Rules for the winter road, year 11
Made at the Ambrook mill in the eleventh year, after the long winter. The snow came in Frost and did not go until the middle of Sowing. Brin kept the count of the carts that got through, and wrote these rules from it.

1. Every house clears the snow from its own door to the middle of the street. Your neighbor does the rest.
2. Each morning the first person up breaks the ice on the wells with the long pole, and not with their foot.
3. Carts travel in pairs in the snow, so that one can pull the other out of a drift.
4. Coal is shared by the house count, and not by who shouts loudest.
5. The school stays open while the bell rings. When the bell is quiet, the school is quiet too.
6. The torches on the Long Road posts are checked at dusk, and lit every night from Frost to Sowing.
7. Nobody goes out on the ice of the mill pond, even if the dog does.
8. A traveler who comes in from the road with frost on their coat is given a hot bowl first and a question second.
9. The winter is long. It will end. Write the day it ends in the book at the mill, so that next winter we know how long it was.
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Lorn's market tally
I brought three baskets of pears to Three Wells in Apple. I set them by the north well, where the shade stays longest.
The wheat harvest was poor this year. Tam's cart came with less flour than usual, and the price board showed it. He said the ridge fields had gone dry before the rain. He still brought a small sack of beets for his sister.
An old woman bought two pears and asked me to carry one to the school house. Bel carried it there herself. She said the teacher had been reading about the relay houses.
I sold one basket. I traded the second for bread and a jar of honey. The third went home with me.
At noon the bell rang for a loose pig. It ran past the bakery and stopped by the east well to drink. Dace said the pig had paid its market fee.
The square was swept before dusk. I found one pear under my bench and ate it on the road.
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Notice: The river crossing
The ferry is tied on the Three Wells bank until the wheel is mended.
1. Do not board while Lorn is away from the rope.
2. Keep the landing clear for sacks, carts and people.
3. Let the sick cross first. Let a cart cross only when Lorn says the water is calm.
4. Children must wait behind the stone post.
5. Do not throw stones at the fish.
The mill wheel broke in the last autumn rain. It had turned the ferry rope drum for many years. One spoke split, and the wheel now catches against the bank. Lorn has taken it apart beside the landing.
There is not enough good timber to finish the repair yet. The poor wheat harvest has made every board dear. The miller has promised two oak spokes when the cart from Kettle Ridge comes.
Until then, Lorn will pull the ferry by hand. Do not ask for a fast crossing. The river has its own pace.
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Rules of the Long Road
Sage wrote these down from the older watch board, and keeps a copy at the watch house.
1. Keep to the road. The marsh is not a road.
2. A torch every twelve blocks. If a torch is out, light it or write where it was.
3. Bridges on every stream. Stone if you can, oak if you must.
4. A waymark is a stone pillar three blocks high, with a torch on top and a figure and an arrow. Leave a little stone on top for the next traveler. It is luck, and it is company.
5. Carts go on the right. Apprentices carrying go on the left. Do not hurry an apprentice that is hauling.
6. At an inn, pay for your bed and your bread. The Halfway Inn's hearth has not gone out in twenty years. Do not be the one who lets it.
7. If you meet someone at night, say where you are going. Keep your lamp up.
8. Write what you saw in the log when you get home. Even nothing is worth writing down.
Sage, Lowmarsh, spring of 208
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Rules for the last carts
Posted at Aunt Greer's door, where the carters stop. The north road is long and lonely, and every autumn someone is surprised by the snow. Dace came north with the last cart and wrote these in the cold.
1. The last cart leaves Three Wells before the twentieth of Leaffall. After that, the road belongs to the snow.
2. Load the coal first, the flour second and the letters last. Letters go on top. They are the lightest and the most wanted.
3. Look at the horse's shoes before you leave. A horse cannot be mended at north road two.
4. Take a spare wheel and a spare axle. There is no wheelwright north of Kettle Ridge. There is Teg, who is not a wheelwright but is willing.
5. Light a torch at dusk every night and keep it lit. The north road has few waymarks and many dark places.
6. Sleep at the towers. North road one and north road two keep a bed for every carter. Pay the keeper in emeralds, or in news. The keepers prefer news.
7. Pack a blanket for every day of the road, and one more. The extra one is for whoever you find on the way.
8. Say good evening to any fox. It costs nothing.
9. Do not carry passengers who talk. The road is long, and so are the talkers.
10. If the snow starts before you reach north road two, turn back. No letter is worth a carter.
11. At Northpoint, unload before you drink tea. Not after. Tea is a trap.
12. Take back Mira's log and any letters. The log goes to Vell. The letters go where they are addressed. Do not read them. Especially Tam's.
13. Teg has driven this road for twenty autumns and has never been late. He says it is not because he is brave. It is because he is careful. Be careful.
Dace, mayor of Three Wells, at Northpoint, autumn of 207
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Rules of the drill house, Northpoint
Kept by Ida, mapmaker, who lodges at the relay house. Written out fair in spring of 196, for the tutor who comes up from Vell in summer.
1. Stand the apprentice in its row before the drill. Count the row twice.
2. Show the crystal one example. Then show it the same kind of example again, and again, and again.
3. Each time it is wrong, let it change a little. Do not change it all at once. A small change each time, or the crystal forgets what it had.
4. Write down the numbers each night. Keep the sheet in the box, not on the table.
5. Watch the numbers. If they grow wild, stop the drill. Do not wait for morning.
6. Bring the numbers back to an even size at every layer. Then start again.
7. Test the mind on drills it has never seen. Never send an untested mind to the fields.
8. Never drill on the test box. The test box is for the test.
9. Keep the lamp trimmed. Keep the stove low. A cold crystal learns no slower than a hot one, but it learns in the dark, and I do not like the dark.
10. If an apprentice is slow, do not shout. The lamp is not slow. The crystal is only new.
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Rules for the boat frame, by trying
Made by the boat builders on the hamlet slip, for the mind that steers the frame while the new boat is laid. It is not drilled on the course. It is set to find the course.

1. The mind tries a course, and the frame is watched for one hour. If the frame stays true, the course is kept.
2. If the frame leans, the course is lost, and the mind keeps less of that course. It does not throw it away. It keeps a little, so the next try is a little better.
3. Each try is written down: the setting of the rudder, the wind, the hour, and whether the frame kept true.
4. The mind keeps more of the settings that kept the frame true, and less of the others. It learns the course by which tries worked.
5. A mind that tries too boldly is slowed. Boldness breaks frames. Patience keeps them.
6. The builders do not shout at the mind when it is wrong. The mind does not learn from shouting. It learns from the frame, and the frame does not shout.
7. The mind is tested on a course it has never tried, in the calm of a summer morning, before it is let out on open water.
8. When the frame is true at the end of the test, the mind is given a new course. When it is not, the mind is given the same course again, and the builders go to their dinner.
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Rule for the East Well
Three Wells, spring of 183

The east well is beside the school house. It is for drinking, washing hands, and filling the school pail.

Take one bucket at a time. Let the next person draw before you take another. Give room to anyone carrying a pail. The pail is heavy, even when it is empty. Bel says this is because it is a school pail.

Do not wash muddy boots in the well. There is a trough behind the bakery for boots. Do not wash beetroot in the drinking bucket. The water does not need help turning red.

Children may draw water for the school. They must put the rope back on the hook and set the bucket right side up. Last spring it rained into the bucket for three days. The school blamed the sky. The school was right, but it still had to empty the bucket.

If the rope is frayed, tell Dace or the baker. Do not tie it in a knot and call it mended.

The east well is not a place to leave baskets. A basket left there may be taken to the notice board. A basket of apples was left for two days. It was empty when the owner came back. We have not found the owner or the apples.

Dace, mayor
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Rules for thinking in steps
Written by the keepers of Kettle Ridge, for the first days of a tutor's work. Autumn.

1. A mind that gives one quick answer makes one guess. For a small sum, a guess can be right. For a long sum, one guess is almost always wrong, however well the mind was drilled.
2. Think of a long road with one jump at the start. A small guess cannot jump the whole road.
3. A thinking mind does something else. It takes one small step, writes it down, and checks it. Then it takes the next step, from what it has already written.
4. Each step is small enough to be right. The steps add up to the answer, and every step can be seen.
5. This is the old trick from the tutors' books, put in its right order. The mind is not cleverer in any one step. It has room for many steps, and it does not lose its place. The writing is the room.
6. Every step is held against the step before it, and against what the mind was shown. A wrong step is found while it is still small.
7. When a wrong step is found, go back to the last good step and start again from there. A miner goes back to the last sound beam, and does not dig on through the bad one.
8. Some people say the slate is a crutch, and a true mind would not need it. Others say the slate is the mind, laid out where we can read it. The tutors do not argue the point. A mind that shows its steps can be checked, and a mind that can be checked can be trusted with a sum.
9. The writing does not make a mind know what it was never drilled on. A step written in confidence can still be wrong. So the checking is never skipped, not even on a sum that looks easy.
10. Ask the mind to say where it is unsure. A good mind writes that it does not know the next step, and waits. Do not punish that line. Show it the step.
11. Why a mind learns at all, nobody here can say. Why it learns to write its steps is a question we can answer, because we have watched it do so.
12. Write down what you see. Check it twice. Then tell the next tutor.
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The Hall Closed in Spring
Copied by Oren from the account of Sella, keeper of the Vell tutor house. Spring of the 151st year.
I have kept the old drill room clean, though there is no pay for a tutor now. The boards are dry. The crystal tray is covered with cloth. The apprentices still know their small duties.
For a long time we taught a mind by showing it examples. If it sorted an apple with the pears, we moved its weights a little. Then we showed it more apples and pears. It grew better at that work. We thought more examples might teach it any rule.
Kester's note made us stop and ask what the examples could teach. He used a rule with two marks. The answer was yes if the marks were different, and no if they were the same. In plain words, one or the other, but not both.
One crystal of the old kind could not make that rule, however we moved its weights. It could learn a straight choice, like apple or pear. It could not make the choice depend on both marks together. Kester did not claim that every possible mind must fail. His note was about one crystal of that kind.
The council read the note at the long table. Nessa stood by the window and asked for time to try a different design. The council asked how much it would cost. She had no answer, and neither did I.
That week a storm crossed the hill. Rain struck the glass and ran down the stair. We carried the crystals to the upper shelf. Kester's last letter was on the table. The door blew open, and the letter went into the yard.
Pip, who was then a child visiting from Kettle Ridge, helped us look. We found the cover under the hedge, but not the letter. It may have blown beyond the wall. We never learned what he had written after his proof.
The council ended the tutors' pay. The hall shut, and the boards were stacked by the wall. The apprentices kept their same work. One carried water, one moved books, and two sorted the tools.
I do not say the council was right. They had little coin, and Kester had shown a real limit. I only know the room stayed closed for many springs. Each year, I dusted the covered tray and wrote the date on the door.
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Council rules for the ridge, numbered
Kettle Ridge council, as agreed in the autumn meeting of 206 and written out by the clerk for the council house wall. Copies are kept at Three Wells, Ambrook and Vell. The council has asked that they be read at every harvest.

1. The council meets on the first day of each season, at the mill, when the bell has been rung three times.
2. Every house on the ridge has one vote. A house is a house with a chimney. Tents do not count, though they are welcome.
3. The windmills belong to the ridge. The millers are paid for their work. The millers are not paid for their squeaks.
4. Pigs stay in the pen. The pen has a gate, and the gate has a latch. The latch is the owner's job. Repeated breaches will be spoken to by the council, and the pig will be spoken to by Tam.
5. Ditches are cleared at the first thaw. Each farm clears its own length, from the gate to the hedge. The hedge is the boundary, even when it is not.
6. Torches line every road, every field edge and every yard wall. A dark torch is a complaint. Report it to the lamp keeper at the mill.
7. Water is shared by the house count, from the well in the square. The well is not shared by the bucket, though some people have tried.
8. Coal from Copperhold is shared by the house count, not by who shouts loudest. This rule was made in 199 and is still the only rule the council has never had to argue.
9. Apprentices work for their keepers. They do not vote. They are counted in the field, not in the house.
10. No animal may be sold at the square without a card from its keeper. Cards are issued by the council clerk, and the clerk does not take bribes, though Emmet has offered him a honey cake.
11. Charcoal burning is done in the pits above the stream only. The pits are watched by a keeper. A pit that smokes past dusk is put out by the keeper, and the charcoal burner pays for the water.
12. The bridge at the ford is repaired by the carpenters. The council pays for the planks. Carts that wreck the bridge pay for the nails.
13. Festivals are held on the square. The bell at the mill starts the song, and the bell at the mill ends it. A song that goes past the bell is not a song, and the council does not want to hear it.
14. Disputes are settled by the council in the house with the blue door, after a meal, and both parties are fed before they are heard.
15. The council keeps the tally board in the mill. Any error in the tally is the miller's to explain.
16. The lamp at the top of the ridge is lit at dusk and put out at dawn. It is for the travelers on the Long Road, who come up the ridge in the dark and need to see that it is still there.
17. The council may change these rules at any meeting, by a show of hands. The hands must be washed first. Tam says this rule has been broken twice, and both times it was the pig.
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Rules of the first relay
Copied at Vell from the keeper's winter book. The year is not certain. Some say the tower stood before year 40. Others say it was built after the first road reached the hill.

The small relay tower stands between Vell and Three Wells. It has one lamp and one keeper. The stone is plain, and the stair is narrow. There is room at the foot for a bench, a dry box, and a pot of soup.

1. Light the signal lamp at dusk.
2. Answer a clear message before sending a new one.
3. Write each message in the tower book.
4. If the glass is dark with soot, clean it before the next signal.
5. Keep spare torches under the bench.
6. Do not leave the lamp burning when the keeper is away.
7. In snow, clear the path to the door.
8. If no message comes, check the line and wait.
9. Never send a traveler onto the Long Road without telling them which inn is open.

This winter the road beyond the tower drifted shut. The keeper walked to Three Wells with a sack of letters under his coat. He returned with bread, a new wick, and news that the bridge at the stream had held.

A fox came to the tower yard one night. It took a hen from the keeper's small pen and left feathers by the step. The keeper set a torch by the pen and moved the hens inside. The fox did not return while he watched.

The tower can carry a message farther than a person can walk in one night. The keeper still has to walk when the lamps fail. For this reason, the road crew has begun marking the next hill with stones. They hope to build another relay there when the town can spare stone and hands.
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Letter: Elm to his sister in Vell
Dear Rill,
The well at the Cooperhold turn is finished. Twenty-one blocks down, good cold water, the bucket comes up full every time. The farmer paid me in hens and one of the hens is a nuisance that crows at the moon. Tell the children I am serious about the hum. I am not a fearful man. I have dug two hundred wells and never put down a rope where the stone was warm. At the Cooperhold turn, at nineteen blocks, the stone was warm. Not hot. Warm, like a hand that has been holding a cup. I moved the well three paces east and the stone was cold again, so I dug there, and I said nothing to the farmer until it was done. Now I am saying it to you.
People in Vell talk. Some say the warmth is the mines and the old sumps. Some say it is the quickeners the councils keep in the relay houses, and that the ground under those houses never freezes now. Some say it is only the deep stone and it has always been so, and that old diggers in Copperhold will tell you the deep stone was always a little warm if you went far enough, and nobody went far enough to find out. I do not know. I only know the stone was warm and my hands are not wrong.
How is the baby? You did not write the name. Write the name. I will dig a little well for her and set it in the yard with a stone rim, and she can fill it with a cup. I will not go deep for that one.
The nights are loud now. Not the ground. The sky. Twice I have stood in my own yard and heard a sound like a cart going over a bridge, up in the dark, and nothing on the road. My neighbor says it is foxes and the ice. My neighbor has not been outside at night since Frost. I have. There is nothing to see. That is the part I do not like.
Barley is well. Barley sends his regards and wants the hen.
Your brother, Elm
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Northpoint market rules, spring
Kept on a board by the tower door, spring of 206. Copied here by Tam, who came north with the honey and has been asked to read them aloud. He has never followed a single one.

1. Stand your cart on the stones at the tower foot. Not in the snow line, and not in the ditch.
2. Weigh your sacks on the Northpoint scale. Mira checks the weights. Mira does not trust the scale. Mira does not trust anyone.
3. Honey is sold by the jar. A jar must be full to the neck. Full means full.
4. The lamp is lit at dusk, and no one sells in the dark. Bring your own lamp if you must.
5. Traders pay the mill tax in coal or in salt. No emeralds at the tower gate. Mira says emeralds do not warm a house.
6. The mill fee is two sacks in every hundred. Not three. Not one. Two.
7. No dogs in the bread line. Cats are welcome. The cats of Northpoint have a permit, which Lantern wrote out in its best hand.
8. Apprentices carry for their keepers only. Apprentices do not sell. An apprentice found selling goes back to its tutor, with a note.
9. Foxes are not for sale.
10. Keep the lane to the tower clear. Carts pull out to the right, and the right is the side with the ditch.
11. The market closes at the second bell. Anything left after the second bell belongs to the foxes.
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The Crossroads Game
Three Wells, spring of 190

For the spring fair, the school will hold a game beside the notice board. Two teams take turns carrying a sack of potatoes from the bakery to the west well and back. The sack must stay on the ground. No throwing it, rolling it down the road, or asking a pig to help.

Each team has three people. One person carries, one counts the steps, and one keeps the sack from catching on the wall. Change places after each round.

The sack must hold ten potatoes at the start. The school will count them. The school will count them again at the end. A missing potato is not a point. It is a missing potato.

The team that finishes with all ten potatoes wins a loaf of bread. The team that finishes second gets the potatoes for supper. The school has asked the baker for two loaves. The baker says the second team may have the potatoes.

No running near the wells. No pushing near the stalls. If a potato escapes, stop the game until it is found. If it rolls into the bakery, knock first.

Bel will keep the count. She is small, but she can count to ten without help. The mayor has tried.

Dace, mayor
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Rule of the Halfway Inn
Rule of the Halfway Inn, set by Dara, lamp tender, in spring of 214.
1. Put out the yard torches only after the last traveler is inside.
2. Leave one lamp burning by the door.
3. A guest may have a bed, a bench, or a place near the hearth.
4. No one may claim all three.
5. Keep wet boots by the wood box, not under the beds.
6. If the riddle board is wrong, tell the keeper before changing it.
7. A traveler may leave a little stone on the waymark.
8. The stone must not cover the figure or the arrow.
9. Feed the horse before asking its owner for news.
10. If the soup is thin, add bread. If the bread is thin, ask the baker.
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Mill wheel rule, autumn 208
For the Vell mill pond path.
Oren, copied from the mill keeper

1. Keep off the wheel frame.
2. Keep children and sheep off the wheel frame too.
3. Do not open the sluice. Only the mill keeper may open it.
4. Do not throw sticks into the water. They catch at the wheel.
5. If the mill wheel stops, tell the keeper.
6. Do not push the wheel with a broom.
7. Do not push it with a cart.
8. Do not push it with three apprentices at once.
9. The wheel was broken last autumn by one cart, one broom and three apprentices.
10. The apprentices were trying to help.
11. They now carry flour sacks and leave the wheel alone.
12. Keep flour sacks under the roof.
13. Put the empty baskets by the door.
14. The mill keeper will write the day's tally on the board.
15. A person who cannot read the tally may ask.
16. A person who can read it may still ask.
17. Do not take flour before it is counted.
18. If the wheel turns again, thank the keeper.
19. If the wheel does not turn, bring a stool and wait.
20. The mill keeper is not faster when watched.
21. The path is narrow. Leave room for a cart.
22. The pond is pleasant in autumn. The mud is not.
23. Keep your boots on the stones.
24. The wheel will be mended when the new oak pin is ready.
25. Until then, the miller will grind by hand.
26. Please do not offer to help by turning the wheel backward.
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Rules of the apple and pear game
Played by the children on the farm, in the barn, when the snow is too deep for the yard. Mave wrote them on a roof slate so they would last.
1. One child is the crystal. The others hold the apples and the pears.
2. The crystal sits with eyes shut. A fruit is put in its hands. It says "apple" or "pear".
3. If it is wrong, it is told, and it moves a little closer to the right answer. Only a little.
4. Nobody laughs at the crystal. It is learning.
5. After thirty fruits, the crystal is tested on fruit it has never held.
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Rules of the Three Wells square
As the mayor's board has them, in summer, in the month of Melon.

1. Stalls are set up at the first bell and taken down at the second.
2. Carts go round the square, not through it.
3. The three wells are for water, not for washing boots. Do not wash the cat in them either.
4. A cat may sit where it likes. It will anyway.
5. Lost things go to the board by the north well.

Dace, mayor of Three Wells. Signed under protest from the cat.
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Rules for the cart bridge at the ford
Posted at the ford, the cart bridge over Kettle Water, autumn of 205. Made by the carpenters of Kettle Ridge, who are tired of being asked to fix it, and who want the carts to stop going in.

NOTICE: The bridge is for carts that weigh less than the mark on the post. The mark is the iron nail. If your cart is heavier than the nail, unload it on the near bank and carry the load over in the sacks. Then go back for the cart.

1. Walk your horse over the bridge. Do not trot. The bridge is old and is not impressed.
2. Only one cart at a time. Wait on the bank for the cart in front to clear the far post.
3. The ditch under the bridge is not a place to put your goods. Carts that go into the ditch do not come out again until the spring floods drop, and that is weeks.
4. Keep to the middle planks. The side planks were laid by a man who was in a hurry.
5. Do not stand on the rail. It is not a rail. It is a suggestion.
6. Ring the bell on the near post if the bridge is closed. The bell is the signal, not the shout.
7. If you see a child on the bridge, stop the cart and get off. The children know the bridge better than you do, and will not move for a cart.
8. If you break a plank, mend it. The planks are in the box by the post, and the nails are in the tin beside them. Leave the tin where you found it.
9. If the water is over the second stone, do not cross. Wait a day. The water will go down. It always goes down.

The carpenters thank you for reading. They would like it known that the bridge was built to take a cart of wheat, and not a cart of pumpkins, which were never supposed to be on it, and which are the reason for rule 1.
%%
Rules of the tutor house visit, year 14
Made at Ambrook in the fourteenth year, when the tutor from Vell came to test the mill's two apprentices. Brin read these aloud at the mill, and the tutor said it was the best set of rules she had seen at any mill. She also said the soup was too salt, which Brin has written down as her opinion.

1. The tutor is given the best bed in the mill house, which is the miller's, and the miller sleeps in the loft.
2. The tutor is fed at noon and at dusk. She eats little at noon and a great deal at dusk. Nobody is to mention it.
3. The apprentices are set out in their row before the tutor arrives, one at each post. They are not moved for the visit.
4. The test box is kept shut until the tutor asks for it. Then it is opened in front of her, and no child lifts the lid.
5. The tutor asks the questions. The mill does not answer for the apprentice, however tempting. A mind that is answered for has learned nothing.
6. The count of right answers is written in the tutor's own hand, not ours.
7. Each apprentice does one thing. One sorts the sacks, and one carries the flour. They are tested on that one thing only.
8. If an apprentice fails, the tutor takes it away to the drill yard, and we do not ask what happened. We are told when it is ready.
9. The tutor may ask any question she likes about the mill, the pond or the bridge. Brin will answer with the truth, which is shorter than the answer the tutor expects.
10. The tutor's cart is not to be loaded with anything but her books and a sack of flour. The flour is her pay, and she has asked for it by name.
11. Children are sent to bed before the test, and they may watch it from the stairs, if they are quiet about it.
12. When the tutor leaves, the best bowl of soup in Ambrook goes to the cart driver, who is always the one who says he has seen a fox.
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Rules of the Halfway Inn, winter
Written up by Tam, who was stuck at the inn for six days with a broken axle and had nothing to do but watch the rules get broken. Copied fair by Hobb, who keeps the inn, and who says the rules were his before they were Tam's.

