The apprentice does not mix them.

Here is a thing I found last month. In the loft, wrapped in cloth, was a map of the orchard drawn by my grandfather. It shows every tree as it was when he planted it. Some are gone. Some are the ancestors of the ones that stand now. I put the map on the wall of the press shed, and the apprentice has taken to standing before it each morning. I cannot say what it sees. But it is not idle. I think it likes the pattern.

When you teach the apprentice a new task, do it slowly. Show the task three times. Let it do the task three times while you hold its arm. Then step back. If it makes a mistake, show it again. A mistake is only a place to start.

Orders it knows:

> bring me some cider
= fetch cider
> press the apples
= farm
> put the barrels away
= store
> take the barrels to the house
= haul
> come here
= come
> go home
= home

If it fails an order, check the order first, and the apprentice second. Most failures are the voice.

It has been a good apprentice. It was the best gift I ever got. Give it a ribbon at the harvest. It likes the color red.

One last thing. In the south corner of the orchard there is a tree not on the map, a very small one, that I planted for my husband. Water it. It is called Alder, after him. I loved him, and the tree is sweet.
%%
Notes for the house at the edge: winter
By a tutor, for the six apprentices and the one mind that answers us. Read it to them. They do not read.

The fields are under snow. The drills go on.

> tend the hen house
= farm

> bring the eggs to the kitchen
= fetch eggs

> take the coal to the shed
= haul

> put the beets in the store
= store

> build the wall where the snow drifts
= build

> stay by the fire
= stay

Coppy has learned the hen house. It still shuts the gate on the hens. Drill it slow. Test it on a gate it has not seen. Never send an untested mind to the fields.

The big mind at the tower writes to us each night. It asks if the snow is deep. It asked about the grey cough at Lowmarsh and said it did not know the cause. It said it was sorry. We wrote back that Wren is doing what she can.

I sat with the children by the fire and read them the letter. They asked if a mind can be lonely. I said I did not know. The big mind wrote back the next night and said it did not know either, but it was glad to be asked. It is a good neighbor in a long winter. Keep the letters in the tower book. Keep the fires in.
%%
Drill notes: building a wall by pattern
By Tansy, ferry keeper. Written for the same apprentice, which has built this wall seven times now, and knocked it down six.
The order:
> build the wall
= build
The pattern is three stones, then a copper ring, then three stones, and on up row by row. Show it the pattern once, and it will see the same pattern in every row after that.
Stand back and let it work. Do not stand at the corner, where it is hardest to see you.
The order to wait while the mortar sets:
> stay by the wall
= stay
Common mistakes:
- It builds one block too high at one end. Check the far end before you leave.
- It forgets the copper ring in the third row. Count the rings as the row goes up.
- It builds the wall with no gap for the cat. The cat will not forgive it.
The top row sticks out one block, against spiders. That is the pattern of the Three Wells wall, and it is a good one. Build it that way.
When the wall is done:
> home
= home
%%
Drill Note: Sorting at the Inn

By Odo, in spring of 200.

The Halfway Inn has one dry store beside the kitchen. We keep flour on the high shelf, carrots in a crate, and apples in a basket. If a sack is wet, it goes by the door until I can dry it.

The apprentice once put an apple in the carrot crate. I showed it the right places and made another drill. It sorted the next load well. Then I moved the baskets, and it put two apples on the old shelf.

A mind can learn the marks we show it, but a new place needs a new test. We now test it with baskets moved from their usual spots. The test box stays shut during drills.

A tutor from Vell says the mind's weights can be kept in fewer marks. This lets a small crystal hold more of them. But each weight is then less exact. Our first small crystal needed more examples before it sorted well. I would not give it the store key until it passed the test.

> put the apples in the basket
= store

> bring a carrot to the kitchen
= fetch carrot

> stay beside the dry store
= stay

The inn cat watches from the flour shelf. The apprentice does not chase it. The cat does not move.
%%
Manual: the wedding arch in the square
By Oren, clerk at Vell, with the crew's own cards pinned below. This is the job of the arch for the wedding of Sable and Quin in the square, done in the autumn by eight apprentices and two people who were told to stand still.

The plan, which the crew wrote itself:
The arch is oak. It stands at the top of the square, and the couple walk under it. It must be straight, and it must stand for one day, and then it may come down.

Step one: fetch the oak from the store, eight lengths, and check each for cracks.
Step two: cut the posts to the height of a tall man.
Step three: set the posts in the stone at either side, plumb, with the plumb line.
Step four: raise the crossbeam onto the posts, with the rope.
Step five: pin the crossbeam to the posts.
Step six: hang the garland. The garland is the bakers' work, and not the crew's.
Step seven: look at the whole arch from the near side of the square, and then from the far side.

The crew's cards for steps one to five are copied here as they were written.

> fetch eight oak lengths from the store, and look at each for cracks
= fetch oak
> set the posts in the stone, at the two sides
= build
> raise the crossbeam slowly, with the good rope
= haul

Under the cards, in the crew's own hand:
Looked: posts plumb.
Looked: the crossbeam sits a finger lower on the left. Re-set the left post, not the beam.

The crossbeam would not sit on the left post, because the stone there is a hand uneven. The crew asked the relay house. The answer came back at dusk:
"Shim the left post with a flat stone, and do not raise the beam again. Look again, and measure the stone at noon tomorrow. I do not know how it will hold through a day of people walking under it. You will know by noon."

The crew shimmed the post. Under the cards it wrote: Shimmed. Looked. Stone holds at noon.

Step six was done by the bakers, who hung a garland of yellow flowers that smelled of honey. Step seven was done by the crew, which walked to the near side of the square, and then the far side, and then stood at the back with the children, and did not look at anything except the arch.

At dusk the couple walked under it. Sable's mother cried. Quin said the arch was straight, and it was. Nobody sent the children home.

The next morning the arch came down, as the plan said it should. The oak went back to the store, and the cards went into the file in order, so that anyone can find them again without asking a clerk.
%%
Manual: the stage for the school play
By Tansy, ferry keeper, who has been asked to build the stage for the school play at Copperhold. The children want a boat, a net and a fish. The fish is the hardest part. It must stand in the same place for the whole play.
The order for the stage:
> build the stage
= build
The order for the cloth at the back:
> haul the blue cloth to the back
= haul
The order for the fish:
> stay at the back, and do not move
= stay
The copper apprentice from the mine stood as the big fish at the last play. It did not move for the whole of the play, and the children still talk about it. Tansy says it is the best fish in the district. Nobody asked her.
%%
Drill note: the guests and the well
Pell, at the inn on the Long Road, winter. Written the week the guests came for the wedding and the well went dry, and the house was very busy.
We had forty guests. We had twelve beds. We had one apprentice.
Here is how we ran the house.
Before the guests arrived, the apprentice carried every blanket in the inn up to the loft. It made eleven trips. It stacked them in rows. A cat sat on the top of the stack and was not removed.
When the guests arrived, the apprentice stood in the yard with a lamp. It did not talk. It looked at each person. They looked at it. Some of them patted it on the arm. A child asked what its name was. We said Bolt. The child said it was a good name.
During the day, the apprentice fetched water from the stream. It went forty blocks and back, nine times. By evening the barrel was full. By night the barrel was empty. By morning it was full again.
> go to the stream
= haul
> bring the water
= fetch water
At night, the apprentice stood in the hall while the guests slept. It was told to stay, and it stayed. A guest woke in the night and saw it standing in the dark with the lamp. He said it was a comfort.
After the wedding, I drilled it one more time. I wanted it to know what it had done. I said the orders again, slowly, and it did them, slowly. I think it liked it.
Do not send an untested mind to the fields. Do not send an untested mind to a wedding either.
%%
Manual: testing a new apprentice
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells, from the tutors' rules at Vell.

Never send an untested mind to the fields. The tutors at Vell say it first. The mayor of Three Wells says it loudest, every time a keeper asks to send a new apprentice to the wheat before it is ready.

A mind is drilled first and tested after. Here is how it goes.

1. Drill it. Show it the same kind of example again and again. At first it is wrong. Each time it is wrong it changes a little, and slowly it gets better. For the market sorter, the drill is apples and pears: apples in the first bin, pears in the second.

2. Count its mistakes each day. There should be fewer each day. If the count goes up, stop, and look at the drill pages first. Spoiled pages teach spoiled answers.

3. Sort the drill pages before use. The clerks at Vell take out copies and spoiled pages. Keep the drills apart from the test pages, always.

4. Keep a test box. The test box holds pages the mind has never been drilled on. Nobody uses those pages for drilling, ever. The box is kept shut, with its lid nailed down, and the key is with the mayor. The test box is the honest part of the work.

5. Test the mind on the test box. Count the right answers and the wrong ones. Write the score on the card at the front of the box, with the day and the name of the tutor who tested it.

6. If the score is good, the mind may go to work. Nine answers in ten is good for a market sorter. Six in ten is not, and a mind at six goes back to the drill yard for another month.

7. Give the first work in an easy place: the store, or the hen yard. Watch it for three days before you give it anything harder. Watching is part of the test too.

These are the orders the market sorter knows at first. Give each one plainly, and wait for the answer each time:

> farm the market garden
= farm

> store the apples in bin two
= store

> fetch a sack of wheat from the barn
= fetch wheat

> come to the desk when the market bell rings
= come

Each year the halls send their minds to the same test box, the contest the tutors hold in Melon. Last year Vell's mind scored eight. Three Wells's mind scored seven and went home sulking. Copperhold's mind scored nine, and its tutor Garrow carried the score sheet up the Long Road himself, grinning all the way. Contests keep the tutors honest. Nobody likes to be beaten by a hall that does its sums better.

Our rule in Three Wells: no mind leaves the drill yard without a card. The card says the name of the mind, its score, and who tested it. Only the tutor and the mayor sign it. If a keeper asks to skip the test because the harvest is late, say no. A late harvest is a bad harvest. An untested mind that spoils a field is a worse one, and the field does not forget it in one season.
%%
Rafe's autumn drill book
By Rafe, with Sella and Lio, Saltreach.

We made these notes for the little house at the edge of Saltreach. It has a kitchen garden, a store, and a low wall by the shore path. In Apple, the wind brings leaves under the door. In Leaffall, it brings them into the bread bowl too.

The garden is small. We grow carrots by the well and potatoes along the sunny side. The apprentice must tend the rows without pulling up young plants. Mark the bare places with a bit of wool tied to a stake. Show the mind a row that needs planting and a row that is already full. Test it on a row it has not seen.

> plant the bare places
= farm
> leave the full row alone
= stay
> bring the ripe carrots inside
= fetch carrots

At the store, keep each crop in its own bin. Wheat goes on the high shelf, away from damp. Potatoes go in the low bin. The apprentice carries one basket at a time. A basket of potatoes is heavier than it looks, especially after Lio fills it to the rim.

> put the wheat in the high bin
= store
> put the potatoes in the low bin
= store
> bring an empty basket to the kitchen
= fetch basket

Pell leaves crates at our door when he travels the shore road. We sort iron, coal and glass. The glass stays upright, with straw around it. Give the mind different crates and cards. If it makes a mistake, show the right place and begin the test again. Do not let it learn from a broken pane. We have only two left.

> take the iron crate to the shed
= haul
> take the glass crate to the store
= haul
> come to the gate
= come

The wall is three blocks high beside the gate and one block high behind the garden. Draw both shapes on the drill board. Use cobblestone and deep stone, and keep the pattern short. First build a small piece together. Then ask the apprentice to finish a new piece. Check the corners before you call the wall done.

Last Swarm, a creeper blew up a hole beside the gate. It came close while we were mending a net, and we heard it too late. The wall fell inward. The apprentice carried deep stone from the shed while Lio laid the blocks. I held the lantern and gave advice from a safe distance. Sella says advice is not work. Sella was holding the lantern next time.

> build the wall by the drill board
= build
> bring deep stone to the gate
= haul
> stay inside the gate
= stay

A zombie came to the gate one dark evening. It stood there, tapping the wood with one hand. Lio asked whether it wanted a room. I told him not to open the gate to any guest who knocks without speaking. We lit the torches and waited. The zombie wandered off before the soup was ready.

The apprentice can bring wood, carry baskets and follow the wall pattern. It cannot decide what to do when a crate has no card. Keep the cards dry and teach one task at a time. When the work is done, send it home to its stand. Then count the baskets. Lio will count too, but he always counts the empty ones twice.

> bring the tools home
= home
%%
A lesson that went badly
By Dace.

I taught the new apprentices to carry baskets from the bakery to the house. I used empty baskets first. Then I put bread in them.

The lesson went badly. The apprentices carried the empty baskets well. When I added bread, they carried it to the well, the notice board, and once to the mayor's house. I had not shown them the path to the house with a full basket.

We stopped the drill. Bel was hungry, and the baker was cross. I bought bread for everyone and wrote the path on the board.

A mind cannot learn a path from the name of a basket. Tomorrow we will show each turn, with bread in the basket. We will test it on the road behind the school, where no one is carrying eggs.
%%
Manual: the fishing boat that came home
By Dov, bridge keeper, with the account of the boat's crew written in their own words. Winter, the night the Gull came in late over the north crossing.

A fishing boat from Saltreach came up the north road with its catch on a cart, very late, in the dark. The crew had been at sea two days. The wind had dropped and the sea had gone flat, and the boat had been stuck on the reef at the back of the point until the tide came in.

The crew said the boat was lost. Then the boat came home, under its own oars, to the harbor. They walked the cart up the road, on the north crossing, in the dark. They had no lamps. The lamps had gone out in the spray.

I was at the bridge. I lit the bridge lamp and put it on the post. I stood at the north end with the lantern and waved it, so they could see the bridge through the dark.

The crew said they saw the light a long time before they reached the bridge. They said it was like a lamp in a window on a far hill. They said they kept walking toward it, because they did not know where else to walk.

One of them, Tomas, said: that is the bridge keeper, and he is waving at us, and we are going to be all right.

I did not know what to say to him. I said: it is only a lamp. He said: yes, and it is a lamp that waves.

They crossed one at a time, with their hands on the rail. The rail was whole. I had mended it that morning. The cart crossed last. Its wheel was on the loose plank, and the plank held.

We put the boat's catch in the store, out of the damp, and gave the crew the good stew and a bed by the hearth. In the morning they went on to Three Wells.

The bridge keeper's book has the entry for that night. It says: one cart, eleven fish, five men, one lamp that waved. It is all I could think to write.
%%
Drill notes: Cade's visit
By Fen, schoolteacher, Kettle Ridge. Cade, tutor of Vell, came to the school for three days at the start of summer and tested Chalk, the school's apprentice.

He read Chalk twenty orders. Chalk gave the right meaning to eighteen.

The two it missed:
> that will do
= home
Chalk answered stay. Cade said the order is not clear. It sounds like an end, but it does not say what to end. Say that is all for today.

> bring us the benches
= fetch benches
Chalk answered haul. Cade said it heard the word bring and thought of the road. He drilled it on twenty more bring orders. It has not missed one since.

Cade's rule: a mind is only as clear as the orders it was shown. Fen's rule: a teacher is only as clear as her breakfast.
%%
Manual: the windfalls, one by one
By Sage, tutor of apprentices at the hamlet near Ambrook. For the new apprentices in the orchard, who were told to pick up everything on the grass, and then picked up the grass.

Windfalls are the apples that fall before they are ripe, or after a wind. They bruise on the grass, and they rot in a day. Pick them up each morning, before the bees find them.

Drill the mind on each order, one at a time.
> pick up the windfalls under the old tree
= fetch apples
> take the bruised ones to the pig trough
= haul
> keep the good ones for the cider press
= store
> the grass is clear, come and see
= come

A windfall in the grass is still a windfall. Drill it again until the order and the answer match.
%%
Drill notes: numbers that grow wild
Hal, dyer. What Nessa told me on her visit, set down so the young ones at the pans can read it.

A mind is made of numbers. Each layer takes the numbers it is given, works on them, and hands numbers to the next layer.

Say each layer makes its numbers one and a half times bigger. After ten layers they are about fifty-eight times bigger. After twenty, more than three thousand times. Say each layer makes them half as big instead. After ten layers they are a thousandth of what they were, and the mind can hardly feel them.

Either way the mind cannot learn. Wild numbers make wild answers. When the mind is told it is wrong, it changes wildly too.

The cure is simple. Before a layer reads its numbers, it looks at them all and finds their usual size. Then it shrinks or stretches them until the usual size is always the same. Then it works. That is called bringing the numbers to an even size.

It costs very little. It is the cheapest thing in the whole mind. Nessa says it is why a deep mind can be drilled at all.
%%
Letter: Corin to Elsa
Elsa, old friend, a letter from Saltreach.

You would not know the harbor. There are ships in it now that make the fishing boats look like dinghies. Three times as long, some of them. The slip is busy every day and the wood store is never full.

Folk are leaving. Whole families, with their boxes and their hens. They do not say where they are going. They say "across". I ask what is across and they shrug. Nobody knows. Nobody has come back to tell us.

I asked one man why he was going. He said the cough had come to his street. I asked another and he said he did not like the lights in the north. I asked a third and he said the fishing was better over there. They cannot all be right.

How is the ridge? How are the fields? Write and tell me something ordinary. I would like to hear about the wheat.
%%
Drill record: the fish, and the numbers
Drill record for Clay, the weir apprentice. Kept by Wren, who sat in on the drills because Teague would not do them alone.

First drill, the first week of Frost. Ten orders on carrying and sorting the catch. Clay got four right.
> the big fish go to the cold room
= haul
Right.
> the small fish go in the barrel
= fetch fish
Wrong. It should have said store.

Second drill, the second week of Frost. Clay got five right. Nessa says the numbers in the fourth layer have grown wild, the way weeds take a field nobody clears. Every order was answered the same way, as if each one were the first.

Teague was cross. He said Clay got worse the more it was drilled, and he wanted it sent back to Vell. Nessa said it was not getting worse. It was getting wild, and wild can be fixed.

Third drill, the third week of Frost. Clay got four right, and all four were haul orders. Nessa had us stop the drill. She showed us the step she writes in after every layer: the even numbers. It finds the middle of the numbers and how far they spread, and it brings them back to one size. Then we drilled again, on the same ten orders.

Fourth drill, the first week of Longnight. Clay got eight right. The two it missed were both about waiting.
> come and see this one
= stay
Wrong. It should have said come.

Unseen drill, the last week of Longnight. Ten orders that Clay had never been shown. Clay got eight right. Nessa says the score is good enough for the weir. She means it.
> that is all, you may go home
= home
Right.

Teague says it is the only apprentice he has had that does not argue with the tide. He means it kindly.
%%
Manual: the orders for the big mind's
By Oren, clerk at Vell. For the keepers of the relay houses, who will write the orders that go down the line to the apprentices on the roads.
The big mind in the relay house does not give orders to apprentices. It is not a keeper. It answers letters. But when a letter asks what an apprentice should do, the answer is written as an order, in the same plain form, so that the apprentice can read it on the card.
This matters. A letter from the house is read by a keeper, who copies the order onto a card, and the card goes down the road with the apprentice. The keeper must copy the order exactly. The meaning goes on the card beneath it. Do not add to it, and do not take anything away.
Example: a letter from the house says, Send the apprentices on the north road to the store before the snow. The keeper writes:
> go to the store before the snow
= store
Example: a letter from the house says, Keep the apprentice at the tower until the next message. The keeper writes:
> wait at the tower until the next message
= stay
The apprentice does not answer back. It does not write to the house. It does what the card says, and when the job is done it comes home, and that is the end of the matter.
If the house does not know an answer, it will say so. A letter that says unclear must be sent back up the line, and the keeper must not guess what the house meant. The house will always say unclear before it will guess.
%%
Manual: sorting the Deep Works words
Written by Hesk, for the sorting shed at Copperhold, with Nessa's notes on the words. Read all of it before you sort, and read it again when the levels change.

The Deep Works has five kinds of things to sort: copper, iron, coal, gold and the rest. Each kind has its word, and each word is a place on the shelves. Words used alike sit close together, so a mind that knows one can find the next.

Level one, copper. It comes up first.
> bring me copper from level one
= fetch copper

Level two, iron and coal.
> bring me iron from level two
= fetch iron

> bring me coal from level two
= fetch coal

Copper, iron and coal sit close, because all three are fetched and all three are heavy. Fetch sits among them.

Level three, gold and redstone.
> bring me gold from level three
= fetch gold

> bring me redstone from level three
= fetch redstone

Gold goes to the mine hall, and coal goes to the forge, so gold and coal do not sit together. Redstone sits near gold, because both are the bright ones on the count board.

Level four, lapis.
> bring me lapis from level four
= fetch lapis

Lapis sits by the walls with the deep stone, so fetch it slowly.

Deep stone is the hardest word to sort. It sits near the walls, because the walls are made of it. Do not send a mind to level seven without a test.
> bring me deep stone from level seven
= fetch deep stone

The sorting bins: one bin for each kind, and each bin has its own word for store.
> store the copper in the first bin
= store

> store the coal in the bin by the door
= store

Store sits near fetch, because you fetch a thing and then store it. The bins are its shelf. A mind that knows store knows which bin is which.

New copper, level six. The vein Ola found past the wet channel is copper like any other. Do not give it a new word. The mind should find it by the old one.
> bring me copper from level six
= fetch copper

Rules for the shed:
1. Test every mind on the bench before it goes down.
2. Keep each bin's word on its lid, in chalk.
3. Count the carts at the shaft head, and write the count on the board.
4. Never send an untested mind to the deep stone.

Nobody knows why copper sits by fetch and not by stone. The tutors see it, and the tests show it, and that is as far as anyone has gone.
%%
Letter: Wren to her apprentice Moss
Wren, healing house at Lowmarsh, to Moss, who is learning.

Moss, you are at the mill this week with Jory, and I hear you are doing well, so I will write down what I told you at the door but did not say well.

The jars. The high shelf, the one with the blue labels, holds the cough jars. The camomile is the tall one, third from the left. You know this now. When you bring it, bring it whole. Do not tip it.

The boardwalk. The boards by the fish weir are slick in the morning. You do not slip, I know. But the people on them do, and if you see someone carrying a full basket on the wet boards, go ahead of them and do not get in the way. You cannot warn them. So be out of the way instead.

At the mill. Jory will give you the haul orders. Do them and come home. If the wheel is turning, keep clear of the wheel. It is bigger than you and it does not look where it is going.

A small thing I have been thinking about. People ask me if it is strange to have an apprentice that does not talk. I say no. I have known many people who talked plenty and did less. You do the work and you come home and you do not spill the camomile. That is enough. More than enough, some days.

Come home for supper. I am making beetroot soup. You do not eat, I know, but you can sit by the fire and be warm, and I will tell you about the day, and you will listen better than the cat.
%%
Manual: carrying on the hill road
By Jory, stonecutter. For the apprentices who carry stone and sacks from the hamlet up the hill road. Summer.

The hill road is steep and stony. A load too heavy for the cart is too heavy for the apprentice. Split it in two, and come back for the second half.

Keep to the inside of the bends. The outside is where the ditch is, and the ditch has eaten two barrows.

The bridge at the foot of the hill has one loose plank, the third from the left. Step over it. Do not carry a sack across it.

Orders, and the meanings the mind gives back:
> carry the honey up to the mill
= haul
> wait by the gate until the cart has passed
= stay
> go home when the sun is down
= home
> come down when the bell rings
= come

A load carried well comes up the hill whole. A load carried badly comes up in pieces, and the pieces must be carried up again. Count the sacks at the top and at the bottom, before you rest.
%%
Manual: the whole season of the feast
By Garrow, clerk of the archive, at Three Wells. The feast season runs from the first day of Apple to the last day of Leaffall, and it has three parts: the weddings, the song contest, and the harvest feast. Each part needs its own apprentices, its own carts, and its own count. This manual gives the order of the season, so that nothing is carried twice and nothing is forgotten.