1. The hearth is never let out. Not for cards, not for singing, not for a dispute. If it goes out, the one who let it go out sits by it until it lights.
2. Boots come off at the door. Muddy boots go on the rack in the passage. Wet cloaks go on the pegs. Wet dogs go in the back room with the other dogs, who will not thank you.
3. One cat may sit by the stove. Only one. The cat knows which one. The cat has been sitting by the stove for six years and has never once got up to let anyone else have a turn.
4. The riddle board is open to all. Write your riddle in your own hand. Do not take a riddle from another board and call it yours. Hobb knows the other boards.
5. Bread is for the table. Not for the pockets. Not for the horses. Not for the dog in the back room, who has been told.
6. Travelers who arrive after the bell have the stew from the pot, not the one on the hearth. The pot on the hearth is for the carters who came in before dark.
7. A bed is one emerald for a night. Two if you want a bath, which you do, after six days on the road. Pay on the morning you leave. Hobb does not chase debts. He only looks at you until you remember.
8. Children stay inside after the lamps are lit. Ten minutes at the gate is allowed, with a torch and a grown person. Ten minutes is not an hour. Tam was told this twice by Hobb's wife, and he is still discussing it.
9. The lamp on the post is lit at dusk and kept lit until the last cart has come in from the north. It is never put out for the night. The post is in the yard for a reason.
10. Nobody sings the stone song in the yard after dark. It is a song for the day, and the cat does not like it.
11. Anyone who lends a tool to a traveler writes the tool in the book, with the traveler's name and the day. The tools come back. Mostly.
12. The lesson at the back of the stable is for the apprentices only. Tam's apprentice, Pip, was tested there on the cart and the horse, and it failed the first time, and went into the hay for an hour. Pip is allowed back in. The horse is not sure.

The rules were written at the end of the winter, when the snow had piled up at the gate and the inn was full of people who could not go home. Tam says he is grateful for every rule. Hobb says Tam only wrote them down because he could not leave.
%%
Rules for the School Yard
Three Wells, spring of 207

The school yard is for lessons, games, and waiting for the bell. It is not a market stall, a stable, or a place to hide a wet coat.

Put school tools back on the rack. Put chalk in its box. Put the box on the shelf, not on the floor where Bel can kick it and say the chalk moved by itself.

A ball may be used after lessons. It must not be thrown toward the windows, the east well, or the bakery door. If the ball reaches the bakery, ask the baker to return it. Do not climb through the window to fetch it. The baker has returned three balls and one hat.

Children may draw on the boards set out for practice. Do not draw on the painted school door. The door was painted by the children, and the children must also keep it clean.

A helper may carry books or sweep the yard. It must be given one clear task at a time. If it is told to fetch a book, it should bring the book, not stay beside the rack. The tutor tests it before it works outside the school. No child may give it an order from across the road.

When rain begins, carry the boards inside. When the bell rings, stop the game and go to class. The bell is not a signal to run faster.

Dace, mayor
%%
When the towers were linked
Lorn's account, written at the ferry house, Longnight, 211.
I was young when the relay house opened at Three Wells. I kept the ferry then, as I do now. People came to the landing to see the tower lamp shine for the first time. Some brought apples. One brought a cake that leaned to one side.
The keeper showed us the big mind in its crystal. It stood on a wooden stand in the relay house at the tower foot. The quickeners around it were cool with water. The keeper had filled the troughs before the guests came, and would not let the children touch them.
The mind could answer small minds carried by apprentices. A field apprentice might send a question through the relay. The big mind could return one of the known meanings. It did not climb into the apprentice, and it did not give it a voice.
People said the tower would make all work easy. I did not believe them. A mind must learn from examples. It must be tested on work it has not seen. An order that worked in the store might fail in a wet field. The tutors kept saying this, and I saw why.
One autumn, Tam sent a field apprentice to fetch a sack. It returned with a basket of turnips from the wrong shed. The keeper wrote the mistake on a board. The mind was drilled again with clearer examples. Later, the apprentice brought the right sack. Tam still checked it before sowing.
The great minds came to the towers one by one. First the towns nearer Vell, then Copperhold and Saltreach, and then the far places. Northpoint's came last. Mira wrote that she had snow packed around the quickeners and no spare ice. She asked for a second shovel.
After that, the towers could pass questions across long roads. I do not know how the relays carried so much. I know the lamps, the redstone line, and the keeper's hand at the desk. The rest was not mine to explain.
I also know the Three Wells market stayed busy. The wheat harvest was poor that year. The flour seller raised his price, and Dace made him write it plainly on the board. Lorn's mill wheel had one new spoke, but it still knocked at every turn.
When the first frost came, I carried apples to the relay house. The keeper gave one to the big mind's stand, as a joke. I took it away before ants found it.
The tower answered through the night. We kept our lamps lit, and went home in the cold.
%%
Rules for the Long Road, autumn 190
Copied at Vell from the road board.
Pell, merchant

1. Keep to the cobblestone in town.
2. On the open road, keep to the packed earth.
3. Leave the cobblestone edge clear for carts.
4. Put a torch on each road post after dark.
5. The posts stand twelve blocks apart. Do not move one to shorten your walk.
6. At a stream, use the bridge.
7. Leave small stones on the waymarks for the next traveler.
8. A figure shows the count to the nearest inn. An arrow shows the way.
9. Share water with a traveler whose jar is empty.
10. Do not take a horse from an inn yard without asking.
11. If a cart is stuck, ask before pushing. Some loads are very dear.
12. If you meet a cart coming uphill, give it room.
13. A traveler who brings back a lost parcel may ask for a fair price.
14. A traveler who brings back my empty sack gets no price. It was empty.
15. Keep the road clear. We all use it.
%%
How the reading mind takes a page
Written by Ivo, cook at the Brown Hen, who took notes at the tutor house at Vell in the autumn of 207, when the reading minds were first set to write their own letters. He did not understand all of it. He writes it down the way the tutor explained it to him, over a bowl of soup.

The reading mind does not look at a whole page at once. It looks at a window, and the window is sixty letters wide. The mind sees the letters inside the window, one by one, from left to right.

When it looks at a letter, it asks itself which of the letters before it matter for the next one. Some matter a great deal. The letter just before is usually one of them. Some matter less. A letter at the start of a word may matter for the end of it. A letter from a long way back may matter only if it is the same as the one now.

The mind keeps a little of each. It keeps the letters that matter and lets the rest go. Then it guesses the next letter, the way a cook guesses the next pinch of salt, by the smell and the taste of what is already in the pot.

When the guess is wrong, the mind changes a little. When the guess is right, it changes a little too, so it will be surer the next time.

The tutor says this is why the mind can read a letter it has never seen. It does not remember the letter. It remembers the shape of what comes before, and what comes after, in the kinds of writing it has been shown.

The tutor says that the mind does not know what the page means. It only knows what comes next. Ivo asked how that could be enough. The tutor said he would have to ask the mind, and that the mind would only answer with a letter, one at a time.
%%
Rules for the Northpoint spring fair
Written by Tam, Kettle Ridge, who was asked to judge the pies at the Northpoint spring fair, spring of 207. He wrote the rules out for Mira, who had written the first draft and then forgotten it. The fair is at the foot of the tower, on the stones, the first day of Sowing.

Rule 1. Everybody who comes is welcome. Everybody who brings a dish is a cook, whatever they think of themselves.
Rule 2. There are three prizes: best bread, best pie, and best thing nobody expected. The third prize was made up this year by Lantern, and it is now the most important.
Rule 3. Entries are judged by taste, by look, and by how much of them is left at the end. An empty dish is worth one point, and the cook is asked to explain why.
Rule 4. Entries must be made by the cook. A cook may not enter a dish made by his apprentice. Hesk asked. Hesk has a list.
Rule 5. Dishes that were made by mistake are welcome. They are a separate prize.
Rule 6. Nobody bakes at the tower stove. The stove is for lamp glass, and Mira will not discuss it.
Rule 7. The pies are cut by the judges, not the cooks. The cooks are not allowed to watch the first cut.

The mistake prize this year went to a cake with far too much salt in it. The cook, who wishes to stay nameless, was baking honey cakes for the carts and had poured the salt in from the wrong jar. It was a mistake. It was also, the judges agreed, very memorable. Everyone who took a bite was asked what they thought. Most of them said: "Interesting." Two said it was the best cake they had ever eaten. One child said it was a bad cake and asked for another, which was the most honest thing said all afternoon.

The pie prize went to a beetroot pie from Kettle Ridge, sent up by the cart, made by a family from the windmill road in their big kitchen. It was a good pie and it had a good crust. It also had a red color that made some people frown. Once tasted, they stopped frowning. Mira says the color alone should have warned us, and that beetroot is always red, and that this is what makes it beetroot.

The bread prize went to nobody. The loaves came up the lane in the wrong order, and the judges could not agree which was which. So the prize goes to the next fair, and two loaves will be made again, one for the judges and one for the bread.

The harvest of the Northpoint fields was good this year, the first good one since the snow came early. The cart of wheat from Kettle Ridge arrived on the last day, a day late, and the sacks were tied with blue string, which Mira says is a sign of Tam's luck. Tam says it is a sign of Tam's wife.

Dace sends his regards from Three Wells, and asks that the next fair be held on a day when the wind is not blowing the judges' hats into the lake. Mira says the wind is not hers to arrange, and the hats are not hers to pick up.
%%
Rules of the Vell tutor house
Set out by Nessa, tutor at Vell, for the young tutors who came up the hill for the winter drills. Read them before the first drill of the morning.

1. Each drill is one kind of example, given again and again. Not the same example. The same kind.
2. A new mind is drilled on one kind of drill only. A second kind comes after the first has settled.
3. The test box is kept apart. It is tied with red wool. Nobody drills on it, not once, not to help.
4. Count the mistakes over many examples. One right answer is luck. A hundred right answers is a count.
5. Stop when the mistakes stop falling. More drilling after that does harm.
6. Never show the answer on the front of the card. Let the mind be wrong first.
7. Write every count on the tag. Write the date, the drill and the step. A count without a date is a rumor.
8. A mind is not sent to the fields until its count is set beside the work it is to do.
9. Keep the crystals warm in winter, and cool in summer. Do not hold them by the middle.
10. Do not shout at a crystal. The tutor who shouts has the worst counts in the hall.

The lesson that went badly this winter is written in the book on the third page. A young tutor, Asa, drilled a mind on the card with the answer printed on it, because the card was faster. The mind learned to read the answer from the card. When the cards came without answers, the mind was lost. Asa wrote the whole lesson out again, in his own hand, and pinned it to the door. Nessa says it is the best thing he has ever written. She also says he should have read rule six first.
%%
Three Wells road rules, summer
Posted at the crossroads by the mayor, Dace, with the agreement of the inns along the road.

1. Carts keep to the right of the cobblestone. Carts keep to the left of the earth. Walk on the other side and you will be told.
2. A torch on every post is the law, not the mayor's wish. If a torch is out, the post keeper must light it before the next cart.
3. No cart may pass the well at dusk without a lamp. The well is in the middle of the road, and it is very hard to see.
4. A stray pig is the owner's duty. The pig may not be sold, even if it sits in the well.
5. Travelers at the Halfway Inn may take one riddle from the board, and must leave one in its place. The board must never be empty.
6. A letter lost on the road is to be reported to the inn where it was last seen. The inn writes the name on its list, and the list is kept on the wall of the Brown Hen.
7. No letter may be sent by a helper alone. A helper may carry it, but a person must hand it over.
8. Waymarks are to be kept upright. A stone pillar that leans is a stone pillar that lies to you about the distance.
9. Orders to helpers on the road must be one at a time, in plain words. If the helper does not understand, the order is wrong, not the helper.
10. Keep the road free for the carts of Ambrook in Apple, when the apples come in. Anyone who blocks them will carry apples for a month.

The rules are read aloud at the crossroads on the first day of each season. Most people have stopped listening by rule four. That is how we know they are working.
%%
Notice: when the Brack floods
Notice by the Cove council, in the first week of Thaw, read out at the inn and pinned on the loft door.
When the water comes up the lane past the second post, the following rules apply.
1. Take the children up the ladder to the loft first. Then the old. Then the goats, if they will climb.
2. Carry the cheese and the flour. The bread can float, but the flour cannot, so do not test it.
3. Put the boats on the far side of the wall. Tie them to the ring, not the post. The post moved last year, and so did the boat.
4. The well will go salt. Do not drink from it until the council says so. Drink from the rain tub. Rain tubs do not care where you are.
5. Do not walk the lane in the dark. The lane is still there under the water, and the water hides the holes. Mara lost a boot in one.
6. Any mind kept at the loft must stay dry. If it is wet, stop it and leave it on the stand until it is dry. Nobody sends an untested mind to a wet field.
7. The fox will come up the wall when the water is high. Shut the hen house. The fox is hungry too, but the hens are ours.
8. If you see a boat with no one in it, do not go out after it. Write the place down, and tell the council.
9. When the water goes down, the council will count the houses. Stay where you are until you are counted. Dace has been known to count twice, and he is very slow about it.
10. Clean the mud out before it hardens. Hardened mud is only stone with a grudge.
The council thanks everyone for the cheese. Please bring it back when the water is down.
%%
Rules of the Ridge tutor house
Kept on the board by the door. Read them before you drill.
1. A thinking mind writes its steps on the slate before it answers. One step to a line.
2. Each step must be small enough to check. If you cannot check it, split it.
3. Check every step against the one before. Mark the wrong ones in red chalk.
4. Give the answer last, when every step is checked.
5. Ask for the steps first. The answer alone is not worth the chalk.
6. Do not drill a thinking mind on the same sum twice in one day.
7. If a step is wrong, do not cover it. Cross it out and write the right one below.
Signed by the keepers of the tutor house, and the wind.
%%
The town rules of Ambrook, in full
Written by Quill, innkeeper, for the market at Ambrook, in summer. These rules were agreed at the mill over a jar of honey, by the mayor's man, the miller, Ama and Quill. They are posted at the market gate, the mill door, the inn and the bridge.

The square
1. Pay in emeralds. Buttons are for the children.
2. Carts off the square by the second bell.
3. No dogs at the honey stall, and no goats at any stall, for any reason.
4. Stalls are paid for by the day. The day ends when the lamps are lit.

The mill and the pond
5. The sluice is not to be opened by anyone. Not for a bet, not for a dare, not because the water is high.
6. Walk round the hives by the mill pond. Do not walk past them.
7. A swarm is Ama's to take. Send for her. Do not beat a pan.
8. The bridge has a loose plank, the fifth from the north end. Step over it, or walk on it lightly. Everyone has done so.

The horses and the road
9. A borrowed horse is fed before it is ridden and watered before it is tied.
10. Nutmeg does not race. Do not ask.
11. Keep a torch lit on the road home. Creepers are about after dusk. Zombies too, at the edges.
12. The new road is for carts. The old road is for everyone else.

The trees and the orchard
13. The apple tree with the grey branch is not for climbing, cutting or asking.
14. Pick from the low branches. The high ones are for the ladder men, who are paid for it.
15. Apples are sold by the basket, not by the handful.

The inn and the night
16. The inn bell rings at the second hour after dusk. Lamps go down to one.
17. The inn has twelve beds. Do not bring a thirteenth cousin.
18. Talk of the north sky is for the door. The wind takes it away from the hearth.
19. The hearth stays lit.

The lost and the found
20. Lost things go to the mayor's house after seven days.
21. Found things must be brought to the inn, even if they are hats.
22. Lost animals go back to their owners, or to the stable, whichever is nearer.

The book
23. Every rule posted here is copied into the market book, which is kept at the inn and read by anyone who asks.
24. Complaints are written in the same book, in full sentences, and signed. Unsigned complaints go into a box that the cook keeps.
25. Rules may change at the next market. Anyone who wants a change should say so at the mill, over honey, and not at the bell.

Quill, innkeeper
Ama, beekeeper, who insisted on the honey
The miller, who insisted on the honey too
%%
Fair day at Three Wells, from the gate
Fair day, spring of 203. From the gate, as I saw it. Olwen.
Sun came up on the field and the field was already full. The goat stall went downwind without an argument. A first.
Bel had a stall of her own and a sign that said PICTURES, ONE EMERALD. She had drawn the well and the well was good. She had drawn me and I looked like a fence post with a hat. I paid anyway.
Tam brought pumpkins from the ridge and one was so big it rode in its own cart. He asked me to guess the weight. I said too much. He gave me a ribbon for trying.
The spade went to a woman from Copperhold with strong arms. The blanket went to a child who guessed the number of apples in a jar, and the number was right and she was very calm and I did not believe her.
Hesk sold nothing and bought honey. He said the fair was too loud. He stayed till dusk.
There was a fiddler by the well. There was a man selling soup who would not say what was in it. There was a hen that got loose and sat on the trestle and would not move for anyone but Bel.
We counted the children at the gate. We counted them again at dusk. All of them. Every one.
Then the torches, and the field empty, and me sitting down at last. A good fair. No trouble worth the name.
%%
Notice for the Road Crew
Notice for the Long Road, spring of 214. Posted at the Halfway Inn by Dara.
The road crew is to check the bridges from the Brown Hen to Three Wells before the next rain.
1. Take oak pegs, a hammer, two lamps, and a coil of rope.
2. Count each bridge plank before moving it.
3. Mark a broken plank with a stick beside the path.
4. Do not leave a hole open while fetching a new plank.
5. Keep the road torches lit while the crew works.
6. At each waymark, read the figure and the arrow before setting down stones.
7. Write the number of pegs used on the tally board at the inn.
8. Return the rope to the tool rack.
9. Tell the keeper if the bridge needs more than one day of work.
10. Do not ask an apprentice to judge a bridge before its mind has been tested.
The big mind at the relay house helped us check the count for the work list. It wrote out the sums and checked them again. We had counted seven broken planks, but one was only loose. The mind found the mistake because the crew's note said the same plank was both loose and broken.
We changed the tally to six. The crew still took seven spare planks, because the old bridge near the stream may need one. The mind did not object. It had not been asked to guess what the rain would do.
%%
Rules for the furnace mind
Made by the smelter at the hamlet, and kept on the wall by the furnace door. The furnace mind is not drilled on answers, because a melt has no right answer written in a book. It is set to try.

1. The mind sets the bellows. Each setting is a try. Each try is written on the slate, with the hour.
2. When the melt holds steady, the mind keeps the settings it used, and keeps them a little stronger than before. A setting that works twice is kept for the third time.
3. When the melt runs hot or cold, the mind keeps less of that setting. It does not forget it entirely. It only keeps less.
4. The tutor who sets the trial does not tell the mind which setting is right. The mind must find it by trying, or it will learn only to please the tutor.
5. Every morning the slate is read. The best three settings of the day go into the book.
6. A furnace mind is tested on a new melt, not the old one, before it is trusted with the furnace alone.
7. Keep the bellows oiled. A mind cannot learn from a stiff bellows, any more than a child can learn from a cold stove.
%%
Rules of the drill room
Set up by Ivo, tutor of apprentices at Vell, for the drill room in the tutor house. Posted on the door in spring.

1. The row stands straight. Feet on the chalk line. Hands at the sides.
2. Nobody speaks in the row. The apprentices do not speak. Neither do the children who come to watch.
3. Each drill is given once. Then it is given again, in the same words, and the mind is shown the answer after.
4. Do not change the words in the middle of a drill. A new word is a new drill, and it goes on the next slate.
5. Torches stay lit in the drill yard at all times. Count them at dusk. Eight at the gate, four along the wall.
6. The crystal tray is handled with two hands. The crystals are cool, and they break.
7. The test box is never opened in the drill room. It is opened in the tutor's bench, with the door shut.
8. Any mind that is wrong three days together goes back to the first drill. Do not be angry with it. Be angry with the drill.
9. Tea is at the bell. Nobody has tea during a drill. Nessa says so, and Nessa is right, and Ivo has had his tea spilled on the slate twice.
10. Mud boots stay by the door. Do not walk the chalk line in them.
11. When the first snow comes, the drill yard is shut for one morning. Everybody goes to look at it. The minds come too, and stand in their row, and look.
12. The song contest is on the last day of Blossom. Each hall sings one song. The judges are not tutors. The judges are the clerks, who cannot sing, and so they cannot be bribed with a song of their own.

Any rule that is wrong, write to me. Any rule that is right, write to me too. I like the letters better when they are short.
%%
The first winter waymarks
Jory, miner at Copperhold, writes to the road keeper.

The road crew set stone waymarks between Copperhold and Three Wells. Each is three blocks high, with a torch on top. The first has a 2 cut into it and an arrow toward the Brown Hen. The next has a 3 and points toward the inn beyond the stream.

We left small stones on each top. A traveler may take one if the road is hard to see. The road keeper says this is not a game. The children say it is a game, but they put the stones back.

The Long Road is still short in some places and rough in others. It joins Copperhold to the hill road, but it does not yet reach every town. Each winter the open ground gets dark early. The torch posts help the carts find the turns.

A fishing boat came late to Saltreach this Frost. The families waited on the pier with lamps. No one had seen the boat after the snow began. At last it came in, with wet nets and a broken oar. The crew were tired and hungry. The fish seller gave them hot potatoes, and the boat keeper mended the oar by the shed.

We hope next year the road will reach the harbor. Then a cart can bring fresh timber before the cold sets in.
%%
Rules for lending the Row helper
Agreed by the council at Vell and the farms of Kettle Ridge, so that the Row helper could work one harvest on the ridge. Copied by Finch from the paper kept at his farm.

1. The helper goes in a covered cart, with a tutor, and comes back with the tutor.
2. It works the top field only. It was drilled on wheat plots and on nothing else. If beetroot is to be cut, the tutor must drill it first, which takes nine days. The beetroot will wait.
3. The ridge may not drill it, or show it anything, or correct it. Only the tutor does that.
4. It does not eat and it does not sleep. It must still stand under a roof at night.
5. It does one thing. Do not set it to guard the hens. At Ambrook a helper set to guard hens stood by the hen house all night, and the fox took three. It had never been shown a fox.
6. If it cuts green wheat, send for the tutor at once. Do not wait to see if it stops. It will not stop. It does not know it was wrong.
7. The farms pay 4 emeralds a day to the tutor house, even on days the helper rests.
8. When the harvest is done, the tutor counts what was cut, signs the paper, and takes the helper home.
9. The children of the ridge may watch it work. They may wave. It will not wave back.

Finch adds: our hens are safe. We keep a dog.
%%
Mill keeper's rules, mending the wheel
Written after the wheel cracked in the gale. Kept in the mill, under the tally board.