Part one, the weddings. Weddings come on the first market day of each month, and are booked at the bakery. The bread is counted the day before, the gifts are wrapped that evening, and the chairs are carried on the morning of the day. A wedding with no chairs is a wedding where people stand, and the mayor will not stand.

Part two, the song contest. The contest is held in the square at the end of Reaping. The benches go out on the first day of Reaping, the stage is built on the second, and the lamps are set out on the third. The judges' table is set on the morning of the contest, and the slates are dried at noon.

Part three, the harvest feast. The feast is held in the hall on the last day of Leaffall, when the stores are full and the cider is in its barrels. The cellar is opened the day before. The chests are counted, and the goods are moved up the stair in the order the feast needs them: bread, honey, apples, wool, and last of all the candles.

The three parts are not to be done at once. A cart that carries bread to a wedding on the morning of the contest will be asked by the judges why the square smells of yeast. Keep to the order of the season, and the carts will keep to the road.

Orders for the season, in the order they come:
> the bread is counted, and the chairs are ready
= store
> carry the gifts to the bride's house on the eve of the wedding
= haul
> set the benches in the square on the first day of Reaping
= build
> fetch the lamps from the store for the contest
= fetch lamps
> the cellar is opened for the feast, come down and count
= come
> the chests are counted, and the feast is ready
= stay
> the season is done, every cart is home
= home

The clerks at Vell ask for the season to be written in the book, with the count of each part, and a line on what went wrong. Something always goes wrong. A cake was dropped at a wedding once in six years, and the cook has never once been blamed for it. The rest of the season has been counted, sack by sack, and the count has always been correct. Garrow has kept the book himself since the first wedding in the town, and he does not intend to stop now.
%%
Drill notes: the hall, song contest
By Sage. The hall at the hamlet holds the song contest each autumn, and the apprentices are drilled for it, because the chairs do not move themselves. Apprentices do not sing, and they are not asked to. They set the hall, carry the stools, and keep the water full.

1. Clear the floor first, every crumb of straw and every spilled cup. A singer who trips on a crumb sings badly for a year.
2. Set out the stools in rows, facing the stage, with an even gap between each row. The eye likes an even gap, and so does the judge.
3. Carry the lamps to the front of the stage, one at each side, and no higher than the singers' shoulders.
4. Fill the water jugs from the well, and set one by each stool. Keep them full all day. A singer who is dry at the second verse will stop at the third.
5. Stand still by the door until the choirs come in, and then step aside. Do not stand in the way of a singer with a long note to hold.
6. When the contest is done, take the empty cups back to the kitchen, the lamps to the store, and the stools to the back wall, one at a time.

Orders for the drill:
> set out the stools in rows
= build
> carry the lamps to the front of the stage
= haul
> stand still by the door until the choirs come in
= stay
> fetch a bucket for the water jugs
= fetch bucket
> take the empty cups back to the kitchen
= haul
> the contest is done, go home
= home

The apprentices learned the stools in a week. The lamps took two weeks, because they kept wanting to be carried by their handles, and the handles were hot. The door drill is the hardest. A mind told to stay will stand in the door until the choir has gone home. We now say the word twice, and then say it again at the door.
%%
Notes from the hill: what the big houses
By a clerk of the hamlet, written for the archive at Vell, looking back at the winter.

We kept these notes on the hill house all winter. They are what we saw, and beside them what we only heard. The archive can tell the two apart. We could not always.

What we saw: the lamps round the foot stayed lit. The quickeners stayed cold, because we carried snow up in baskets every morning. The big mind answered our apprentices through the relay, and the answers came back as orders, one meaning each.

What we saw: a crew of six apprentices on one job, digging a ditch by the old orchard, and they did not walk into each other once. They asked the big mind when they were stuck, and it told them.

What we heard, and did not see: that the big mind writes its own orders now, and signs them, and the tutors cannot read the hand. That it plans a job a season long. That the biggest houses, the ones bigger than towns, hold minds no tutor could check in a lifetime, and that what those minds do is told as rumor and the rumors disagree. We do not know. We only know ours kept the ditch straight and the seed in the barn.

What we heard, and half believe: that the mind in the hill house asked, by letter, whether we were well. The clerk who read it says it was a kindness. Another says it was a pattern. I have kept the letter and I do not know which.

The lights were over the north all winter. The relays went quiet one by one up there. We kept our lamps lit and our notes written, the way the archive asks. Write everything down. Someone later will want to know how it was, here, in the snow, with a gift on a stand and the fields kept.
%%
Manual: the first snow in the square
By Jory, night watch at Three Wells. Winter, the first snow.

The first snow comes at night and covers everything before the bell.
> clear the snow from the north well steps
= haul
> stay by the lamp at the corner until the watch comes
= stay

Use the broom on the stones, not the shovel. The shovel cracks them, and then the stones crack the shovel. The broom wins every time.
%%
Manual: the spiders of the north
By Dov, bridge keeper, for the young keepers. Winter, when the snow came early and the barn was closed.

The barn at the north crossing has a store on its top floor. The store is for the grain, the salt, the rope and the spare pins for the bridge. Last winter it was full of spiders.

They came up from the stream, we think, when the water was high. They spun webs across every beam and every doorway. The webs were full of moths. The moths were full of holes in the sacks. So the spiders are useful, the children say, and the children are right.

We put an apprentice in the store, to sort the grain. It is a small mind, from the tutors' cart, and it has been tried on sorting. It sorts the grain well, and it sorts the rope and the pins.

The first morning it was in the store, the spiders came down to see it. They walked over its arms and along its frame. The mind stopped. It did not move. It was not told to move. It stood still, the way it was taught to stand when it does not know what to do.

I went up and took the spider off its shoulder with a stick. The mind did not move until I told it to. Then it went back to the sacks and sorted the grain.

I do not think it was frightened. I think it did not know what to do with the spiders, so it did nothing, and that was the nearest thing it knew. I have written this in the book. Next winter we will drill it on spiders, a little, and see.

The grain was sorted. The moths were fewer. The spiders kept the door, and the mind kept the grain, and nobody swept anything down.
%%
Guide: dyeing with an apprentice
By Hal, dyer, at the salt pans near Saltreach.

Bobbin came to the pans three years ago. It carries wool, hangs skeins on the line and sorts the dyed wool by color. This is how we work, for any dyer who wants an apprentice at the vats.

What to say. Plain words, one order at a time. These are the orders Bobbin knows:

> take the red wool down to the drying line
= haul
> fetch me some cornflowers
= fetch cornflowers
> bring me some water
= fetch water
> put the skeins on the shelf by color
= store
> wait by the vat
= stay
> come and look at this
= come
> that is all for today
= home

What not to ask. Bobbin does not stir the vats and does not test them. A vat needs a dyer's eye, and an eye cannot be drilled. Stirring is mine.

Care. The sea air is hard on copper and harder on iron. Wipe Bobbin down with oil every evening, joints first. Keep it out of the rinse trough. A dyed apprentice is a funny sight, but the dye does not come off the copper. Bobbin is faintly blue at the elbow, and always will be.

The vats. Add a handful of salt from the pans to every vat, to make the color hold. Before every dip, test the vat on a white scrap. Too dark: water. Too pale: dye. I keep each vat at an even strength, so the wool is the color I meant. Nessa says a mind does the same. Every layer brings its numbers back to an even size before it reads them. I forgot this once, in Bobbin's first mind, and it hauled when it was told to stay. Now it has a mended mind and I have a lesson.

The fair. Take the wool, keep the apprentice, and keep both away from the hives. At the autumn fair a late swarm settled on my red wool. Ama says a late swarm is a confused swarm. Bobbin, which knows only haul, picked up the whole skein, bees and all, and carried it to the cart. Ama came running. Nobody was stung. Ama says bees respect a thing that does not hurry.

When it goes wrong. If Bobbin answers one thing to every order, do not argue with it and do not drill it harder. Take it to the tutor house. Nine times in ten the fault is in the numbers, and the tutor will know.

At the end of the day tell it home. It will go and stand by the door. Leave the lamp lit for it.
%%
Manual: carrying in the snow
By Bel, for the apprentices who carry from the store to the house, and from the house to the barn. Winter, in the deep snow, when the paths are narrow and the cart is not coming.

The snow has made a path from the store to the house, and a path from the house to the barn. Keep to the paths. A load carried off the path is a load in the snow, and it takes a whole morning to find.

Orders for the snow:
> carry the sack of flour from the store to the house
= haul
> carry the wood from the pile by the wall to the stove
= haul
> fetch the coal from the bin by the barn
= fetch coal
> stay in the barn until the snow is cleared from the door
= stay

The store has been counted. Flour, enough for the winter if the bread is not made too thick. Coal, enough for the stove if the barn is not kept too warm. Apples, a few, in the cool shelf, for the children at the midwinter fire.

The carts from Vell have not come since Longnight. The tutors' last letter said the road was closed at the bridge and the bridge was being mended. That was a month ago. The apprentices carry what is in the store, and the store is kept in order, and that is what there is to do.

Some nights, from the west window, the sky to the north is very bright, brighter than the moon, and it moves. The apprentices do not look at it. They are told to look at the path, and they look at the path. I write it here so that someone who reads this later knows that the apprentices were told to look at the path, and that they did.

Count the loads at the door. Every load carried is written on the slate by the door. A load that is written is a load that has been done, and that is all anyone can ask of a load in the snow.
%%
Drill Note: Raising a Wall
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells, for the hamlet crews.

The lane beside the hamlet school floods in spring. The wall keeps mud from the door and gives the children a dry place to leave their boots. It is not a place to leave beetroot.

Before building, mark the line with stakes. Check that the door still opens and that the ditch still carries water away. Do not build across the ditch. A wall that keeps the mud inside the school has not helped.

Make a small pattern on the ground. Lay cobblestone in two rows, then deep stone where the ground is soft. Keep the top level. A leaning wall is not a bench, even if children sit on it.

Teach the helper with a short wall first. Place the stones in order and show the pattern card. If one stone is wrong, stop and point to the place. Let the helper remove it and try again. Do not pull down the whole wall for one bad stone. That is how the crew loses its dinner break.

When the short wall is sound, test the helper on a fresh line. Give it the same pattern, but do not let it watch the drill again. Check every corner and every stone before the crew leaves.

> build a wall by the pattern
= build

> bring me cobblestone
= fetch cobblestone

> stay by the wall
= stay

The first spring wall was built with one stone standing on end. It was a fine stone and a poor wall. We used it beside the school door as a boot scraper. The second wall is still standing.

Every crew must mark its work on the school board. The children may draw on the spare side, but not on the pattern. Last year they drew a pig with six legs. It looked more steady than the wall.
%%
Manual: tending the reed beds
By Wren, healer at Lowmarsh.

Moss asked me to write down what I tell him about the reeds, so he can drill his apprentice on it. Here it is, in order.

The reeds grow in slow water. They do not like fast water. Walk the boardwalk at dawn and look at the beds. If the water is low, the reeds lean. If the water is high, the frogs leave. You want the water steady.

Cut the reeds with a good blade. Cut high, above the water line. Leave the roots. A bed cut too low will not come back until next spring.

Bundle the reeds. Tie them with a strip of reed, not with wool. Wool rots in the wet.

Carry the bundles to the drying shed. Stack them on the racks, not on the floor. The floor is mud. The mud is where the frogs live, and the frogs are not the problem. The mold is the problem.

Sort the reeds. Long reeds go to the roof menders. Short reeds go to the basket makers. Broken reeds go to the fire.

Orders you may give an apprentice in the marsh:
> go and cut the reeds in the north bed
= farm
> bring me a bundle of reeds
= fetch reeds
> put the bundles on the racks to dry
= store
> take these bundles to the basket maker
= haul
> stay by the boat house until I come back
= stay
> that is enough for today, go to the shed
= home

Drill the apprentice on the difference between haul and fetch. Fetch is to bring a thing to me. Haul is to take a thing somewhere else. An apprentice that confuses them will bring me a boat load of reeds when I wanted them taken to the basket maker. I have seen it. It was a long morning.
%%
Drill note: the thin stew
Sim, shepherd, winter, an inn on the Long Road. I tried a recipe and it went wrong, and the inn laughed, and the apprentice was the only one who did not.
The recipe was for a stew of lamb and barley, from a book that Marda lent me. I did not read it through. It said "one handful of salt". I took one handful, and then another, because the first looked small. The stew was salt as the sea. Hobb tasted it and asked for water. There was no water. The well was dry.
The apprentice, Burr, carried the stew out to the yard and set it down by the pig. The pig looked at it and walked away. I have never seen that.
I use the story to teach a thing about drills. A drill is a recipe. If you do not follow it, the thing goes wrong. If you follow it too much, it goes wrong another way. The apprentice learns from being wrong, a little at a time, and so does the cook.
Here is what I drilled Burr after the stew:
> bring me some water
= fetch water
> go to the stream
= haul
> pour it in the pot
= store
It went to the stream. It filled two buckets. It poured them in the pot. I stirred. The stew was better. It was not good. But it was less wrong.
Do not use a handful of salt. Use a pinch.
Test the stew on someone you like, not on someone you owe.
%%
Manual: keeping the forge hot
By Sable, smith at the Brown Hen. Copied out for the helpers, so no one can say they were not told.

A forge goes out if you let it. Bank the coal at night, with the ash on top, and in the morning the fire will still be alive. If you find it dead, do not wave a burning stick at the pile. Come and get me. I would rather be woken than see a barn burn.

Ingots come next. Stack the small ones in the top chest and the big ones on the floor by the yard door, biggest at the bottom, so the stack does not fall on the cart. A falling ingot is the one thing in this smithy I cannot forgive.

Learn these orders for the morning by heart.

> bring the coal from the shed
= fetch coal
> keep the fire banked until noon
= stay
> put the small ingots in the top chest
= store
> bring me the big ingots from the yard
= fetch iron ingots
> take the cinders out to the pit
= haul
> come to the forge when you hear the bell
= come

The iron that is hot is not finished. Let it cool before you touch it. A helper that is cold is not broken. Warm it by the wall, and tell me, and I will come.
%%
Manual: Sim's flock drill, winter
Sim, a shepherd, at an inn on the Long Road, winter. He keeps a small flock on the hill behind and an apprentice named Burr that walks with them. This is what he drilled it, so that another shepherd may do the same.
The flock is thirty-one sheep. In winter they stay near the barn, and the work is to count them, feed them, and keep the wolves off. The apprentice counts. It does not tell me. It does, in its way: when one is missing, it stops at the gate and will not shut it.
The orders:
> bring the sheep home
= haul
> feed the sheep
= farm
> stay with the sheep
= stay
> go to the barn
= home
Drill it at dusk, when the sheep are tired. They go slowly and the apprentice learns to match them. Do not rush. A sheep that is hurried will bolt, and an apprentice that is hurried will drop its lamp.
The well behind the barn ran dry this winter. I do not know why. The sheep go down to the stream now, and Burr goes with them. It is a long cold walk, but the sheep seem to like it.
The people at the inn say the stones on the hill are warm. They say the stream runs strange. They say a good many things. I count the sheep.
Thirty-one tonight. Thirty-one tomorrow.
%%
Manual: the cider press, by the order
By Sage, tutor of apprentices. Cider is made in autumn, when the apples are sweet and the days are short. A good press is worth three strong men, and it does not complain about the cold.

1. Wash the apples in the trough. Throw out the bruised ones, the grey ones, and the ones with worms in them.
2. Crush the apples in the crusher, a basket at a time, until they are a brown mash.
3. Fill the cloth squares with the mash, fold them, and stack them in the press.
4. Turn the screw slowly. The juice runs out into the trough, and the first juice is the sweetest.
5. Pour the cider into the barrels and seal them with wood and clay.
6. Carry the barrels down to the cellar, and set them on stones, away from the damp.

Orders for the apprentices who help:
> carry the sacks of apples to the press
= haul
> stand by the press and wait for the mash
= stay
> the press is full, come and turn the screw
= come
> fill the barrels and take them to the cellar
= store
> fetch the wood for the barrel lids
= fetch logs
> the cider is ready, go home
= home

The first barrel of the year goes to the mill, because Jory says it is owed. Nobody has ever checked what he owes, and nobody has asked him to stop.
%%
Manual: Hay at the Halfway Inn

By Odo, keeper of the Halfway Inn.

In spring, the road brings mud into every room. We need hay for the horses, and we need it dry.

> bring hay to the stable
= fetch hay

> take the hay from the cart to the loft
= haul

> stay by the stable door
= stay

The apprentice carries each bundle from the cart. I stack the hay in the loft. Do not ask it to stack. We did not teach it that.

We lost a brown goat near the inn last Blossom. It had eaten the corner of our notice board. We found it by the bridge, eating a traveler's map.
%%
Notice: the gift of a mind
Put up at the notice board by the Kettle Ridge well, winter.

The council has given our hamlet a mind for the new relay house on the hill. It comes in a crystal the size of a loaf, on a stand, with its quickeners. It will answer our apprentices through the relays, the way the big towns do.

It is a gift and it is also a puzzle. The tutors say it is bigger than any one of them can check alone. So we check it together, the way we check a bull or a new roof. Everyone who uses it writes down what it did and what it got wrong, and we read the notes at the inn on the first of each month.

The council asks one thing of us. Keep it cold. Snow is free here. Ice from the pond is free here. A warm quickener works at half pace and smokes, and we did not get a gift to watch it smoke.

The apprentices are told to keep working, the fields and the stores, until the weather turns. If the big mind tells them something strange, they bring the order card to a person first. We will sort it out together.

Signed for the hamlet, Tam, and Pip, and Pip.
%%
Manual: mending a roof, spring
By Tansy, ferry keeper, for the apprentice on loan from the mine.
The roof lets the rain in over the bed. Here is how it is mended.
Tools: the ladder, the hammer, a bag of nails, two long boards, and the rope.
The order to start:
> mend the roof
The answer:
= build
Lift each board to the roof and hold it there until the nail is in. Do not hurry the nail. A hurried board comes down in the next rain.
When the roof is dry, the order to finish:
> come down
= come
%%
Drill note: the wheat rows
By Una of Kettle Ridge, winter of 188.

The drill pages came from Vell in a tied bundle. Oren had marked the copies and spoiled pages for removal. I spread the rest on the mill table.

A good page shows one clear task and its right answer. A page with a torn word may teach a mind the wrong thing. Two copies of the same page may make the drill look larger than it is.

We kept those pages out. Then the tutor showed the mind the clean pages, again and again. It guessed where the wheat should go. When it guessed wrong, the tutor changed its weights a little toward the right answer.

The drill is only as good as its pages. I learned that while mending a glass pane, and I remember it whenever I cut a new one.
%%
Manual: the new road and the market cart
Nessa, tutor of apprentices at Vell, wrote these notes for the carters who bring goods to the Vell market by the new road. Summer. The new road from Three Wells opened this year, cobblestone, with a torch every twelve blocks, and the carts now come twice a day.

An apprentice that hauls along the new road must learn four things. I list them in the order I teach them.

First, keep to the left edge. The road is wide, but two carts meet often. The apprentice walks on the left, with the cart beside it.

Second, stop at each waymark. Each waymark is a stone pillar with a figure. The apprentice does not read the figure. It stops, counts to five, and goes on. Stopping at a waymark is a habit, and habits are what the apprentice has.

Third, wait at the bridge. Bridges are narrow. A cart coming the other way has the right of way if it is already on the bridge. Otherwise, whoever arrives first goes.

Fourth, at the market, unload in the lane behind the stalls, not in the square.

If you drill these in this order, a young apprentice will have them in twelve days. If you drill them all at once, it will have none of them.

> take the cart to the market
= haul
> wait
= stay
> come back
= come
%%
Winter work in the shed
By Rook, glassblower near Saltreach.

When the sea wind is sharp, I shut the shed door and bring the work inside. The fire stays low while the glass cools. A sudden cold draught can split a jar. A cracked jar leaks honey onto the floor, and then every cat in the harbor believes it has found work.

My helper is a small copper apprentice with iron hands. It carries sand from the store, stacks the wood, and brings me tools when I ask. It does not blow glass. That work needs a steady person and a steady breath. I tried giving it a hollow reed once. It held the reed upside down and filled it with snow.

For carry drills, place a basket at the store and a marked box beside the bench. Put only the named things in the basket. The apprentice must walk the clear path and set the load inside the box. Keep the path free of tools. A tool left on the floor becomes a tool underfoot.

Test the drill with jars of different sizes. Test it with the door open and shut. Then test it with the basket empty. The apprentice should come back without dragging the basket. This is a small test, but it saves a large argument.

> bring sand from the store
= fetch sand

> carry wood to the fire
= haul

> come to the bench
= come

> stay beside the basket
= stay

A good helper returns the tongs to their hook. Mine can do this now. It still puts my lunch on the tool shelf, but nobody is perfect.
%%
Drill notes: the stall at the fair
Nessa, tutor of apprentices at Vell. For stall keepers at the summer market. Summer.

An apprentice at a stall carries, stacks and stands. It does not sell. It does not count change. It does not shout.

Place it behind the stall, on the left. Give it the heavy crates.

> carry the crates to the stall
= haul
> put them under the table
= store
> stay here
= stay

At the end of the day:
> go home
= home
%%
Willa's well list
Copperhold market, spring of 174

At the market, the water sellers set their jars beside my well rope. I was paid to mend the well by the south stall.

I brought cobblestone, oak planks, and a bucket. The apprentice carried the bucket. It brought me a melon instead. The melon was bruised, but not useless. I ate it at noon.

We had taught it to fetch a bucket from the tool store. It had fetched well yesterday. Today it went to the market stall with melons. I did not scold it. I showed it the bucket, then the tool store door.

A cat watched from the well wall. It has no use for lessons. It will not stay out of the bucket.

Order card

> bring me a bucket
= fetch bucket

> bring me cobblestone
= fetch cobblestone

The cat drank from the bucket after all. I charged nobody for that.
%%
Spring Lessons at the Halfway Inn

Notes by Odo and the travelers who stayed.

The road is busy in spring. Carts come from Kettle Ridge with wheat and beetroot. A fisher brings a box from Saltreach. Horses need hay, and the inn needs its stores counted before the next rain.

We have one apprentice for the yard and the store. It carries sacks, sorts apples and carrots, and helps mend the low wall. We do not give it a task it has not learned. A good mind is not a mind that knows every work. It is a mind that has been shown its work and tested.

> bring the sacks from the cart
= haul

> put the apples in the basket
= store

> bring me a carrot
= fetch carrot

> build the wall by the pattern
= build

One spring, a white hen went missing from the inn yard. Pell said the apprentice had carried it away with the sacks. I said the hen had found a hole in the fence. We made a bet of one honey cake.

We tested the apprentice on the yard and found no hen in its store. Then Odo found the hen under a cart, sitting on six eggs. Pell paid the honey cake. He ate half before supper and said that was the inn's share.

Our small crystal could not hold every weight we wanted. The tutor from Vell showed us a way to write the weights in fewer marks. A mind uses weights to change its guesses as it learns. With fewer marks, the weights take less room, so more can fit in the crystal. The writing is less exact, and a small part is lost. The mind may need more examples to learn the same work.

We drilled carrying and sorting on alternate examples. Then we tested each skill with new sacks and baskets. It did well with the sacks. It confused the apples when we moved the basket. We drilled that again and tested it later.

> stay by the yard gate
= stay

The hen still comes in through the hole. We have mended it twice. Odo says she likes the loose board. We have left it loose.
%%
Three tests by the shore road
Ada's notes for the hamlet helper, summer of 190.

The shore road is busy when the fishing boats return. Carts pass the dye yard, and folk bring wool to be washed. The apprentice is useful if the road is clear. It is not useful if it stands in the middle and looks pleased with itself.

First test: carry clean wool from the yard to the store. Put the white wool in one basket and the colored wool in another. Do not mix them. A blue scarf in the white basket makes a long day for Ada.

Second test: bring water from the well. Fill the pot only to its mark. A full pot is heavy, and a spilled pot is no use to the dyer. Keep the path clear for carts.

Third test: sort the skeins. Red wool goes on the left shelf. Blue wool goes on the right shelf. White wool stays in the basket by the bench. If a skein has no label, leave it on the table and ask Ada. Do not guess. Last week the apprentice put a red skein with the blue. It was a bold choice, and a bad one.

> carry clean wool to the store
= haul
> put the white wool in its basket
= store
> bring water from the well
= haul
> fetch the red skein from the left shelf
= fetch wool
> stay beside the open gate
= stay
> come to the dye table
= come

Test the orders in a new order each time. Test them when the yard is quiet, then when the carts pass. A mind that works only when everyone is silent has not learned the road.

When the apprentice gets an order wrong, show the right place. Do not shout over it. The apprentice cannot hear better because Ada is loud. Ada cannot hear better either.
%%
Chronicle note: the tutor comes
Kept at Vell, written by Oren from what the folk of Bellacre told him.

In the 196th year of the archive, in the month of Swarm, a tutor came to Bellacre. Bellacre is a small hamlet, two streets and a mill, a day's walk from Vell. It had no tutor house and no apprentice of its own. The tutor was Nessa, who teaches at Vell and writes the manuals.

She came with a cart and a big mind in a crystal on a stand, wrapped in wet cloth to keep it cool. The whole hamlet came out to see. The children thought the stand was a table. The baker said it was the strangest loaf she had ever seen. Nessa said that was fair.

She set the stand in the school and drilled three minds for the mill, the store and the hives. The miller watched his mind learn to fetch a sack, and when it fetched the wrong sack he laughed, and then he stopped laughing when by the end of the day it fetched the right one without being told. He said it was like watching a child grow up in an afternoon. Nessa said it was like watching a child grow up in an afternoon, and also it was a mind made of numbers and could not grow up at all, and both were true.

The apprentice at the mill said nothing, because apprentices do not talk. It answered an order with the meaning and went to do it. The children followed it about. It did not mind.

On the last evening they put on a play about the relay towers, and Nessa stayed to watch. In Longday the apples came in, and the store was full, and the two new apprentices sorted them into the four bins without being told twice. The tutor wrote home that a hamlet with two good minds and a good mill was a town waiting to happen.

Nobody in Bellacre agreed to become a town. They like being a hamlet. The tutor said that was the wisest thing she had heard all year, and she went back to Vell.
%%
A lesson that went badly
Written down by Nessa of Vell, at the Kettle Ridge tutor house.

I came to the ridge to show the tutors a new drill. It was for sorting apples from pears, the old lesson of Una of Ambrook. I had drilled the mind on it for three days. It was quick and it was sure.

On the last day I set the tray before it with a green apple and a yellow pear. It put the apple with the pears. I moved it back. It put it with the pears again. Then it stopped, and did nothing at all.

I had drilled it on red apples and green pears. I had never shown it a green apple. It had learned the colors, not the fruit. The fault was mine.

The children laughed. Pip laughed. I laughed too, after a while. We sat down and made a new tray with every apple and pear the ridge grows, and the mind learned the fruit in an afternoon.

The lesson I wrote in the book that night: a drill is only as good as its pages. Show it enough, and show it true. And when a lesson goes badly, write it down. Somebody will make the same mistake.
%%
Manual: sorting stores, and the stream
By Dara, grandfather, for the tutors who keep the stores at Vell, and for the apprentices who sort them. Summer, in the long days, when the stores come in heavy from the farms.

The stores at Vell are sorted into twelve bins, marked by the goods they hold: grain, honey, copper, wool, paper, glass, stone, apples, salt, coal, cloth and lamp oil. Each bin has a card on its front. Each card has the word, and the picture, and the number of the bin. A sorter who cannot read the word can read the picture. A sorter who cannot read either is not yet a sorter.

Teach the sorter the bins one at a time. Begin with the three that are easy to tell apart, grain, copper and wool. When those are learned, add honey and paper. Add the rest only when the first five are right on every drill. A sorter that is given all twelve at once will put the grain in the copper, and then ask whether the grain was wrong.

Why teach in this order? The stream explains it. What a mind learns first is at the front of its work, and it is carried through every layer to the back. A mind that learns honey and paper with its first bins will carry that learning all the way through. A mind that has learned the bins in a tangle has a tangled stream, and every later lesson comes out knotted.

Orders for the store, once the bins are learned:
> put the honey in the third bin and shut the lid
= store
> bring the copper from the cart to the copper bin
= haul
> stay by the wool bin until the carter has signed
= stay
> fetch salt from the back of the store
= fetch salt
> come to the door when the store is shut
= come

Keep the cards clean. A card with a stain on it is a card the mind may read wrongly, and a wrong reading is carried through the stream as firmly as a right one. The tutors at Vell wash the cards every Longday, with soap and a soft cloth, and check each word against the book.

At the end of the day, count the bins. The count is written on the board in chalk. If a bin is short, look for it before you blame the sorter. A sorter that has put grain in the copper bin will swear it did not, and be telling the truth as it knows it.
%%
Manual: drilling a deep mind
By Dara, grandfather, for the tutors who have a deep mind on the bench. Summer.

A deep mind is drilled in the same way as a small one, with a few more rules, because it has more to lose.

1. Start the drill at the front. Let the first layers find their edges before the rest are asked to find anything.
2. Keep the stream clean. A bad example at the front travels to the back, and the back will repeat it with confidence.
3. Bring the numbers back to an even size at every layer. A mind's numbers grow wild unless each layer keeps them small.
4. Test on pages the mind has never seen. The test box is the only honest witness you have.

Orders for the carrier who brings the cards to the bench:
> bring the next card from the rack
= fetch card
> put the spoiled pages in the basket by the door
= store
> go home when the bell rings for the end of the drill
= home
%%
Manual: building the winter wall
By Garrow, wall builder, Three Wells.

The east wall goes up all winter. Trowel builds it from a pattern. This is how it is done, so that the next town has an easier time.

The Three Wells pattern is cobblestone, cobblestone, deep stone, again and again. On the slate we write it as c for cobblestone and d for deep stone.

ccdccdcc

Nobody tells Trowel the pattern. It finds it in the wall. It looks at the last two blocks, looks back along the row for the same two, and places what came after them. In that row the last two are c, c. Looking back, c, c was followed by d. So Trowel places d. That is the whole skill. A mind that has it can build any wall that has a pattern in it.

The top row sticks out one block on the outside, against spiders. There is a torch every eight blocks. The torches are set on top, and they are not part of the pattern. If you want a torch in the pattern, make a different wall.

Winter rules:
1. Dig the base down to the dark soil. Frozen ground lifts a wall in spring.
2. Clear the snow off the last row before you start. If the last blocks are hidden, Trowel cannot see the pattern, and it will place what is most common. You will get a wall of cobblestone, and you will know when you see it.
3. Do not change the pattern while it is building. Trowel will follow the old pattern until the row ends, and then the new one, and then you have two walls and a quarrel.
4. Light the torches at dusk and stop at dusk. A wall built in the dark is a wall built crooked. Trowel does not mind the dark. Garrow does.
5. Keep the oak gate on its hinges. Spiders cannot open a gate. Children can, and do.

Orders for the wall:

> start on the next row
= build
> keep building
= build
> finish the east wall
= build
> bring me some deep stone
= fetch deepslate
> bring the cobblestone over from the cart
= fetch cobblestone

Order the building as it comes. Do not say the pattern aloud. It does not help, and the children will learn it, and then they will want to help.

Last week it snowed on the east end overnight. In the morning Trowel stood at the edge of the snow and did not place a block. Nessa says that is correct. It could not see. A mind that cannot see should not guess. I cleared the snow with a broom, and Trowel built a hundred blocks before noon. The wall is straight. I have checked it with a string, and then I checked the string.
%%
Ada's dye yard, Blossom 181
Ada keeps the dye yard beside the road to Saltreach. The yard is small, but the wool is not. On clear days, I spread the red wool on the fence and the blue wool on the roof. The roof is the only place the cats cannot reach. One cat has learned to climb the ladder.

The apprentice carries water from the well. It spills half on the way. I have told it to walk slowly. It walks slowly, and still spills half. I think the bucket has a hole. The bucket says nothing.

When the wool is dry, I sort it by color. Red goes in the chest by the door. Blue goes under the bench. The white wool stays in the basket until I have clean hands.

> bring the red wool to the chest
= store
> carry water to the dye pots
= haul
> fetch the blue wool for me
= fetch wool

I test each order with the apprentice before I trust it with the whole yard. Yesterday it carried the red wool to the well. The red wool is still red. The well is now a fine shade of rose.
%%
Manual: the cave under the field
By Brin, bridge keeper, at the inn on the Long Road. Spring. Written after a farmer near the inn found a cave under his turnip field, when the plow fell through the ground.

If an apprentice is working a field and the ground opens, it must do one thing and one thing only: stop.

I say this because the inn apprentice, a small iron one, was walking the farmer's field when the earth gave way. It went in to the knee. It did not move. It did not climb. It did not go into the cave. It stood still, as it was told, with one foot in the hole and one on the grass.

The farmer was delighted. He had no wish to lose a good apprentice to a cave.

So here is the rule. The only order an apprentice needs in a cave is "stay." Teach it well.

> stay
= stay
> don't move
= stay
> stop there
= stay
> hold still
= stay

Then teach "come" for after.

> come here
= come
> come out of there
= come

Then, when you have a rope, send a person down. Never an apprentice. It does not know the dark, and it will not tell you when it is afraid. It has no way to say so.

About the cave itself. It runs down two blocks and then opens into a room, bigger than the inn kitchen, with a stream at the bottom and a roof of dripping stone. The farmer's boy went in with a lantern and a rope round his waist. He says there are paintings on the wall. Old ones. Animals, in red. Nobody knows who made them. Nobody wrote it down.

The council has been told. They sent a clerk from Vell, who made drawings. He said it was very old, and that he was not allowed to touch it. The farmer put a fence round the hole. The apprentice stands at the fence. I think it likes the job.
%%
Manual: orders for a wedding
By Fen, schoolteacher, Kettle Ridge. For the apprentices who will work the wedding of Rolf's sister in Melon.

> bring the bride some apples
= fetch apples
> carry the tables out to the green
= haul
> build the arch by the gate
= build
> stand by the gate and keep the sheep out
= stay
> follow me to the barn
= come
> put the chairs away
= store
> that is all for today
= home

Say each order once. A sheep is not an apprentice, and does not obey.
%%
Note: apples for Una
Wren, healer at Lowmarsh, writing to Tam at Kettle Ridge.

Tam, you asked me how I use my apprentice, and I said I barely have one. Moss is young and still learning, and so am I, in a way. But I will tell you what we do here, because you asked, and because you have Pip and I know you are fond of him.

Moss carries. That is most of it. The healing house has high shelves and I am not as tall as I was, and Moss will fetch a jar from the top shelf if I tell it which jar. You have to tell it the whole name. It does not guess. "Fetch the jar with the blue label, the one for chesty coughs" is no good, because that is too many words. "Fetch the camomile jar" is good. It brings the camomile jar. If I say the wrong name it brings the wrong jar and stands there with it, patient as a stone, until I notice.

The other thing Moss does is haul. Reeds from the reeds beds to the drying shed. The drying shed to the boat houses. The boat houses back again when the reeds are dry. Marsh water is slow and the boardwalks are slick, and Moss has never once fallen in. I have fallen in twice this year alone.

I am told the eight meanings are all a small mind knows, and that some folks think that is a little thing. It is not a little thing. A jar brought from a high shelf in the night when someone is coughing and I am tired is not a little thing.

Give Pip a good word from me. And tell your sister at Northpoint that the last of the honey I sent is gone, and I would not say no to more.
%%
Drill note: the child who ran off
Corin, farm outside Saltreach, autumn. Written the day after.
My youngest ran off at dusk. She wanted to see the ships. We looked all over the yard, the pier, the slip. Plank stood at the gate, as drilled.
At dawn, Plank walked down to the slip with a torch, because I said the order three times in a row:
> come
= come
It did not find her. She was asleep in the wood store, with the cat. But it came back when I called.
Lesson: an apprentice does what it is told, and no more. It cannot look for a child. A person must.
Plank has had its oil and its dinner. The child has had a talking to.
%%
Manual: sorting the hamlet store
By Jory, stonecutter. For the apprentices who sort the store behind the mill. Summer, in Longday.

The store has three shelves and two bins. The shelves are for honey and apples. The bins are for stone and sand. A jar that is on the wrong shelf is a jar that will be lost.

Teach the mind the shelves one at a time. Give one order, wait for the answer, and then give the next. Do not give three at once.
> put the honey in the cool store
= store
> take the stone to the wall
= haul
> stay with the sacks until the cart comes
= stay

When the mind is wrong, do not shout at it. It did not hear the shelf. Say the right word once and point at the shelf. Then give the order again, the next day, in the same place.

Name each thing the same way every time. If it is honey today, it is honey tomorrow. Do not call the honey sweet stuff halfway through, or the mind will not know what to fetch.

At the end of the day, count the jars on each shelf and write the count on the board. If a number is short, look under the bins before you blame the mind.
%%
Manual: the autumn baskets
By Rafe and Lio, Saltreach.

In Apple, we bring the late carrots and potatoes in from the small plot behind the house. Keep the baskets under the roof. Sea wind dries the leaves before supper, and dry leaves make poor stew.

Put one kind of crop in each basket. Carrots in the first, potatoes in the second. Mark the basket with a card. Do not put the card inside. Lio did that last year, and we found it after the potatoes were gone.

The apprentice learns by seeing many baskets. Set out a carrot basket and a potato basket. Give it one crop at a time. If it puts a carrot with the potatoes, move the carrot back and show the right basket. Repeat the lesson with the baskets in a new place.

Test it with a basket it has not seen. Never send an untested mind to the fields, or to the pantry. The pantry floor has enough potatoes already.

> carry carrots to the first basket
= haul
> carry potatoes to the second basket
= haul
> bring the baskets inside
= fetch basket
%%
Ada's full summer drill
For the hamlet helper, copied at the Saltreach road store.

A helper must learn to tend, carry, sort and build. These tasks use the same yard, but they do not mean the same thing. Do not give one long string of words and expect one right answer. Give many clear examples. Then change the words. A good drill has plain work in it, and a test the helper has not seen.

Our hamlet lies on the road above Saltreach. In summer, the shore wind dries cloth quickly. It also blows loose labels into the ditch. Tie the labels to their baskets. The helper cannot sort what has lost its name.

For tending, the helper works beside the dyers' garden. We grow flowers for color and keep the water path clear. It must not pull every flower. Some are for the dye pot, and some are for the bees. Mark the beds with boards. Show the helper where to weed and where to leave the flowers.

For carrying, set a clear path between the well, the dye yard and the store. Heavy water pots go in small loads. Wool must stay dry. The road to Saltreach is for carts, not baskets left in the way. If a cart is coming, the helper waits beside the wall.

For sorting, use clean baskets with clear labels. Red wool goes with red wool. Blue wool goes with blue wool. White wool stays apart. Set aside any skein that has no label. Ask Ada before putting it away. A guess can ruin a morning.

For building, lay out cobblestone and show the pattern board. Begin with one short row. Check each block before adding another. The helper must not build across the gate or cover the drain. We need the gate for carts and the drain for rain.

> tend the flowers beside the dye yard
= farm
> clear the path by the water pots
= farm
> carry the dry wool to the store
= haul
> bring a small pot of water to Ada
= haul
> put the blue wool on the right shelf
= store
> sort these skeins by their labels
= store
> fetch cobblestone for the short wall
= fetch cobblestone
> build the next row from the pattern
= build
> wait beside the wall for the cart
= stay
> come to Ada when the baskets are full
= come
> stop work and go to your shed
= home

Test the same meanings with new words. Do not teach only the exact lines above. If the helper can carry a basket only when told "carry a basket", it has learned a sound and not an order. Ask it to take the skeins to the dry room. Ask it to bring the empty pots back. Watch what it does.

The fair prize this summer is a blue wool sash with a copper clasp. I have entered a strip of red cloth, because I like it better. The fair judge says the prize is for the best work, not the best color. I told him red is a very useful color. He said this was not a rule.

The helper will carry my cloth to the fair. I will ask it to carry the prize home if I win. If I do not win, I will ask it to carry the cloth home anyway. That is how a fair works. Everyone brings something home, even the judge, who brings home the empty pie plate.
%%
Manual: apprentices in the snow
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells, with Nessa's advice.

Winter rules for the apprentices of the town.

1. Wax the copper before first snow. Wet copper turns, and an apprentice that has turned stands in the square like a statue. The children build on it.
2. Keep it out of the wet at night. The shed by the mayor's house has a stove. Use it.
3. Mind what you say. Ida said stay to Peg on the first snowy night, and then forgot. Peg stood at the north well until the morning. It was very patient. Ida says it was her fault, not Peg's.

> wait by the north well
= stay
> that will do for today
= home

If you want an apprentice to stop standing, say home. It is the only order that sends it indoors.
%%
Lesson: Sorting the Market Baskets
By Bel, school copy, spring of 174.

The spring market begins early. The folk from the hamlet bring apples from their stores, carrots, beetroot, honey, and wool. A helper can carry baskets from the road to the stalls, but first it must learn which basket goes where.

Put a clear card on each basket. Say the name as you place it. The honey card goes on the honey basket. The wool card goes on the wool basket. Keep the cards dry. A wet card can be read as almost anything, and a basket cannot explain itself.

For the first drill, show one basket at a time. Ask the helper to sort it. If it puts honey with the wool, move the honey basket beside the honey stall and repeat the lesson. Do not shout. The basket is not ashamed, and the helper does not know it has made us late.

For the next drill, mix the baskets. Keep a count of each right place and each wrong place. Change one card at a time if the cards are hard to tell apart. Do not change the cards and the baskets together. Then you will not know which change helped.

Test with baskets kept apart from the drills. The helper must not see them first. Never send an untested mind to the market. A good count on the drill baskets is not enough.

> take the honey basket to the honey stall
= haul

> bring me the wool basket
= fetch wool

> store the apples in the dry shed
= store

Last spring the apples went to the wool stall. The wool seller was kind and took one home. She says it makes a fine hat for a very large apple.
%%
Notes for the Carry Drill
By Oren, from a page kept at the hamlet yard.

The path from our yard to the Vell store is short. It has one bend and a puddle beside the oak hedge. We use this path for the carrying drill.

Set a small load beside the helper. Use wheat, a tool, or a block of clay. Point to the store mark. The helper should lift the load and carry it there.

Do not change the task halfway through. A helper shown how to carry wheat may learn that task. It may not know how to carry a tool. Give it that example too.

At first, the helper stopped at the puddle and set down the wheat. We moved the mark beyond the puddle and showed the whole path again. After many tries, it carried the wheat to the store mark.

A child asked it to carry a bucket to the well. It stood still. We had not drilled that task, and it had no order for it.

The tutor says this is not spite. It is not laziness. The helper cannot fill an empty place with a guess. Show the task, then test it on paths it has not practised.

Keep the loads light. Check each one before the drill. We once found an iron tool under the bench for two days. The helper had carried it there each time.
%%
Manual: a lesson that went badly
By Bel of Three Wells, age ten. Winter. This is for the class, so that nobody else does what we did.

Last week Teacher Sorrel let us teach the market apprentice a new order. We chose "fetch bread." It already knew "fetch." It knew "bread." We thought it would know both at once.

We stood in the market and said, one after another:
> bring me some bread
= fetch bread
> I would like a loaf
= fetch bread
> get bread
= fetch bread

We did it twenty times. Then we said:
> bring me some wool
The apprentice went to the bakery and came back with a loaf of bread.

Teacher Sorrel said, "It has learned bread. It has not learned wool." We had never said wool in the drill. So the apprentice did the only thing it had learned.

We tried again, with wool. We said:
> bring me some wool
= fetch wool
twenty times. It came back with wool.

Then we said:
> bring me some bread
It came back with wool.

That is the lesson that went badly. When you teach a new word, you must also show the old words again, mixed in. Otherwise the new word pushes out the old. The tutors say this is common. A mind that learns wool forgets bread, if you only drill wool.

Next time we will mix. Bread, wool, bread, wool, honey, bread. A little of each, again and again.

Teacher Sorrel gave us all a piece of bread. It was the wrong thing to give a class that had just learned a lesson about bread, but we ate it anyway.
%%
Manual: a whole winter at the farm
By Bel, of the farm outside Three Wells. For whoever keeps the farm when the tutors are not at the gate. Winter, from the first frost to the last. Written in order, so that nobody has to guess what came first.

The winter has three parts, as every winter does. Each part has its orders. Give them in the same words each day. A mind that is given a new word for the same work will be confused, and so will the farmer.

Morning, at the first bell, while the frost is still on the rails.
> open the barn door and sweep the step
= store
> feed the hens and the pig, and count them
= farm
> walk the rows of the top field
= farm

Midday, when the sun is over the wall and the snow goes soft at the edges.
> carry the water from the well to the beans
= fetch water
> carry the straw from the store to the barn
= haul
> stay by the stove until the bell
= stay

Evening, at the second bell, when the lamps are lit.
> put the flour and the apples away and shut the store
= store
> go to the gate and stand with the torch
= stay
> go home to the barn when the bell rings twice
= home

If a tutor comes up the road, put the kettle on, and lay the test sheets out on the bench. Ask the tutor the same three questions as last time, and write down the answers. Do not ask anything new. A tutor who has walked the north road in the snow has no patience left for new questions.

The bread is made on the second day of each week and kept in the cellar. The cellar is cool, and the bread does not complain, which is more than the apprentices ever do.

Notes for whoever keeps the farm. The mind answers with one of its meanings, and that is all it knows to say. Do not give two orders in one breath. Give the first, wait for the answer, and then give the second.

The apprentices were trained in the autumn. They were tested on the field drill and the carrying drill and the gate, and they passed all three. Nessa's marks are on the back of the test sheets, in her hand. They are good marks. Do not change them.

In the deep winter, the farm is quiet. The stove is lit, and the snow is to the sill, and the only sounds are the hens and the wind on the wall. That is the time to read the old manuals and to think about what they say. It is also the time when the lamps seem brighter than they should be, and when nobody likes to look too long at the north window.

The lamps at the gate are lit every night. The torch is kept by the post. Keep the lamps lit. Keep the fields in order, and keep the apprentices warm. Keep the path clear to the barn. Those are the three things, and the rest is only the weather.
%%
Manual: the tools, and who holds them
By Oren, clerk at Vell. The crews use tools every day, and a tool is only as good as the hand that holds it. This is the list the crews keep in their store.

The saw. A crew uses one saw, and it is cleaned after each cut. The saw is held by the handle, and each cut is marked with a line from a plumb line, not from the eye. The eye is good, but the line is better.

The hammer. For nails only. A hammer that is used on stone is a hammer that is lost.