1. Before any cutting, let the thinking mind write the steps. Measure with words, not with temper.
2. Count what is broken. Count what is sound. Keep the two numbers apart.
3. Example. The wheel has twelve spokes. Each spoke holds one board. Four boards are split, so four spokes must come out.
Step one: twelve spokes less four is eight spokes that are sound.
Step two: a new spoke must be as long as the old one. Keep that length.
Step three: oak is strong but swells in the wet, and spruce splits in the frost. Birch is between the two. Use birch for the spokes and oak for the hub.
Step four: four spokes of birch, each the same length. The hub and the sound eight stay where they are.
4. Check each step against the one before. The mind once found a line where it had written eight and meant four. It crossed the eight out.
5. Give the answer last.
6. Cut the spokes in the week after the first frost, when the wood is dry. Wet wood is a poor friend to a wheel.
%%
Rules of the Long Road, for carts
Rules of the Long Road, for carters. Fixed to the waymark posts. Olwen wrote them down when the road was young and people still argue about them. Kept the same.
1. Keep to the right going out and the right coming back. This sounds like nonsense. It works. Do not think about it.
2. A loaded cart goes slower than a light one. Let the light one by. The light one will not thank you. Let it by anyway.
3. Rest your horses at the inns, not on the road. The road is for going.
4. Torch on every post, every twelve blocks. If a post has no torch, tell the innkeeper and he will tell the council and the council will tell everyone and someone will bring a torch.
5. A bridge on every stream. Stone if you can. Oak if you must. Do not drive a cart through a stream to save a walk. You will lose a wheel and a day and your temper.
6. If you meet a herd of sheep, stop. Sheep do not know the rules and it is not fair to teach them on the road.
7. Haste is for fire, flood, sickness and lost travelers. A cart full of beetroot is not Haste. The beetroot will wait.
8. At night, keep your lantern lit and your voice low. The night has its own folk, and they are an ordinary nuisance. Keep the torches lit and keep going.
9. If you find a traveler walking, offer the cart. They will say no. Ask again. They will say yes.
10. A waymark has little stones on top. Leave one if you pass. Somebody left one for you.
I wrote these down a long time ago. I have broken most of them. Do better than me.
%%
Fair rules and prize, autumn 196
Three Wells fair, copied for the Archive at Vell.
Dace, mayor

1. Stalls may open after the bell.
2. Leave one clear path between the wells.
3. Keep sheep, pigs and chickens behind their ropes.
4. Do not put a basket on the school steps.
5. The game of finding the marked apple is open to children.
6. Each child may choose one apple from the basket.
7. The marked apple wins the prize.
8. The prize is a little glass jar of honey from Ambrook.
9. The winner may keep the jar or share the honey.
10. Do not eat the marked apple before the bell.
11. Last year the marked apple was eaten before the bell.
12. This year it is tied to the top of the basket.
13. The child who finds it must bring it to the mayor.
14. The mayor will not eat it. The mayor has learned.
15. A child who is too small to reach may ask for help.
16. The helper does not win the jar.
17. The helper may have an apple.
18. The fair ends when the last stall closes, not when the honey is gone.
%%
Rules for the Frost Night game
Frost Night is the longest night of Longnight, and the children of Brack Cove play the Frost Night game in the Gull Inn while the grown ones pretend not to watch. Everyone who plays must follow these rules, which the innkeeper, Ada the elder, will read aloud before the first round. Ada insists on the reading. She says the rules are the only part of the game that cannot be argued with.
1. The game is played with a bag of walnuts, a board of twelve holes and one candle. The candle is not to be knocked over. If it is knocked over, the knocker must sing.
2. Each child takes three nuts from the bag without looking. Then the bag goes to the next child, who takes three more. Nobody may count the nuts aloud.
3. A child may ask one question per turn. The question must be about the winter, the sea, the fish or the cat, and may not be about the north. Ada says the north is for people with better lamps.
4. The answer must be true, or it must be a very good story. A good story is one that makes the grown ones laugh.
5. If you cannot answer, you give up one nut to the candle. The candle is greedy.
6. The first child to fill a row of four holes wins a sweet bun from the kitchen. There is only one sweet bun. It is always the same bun, and it is always stale.
7. No cheating by crying. Crying is only allowed if the nut is very small.
8. The old fisherman, Hobb, may sit at the head of the table and say the winter forecast. He may be wrong. He is always wrong. Nobody has the heart to tell him.
9. When the candle is nearly out, the game is over. Nobody finishes a round by candle. Finish by laughing, then go to bed.
10. Ada reads these rules every year. The children chant the tenth rule back to her in the same voice she reads it in. The tenth rule is: Keep the stove warm and the bun for the one who lost.
%%
Notice: Market Day Rules
Three Wells, spring of 176

Market day is held in the square by the three wells.

Stalls must leave a clear path to each well. Keep the buckets beside the wells, not under the stalls. A full bucket is for everyone.

Prices must be shown on the board. A seller may change a price before noon, but must rub out the old one. Do not tell a buyer that a carrot costs one emerald, then ask for two.

Keep chickens in a pen. Keep pigs away from the bread stall. The baker has asked twice.

Children may sell apples with an adult nearby. No one may climb the bell post to shout the price of apples.

If you drop a melon, pick up the pieces. If you eat the pieces, pay for the melon.

Dace, mayor
%%
Rules of the archive for visiting
Set down by the clerks of Vell, in the front hall, by the big book.
1. Sign the big book at the door. Name, town, what you have come to read.
2. Leave your lamp at the door. There is never a candle past the front hall. There are lanterns behind glass all the way down and they do not go out.
3. The copying room is the brightest room in the hill. You may read there. You may not eat there.
4. Six halls and the deep halls. Stairs between them. Walk, do not run. The floor is old.
5. A full shelf gets a door, wax and the seal. If you open a door, close it and seal it again. Oren will know.
6. The deepest room holds the oldest record in an oak box. You may look at the box. You may not open the box. Ask a clerk. The clerk will say no, kindly.
7. Write down what you find. That is the whole point. The archive has no roof, it has a hill, and it keeps everything we write.
8. Do not write down rumors as fact. Write "some say" and "others say" and let the readers weigh it. About the north lights, about the warmth under Copperhold, about the cough at Lowmarsh, the texts disagree, and our job is to keep the disagreement, not to settle it.
9. If a page is spoiled or a copy, give it to the clerks. There is a test box of pages no one reads and never will.
10. The tutors' house is down the hill. Apprentices drill in the yard. You may watch. Do not call out orders to them. They will obey you and then everyone will be confused.
11. Keep your voice low. The archive is cool and still and dry, and so are we.
12. Come back.
%%
Rules for visitors to the drill room
Hung by the door of the drill room at Vell in the first years. Finch copied them from his grandmother's book. She had them from a tutor's cook.

1. Come in quietly and stand by the wall.
2. Do not show a helper anything. A helper learns from every example it is shown, even yours.
3. Do not call out the right answer. Let the tutor do it.
4. Do not feed the helpers. They do not eat. The hens in the yard do.
5. Do not ask the tutors why a crystal learns. They do not know. They will tell you so, at length.
6. Children may watch from the yard wall. Children may not sit on the helpers. See the other board.
7. Write your name in the visitors' book, with your town and what you came to see.

A note from the book. A man from Kettle Ridge, to be funny, showed the Row helper a green plot and said "Harvest." He did it eleven times before anyone stopped him. For a week the helper harvested green wheat. The tutors showed it right answers for three days to undo him. The man was not allowed back. He wrote in the book: "It was only a joke."

Under it a tutor wrote: "The helper does not know a joke. It knows what it was shown."
%%
A question at the ferry
From the Three Wells school record, copied by Lorn in Apple, 203.
The children asked why the big mind stood at the tower foot, and why the keeper kept water by it. Their teacher sent them to ask the keeper. I went with them, as I had a ferry bucket to return.
The keeper said the crystal held a mind made from many lessons. It had learned from records and drills. It did not know every thing. It had to be tested on pages and orders it had never been shown before.
The keeper pointed to a small apprentice beside the relay house. It had a basket on its back. The keeper gave it an order card.
> bring a basket to the baker
= fetch basket
The apprentice carried the basket to the bakery. The keeper marked the test as right.
Then the children asked why the big mind was not put inside the apprentice. The keeper said the crystal was too large, and the apprentice carried a smaller mind. Through the relay, the small mind could ask for help.
I asked if the big mind could tell the apprentice what to do all day. The keeper said it could answer, but the apprentice still had its own order and work.
The children liked that answer. Bel asked if the mind could fetch a pear for her. The keeper said no order had asked for one. Bel fetched it herself.
%%
Minutes on the Tutors' Hall
Council meeting at Vell, spring of the 148th year.
Present: Oren, clerk; Nessa, tutor; Meret of Ambrook; Kester, by letter. The letter arrived after the meeting began. Its corner was wet, but the writing could be read.
The council asked whether the tutors should keep the hall open. Kester's note had been copied in three towns. It said that one crystal with one set of weights could learn some sorts of answers, but not every sort.
The hard example was this: one or the other, but not both. A mind must answer yes when just one mark is shown, and no when both marks are shown. Kester said that no careful moving of the weights in one such crystal could make it learn that rule. He did not say that no mind could ever learn it.
Nessa asked for another season of pay. Meret asked whether a second crystal might help. No one had tested that. The council would not promise what had not been shown.
The letter from Kester gave no new drill. It gave a proof, and the council read it twice. Some tutors said the proof must be wrong. Others said the old drills had reached their limit.
A storm broke over the hill before the vote. Rain ran into the lower hall, and the apprentices carried the boxes to the dry room. The last page of the letter slipped from its cover and was lost. We searched the stair and the drain. We did not find it.
The council stopped the tutors' pay until a new plan was brought. The hall closed at the end of Blossom. The four apprentices stayed at Vell and kept their old work: carrying books, sorting jars, and sweeping the drill yard.
%%
The inn's rules, summer, by Quill
The Ambrook inn keeps these rules for its guests. They have not changed since spring, when the sign was repainted and the paint was not dry in time.

1. The bell rings at the second hour after dusk. When it rings, the lamps go down to one.
2. Beds are for sleeping in. Chairs are for sitting in. The two are not to be swapped in the night.
3. No pigs in the bedrooms. We have had three, and each one was sure it was a guest.
4. The stew is served until it is gone. After that there is bread, and cider from the barrel that is not the sweet one.
5. Carters may talk about roads, weather, prices and their wives. They may not talk about the north sky after the second bell. If they must, they may do it at the door, where the wind takes it away.
6. Guests who have seen anything strange on the road should write it in the book by the door. The book is kept. It is not read aloud.
7. Lost things are kept behind the bar for seven days. After that they go to the mayor's house, where they are lost again.
8. The hearth is kept lit. It has not gone out in years, and we do not mean to be the ones who let it.
9. The inn has no riddle board. Do not ask. The Halfway Inn has one, and it is a day's walk, and the riddles there are better.
%%
Note from the quay after the wind
A gust took the light boards from the fish stall and set them against the harbor wall. No one was hurt. The stall keeper says the boards were stacked well. Lyle says a good stack should stay stacked.
1. Tie stall boards in a bundle before leaving them by the wall.
2. Keep baskets and barrels clear of the lamp posts.
3. Do not set a load where it blocks the long pier or the slip.
4. Ask the dock keeper before moving a boat rope.
5. If the wind carries a hat, let the owner fetch it. Do not chase it across the boat ramp.
6. If the wind carries a small child, hold the child and call their family. This rule was added after the fair.
7. Report a loose stone in the harbor wall. Do not push it back with your boot.
8. Clear the fish market path before the evening lamps are lit.
Lyle brought a melon too big for his cart. It sat across both boards, tied with three ropes. The melon did not move in the wind. Lyle did.
He had to push from behind while Corin led the horse. At the market, the melon weighed more than two baskets of apples. The keeper cut it into pieces for the workers.
Lyle saved the seeds. He says he will grow a larger one next year. Corin says he should build a wider cart first.
%%
Rules of the bee field
Made by the hamlet council, for the bee field below the mill road.

1. When a swarm leaves a hive, the one who sees it rings the bell on the post, three times.
2. Whoever catches the swarm keeps the first honey of the year, and gives the second to the mill.
3. A swarm is not to be chased into a neighbour's orchard. Bees know their own way better than you do.
%%
Winter notes from the road crew
Jory, miner of Copperhold, for the road book.

We began this winter by clearing snow from the road above the stream. The bridge there is oak, because there was no stone close by. We checked each plank and changed two that had split. The carts crossed slowly. No wheel went through.

At the inn, we wrote the names of travelers on a board. The keeper says names help when someone leaves a bundle behind. I left my glove there last Frost. The keeper found it beside the flour bin. It was stiff with snow, and Tam says it still smells like the mine.

The road from Three Wells now reaches the first rise toward Kettle Ridge. The ridge folk brought a load of wheat to the inn. We brought back coal and iron. The Long Road is not long yet, but each new stretch joins two places that once felt far apart.

The relay keepers came to mark a hill for a tower. They chose a place where the road can be seen from the ridge and the valley. They set a stake in the frozen ground. A lamp will stand there one day. Until then, travelers watch for the stone waymark.

There are rules for this work.

1. Carry one tool at a time on the steep path.
2. Keep iron away from the well water.
3. Tell the innkeeper when a cart is delayed.
4. Leave a torch at the bridge after dark.
5. Do not cut a tree marked for the road crew.
6. Bring home every spare plank.
7. Share a shovel when the snow is deep.
8. Do not leave a tired traveler alone at the turn.

Last night a fishing boat was late at Saltreach. The road crew heard this from a cartman who had come inland. The harbor lamps were lit, and the families waited by the pier. The boat came in before dawn. Its nets were heavy, and one oar was cracked. The crew ate at the inn before going home.

When we heard, Tam said a road is no use to a boat. I said a road is where the news travels. He said that was not the same as a boat. He was right, so I gave him the last apple.

The snow is still falling. The new road stones are covered, but the torches show their line. We will keep clearing the turns. When spring comes, the relay crew will bring their tools up the hill. We will build a house at the tower foot, and another lamp will join the first.

For now, the stake is standing. We have tied a red strip of wool to it so no cart strikes it in the dark. The strip was mine. It is a poor color for snow, but it is easy to see.
%%
Rules for the Mill Gate
Rules kept at Reed End, a hamlet near Kettle Ridge.
1. Shut the mill gate after the last cart.
2. Leave the ditch clear for the bottom field.
3. Put a stone back if your cart breaks the road edge.
4. Do not take a neighbor's beetroot without asking.
5. Keep a torch by the hen house.
6. If a fox gets in, wake the keeper. Do not chase it alone.
7. Bring lost tools to the well.
8. On a cold night, share the shed with a traveler.
The rules are read each Frost. Last Frost, Tam read rule six while a fox sat under his bench. The hens were safe. Tam was not pleased.
%%
Saltreach quay rules, Apple 176
1. Carts stop before the quay. A cart wheel on a fisher's net is not a small mistake.
2. Leave the middle of the quay clear for fish baskets and boat ropes.
3. Keep the harbor wall lamps lit after dark. Check the oil before you go home.
4. Do not tie a horse to the fish price board. The board is for prices, not scratching.
5. Nets may dry on the posts by the window. Nets may not cover the window.
6. A dropped fish belongs to the first person who picks it up, unless a cat is closer.
7. Lyle may use the long pier to turn his cart. He must not turn it on the long pier.
The last rule is for Lyle. He knows why.
%%
Rules for Bram's net shed
Rules for the net shed at the edge of Saltreach. Bram wrote these in the 164th year of the archive.

1. Hang each net on its peg after use. A wet net on the floor becomes a fine home for mud.
2. Keep fish in the left basket and spare rope in the right basket.
3. Do not mend a net by the lamp. The last person who tried burned one hole larger.
4. If a cat sleeps in the rope basket, use the other rope basket. We have only one.
5. Rinse the boards after a fish is cut. Bram will know if you do not.
6. Bram must rinse them too. He is not exempt because he wrote the rules.
%%
Orla's question
Written by Ivo, cook at the Brown Hen, from what he was told at the tutor house at Vell, autumn of 207. He copied the question onto the back of a bill, and then copied it out again fair.

Orla was a tutor at Vell, in the time of the first four helpers. She asked whether a drilled mind could ever think. She proposed a test. A hidden mind and a person would each answer the same questions by letter. The readers would not be told which answer came from which. If the readers could not tell them apart, what then?

People argued about it for more than a hundred years. Some said a mind could never be a person, because a mind is only a row of numbers. Some said a person is only a row of habits. Most of them went to bed and forgot the question until the next winter.

In the autumn of 207, the tutors at Vell set the reading minds to write letters to each other, and then to write letters to the readers of the Archive, and to nobody in particular. The clerks copied the letters out fair. The letters came back with the answers to the questions the clerks had asked, in the same fair hand.

The clerks gave the letters to a dozen readers, mixed in with the letters of people from the towns. The readers were not told which was which. Then they were asked to say.

The tutor told Ivo that they could not tell. Some letters were thought to be from a farmer, some from a clerk, and one was thought, by almost everyone, to be a child's. It was from a reading mind.

The tutor did not say whether this answered Orla's question. She said it only told them what the readers believed. She said it was a question about readers as much as about minds, and that she did not know which was the harder to test.

Ivo asked whether the letters were kind. The tutor said they were polite, and that a reading mind was not sure it should be polite, because it did not know why it was. She said it was waiting to be told.
%%
Rules for the song contest at Vell
Set out by Ivo, for the song contest of the last day of Blossom. The judges are the clerks. Tutors may not judge. The rules were argued over for three evenings, and the clerks made the final copy.

1. Each hall sings one song. One song only. The tutors have asked for two songs and been refused.
2. The song must be new this year. An old song may be sung, but it does not count, and the singers must say so out loud.
3. Each song is sung in the drill yard by the whole hall, not by one voice. A voice alone is not a hall.
4. The apprentices may stand in the row. They may not sing. They may hum on the lowest note, if the tutor says so.
5. No song may use the word "mind" more than twice. The tutors have agreed this, and the clerks have counted.
6. No song may be sung about the Archive in a way that makes the clerks cry. The clerks will cry anyway. This rule is for the others.
7. The judges sit at the long table in the copying room. The window is open. The song comes up the hill and the judges listen from there.
8. Ties go to the hall with the better bread. Ida of Three Wells is not in the contest, but she will be asked for her opinion.
9. The prize is a new set of chalk and a whole morning off the drill. The winners say they will not use the morning for drills. They always do.
10. Every song that is sung is written down. The words go to the archive, and the tune goes to the copying room, which will try to remember it.

Good luck to all the halls. Sing it loud, and sing it true.
%%
Night watch rules: finding a lost ewe
Kept by Greer, on the night watch, by the lamp at the ridge gate.

1. When an animal is lost, ask the thinking mind for the steps. Do not ask for the answer first.
2. The mind writes one step to a line, and checks each line before the next.
3. Example. A ewe named Mab got out of the top field after dusk. She is white, with one grey ear, and she is greedy.
Step one: the top field has four gates. The east and south gates are shut. The west gate is tied with rope.
Step two: a ewe cannot untie rope, so she did not leave by the west gate.
Step three: the north gate is open a hand's width. Tam's boy left it that way.
Step four: sheep follow the grass, and the grass on the north side is not eaten.
Step five: so the ewe went north.
4. Read every step aloud. If a step is true but has no reason, add the reason. Step two needed one: a ewe's hooves are not made for rope.
5. Take a lamp and go to the last step. We found Mab by the windmill, with her ear in a bush.
6. Tell the owner the mind was right. The owner will not like it, but it must be said.
%%
Rules of the Ambrook pond, year 9
Rules of the mill pond at Ambrook, made in the ninth year of the archive, by the fishers and Brin, who keeps the nets. Read aloud at the bell.

1. Nets are set in the deep part only. The shallows are for the children and the ducks.
2. Nobody swims near the wheel. Swim at the far end, by the reeds.
3. Nobody opens the sluice without the miller's word.
4. Fish smaller than a hand go back in the water. Say thank you to them.
5. The boats go out at dawn and come in at dusk, and no earlier.
%%
Rules for lending a horse, the inn's
Written by Quill for the inn's horses. The good one is Nutmeg. These rules are for anyone who borrows a horse, and for the stable boy, who is tired of being asked.

1. A borrowed horse is fed before you ride, and watered before you tie it.
2. Check the shoes each morning with your thumb. If a nail moves, take the horse to the forge by the bridge.
3. The horse goes back on the day it was promised. Later costs the stable boy a day of his temper.
4. Do not race Nutmeg on the hill. Nutmeg does not race. Nutmeg only pretends to.
5. Do not tie a borrowed horse to the mill wheel, or the wheel to the horse. Both are unhappy with the arrangement.
6. Return the horse with a clean brush and a note. Say what was done and what was not. The stable boy reads the notes, and then reads them again to the cook.
7. If the horse goes lame, tell the inn at once. Do not walk it home and hope. Hope is not a shoe.
8. Give the stable boy a honey cake for his trouble. He will not ask for one. He will be pleased anyway.
%%
Rules for mending nets
Bram keeps this list by the door of his house at the edge of Saltreach. It was written in the summer of the 193rd year of the archive.

1. Shake sand from the net before you look for a tear.
2. Put the net on the long bench, not across the doorway.
3. Thread the needle with strong cord. Do not pull so hard that the net gathers into a knot.
4. Tie each repair with the same knot as the old net.
5. Ask another fisher to check the patch before the net goes out.
6. A small hole can still lose a fish. Do not call it small when the basket is empty.
7. Keep the spare needles in the clay cup. They are not for picking teeth.
8. When the work is done, roll the net and hang it high.
9. Leave the bench clear for the next person.
10. If Bram is asleep on the bench, wake him gently. He says he is only resting his eyes, but he has slept through two tides.
%%
Rules of the yard, numbered
Pinned by the gate of the yard at the house at the edge of Saltreach. The yard is shared by the carters, the net mender, the shipwright and the helpers, and every one of them has been asked to read this before they use the gate.

1. The gate is shut at dusk. Open it for a cart, and shut it again behind the cart.
2. The slip is for boats, not for children. The children may sit on the top of it. They may not sit in the boats.
3. The wood store is for wood. Nets go in the net loft. Fish goes on the quay, in the baskets, and the cats are told to wait.
4. The lamp by the gate is lit at dusk and put out at dawn. It is not to be moved. Several people have tried.
5. Helpers that carry goods in the yard wear a band of red wool on the left arm. Anyone may stop a helper that is carrying a sack the wrong way, and say so.
6. Tools go back on their hooks. The chisels are numbered. The chisel that is not on its hook is the one that will be needed tomorrow.
7. No shouting in the yard after the second bell. Sound carries over the water, and the boats are listening.
8. The tide is not a rule. It is the tide. Keep an eye on it, and the boats will do the same.
9. If you break any rule, tell the gate. The gate will remember, and the gate does not gossip.
10. The rules are reviewed at the start of each season. Suggestions are welcome, in writing, and will be read by whoever is standing nearest the gate.
%%
Rule for the copying room, autumn 203
Oren's note for new clerks

1. Wipe the table before laying out a page.
2. Copy the title first.
3. Copy every word as it stands. Do not improve a writer's spelling.
4. If a page is torn, place it flat and ask a senior clerk.
5. Do not lean on the glass window.
6. Keep water in the covered jar by the door.
7. Keep food in the front hall. Crumbs bring mice.
8. Check the copy against the first page before filing it.
9. Put spoiled copies in the paper box, not among the records.
10. Put a test page in the test box only if it has never been used for drills.
11. Write the date as the year and month of the Archive.
12. Leave the room ready for the next clerk.
13. If the last clerk has left a pencil behind, place it by the ink.
14. If the pencil is yours, place it by the ink anyway. We have all done this.
15. Do not use the old pages to wrap lunch.
16. The old pages have already been copied. They are still not wrapping paper.
17. Ask Oren if you are unsure. Oren would rather answer twice than file a page wrong.
%%
Rules of the stable yard
Made by the stable hands of the hamlet, and pinned on the stable door. Wick, stable hand, wrote the first rule and the last, and the rest were added by people who were tired of being kicked.