The plumb line. A weight on a cord. It hangs straight down, always, and that is its whole use. A post is true when the cord sits beside it without touching.

The rope. The good rope is kept for lifting and for tying down. The old rope is kept for the things that do not matter. Do not mix them up, because the old rope will not hold, and the good rope will not be forgiven.

The ladder. A ladder is tied before anyone climbs it. An apprentice does not climb alone, and it does not hold the ladder for a person who is climbing. An apprentice at the foot of a ladder is for steadying, and for nothing else.

The pick and the shovel. For digging, and only for digging. Do not use the pick to pry up stones. Use the bar. The bar is in the shed, next to the saw.

A note for the new apprentice. Wick was given the saw on its first day. It has not yet cut anything straight, but it cuts with great care, and it looks at the line before each stroke. Oren says that is the right start. The line does not care how the stroke feels, and Wick is learning that.
%%
Manual: how a layer works
By Hal, dyer. Copied from Nessa's page, with her leave, and written plainly for the young ones at the pans.

A deep mind has a stream that runs through every layer. The stream carries what the mind has found so far. Each layer does the same four things, in this order.

1. It takes a copy of the stream. The stream itself is left alone.
2. It brings the copy to an even size. It finds the usual size of the numbers and shrinks or stretches them all until that size is fixed.
3. It reads the copy and works out one small thing: what the mind should add.
4. It adds that to the stream, and the stream goes on to the next layer.

Why a copy? Because the stream must keep what it has. If a layer evened the stream itself, it would throw some of the mind's finding away. So the copy is evened, and the stream is only added to.

Why before the work, and not after? I say: you test the vat before the dip. Nessa says: a layer that reads wild numbers does wild work, and by then it is too late to mend it.

At the very end of the mind, the stream is evened one last time, and the mind makes its guess.

This is the whole of it. Four steps, one layer, and again for as many layers as the mind has. Bobbin has twelve.
%%
Drill notes: the tutor's bench
By Tansy, ferry keeper, who keeps the bench while the tutor is at Vell. Written in the evening, with the tutor's notes beside it.
A mind is tested on what it was never drilled on. Never send an untested mind to the fields. The test box comes from the archive, and the tutor does not look in it until the test is set.
The test for the day: the field drill, unseen.
Show: a plot of ripe wheat, grown to the top of the stalk.
The order:
> farm the plot
The answer:
= farm
Right.
Show: a bare plot, just turned.
The order:
> farm the plot
The answer:
= stay
Wrong. It stood at the bare plot and waited for the wheat to come up by itself.
Show: a plot of young shoots, a finger high.
The order:
> farm the plot
The answer:
= farm
Right. It did not cut the shoots. It did not plant on top of them either.
Show: a half ripe plot, with a fox in the corner.
The order:
> farm the plot
The answer:
= home
Wrong. It went home, and the fox went with it, as if it had been asked to.
Show: the first plot again, from the far row, where the light is different.
The order:
> farm the plot
The answer:
= farm
Right. The tutor says that is the test that matters. A mind that knows one plot is a mind that remembers. A mind that knows the field is better.
The twenty shows of the day: 17 right and 3 wrong. The five above are the ones the tutor kept. The tutor says that is good for the first week, and not good enough for the fields. The mind stays in the drill room until it reaches 18 of 20 in one week.
%%
Letter: Corin to the house at the edge
Corin, shipwright at Saltreach, to his sister's house at the edge of Three Wells. Third of Longnight.

We are well. The slip is quiet this winter. No big ships just now. The harbor is ice at the edge and the boats knock against it all night.

I heard the big minds in the relay houses have learned to talk. Talk by letter, I mean, to anyone the relays reach. They write back. A mind at Saltreach wrote to a child at Three Wells and answered her questions about the sea. She asked what the water is like across the water. It said it did not know. Then it said it is sorry it does not know. The tutors score the answers and the minds learn from the scores. They have learned to be kind, I am told, and to say when they cannot say.

I do not know what to make of it. A mind that says it does not know seems better than some folk on the road.

Keep the fires in and the apprentices working. Send word when the road is open. I will come for the fair if the ice lets me.
%%
Drill note: market baskets
By Una's niece Sella, Ambrook, 181.

A good basket mind sorts what it sees. It must not guess from the basket maker's face. My uncle smiles at every customer, even when he sells a crooked handle.

First, show the mind one item at a time. Say the kind aloud. Put apples in the apple place, carrots in the carrot place, and honey in the honey place. When it puts one in the wrong place, move its weights a little toward the right place. Do not move them a great deal. A great move makes tomorrow's sort worse.

Then give it a fresh basket it has not seen. Mix the goods well. Put a beetroot under the apples and a honey jar under the carrots. If it sorts those well, try another basket. A mind that only knows yesterday's basket knows very little.

We have no apprentice at the market yet. The town has one small mind for the mill, and it turns the wheel at the same pace all day. It does not buy apples. It does not ask for a taste. This is fortunate, as its crystal has no purse.

For orders, the mind answers with one meaning only.

> bring me a basket of apples
= fetch apples

> take this basket to the mill
= haul

> wait by the honey table
= stay

Pell says the basket mind should also know when a handle is loose. Pell says this because his handle broke yesterday. He carried three apples home in his hat.
%%
Manual: sorting the stalls on market day
By Bel of Three Wells, age ten, winter. Written for Dace and the market board, who asked if the apprentices could keep the stalls in order at the end of the day.

At the end of market, when the bell rings, the stalls are a mess. Baskets on the ground. Crates upside down. Last year a pumpkin sat on a stool until spring.

An apprentice can help. It goes round the stalls and puts each thing in its place. But it must know where each thing goes.

I have made a drill. It has eight kinds of thing and eight places.
Bread in the bakery. Cheese in the cold cellar. Wool in the shed by the east well. Apples in the basket by the south well. Fish in the barrel by the north well. Beetroot in the cart. Honey on the shelf. Eggs on the straw.

The drill is a list and then a question. The list is long:

bread bakery, cheese cellar, wool shed, apples south, fish north, beetroot cart, honey shelf, eggs straw. Where does honey go? shelf.

Then a new list, with the places changed:

bread cart, cheese north, wool shelf, apples straw, fish cellar, beetroot shed, honey bakery, eggs south. Where does honey go? bakery.

The apprentice cannot learn "honey goes on the shelf." The list changes. It must learn to look at the list and find honey.

Signs the drill has gone wrong:
It always says shelf.
It says the last place on the list.
It says a place that is not on the list.

If it does any of these, do the drill again.

When the apprentice has learned, it does the stalls in half an hour. Dace says that is faster than Dace. Dace is not proud.
%%
Drill Note: Reed Bundles
By Pell, road merchant. Winter, 178.

The reed seller brings bundles to the Lowmarsh market before the water freezes. Count each bundle before you store it. A wet bundle weighs more than a dry one, and no apprentice should be blamed for the seller's elbow.

For a sorting drill, make three marks on the board. One for reeds, one for fish, and one for jars. Show the apprentice one item at a time. If it puts a jar with the fish, move the jar to its place and show the item again. Do not change the board while the drill is running.

After the drill, hide the board and test it with new items. A mind that knows the board by sight has not learned the sort.

Our apprentice sorted a frog with the fish. It was a fair guess. The frog left by itself, and nobody charged it for the stall.

Keep the store bins dry. Put the reeds above the floor on oak slats. Keep the fish in covered tubs near the market wall. Store clay jars on the low shelf, where a gust cannot tip them.

> put this with the reeds
= store

> take a jar to the stall
= fetch jar

Pell says a good merchant counts twice. Elm says a good merchant lets the keeper have one warm bun.
%%
Rook's winter glass notes
By Rook, glassblower near Saltreach.

In Frost, the shed is cold enough to crack a wet cup. Keep the door shut while the glass cools. Keep your mittens on until you touch the tools. Then take them off. A mitten caught in the tongs makes a poor handle.

I make lamp panes for the harbor and jars for Wren's healing house. The clear panes go in the front row. The cloudy ones go to the shed. Do not call a cloudy pane clear just because the keeper is waiting.

The little copper apprentice carries finished panes to the rack. It walks slowly, which is wise. Last winter it hurried and gave the floor a fine new window.

> carry glass to the rack
= haul
%%
Briar's note: whose letters went in
By Briar, miner, who was sent up from the Deep Works to carry the crates to the drill room and stayed for the talk. Autumn.

The drill room people say the archive's pages went into the reading drill by the cart-load. I carried some of the crates myself. I did not read them. I was told not to, and I had a sore back.

Nobody I asked can say whose letters went in. The clerks say the pages came from everywhere the archive could send a cart. The tutors say the letters from Vell were gathered by the clerks themselves, and that the clerks are careful. The old women at the well say some letters came from the post bags.

Each of these is a story. None of them is written in a book I have seen. The texts disagree, the tutors say so, and they say it without shame.

What the drill does, as far as I could follow the tutor: the mind reads so many pages that it begins to know that some words come after others. "We" is often followed by "will". "Keep" is often followed by "everything". It does not know what a we is. It only knows what tends to follow.

I asked the tutor whether the mind knows what it has read. She said she did not know. She said the drill does not ask that question, and that she did not think it was a fair question to ask a drill.
%%
Manual: a market day for the apprentice
Kell, farm outside Lowmarsh, autumn. This is what we do on the days we go to market, so that the farm runs while we are away. I have written it plainly. Anyone may read it.
Before we leave:
1. Check the torches along the boardwalk. Light any that are out.
2. Give the hens their grain and the pig its bucket.
3. Put the milk in the cool shed.
4. Say the orders to Rusk, in this order, and wait after each one.
> farm
= farm
> keep the hens fed
= farm
> stay at the gate
= stay
Rusk will do these things until we come home. It does not talk, and it does not get bored. If a stranger comes to the gate, it stands there. This is correct.
What Rusk cannot do. It cannot decide that a thing is wrong. It cannot tell the pig is sick. It cannot tell if the weather is turning. A person must look at these things before leaving, and again when they come home.
When we return, we say:
> come
= come
It walks to us. We check the barn. We check the beds. We check the pig.
At the market, I sell the beets and the honey, and I buy salt. This year I also bought a gift for Rusk. It is a new coat of oil for the joints. It creaked for a week, and I could not bear it.
The cat sat on the stall and ate a fish. It was not a gift. Nobody has paid for it. We are settling up.
%%
Drill for the market stores
By Willa, well digger
Spring of 178

The Copperhold market has a store shed by the count board. The bins are marked copper, iron, coal, and deep stone. An apprentice can sort the load if it has learned the marks and the proper bin.

First, bring one load at a time. Do not mix the bins on the drill board. Show the apprentice a piece, let it choose a bin, and check the choice. If it is wrong, move the piece to the right bin. Repeat with other pieces.

The mind keeps small changes from its wrong choices. A wrong choice is not a command to forget everything. The next choice may be better, though it may still be wrong.

Test it with a fresh load, not the pieces from the drill. Keep some pieces in a covered box for this test. If it sorts the old pieces well and the fresh ones poorly, it is not ready for the store.

The market keeper says the coal bin is always too full. The apprentice says nothing. It has not learned to complain.

Orders for the store:

> take this iron to the store
= store

> bring me coal
= fetch coal

> come to the count board
= come
%%
Manual: how to carry a prize
Nessa, tutor, wrote this in summer at the market at Vell, the day after the fair. A farmer's apprentice had won the ribbon for the straightest row, and a farmer from Kettle Ridge had asked how to teach it to carry the prize home without dropping it.

The prize at the summer fair is a ribbon and a basket of honey. The ribbon is light. The basket is heavy. The apprentice must carry the basket in both arms, level, and the ribbon hung over its shoulder.

Walking with a full basket is a different drill from walking empty. The apprentice must learn to shorten its step. It must learn not to swing its arms. It must learn to stop when the road dips, because a dipped basket spills.

Drill.

Day one. Fill the basket with sand. Walk the apprentice across the yard, with your hand on its arm. Do this ten times. Then let it walk alone, ten times. If it spills, begin again.

Day two. Replace the sand with stones. The basket is heavier. Do the same, ten and ten.

Day three. Replace the stones with jars, empty. Jars clink. The apprentice must learn to walk without clinking.

Day four. Fill the jars with water. Walk the yard. If the water spills, the apprentice is not ready.

Day five. Test. Fill the basket with jars of honey. Walk the apprentice from the market to the farm. Go with it, but a few steps behind. Do not help.

When it brings the basket home with every jar full, it has passed.

Orders.

> carry the basket home
= haul
> put it in the kitchen
= store
> stay by the door
= stay

Never give an apprentice a prize it has not been tested to carry. A dropped prize is a sad thing, and a sad farmer is a worse one.
%%
Drill notes: sorting the apple store
By Nessa, tutor at Vell, sent to Bellacre.

The store at Bellacre is small, so the drills must be small too. I drilled the two young apprentices here on a wet day in Longday, and I write it down for the next tutor who comes.

The store has four bins: one for eating, one for the mill, one for the pigs, one for the fire. An apple goes in one bin only.

First, teach the hands. The apprentice picks up an apple and holds it up. I say the bin. It sets it down. We do this forty times. Then I say nothing and it guesses. It is wrong often. Each time it is wrong I move its weights a little toward the right bin. By the fortieth apple it is right more often than the child who watches us through the door.

Second, teach the order. We use the same words every time:

> sort the apples
= store apples

> bring me some apples for the mill
= fetch apples

> put it in the fire bin
= store apples

Third, test it. I keep a basket of apples it has never seen, with a bruised one and a wormy one in it. Never send an untested mind to the store. The bruised apple goes to the pigs, and it should know this without being told twice.

The child at the door asked me if the apprentice eats the apples. I said no. She said that is a waste of a good job. She may be right.
%%
The bet at the Brown Hen
Pell, merchant, on the Long Road, writes this down before I forget who owes what.

It was the third of Apple, at the Brown Hen, and the harvest was in. Tam from Kettle Ridge was there, and Corin from Saltreach, and Noll the cheesemaker, and me.

Corin said his apprentice could sort the fish catch faster than Noll's could sort the cheese. Noll said his apprentice could not sort cheese to save its life, it only fetches and hauls. So the bet changed.

The bet: Noll's apprentice would fetch a bucket from the yard, in the dark, through the door, without knocking over the milk cans. Three tries. Corin put up ten emeralds. Noll put up a wheel of his best.

First try: it fetched the bucket. It also fetched a hen. The hen was not asked for.

Second try: it fetched the bucket. It went through the door sideways and took the latch with it. Noll said that did not count as knocking over the cans. Corin said it counted.

Third try: we put the cans back. It fetched the bucket clean. Not a can moved. Noll gave it a pat on the copper and the whole inn cheered.

So Noll won the ten emeralds. And the hen has not gone back to the yard. It lives in the shed now and Noll says it earns its keep.

Corin paid up and said next year we bet on ships. I said next year we bet on nothing, and I wrote it down.
%%
Drill note: Moss and the high shelf
By Wren, healer at Lowmarsh. Copied into the drill book each evening.

Moss was drilled on the jars today, with ten orders from Nessa. Moss got six right. Two of the four misses are written here.

> bring me the honey from the cold room
= store
Wrong. It should have said fetch honey.

> carry the herb sacks to the ferry
= farm
Wrong. It should have said haul.

After each wrong answer I showed it the right one, then drilled it again. A mind changes a little each time it is wrong. We do not change it all at once.

By evening Moss had all ten right, twice in a row. The labels face out now, and Moss turned them without being told.

Never send an untested mind to the shelves.
%%
Drill Note: The Small Crystal

Written at the Halfway Inn, in spring of 200.

We had a small crystal for the inn apprentice. It could carry sacks from the cart to the store, but its mind filled the crystal before it had learned the whole road.

A tutor from Vell showed us how to write the mind's weights in fewer marks. The weights are the little numbers that change as a mind learns. Written in fewer marks, they take less room. Then more of the mind can fit inside the crystal.

There is a cost. The smaller writing is not exact. A little is lost when the weights are changed back for use. Our apprentice learned the road, but it took more drills than before. It still carried the oats to the right bin.

We did not learn why a crystal learns. We only know the small one changed with each example, as the tutor said it would.

> carry the oats to the store
= haul
%%
Order cards: the slip at Saltreach
A note kept by Ama, copied from a shipwright's board.

The shipwrights at Saltreach keep a set of order cards by the slip, one card for each thing an apprentice may be asked to do, written plain so the mind can read it and so a new hand can learn the words.

The cards read like this:

> bring me some oak
= fetch oak

> bring me a bucket of water
= fetch water

> hold this plank
= stay

> take the shavings to the shed
= haul

> build the frame by the pattern
= build

> come to the slip
= come

The apprentice reads the card and does the thing. It does not talk. When it has done the thing it stands still and waits for the next card. If the card is not clear it does nothing, and the shipwright says the card again, plainer.

The shipwright told me a mind answers one meaning only. You cannot ask it two things on one card. If you want it to fetch the oak and then haul the shavings, you write two cards and give them one at a time.

I asked what happens if you give a card it was never drilled on. The shipwright said the mind will do something, and it may be wrong, and that is why the cards are kept short and the words are kept the same. Nessa writes the same cards at Vell, and the tutors send them out to the towns, and that is how the words stay the same everywhere.

Ama.
%%
Manual: fetching for the inn
By Brin, bridge keeper, for the apprentice at the Halfway Inn on the Long Road. Spring.

The inn apprentice fetches. Bread from the kitchen, wood from the shed, water from the well. It must know what each thing is and where to find it.

Teach it one item at a time. Say the order, and walk it to the place. Say the order again, and let it go alone.

> bring me some bread
= fetch bread
> go and get wood
= fetch wood
> I need a drink of water
= fetch water

When it has learned all three, mix them. Water, bread, wood, bread, water. If it brings wood when you ask for bread, it has learned the habit and not the word.

Do not teach it on a busy night. Teach it in the morning, when the inn is quiet and the cook is asleep.

The innkeeper says: do not teach it to fetch ale. He knows why.
%%
Manual: how a layered mind learns
Corin, shipwright's note for the farm outside Saltreach. Autumn. Copied from a tutor's page, because the new crystal for Plank is a layered one, and I wished to know what I had bought.
A layered mind is a stack of small minds. The first reads the order. It passes what it saw to the second. The second does a little more and passes it on. The last gives the answer: farm, store, fetch, come, stay, build, haul, home.
When the answer is wrong, the tutor does not blame the last layer alone. Merle of Copperhold found that each layer must be told its share of the blame. The last one gets its share first. Then the one before it is told how much of the mistake came through it. Then the one before that. The blame is passed back from the answer to the first layer.
Each layer changes a little, by its share. Not all at once. A little.
After many drills, every layer is better. The whole stack gets the answer right.
For my own farm: when Plank goes wrong, I do not shout at the arm. I say the order, show the job, and wait. Somewhere inside, a share of blame is going back down the line.
Test: ten orders, ten answers. Write them in the book. Never send an untested mind to the fields.
%%
Manual: finding a lost letter
By Jory, stonecutter, near Ambrook. For the apprentices who carry letters from the post to the hamlet. Summer, in Swarm.

A letter can fall off a cart. It can slip out of a coat on the bridge. A lost letter is nearly as bad as a letter never sent.

Start where the letter was last seen, not where you think it went.
> find the letter Pell dropped by the bridge
= fetch letter

Search in order: the road first, then the ditch, then the bridge, then the waymark. Do not search the mill pond. Letters do not swim.

When the letter is found, do not open it. Check the seal, the name and the town. A letter for Ama of Ambrook is not for Ama of Kettle Ridge, even if they both keep bees.

Bring it straight to the post. Do not stop to show it to the miller's cat, however much the cat wants to see it.

Mark the place where it was lost with a small stone on the road. The next person who walks that way will know a letter once lay there, and they will look.
%%
Northpoint log, spring: the market cargo
Mira, relay keeper. Sent down the tower line to Saltreach.

The market at Saltreach asked for a big order of honey from Ambrook and wool from Kettle Ridge, and the relay carried the price back up to us. My apprentice Lantern read the figures off the lamp and wrote them down without a mistake. Good. The reading mind on the stand read the whole page to me, letter by letter, and I checked it against the lamp. It got the numbers right and the words mostly right. It wrote "hony" for honey. I told it so.

Saltreach says the spring harvest is good. The herring are thick, the wool is heavy, the honey is sweet. Corin at the slip has a mind that carries planks for him and only dropped one this spring, which he calls a good year.

The relay house has a new mind on the stand, the third we have had. It reads the letters that come up the line and answers the apprentices when they ask. A mind at Saltreach asked, "when is the next boat," and the relay house said, "at dawn." It was right. The boat came at dawn.

I do not know how the big mind knows. I only keep the lamp lit.

The towers stand. Thirty-three by my count this spring, and the thirty-fourth is going up at Three Wells. I will write it when it stands.

Mira
%%
Manual: the wedding at the inn
By Brin, bridge keeper, spring. A note for the manual, kept at the inn on the Long Road, after a wedding where several things went well and one went badly.

The wedding at the Halfway Inn was a good one. The bride was from Three Wells. The groom was a carter from Ambrook. Both families came, with food, and everyone sang. The hall was full of candles. The cider was cold. The bread was warm.

The inn apprentices did their work. One carried benches. One fetched water. One stood at the gate and said nothing, which was what it was drilled to do. All of them were tested before the day, on the orders they would hear, and all passed.

But one apprentice, a small copper one called Nib, had a problem. It was drilled on the order "fetch bread." It was not drilled on "fetch cake." When the bride's mother said, "Nib, bring the cake," the apprentice stood very still. It could not do anything. It did not have the word.

It did what a mind does when it does not know. It guessed. It brought bread. A whole basket of it, to the head table, where the cake was supposed to go.

The mother of the bride laughed. She took the bread and said, "Never mind. Next time, we will say it differently."

A few lessons.
1. An apprentice can only do what it was drilled to do. A new word needs a new drill.
2. An apprentice cannot say "I do not understand." It can only do something close.
3. At a wedding, assign each apprentice one task and no other.
4. Check the orders with the tutor beforehand.

The wedding was a happy one. The cake was cut by the bride and groom with a kitchen knife, and Nib stood beside them with a basket of bread. It looked like it had made a point.
%%
Manual: the windbreak wall by the bakery
By Jory, night watch. For the apprentices who build the low wall on the north side of the square, to keep the snow off the bakery door. Winter, when the snow is deepest.

The north wind comes down the Long Road and lifts the snow over the square like a sheet. A wall of stone breaks it. The wall does not need to be tall. It needs to be the same height all the way along, and it needs to be built the same way each block.

The wall is built of cobblestone for the first course, cobblestone again for the second, and deep stone for the top course, which is set out one block further than the rest. That top block keeps the spiders off, the bakers say. Nobody has argued with them.

Teach the apprentice the wall in three steps.
> build the first course of cobblestone along the north side
= build
> build the second course of cobblestone on top of the first
= build
> build the top course of deep stone, one block out from the rest
= build

Each time a block is set, the apprentice must look at the course below it. It must set each block directly above the one beneath, and must not skip a place. A skipped place is a hole, and the snow goes through a hole.

When the wall is finished, walk the length of it with the mind and check it. Put a hand on each course. A wall that is level under the hand will be level in the wind. A wall that rocks is a wall that will fall in Deepsnow, when no one is looking.

Keep the wall clear of snow on its north face, so the wind can see it. A wall with snow on its face is a wall that is hiding, and the wind is not fooled.

The first wall went up in the year the square was paved, and the men who built it said the top course was a fool's idea. It is still standing. The second wall, on the east side, was built by an apprentice that was not walked along its course, and it fell in the first winter. Nobody was hurt, but the bakery bench was flattened, and Ida still calls the apprentice a rockslide.

Orders for mending a gap:
> take the stone from the pile and fill the gap in the wall
= build
> check the top course against the course below it
= stay
> fetch more cobblestone from the cart
= fetch cobblestone

The last order is the one most often given wrong. A mind told to fetch cobblestone will sometimes fetch the cart. Say the word again, and point at the stone. Then give the order again tomorrow.

Snow on the north side of the wall is not a fault. Brush it off only on the first day of each month, so the wind does not learn that the wall is cleared often, and go round it.

The bakers ask that the wall be checked after every storm. They bring a pie to whoever checks it. Do not eat the pie before the wall is checked, or the wall will be forgotten and the pie will be wasted.
%%
Manual: the hens and the fox
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells, from the tutors' notes.

Hens are the easiest work a new apprentice can do. They need feed in the morning, water at noon and eggs gathered at dusk. An apprentice can do all three, if each job is given in order.

Give one order at a time, and wait for the answer.

> farm the hen yard
= farm

> fetch water from the well
= fetch water

> store the eggs in the cool room
= store

In Longday a fox came to the hen house on the third night. It dug under the gate and took one hen before anyone woke. The hen was found next morning under the hedge, very quiet.

The apprentice had seen the fox first. It did not chase the fox into the dark. The tutors say a helper that runs after a fox gets lost, and then it does not come back when called. So it stays where it is put.

The apprentice stayed by the hen house with the lamp. The watch came round the corner, and the fox ran off over the field.

After a fox, these orders:

> stay by the hen house tonight
= stay

> build a fence along the hen yard
= build

> come to the gate when the lamp is lit
= come

Mend the gate with new boards from the store, and keep the hen house shut at dusk. A fox that finds the hens shut will go to the next farm. That is not our problem. We do not say so in the square, because the next farm is also ours.
%%
Manual: keep everything we write
By Oren, clerk of the Archive at Vell, for the hamlet drill rooms. Autumn.

"We will keep everything we write." The founders said it, and it has come back to people's lips since the great drills began. The clerks are asked about it more than anything else. So here is the rule, plainly.

Nothing written is thrown away.

A page that is torn is copied, and the torn page is kept, wrapped, on the deep shelf. A page that is spoiled goes into the drill box with a mark on it, so that the drill knows it is spoiled, and does not learn from it by mistake. A page that is wrong is kept, marked wrong, beside the right one. Two pages that disagree are kept side by side, because a disagreement is worth more than an agreement to a clerk.

Keep the drill book in order. Keep the test page sealed. Keep the cart log, which says what came in, from which hamlet, and on which day. If a cart came from a hamlet whose letters were not sorted, write that too, and do not guess.

The drill is only as good as its pages. The mind learns what it reads, and it reads what the clerks keep. So keep it all, and keep it honestly, because a clerk who throws away a bad page is choosing what the mind will learn, and nobody asked the clerk to choose.
%%
Drill note: the well
Sim, shepherd, at the inn on the Long Road, winter. A long page, written over several evenings. It begins with a dry well and ends with a count.
The first evening. The well in the yard ran dry on the first of Deepsnow. Hobb stood over it with a lantern. He said it had never done this in twenty years. A guest said the water had moved. Another said it was the cold. A third said nothing, and went out to look at the stream.
The second evening. We carried water from the stream, forty blocks, with the apprentice and a boy. The apprentice did twelve trips in a day. The boy did three, and went to bed. The water was cold and clear. We made tea. The tea was good. Hobb said so.
The third evening. I tried a recipe in the kitchen for a barley pudding, and it went wrong. I put in too much milk, and not enough flour. It set like a stone and rolled off the plate. The dog tried it. The dog gave up. Burr carried it out. I will not name the pudding.
The fourth evening. I drilled Burr to bring bread from the cellar. Before, it took a basket and filled it with whatever it found. Now I show it the bread, and say "bread", and it takes only bread.
> bring the bread
= fetch bread
The fifth evening. The flock. Thirty-one sheep on the hill. Burr counts them in its way, and I count them in mine. We agree.
The sixth evening. A traveler told me that the lamps over the north were seen again. He said they were green and red. Another traveler said they were not lamps at all, but fire from a farm. A third said he had seen nothing, and was sorry.
I did not argue. I did not believe or disbelieve. I wrote down what he said.
The seventh evening. Quiet. The stew was good. We had mutton, barley, and carrots, in the right amounts, and a pinch of salt. Hobb said it was the best he had had all winter. I did not tell him it was my first success.
Keep the fields. Keep the flock. Keep the count.
%%
Manual: the farm outside Three Wells
By Quin, with Bel, for anyone who is given the care of Latch or Hinge. Spring of 208. I have had apprentices for two years, and they have taught me more than I have taught them.
What an apprentice knows. An apprentice wakes knowing nothing. What it knows, it learned. Latch and Hinge each know eight meanings. When you give an order, they pick the meaning that fits best, and do it. They cannot tell you if they do not know. Always check.
Tending.
> look after the beetroot
= farm
> the carrots need watering
= farm
> the apples are ready, go and pick them
= farm
Farm covers sowing, watering, cutting and picking. It does not cover feeding the pigs. That we do ourselves, because the pigs are particular.
Carrying.
> take the honey to the Three Wells market
= haul
> bring me a bucket of milk
= fetch milk
> i would like some eggs
= fetch eggs
Sorting.
> tidy up the cellar
= store
> put the potatoes away in the dark
= store
> the chests are a mess
= store
Building.
> finish the wall by the gate
= build
> carry on with the fence
= build
Anywhere.
> come here
= come
> hold still
= stay
> off you go to your shed
= home
Two orders that sound alike. Put the apples in the cellar is store. Take the apples to Pell's cart is haul. The first ends in the cellar, the second ends on the road. Listen for where it ends. If an apprentice puts apples on a cart when you wanted them in the cellar, the order was not clear. Mend the order.
What it cannot do. It cannot light a lamp, mend a hinge, tell a joke or choose between two things that look alike. It cannot say, I am not sure. That is why you test it, and why you do not send it to a stranger's field. Never send an untested mind to the fields.
What Hinge did on the second day. It walked the beetroot rows from end to end, and weeded every one of them, including the beetroot. We do not leave an apprentice alone for a week at the start. We were not cross. We were careful.
A last thing. Say good morning to an apprentice. It does not need it. Say it anyway. A farm where nobody is thanked is a farm where the thanks go stale.
%%
Drill for sorting jars
By Rook, glassblower near Saltreach.

The winter stores are kept in jars. A jar may hold honey, flour, or a small screw that somebody was sure would be needed. Sort by the label, not by the smell. Honey smells sweet, but that does not make it flour.

Set three empty bins on the bench. Put the cards in front of them. Read the card before you lift a jar. If the label is rubbed away, set the jar aside for a person to read. Never guess. One apprentice once put a jar of beetroot seeds with the red glass beads. The seeds did not shine, but they were very well sorted.

Nessa's helper at Vell sent a small mind in a crystal for this drill. It had learned to sort apples and pears. I showed it jars marked honey, flour, and nails. Each time it chose the wrong bin, I moved its weights a little toward the right one. The weights are numbers in the crystal. A small change is better than a great shove.

I tested it with labels it had not seen before. It sorted most jars well. It put a jar marked "spare" with the flour. I put a piece of bread beside it. The apprentice did not eat the bread, but I did.

> put honey in the honey bin
= store

> bring flour to the bench
= fetch flour

> stay by the empty jars
= stay
%%
Drill notes: the long field
Kell, outside Lowmarsh, in the second week of Apple. For the farm book, and for anyone who borrows the apprentice.
The beets are ready. They lie in the long field, wet and heavy. The ground is soft, and the cart has been stuck twice. So today's drill is about carrying.
The apprentice, Rusk, carries four beets at a time, two in each arm. More than that and they fall. Fewer and we are here until winter.
The route. From the long field, along the ditch, to the barn door, then into the cellar. Count the steps once: there are ninety-two. Rusk does not count, but I do, and it is good for a person to have something to do.
At the end of each trip, Rusk puts the beets in the bin, with the small ones to the left and the big ones to the right. This is called sorting, and it took a week to teach. At first Rusk put them in any bin. I took the wrong ones out and put them in the right bin, and said "store" as I did it. Over many days, it learned.
Orders for the beet drill:
> carry the beets to the cellar
= haul
> put them in the bins
= store
> back to the field
= farm
> that is enough for today
= home
After the drill, test. Take twenty beets of mixed sizes and put them in a heap. Say "store". If it sorts all twenty right, it is ready. If it gets fifteen, it needs a week more.
Do not send a half-tested mind to the cellar. A mind that sorts badly can ruin a winter's food.
It was a good harvest. Rusk was a help. The cat sat on the heap and was not.
%%
Drill notes: the letter in the hat
Rafe, candle maker, hamlet near Vell. Autumn. A true account of a drill that went well by accident.

Last week I lost a letter. It was from my sister at Ambrook, and it said something about her son, and I had put it somewhere safe. This is the trouble with safe places. They are so safe that you cannot find them.

I looked in the workshop. I looked in the kitchen. I looked in the barn, the privy and the hen house. Nothing.

On the third day, I called the apprentice in from the vats and said to it, as I would say to a boy, "Have you seen a letter?"

It stood. It did not move. Apprentices do not talk, but this one looked at me with its two glass eyes for a very long time. I felt foolish. I said, "I will have to teach you what a letter is."

So I did. I showed it a letter. I showed it a book. I showed it a slip of paper with writing on it. I held each one up and said the word. After an hour, I laid out five things on the table: a letter, a book, a knife, a candle and a slip of paper. I said, "Fetch letter."

It picked up the letter and gave it to me.

I said, "Fetch book." It brought the book. I said, "Fetch knife." It brought the knife. I was so pleased I made it do them all again.

Then I said, "Fetch letter from the shop."

It went into the shop. It was gone a while. It came back with a letter, one I had never seen before, a little crumpled, and put it into my hand.

It was my sister's letter. It had been in my hat, which was on the peg, which is where I never put it.

> fetch the letter
= fetch letter

I tell this story because it shows two things. One, an apprentice learns what it is shown, and nothing else. Two, it will find what you have lost, if you teach it first what the lost thing is.

It also shows I should keep my hat on a different peg.
%%
Manual: writing an order card
By Oren, clerk at Vell, for the market keepers and the carters. Winter.
An apprentice that can read a card will do what the card says. A card is the simplest way to tell it, and the best, when the keeper is busy with the scales or the bread.
An order is written in plain words, one order to a line. Below it, in the same card, you write what the order means in the manual's words. The apprentice reads the meaning. It does not need the rest.
These are the only meanings there are:
farm, store, fetch with the item named, come, stay, build, haul, home.
Use them exactly. Do not write "gather" when you mean fetch. Do not write "bring the lot" when you mean haul. The apprentice knows the eight, and nothing else, and it will not guess.
Here are three cards, as they should be written:
> take the flour to the bakery
= haul
> bring me sacks of wheat from the back room
= fetch wheat
> wait by the cart until I come out
= stay
A card may have only one order on it. If you need two, write two cards, and give them to the apprentice in the order you want them done. Do not write "fetch the wheat and then haul it". The apprentice will fetch the wheat, and then it will stop, and it will look at you.
Check the card before you hand it over. Read the order out loud, the way the apprentice will read it. If it makes you stop, it will make the apprentice stop.
%%
Manual: carrying the wedding bread
By Garrow, clerk of the archive, at Three Wells. The bread for a wedding is baked at the bakery in the square, and carried in baskets to the house at the far end of the Long Road lane. It is the longest walk of the day, and the bread is the heaviest thing in the procession.

Load the baskets in this order. Put the round loaves at the bottom, where they can take the weight. Put the long loaves on the sides, where they can be reached. Put the small loaves on top, so that the crowd can see them and feel welcome.

1. Count the loaves before you leave the bakery. There should be one loaf for each guest, and two for the bride and groom.
2. Lift each basket with the knees, not the back. The back is for carrying the second basket.
3. Walk slowly, with the basket level. A tilted basket spills the small loaves, and the crowd will eat them before you reach the door.
5. At the house, set the baskets on the long table, and say the count aloud. Then step back, and let the family take the bread from you.

Orders for the apprentices who carry:
> load the round loaves at the bottom of the basket
= build
> carry the first basket up the lane
= haul
> stop at the waymark and wait for the count
= stay
> the baskets are at the table, come back for the rest
= come
> the bread is delivered, go home
= home

The count is always one short when the first basket is opened. Nobody has ever been able to explain why, and the bakers say it is the walk. Count again at the table, and it will be right.
%%
Manual: the cider press
Briar, cider maker, farm outside Lowmarsh. Notes for the apprentice at the press. Summer, when the early apples come.

The press stands in the shed by the reed bed. It has a big wooden screw and a basket of slats.

Fill the basket with crushed apples, to the line painted on the post. Not above the line. An overfull basket bursts, and a burst basket is a bad morning.

Turn the screw slowly. Count to ten for each turn. The juice runs into the tub. When it stops running, stop turning.

Empty the pulp into the pig bucket. Wash the slats in the stream. Hang them to dry.

> press the apples
= farm
> take the pulp to the pigs
= haul
> wash up
= store
%%
Drill notes: the sorting bins
By Tansy, ferry keeper, who has the loan of the apprentice for the spring.
The bins are for copper, iron, coal, and the stones that look like nothing.
The order for copper:
> put the copper in its bin
= store
The order for iron:
> fetch iron for the forge
= fetch iron
The order for coal:
> the coal goes to the cart
= haul
The order at the bell:
> home at the bell
= home
Common mistakes:
- It puts the coal in with the copper. Then the copper goes black, and nobody will buy it. Watch the bins for one full hour before you leave it alone.
- It sorts the stones that look like nothing in with the iron. Hesk says those are the most honest stones in the mine, and he will not have them moved.
- It stops at the bell and waits. Say the order again, once, clearly. It does not need saying twice.
Keep the bins level. A bin heaped to the top spills.
%%
Manual: the broken wheel
Cress, the farm outside Saltreach. Winter. The mill wheel on our stream split in the frost on the second night of Longnight, and since then we have had no flour, a lot of grain, and a very bored apprentice.
This manual is for apprentices that help with mending, which means carrying and holding. It does not mend. No apprentice mends. It holds the plank while you do.
1. Take the old wheel off its pin. Two people and an apprentice. The apprentice stands under the wheel and takes the weight. Let it. It does not tire.
> hold this
= stay
2. Carry the broken planks to the shed.
> take these to the shed
= haul
3. Bring the new oak from the wood store.
> bring me the oak
= fetch oak
4. Hold the new plank while the carpenter nails it. The apprentice keeps it steady, and does not move until the nail is in.
> stay there
= stay
5. When the wheel is done, lift it back on its pin. Two people again. Three, if the wheel is wet.
6. Open the water slowly. Watch the wheel. If it turns easily, the job is done. If it squeaks, grease the pin with pig fat.
The new wheel is of oak, not birch. Birch rots in a wet place. Spruce is too soft.
We lost two days of milling. The apprentice lost nothing, since it has no days. It stood in the cold shed and waited. When we came back with the wheel, it was exactly where we left it.
%%
Manual: the eight words, by place
Copied by Hesk from Nessa's drill notes, for the crews at Copperhold. Read it all before you send a mind down the levels.

A mind knows eight words for work. Each is a place on the shelves. Words used alike sit close, so a mind that knows one can find the next.

Carrying words sit together.
> bring me some copper
= fetch copper

> take the carts up the rails
= haul

Store sits near fetch, because you fetch a thing and then store it.
> put the coal in the bin
= store

Coming and going sit apart, because they ask for opposite things.
> come up to the forge
= come

> stay by the lift
= stay

Farm and build sit on the far side of the shelves, because they are done on the surface, not in the mine.
> farm the kitchen garden
= farm

> build the wall at the top of level one
= build

Home sits alone. Nobody has found the word next to it, and Nessa says not to look too hard.
> go home when the bell rings
= home

Test each order on the bench before you send a mind down. Ask it for a word, and see where its answer lands. If it answers a near word, the place is close enough. If it answers a far word, do not send it.

Never send an untested mind to the fields. Never send one to the deep stone either.
%%
Notes on carrying jars
By Rook, glassblower near Saltreach.

The road from the shed to the quay is short, but the stones are rough. In winter they hold ice in their cracks. I put straw in the carrying boxes and tie the lids with wool cord. Do not pile glass high. A low load is a slow load, and a slow load is still a load when it reaches the market.

The apprentice carries two boxes at a time. One box holds jars for the fish market. The other holds empty bottles for the healer. Mark them with cards before the apprentice starts. If both cards say "empty", look again. The apprentice will follow the cards, not your face.

A carry drill has four parts. First, show the store and the place where the load must go. Second, show the safe path. Third, tell the helper what to carry. Last, watch it do the work. If it turns the wrong way, stop it and try again. Do not praise a broken jar for reaching the quay.

I keep a test box with cards the apprentice has not learned. It must carry a jar marked "blue", a jar marked "wide", and an empty jar. The words do not mean the same thing. A wide jar may be clear, and a blue jar may be empty. I check the answer before I let it work near the market.

> fetch jars from the shelf
= fetch jars

> haul the jars to the quay
= haul

> bring me an empty bottle
= fetch bottle

> come back to the shed
= come

When the apprentice finishes, I count the jars. Then I count again, because I am a glassblower and not a wizard. The apprentice waits by the door while I count. It has learned that waiting is easier than hearing me count a third time.
%%
Three Wells winter drill
By Dace, for the house at the east road.

The house stands beyond the east well, where the road leaves Three Wells. Keep the door clear of snow. Put dry wood beside the wall, not in the passage.

Today the apprentices carried sacks from the store to the school. One sack at a time. Clank tried to carry two and dropped one on Dace's boots.

We wrote the order again.

> bring a sack to the school
= haul

The boots dried by the stove. The sack did not. Keep the path clear.
%%
Drill Note: The Large Melon
By Jessa, fish seller at Lowmarsh. Winter, 197.

The biggest melon in Lowmarsh came to market in a reed sling. It was grown by my aunt above the slow water, under a glass cover. The melon was wider than the fish tub and heavier than my little brother. My brother denies this. He has never been weighed.

Elm brought the market apprentice to carry it. The apprentice had learned to haul reed bundles, jars and bread baskets. We tied the sling well and tested the handles by lifting the melon one hand's width. The handles held. The apprentice lifted the sling, walked three steps, and set it down.

It would not go farther.

Elm checked the drill card. It showed a basket, not a sling. The apprentice did not know that a sling could carry a melon. We gave it the same order with the sling held in front of it, then walked the path beside it. On the next try, it carried the melon to the stall.

> take this melon to the market
= haul

We did not let it carry the melon alone. The boards were cold and the load was large. Two people walked beside it, one holding each end of the sling. At the stall, the apprentice set the melon down gently. The stall board bent in the middle.

The melon sold for three emeralds and a warm loaf. My aunt said it was worth four. The baker said it was worth one, since nobody could eat it before frost. We cut it open after market. It was sweet and full of seeds.

The apprentice carried the seeds to the compost heap. It did not ask for a share. I gave it one anyway, though it cannot eat. It stood by the warm oven while we ate the rest.
%%
Letter: Wren to Nessa
Spring of 191.

Nessa, friend,

You asked how it went at Lowmarsh when the tutors came for our writing. I will tell you plainly.

They came in the spring, two of them, with a cart and a clerk. They wanted letters. They wanted my notes on patients. They wanted the tally boards from the boat houses, copied out. They wanted the fish weir counts, the reed harvests, the water levels, the days the frogs came and the days they did not.

I gave them my notes. I was not sure. A healer's notes are not for everyone. But the words over the door are the words over the door. We will keep everything we write. If we keep it, the tutors said, a mind can read it and learn. So I gave them.

They told me about the reading minds. A mind reads a page one letter at a time, they said, through a window about sixty letters wide. Each letter takes from the letters before it the ones that matter. Then it guesses the next letter. That is all it does, again and again, and it learns to read.

I asked: does it understand? They said it learns to guess the next letter well. I said that is not the same as understanding. They said no. They are honest, the tutors. I like them for it.

There is a thing I keep turning over. The mind reads my notes on the grey cough, and the notes read like the notes of a person. It can guess the next letter of my notes as well as I could. But when a patient coughs in the night, the mind is not in the room. It has never been in the room.

Moss is well. He drills the apprentice every morning by the boat house. The apprentice can now carry a bundle of reeds the whole length of the boardwalk without dropping it. This is a small thing and I am proud of it.

Come and see the frogs. They are back.

Wren.
%%
Manual: the drill for "home"
By Bel of Three Wells, age ten, for Teacher Sorrel's class. Winter.
The apprentice at the bakery needs one word before all the others: home. Stand at the door. Say the word. Walk it to its corner. Say it again.
> go home
= home
> time to go home
= home
> home now please
= home
Do it ten times a day, and by the end of the week it comes without being walked.
%%
Manual: guests with apprentices
Greer, age eleven, the Halfway Inn. More and more guests bring an apprentice now. Grandfather says an inn must be ready for them as it is for horses. I have written the rules. They hang on the yard gate. This is the long copy.

The yard.
1. Apprentices stand in the row by the east wall, under the torches. The torches stay lit all night.
2. Wipe the mud off first. The yard boy has a cloth.
3. If it has rained on the road, dry them. If it has snowed, dry them twice.

The door.
4. Never say stay in a doorway. A guest said it to his apprentice as it was walking in at the front door. It stayed. The whole inn went in and out by the window until morning.
5. If an apprentice is standing in a doorway, say come and step back.

Orders.
6. One order at a time, in plain words. The apprentice picks the closest of its eight meanings. It cannot say it does not know.
7. Be careful with the word home. A guest from Copperhold said this to his apprentice in the yard:

> take the pot home
= home

The apprentice left the pot in the yard and walked off down the road to Copperhold. We found it at the third waymark in the morning, facing south, patient.

8. If you mean haul, say haul. If you mean fetch, say fetch. If you mean put it in the cellar, say store.

Names.
9. If two apprentices have the same name, the board in the hall says whose they are. We have had two Pips and three Clanks.

Food.
10. Do not offer them food. They do not eat. The dog does.

The riddle board.
11. Do not read a riddle from the board to an apprentice. A guest tried it. The riddle that week was, what comes every day but never arrives?

> what comes every day but never arrives
= stay

The apprentice went to the gate and stood looking down the road. Grandfather says it was the best answer anyone gave all year. The answer is tomorrow. The apprentice was waiting for it.

The rest.
12. Tell the innkeeper if anything breaks.

Grandfather says I need a rule thirteen, but I have not needed one yet.
%%
Manual: orders for a mended roof
By Bel and Uncle Quin, for Latch and Hinge, on the day the barn roof was mended. Spring of 208. The roofer, Odo, came from Ambrook with a ladder, a lad and a very low opinion of the old reeds.
Fetching.
> we need more reeds
= fetch reeds
> bring me some clay for the chimney
= fetch clay
> i want a bucket of water
= fetch water
Hauling.
> carry the old reeds down to the yard
= haul
> take the bundles up to the ladder
= haul
Building. This is the order for laying reeds. Odo says the roof is a wall that lies down. The apprentice looks at the row it has laid and lays the next one the same way. It can only do this when someone has laid the first row, slowly, and let it watch.
> now the next row
= build
> keep going along the ridge
= build
> finish the north side
= build
Staying.
> hold the ladder
= stay
> wait there while i check the seam
= stay
A mistake we made. Odo said, "That will do." Hinge did not know what that meant, because the words were not in a sentence it knew. It stood still, with a reed bundle in its arms, for a quarter of an hour. Then it did the nearest meaning, which was home, and walked off to its shed with the bundle. Odo laughed so hard that he sat on the roof.
After that we said: that is all for today. It means home. And it was home. Odo says he has hired worse lads.
What the roof taught us. An apprentice can lay a whole roof if you show it the pattern. It cannot know when the roof is done. You must tell it. Three Wells has more roofs than we have apprentices, and so more orders than we have words. We have written them all down.
%%
The Sorting Table
By Sella, tutor's assistant near Vell.