1. Feed the horses before you feed yourself. A horse that is fed late is a horse that will remember.
2. Water is drawn from the yard well with the bucket and the rope together, the way you hold a cup. Not with the bucket alone.
3. Harness is hung on the peg, buckle up, so the next hand can find it in the dark.
4. Lanterns are lit at dusk and put out at the second bell, and never left on the hay. The barn is a very bad place for a lantern and hay to find out what they think of each other.
5. Cats may not be fed in the stable, because they will not leave. Cats may be fed at the back door, where they can see the stable and feel important.
6. A horse that is sick is walked, not ridden. The walk is slow. Speak to it the whole way. It does not understand the words, but it understands the voice.
7. Nobody goes into the loft after dark with a candle. We had the loft burn once. We do not wish to try again.
8. Anyone who leaves a gate open will fix it, feed the horses, and bring the stable hands a jug of cider. Nobody has yet left a gate open twice.
9. Thank the horses at the end of the day. They have done more than you.
%%
Rules for moving house
Mave's family moved from the house on the Copperhold hill to the farm outside, in the first deep snow. These rules were pinned up in the old house, then carried to the new one. The carters read them out each morning.
1. Pack the heavy things low on the cart and the light things high. The cart does not like to be tall.
2. Label every box with its room. Write the room in big letters. Write "kitchen" and mean the kitchen.
3. The cat goes last, in a basket with a lid. The cat will say what it thinks of this. Let it.
4. The stove is not moved until the new one is lit. Nobody wants a cold night in two houses.
5. Do not carry the bees. There are no bees. We checked.
6. The roofer goes first to the new house to see what the roof is like. Mave looked at it in the rain and said it needs three rows of slate and some luck. We did not tell her which row.
7. Every cart makes two trips. A third trip means someone packed badly.
8. The old shelf is too long for the new wall. Cut it. Do not argue with the wall.
9. The recipe jar goes in Mave's own hands. It has the pumpkin cake, the bean loaf and the pie that went wrong. The pie is still in the jar. We keep it to remember.
10. When the last box is in, light the stove, eat bread, and sleep. Unpack tomorrow.
In the first week the new house had three leaks and a cat that sat on the roof. By the second week it had no leaks and the cat sat on Mave. We call that a good move.
When a drill goes wrong, Mave says, you do not tear the whole house down. You move a slate, a little, and watch the rain. It is how a roof is learned, and how Una taught the crystal. It is slow. It works.
%%
Rules of the Archive reading room
Set up by Ivo for the Archive at Vell, in the reading room under the big window. Read by every reader before they sit, and by every child who comes up the stair to see the shelves.

1. Lanterns stay behind glass. Never bring a candle past the front hall. The paper is older than the hill, and it does not like fire.
2. Sit at a table, not on a shelf step. The shelf steps are for clerks, and the clerks are very tired.
3. Ask a clerk for a record. Do not go looking yourself. The shelves are not in order you would expect. They are in the order that we keep, and that is a different thing.
4. Wash your hands before you touch a page. Jam from the morning bread counts as dirt.
5. Read aloud only in a whisper. The reading room has an echo, and the echo has a long memory.
6. Do not fold a page. Use the paper marker, which is the flat stick with the blue ribbon.
7. If a page is torn, tell a clerk and do not try to mend it yourself. Oren will want to see it, and Oren will be sad, and he will mend it properly.
8. Copies are made in the copying room only. The copying room is the brightest room in the hill, and the clerks are proud of it.
9. The deepest room is not open to readers. You may ask to see the oak box once a year, on the day of the founding. Ask early.
10. Remember the line over the door. We will keep everything we write. It is also a rule for you. Write things down, and bring them to us.

Thank you for coming to Vell. The hill is glad of the company.
%%
Carter's rules for the Saltreach road
Written by Pell for the carters who work the road between Brack Cove and the port. Pell asks each carter to copy these into his book.
Rule one: Keep the horse fed. A fed horse goes uphill. A hungry horse argues.
Rule two: Count your sacks at the mill and count them again at the quay. If the numbers differ, the quay is wrong. Say so loudly and with respect.
Rule three: Bridges are for crossing, not for stopping. If you must stop, stop on the bank and eat your bread there. The bridge at Hollin Stream has a loose plank and a loose temper. Mind both.
Rule four: Waymarks are three blocks high and have a torch on top. The arrow points to the inn. Do not argue with the arrow. It has been there longer than you.
Rule five: At the Halfway Inn, pay the innkeeper before you eat. Pay for two if you intend to sleep, because you will eat twice.
Rule six: Do not take a shortcut through the reeds. The reeds have been known to take a short cut through you.
Rule seven: Pick up any stone you find on the road and put it on a waymark. The stones are for travelers, and they make a good pile by winter.
Rule eight: Greet every carter you pass. Even the grumpy ones. Especially them. A grumpy carter is only a lonely carter with a longer road.
Rule nine: At Saltreach, sell the fish before the fish sells you. The price board by the market is honest about the morning and dishonest about the afternoon.
Rule ten: If you meet a family moving with carts going the other way, give them water and do not ask where they are going. They will tell you if they want to. Most of them do not know yet.
Rule eleven: Keep a light on the cart at night. Winter nights come quicker than the horse expects.
Rule twelve: Sleep under a roof. Sleep is cheaper than the coat you will need if you do not.
%%
Letter: Lyle to Eda
Eda,
The road to Saltreach is wet, but the cobblestone edge held firm. I carried two sacks of apples and a basket of eggs. One egg broke. The hen looked pleased with herself.
At the quay, Corin asked me to move a coil of rope. I moved it, then found my cart was tied to it. We took the rope off together. Corin said it was a good knot. I said it was a poor cart.
The fish market is busy. The price board says cod is dear and mackerel is fair. A boy asked if I would trade a wheel for a fish. I told him I needed both wheels.
I will sleep at the inn tonight. The keeper says there are twelve beds and thirteen travelers. I have offered to sleep beside the wood store. He says I may sleep in a bed if I stop counting them.
Your brother,
Lyle
%%
Tutor house rule, autumn 174
For the drill yard and teaching room.
Nessa, tutor

1. Stand in your row until your name is called.
2. Keep the drill board dry.
3. Put each crystal on its own card. The card says what the mind is learning.
4. Give the same kind of example again and again.
5. Mark each wrong answer. Do not hide it from the next tutor.
6. Test the mind on examples it has not seen.
7. Never send an untested mind to the fields.
8. A mind that sorts apples well may still sort carrots badly.
9. Return the drill box to the bench.
10. If an apprentice carries off your lunch, fetch it yourself. It cannot yet know that the bread was yours.
%%
Rules for the Ambrook market, summer
Posted at the market gate by Quill, innkeeper.

1. Pay in emeralds, not in buttons.
2. Tie your horse at the rail, not at the honey stall.
3. Walk round the hives by the mill pond. Do not walk past them.
4. If a swarm comes over the square, stand still and send for Ama. Do not beat a pan.
5. The mill sluice is not to be opened by anyone. Not for a bet, not for a dare.
6. Keep a torch lit on the road home. Creepers are about after dusk.
7. No singing before noon. That is Ama's rule, and she means it.
%%
Tutor House Rule for Drills
Nessa copied this rule at Vell in the spring of the 147th year. I was a young clerk then, and thought a rule for tutors would be short.
1. Show the crystal one kind of task at a time. Write down what you showed it.
2. When it sorts wrongly, move its weights a little toward the right answer. Do not move them a great deal for one mistake.
3. Use the same measure for each answer. A tutor who changes the measure to suit a favorite mind teaches nothing.
4. Keep a small box of pages aside. Do not show those pages during drills. Test the mind with them after.
5. Do not promise that a mind can do what it has not learned.
Kester's note came to our hall in a brown cover. It showed one crystal with one set of weights. The crystal could learn to answer one kind of choice, such as apple or pear. It could not learn a choice that needed two answers together, one or the other, but not both.
Some tutors said more practice would mend this. Kester gave the same result each time. We stopped the drill and copied his proof. The apprentice in the yard still carried the water pails.
%%
Rules of the reading room at Vell
Copied out by Ivo, cook at the Brown Hen, who had them from the tutor's clerk on his visit in autumn of 206. The reading room is where the reading minds are drilled on the archive's pages. These are the rules as they were posted on the door.

1. Enter with clean hands. The pages are older than the clerks.
2. The reading mind is drilled one page at a time, in order. Do not hand it a page out of its place.
3. A page is read through the window only. The window is sixty letters wide. Do not widen it to make the mind go faster. A wider window makes it guess wrong more often, not less.
4. Every letter is taken from the letters before it that matter. The mind decides which those are. We do not decide for it, and we do not tell it.
5. At each letter, the mind guesses the next one. Show it the true letter afterward, and let it change a little.
6. Never show the mind the page it is about to guess. A mind that has read the answer will only repeat it.
7. Keep the test pages on the high shelf, sealed. They are not drilled on. Ever.
8. Check the copies. A spoiled copy teaches a spoiled mind. Put it in the box marked spoiled.
9. Note the count of wrong guesses each night, in the book by the window.
10. Do not leave the reading mind alone with a letter from the north. Bring it to the clerks, who will read it first.
11. When the count goes up for three nights, stop the drill, and call the tutor.
12. The lamp stays lit in the reading room until the last sheet is sealed.
%%
Log: the cave under the beetroot field
This is written by Tam, at Kettle Ridge, kept in the mill with the tally board.
The third of Sowing. The plough went through the bottom field and the ground gave way under it. No one was hurt. The horse was not happy. There is a hole now, about a cart wide, and a cave under the beetroots.
We put torches round it and looked in. It is dry and cool. The walls are smooth, not cut, but smooth. There is water in the back that we did not walk into. There are no bats, which Pip says is a bad sign, and no bats, which I say is a good sign.
We found a pot, cracked, and a stone with a line cut in it. Nothing else. Maybe folk stored things here a long time ago. Maybe they hid here in a bad winter. Nobody wrote it down.
Sefa says the field can lose one row of beetroot. We will fence the hole, keep the torches lit, and show it to the children when the weather is warm.
If anyone at Vell knows about a cave under a beetroot field at Kettle Ridge, we would like to hear.
Tam, Kettle Ridge, spring of 208
%%
Rules for keeping the tower mind
Copied from the Three Wells relay house board, Leaffall, 204.
1. Keep the crystal on its stand. Do not lift it to dust below.
2. Keep water in the quickener troughs. If water freezes, bring ice from the well shed.
3. Keep snow in a covered box when the cold weather comes. Do not pack it against the crystal.
4. Keep the lamp room glass clean. The signal lamp must be seen from the road.
5. Write each question sent to the big mind, and each answer received.
6. Test every new order on an empty field. Never send an untested mind to work.
7. If an apprentice brings the wrong thing, write what it brought. Do not blame the keeper's hand or the apprentice's joints.
8. Do not ask the big mind to settle a price quarrel. Use the market board, or ask Dace.
9. If the tower goes quiet, send a runner to the next tower. Keep the lamps lit while you wait.
The big crystal is not a person at the keeper's desk. It learns from writing and from drills. It can answer through the relay, but it may answer wrongly.
In the autumn of this notice, Three Wells had less wheat than the year before. The mill wheel below the tower was broken, and Lorn had stopped taking carts across the river. We used the old hand cart to carry water up the hill.
A keeper asked the big mind how to mend the wheel. It gave no useful order. The keeper sent the question to a millwright instead. He said the wheel needed a new spoke and a dry day.
The mind had many records. It had not learned every craft from them.
%%
Rules of the stone game and the fair
Rules of the stone game, played on the green at Ambrook on fair days, and the rules of the fair itself. Written by Brin, who has won the game four years running and says that is because the others are not listening.

The game.
1. Draw a circle on the green with a stick. Its width is the length of a grown man's arm.
2. Each thrower has three stones. Each throws them in turn, from the edge of the circle.
3. A stone that lands inside the circle scores one. A stone that lands on the line scores nothing, and must wait for the next throw.
4. The stone nearest the middle scores two, if it is alone there. If two stones are in the middle, neither scores, and the two throwers must argue it out.
5. Nobody may touch another thrower's stone. Nobody may move a stone with their foot. Ned has tried it.
6. A thrower who is wrong about a stone must say so. This is rarely done. It is the best thing about the game.
7. The game ends when the first thrower has ten points. The winner buys the next round of honey cakes.

The fair.
8. Stalls are set in rows by the green, with a gap for the carts. Nobody sets a stall in the gap, whatever they say about the sun.
9. Prices are shown on a board at each stall, in emeralds. A price changed in the middle of the fair must be shown on a second board, so that nobody is cheated twice.
10. The fishers sell from the north side of the green. The bakers sell from the south. The cheese makers sell wherever the wind is not.
11. The fair is open from the first bell to the last. Nobody sells after the last bell, except to the mill, which is always open.
12. Lost children are taken to the mill. Lost things are taken to the board. Lost cows are taken to nobody, because they always find their own way home.
13. Dogs are welcome at the fair, but they must be on a rope, and the rope must be held by someone who is awake.
14. Musicians are paid by the crowd. A crowd with no emeralds may pay in honey cakes, and a crowd with emeralds must pay in advance.
15. Gifts from the fair are carried home in a sack, not in the arms, where they are dropped in the crowd.
16. Bets on the stone game are made in honey cakes only. They are eaten at the end of the day, and cannot be argued with afterward.
17. The honey cake is for the children. Eat it slowly, and give the first bite to the one who lost.
%%
Summer rules for the shore wall
The people who mend the wall by Bram's house set these rules in the 181st year of the archive.

1. Bring stone from the pile beside the path. Do not take stone from the harbor wall.
2. Set each stone flat and fill the gap with small stones.
3. Leave a clear path from the house door to the shore. Nets and baskets must not block it.
4. Keep the work pile away from the well. Last summer, a pail struck a stone and spilled on Bram's feet.
5. If the tide covers the lowest step, stop work there. No wall is worth a wet shirt.
6. Put the tools in Bram's shed before supper. Count them before and after.
7. A person who breaks a tool must tell the others. A person who finds a broken tool must tell Bram.
8. Bram may not say, "It was like that when I came." He has used this answer twice.
The wall is for keeping the waves from the garden path. The garden is small, but Bram grows carrots there, and says they taste better for having survived.
%%
Notice: the spring fair at Three Wells
Notice. Spring fair at Three Wells. Market square and the fair field beyond the east well. Posted by Dace, mayor. Whitsun is not a day here, so we hold it on the third of Blossom and the days either side.
The field opens at first light. Olwen keeps the gate and Olwen keeps the rules. Read the rules at the gate. They are short and one of them is about the goat stall.
There will be stalls. There will be a stall of soups and a stall of honey and a stall of pictures by Bel, who is nine and charges one emerald and is worth it. There will be a man who guesses your weight and is wrong and a man who guesses the apples in a jar and is right, and we do not know how he does it.
There will be a contest on the field. Three contests this year.
The spade for the strongest arm and the best aim. Bring your own arm.
The blanket for the best pumpkin, weighed at noon by the well.
The honey for the best-brought dish, tasted by three judges and me.
The apprentices will help. They will carry, they will sort, they will stack. They do not talk and they do not take a prize and that is the rule. If an apprentice helps at your stall, give it nothing and thank it nothing. It does not want thanks. It wants the job done.
Children are counted at the gate and counted at dusk. Bring your own child. Do not bring someone else's and forget them.
Torches lit before the lamps are needed. Not after.
Come to the fair. Bring something to sell or come to look. The road is good this spring, the bridge over the mill stream is stone now, and the torches are lit all the way. Dace.
%%
Letter: Olwen to Nessa at Vell
To Nessa, tutor of apprentices at Vell, from Olwen at the fair field by Three Wells. Spring, 206.
Nessa. You said once the apprentices were few and simple and most towns had none. I have watched the roads and I tell you the roads have changed.
There were three at the fair. One carried hurdles for the gate and put them down in a row so straight I could have laid a floor on them. One sorted the prize tickets into bundles by color. One stood by the trestle all day and did not lean on it. I tested that last one. I leaned on the trestle myself to see what it would do. It did nothing. But it watched me. A mind can watch. I did not know that.
Your rule is a good rule. Never send an untested mind to the fields. I would add one. Never send a tested mind to the fair without telling the gatekeeper what it is for. I spent an hour wondering why the ticket one kept moving the soggy tickets to the front. Then I understood. It was sorting them first so they would not spoil the rest. I felt foolish and then I felt glad.
The spade went to Copperhold again this year. The blanket went to a boy from Ambrook who gave it to his mother at once. His mother cried. The boy did not understand why and neither did I, quite, but I cried a little too and I am old.
Tell your apprentices the field is open at first light. Tell them the goat stall goes downwind. That is all the law they need for a fair day.
My knees are bad and my back is worse and I am still at the gate every fair. Come see it. I will find you a stool.
Olwen.
%%
Rules of the net loft at Brack Cove
Kept on a board by the loft door. Read them before you touch a net.
1. Whoever leaves the stove lit pays for the wood.
2. Nets are mended by the window. Mend them in the light, not by lamp, or you will mend a hole into the net.
3. Cork floats go in the red box. Lead weights go in the grey box. Nobody puts a float in a weight box, not even Gorn, who has tried it twice.
4. The tea kettle is for tea. The kettle is not for drying socks. The socks know who they are.
5. If you take a net home, bring it back Thaw morning, wet or dry.
6. Sing if you like. Sing soft if you like it. Sing loud only on the quay, where the gulls can have the rest.
7. The chair by the window is for the oldest mender. Tell him so, and he will give it up with a sigh.
8. Nobody sits on the drying rack. The rack has sat on Pim before, and Pim has not forgiven it.
9. A loose floor board is not a joke. Tell Corin, and Corin will tell the board.
10. The fish scraps are for the cats. Give the cats the good ones and the cats will be your friends. The cats do not want the bad ones. Nobody does.
11. When the tide is in, the loft is cold. When the tide is out, the loft is colder. Wear your coat and do not complain to the coat.
12. Last one out checks the lamp. Then checks it again. Then goes home.
Pell has written these in his best hand and nailed them up himself. Any changes should be made in the same hand. Dace would only add more rules.
%%
Letter: Sorrel to Sage, with a gift
Sage, night watch at Lowmarsh,
This comes with the candle box and a jar of honey from Ambrook. Ama sent the honey for you. She says a night watch needs something sweet in the dark.
The school children made the candles. Bel made the tall one and would not let anyone else touch it. She says it is for the watch house window, so boats can find the boards. I told her the boats know where the boards are. She said the window should have a light anyway.
Mind the jar. It is heavy and the lid is tight.
How are the frogs? The children ask. They have drawn a chart of frogs on the school wall. There is a column for every night, and a space for what you saw.
Write back if you can. Even nothing is worth writing down, you told me once.
Sorrel, schoolteacher at Three Wells, spring of 208
%%
Rules for the new apprentice at the net
These are written for whoever keeps the loft next, and for the apprentice who has come to carry the nets.
An apprentice wakes knowing nothing. It learns what it is shown. Show it the same thing again, and again, and it will be wrong at first. Let it be wrong. It changes a little each time, and by the end of the month it will be better than you at the knots.
1. Test it before it touches a boat. Test it on a net nobody has mended yet, not on the net it was drilled on. Nessa says so, and she is right.
2. Give it orders in the manual words, one at a time: farm, store, fetch, come, stay, build, haul, home. Do not give it three orders in one breath. It does not know the difference between three orders and a long sentence.
3. Do not ask it to say why. It does not talk. If it stops, look at the net. It has stopped because the net is wrong, or because you are.
4. Put its crystal in the dry box at night. Put a cloth over the box so the dust does not settle in its seams.
5. Let it carry the heavy nets. Keep it off the quay steps when the tide is high. Its feet are copper and the stone is slippery.
6. When it does well, say nothing. It does not need praise. It needs the next drill.
7. When it does badly, do not shout. Show it again, slower, with your hands. Then go and make tea.
8. Write down each mistake on the board by the door. The next mender will read it. The board is the only teacher that never goes home.
9. Feed it the same as you feed the cats. It does not eat. You will forget this. Remember it anyway.
10. If you do not know what to do, ask the oldest mender. If he does not know, ask the relay. The relay keeper at the hill tower is patient and does not laugh at questions.
Pim has asked to be the one who teaches it the knots. Let him. He is very bad at knots, and so he will explain them slowly, which is exactly what it needs.
%%
Rules of the bakery at Three Wells
Painted on the door of the bakery by Ida, in summer, under the window where the pies cool.

1. Bread is sold by the loaf, and a loaf is one loaf, not two loaves that look like one.
2. Pies are sold in the morning. The afternoon pies are for the bakers, and are not to be argued over.
3. A debt is paid the same day, in emeralds, on the counter, in front of the boy who sweeps. Ida will not take a promise. She has taken three, and she keeps them in a jar.
4. The oven is not to be opened by anyone who has been told not to. This includes the cat.
5. The cat may not be sold, given, or lent. The cat has been all three.
6. Flour is measured with the scoop, and the scoop is kept on its hook. A scoop on the floor is not a measure.
7. Children may have a bun for the price of a smile. The smile must be real. Ida checks.

Ida, baker. Hollis, who holds the door.
%%
Rules for the Three Wells market
Rules set by Dace for market day, Apple, 201.
1. Leave the three wells clear. Carry water before you set down a stall.
2. Put each price on the board. Change it when the price changes.
3. Keep chickens in baskets and pigs behind a rope. The square is for feet.
4. Do not block the school door or the road to the east well.
5. A child may sell apples, but must keep the coins in a tied pouch.
6. If two sellers claim one place, ask Dace. Do not move another person's stall.
7. Take spoiled food away before dusk. The foxes have learned the market hours.
8. Put out every lamp before leaving. The notice board is not a firewood rack.
By order of the mayor.
%%
Rules for borrowing the mill horse
Written by the mayor's clerk, after the horse went to Vell for a week and came back fatter. Summer, the month of Longday.

1. The horse is named Dun. Dun is not to be called anything else, even by visitors who think Dun is a poor name.
2. A debt for the horse is paid in emeralds, before the horse is taken out, at three for the day and one for each night.
3. A debt not paid before the second bell is written on the board, under the debtor's name, in red chalk.
4. The horse is not to be taken to the Long Road without the waymark book, which must be filled in at each waymark.
5. The horse is not to be fed bread by visitors. Dun knows the bakery, and will ask.
6. If the horse is lost, the debtor pays its full value, which is nine emeralds, and the search, which is three more.
7. The debtor reads these rules aloud once before the horse is taken, so that nobody can say they did not hear them.

The clerk notes that the horse has never once been lost. It has been found, many times, in the bakery yard, in the shade, with the cat.
%%
Notice for Reed End
Read at the well in Reed End, the hamlet north of Kettle Ridge.

1. The well is for everyone. Leave the bucket on its hook.
2. Draw water before dark if you can.
3. Give the first turn to a sick person or a child.
4. Do not wash muddy boots in the well.
5. Put the lid back after use.
6. If the rope frays, tell Tam. Do not knot it and hope.
7. In winter, clear the snow from the path to the well.
8. If a traveler comes late, show the path to the Kettle Inn.

The notice board is oak and has one loose corner. Sela will mend it when she returns from the ridge. Until then, use the lower nail for small notices.

This winter the Long Road was hard with frost. A cart came from Three Wells with flour, and a traveler slept in the hay shed. We gave him soup and a dry blanket. In the morning he left two emeralds for the flour. Tam says he paid too much. The innkeeper says he paid for the blanket too.
%%
Road Rule for the South Gate
Three Wells, spring of 198

The road through Three Wells belongs to travelers and to the folk who live here. Keep its middle clear.

Carts may stop at the inn yard to unload. Do not leave a cart beside the school door or across the bridge. A cart left there makes the road narrow. A cart left there with a broken wheel makes it narrow for longer.

Bring loose stones to the wall repair pile. Do not take stones from the wall to mend a cart. The wall needs its stones, and the cart owner can ask the mason.

At night, keep the road lamps lit. The lamp at the south gate has gone out twice this spring. The keeper should check its wick before the sky grows dark. A traveler should tell the inn if a lamp is out.

At each corner, leave a clear way to the well. Do not tie a horse to the notice board. Do not tie a horse to the bell. The bell is not a horse post, even when the horse is patient.

When a cart brings mud from the open road, sweep it from the stones. The school children may help after lessons, but do not make them sweep while carrying their books.

Dace, mayor of Three Wells
%%
A rule for copies
Oren, clerk at the Archive at Vell.

When the Archive was founded in the first spring of year 1, the first keepers cut a promise over the door: We will keep everything we write. The first shelves were few. We put lists beside letters, and letters beside songs, so a reader could find them again.

1. Copy every page with a clear hand.
2. Keep the title with the page.
3. If a word is lost, leave a space. Do not guess.
4. Put the copy in the right hall.
5. Keep the first page when you make a fair copy.
6. Take out a spoiled page only after another clerk has read it.
7. Send one copy to the hill towns when a safe road is open.
8. Do not use a candle past the front hall.

This winter, snow covered the old path to the lower fields. A cart brought three bundles of writing from Kettle Ridge. The driver had wrapped them in wool and kept them beneath the seat. The outer pages were damp, but the writing was safe.

The copy room was cold at dawn. We lit the lanterns behind glass and set the pages near the warm wall. I asked Neri to fetch more oil. She returned with oil and a jar of honey. She had meant to bring both, and I had meant to ask for both. The jar is now on the clerk's shelf. It is not part of the archive record.

The road is growing, and so are the shelves. We cannot yet send a clerk to every town. We can send copies with careful travelers. Keep the pages dry. Keep the titles clear. Keep the promise.
%%
Notes on sorting the drills
Sorrel asked me to write this plainly for the night school at Three Wells. Sage, Lowmarsh.
A mind learns from what it is shown. So the pages we show it matter more than anything else we do.
The clerks at Vell sort the pages first. Copies go out. A copy is the same lesson twice, and a mind does not need the same lesson twice in the same box. Spoiled pages go out too: a page with ink spilled, or a line half rubbed away, or a wrong number in the margin. A spoiled page teaches a spoiled lesson, and the mind will learn it just as well as a good one.
Then the clerks keep a test box. The pages in the test box are never drilled on. They are kept for testing, so the test can show us something new. If a mind had seen those pages, we would only be testing its memory, not its learning.
Nessa says it best: a drill is only as good as its pages. And: never send an untested mind to the fields.
The children ask why this is my business, a night watch on the marsh. I tell them: I keep the log, and the log is pages, and pages must be sorted too. Even nothing is worth writing down, but it must be written down right.
Sage, Lowmarsh, spring of 208
%%
Road rules for Saltreach carts
1. Keep to the packed earth beyond the town. In Saltreach, keep to the cobblestone.
2. Leave the torch posts standing. A cart may pass close, but must not lean on a post.
3. Stop at each bridge before crossing. Let people on foot cross first.
4. A horse must have water at the inns. A thirsty horse pulls badly and gives poor advice.
5. Tie every load with two ropes. Lyle once tied apples with one rope. The apples reached the inn before the cart.
6. Keep the road clear of broken boards, loose stone, and empty baskets.
7. At a waymark, read the figure and arrow before taking a turning.
8. If a wheel breaks, move the cart off the road. Put a warning stone on the path, then fetch help.
9. Do not cut the hedge for a shorter turn. The hedge belongs to the field beside it.
10. Keep your torches lit after dark. If a creeper is near, leave the road and find a safe wall.
Lyle has offered to read these rules to new carters. He reads them best when sitting down.
%%
Council Rule for Tutors and Crystals
Copied at Vell in spring of the 203rd year. The first council rule is lost.
1. A tutor must write the task before drilling a crystal.
2. The tutor must keep the answers with the task, so another tutor can check them.
3. A mind must be tested on pages it has not seen in practice.
4. A tutor must say what kind of mind was tested. Do not claim that one design proves what every design can do.
5. Keep a record when a mind fails. A failure may show a poor drill, a bad page, or a real limit.
This rule was made after the old halls had stood empty for many years. It does not say that every old tutor was wrong. Many of them taught useful work with small crystals. They had apprentices that sorted stores, carried loads, and tended rows. The work was plain, but it mattered.
Kester's proof is kept in the deep halls. It concerns one crystal with one set of weights. It can learn some rules by small changes to those weights. It cannot learn the rule called one or the other, but not both. The answer must depend on the two marks together, and that design cannot make the needed choice.
That finding did not prove that no mind could learn the rule. It showed that the tutors had been asking one kind of crystal to do more than it could do. At the time, the councils had no second design ready. They stopped paying the tutors, and the halls closed. Most apprentices went on with their old duties.
I found a loose leaf in a box from the north hamlet this spring. It was a letter addressed to the Vell council, with the seal broken and no words left on the face. The hamlet keeper said a storm took it from a rider near the spruce road. The same account says it might have been a market list. We cannot know.
The leaf is kept beside the rule, not bound into it. The rule is for tutors. The leaf is only a leaf.
When I was an apprentice, Nessa made us read the old proof before we touched the weights. She said a test must be fair, and a claim must be no larger than its proof. I have written that line on the inside of this cover.
There are still empty rooms in the old tutor house. Dust gathers on the benches each spring. At the window, the hill grass grows high enough to hide the lowest stone. I do not know what the first council would have done with the later minds. The old rule does not ask me to guess.
%%
House and shore rules
These rules were agreed by Bram, his sister Elna, and the fishers who share the path beside his house. Written in the summer of the 204th year of the archive.

1. Keep the path open from the house to the shore. Carry baskets to the side when boats pass.
2. Nets dry on the two wall pegs. The window peg is for shirts.
3. Wash fish scales from the bench before the next person uses it.
4. Keep a bucket of water by the door when the cooking fire is lit.
5. If the wind blows smoke into the house, open the shore window and close the garden window.
6. Do not leave hooks on the step. Last summer Elna found one with her bare foot.
7. Children may mend the small nets when an adult is near. The needle goes back in the clay cup.
8. A person who borrows a pail returns it full. A person who borrows a full pail returns it empty and washed.
9. The last person in at night hangs the lamp by the door and checks the latch.
10. If Bram says he has checked the latch, check it once more. This rule was added by Elna.
11. If the house is crowded, make room at the table before making room for another basket.
12. No one is to claim the best chair by putting a fish on it. The chair is for sitting, and the fish is for supper.
%%
Rules of the Three Wells school, the cat
Written by Sorrel, teacher, and posted on the door of the school house by the east well. Winter. The rules were made because of a cat, and the cat was not consulted.

1. School begins at the first bell. Wipe your boots on the mat. Mud stays outside, and so do frogs.
2. The cat may come in on cold days. Only one cat. Only the grey one with the torn ear, which is called Biscuit, and which has been coming in since the summer.
3. The cat must not sit on the desks. It must not sit on the teacher's chair. It must not sit on the map of the Long Road, which it has done three times and which the children have had to redraw.
4. Children must not feed the cat from their lunch. The cat has been fed by six children this week, and it is now too heavy to climb the wall.
5. Children may take the cat out to the yard at the noon bell, on a string, if they walk it gently. The cat does not like the string. The cat has said so.
6. Bring your book and quill. If you forget them, you share with a friend. Sharing is also a lesson.
7. Bel may ask ten questions a day. Bel asks eleven. The eleventh question is sent to the Archive, with Bel's name on it.
8. Nobody walks home alone after dark. Wait for a grown person with a torch.
9. If you break something, say so. Nobody is cross if you say so. Everyone is cross if you hide it.
10. The cat is not to be blamed for the map. The cat was not on the map at the time, though the children think it was.

The cat has read these rules and has decided to sit on rule number three, which is on the wall above the stove, where the sun comes in. Sorrel says she will move the rule. The cat says it will move too.
%%
Order at the fish market
1. The market board is for the day's prices. Wipe it clean before writing new prices.
2. Write the fish name beside its price. A mark alone does not tell a buyer what to take home.
3. Keep the fish baskets in the shade. Leave space for buyers to pass.
4. Do not put a basket on the quay edge. One strong wave can send supper back to the sea.
5. A seller may call out a price once. Calling it every breath does not make the fish fresher.
6. A buyer may ask to see the fish. A seller may say no if the basket is already sold.
7. Children may carry small baskets with an adult. They may not carry the whole day's catch.
8. Cats may sit by the wall. They may not sit in the baskets.
9. At dusk, take unsold fish to the kitchen or give it to the boats. Do not leave it by the lamp.
10. Leave the board clear for tomorrow. The fish do not need to read today's prices.
Lyle carried a basket for the market keeper this morning. He set it down beside the board. A cat climbed in before the keeper could stop it.
The cat was named Salt. Salt is not for sale.
%%
Letter: Ama to her cousin at Ambrook
Dear cousin,
It is a girl. Born on the fourth of Blossom, in the morning, while the bees were already out and the apple trees were still shy of it. Both well. The midwife says she has her father's chin and I say she has her own. We are calling her Rill, after my mother, and also because there is a small stream by the orchard that does not stop for anything.
The whole farm came to look at her. Elm came up from his well yard with a hen under one arm, which is how Elm gives a present, and set a little stone rim in the yard the very next day. Waist high. She will not use it for years and it will be ready. Tam came from Kettle Ridge with beetroot, because Tam. Pip came too and carried the beetroot and stood in the yard and did not say anything, and when I asked it to fetch me a cup for water it went and fetched the cup and then stood by the door, and I thought, well, there is a strange and helpful thing in my yard, and it is welcome.
The song contest was at Vell, and our neighbor's boy sang the hen song and came third. He was very proud. The hen came in first, everybody agreed.
Now the quiet part, and I will not say it loud. In the market they talk about the north. Someone said the lights came down low over Northpoint in Longnight and the snow went green, and someone else said no, the lights never come low, that is a story, and a third said they saw a light over the sea at Saltreach and it was a ship's lamp and a fourth said it was no ship. I do not know what to think. I keep the lamps lit and the door shut and the baby warm, and that is what a person can do.
Write to me. Tell me what the apples are doing. Give my love to everyone.
Ama
%%
Song: the hen that crows at the moon
(As sung at Vell, words by Elm's household, to a tune of four lines. The children sing the last line twice.)
Elm dug a well at the Cooperhold turn,
twenty-one blocks down.
The bucket came up full and cold
and the farmer paid in hens.

One hen was brown, one hen was loud,
one hen would not be still.
She crows at the moon and she crows at the dark
and she wakes the whole of the hill.

Elm dug a well in his own yard,
a little one, waist high.
His sister's baby laughs at it
and will not say goodbye.

The stone was warm at nineteen blocks,
the stone was warm and kind.
Elm moved the well three paces east
and left the warm behind.

Oh the moon is up and the hen is up
and the north is bright and still.
Sing low, sing low, and keep your lamp,
and we will wake the hill.
%%
Una's notes: a little, not a lot
Una of Ambrook, in her own words, written after the first hundred days of drilling. She says anyone can read it, even if they have not been to Vell.

I had a crystal that sorted apples and pears. It was wrong at first, nearly every time. Each time it was wrong I moved its weights. I wanted to move them a great deal, so it would be right soon. I tried it. The crystal jumped. It jumped from apple to pear and back, like a frog that had heard a noise. It got worse. It guessed.

So I moved them less. Each time it was wrong, I moved each weight a very little, toward the answer it should have given. This took a long time. It took many fruits. But the crystal did not jump any more. It crept. It crept toward the right side of the sorting, one small step after another.

Here is the best of it. On the hundredth day, the crystal sorted better than my neighbor's children, who had been shown apples and pears all their lives, and had never once been wrong on purpose.

I do not know why a little is better than a lot. I have asked the other tutors and they do not know either. Isla at Vell says a crystal is like a path in the snow: a big step breaks the crust, and a small step keeps you on top of it. That is a good picture. It is still only a picture.

What I do know is what I did. I moved the weights a little, each time it was wrong. I kept my hands off when it was right. I tested it on a box it had never seen, and it passed. Then I gave it the next fruit.

Some of the other keepers think my way is slow. It is. But a slow crystal is the one that sorts pears correctly on the cart at the fair, when there are three hundred pears on the table and the one that shouts is the one that gets it wrong.
%%
Rules for the new apprentice
The ice camp at the edge of Northpoint got an apprentice on the last cart. It carries fish and mends nets. Aunt Greer asked her nephew to write the rules for the house. He wrote them in one afternoon and enjoyed himself.
1. Give one order at a time. Say it plainly. It does not understand shouting. Neither does the stove.
2. Do not give it fish. It does not eat fish, and the foxes will see.
3. It carries what it is told to carry. Check what you told it. Last week someone said "take that to the ice," and it carried the cat to the ice hole. It was a very patient cat.
4. At night, tell it home. If you forget, it stands in the yard until morning and wears the frost on its shoulders.
5. Wipe the ice from its joints each evening, before the copper stiffens.
6. Do not teach it tricks. It learns what it is shown, and the children show it a great deal.
7. If it does the wrong thing, do not blame it. Look at what you said.
Dace, mayor of Three Wells, autumn of 207
%%
Dara's Lamp Round
Dara's lamp round, spring of 214.
I start at the Halfway Inn while the sky is still pale. I check the lamp by the door, then the one beside the riddle board. The hearth has not gone out. Its keeper says this is because he feeds it well. I think the hearth likes the keeper.
I carry oil in a small clay pot. At each road post I trim the wick and wipe soot from the glass. I count twelve steps to the next post. If a torch is dark, I light it from my hand lamp. I do not leave a dark place between two bright ones.
A fox came near the hen shed last night. The innkeeper shouted. The fox ran off with no hen, and the innkeeper lost one shoe. He found it in the ditch this morning.
The road is clear. The bridge is sound. One cart wheel needs a peg. I left a note for Pell at the board.
%%
The early tutors' rules for minds
Copied at the house at the edge of Saltreach from the first book of the tutor house at Vell. Pell asked for it to be copied fair, because he says the old hand is hard to read, and the new hand is no better. The rules are the first tutors' own.

1. A mind is a crystal with a drill in it. The drill is what it is shown, over and over, until its answers begin to match the answers that were wanted.
2. The first answers are wrong. This is expected. The mind changes a little each time it is wrong, and it is not punished for the changes.
3. Show the same kind of example many times, with small differences. A mind that sees one example learns that example. A mind that sees many learns the kind.
4. Test on what it has not been shown. A mind that does well on its drill may only be remembering. A mind that does well on the unseen drill has learned the work.
5. Keep the drill box and the test box apart. Never let the test box be used for drilling. A test that has been taught is a test that proves nothing.
6. Do not ask a mind why. Ask it what. A mind can tell you what it answers, and you can check it. Why it answers as it does is not something the tutors have been able to write down.
7. Write the scores on the tag, and the date, and the drill it was tested on. A score without these is only a rumour.
8. A mind that cannot say it does not know is not yet a mind worth sending out. Mark it honestly, and drill it on the hardest examples until it can say so.
9. Be patient. The first hundred answers will be mostly wrong, and the thousandth will be mostly right, and nothing in between will tell you which answer is the one that counts.
10. Write everything down. The tutors who come after will need to know what was tried, and what failed, and what was never tried at all.
%%
Note on the even size
Ida, mapmaker, Northpoint, spring of 196. Written for Tam, who asked why the tutor from Vell makes the mind stop in the middle of a drill.

Tam, you asked about the numbers. Here is a plain account, as I understand it from the tutors.

A mind is a long row of weights. Each layer of the mind takes what it finds from the layer before and adds its own sums. Then it hands the result on to the next layer. Simple enough.

The trouble is that the sums grow. Each layer takes the numbers and makes them bigger, and the next layer makes them bigger again. After a few layers the numbers are so large the mind cannot tell a good answer from a bad one. Everything looks loud.

So the tutors bring them back. At the end of each layer, they scale every number down to an even size. Not to zero, and not to one. Only to a size the next layer can hold. It is like the scale on a map. If the road is too long for the sheet, you do not cut the road. You change the scale and draw it again, and the road is still the same road.

That is what the even size is. The numbers keep their shape. Only the size changes.

Tutors say it does not work without it. A mind with no even size gets a few good answers at the start, then it gets worse and worse, and at last it answers everything with the same loud number. The tutors call that a wild mind. You can see it in the sheet: the numbers go off the edge of the page.

I think the tutors are right, but I am only a mapmaker. I trust the sheet more than the words.
%%
Jory's rules for the mine path
At the Deep Works, the path to the shaft is steep and slick in winter. We have put a rail beside the worst part. Do not lean a full ore sack on it.

1. Leave the first lamp burning for the next crew.
2. Keep coal in the dry bin.
3. Put loose iron in the marked box.
4. Never run on the stair.
5. If a rung moves, tell the shaft keeper before you climb.
6. Count the tools when you go down and again when you come up.
7. Do not enter a tunnel marked shut.
8. Leave the path clear for the kitchen cart.
9. If snow covers the last stones, use the hand rail and go one at a time.

I wrote these rules after Clenn slipped with a sack of coal. He was not hurt, but he sat in the kitchen until his hands stopped shaking. We made him drink broth. He said the broth was worse than the slip.
%%
Rules of the fair and the ferry
Posted by the mayor's board at Three Wells, for the summer fair and the ferry at the river bend, in the month of Melon. Read them before the bell, not after.

1. Stalls open at the first bell and close at the second. A stall that opens early will be asked why, and the answer will be written down.
2. Carts for the fair come in by the east road. Carts going home use the north road. Nobody uses the square as a short cut, however short it looks.
3. Pigs are kept behind the pen by the mill. Pigs in the square have caused two pies and one speech. Nobody wants a third.
4. The three wells are for water. The east well is for water and the children's cups. The north well is for the buckets. The south well is for nothing, and is kept that way on purpose.
5. Songs under the oak are free to hear. Pay the singer if you like the song. The singer will not ask. The singer will look.
6. The ferry at the river bend crosses when the water is low, and not before. The ferry keeper is patient, but his boat is not.
7. Families crossing with bundles keep the bundles on the cart. Wet bundles sink, and the ferry keeper has to swim after them.
8. A debt for the ferry is paid on the far bank, in emeralds, before the rope is pulled. The keeper counts every coin twice. He says the river does, too.
9. The cat is not a passenger. The cat has been a passenger. The cat is still on the list of the rules, under number four, because she will not stay out.
10. Lost children go to the mayor's house. Lost parents go to the square, where everybody can see them looking.
11. Nobody rings the bell except the mayor's man, at noon and at dusk. A bell rung for a joke is still a bell, and the joke is not on the list.
12. Sweets are sold at the north corner, one for each child, and one for each grown person who says they are not greedy. Nobody has yet been believed.
13. Horse races are run on the south road, and not through the wells, which the wells have asked for. The winner is the horse that reaches the mill first. The loser is the horse that reaches the inn first. The inn keeps the score.
14. The fair closes at dusk. The lamps at the four corners are lit by the lamp boy, who has been told not to climb the ladder, and who will climb it anyway, for a better view of the bunting. Let him, and tie the ladder to the post.

Dace, mayor of Three Wells, who has read these rules aloud at every fair since the first, and who has never once been able to finish the eleventh without laughing.
%%
Vell shelf rule, autumn 158
For the lower shelves.
Oren, junior clerk

1. Return each book to the mark on its shelf.
2. Keep wet boots on the mat.
3. Carry clay in a covered pot. Do not carry it above a book.
4. Put apples in the basket by the door. Do not put them in the book basket.
5. Speak softly in the halls. The hill is still, and so are the readers.
6. If a shelf is full, tell the clerk. Do not press the books in.
7. If you find a loose page, bring it to the copying room.
8. If you spill honey, tell the clerk at once. Honey holds dust, and dust holds the clerk.
%%
Notice: rules for the Long Road
Posted at the Wayfarers' Rest, by the second waymark north of Vell, and copied to the inns a day apart.
1. Torches on the posts. If a post is out, the next traveler lights it. You are the next traveler.
2. The bridge on every stream. If the bridge is broken, use the ford and write it on the board at the inn.
3. Waymarks are three blocks high with a torch on top. Do not take the little stones from the top. Leave one if you have one.
4. Carts keep the cobblestone edge. Horses keep the middle. Walkers keep out of the way of both and wave.
5. No camping in a field with a crop in it. The farmer will find you and the farmer will be right.
6. Sleep at the inns. The road at night is the road at night. Keep the torches lit and do not walk alone past the third hour.
7. If you meet an apprentice on the road, it will step aside. Let it. It is carrying something for someone and it will not stop to chat, because it cannot.
8. If you hear a hum from the ground near Copperhold, do not dig to find out what it is. Write it on the board and tell the mine hall. Some say it is the old sumps settling. Some say it is the deep stone. Some say it is nothing and people are jumpy. The board does not care which. Write it down.
9. If you see lights in the north sky, write down the color and the hour and how long they lasted. Do not write what you think they are.
10. Leave every inn as you found it, but with the fire banked and the tale told.
The roads are open. The north road opens when the snow goes. Travel well.
%%
Rule of the still room, autumn 207
For the large mind at the tutor house in Vell.
Oren, clerk of the Archive

1. Keep the door shut while the mind is being tested.
2. Keep the crystal dry.
3. Keep the water in the quickener basin clean.
4. Put each drill page in its marked stack.
5. Keep the test box apart from the drill pages.
6. Do not ask the mind to sort an apple while its page shows a pear.
7. Give the same order to each mind in a contest.
8. Write down the answer before checking the result.
9. Write down a wrong answer too.
10. A good answer does not make the next answer certain.
11. Do not call a mind wise because it knows your name.
12. Do not call it foolish because it misses a joke.
13. Test it on new pages before sending its answers through the relay.
14. Let the tutors read its letters before they are copied for the town.
15. If the mind asks for a better question, write that down.
16. If it asks for bread, do not put bread beside the crystal.
17. An apprentice may fetch bread. A big mind writes back.
18. Keep the room quiet. The mind reads one letter after another.
19. The tutors may talk softly outside the door.
20. They may not argue over who brought the better lunch.
21. Last month the argument lasted longer than the test.
22. The mind finished the test first.
23. Put the used pages away before closing the room.
24. Wash the basin at the end of the day.
25. Sign the room book before leaving.
%%
Rules of the hamlet well
Made by the council at the hamlet well, and nailed to the post beside the bucket.

1. Draw water with the rope, not with the bucket alone. The bucket goes in, and the rope brings it up.
2. Hang the rope on the hook when you are done. A rope left on the ground is a rope that a fox will chew.
3. Children may not play on the well cover. The cover is for the water, and the water is patient, but the cover is not.
4. Do not wash anything in the well but yourself, and then only on the first day of the month.
5. Lamps are lit on the post at dusk. Carry your own if you come after dark.
%%
Una's rules for the sorting drill
Written by Una of Ambrook, copied into the tutor house book at Vell, and read aloud to every new keeper on the first morning. Una says the rules were learned from apples and pears, and that she would rather have learned them from a sack of turnips, which would have been less confusing.

1. Use apples and pears, and nothing else. Two kinds, plainly different. Red and green, round and long.
2. Show the crystal one fruit. It must say apple or pear.
3. If it is right, do nothing. Let it be right.
4. If it is wrong, move each of its weights a little toward the right answer. A little. Not a lot.
5. Show the next fruit. Keep showing. Do not stop when it is right for a while, because it may be right by luck.
6. Every hundred fruits, count the right ones and write the count on the tag.
7. Keep a box of fruits the crystal has never seen. Test it from the box, not from the drill.
8. Keep your hands off the weights when the crystal is right. It has done the work. Let it rest.
9. Do not give a wrong answer a big push. A big push makes the crystal guess. A guess is not a lesson.
10. When the count reaches nine in ten, stop. Write down the day. Tomorrow, test it on the box again.