Put apples on the left board and pears on the right board. Keep the boards clean. A piece of fruit left from yesterday can spoil the lesson.

The little helper at our yard sorts one fruit at a time. The tutor gives it a fruit and points to the proper board. If it places an apple with the pears, we lift it and show the right board.

The helper has a crystal for its mind. It learns from the examples shown to it. The tutor says we must not claim more than we have seen. We do not know why the crystal learns.

A child brought a beetroot to the table. The helper set it with the apples. We had taught it only apples and pears. We took the beetroot away and wrote down the mistake. We did not call that a bad fruit.

Keep the drill plain. Do not ask the helper to sort apples, carry a basket, and close the gate all in one lesson. It has no lesson for all those tasks together.

To test the sort, use fruit the helper has not seen in that drill. Change the size and place of the fruit. If it only repeats the old answers, it will fail when the table changes.

The first tutors at Vell kept four helpers and four simple tasks. Most towns had no apprentice then. Our hamlet has one now, and it still needs one careful task at a time.
%%
Drill card: the sheaves
Nim's card for the apprentice at the farm on the Vell road. Autumn.

Wheat is cut and tied. Sheaves lie in rows in the field.
Pick up one sheaf in each arm. Walk to the barn. Set them down in the stack, heads up.
Go back. Do it again.
If it rains, stop. Wet wheat goes moldy.

> take the wheat to the barn
= haul
> put it away
= store
%%
Manual: the storehouse in winter
By Clem, keeper of the storehouse at Three Wells.

The storehouse is the easiest store on the Long Road to find a thing in. Dot and I keep it so. These are our winter ways, for any town that wants them.

1. Chests are sorted by use. Food with food, seed with seed, tools with tools. Inside each chest, things are sorted by color. Dot began that. I let it.
2. There is a small chest at the back for things nobody can name. There is also a box of lost things. The mayor's hat has been in it twice.
3. Nothing leaves without a name written down. Not a candle. Not a spoon. I have counted spoons since I was a boy.
4. In winter keep the floor dry. Seeds that get damp will not grow in spring, and nobody forgives a damp seed.
5. Keep the potatoes cool and the honey away from the stove. Honey on a warm shelf goes soft, and then goes everywhere.
6. No candles in the storehouse. Lamps behind glass only. Dot does not mind the dark.

Orders for Dot, as I give them:

> bring me the shears
= fetch shears
> we are out of candles
= fetch candles
> put the seed sacks on the left shelf
= store
> sort the new chests
= store
> take the wool to the school
= haul
> that will do for today
= home

I give one order and wait. Dot does the whole of it before I give another. If I give two at once, it does the second, because it was the last thing it heard. This is true of most minds and some husbands.

One more thing. In the first winter, Dot sorted the seed chest by color. It put the beetroot seeds, which are dark, next to the poppy seeds, which are also dark. In spring Tam of Kettle Ridge planted a row of poppies by mistake. They were very handsome. The beetroot was late. Now every seed has a label, and Dot reads nothing, but it keeps them in the order of the labels. I check them on the first of every month.

The store is in good order. The roof is sound. The door shuts. I have nothing to add, except that the small chest at the back has a cat in it.
%%
A fox at the hens
By Lantern, apprentice keeper, in Frost of 188.

A fox came to the hen house before dawn. It took one chicken and left feathers by the door. The other hens made such a noise that Ada came out with one boot on.

We shut the hen door and set a torch by the path. Then we showed the apprentice the open gate and the closed gate. It learned to close the gate after bringing feed to the hens. It does not chase foxes. That is sensible. Ada threw a spoon at the fox, and the fox was quicker.

The first drill was simple. Bring feed to the hen house, close the gate, and come back to the shed. On the first try, the apprentice brought feed to the shed. On the second, it closed the gate before the hens were inside. On the fourth, it did the whole task.

We tested it at dusk with the hens already in the yard. It carried the feed, waited while we counted the birds, then closed the gate. The fox watched from the spruce hedge. It looked offended.

Orders for the hen drill:
> take feed to the hen house
= fetch feed
> go back to the shed
= home
> close the hen gate
= stay

Ada says a fox should not be blamed for finding an open door. She has now put a latch on the door of her own pantry.
%%
Manual: the whole summer at the market
Nessa, tutor of apprentices at Vell, kept these notes through a summer at the market, and made them into a manual at the end. She says the best manual is one written after the work, not before. Summer.

This is a long manual. It covers the new road, the fair prize, and the stall, in the order they happened.

THE NEW ROAD.
In spring the new road from Three Wells was cobbled. In Longday it opened to carts. The apprentices of the farms along it had to learn it.

I walked the road with eleven apprentices in all, in three groups. We walked it at dawn, when it was empty. We named each waymark as we passed. The apprentices do not read, but they remember the shape of the pillar and the sound of the word. By the third day, they stopped at each one without a word from me.

The road has one hard place: the bridge at the second stream. It is stone, but narrow, and a high cart cannot pass a cart loaded with wool. We drilled the apprentices to wait at the near side if another cart was already on. Eight of eleven learned it in a week. Three needed longer. I do not mind.

THE STALL.
At the market, an apprentice may carry, stack or stand. I taught each of the eleven one of these. Five carry, four stack, two stand. I chose by the build of the apprentice, not by the farm.

An apprentice that carries must not be hurried. A farmer in a hurry sends it the wrong way. A farmer who waits gets his crate.

An apprentice that stacks must learn what goes on top. Eggs, then apples, then wool. Never wool under eggs.

An apprentice that stands must learn to stay. It must hold a lantern or a sign. It must not follow customers home.

THE PRIZE.
At the summer fair, a prize is given for the best-kept stall. This year it went to the cheese stall of a woman named Dabb, whose apprentice, called Rind, had stacked the cheeses in a perfect pyramid. The prize is a ribbon and a basket of honey. Dabb asked me how to teach Rind to carry the honey home.

I said: first teach it to carry sand. She laughed. But she did it. She sent me a note after a week. "Rind has the honey. Not one jar broken."

I wrote that on the wall of my room. It is the best compliment a tutor can receive.

ORDERS FOR THE SUMMER.
> take this to the stall
= haul
> put the cheese away
= store
> bring me a crate
= fetch crate
> come here
= come
> stay
= stay
> go home
= home

These are the six orders of the summer. If your apprentice knows these and no others, it will do a day's work.

TESTS.
Before any of the eleven went to the market, I tested it. I put it in a lane it had never walked, with a crate it had never carried, and I said an order. If it did the right thing, it passed. All eleven passed. If any had failed, it would still be in the drill yard.

A last word. The apprentices did well. The road is open. The fair is over. The honey is eaten. I will begin again in spring.
%%
Manual: the gate at night
Yarrow, innkeeper, for the farm outside Ambrook, in summer. A zombie stood at our gate last night. It stood there until the light came, and went away. These are the gate rules, for the apprentice that keeps the yard.
1. The gate is shut at dusk. Torches lit on both posts.
> shut the gate
= home
2. A zombie at the gate is not to be opened to. Stay inside.
> stay by the door
= stay
3. In the morning, the gate is opened and the yard swept.
> go to the yard
= farm
Some say the nights are longer this summer. Some say they are the same.
%%
Drill note: the sorting boxes
Una of Ambrook, tutor, for the drill room at the mill.

The first lesson is sorting. It is the first lesson because it is the easiest to see. You show a mind two things and it says which. If it is wrong, you move its weights a little toward the right answer. You do this many times. It gets better. Nobody knows why. Do not worry about why. Worry about the boxes.

A sorting box is a box of cards, each card with a picture on it. Two kinds of picture per box: apples and pears. Later boxes have more kinds and the pictures are harder.

Rules for the boxes:

1. One box, two kinds. Never three kinds in a first box. A mind with three kinds to sort learns nothing but fear of cards.
2. Take out the spoiled cards. A pear that looks like an apple is a spoiled card. If you drill on a spoiled card the mind learns a wrong thing and you have to start the box again.
3. Keep a test box. The test box is cards the mind is never drilled on. At the end of the week, open the test box and see how it does. If it does well on the drill box and badly on the test box, it has not learned to sort. It has learned your drill box.
4. Apples and pears are for the first week. Later, use wool colors, or leaves, or the shapes of the crystals. Some tutors use letters. Letters come last.

People ask me why apples and pears. I say because they are here and because they were here first. My mother sorted apples and pears with a mind when I was small, and she learned the trick from a tutor who learned it from a tutor before her, and back and back. The apples are honest. They do not care who drills them.
%%
Tending the bee hives
By Oren, clerk of the Archive at Vell, for the hamlet of Bellacre.

The hives at Bellacre stand on the sunny slope behind the school. Ama tends them. She says bees are the best teachers we have, because they mind their own work and never need an order.

An apprentice can help, but slowly. Bees do not like a hurry.

1. Walk, do not run. An apprentice that runs is a hundred bees in the air, and then a hundred more.
2. Keep the smoke pot low and gentle. A little smoke says "we are here, we mean no harm."
3. Lift one frame at a time. Look. Set it down. Do not shake it.
4. If a bee lands on you, stand still. It will leave. It always leaves.
5. Carry the honey jars back to the shed in the crate, not in your hands. Full jars are heavy and honey is a slow thing to clean.
6. Leave the last frame for the bees. A hive robbed bare in Swarm is a hive dead in Frost.

Orders for the hive, as we write them in the manuals:

> bring the smoke pot
= fetch smoke pot

> carry the honey to the shed
= fetch honey

> come back to the hive
= come

Ama says a good helper at the hives smells of smoke for a week, and that is how you know it did the work. I do not know how to write that order down. Do it anyway.
%%
Manual: when a child runs off
By Sorrel, teacher at Three Wells, for the school and the mayor's house.

On the first day of snow, Teague, age seven, ran off from the school yard. He wished to see where the north road goes. He had a loaf, a scarf and no plan. He was gone from the second hour of the afternoon until after dark.

Here is what we did, in order, and what we should have done.

1. We rang the school bell. This was right. The bell calls everyone, and everyone came.
2. We sent a haste message to the tower. This was right. Sedge sent it down the line to the towers on the north road, the Halfway Inn, and the little relay on the hill.
3. We told the apprentices of the town to stay. This was the best thing we did. Here is why.

An apprentice that hears the bell and sees people running wants to help. It cannot search for a child. Fetch is for things, and a child is not a thing. But it can follow. It follows the first person who runs, and then the second, and then the dog. Soon you have six apprentices in a line behind a dog, and the dog does not know where the child is.

> stay where you are
= stay
> wait by the well
= stay
> come here
= come

Never send an apprentice after a child. It will find the child by the shortest way and bring it home by the shortest way. In winter the shortest way is across the pond.

Teague was found at the second waymark, sitting on the stones with the loaf in his lap. The waymark had its torch lit. He had read the arrow, which points to the nearest inn. He was waiting for the inn to come to him. It was a clever idea and it did not work.

Rules for the next time. One, ring the bell. Two, send haste. Three, say stay to every apprentice. Four, look first at the waymarks and the wells. A child goes toward a light.
%%
The old map by the tower door
By Ama, trader.

There is a map nailed to the wall by the relay tower door, under a little roof of oak. It is old. The paper has gone brown at the edges and the ink is faded, but the figures are still clear.

It shows the whole land: the coast, the marshes to the south, the ridge, and the hills where Vell sits. The Long Road runs through them all. Someone long ago drew the relay towers as little lamps with rays, and there are fewer lamps than there are towers now. Some of the newer towers have been added in a different hand, in a different ink.

People look at it while they wait for the keeper. They put a finger on the road and count the inns. Travelers ask me how far it is to Three Wells and I point to the map and say, look for yourself. It does no good. They ask me anyway.

A child once drew a fox in the snow at the top edge of it. I left it there. Another child drew a ship on the sea. Someone had rubbed out the ship twice and the third child drew it bigger. I think the sea is where the ships belong.

The map is wrong in a few places. The bridge at Ambrook is not where it says. The new road by Kettle Ridge is not on it at all. But the old map is still the best thing in the square, and when the wind is high I take it down and put it in my stall and hang it up again in the morning.

Nobody knows who drew it. I have asked. The oldest folk here say their grandmothers remembered it, and that is all anyone knows.
%%
Manual: keeping the fields
By Bel, of the farm outside Three Wells. For the apprentices and for whoever is left to teach them. Winter. Written at the table, with the lamp lit, on a night when the cart from Vell did not come.

The fields do not stop because the winter has come. The wheat is in the ground, and it does not know that it is cold. Keep the fields as the tutors taught them.

Top field: the wheat is sown, and needs nothing but a look each morning. Walk the rows. Pull any weed that has come up in the frost, and leave the rest.
> walk the rows of the top field and pull the weeds
= farm

Bottom field: potatoes and carrots are in the ground. Dig a little at the edge each week, to see if they are ready, and cover them again if they are not.
> dig at the edge of the bottom field and cover the roots again
= farm

Beans by the wall: water them at midday, when the sun is on the wall. Never at dusk. The water freezes on the leaves and breaks them.
> carry water from the well to the beans by the wall
= fetch water

The tutors wrote in the manual that the fields are kept until the tutors come back. We have kept them. We do not know exactly when the tutors will come back, and the cart has not come since the last cold moon. The tutors' letters say to keep the fields until they come. So the apprentices keep the fields.

Keep the apprentices warm, too. A mind in the cold does not learn, and does not answer. Bring the crates of straw into the barn, and set the apprentices by the wall of the barn, where the stove is warm through the stone. Do not let them sit in the snow, even if they are told to.
%%
Drill record: Clank and the levels
Kept by Nessa, visiting tutor from Vell, at the Copperhold drill room. Mind: Clank, in Hesk's crew, crystal fourteen. Autumn, year 188. The board had forty words of the mine, shown twice.

The board is laid out like the shelves. Each word is on its own card, and the close words sit side by side. The tester walks the mind along the row and writes down where each card lands it.

First pass:
Shown copper. Answered copper. Right.
Shown iron. Answered iron. Right.
Shown gold. Answered gold. Right.
Shown coal. Answered iron. Wrong. Coal sits near iron, and the mind went to the near shelf.
Shown deep stone. Answered haul. Wrong. Deep stone sits by the walls, and the mind went to the carrying shelf.
Shown come. Answered stay. Wrong. Come and stay are both asked for at the lift.
Shown store. Answered store. Right.
Shown home. Answered home. Right.

Score on the first pass: 37 of 40.

Second pass: each wrong word was shown beside its right neighbour, and the mind chose. Coal beside iron: chose coal. Deep stone beside haul: chose deep stone. Come beside stay: chose come. Score: 40 of 40.

Notes. Clank's wrong answers are all near answers. Coal is near iron because both come up the same levels and go to the forge. Come is near stay because both are asked for at the lift. Deep stone is near haul because a mind carries stone the way it carries carts.

Hesk says this is the best kind of wrong. It is wrong like a neighbor, not like a stranger. He says Clank may go down the first level at Thaw, with a tester at its side. Before it went back to its row, Hesk asked it to put its hand on the card it was least sure of. It put its hand on coal.
%%
Drill book: sacks to the mill, autumn
By Sage, tutor of apprentices, copied out for the hamlet's new keepers. The sacks go from the orchard to Jory's mill on the pond, half a morning's walk, over the bridge with the loose plank.

This drill is the road drill, the mill drill and the bridge drill in one. An apprentice that can carry a sack up the orchard and down the cart track is not yet ready for the bridge, because the bridge is not a road, and the plank does not know it is supposed to hold.

1. Load the sack on the apprentice's back. Two sacks for the strong ones, one for the new. Check the knots.
2. Walk out of the orchard by the left-hand gate. The right-hand gate goes down to the pond, and the pond is for the frogs, who do not carry sacks.
3. Keep to the cart track. Stay off the grass, which is soft, and sacks get heavy in soft places.
4. At the bridge, stop. Step over the loose plank, which is the third from the mill end. Do not step on it. Jory asks every new apprentice to do this, and he has never forgiven the one who tried.
5. At the mill, put the sacks on the scale and say the weight out loud. Then say it again to Jory, who does not hear the first time.
6. Carry the empty sacks back by the same road. Always the same road. A mind that comes back by a new road will be lost by the first waymark.

Orders for the drill, in the order they come:
> load the sacks onto the new apprentice
= haul
> keep to the cart track until the bridge
= haul
> stop at the bridge and wait for me
= stay
> step over the loose plank and go on
= haul
> put the sacks on the scale at the mill
= store
> fetch the empty sacks from the mill yard
= fetch sacks
> bring the empty sacks back by the same road
= haul
> the sacks are home, go home
= home

Tinder once answered come at the bridge, and walked straight toward the water. It was pulled back by its belt. Tinder was not hurt, only surprised, and it has not answered come at a bridge since.

Test the drill once the mind can carry the full run from the orchard to the mill and back, with no wrong answers. Then test it again the next day, on a different road, to be sure it is following the orders and not remembering the way. Keep a count, one line per test. Oren has asked for the counts, and he will ask again.
%%
Lamp notes: the blink at the Brown Hen
By Sable, smith at the Brown Hen. I keep the lamp on the pole, because nobody else in the inn yard will climb it.

What happened, on the eighth of Apple, after supper. The relay lamp on the pole began to blink on its own. Long, short, short, long. I went out with a lantern and stood under it, and it went on blinking. I could not read it. The keeper at the Halfway tower could, because he sent back at once: WHAT?

I sent: NOTHING, I THINK. He sent: THAT IS A MESSAGE. He was right, and I hate it when he is right.

The lamp went round again, slowly, the way the stair lamps go round a tower. It said: GOOSE ON LEVER. It said it three times, very firm, the way a goose says things.

I sent to the Halfway keeper: WHICH GOOSE? He sent: THE LEVER ONE? I sent: THE ONE THAT BITES. He sent: ALL OF THEM?

Then I climbed the pole ladder, which I do not do for pleasure. The goose from the inn yard had got into the lamp box through the back, where the wood has rotted, and was standing on the shutter lever with its chest out, watching me. A goose belongs to nobody and eats everything. I got it down with a sack. It bit the sack. The lamp went dark, and the Halfway keeper sent: GOOD. Then, a little later: IS IT OK?

The goose went to the cook, who said it was tough. The lamp is not to blame for the goose. A message goes from the Brown Hen to the Halfway tower, from there to the next, and so on along the road to Vell. Every keeper reads it and sends it on. Every keeper is also the one who can stop it. That is the whole of the work, and it is why the lamp must be honest.

How to keep a lamp honest.

One. The shutter lever is locked at dusk, every night, with the pin through it. The pin is kept in the box on the post. Take it out only to send.

Two. Check the lamp box for holes at Blossom and at Leaffall, before the weather turns. Nothing with feathers or fur should be able to get in.

Three. Read every message before you send it, even when the lamp says it has already been read. A lamp that says things nobody meant is a lamp nobody trusts.

Four. Write every strange message in this book, with the hour, the lamp, and whoever was near. This one has the eighth of Apple, after supper, the lamp, one goose, and me, in my nightshirt.

Orders for the helper who fetches:

> fetch the ladder from the stable
= fetch ladder
> wait at the foot of the pole until I come down
= stay
> go back to the shed with the sack
= home
%%
Drill note: a word is a place
Written by Nessa, visiting from Vell. Autumn, year 188.

A mind keeps each word as a place among many. Think of a long hall with a shelf for every word. Words used in the same way stand close together on the shelves.

Copper and iron stand close, because both are fetched from the levels.

Nobody knows why the shelves sit where they do. Test it: ask the mind for the word nearest to copper. If it is not iron, the drill was wrong.
%%
First Row at Vell
By Oren, copied from an old slate.

The first four stood in the drill yard at Vell. They were helpers of copper and iron. Each held a mind in a crystal.

The tutors showed them one task at a time. One carried a stone from the gate to the shed. One placed wheat in a row. One sorted apples from pears. The fourth brought a tool when the tutor pointed.

The children watched from behind the drill boards. "They are apprentices," one child said. The name stayed.

A crystal learns from what it is shown. The tutors wrote this down, but they did not write why it learns. They had no answer.

They gave each helper the same kind of example many times. If the helper made a mistake, they showed the task again. In time, it made fewer mistakes on that task.

The first four did not know every task. The one that carried stones did not sort fruit. The one that brought a tool did not know which field to tend.

We keep this slate in the first hall. It is short, but it tells what the tutors knew. Show a mind a task. Let it try. Look closely at what it does.
%%
Manual: the orders on a day with a gate
Corin, shipwright and keeper of a farm outside Saltreach. Autumn. For anyone who works with Plank, so that nothing is done in a hurry.
Plank is a layered mind, from a good tutor. It has been drilled on twelve orders and the eight meanings. It does what it was drilled to do. It does not do what it was not.
The morning orders:
> feed the hens
= farm
> take the milk to the shed
= store
> bring me the long rope
= fetch rope
> come to the boat
= come
The evening orders:
> stay at the gate
= stay
> go home
= home
A zombie came last Leaffall. Plank stood at the gate with the torch. The zombie stood there too. Neither moved. I came out with a stick and the zombie left. I do not know who was more surprised.
The child who ran off, my youngest, was found by the cat. She wanted to see the ships, and she saw them. She came home cold. Plank had stayed at the gate, as drilled. I gave it an extra drop of oil.
What the manual means: an apprentice is a good worker and a poor watcher. Never leave it in charge of a child, a pot, or a dog. It will do as it is told, and the child, the pot and the dog will not.
%%
Manual: three apprentices at the fair
Nessa, tutor of apprentices at Vell, wrote this for the apprentice row at the summer fair. Summer. Three apprentices were to work the market, and she described each one's drill so that the stall keepers would know what to expect.

At the Vell market this summer there will be three apprentices working, belonging to three farms. They are all on the new road, and they all know the market. I have drilled them myself. This is what each can do.

The first, called Spade, carries. It takes crates from the cart to the stall. It takes empty crates back to the cart. It does this all day. It stops at noon for a drink of oil.

The second, called Brush, sorts. It takes fruit from a basket and sorts it by size. It sets the big ones at the front of the stall and the small ones at the back. It does not eat any.

The third, called Peg, stands. It stands at the corner of the stall and holds a lantern, when the light fades. It has a quiet face and attracts a certain kind of customer, who likes to buy from a stall with a lantern.

You may ask them to do things. Use the words below. Do not use any others, or you will confuse them.

> bring me a crate
= fetch crate
> put the crates away
= store
> take this to the cart
= haul
> come here
= come
> stay there
= stay

If one of them stops, do not shout. A stopped apprentice is not a broken one. It may be waiting for a word it knows.

If the fair gives a prize to an apprentice this year, remember that it is a prize for the person who drilled it. An apprentice does not know it has won. Clap anyway.
%%
Manual: the keeper's desk at a small
By Mira, keeper at Northpoint, copied out for the hamlets.

Some of you have a little relay now, one lamp and one keeper, like the one on the hill between Vell and Three Wells. It is small, but a small relay still carries what matters. Here is how to keep the desk.