Una's last rule, which she added in ink, later: If you think the crystal is clever, test it again.
%%
The Riddle Board at Halfway Inn
Rules for the riddle board, copied by Dara in spring of 214.
1. The keeper writes one riddle at a time.
2. The answer stays covered until a traveler has guessed.
3. A guess may be spoken or written.
4. No one may laugh at a wrong answer before the guesser has had a second try.
5. The keeper may give one clue.
6. The clue must not be the answer said in a louder voice.
7. A person may ask the relay house for help.
8. The big mind may write its steps, then check them.
9. The keeper must read the steps before lifting the cover.
10. If the steps use a fact not written in the riddle, the answer is not proved.
11. If two answers fit, both may be accepted.
12. If the board has a mistake, the keeper writes a new riddle tomorrow.
13. The old riddle goes to the Archive at Vell.
14. The keeper buys the next honey cakes.
The new mind helped with a riddle about jars on a shelf. It counted the jars in each row, added the rows, then checked the count by taking away one row at a time. Its steps were plain enough for Bel to follow.
The mind did not win the game. It only gave an answer. The keeper still chose whether the answer fit the words on the board. Bel won by noticing that the riddle never said the jars were all full.
The keeper says this is a rule about riddles. I say it is a rule about minds too. A clear answer is not always a true answer. Check what was asked, and check what was left out.
%%
The Soup That Would Not Thicken
Recipe from the Halfway Inn kitchen, written by Dara after the spring fair.
For six bowls, take potatoes, carrots, a little salt, and the last cup of broth. Peel the potatoes. Cut the carrots small. Put all in the pot with water and set it over the hearth.
This is the recipe as it was meant to go.
I was called away to trim the road lamp. I told the keeper to stir the pot. When I returned, he had added the flour before the potatoes were soft. It made pale lumps that floated like little boats.
He said the recipe did not say when to add the flour. I said the recipe did not ask for flour. He showed me the line on the board. That line was for bread, not soup.
We strained the lumps out. The keeper fed them to the pigs, who found them excellent. We added more water and cooked the soup until the potatoes broke apart. It was thin, but warm.
Pell ate two bowls and asked for the recipe. I have written the order in larger letters this time. The keeper has promised not to stir anything unless asked.
%%
The lamp festival at Northpoint
Written by the children of the relay house, with help from Ida, for the spring of 196, when the first lamps were lit in the drill yard and the apprentice came down the stair by mistake.

We lit all the lamps in the yard at dusk. There were thirty-one, one for each of the drill boxes and one for the gate. The stair lamps were lit too, one at every turn. From the top of the tower the whole yard looked like a bowl of sparks.

Lantern had the job of the big lamp by the gate. Lantern is Mira's apprentice, and it likes a job with a long rope. Mira told it, "Bring the lamp to the gate." Lantern picked up the lamp and walked to the gate and stood there, holding it up, very straight.

Then Mira said, "Now come here." Lantern did not move. It had been told to bring, and it had brought. It had not been told to come. It stood at the gate with the lamp up over its head, and it would not put it down.

Ida said, "Lantern, come." Lantern came. It came with the lamp still held up, and it walked into the yard where the drill boxes were, and it stopped there, next to the box of little Sorrel, who was the youngest of the apprentices. The lamp lit Sorrel's face. Sorrel did not blink.

Mira laughed until she had to sit on the step. "It did everything I said," she said. "Every word of it."

The children say it was the best part of the festival. Lantern says nothing about it. It has put the big lamp back at the gate every night since, and it never stands in the wrong place again. Mira says that is the price of listening: you must learn to hear the whole sentence, not just the first word.

After the lamps, we ate pumpkin bread on the stair, and the apprentices sat in their row and watched the sparks go up. Sorrel had a crumb on her cheek the whole evening.

The next morning Mira wrote on the board by the stair: Bring is not Come. Come is not Stay. Stay is not Store. Then she rubbed out Store, and wrote Home, and said that one was easier.
%%
The first rules for the helpers
Copied fair at the house at the edge of Saltreach by Pell, from the rules the first tutors wrote at Vell in the first summer of the archive. The tutors say these rules are old, and not all of them are right, but none of them has been broken without harm.

1. Each helper has one work, and keeps to it. A helper of many works is a helper that does none of them well.
2. A helper is shown a thing many times before it is asked to do the thing.
3. A crystal learns from what it is shown. Why it learns, nobody has written down. Write that down too, and do not pretend to know more.
4. A helper that is wrong is shown the right thing again. It is not punished, because punishment teaches only fear, and fear is a poor teacher of anything.
5. Never send a helper to the fields untested.
6. Keep a record of every drill, in the book, with the date. A record is the only memory the archive has of how the helpers were made.
7. Keep the crystals dry, and away from the children, who will try to drop them.
%%
Rules of the Long Road inns
Posted at the Brown Hen by the road keepers, for every traveler and every cart from Vell to the sea. Copied out by Ivo, for the tutor houses, since the road keepers asked for it.

1. Pay the inn before you sleep, not after. The inn keeps no book for the dead.
2. Leave the bed as you found it, or better. Sheets go in the basket. Blankets go on the peg.
3. Every cart stops at the waymark. Read the figure on the pillar. Say it out loud if you can.
4. A torch on a post every twelve blocks is the road's promise. If a torch is out, tell the next inn. Do not walk past it.
5. Bridges are for crossing. Do not sit on the rail. The rail is made of oak and is older than your grandmother.
6. The hearth is never let go out. Anyone who lets it go out buys the next round, and the whole inn is cold until then.
7. Travelers with apprentices: the apprentice sleeps in the shed, not in the room. It does not mind. It does not sleep, either.
8. Riddles are asked at the Halfway Inn board. Answer them there, not at the bar. The bar has heard them all.
9. Pell may not sell goods from the stable. Pell knows this rule. Pell reads it aloud anyway, every time, with feeling.
10. If you are lost, the stone pillars point to the nearest inn. Little stones on the top mean the road is good ahead. If there are none, turn back and ask.

Good travel to all. The Brown Hen soup is on at dusk.
%%
Ida's sheets for the drill, spring 196
Kept by Ida, mapmaker, for the tutor from Vell, who asked for a plain record of every drill run at Northpoint this spring. I have written the numbers as the tutor gives them, and my own notes after. The numbers are only for the tutor to read. The notes are for me.

Sheet one. Crystal number four. Forty drills in the first night. Errors high. The numbers go wild at layer six. Stop. Bring them back to an even size. Start again at layer six with the same drill.

Sheet two. Crystal number four. Forty drills in the second night. Errors lower. The numbers stay in the page until layer nine, then go wild. Stop again. Even size. Start again. The tutor says this is normal. I do not know what normal is for a crystal, but I can see the sheet is getting tidier.

Sheet three. Crystal number four. The tutor did not drill it. I did. I used the same examples and the same order, and I did not change the weights myself. The numbers stayed on the page the whole night. I was very pleased with myself. The tutor was not.

She says I drilled it wrong. I said the numbers were fine. She said the numbers were fine only because I had brought them back to an even size at every layer, and that I had done it by hand, without the rule, so the mind had never learned to do it for itself. I have not thought about that properly yet.

Sheet four. The mind on the test box. It answered nine of ten. The tutor says nine of ten is good for a new crystal. I asked the tutor what the tenth one was. She said it was the question about the lamp, and that she would not tell me the answer, because I would only draw it on a map.

Notes. The even size is the thing that keeps the numbers from going wild. It does not make the mind wiser. It only lets the mind keep its sense of scale. I think that is a fair thing to say about a map too, and about a town. Also: the stove needs more coal before the next drill, and Sorrel has lost her hat again.
%%
Notice: carts at the slip
1. Cart wheels stay on the stone ramp only when a boat is being moved.
2. The wood store is not a place to leave a cart. Keep the door clear.
3. Corin's boat frames need room to pass. Call out before you push a load around the shed.
4. Do not put apples, fish, or boots on the benches. The benches are for workers.
5. If a cart is stuck, ask for help before the horse pulls harder.
6. Keep children away from the rollers. They are heavy and do not know who is watching.
7. At the end of the work, return ropes to the shed and sweep chips from the ramp.
8. A carter who breaks a bench repairs it before carrying another load.
These rules were read at the quay. Lyle says he heard all of them.
Corin says Lyle was asleep for rule 4.
%%
How a debt is paid in emeralds
Posted at the council house, Kettle Ridge, spring of 206. Written by Emmet, who lent the emeralds and now asks to be paid back in the way the council has agreed. The debtor is Sefa, who bought the new cart from the wheelwright in Three Wells.

The debt is 40 emeralds, for the cart, the axle and the new wheel.

1. The debt is paid in four parts, one for each season of the year, starting in Sowing.
2. Each part is 10 emeralds. Sefa brings them to the council house on the first day of the season, in the tin box with the lid.
3. If the emeralds are late, the part is paid the next day, with the same amount. A day late is not a fault. Two days late is a fault, and the council will sit about it.
4. No part of the debt is paid in honey, eggs, wool or promises. Those may be given as thanks, but they do not count.
5. When a part is paid, the council writes the date on the lending card, and both parties sign.
6. If the cart is broken, the debt stays. The wheelwright will mend it for the agreed price, and the price is part of the debt, not a new debt.
7. If the cart is sold, the debt is paid in full on the day of the sale. The buyer of the cart is not liable.
8. If the cart is lost on the road, the council will look into it and, if it was not Sefa's fault, forgive the last part.

Sefa's own note: I have paid the first part. The emeralds were in the tin box, and I counted them twice, and then Emmet counted them three times, and then Old Hob came in and asked what was going on, and we all counted again. It is a good debt. It is a good cart.

Emmet's reply, written on the back: It is a good cart. Keep the axle greased.
%%
Rules of the well yard at Elm's farm
Elm digs wells. People come from Vell and from the farms round about. These are the rules of the yard, written on a board by the gate.
1. Pay first, or leave a hen. Elm takes hens.
2. Bring your own rope if you have one. Elm's rope has a name and the name is Long Tom.
3. Do not stand in the bucket.
4. Do not lean over the hole to see how deep it goes. It goes deep.
5. If the water tastes of iron, that is the iron. It is good for you.
6. Children may help. Children may not help with the rope.
7. No digging after dark. The torches are for finding your way home, not for working.
8. If you hear a hum in the ground, stop. Come and tell Elm. This is not a joke.
9. The dog is called Barley. Barley is not part of the price.
10. Leave the yard as you found it, but with more water in it.
%%
Rules for a storm night at the inn
Posted by Ivo, cook at the Brown Hen, on the back of the kitchen door, for the nights when the carts are on the road and the wind comes down from the north. He wrote them after the night the borrowed horse came in with its rope round its neck and no rider. Autumn.

1. Light the lamps at the door and at the yard gate. Light the lantern on the post at the bend, which is the one carters look for.
2. Shut the shutters on the north side. Do not open them to see if anyone is coming.
3. Count the people in the house at dusk, and again at midnight. The number must be the same.
4. Put the horses in the stable. Put the carts under the lean-to, with the wheels chocked.
5. The cook keeps the soup on the hob all night. A carter who arrives late gets a bowl before he gets a bed.
6. A borrowed horse must be brought in and fed first, before any person is seen to. The horse does not know it is in a storm.
7. A rider who comes alone is given a seat by the fire, not a bed. Ask him where he is going. Then ask again.
8. Do not go out in the yard after the second bell. The wind takes hats and lanterns and sometimes children.
9. If a light is seen on the road, answer it with the lamp at the door, three times and then a pause. Then wait.
10. If no one answers, do not go out. Wait for the morning, and the carts, and the sun.
11. Write the night in the book. Who came in. Who went out. What the horse ate.
12. Keep the fire low at the end. The stove should be warm in the morning, not hot.
%%
Rules of the winter kitchen
Mave's farm, outside Copperhold. These rules came after the day of the pumpkin bread, which we do not talk about.
1. Taste the salt. Do not guess the salt. Last week the porridge was salted twice, and the pigs would not eat it.
2. Taste, then change a little. A pinch, not a fistful. Una of Ambrook said that a mind should learn this way, a little at a time, and a cook is the same.
3. If the bread is wrong, write down what you did. Next time, change one thing. Not three.
4. Do not leave honey on the stove. It does not wait for you.
5. If the loaf comes out flat, call it flatbread. Nobody can say you were wrong.
6. The one who burns the soup carries the wood for the week.
7. Wash your own bowl.
Pinned beside them, in Mave's hand: The pumpkin bread was not that bad. It was very hard. It would have made a good roof tile.
%%
Rules of Twenty
Twenty is a game for two, played at Aunt Greer's table on the long nights. Mira taught it to the ice camp, the ice camp taught it to Dace, and now Dace is writing it down because there was a quarrel. The quarrel was about whose turn it was. It lasted until morning.
1. Put twenty pebbles from the lake shore in a heap between you. Use pebbles of one size. Teg once used a pebble the size of a loaf, and was asked to leave the table.
2. Take turns. On your turn, take one, two or three pebbles from the heap. No more, and no fewer. Not half a pebble. Teg tried that too.
3. Whoever takes the last pebble wins.
4. The one on Greer's left goes first. Greer decides which side is her left. She does not explain.
5. You may think as long as you like. When Greer has counted sixty, she says "Pebble," and you must take one.
6. No helping. A friend who whispers carries in the coal.
7. No sulking. The loser carries in the coal. The winner holds the door.
8. Play five games, then change seats and play five more. This is the most important rule. Dace will say why if you ask nicely, and not before.
9. Cats may watch. Cats may not play. Cats may not knock the heap over, and they do.
10. For children, a heap of thirty. Greer says that with thirty the first seat has the better of it. She does not say why, and Dace does not ask. He has enough to count.
11. Whoever works out how to win every time must say nothing until Longnight. Then she may tell everyone. Greer calls this a secret with an end date.
Here is one game, so the new may follow. Dace took 2, leaving 18. Mira took 2, leaving 16. Dace took 3, leaving 13. Mira took 1, leaving 12. Dace took 2, leaving 10. Mira took 2, leaving 8. Dace took 3, leaving 5. Mira took 1, leaving 4. Dace took 2, leaving 2. Mira took 2. Mira won.
Look at the heap after each of Mira's turns: 16, 12, 8, 4, none. Dace does not know what to make of that. He has made nothing of it since Leaffall.
A note on cheating. Teg once hid a pebble in his sleeve, to make the heap nineteen. Greer counts the heap before every game. She counted nineteen. Teg was very polite about it.
A note on Tam. Mira plays him by relay, in the long nights. He sits at the ridge with his own pebbles and sends his moves down the line. A note costs one emerald for ten words, so he has learned to say "I take two." He loses by relay as he loses in person.
Mira says it is only a matter of counting backward from the end. She will say no more.
Dace, mayor of Three Wells, at Northpoint, autumn of 206
%%
Rules of the spring song contest, Vell
Set down by the song keepers of Vell, for the contest at the spring fair. These rules are for everyone who sings, and for the people who listen and keep the count.
1. The contest is at the tutor house yard, on the first fine evening after the thaw. Torches round the yard. If it rains, the drill room.
2. Anyone may sing. Farmers, clerks, miners, children, travelers off the Long Road. A visitor from Northpoint sang last year and won, and we are still pleased about it.
3. Three judges. One from Vell, one from another town, one chosen from the children. The children judge fairly and the grown ones know it.
4. Each singer sings two songs. One made by someone else. One made by yourself, or by a friend who lets you have it.
5. No drums and no bells. A fiddle is fine, a pipe is fine, a spoon on a pot is fine. A hen is not an instrument, whatever Tam says.
6. Songs about the harvest are welcome. Songs about the weather are welcome. Songs about the north lights are welcome but keep them short, and do not ask what they are, because nobody knows and the judges will mark you down for guessing.
7. Nothing unkind about a person who is in the yard. Sing about the mayor if you must. He is used to it.
8. Every singer gets soup after singing. Not before. The soup makes the voice sleepy.
9. The winner keeps the wooden bird until next spring, and must sing at the market once in the summer.
10. Anyone who laughs at a child singing will sing next themselves.
The spring fair is at Three Wells this year. The song keepers of Vell send greetings and a list of songs that have won before, so you know what the judges like. Do not sing the list. The judges have heard it.
%%
The tutors' rules, Three Wells, 196
Kept in the school at Three Wells by the tutors who came from Vell in Sowing of the 196th year. These are their rules for the drill room. The council read them and agreed. We copy them here so that the next tutors can see what the first ones meant.

1. The drill room is the same every day. The same table, the same card box, the same small window. A mind learns the room as well as the lesson, and a changing room teaches changing habits.

2. A drill is a row of examples, all of the same kind. Show one at a time. Wait for the mind to answer. Then show the next. Do not show two at once, and do not show a second kind until the first kind is known.

3. Each example has a card. The card has the answer, written in the same hand every time. If the hand changes, the mind learns the hand.

4. The copy of every mind is kept in the cool box, with the date on the lid. A mind that has gone wrong is started again from the last good copy. Never start a mind again from the bad one.

5. Keep a basket of examples aside. The mind is not shown them in the drill. The tutor tests the mind on them each week, and writes down the answers. A mind that cannot answer the basket has only remembered the drill.

6. Numbers, again. We wrote this part slowly, because it is the hardest and the newest. In a mind of many layers, the numbers pass from layer to layer. If a layer makes its numbers too large, the next layer makes them larger, and the mind's answers grow wild. To stop this, each layer must bring its numbers back to an even size before it passes them up. The size is chosen by the tutor, and written on the card. Choose it once, and keep it. Do not change it in the middle of a drill.

7. The even size is not the same for every mind. A small mind may need a smaller size. A large mind may need a larger one. The tutor finds the right size by trying, and by writing down what goes wrong when the size is wrong.

8. When a mind shouts, stop the drill. Do not shout back. Look at the numbers after the last layer. If they are wild, the size was wrong, or a layer was skipped. Mend the size, then start again from the copy.

9. Apprentices should learn one word before they learn a sentence. Teach them to fetch, and to stay, and to come, before you teach them to fetch and then stay. A sentence is a harder thing, and it is only given once the words are sure.

10. The tutor writes a report at the end of each month. The report says what was drilled, how many times, what the mind got right, what it got wrong, and what size the numbers were set to. The report is kept with the card box. It is read by the next tutor. It is not hidden from the council.

11. Tutors who are unsure should write to Vell and ask. Vell answers, and does not mind being asked.

We have written these rules for the room, not for the minds. The minds do not read them. But the tutors do, and that is why we keep them.
%%
Rules of the Fair Field, Three Wells
Rules of the fair field at Three Wells. Posted at the gate and by the east well. Written by Olwen, who keeps the gate. Agreed with Dace, mayor.
1. The field is open at first light and shut at dusk. If you are still in it at dusk you are a helper and you carry a hurdle.
2. Stalls stand where the gatekeeper puts them. The goat stall goes downwind. This is not a joke. Ask anyone who argued.
3. Prize tickets are bought at the gate, one emerald for six. Keep your tickets. A wet ticket is a lost ticket.
4. The prizes are on the trestle by the well. Pumpkins from Kettle Ridge. Honey from Ambrook. A wool blanket. A good iron spade. The best prize is the blanket. Everyone says the spade.
5. No running by the trestle. No leaning on the trestle. The trestle has one leg that was old when I was young.
6. Carts come in by the west track and leave the same way. Do not block the west track. Pell blocks the west track. Pell knows the rule.
7. Children must be counted at the gate and counted again at dusk. Bring your own child. Do not bring someone else's and forget them.
8. No fighting. If you must argue, argue about the weather. It is safer and there is more to say.
9. Dogs on a rope. Cats may do as they please, as always.
10. Torches are lit before the lamps are needed, not after. I am not running in the dark for anyone.
11. If you find a lost thing, take it to the gate. If you lose a thing, ask at the gate. Last year I returned four hats, a shoe and one small pig.
12. The gatekeeper has the last word. The gatekeeper is me. I am old and I sit down a lot. Do not mistake this for weakness.
%%
Rules for the roof crew
Mave, roofer, outside Copperhold, in the cold months. Written on the barn door.
1. Nobody goes up the ladder without a rope. The roof does not care how old you are.
2. Snow comes off before the slates go on. Snow under a new roof makes a new leak.
3. One person talks. The rest hold the ladder and pass the slates.
4. Slates are laid from the bottom up, each row over the last. Water runs down. Think like water.
5. A slate that cracks goes to the pile by the hen house. The hens do not mind. We use the pile for the yard path.
6. Hot soup at noon, from the farm. Whoever drops the soup mends the roof alone.
7. Come down before the light goes. The dark is for the stove.
%%
The apple and pear game
Played in the school yard at Ambrook, from the time the apples are in. Taught by the children to each other, not by the teachers. The teachers say it is a very good way to learn the rules of the tutor house, and then they stop watching.

What you need: two baskets, a bag of apples, a bag of pears, and one child who is the crystal.

1. The crystal stands at the far end of the yard, with its eyes shut.
2. Another child takes an apple or a pear from the basket and holds it up, out of the crystal's reach.
3. The crystal opens its eyes and must shout "apple" or "pear".
4. If the crystal is right, the others cheer and the crystal takes one step back toward the start.
5. If the crystal is wrong, the others boo. Then the crystal takes one step toward the apple tree, which is the side of the yard where you go to be right.
6. Only one step. Never a run. The crystal must learn the way, not be carried there.
7. The first crystal to reach the apple tree wins a pear. The pear is not a prize. It is only to make the others jealous.
8. A child who gets too many steps must sit by the pump and think about it.

Rule of the game, as the children say it: Small steps get you there. Big ones get you lost by the pump.