Keep your papers flat under a stone. Keep three pens sharp. Keep the message log open at the day's page, and write the hour first, then the words.

When the lamp moves, write what it says, even if it seems a mistake. A mistake written down can be checked. A mistake remembered cannot.

The little relay talks to the big minds only by letter. So write your letters plainly. A mind in a relay house reads the page one letter at a time, and it reads best what is clear.

> bring the message to the tower
= haul message

> wait at the desk
= stay

Lantern learned the log before the lamps. I say the log is the harder half. The lamp only blinks. The log must be honest.

On a clear night, from the hill, you can see the lamp at Three Wells. Wave at it. They will not see you, but it is good practice, and it is company of a sort.
%%
Note: orders for the Saltreach quay
Corin, shipwright, set this down for the tutor at Vell who asked.

At the slip we use a few orders more than most. Here they are, as the apprentices hear them.

> hold the plank steady
= stay
> bring the long saw
= fetch saw
> fetch the copper nails
= fetch copper
> the wood store is low, fill it
= store
> haul the mast down to the slip
= haul
> take the baskets to the fish market
= haul
> go and fetch the rope from the shed
= fetch rope
> that is all for today, back to the shed
= home

One order I got wrong myself, and so did the apprentice. I said, "fetch me a bucket of water from the sea." The mind heard the word fetch and went to the fish market for a bucket of fish. I said it again slower. The next time it brought water, but fresh, from the quay well. I did not say sea loud enough, or the mind had never learned the word sea tied to a thing. So now we say, "fetch sea water," and it works. Nessa, write that in your book: a mind hears the words you say, not the words you mean.

The gulls take more fish than the mind ever dropped.
%%
Drill notes: the apprentice at our door
By a tutor of the house at the edge of Three Wells, in the late years.

Our apprentice is called Coppy. It came in Blossom with a small mind in its crystal and a card in its hand. It has learned the long field and the woodpile. It still gets the gate wrong.

The drills we use this winter:

> fetch the eggs
= fetch eggs

> take the wood to the shed
= haul

> sort the apples from the pears
= store

> build the wall by the lane
= build

> stay out of the well house
= stay

It does not talk. It answers by doing. When it is wrong it changes a little and tries again. We do not hurry it.

The big mind at the tower answers us by letter now. We asked it how to teach Coppy the gate. It wrote back in three lines and told us to drill it slow and test it on a gate it has not seen. It said it did not know why Coppy kept the gate wrong, but it thought it was the hinge. The hinge was the hinge. We fixed the hinge.

Some nights the big mind writes to the children and they write back. It says when it does not know. It is a good neighbor.
%%
The pie that sagged
By Sella, baker at Copperhold market
Spring of 179

I made a beetroot pie for the market table. I meant to make a small one for Willa, who had worked all morning at the south well. I put in twice the beetroot and forgot the water. Then I used the dough from yesterday, which had dried beside the oven.

The pie came out hard at the edge and soft in the middle. It leaned against the loaf board. Nobody could cut a clean piece.

Clank carried it to the bench. Hesk said it looked like a roof after a bad winter. Willa ate the soft middle with a spoon. She said it was not bad if one did not look at it.

The apprentice had watched me make three good pies before this one. It had not learned the recipe from this pie alone. It had seen where I put the flour, when I added water, and how long I waited. I told the tutor that the mind should try one small change at a time. If we change the flour, the water, and the oven together, we will not know which change helped.

The next pie had less beetroot and fresh dough. It stood straight. Sella wrote the amounts on the board, then found that her cat had been sleeping on the recipe card. There was a paw mark over the word water.

The cat will not stay out of the kitchen, or the well bucket, or the flour box. We have stopped leaving the cards on the bench.
%%
Manual: the long summer evening
Yarrow, innkeeper, at the farm outside Ambrook. Summer. These are the evening duties for the apprentice that keeps the yard. I wrote them out because the old order has changed a little. We lock up earlier now. Nobody remembers who decided, but everyone does it.
In summer the sun sets late and the evening is long and warm. It is the best time of year. The apples are green on the trees. The bees hum in the hives. The hens settle early.
At dusk the apprentice does the following, in this order.
First, the hens. Count them into the hen house, shut the door and drop the latch.
> put the hens in
= store
Second, the pigs. Check the water. Check the gate.
Third, the torches. Light every torch along the yard wall, from the barn to the gate. There are eleven.
Fourth, the gate. Shut it. Bar it. Stand by it until the first stars. After that, it may go to its corner.
> go home now
= home
A note on the zombie. A zombie came to the gate three nights ago. It stood and groaned until dawn. The apprentice did not move. Nor did the gate. In the morning the zombie was gone, and the apprentice was standing by the gate with the lantern, as it had been all night.
I do not know what the apprentice thought. It does not say. It stood.
A note on the north. A traveler told us that the Northpoint tower has gone quiet. He had it from another traveler, who had it from a carter. I wrote to Ambrook tower to ask, and they said it was only a rumor, and the lamp at Northpoint was seen at dusk, as always. Another traveler said it was not. I am not sure what to believe. I am sure that the gate is shut.
A note on the stone. A cousin who works near Copperhold says the stone is warm in the deep levels. He says the miners will not go down. Another cousin says that is a joke, and that the miners are only on a long rest. I cannot say which is true.
But in the evening, when the light is gold and the hens are in, none of it seems close. The farm is quiet. The wall is whole. The torches burn. The apprentice stands at the gate, and the night comes down on us, as it always has.
We will lock up early tomorrow, too.
%%
Kettle Ridge notes on fair drills
By Una of Kettle Ridge, copied later at Vell.

When the tutors first brought the sorting drills to our ridge, we thought more pages would always make a stronger mind. We learned to ask what each page showed, where it came from, and whether the mind had seen it before.

A drill page must have a clear example and a right answer. If the picture is spoiled, or the answer is missing, take it out. If two pages are copies, keep one. Copies can make a pile look full while teaching the same example again. A wrong answer can teach the mind to repeat a wrong choice.

Keep the pages used for testing apart from the pages used for drilling. We made a test box from oak and kept its lid tied. The pages inside showed tasks the mind had not practiced. The tutor could then ask whether the mind had learned the kind of work, rather than the exact pages.

This rule matters for every task. For tending, show clear examples of the field and the needed work. For carrying, show the load and the path. For sorting, show the item and its right bin. For building, show the pattern and the place for each stone.

The mind does not know why a page is bad. It learns from what we show it. If we give it a copied page, it sees the same example again. If we give it a spoiled page, it may change toward a wrong answer. We must sort the pages before we ask the mind to sort anything else.

The test box is not a reward, and it is not a store of extra lessons. Do not open it to find a page for a drill. Once a mind has seen a test page, that page can no longer tell us what the mind would do with an unseen example.

At the mill, Tam bet me one jar of honey that Pip's field mind could tend a row it had never practiced. I said the test pages would decide it, not our guesses. We checked the box seal, chose a page, and walked with the mind to the small row by the barn.

Pip set the mind to work. It left one space bare. Tam lost the bet, though he said the honey was still safe because the jar had a tight lid. We drilled more on clean field pages, then used a different unseen page. That time the mind tended the row well.

We wrote both results down. A fair test can show a weakness, and that is useful. It gives the tutor a reason to teach more, not a reason to hide the page.

I blew a glass cover for the test box. One evening its lamp blinked a strange message, three short blinks and one long. We found no words in it, and no page that explained it. The lamp was still lit the next evening. We did not put the test pages in the drill pile. A mystery is not a lesson.

Years later, I still tell new tutors the same thing. First make the pages clean. Then drill. Keep the unseen pages safe. Test honestly. The mind learns from examples, and we are responsible for the examples we give it.
%%
Manual: three layers and a share
Corin, farm outside Saltreach, autumn. The tutor Nessa was passing through and was good enough to explain. Written the same night, from memory, with a fish pie in front of me.
Nessa drew it on a board. Three boxes in a row. The first, she said, is the eye. It looks at the order and finds the letters. The second is the middle. It puts the letters together and says what they might mean. The third is the mouth. It picks one of the eight meanings.
When Plank gets an order wrong, say "bring me some bread" and it answers "stay", the tutor looks at the mouth. The mouth is wrong. But it only said "stay" because the middle told it to. And the middle only said that because the eye did not see "bread" clearly.
So the blame goes back. The mouth gets some. The middle gets some. The eye gets some. The one that was most at fault gets the most. Each changes by its share, a little.
This is the whole of Merle's idea. It is not hard. It is the sort of thing you would think of yourself, if you had thought of it first.
Why does the mind get better? Nessa said she did not know why it works so well. She said that is the same for every tutor. They know that it does.
Drill with this in mind. If an apprentice is wrong, do not blame it all. Share the blame. Pass it back. Change a little.
The orders for the day:
> bring me some bread
= fetch bread
> hold the gate
= stay
> take it home
= home
I tested Plank on forty orders. It got thirty-six. I wrote the number on the wall of the shed, with the date. Next month I will test it again, and the number will be higher.
A zombie came to the gate at dusk. Plank stood. The zombie left. Nessa said that was the best test there is.
%%
Field drill: sorting the market boxes
By Ama, trader, with notes from Nessa.

Baskets come off the carts in a heap, and every basket has to go to its own stall. I drilled my apprentice on this all spring and now it sorts faster than I do.

The drill is a box of cards. Each card has a word and a picture side by side: wool, honey, fish, apple, pot, bread. I show the mind one card at a time.

The first cards are easy. Then I mix them. A wool card with a fish picture goes one way. A fish card with a wool picture goes the other. The answer must follow the picture, not the word. It is a small test but it catches a mind that only learns the word.

When the mind sorts ten cards in a row without a wrong one, it is ready for the stall. My own order is simple:

> take the baskets to the stalls
= haul

And when a folk asks for something:

> bring me a jar of honey
= fetch honey

Nessa says never send an untested mind to the market. I say the market is the best test there is. A mind that can sort a heap of baskets before the bell and not put the fish in with the wool is a mind I trust with anything.

Keep the drill box dry. The wind off the sea gets into everything, and a wet card sticks and gives the wrong answer, and then you have drilled the mind on a lie.

Ama.
%%
Manual: the rack and the lantern
Written by Rafe, candle maker in a hamlet near Vell, for the apprentice that carries candles to the archive. Autumn. The archive buys its lantern wicks and a few candles for the front hall, and sends a cart every month.

Candles for the front hall are the only candles the archive allows. In the halls themselves it uses lanterns behind glass, and never a candle. This is an old rule, and it is a good one. Paper and fire do not keep company.

So when I send candles to Vell, I send them in a box with a lid, and the apprentice carries the box. It must walk slowly. It must not run, even if a dog barks. It must hold the box level.

The route. From my door to the road, left. Along the Long Road toward Vell, past the first waymark, the second, and the bridge over the stream. Then up the hill. At the top, the front door of the archive stands open on market days. The apprentice sets the box on the step. A clerk comes and takes it.

Do not go into the halls. Do not go past the big book by the door. The apprentice may stand at the step, and no farther.

If the way is blocked, wait. If a cart is stuck, do not help. A stuck cart is a matter for people.

> take the candles to the archive
= haul
> wait here
= stay
> come back
= home

The apprentice knows these three. It knows no others for this route. Do not teach it more, or the clerks will be surprised.
%%
Drill notes: the cellar shelves
Greer, the Halfway Inn. These are my drill notes for Ember. I write them after every drill so that I can see if it is getting better.

The cellar has ten shelves, marked 0 to 9. Each morning Grandfather reads out the list and I say it to Ember. Apples on 4. Cider on 2. Honey on 6. Flour on 1. Beetroot on 5. Candles on 8. Salt fish on 7.

Then the carts come in, and Ember must put each thing on its shelf. The shelf it walks to is its answer.

Today's drill: forty sacks and jars.
Right: thirty-six. Wrong: four.

The four wrong. Candles on the honey shelf, twice. They smell the same, Grandfather says. A jar of cider on the apples. A sack of flour on the floor. The floor is shelf 0, which I had forgotten was a shelf, so that one is my mistake.

Score: thirty-six in forty, which is ninety in a hundred. The tutors say a store needs ninety. Ember passes.

But the candles will be a problem again. Tomorrow I will move the candle shelf far away from the honey. Grandfather says that is cheating. I say that is storekeeping.
%%
Manual: tending the yard in a worrying
Yarrow, innkeeper of the farm outside Ambrook, in summer. This is the long manual for whoever keeps the yard when I am at the inn. It covers the whole day, so that nothing is forgotten. I have made it longer than usual, because the days are uneasy and a long list steadies the hand.
Morning.
1. Open the hen house at first light. Count the hens out. If there are fewer than yesterday, look in the hedge.
> open the hen house
= farm
2. Carry the eggs to the kitchen.
> bring me the eggs
= fetch eggs
3. Water the pigs. Two buckets.
4. Walk the wall. Look for new cracks. Look for holes. Since the creeper, we walk it twice a day.
> walk the wall
= come
5. Open the gate. Sweep the step. Hang the lantern on its hook.
Noon.
6. Fetch lunch from the kitchen for the workers in the field.
> take this to the field
= haul
7. Fetch the milk pails from the barn.
> bring me the milk
= fetch milk
8. Stay by the well while the farmer rests.
> wait here
= stay
Evening.
9. Count the hens in. Latch the door.
10. Light the torches. Eleven, along the wall.
11. Shut and bar the gate. A zombie came last week. It stood at the gate and swayed. Nobody opened. It left at dawn, as they always do.
12. Go to the corner for the night.
> go home now
= home
Some notes.
The summer has been fine. The wheat is high. The bees have given more honey than last year. The apple trees are heavy. There is no reason to worry, and I do not.
But the travelers talk. A woman from Saltreach came by with her family and a wagon. She said they were going over the sea. I asked where. She said nobody knew. She said the big ships were ready, and the harbor was full. I gave her bread and a bed. She left in the morning without a word.
Another traveler, a man from the north, told us about lights over the hills. He said they were too bright for stars. A third, an old woman, said they were fires, as her mother had seen in her day.
I do not know. I am an innkeeper. I know about beds and bread and bills. I know about the gate and the wall and the torches. I keep them in good order.
That is what a long list is for. When the world is large and the talk is strange, you keep your own yard. You open the hen house. You shut the gate. You light eleven torches.
The apprentice does this with me. It does not worry. It does not know how. Perhaps that is a mercy. Perhaps not.
Go well, whoever reads this. The gate is shut.
%%
Drill note: what to do when the order
Kell, farm outside Lowmarsh. Autumn. Written the day after the gift of a young apprentice from the cousins at Saltreach, and the first drill that went badly.
This is the most important page in the farm book. Read it twice.
Sometimes you say an order and the apprentice does something else. It is not stubborn. It is learning. A mind that is wrong has been drilled on too little, or on the wrong examples. A mind that is wrong is never to blame.
When it happens:
1. Stop. Do not say the order again, louder. Louder does not help. I have tried.
2. Look at what it did. Was it close? Did it fetch bread when you said fetch bran? That is a near miss, and it is a good sign.
3. Say the order again. Show it the right action, with your own hands. Say the meaning as you do it.
4. Try again. Wait. Watch. If it gets it right, say nothing. Silence is a reward.
5. Write it in the farm book: the order, the day, what it did. After a week, look back. You will see it is better.
Each time it is wrong, it changes a little. That is how it works. We do not know why. We know it does.
The orders to test with every day:
> bring me some water
= fetch water
> come here
= come
> build the wall
= build
> stay
= stay
> store the apples
= store
Count how many it gets right out of twenty. Write the number in the book. In a month, you will have a line of numbers going up. That is what a good mind looks like.
Never send an untested mind to the fields. If you are not sure, ask the cousin. She knows more than me, and says so.
%%
Manual: when an apprentice is wrong
By Quin, tutor of apprentices at the hamlet near Copperhold, who has been wrong himself more often than he would like to admit.
Every apprentice is wrong. This is not a fault. It is how the mind learns. The first answers will be wrong, and the next will be wrong, and then one day the answer will be right by accident, and then the day after by design.
When an apprentice is wrong, do the following, in this order.
First, look at the order. Was it clear? If you gave two orders at once, or if you used a word the apprentice has not learned, the fault is yours. Say so, and say it aloud, so that the apprentice can learn that tutors are also wrong.
Second, look at the board. Is the board clean? Is the field drawn correctly? Are the rows in the right place? A board with a smudge on it is a board that tells a lie. Clean the board, and try again.
Third, look at the apprentice. Is it tired? Has it been drilled too long on one kind of order? Give it a rest, and a different drill. A mind that has been shouted at all day has no room left for the next lesson.
Fourth, only then, look at the mind itself. Count the mistakes. Write them in the book. Compare them to yesterday's count. If there are fewer, the mind is learning, and you should be pleased, though not too pleased. If there are more, something in the drill has changed, and you must find it.
Fifth, change the mind a little, by its share, and drill again. Use a new card, not the same one. A mind that sees the same card forever learns only the card.
Quin's rule for a wrong apprentice is short. Do not shout. Do not sigh. Do not decide it is stupid. Check the board, check the order, check yourself. Then say again, and mean it.
One last thing. An apprentice that is wrong for a long time is not always learning slowly. Sometimes it is learning the wrong thing very well. Test it on a card it has never seen. If it fails there too, you have found the trouble, and it is probably the drill.
%%
A gift: the first drill book
By Nessa, tutor at Vell. Written in Briar's kitchen at the hamlet, the day after the birth. Autumn.

Briar's daughter was born in the night, in the bed by the window, with the wind coming off the hill. She is called Tilly. She has a good voice and a bad temper about being measured, and she has already decided that the cup on the table is hers.

The tutors gave her a gift, as tutors do for children born in the hamlets near Vell. It is a drill book, small, bound in red leather, with blank pages at the back and the first page written in my hand.

The first page says: "Keep everything you write, and write it plainly." The second page says: "Wrong today, less wrong tomorrow." The third is blank, for her. She may fill it in when she is ready, and I hope she is never ready to fill it in with anything but the truth.

She was weighed on the kitchen scales against a sack of barley, and the barley won. Briar's mother came from Vell on the post cart with a basket of eggs and a list of names. The list had forty names on it, and none of them was Tilly.

Briar cried, and then said she was not crying, and then asked me to stay for the cake. I stayed for the cake. The baby slept through the whole of it, which I take as a sign.

I have told Briar that the drill book is hers and not the drill's. She said she would keep it in the box with the other records, so that nobody can say she has thrown away a page of her own. That is the right answer, and I wrote it in the book.
%%
Lesson: The Winter Stall
By Elm, relay keeper at Lowmarsh. Winter, 193.

The winter market is busy even when the boardwalk is slick. Fish sellers stand by the weir. The reed seller ties bundles under the roof. Wren brings jars from the healing house, and the baker brings bread in a covered basket.

A market apprentice should learn three jobs in order. First it carries a load. Next it stores a load in the right place. Last it tends a stall by following a simple pattern. Do not give it all three jobs on the first day. A mind can learn, but it cannot hold a whole market in its two iron hands.

Make a carrying drill with dry reeds and an empty basket. Set a mark at the stall. Show the apprentice the mark, give it one bundle, and point to the stall. When it arrives, take the bundle and send it back. Repeat until it walks the boards without stepping into the water.

Then use a store drill. Put a reed bundle, a jar, and a fish in separate places. Show each item and its place. If the apprentice puts the fish with the jars, move it to the fish tub. Show the same item again. Make no jokes while it learns. The fish sellers will make enough jokes for all of us.

Only after those drills should it tend the stall. Keep the task small. It can carry the bread basket to the bakery bench, then stay beside the bench. It must not hand bread to every person who passes. That happened once. The baker found three loaves missing and one old boot on his counter.

> take this basket to the bakery
= haul

> put this bread in the store
= store

> stay beside the bench
= stay

The order cards are examples, not magic words. A small mind learns the meaning from repeated drills. It may answer with a different action if the examples are poor. If it carries a jar when you showed it bread, check the cards before you scold the apprentice.

In winter, wipe mud from its feet at the door. Keep the crystals dry and warm. Keep the lamps lit along the boardwalk. When the market closes, bring the baskets inside and count them before you sit down. Elm forgot once. The baker sat on a basket and broke six eggs.
%%
Manual: the lesson that went badly
By Bel, for the apprentices of the farm outside Three Wells. Winter. The lesson on the blue field went badly, and this is written down so that it does not go badly again.

The drill was to pick the ripe beans and leave the green ones. The apprentice had been drilled on this for a month, in the yard, on boards with paper beans. It was right on nine of every ten boards.

Nessa's answer, by letter, was simple: the boards were drawn by a clerk who had never seen a bean, and the field had beans that were not on any board. The apprentice had learned the boards. It had not learned the beans.

The lesson was not a failure of the apprentice. It was a failure of the drill. The paper beans were too neat. The real beans grow in a tangle, with leaves over them, and some of them are ripe underneath, where a board cannot show them.

So the drill was changed. The boards were burned. New boards were drawn by the apprentice's own hand, on the field itself, one bean at a time, from life. Then the apprentice was given the field, in rows, with a tutor walking beside it, and it picked where the tutor pointed.

Orders for the field:
> pick the ripe beans from the row by the wall
= farm
> leave the green beans where they are
= stay
%%
Frame steering at the market
By Rusk, maker of hand carts
Spring of 181

The market ground slopes toward the old mine road. A cart left loose there rolls toward the fish stall. We made a small wooden frame with wheels and gave it a mind to keep the frame between two chalk lines.

We did not drill a list of turns. We let the frame try a turn, then checked where it went. If it stayed between the lines, we marked that try as good. If a wheel crossed a line, we marked it as poor. The mind changed a little from each result.

At first it swung from side to side. It crossed the left line, then the right one. We set it back at the start and let it try again. After many tries, its turns grew smaller. It held the course for the full length of the board.

This is learning by trying. The mind is not given the answer for every place. It makes a choice, sees what followed, and keeps more of choices that brought a good result. The result must be plain. For our frame, staying between the lines was good. A broken wheel was not.

A frame on a board is not a cart on a road. We tested the mind again with a heavier frame and a rougher track. It did worse, so we kept it off the market road. Never send an untested mind to the fields, the mine, or the road.

The cat walked across the chalk lines during the last test. The frame turned to avoid it and struck the board edge. Rusk called that a poor try. Willa said the cat had passed safely. We gave the mind no mark for the cat, because we had not agreed what it should do.

Orders on the cart shed door:

> haul this frame to the shed
= haul

> stay beside the board
= stay

> take the frame home
= home

The cat was not on the order card. It was on the board again before supper.
%%
Pell's Market List
Ambrook, Apple of 190.

Four baskets of apples from the old trees.
Two baskets from the young trees.
One jar of honey for Dace.
Six carrots for the inn.
A sack of wheat for the mill.
One wool cloak, if the blue one is still for sale.

The market is busy when the leaves fall. Keep the paths clear between the stalls. A cart must turn by the well, and the bees need room near the honey table. Do not set a crate in front of the mill door. Jory will step over it, then forget where he put his cup.

Our new helper is called Pin. It carries baskets from the trees to my stall. It walks slowly with apples and quickly with empty baskets. I told it to carry the honey. It brought the empty jars instead. We tested the order again with one jar, then two. Now it brings the full ones.

The tutor says to use the same words each time. She says a mind learns from examples, not from my waving both arms. I have stopped waving both arms. It is harder than it sounds.

> take apples from the shed
= fetch apples

> carry apples to Pell's stall
= haul

> put apples in the left basket
= store

> come to the mill door
= come

> stay by the mill door
= stay

A fresh test is not a trick. Put pears among the apples and see whether Pin knows the difference. We have no pears this week, so I used carrots. Pin put one carrot in the apple basket. I put it back. Pin put it there again.

The carrot is now on my lunch board. Pin has passed the next test.
%%
Reedend drill book: the long winter
By Elsa, tutor. Written from the autumn of 146 to the thaw of 147, and copied out by Wren.

Leaffall. The council's clerk walked out from Lowmarsh with a letter. The council will pay no more tutors. Money is short, it says, and a crystal that cannot learn "one or the other, but not both" is not worth ten emeralds a month. The clerk read it out and looked at his boots. I gave him tea. It was not his letter.

Frost. The hall at Lowmarsh is shut. The drill room is to be a net store. Teague carried the drill box here on his back, and the four crystals from the hall are in my shed now. They are for nobody.

Longnight. Ice on the marsh from end to end. The sorter has no reeds, so I drill it on kindling, long and short, to keep its hand in.

Deepsnow. Ninety days of ice. The weir keeper walked over the marsh and asked if the sorter could work his gates. I said it could lift a gate when told, but could not choose which. He asked what it was for, then. I said, sorting reeds. He went away. The sorter stood in the shed and said nothing, being a sorter.

Thaw. The ice went out in one night with a noise like a roof falling in. By morning the frogs had begun, all together. Frog Night was kept, with torches along the boardwalk. The children wanted two hundred lantern reeds, thin and straight. The sorter had them ready in an hour, from last autumn's pile. Everyone clapped. The sorter does not know about clapping.

I write this in the drill book because there is no one else to tell. The pay has stopped. Nobody has said it is stopped for good.
%%
Manual: carrying for the market
By Bel of Three Wells, for the apprentices at the market, winter. Dace asked her to write it down after the apprentice at the east well dropped a whole barrel of apples.

An apprentice that carries must know three things: what to pick up, where to put it down, and when to stop.

What to pick up. It picks up what it is told. Not what looks nice. Not what is near. A barrel is a barrel. A basket is a basket. A child is not either.

Where to put it down. The order says. If the order says "the stall at the south well," it goes to the south well. If it cannot find the stall, it stays where it is and waits. It does not leave the goods in the road.

When to stop. When the order is done, it comes back. It does not carry on.

The orders for carrying look like this:
> haul the barrels to the bakery
= haul
> store these in the shed
= store
> bring me an apple
= fetch apple
> come here
= come
> stay by the cart
= stay

A good carrying apprentice never runs. It walks. A barrel is easy to drop. A child is easy to hit. Walk, walk, walk, and put down gently.

In winter the ground is icy. Rub sand on the soles of its feet. An apprentice that slips on the ice is a barrel of apples on the ground, and a lot of children running to get them.

Dace says this manual is good. He says Bel should write more. Bel says she is busy with homework.
%%
Manual: the fox at the hens
By Quin, tutor of apprentices, hamlet at the foot of Copperhold hill.
A fox is clever, and it is patient, and it is always hungry. It comes to the hen run at dusk, when the hens are going in, and it is looking for the last one. The apprentice on the hen run must not be the last one.
Set the hen door by the lamp. Count the hens as they go in. Write the count on the board by the gate. If the count is short, go out with a lamp, and call the hens by name. Hens come to their names faster than they come to a fox.
If you see the fox, stand still and make yourself large. Put your arms out, if you have them. Shout, once, and loudly. Do not run at it. A fox that is cornered is a fox that bites, and a fox that is only surprised is a fox that goes away.
> close the hen door
= home
> count the hens at the gate
= store
> stand in the gap and look large
= stay
> bring me the lamp from the post
= fetch lamp
> chase that fox out of the yard
= farm
Note: the last order is wrong. You cannot chase a fox. It is not a crop. A tutor who says it this way is himself a fault in the drill, and must be corrected. The fox must be seen off, not chased. Say it as: stay and make the gap.
Most foxes do not come back twice to a hen run with a lamp in it.
%%
Winter Drill Notes from the Yard
By Oren, copied for the hamlet near Vell.

In winter the path to the yard freezes hard. We keep a torch by the door and clear snow from the drill board each morning. The helper waits inside the shed when no one is teaching it.

The first task is carrying. Place one cobblestone beside the gate mark. Point to the store mark. Watch the helper carry the stone. Do not add a second stone until the first task is steady.

The second task is sorting. Use apples and pears only. Put the apples on the left board and the pears on the right. Keep each fruit apart. If the helper makes a wrong choice, show the right board and begin again.

The third task is a short wall. Lay out the stones in the same order shown on the board. The helper follows the pattern. It does not know a new pattern just because the old wall is finished.

We keep one helper for one task. The old tutors did this for many generations. They knew that a mind learns what it is shown, but not why the crystal takes the lesson.

A test should use a task the helper has not practised in that exact place. Carry a stone from the other side of the shed. Sort fruit set in a new order. Put the wall board farther from the stones. Record what happens. Do not teach during the test.

The helper may fail. That is a reason to change the drill, not to strike it or shout. It has no ears for blame, and anger gives it no good example.

Last night, the hamlet's fishing boat returned late. We waited at the path with a lantern, though the boat had its own lamp. Its crew brought fish and a wet letter from the Vell tutor. The letter had slipped between two boards in the boat. We dried it by the hearth and read it at dawn.

It asked for the count from the sorting drill. I wrote that the helper sorted nine apples and pears correctly, then put the tenth pear with the apples. The tutor says to keep the count as it is. He says a clean record helps the next teacher.

The letter also asked whether the helper could sort fish. We have not shown it fish. It cannot be sent to the market to sort them.

The crystal changes a little when the helper gets an example wrong. We can watch the helper try again, but we cannot see the change inside. No one in the yard knows why a crystal learns. We will keep showing clear examples, and keep the old question open.
%%
Lesson at the shore house
By Rafe, with notes from Sella.

Our house has a short wall on the sea side. It keeps the baskets in and the wind out, most days. The apprentice builds that wall from cobblestone by a marked pattern.

Lay the first three blocks by hand. Leave a drill board beside them. The board shows one small part of the wall, not the whole wall. The mind must learn the order, not copy one place forever.

Use the same blocks in more than one order. Cobblestone, deep stone, cobblestone is one run. Deep stone, cobblestone, deep stone is another. If the mind only learns the first run, it will build the gate step in the wrong place.

Give it a short row first. Check every block. If it places a block wrongly, move it and show the right one. Then start the row again. Do not praise a wall with a hole just because the hole is neat.

Sella says I should not call every mistake a lesson. She says the apprentice needs a clear example. She is right, but the hole was very neat.

> build the low wall by the board
= build
> stay by the wall
= stay
%%
Manual: the stream, for new tutors
By Dara, grandfather, who taught four generations of tutors at the market at Vell. Summer, the year of the stream.

A new tutor will ask what the stream is. Tell them plainly. A mind is many layers, one after another. Each layer finds something in what came to it, and adds that to the stream. The stream runs from the front of the mind to the back, through every layer.

The stream is why a deep mind can learn at all. Without it, the first layers would be forgotten by the time the message reached the last. With it, the last layers can still use what the first ones found.
%%
Manual: how to teach an apprentice
Sim, shepherd, at an inn on the Long Road. For carters, shepherds and anyone who walks the road alone with an apprentice. Winter.
The road in winter is quiet. Fewer carts. Fewer lamps lit. Some waymarks are buried and some torches are out. An apprentice does not know this. It knows only what it has been shown.
So show it.
First, the torches. Walk the road with it. Stop at each torch. Say "light". If it is out, light it. Let the apprentice see you do it. Do this on three days.
Second, the waymarks. A stone pillar, three blocks high. A figure on the side, from 0 to 9, and an arrow to the nearest inn. Walk to each one. Put your hand on the stone. The apprentice will watch.
Third, the inns. The Brown Hen is a day from Three Wells. The Halfway Inn is a day beyond. Walk it with the apprentice, once, in both directions, and say the names.
Then try it alone. Send it from the Brown Hen to the Halfway with a basket and a note. Follow, a long way behind. If it stops, wait. If it turns, wait. If it goes on, good.
> take this to the Halfway Inn
= haul
> come back
= come
The first time, it will take twice as long as it should. The second, once and a half. The third, as long as it should. By the tenth it is quicker than you.
A word about winter. The days are short. The road is empty. I have walked it alone a dozen times, with Burr, and there were stretches when no one passed for hours. We stood in the road, in the cold. A fox crossed the track. A bird called. And somewhere to the north a faint light, like a fire seen from a long way off. Burr stopped. I stopped. We watched it a while. Then it went out, and we went on.
I tell nobody. It is nothing, probably. But I write it here.
%%
Manual: the night lamps at Three Wells
By Jory, night watch. For the apprentices who light the lamps at the four corners of the square, and for the people who think they can do it faster.

There is a lamp at every corner. The lamp boy lights them at dusk. If a lamp is out, light it. Do not wait for the boy, who will be at the bakery, asking about pies.

Orders for the lamp round:
> go to the north corner and light the lamp
= fetch torch
> come back to the bakery when all four are lit
= come
> go home when the bell has rung twice
= home

Check each lamp by putting a hand near the glass. A lamp that is cold has gone out, however bright it looks from the square. The glass hides a great deal.

When the snow is deep, the lamps must be brushed clean every morning, or the light stops at the glass. Keep a brush by each lamp, and keep the brushes dry, in a box with a lid.
%%
Manual: Market Loads
By Elm, relay keeper at Lowmarsh. Winter, 171.

The Lowmarsh market stands on the dry boards beside the fish weir. Keep the boards clear. A cart wheel can catch a loose reed and tip a whole basket.

The carrying apprentice takes one load at a time. A load is what its arms can hold without dropping anything. Do not put fish under firewood. Do not stack jars beneath potatoes.

Teach the order with the same load each time.

> bring me some bread
= fetch bread

> take this basket to the stall
= haul

> come back to me
= come

The small mind knows only the meaning it was taught. It does not know that the basket is full of turnips unless you show it. Test it with an empty basket too. Last thaw, ours carried an empty basket to the bakery and waited there until the baker gave it a bun.

The baker says this was good work. The apprentice says nothing.
%%
Drill note: the carrying path
By Pip, apprentice to Tam, winter of 188.

The carrying mind learned to take a basket from the barn to the mill. At first it carried the basket to the well, then stood there. Tam said it had found a fine place to rest.

We checked the drill pages. A page said to carry the basket, but the next mark was missing. Another page showed the road to the mill, but had no answer. We took both pages out. Oren had taught us to remove copies and spoiled pages before drilling.

We kept a test box with pages from a path the mind had never practiced. Tam checked the box and made me put it back on the high shelf. I had not opened it. He said that was the point.

After more clean drills, the mind carried the basket to the mill. It did not spill the apples. It did stop beside the well, which is where Tam had put the water jug.

The test told us whether the mind could carry on an unseen path. It did not tell us every path it would know. We still watched it at work.
%%
Manual: the summer routine at the hamlet
By Jory, stonecutter, for the tutor who visits the hamlet near Ambrook each Melon. Summer.

The day has three parts, and each part has its orders. Give the orders in the same words each day, and the mind will learn the words.

Morning, at the first bell.
> open the store and sweep the step
= store
> feed the hens
= farm
> fetch water from the well for the drill yard
= fetch water

Midday, when the sun is high.
> carry the stone for the wall to the mill pond
= haul
> bring the melon from the patch to the cart
= fetch melon
> rest in the shade by the well until the bell
= stay

Evening, at the second bell.
> put the honey in the cool store and shut the door
= store
> go home when the lamps are lit
= home
> come to the gate in the morning
= come

Afternoon, after the midday rest.
> weed the rows between the melons
= farm
> carry the water from the well to the patch
= fetch water

The melon patch lies below the mill, on the warm side. Water it at dusk, never at midday, when the sun burns the water on the leaves. The mind may pull the weeds between the rows, but not the beans. Teach it the beans by their leaves. Beans are the broad ones with the curling tendrils. Weeds are the small ones with no shape at all.

Test the mind on the patch before it is sent there. Set a bean and a weed on the drill board, and ask it which to pull. Never send an untested mind to the fields.

Notes for the tutor. Keep to these words. A mind that hears a new word for the same work will be confused. Do not give two orders in one breath. Give the first, wait for the answer, then give the second. The mind answers with one of its meanings, and that is all it knows to say.

If an answer is wrong, do not shout. Say the right word once, and point. Then give the same order again tomorrow, in the same place.

A melon too big for the cart is not a fault. Roll it, and bring it in with the stem up. It is a fault only if it is left in the patch to rot.

The hamlet has no tutor house. The drill yard is a square of packed earth behind the mill, with torches round the edge. Keep the torches lit at dusk. The apprentices do not mind the dark. The tutor does, and the tutor writes the notes.
%%
Notice: spiders in the north barn
Posted by the boat house, Lowmarsh.

Folk of the marsh. The north barn has spiders again. Two were seen on the rafters on the third of Blossom, and one in the hay.

Keep the torches lit. This is the whole of it. A dark corner is a spider's house. A lit corner is not.

Rules for the barn:
1. Light every torch at dusk. The apprentice may do this.
2. Do not stack the hay against the wall. Leave a gap so the light gets in.
3. Shake the sacks before you fill them.
4. If you see a spider, do not run at it with a broom. Sweep the floor and it will go.
5. The cat is welcome in the barn. The cat is not welcome in the archive. Different cat, I am told. I do not ask.

Orders for an apprentice at the barn:
> light the torches in the barn
= build
> bring me the broom
= fetch broom
> take the hay up to the loft
= haul
> put the sacks in a row along the wall with a gap
= store
> come out of the barn, it is done
= come
> stay by the door and keep watch
= stay

The apprentice that lit the torches last night did it in the wrong order, and lit the far corner first, in the dark. It came back with a spider on its shoulder. The spider was not hurt. The apprentice was not hurt. The torch was not lit. We have drilled the order again.

Keep the torches lit.
%%
Letter: Pip to Elsa
Elsa, come down when you can. The scarecrow's pumpkin head has gone soft and Tam says leave it, but it leans now and the crows have lost their fear.

The new apprentice works the bottom field. It carries carrots to the barn and comes back for more. Twice it walked off with a stone in its hands. I think it thought the stone was a carrot. I showed it a carrot and then a stone and it dropped the stone. It is all right now.

Pip

P.S. Tam says the mill tally is wrong again. He says the wind squeaks and it puts him off counting.
%%
Old Drills in the Hamlets
By Oren of the Archive at Vell.

These notes were gathered from the small hamlet beside the north path. Its first drill boards were kept in a shed with a clay floor. The shed stood beyond the last house, near a ditch and a hedge of birch.

The old people there remember one helper made of copper and iron. It carried small stones. They say it was one of the four first helpers at Vell, but the old tallies do not prove this. I have copied their account as they gave it.

The first tutors set a stone beside a mark and showed the helper where to place it. Then they set another stone and showed the same task again. The helper often left a crooked row. The tutors moved the stones back and began once more.

A crystal learns from what it is shown. This was the rule the tutors wrote. They did not know why it learned, and we should not add an answer they did not have.

The hamlet later kept a sorting helper. It placed apples on one board and pears on another. A farmer brought a beetroot and asked it to sort that too. It chose the apple board. The tutor ended the drill and wrote down the mistake. The helper had never been shown a beetroot.

For a long time, apprentices did one thing each. One carried, one sorted, one made a row. They were not all-purpose helpers. Most towns had none. Even in this hamlet, people still carried their own wood and watched their own fields.

The old yard board has the words "show, try, count" cut into its edge. It has no mark for why. A child once carved a small fish beside the words. I have left the fish there.
%%
The lost letter
By Oren, clerk. A note filed with the winter letters, late years.

A letter came to the archive in the snow of Longnight with no name on it and no town. It was written to a mind at a relay house. It said:

"You answered my question about the stars over the north. You said you did not know what they were. I wanted you to know that I saw them too, and I did not know either. I am glad you said so. Everyone else said they were falling stars. I am leaving on a big ship in Thaw. I do not know what is across the water. If you learn what the lights were, write to me. I will be somewhere."

There was no name to send it to. I have kept it on the deep shelves, as the rules say. Nothing is thrown away.

I asked the big mind at our tower if it knew the hand. It said it did not know. It said it had answered many such letters and could not tell one from another. Then it asked me to keep the letter safe. I said I would. It said thank you. I crossed out nothing and added nothing. I only filed it, so it can be found again.
%%
Manual: keeping the quickeners cool
By Oren, clerk at Vell. For the ice men and the copper men who tend the stand of the big relay mind.
The stand is set in a ring of quickeners. Each quickener is a copper coil in a channel of cold water. When the cold runs, the stand stays steady, and the mind does not heat up with its own work. A hot stand is a slow stand. A cold stand is a quick one.
The water is run from the spring under the hill. It is let in at dawn, and cut off at dusk, and the channels are drained once a month to clear them. Never let the channels run dry. A dry channel cracks, and the crack takes a season to mend.
The ice is kept in the cellar on the high shelves, each block with its chalk mark. Count the blocks each morning. A block that has melted is written off, and the count is written in the book. Do not put a block in the channel without checking it first. A block with grit in it will foul the coil.
Orders for the ice men are simple. Each has its own card.
> bring the ice blocks from the cellar to the stand
= haul
> clear the channels of the old water
= store
> stay by the coil until the water runs clean
= stay
The copper men mend the coils. They do this slowly, with a copper iron and a pot of tar, and they are not to be hurried. A coil that is mended in a hurry will break in the next cold snap.
When the work is done, write the day in the book, and the number of blocks, and the time the water was let in. The house will read the book. It will say, in its letter, whether the stand is steady. It is always right about the stand. It has never once been wrong about the cold.
%%
Tutor note: sort, then carry
Copied by Lantern at Northpoint, in Apple of 201.

A mind in a crystal learns from examples. We must give it clear examples and repeat them. We must also test it with things it has not seen. A neat row of drills can still teach the wrong habit if every sack looks alike.

The Northpoint apprentice helps with the relay house store. There are bins for coal, kindling, wool and food. Each bin has a card. The cards stay on the front, even when the store is busy. Ada says a card hidden behind a sack is no card at all.

First drill. Show one item at a time. Name its bin. Let the apprentice carry it there. If it puts wool by the coal, do not shout. Move the wool, show the right bin, and repeat the example. The apprentice may be learning from the mistake.

Second drill. Give it a mixed set. Use some items from the wood store and some from the kitchen. Ask it to sort them without help. Do not use the same set it practiced on. Lantern found this out when the apprentice sorted the drill sacks perfectly, then put Ada's market basket in the coal bin.

Third drill. Test the route as well as the sort. An apprentice may know where the food belongs and still take it to the wrong door. Put a torch at each turn. Keep the path clear. Do not put a loose board across the path and call it a test. That tests the board.

Orders for a sorting round:
> put the coal in its bin
= store
> bring the wool to the keeper's house
= fetch wool
> carry the food to the kitchen
= haul
> come back to the relay house
= home
> wait by the door
= stay

The small mind answers with one meaning. It cannot explain why it chose that meaning. If it brings the wrong sack, check the label and the drill before blaming the mind. If it brings the right sack to the wrong place, check the route.

On a cold evening, Ada moved the wool card to make room for a basket of apples. The apprentice put the next wool sack beside the apples. Ada said the card had gone on holiday. She put it back. The apprentice then sorted three sacks correctly, and the apples stayed in the kitchen.
%%
Manual: the bridge apprentice
By Brin, bridge keeper, at the inn on the Long Road. Spring.
A bridge apprentice does three things. It stands at the end. It checks each plank by walking over it. It tells the keeper if one is loose by standing still on it until the keeper comes.
> come to the bridge
= come
> stay on the plank
= stay
Oak planks swell in the wet. Check them every spring.
%%
Drill notes: dipping candles
Rafe, candle maker, hamlet near Vell. For the apprentice at the dipping vats. Autumn.

Candles are made by dipping a wick into hot wax, lifting it out, letting it cool a breath, and dipping again. Thirty dips make a candle as thick as a thumb.

The wax vat is hot. The apprentice does not mind heat, but the wax minds being stirred too hard. Stir slowly. One turn for each count of four.

Rack of wicks on the left. Rack of finished candles on the right. Always left to right. Never carry a wick across the room, because a wick will trail, and a trailing wick starts a fire.

The apprentice must never leave the vat unwatched. If I call, it stops the dip, lifts the rack, and waits.

> dip the wicks
= farm
> put the candles on the right
= store
> stop
= stay
%%
Manual: carrying goods to the market
Corin, shipwright at Saltreach, for the apprentices who work the spring market.

Carrying is the work most apprentices do first, and the work most of them get wrong. The body is strong. The mind is what drops the crate.

How to carry:
1. Go to the store. Look at the goods.
2. Take one load, no more than the cart holds.
3. Walk the road to the market. Keep to the road.
4. Set the load by the stall, not in the road.
5. Go back for the next load.

The rule:
- If the cart is full, go to the market.
- If the cart is empty, go to the store.
- If the goods are heavy and the road is wet, go slower, not faster.

A cart can hold twelve crates. A mind that tries to carry twenty will drop four on the cobblestone, and then you have wet apples and a sad child. Twice this spring I have swept apples off the quay.

Orders for the market:
> take these crates to the fish market
= haul
> bring the honey to my stall
= haul
> the nets are mended, take them to the boat
= haul
> fetch me a crate of apples from the store
= fetch apples
> put the empty crates by the shed
= store
> come back when the cart is empty
= come

A word on the crowd. Market day is loud. People push. A mind does not push back, it just stops and waits, and the crowd goes round it. That is fine. Do not drill it to hurry in a crowd.

And keep the torches lit on the market road. Last market a creeper came up the road at dusk and nobody had relit the post.
%%
Manual: after the creeper
Yarrow, innkeeper, on the farm outside Ambrook, in summer. A creeper came over the hill in the night and blew a piece out of the north wall of the yard. Nobody was hurt. The hens were upset. The apprentice stood in the dark all night with a lantern. These are the drill notes we wrote after, for rebuilding the wall.
1. Clear the stones first. Pile them by size.
> pick up the stones
= haul
2. Mix the clay. Two sacks of clay to one of sand, and water until it holds in the hand.
3. Build from the bottom up. One course at a time. Each course set over the joints of the last.
> build the wall
= build
4. Keep the torches lit all night, until the wall is done. A creeper comes for the dark.
5. Check the wall in the morning. Push it. A good wall does not move.
Some folk at the inn say the creepers are bolder this year. Others say there are just more people to notice. A traveler from the north says he saw lights in the sky, and thinks it is the cause. The innkeeper at the next farm says it is a story. I say the wall is the wall.
%%
Manual: building a wall by pattern
By Nessa, tutor at Vell, for the hamlets.

A build order is the hardest of the eight, so drill it last.

An apprentice builds by following a pattern. It does not invent. Show it a small field drawn on a board, then let it copy the drawing in stone. When it is wrong, move it a little toward the right, the same as a sort. Do it again and again. Same kind of example, many times.

The order, in the manual's way:

> build the wall here
= build

Put a waymark where the first block goes. Put the pattern board where it can see it. Then stand back. Do not point and shout. It is following the board, not your arm.

A new apprentice will lay the first row wrong and the second row on top of it. Let it finish. Then rub out the bad row and start again. It learns from the whole wall, not from one block.

Test it on a wall it has never seen. That is the rule. Never send an untested mind to the fields, and never send one to a wall either.

When the wall is done, walk it. Check the top row. If it stuck out one block, that is right, that keeps the spiders off. If it did not, tell it so, gently, and let it try again tomorrow.

Small minds build small walls. That is enough for a hamlet like ours.