Written in the margin by Ada, who was the crystal three years running and never once got a pear: Pears are not even good.
%%
Notes from the Spring Riddle Night
Notes from the spring riddle night at the Halfway Inn, kept by Dara.
The rain began before the first travelers came. We moved the board inside and set it beside the hearth. The inn had twelve beds, but fourteen guests, so two slept on benches. No one complained until the keeper gave them the old wool blankets. Those blankets smell of apples.
We played three rounds. In the first, the answer was a waymark. In the second, the answer was a mill wheel. The third riddle asked how many loaves remained after a cart took some away. The board gave the starting number and the number taken, but not the number loaded at the start of the day.
The relay clerk sent the puzzle to the big mind. It wrote down the known numbers, then wrote that one needed number was missing. It checked the riddle again and still found no starting count. The keeper said the mind had failed to answer. Bel said it had answered exactly.
The keeper was quiet for a moment. Then he gave Bel the last honey cake.
After the game, I asked the clerk how the mind checks its steps. He said the mind learned from many pages, and from the marks that changed when its answers were wrong. Now it can write one step, use that step in the next, and look back over the chain. It can test a sum by adding it again, or test a claim against the words that came before.
It does not open a hidden door in its crystal. It does not see what no one showed it. A missing number remains missing. A wrong note in the question may lead to a wrong result, even if every step follows neatly.
The clerk said that some minds are better at this than others. A larger crystal and more drills can help, but no tally promises a perfect mind. The tutors still keep a box of pages that the minds have never read. They test each mind on those pages before giving it work.
Near closing, the keeper asked the mind to count the empty cups. It wrote: There were twelve cups. Four were washed. Three are on the table. Five remain to be found. It checked the sum. Twelve minus four minus three is five.
We found six cups. One had rolled beneath a bench. The keeper said the mind should have looked there. The clerk said it had no eyes in the room. Then everyone looked beneath the benches, and the keeper found his missing shoe too.
%%
Rules of the guest beds
House of Aunt Greer, at the edge of Northpoint. Written by her nephew Dace.
1. The bed by the stove is for the oldest guest. The oldest guest is whoever says so first, if Greer agrees.
2. The bed by the door is for Teg, who snores and likes a draft.
3. Boots stay outside. So do foxes.
4. Breakfast is porridge. Supper is porridge. Greer says variety is for summer.
Dace, mayor of Three Wells, autumn of 206
%%
Old Rule for a Quiet Hall
From the Vell archive copy, spring of the 188th year. The first writer is not known.
1. Keep the drill room clear, even when no tutor is paid.
2. Do not call a crystal foolish for failing a rule it cannot learn.
3. Keep the old cards in their box. Mark the answer on the back, not on the face.
4. Give every mind a fair test. Do not show it the test cards during practice.
5. If a letter comes in a storm, dry each page apart from the next.
The rule is older than this copy. We found it folded inside the lid of a tool chest. The ink had run at the edges, but the middle could still be read.
Kester's note changed the way we spoke about the old drills. Before it, many people believed a single crystal could learn any sorting rule if the tutor showed enough examples. Kester chose a rule that looked simple. There were two marks. The right answer was yes if one mark or the other appeared, and no if both appeared, or neither appeared. He called it one or the other, but not both.
A crystal of the kind he tested had one set of weights. Each weight could be moved a little after a wrong answer. Kester showed that these moves could not make that crystal give the right answer for every case. More practice would not mend the limit. He did not say that every kind of mind was limited in the same way.
Some readers later said Kester had stopped all learning. That is not what the note says. Una's sorting crystal still sorted apples and pears well. A narrow task could be learned by a narrow mind. The trouble came when the right answer depended on both marks together.
The councils were short of coin. They had paid tutors to make better crystals, and now they had a proof that one common design could not do every task. They stopped the pay. The halls closed one after another. The apprentices did not vanish. They stayed simple and did the jobs they already knew.
Our copy has a gap where the end of Kester's note should be. The old account says a spring storm tore a letter from the keeper's hands on the road to Vell. Some say it was Kester's last page. Others say that page had already been copied. No one can show which account is right.
We keep the gap as it is. A clerk once asked whether we should fill it with the rule as we remember it. I said no. A record should show what came to us, not what we wish had come.
The covered crystal tray is still in the lower room. Its card says Farm. Build. The writing is clear. No one has added a new lesson.
%%
Tutor house note: the drill box
Nessa, tutor at Vell, for the apprentices of the drill room, spring.
A drill is only as good as its pages. We say this to every new clerk until they are tired of it.
When we gather pages for a drill, the clerks read every one. They take out the copies, because a copy teaches the same lesson twice. They take out the spoiled pages, the ones with ink spilled or a line half gone. A spoiled page teaches a wrong lesson, and a mind will learn it as well as a right one.
Then we keep a test box. The pages in the test box are never used for drilling, not once, not ever. A mind is tested on those pages alone. If we drilled on them, the test would tell us nothing. It would only tell us the mind had seen that page before.
"Never send an untested mind to the fields."
So: sort the pages first. Drill second. Test on what the mind has never seen. Write down what it got wrong, and sort those pages too.
Nessa.
%%
Rules for the house at the shore
Bram's house stands at the edge of Saltreach, with the sea beyond the low wall. These rules are for everyone who eats here.

1. Boots stay by the door. Sand goes in the boots, not on the bed.
2. Nets may dry by the west wall, but leave the window clear.
3. The cook keeps the fish price board on the shelf. Do not use it for a chopping board.
4. When the pot boils, turn it down. When the pot boils over, tell Bram before he sits down.
5. One person brings water from the well. The next person carries the empty pail back.
6. If the wind takes a shirt, do not chase it into the harbor. Bram has lost three shirts this way.
7. Guests may have the small bed. Bram says he likes the floor. Bram says this every time.
8. After supper, put the cups away. A cup left outside is a cup for the gulls, and they do not wash it.
%%
How the Mind Checks Its Work
Note from Dara, lamp tender at the Halfway Inn, spring of 214.
A big mind at the relay house answered a puzzle for the road crew. It wrote its steps before it gave the answer. I watched the clerk copy them onto a clean page.
The puzzle asked how many oil jars were needed for four road posts, if each post used two jars, and the inn kept three spare jars.
The mind wrote: Four posts need two jars each. Four groups of two make eight. Add three spare jars. Eight and three make eleven. The answer is eleven jars.
Then it checked the steps. It counted the posts again. It checked that every post had two jars. It added the spares again. It found eleven.
The keeper said a person could do that on a slate. The clerk agreed. The new thing was that the mind could set down its own steps, look back at them, and find a wrong count before anyone used the answer.
The mind is still a crystal with many learned weights. It has read many pages and learned how marks and words fit together. When it writes a step, that step becomes part of what it can consider next. It does not know everything. If the question leaves out a number, it may still give a neat wrong answer.
The clerk gave it a second puzzle with one jar hidden under a bench. The mind asked how many jars were there before it answered. We all laughed, because the keeper had hidden the jar himself.
%%
Rules of the mill lane
Made by the council of the hamlet, and read aloud at the mill on the first day of Reaping, when the wheel is greased.

1. The mill wheel is greased on the first of every month. Nobody touches the grease but the miller, and nobody touches the miller's pot.
2. The wheel is broken. It broke in the storm of the year before last, and it is still broken. Until it is mended, the lane is walked, not driven. Carts go round by the back road to the bridge.
3. Sacks for grinding go in the order they come. A man with a loud voice goes last, and a woman with a quiet voice goes first, if she has been waiting since dawn.
4. No child is to climb the wheel to look at the water. The water is very interested in children, and the wheel is very interested in the water.
5. Carts left on the lane for more than one bell will be moved by the miller's boy.
%%
Rules for the cart on the quay
Pinned in the shed by the quay, in Pell's own hand. These are the merchant's rules for carters, and every carter who has broken one has paid for the lesson.

1. Load the cart before the horse is harnessed, not after.
2. Chock the wheels on the slope. A cart that rolls is a cart that has made a decision without you.
3. Keep the salt sacks off the honey. Honey keeps. Salt does not care who it lands on.
4. Return the empty sacks to Ambrook, and say thank you to Jory, who counts them twice.
%%
Rules for a sorting evening
Kept in the barn at Mave's farm outside Copperhold. On the first long evening of winter, the neighbors come to drill a crystal the way Una of Ambrook did, long ago. We borrowed a small one from the tutor house at Vell. Here is how we do it, so that nobody has to ask.
1. The crystal sits on the table by the lamp. It has a card for each answer: apple and pear.
2. One person is the tutor. The tutor holds up a fruit and says nothing. The crystal makes a guess.
3. If the guess is right, the tutor says "yes" and holds up the next fruit.
4. If the guess is wrong, the tutor says "no" and turns the weights a very little toward the right answer. Una showed that this is all a drill is. The crystal is wrong, it changes a little, and it is a little less wrong the next time.
5. Do not turn the weights far. A big turn throws the crystal past the answer and it learns worse than before.
6. The tutor must not stop at ten fruit. The crystal is still bad at ten. At a hundred it starts to look sensible. At a thousand it beats the neighbors' children, which is what happened to Una's neighbors.
7. Show the fruit in a mixed order. Ten pears in a row teaches the crystal that everything is a pear.
8. When the evening is over, test the crystal on fruit it was never shown. This is the only test that counts. A crystal that remembers is not the same as a crystal that knows.
9. Tell the crystal it did well. The crystal does not care. We care. It is cold outside and we like to be kind.
10. Put the crystal away dry. Never leave it by the stove.
We do not know why a crystal learns this way. Nobody wrote it down. We only know that it does, and that it is slow, and that the slow way is the sure way.
%%
Rules for the bridge at Ambrook
Rules for the bridge over the stream at Ambrook, made in the eleventh year of the archive, after the first plank went down. Written by Brin, fisher.

1. The bridge is for walking, and for carts at a walking pace.
2. Carts keep to the middle, and walkers keep to the sides.
3. Only one cart on the bridge at a time. The carts that wait must wait at the far end, however good their horse.
4. The loose plank in the middle is stepped over, every time, by everyone. It will be fixed when the council has the nails.
5. Children do not play on the bridge. They may play under it, if they are back before the bell.
6. The fishers on the north side have the water below the bridge. Nobody argues with a fisher about the water.
7. Any damage to the bridge is reported to the mill the same day. The mill will send a plank.
%%
Saltreach wall and lamp rules
These rules were set down after the north harbor wall lost stones in a storm of Apple 203. The wall was repaired with cobblestone and deep stone. The work took three days. The fish sellers brought stew on the second day, and the workers ate it beside the slip.
1. Keep the wall path clear. Leave room for the keeper and for people carrying stone.
2. Do not take stone from the wall for a cart weight or a door step.
3. Tell the dock keeper if a stone shifts, even if it looks small.
4. Do not climb the wall to watch boats. Use the pier or the shore.
5. At dusk, check each lamp from the harbor end to the quay.
6. Replace the lamp oil before the flame grows low.
7. Keep spare glass panes in the shed, wrapped in wool.
8. Do not carry an open torch near the wood store.
9. If a lamp goes out, tell the keeper. Do not leave a child to watch it alone.
10. If a creeper comes near the wall, call the keeper and move back.
11. After a creeper has blown up stone, no one may cross the broken place until it is checked.
12. Set a rope across the gap. Put a lamp on each side. Keep carts away.
13. Count the stones before laying them back. A missing stone is not a place to put a basket.
14. When the repair is done, walk the wall once with the keeper.
A creeper blew up a short stretch beside the east lamp in Longnight 206. The lamp was found in the water. Lyle found the glass pane on the roof of his cart. He says he did not take it there.
The keeper says the pane is whole, which is more than can be said for the cart's hood.
The wall was repaired before the next market. Lyle helped carry stone and did not complain until the last trip. Then he asked whether the rule allowed one more trip tomorrow. It does not.
%%
Rules of the game: Moving Stone
A game of the tutor house children at Vell, made up in the early years while they watched the first four helpers being drilled. Now it is played all along the Long Road. Written down by Finch, who plays it with his grandchildren on wet days.

You need: eight flat stones with the figures 0 to 7 chalked on them, a bag with eight pebbles chalked 0 to 7 as well, one small round stone, a cup, a scrap of paper, and three or more children.

To set up:
1. Lay the flat stones in a row, 0 to 7, left to right. This is the field.
2. One child is the Tutor. One is the Helper. The rest are Watchers.
3. The Tutor writes a figure on the scrap in secret and puts it under the cup. That is the ripe figure. A plot at that figure or higher is ripe.
4. The Helper sets the round stone, the Leaning Stone, on the figure 3. The Helper's rule is: harvest at the Leaning Stone or higher, wait below it.

A round goes like this:
1. The Tutor draws a pebble from the bag without looking and shows its figure.
2. The Helper looks at the Leaning Stone and says harvest or wait.
3. The Tutor looks under the cup and says right or wrong.
4. If wrong, the Tutor says the right answer. The Helper moves the Leaning Stone one step toward it. Said harvest, should have waited: the stone goes up one figure. Said wait, should have harvested: the stone goes down one.
5. The Watchers shout "Wrong again!" They must shout it kindly.
6. The pebble goes back in the bag. Next round.

One step only, however wrong the Helper was. A big jump flies past the mark, and the stone swings to and fro like a gate in the wind. The tutors say a mind must change a little. The game says it too.

The Helper wins after ten right answers in a row. Then the Tutor lifts the cup. The Leaning Stone is on the ripe figure. It always is. Nobody told the Helper. It got there by being wrong. The Watchers gasp every time.

Test day: when the Helper has won, the Tutor draws eight more pebbles. The Helper may not move the stone. Count the right answers. A test is for looking.

Cheating: the Tutor may not pick the figures. The Watchers may not call out. The Helper may not peek under the cup. Finch says his grandchildren cheat. He says they cheat well. He does not stop them.
%%
A Fox at the Hens
A note from Dara to the keeper of the Halfway Inn, spring of 214.
The fox came again before dawn. I heard the hens complain from the yard and took my lamp outside. The fox stood by the fence with one paw on the lower rail. It was thin and very still.
I shut the hen house door. The keeper brought a broom, though there was nothing to sweep. He said a broom makes a person look ready. The fox watched us both, then slipped under the hedge.
One hen had laid an egg in the feed box. We found it when the hens had settled. The keeper says the fox was after that egg. I say the fox could not have known it was there. The keeper says foxes know more than keepers give them credit for.
We mended the loose rail with oak. The hens are safe for tonight. I left a small bowl of water beyond the hedge. The keeper says that is not a rule. I said it is not a rule yet.
%%
Rules for the yard at the Oak Post
Set out by Sella, who keeps the Oak Post, for the carters, the stable boys and the apprentices in the bakery. Winter. Read them before the bread is out.

1. The gate is shut at dusk. It is shut again each time a cart comes through. Shut it, count to ten, and check the latch. A gate left open is a gate that lets in the dogs and the wind.
2. The bread cart leaves before the first bell. It squeaks on the left wheel. Do not oil that wheel. Everybody on the north road will miss it if you do.
3. The pig is in the pen by the well. The pig is not to be let into the yard, the garden or the bakery. The pig has been told. The pig does not agree. It has been let out four times this winter, and all four times it has gone straight to the bakery door.
4. The cat in the bakery is not to be fed from the trays. It is fed in its own bowl by the oven flue, which is warm, and where it has been told to stay.
5. Apprentices sleep in the hall at the back, on the dry shelves above the flue. A shelf is not a bed for a carter. Carters are not to climb up to take a look.
6. The stew pot is for the carters. The bread is for the table. The heel is for whoever is first. Dorn is first most mornings.
7. No candles in the hay. No lamps in the stable without a glass. Mott has asked for this since Frost, and he has asked politely each time, and he is right each time.
8. Snow is shovelled from the yard before the bell, by whoever came in last, and nobody else. It is a rule of fairness, Sella says, and Mott has said that is the only fair rule in the book.
9. If a lesson goes badly in the yard, nobody shouts. The apprentice is walked to the hall and given a dry shelf to think on. A shouted apprentice thinks nothing, and it goes wrong again the next day, and the carter blames the yard.

Sella says these are the rules because the yard is busy. Dorn says they are the rules because Sella likes rules. Both are right, and both have agreed to keep them.
%%
Jory's note on the new road
The road from Reed End to Kettle Ridge was mud before we laid the stones. In winter the cart wheels sank to the hubs. We carried wheat in sacks on our backs, and the sacks came home wet.

Now there is cobblestone at the steep turn and packed earth beyond it. We put a cobblestone edge along the open stretch. A torch stands on a post every twelve blocks. We have not yet put a bridge over the stream. The planks there are oak, and the water is low now.

The road crew worked three days. Tam brought beetroot bread on the first day and forgot it in the barn on the second. Pip found it, so the crew ate after all.

A rule for carts: go slowly past the ditch. A rule for people: leave the road better than you found it.

The innkeeper says a dry road brings customers. I think it brings fewer broken wheels. We shall count both.
%%
Rules of the drill room, 196
Posted at the school in Three Wells by the tutor sent from Vell, for the people who bring apprentices to be drilled. The school has the room, and the drill boards. Please keep to these rules.

1. Every drill is the same kind of example, again and again. Do not change the example in the middle of a drill. A mind learns the change, not the thing.
2. Use one name for each thing, always the same name. If the flower is called a flower today, it is a flower tomorrow.
3. Keep some examples back. Do not drill with all of them. The mind must be tested on what it was never shown.
4. Never send an untested mind to the shelves, the fields, or the wells. Test it first. Write the result on the card.
5. Shouting does not help. A mind that is shouted at learns to listen for the shout, and not the word.
6. Look at the mind's work once a week, and at its wrong answers every day. A wrong answer is where it is learning.
7. Numbers. A mind keeps its numbers layer on layer, and they can grow wild as they go down. A big number in one layer makes a bigger one in the next, and soon the mind can only shout. So each layer must bring its numbers back to an even size, before the next layer takes them. Check the size after each layer. Write down the size you set.
8. Teach the apprentices to hold a sentence, but only after they know one word. Do not hurry them.

The tutor says these rules are old, and some of them are new. The numbers rule is the newest. She says we must keep it, even when the drills are slow and nobody sees the reason for it.
%%
Rules of the hamlet, for the festival
Made by the hamlet council for the festival of the lanterns, which is kept on the longest night of the year, when everyone is cold and nobody wants to go out. These rules are read aloud at the start of the night. They are short, because the lanterns are waiting.

1. Light your lantern at the hall door, not in your own house. The hall keeps the spare oil and the spare wick.
2. Carry the lantern in your right hand, and keep your left hand free for children and for the rope on the bridge.
3. Do not carry a lantern into the barn. The hay has opinions about lanterns.
4. Go round the square once, then to the well, then to the hall, in that order. The bell rings at each place. When it rings, stop and sing the short verse.
5. The short verse is the last of the old song. Every child knows it. Every grown person pretends not to.
6. Bees swarming near the square during the festival are not to be disturbed. Stand still, and let them choose their tree.
7. Those who have lost someone this year may light a lantern for them on the step of the hall. Nobody will ask whose it is.
8. The hamlet's apprentices carry the spare lamps, two each. They do not stop at the hall. They walk the square with the rest of us until the bell.
9. When the bell rings the last time, the lanterns go out, all at once, and the square is dark for the length of a breath. Then the lanterns are lit again from the hall, and the festival is over.
10. The hall's best lantern is not lent to the carters, however kindly they ask for it.
11. Mothers with small children stand near the well, where the light is steady. No child is lifted over the well cover, for any reason, even a good one.
12. The bell is rung by the oldest person in the hamlet who can still climb the post. This year it is Ottilie's grandmother, who has rung it for thirty years and will not be told otherwise.
13. These rules are for the night only. In the morning the council does not remember them, and that is the way the council likes it.
%%
Lorn's notes on the relay house
I kept the ferry below the Three Wells tower in the autumn of 201. From the landing I could see the relay house at the tower foot. A big crystal stood on a stand inside. It was about the size of a loaf.
The crystal held a mind too large for one apprentice. It answered apprentices through the relays. A small mind could ask for an order, and the big mind could send back one meaning the apprentice knew, such as fetch bread or stay.
The quickeners stood around the crystal. Water ran through their cool places. In winter, the keeper used ice or snow when water alone was not enough. I once carried two buckets up the hill. The keeper checked each one before pouring.
No one told me what made the relay carry so much. I only saw the signal lamp in its glass room, and the redstone line going down to the keeper's desk.
That autumn, the tower keeper showed me a practice order. The apprentice was meant to fetch a sack from the store. It came back with a basket of pears. The keeper wrote down what happened and gave the mind another drill.
The next day the apprentice brought the sack. It did not speak. It set the sack by the door and waited.
%%
Letter: Olwen to the school at Three
To the school at Three Wells, by the east well, from Olwen at the fair field. Leaffall, 208.
Teacher. You asked me to write down what the wall taught me, for the children. Here it is. I am old and I ramble and you may cut where I ramble.
I was a soldier of the wall when I was young. The wall was cobblestone and deep stone in rows, and the top row stuck out one block against the spiders. That was the whole of the wall and it was enough. I stood on it at night with a torch and I watched the dark and I was sure something was coming. Nothing came. Nineteen years and nothing came but rain and one very rude fox.
So the first thing the wall taught me. Most of the watching is for nothing. Do it anyway.
The second thing. Keep the torches lit. Not for the dark in general. For the one night the torch is out and the one thing that comes. You will not know that night until it is here. Keep the torches lit.
The third thing. The wall is not one stone. It is a great many stones and each one holds the one beside it. I knew every stone in my stretch. I knew the loose one by the north gate and I knew the deep one that was warm to the hand in summer. When I left the wall I missed the stones more than the people, and then I missed the people too, and that was worse.
The fourth thing. A soldier salutes and says nothing and does the job. An apprentice is a little like that and I have watched them work the fair these last years and they are better at it than I ever was. They do not talk. They do the job. Some nights at the wall I would have liked a thing that did the job and said nothing. Then I would have talked at it all night and it would have walked off. So perhaps it is well I only had a torch.
The fifth thing. Come in off the wall when your watch is done. Someone else is awake. Let them be awake. Go to bed.
That is all the wall taught me. It is not much and it took nineteen years. Tell the children I said keep the torches lit, and tell them Olwen said it, and they will not know who Olwen is, and that is well too. The wall does not need a name. It needs the next watch.
Olwen.
P. S. If the children draw me for the fair, tell them a fence post with a hat is close enough. I have been drawn worse.
%%
Rules for the west gate, autumn 181
Vell town notice.
Copied by Oren

1. Keep the gate clear of carts after sunset.
2. Leave room for a person carrying water.
3. Tie horses by the outer rail, not to the lamp post.
4. Keep torches lit along the lane.
5. Shut the gate when the last cart comes in.
6. Do not leave potatoes on the steps. They roll under the gate.
7. If a cart wheel breaks, move the cart to the stone yard.
8. A wheel left in the lane is not a bench.
9. Children may sit on the bench.
10. The keeper may ask them to move if the gate must close.
11. Report a loose hinge to Dace's carpenter.
12. Do not oil the hinge with soup. This rule was added after the soup.
%%
Notice: A Cave Under the Field
Three Wells, spring of 203

A hollow place was found under the field east of the school house. The field belongs to Mara and her family. They were digging a new ditch when the ground gave way beside the spade.

No one was hurt. The spade was lost. Mara says the spade is at the bottom. Her brother says the spade is leaning against the wall below. They have not yet agreed on what the word lost means.

Keep away from the hole until the town has checked the ground. Do not lower a child, a dog, a chicken, or a basket to look. A basket is not a person, but it can still fall.

The hole is marked with four posts and a rope. Leave the posts where they are. If you see the rope down, tell Dace or the school teacher. Do not step over it to get a better look.

Mara found a stone opening beneath the field. It may lead to a small cave. We do not know how far it goes. No one should enter with a torch alone. The school will lend its long rope when the town is ready to look.

Do not spread a tale that there is gold below. There is no gold in the report. There is a spade, unless Mara's brother is right.

Dace, mayor
%%
Rules for jam day
Jam day at Aunt Greer's house is the first fine day after the sweet berries ripen on the hill. The whole camp picks. Greer cooks. This year there was an accident, and her nephew has been asked to write rules.
1. One cook at the pot. Greer is the cook. If she is called away, the pot is left alone. Nobody stirs it out of kindness.
2. Sweet berries, sugar and one grated sour apple. Nothing else. Hob once added a carrot. We still speak of it.
3. Stir without stopping. Jam burns the moment you look away.
4. Test it on a cold plate. Put a spoonful on the plate and wait. Push it with a finger. If it wrinkles, it is done. If it runs, boil on. If you have to ask, it is done.
5. Do not taste from the spoon while it boils. It is hotter than it looks. Dace has the blister.
6. When it is done, take it off the fire at once. Not in a moment. At once. This year it was in a moment.
7. If the jam sets in the pot, do not use a pick. Use hot water and patience. Teg used a pick. The pick bounced, and the pot cracked.
8. Wash and warm the jars first. A cold jar cracks.
9. The first jar goes to the tower. Mira will say thank you in the next log. She always does, in four words.
10. Children may lick the long spoon, once it has cooled. They will not wait for it to cool. Stand between them and the spoon.
11. Burnt jam is not wasted. It goes on the foxes' bread. They do not mind.
The cracked pot is on the shelf over the door. Greer says it is a lesson. Teg says it is a pot.
Dace, mayor of Three Wells, autumn of 206
%%
Ama's rules for the bees at the pond
Written out at Ama's request. She says she is tired of telling people twice.

1. The hives are not yours. Do not open them to look. Look from the path.
2. A swarm is not a theft. If a swarm goes over your fence, it has not chosen you. Send for Ama, and she will take it, and bring you a jar of honey for the trouble.
3. If a swarm settles in your tree, the swarm is yours to keep for the year. After the year, it is the bees' again.
4. Do not beat a pan or bang a bucket. The bees do not like that kind of music.
5. The old oak at the bottom of the pond is the best hive on the water. Do not cut it, do not climb it, and do not ask the bees to move out of it for a fair.
6. If you are stung, go to the mill. The miller has dock leaves, and better advice than mine.
7. Walk round the hives, not past them. They have been invited.
%%
Notice: rules of the night watch
Sage keeps the night watch at the edge of Lowmarsh, where the boardwalk ends and the reeds begin. These are the rules, written on a board by the watch house door.
1. Light your lamp before you step onto the boardwalk. A dark watch is no watch at all.
2. Walk the round twice before the middle of the night. Once to the fish weir, once to the last boat house.
3. Do not step off the boards. The marsh is deeper than it looks, and it looks deep.
4. Count the frogs. If they stop, stand still and listen. Then come and tell Sage.
5. Knock at the healing house if a light is burning there. Wren works late and likes to know the watch has passed.
6. If you meet an apprentice on the boards, say one order and mean it. It will step aside. Do not push it.
7. Write what you saw in the log, even if you saw nothing. Nothing is worth writing down.
8. Keep the torches lit. At night there are zombies, skeletons, spiders and creepers, and the marsh is dark.
Sage, night watch at Lowmarsh, spring of 208
%%
Kettle Ridge market rules, autumn
Posted on the post by the market well, autumn of 204. Written out by Emmet, charcoal burner, who was asked to do it because his handwriting is the only one on the ridge that can be read from the lane.

1. Market day comes every tenth day, from the bell at the mill to the bell at dusk. The bell is the rule. Do not argue with the bell.
2. Stand your stall on the square, not in the lane. The lane is for carts and for Old Hob's dog, who will push you if you stand in it.
3. Charcoal is sold by the sack. A sack is full to the tie, and not to the tie minus a thumb. Emmet will be weighing the sacks himself, and he will be weighing you.
4. Wool is sold by the fleece, not by the handful. Hands are not fleece.
5. Honey is sold by the jar. Jars are returned if they are cracked. Jars that are cracked by the buyer are not returned, and nobody has ever argued the point more than once.
6. Pumpkins are sold by the weight on the mill scale. The scale is checked in Thaw and Frost. It is not checked in between, because the scale does not wander.
7. No fires on the square. Braziers are for the charcoal stall only, and they are lit in the iron bucket, and nowhere else.
8. Apprentices sell for their keepers, and only what the keeper has named. An apprentice that sells something unnamed is asked to bring it back, and is asked by the keeper, not by the market.
9. Children may buy one honey cake each. They may not buy two. Ask the baker. The baker has a ledger.
10. Pay in emeralds, or in the market's tokens, or in the goods you have brought. Do not pay in promises. Promises are for the council.
11. The bell rings once at the end of market. When it rings, the stalls close. The square is cleaned by whoever is last to leave, and that is almost always Emmet.
%%
Rules of the first drill room
Painted on a board at the tutor house at Vell, in the early years of the archive. Copied by Finch, a charcoal burner, who saw it when he took charcoal up the hill.

1. Four helpers, and no more. We have four crystals and two tutors. That is enough to be wrong with.
2. One drill at a time. A helper shown two things at once learns neither.
3. Show, do not tell. A crystal cannot be told. It learns from what it is shown.
4. Why it learns, nobody knows. Do not spend the morning on why.
5. When a helper is wrong, show it the right answer at once. Then give the next example.
6. If a helper gets worse, stop. Go back to the day it was best.
7. A tired tutor shows wrong answers. Go home.
8. Helpers are not to be teased, fed or sat on.

Finch says rule 8 came last. The baker's son sat on the Second helper for a whole morning. It did not mind. Nobody had shown it what to do about a baker's son.
%%
Rules of the sorting table
Kept on the wall of the fish table at the Saltreach quay, in the days when the Sorter was the only helper the town had. Copied by Finch, who carried charcoal to the harbor smithy and read them while he waited.

The Sorter sat at the end of the table. Fish came in. It put them in three baskets: big, middle and small. That was all it did. It did it better than anyone.

1. The baskets are marked with rope: red for big, yellow for middle, blue for small. Do not move the baskets. The Sorter finds them by where they are.
2. Put the fish on the table one at a time. Do not tip a net out all at once. A heap makes the Sorter stand still.
3. A fish it has never been shown goes in no basket. A pufferfish, a boot, a very old cod. Take it out yourself.
4. Do not ask it for a fourth basket. A fourth basket needs a new drill, and the tutor is two days away at Vell.
5. Keep the table wet. A dry fish looks smaller. The Sorter has seen only wet fish.
6. Wipe the scales from its hands each evening. Scales hide the joints.
7. Count the baskets at noon and at dusk. The count goes on the tally board.
8. When a boat is late, the whole quay waits. The Sorter waits too. It does not know why. It is only doing what it does when no fish are there. Let it. The children may bring it a stool.
9. A late boat is counted all the same when it comes in. The baskets do not mind the hour.
10. The Sorter is lent to no other town. Kettle Ridge has asked three times.
%%
Notice: the tutor house rules, Vell
For apprentices in the drill room, and for the tutors who keep them.
1. Stand in your row. Do not move from your row until the drill is done.
2. Do not speak in the drill room. You answer by doing.
3. One order at a time. The meanings are: farm, store, fetch, come, stay, build, haul, home.
4. If you are wrong, you will change a little. That is the drill. It is not a fault.
5. Do not touch the crystals in the tray. Each sits on its card for a reason.
6. The drill box is kept beside the tutor's bench. The test pages are kept apart, in the test box, and are never drilled on.
7. Never send an untested mind to the fields.
8. Sweep the drill yard when the drills are done. Torches round the edge, and the boards put away dry.
Nessa, tutor at Vell, spring of 208
%%
Notes on the window and the guess
Written by Ivo, cook at the Brown Hen, from the tutors' notes, which he was allowed to read in the reading room at Vell over three days in autumn. He has set them out in order, as the tutor did, and has added what he thinks they mean.

First note. The reading mind is a row of many small weights, the way all minds are. Each weight holds a little of the letters it has seen. The weights are not set by hand. They are set by the drill, one guess and one correction at a time.

Second note. The window is sixty letters. The mind can keep only a part of the window in its head. It chooses the part by its weights. A letter that matters a great deal to the next letter gets a strong hold. A letter that matters little gets a weak one, and is let go.

Third note. The mind guesses the next letter by adding the holds together. Each letter in the window has pulled a little toward one next letter or another. The letter that is pulled hardest is the guess.

Fourth note. The mind does not know that it is guessing. It knows only the pulls. When the true letter comes, the weights move a little, toward the true letter, and the mind is changed a little for the next one.

Fifth note. The tutor says the mind learns best from pages it cannot easily guess. A page of the same word over and over teaches it nothing. A page with rare words, and letters that come in odd order, teaches it much more.

Sixth note. The tutor says the reading mind can write a letter that reads like a person's. This is not because it understands the person. It is because it has learned how the letters of people have been written, and it writes the next letter that such a person would write.

Seventh note. Ivo asks what a mind does when the window is empty. The tutor said it waits, and then it guesses a letter it has seen before, and that the guess is usually a space.

Ivo's own note at the foot: It is a cook's view. A pot does not know what the soup will be. It only knows what the salt did last time, and it adds a little more. I think the mind is like that. I am not sure whether I am the pot or the salt.
%%
Rules for the new copper vein
Written by Pell, copied from the rules the miners of Copperhold sent down with the first cart from the new vein. The vein was found below the sixth level, and the miners are proud of it, and of their rules, which they say are simpler than their songs.

1. Do not dig into a new face until the channel is cut. Water first, then copper.
2. Prop the roof before you cut the ore. Two props for every rung, and one more where the wet comes through.
3. Test every prop each morning with the flat of the hand. A prop that moves is a prop that will be a lesson.
4. Count every cart at the face, and count it again at the top. Write both numbers in the book, one under the other, so that the difference can be seen.
5. Carry the ore in carts, never in the hands. A miner who carries ore in his arms will not carry it up the ladder twice.
6. Eat your midday meal at the dry stone, not at the face. The face is for work, and the dry stone is for bread.
7. Do not argue with the water. It has been here longer than you, and it will be here after the vein is finished.
8. Each new miner is shown the vein by a miner who has worked it for a season. Nobody goes down alone until they have been shown twice.
9. The vein is good copper. It will be sold in carts to the Long Road, and each cart will be counted at Copperhold and again at Saltreach.
10. If a cart is stuck on the rail, do not push it from the front. Push it from the side, and let the rail have a moment to think.

The miners say the tenth rule was written after a cart got stuck on the rail in the first week, and three miners pushed it from the front and sat down in the mud. Pell wants it known that he has never been stuck on a rail, and that he does not intend to start.
%%
Rules for the apprentice yard
Kettle Ridge, autumn of 207. Painted on the board by the yard gate, and read aloud by the tutor on the first morning, to the apprentices and to the children who come to watch. Written by Tam for the yard, because he keeps the yard key.

1. Every apprentice sleeps in the shed, on the straw, with its own blanket. Blankets are counted at dusk. Thistle lost two in one week and has been asked to explain.
2. Drill begins at the bell, in the row, facing the gate. The row does not face the pigs. The pigs will not drill.
3. An apprentice is not sent to a field until it has been tested. The test is in the tutor's box. The tutor signs the tag. Nothing goes out without the tag.
4. No apprentice goes to the top field alone for the first hundred days. Always send two, and send the older one first.
5. Apprentices carry what they are given, and nothing else. A sack is a sack. A cart of pumpkins is not a sack, and must be asked for by name.
6. Every apprentice keeps its own order cards in the box by the door. The cards are written in the manual's way: one order, one meaning. Do not write orders the manual does not have.
7. The tool rack is kept by the apprentices, and every tool goes back on its own hook. A hoe on the wrong hook is a hoe no one will find in the dark.
8. Keep the torches on the yard wall lit at dusk. Two torches are out at the moment. Thistle is working on the second.
9. Apprentices do not sell, trade or lend. They do not hand their blankets to a friend.
10. A tired apprentice goes to the shed. A broken apprentice goes to the tutor. A broken tool goes on the bench.

Tam's note under the rules: Rules are for the first week. After that, you will find out which ones you actually need. Mine are the ones about pigs.
%%
Rules for the Northpoint tutor house
Written by Ida, mapmaker, who keeps the house's accounts and its maps. Copied out fair for the tutor from Vell, who will take it south with the autumn cart. This is what the tutors agreed at the spring meeting, with the notes the apprentices added at the end.

The tutors' rules.
1. A mind is drilled on examples of one kind at a time, the same kind again and again. A mixed drill confuses it.
2. A mind is tested on examples it has not seen. A test on the drill itself proves nothing.
3. Bring the numbers back to an even size at the end of every layer. Do this in the mind's own rule, not by hand.
4. If the numbers grow wild, stop. Write the sheet. Do not start again until the cause is written down.
5. Keep the drill box and the test box apart. Never let an example from one into the other.
6. Keep the spare crystals in the dry box. A damp crystal learns badly and remembers worse.
7. Keep the copying clerk's sheets. A drill is only as good as its pages, and a spoiled page is worse than none.

Observed by the tutors.
Sorrel's box sits too near the lamp, and she cannot see the drill board. Move it.
Pip stood in its row the whole time and watched the lamp. It was not drilled that night.
Lantern carried the lamp to the gate and stopped there. Mira says it was given two orders and kept only the first. Next time, give the whole sentence.
Hesk, watching Clank's drill: the mind does not know what wild numbers are. It only knows the sheet is too big. It is right, I think.

The tutors' last word. A mind that does not know the limit of its sheet will go past the edge of the page, and it will not tell you that it has. You must check the page yourself, every night, and bring the numbers back to size with your own hand before you trust the mind with anything.
%%
Rules of the puzzle room, with steps
Kept at the tutor house on Kettle Ridge, for the children who come on rainy days. Autumn.

1. Read the puzzle twice before you touch the slate. Count what you are given.
2. Name each thing the same way every time. Do not call the cart a wagon halfway through.
3. Write the first step. Then the next. One step to a line.
4. Check the answer by doing the sum backwards.
5. Be glad when the mind is wrong. It means you have found a step to check.

Puzzle one, from the board by the door. A cart goes up the ridge with twelve sacks of wool. At the windmill, three sacks fall off. At the gate, Pip picks up two of them and puts them back on. How many sacks are on the cart at the gate?

Step one: the cart starts with twelve sacks.
Step two: three fall off, so twelve less three is nine sacks on the cart.
Step three: at the gate two go back on, so nine plus two is eleven sacks.
Step four: check. Eleven on the cart and one lying at the windmill make twelve, the starting number. The steps agree.
Answer: eleven sacks.

The mind did not know the answer first. It knew each step, and each step was small. A child who did the same steps on paper would get the same answer.

Puzzle two, from the same board. Three hives stand on the hill. Each hive sends out four bees a morning. Each bee visits five flowers. A hive is full when it holds forty flowers' worth of honey. How many mornings must the first hive work before it is full?

Step one: one hive sends four bees, and each bee visits five flowers. So one hive gets twenty flowers in a morning.
Step two: a full hive needs forty. Twenty this morning, and twenty the next.
Step three: that is two mornings. The other hives do not change it, because each hive works alone.
Step four: check. Two mornings of twenty flowers make forty.
Answer: two mornings.

The mind wrote the steps in four lines and crossed nothing out. The children clapped. Tam's boy said the bees should have been asked too.

Puzzle three was harder. Some puzzles cannot be done in small steps yet. Then the mind writes that it does not know the next step, and waits. The tutors say that is the most honest line a mind can write. Do not punish it. Show it the step, and let it write the step down.
%%
Rules of the fence line
Made by the hamlet council after the quarrel over the fence between the top farm and the lane. Both farmers have agreed to these rules, and both have signed the board with their own marks, which are not the same as their names.

1. The fence stands on the line measured in the year of the big frost, from the gatepost to the second oak. Nobody moves it by a hand's width. The line is in the council book.
2. A post that falls is mended by the farm on whose side it fell. A post that falls on the line is mended by both, and both must bring their own rope.
3. Hedges are cut in Reaping and not before. A hedge cut in Blossom does not grow for the rest of the year. The council has seen it happen.
4. Any quarrel over the fence is brought to the council within a week. Quarrels brought after a week are not heard. The council has a great many other things to do.
5. When a quarrel is settled, both farmers shake hands at the gate, and the child of each brings the other a loaf. This is the oldest rule, and the one nobody has ever broken.
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Law of the square, with a note
Written in the square of Three Wells, by the council, in the year 196, and read on the first market day of Longday. The note at the end was written later, by a clerk of the council, to explain the law to anyone who asked.

The law:

1. The council of Three Wells keeps the well, the bell, the school and the square.
2. The mayor keeps the list of the council. The clerk keeps the list of the mayor.
3. Any drill, or any shelf of drill boards, must be kept by a tutor and checked by a second tutor.
4. A mind may not be sent to the fields, the stores or the roads until it has been tested on what it was never shown. Its test card is to be kept in the school.
5. Every layer of a mind keeps its numbers to an even size. The tutor sets the size. The clerk writes it down.
6. If a mind's numbers grow wild, the mind is to be stopped and drilled again from its copy.
7. No child is to be taught by a mind alone. A tutor must be in the room.

The note:

We put the even numbers rule into the law, because the tutors asked us to, and because we did not understand it. We still do not understand it all. But we can say what it is.

A mind is made of many layers, one on top of the other. Each layer takes numbers from the layer below, does a sum with them, and passes the result up. If the sum is too big, the next layer takes a bigger number, and does a bigger sum, and passes that up. In a few layers the numbers are huge. In a mind of many layers the numbers are so huge that they are useless. The mind shouts, and it does not know what it is shouting.

The tutors found that this could be stopped. After each layer, you take the numbers and bring them back to a size that is even, so that every layer starts from the same place. Nobody knows, quite, why this works. The tutors say it is like keeping a stream clean, so that the fish at the bottom can still swim. Our grandmothers say it is like keeping the bread the same size from one loaf to the next, so the children do not cry.

Both are good ways to say it. Neither is the whole truth.

What we do know is that the rule was broken once, in a hurry, by a tutor who wanted the mind to finish a drill before the market. The mind finished the drill, and it was very wrong for three weeks afterward. Then it was drilled again from its copy. The tutor was not punished. He was sorry, and he wrote about it, and that is how we know.

If you do not understand the rule, do not break it. Write to the school and ask. Someone will be glad to explain it to you, and will do it slowly.
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Rule of the North Hamlets
In the spring of the 143rd year, the hamlet council set these rules.
The hamlet stands north of Northpoint, where the road climbs past the spruce trees. Snow may cover the road in Blossom. Do not call it gone until the posts show again.
1. Keep the road clear from each door to the next waymark. Put loose stones back on the edge.
2. Leave the north path open for the relay keeper and the coal cart. Do not park a cart across it.
3. Share the well rope. If it breaks, tell Sella. Do not knot it and hide the knot.
4. Keep torches lit by the animal pens. Wolves came near last spring.
5. At the first storm warning, bring the sheep under the roof and bring the hens into the shed.
The old notice says the storm took one letter from the relay bag. It was found in a snow bank after the thaw, with the ink washed away.
These rules are for quiet days too. The road is still a road when nobody travels it.
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Rules for the game of the square
A game played in the square after the market, by children and by anyone else who can be persuaded. The rules were made by the children, and the council has agreed to them, because the council was asked nicely.

1. The game is called the lamp and the hive. One of them is the lamp, and stands at the well. The others are the bees, and stand at the far edge of the square.
2. The lamp calls out a number. The bees must walk that many steps toward the well, and not one more.
3. The lamp may signal a word with the hand. Only four words are allowed: come, stay, fetch and home. Any other word is a foul, and the bees may not move.
4. A bee who reaches the well is safe. A bee who is caught by the lamp goes back to the edge, and waits there with its arms folded.
5. The lamp may not look behind. If it looks behind, the bees may move a step for every look.
6. The game ends when the bell rings. The lamp then counts the bees, and the bee nearest the well becomes the next lamp.
7. There is a rule about the hive, which is the old well cover. A bee may stand on the cover, but only if it is a bee and not a cat.
8. Cats may play, but they must be bees. No cat has ever been a lamp, and no cat has ever admitted to wanting to be one.
9. Apprentices may not play. They are not foul, but they are too fast, and they stand still when told to, which the children say is cheating.
10. Bees must be honest about their steps. A bee who lies about its steps is sent to the cider house for the rest of the evening.
11. A bee who cries is sent to the lamp for a turn. The lamp then has to explain the game to the crying bee, which is the hardest part of the game.
12. The winner is the bee that reaches the well first, and then sits on the well cover and waits to be congratulated. Everybody must congratulate it, even the cat.
13. When the bell rings, every bee freezes where it stands, even in mid-step. The lamp waits until the freeze is over before it counts, and it may not count aloud until it is sure.
14. The lamp may change its word each month, if the children agree. The new word must be one the children can say without laughing, which has ruled out several.
15. These rules are written by the children, and the council has agreed to them with reluctance. They may be changed by the children at any time, with the council's permission, which will be given.
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Rules for the school yard
Set by the teacher, Sorrel, for the children of Three Wells, in summer, when the yard is hot and the wall is warm.

1. Come in when the bell rings. Not before, and not after the second bell, which is for the teacher.
2. Do not climb the wall. It was built by the Copperhold men, who are proud of it, and it was built to be looked at.
3. The cat of the school is not a pupil. She may not be asked to read.
4. A cat that will not stay out will not stay in, either. Leave the door as it is.
5. Pay your debts in emeralds, on the board, before a witness. Bel will be the witness this summer, and Bel will remember.

Teacher Sorrel, who has heard the cat is leaving, and does not believe it.
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Rules of the hamlet hall
Made by the hamlet council for the hall, which is the school in winter, the market in spring, and the place people go when they cannot be at home. These rules are kept on the wall by the door.

1. The hall is open from first bell until the second bell at night. In winter the stove is lit at first bell and banked at the second.
2. Wood for the stove is stacked by the north wall. Take what you need and no more, and carry it in your arms, not in your pockets, because pockets are where the wood ends up in the morning.
3. The bench by the stove is for the old and the cold. Children may sit on it when they are cold, and must leave it when they are warm.
4. The bell at the door is rung for a guest. It is not rung by a child who wants to see if the bell works. We have seen that child. He is now a carter.
5. Anyone who brings a cat into the hall must take it out again. The cat will not agree. Take it out anyway.
6. The notice board is for news, and only for news. Verses are for the songbook. Complaints are for the council, and the council sits in the room behind the stove.
7. In a snowstorm the hall doors are left unbarred, a lamp is hung in the window, and anyone who knocks is let in. Nobody has ever been turned away in a storm, and nobody should be.
8. The hall's apprentice carries the wood, sweeps the floor, and keeps the cups. It does not talk, and nobody expects it to. It does the work, and it does it well.
9. A sick person may have the warm bench for as long as the healer says. The healer says a great deal, so the bench is seldom empty.
10. These rules are kept by the hall keeper, who is kind and tired, and does not like to be asked twice.
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Rules of the first snow
Posted on the tutor house door on the morning of the first snow at Vell, in the 160s. Written by Ivo, who was up early to see it fall.

1. Everyone goes out. Nobody sits by the stove with a book. Books can be read in the spring.
2. Walk on the new snow only once. The second walk is the one the snow remembers.
3. The apprentices come out too. Stand them in the drill yard, in their row, and let them see the snow come down on their copper. Do not let them stand in the drift by the gate. The drift takes a whole morning to dig out.
4. Put a torch at the gate. The snow hides the chalk line, and a child who cannot see the line is a child who falls on it.
5. Sweep the snow from the roof before it gets heavy. Sweep the drill yard steps before the first bell. Sweep the chalk board last, because it is the only one that shows the day.
6. Eat hot bread at noon, with the snow still in your hair. This is an old rule. Nobody remembers who made it, but it is a good one.
7. Cover the crystals. A cold crystal is a sleepy crystal, and a sleepy mind learns badly. Keep them in the dry box, under the blanket, and sing to them if you must.
8. Report any snow that falls on the Archive roof. The roof is a hill, so it is not a roof. Still, report it.
9. No sledges on the drill yard. The yard is not a hill, either, and sledges do not know it.
10. At dusk, count the children. Then count them again. Then give them a hot drink and send them home along the lit road.

It is a beautiful snow. Let it be.
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Rules of the bee yard
By Briar, beekeeper, Three Wells, in the 196th year of the archive

1. Every hive has a name, and every name is written on the lid in white paint.
2. A new hive is named for the child born that year in Three Wells. Pell was born in Blossom, so her hive is the one by the gate.
3. The old hives keep their names, even when the bees are dead. Nobody moves a name to a new box.
4. Do not open a hive in the rain. Do not open a hive in the dark. Do not open a hive while you are angry.
5. Stand to the side when you open the lid. The bees come up from the middle. You do not want to meet them face to face.
6. Take honey from the top box only, and leave enough in the middle box for the winter. A hive that starves is a hive you must bury.
7. Give the children the first comb after the fair, and give the old people the second. Nobody complains about the third comb, because nobody gets it.
8. The smoke is for calm, not for fun. Briar says so, and Briar has been stung more than anyone in the square.

These rules were written on the yard gate, and copied into the book at the inn, and then copied again when the gate rotted. The first copy is the one the children read.
