Minutes from the harbor room
Winter of 202. Written by Corin.

Present were Mayor Darel, Keeper Anet, Sella, Jorin, and three ship builders. We met in the harbor room because snow had covered the bench outside the relay house.

Anet brought a small apprentice from the tower yard. It stood beside her and carried a slate. She said its little mind could follow a few taught orders. It could fetch a tool, come, or stay. It could not answer every question a person asked.

The big mind in the relay house was different. Its crystal was much larger, about the size of a loaf. It stood on a stand and had quickeners around it. Anet keeps the quickeners cool with water. In Northpoint they use snow and ice when they can.

The big mind reads messages through the relays and sends answers back. Anet said it learned from many pages. It does not grow wise just by standing in a tower. Tutors give it examples, test it, and change its weights when it gives a poor answer.

Sella asked if the little apprentice could learn the fish names from the big mind. Anet said it could receive a lesson through the relay, but it still needed many examples. She warned us not to give it a market job before testing it. A wrong name could send a good fish to the wrong basket.

Jorin asked whether the great crystal could make the tower lamp brighter. Anet said the lamp and the mind have different work. The lamp signals that a tower has a message. The mind reads and answers. We do not know every part of how the relay carries its messages.

Corin said our harbor apprentice had called every net a rope. Sella laughed and said it was not wrong enough to be useful. Anet asked that we save the error as a drill example.

We decided to send the apprentice ten examples of nets, ropes, and baskets. Sella will name each thing. Jorin will check the slate. Anet will test the mind on other examples before it sorts goods at the quay.
%%
Minutes: the marsh meeting, frogs
Minutes of the marsh meeting, the twentieth of Swarm, 193. Held in Abel's front room, because the boat house was full of drying nets. Kept by Abel, weaver. Present: 31 people, standing between the looms. Several people touched the wool. Absent: the frogs.

1. The complaint. Teague and Willa came from Vell in spring and took the house on the lower path. They cannot sleep. The frogs begin at dusk and stop at dawn. Willa counted them. She reached eleven hundred and fell asleep, which she says proves nothing.

2. The replies. Old Fen said the frogs were here before the first post. Rook said the frogs tell you when rain is coming. Tansy said she sleeps better with them. When they stop, she wakes.

3. Wren said that when the frogs stop, something is near. A fox, or a storm. Every fisher knows it. Willa asked who listens to a frog. Everyone raised a hand. Willa did not know where to look.

4. The offer. Abel offered to weave thick curtains for the lower path, three layers of wool, at cost. Mayor Marl asked how much quieter the frogs would be behind a curtain. Abel said, "A little." The mayor said that was honest.

5. The vote. Shall the marsh ask the frogs to be quieter? For: 2. Against: 27. Asleep: 2.

6. The ruling. The frogs stay. Four curtains are ordered. The mayor will sleep one night in the house to see.

Added on the second of Melon. Mayor Marl slept at the lower path. She says the curtains work. She woke once in the night, because the frogs stopped. Teague went out with a torch. A fox was at the hen house. The hens are well. Willa asks that it be written down that the frogs may stay.
%%
Letter: Oren to Isla, on the pieces
Dear Isla,
I have filed your notes on the pieces, and the test pages with them, and I want to ask you one thing before I put the seal on the shelf.
The note says a mind reads words cut into pieces and that the same window holds far more. This I understand, or I understand it enough to file it. What I do not understand is why cutting the words into pieces should make a mind guess better. You have not written it down. I looked twice.
You will say nobody knows, and that we should write that plainly and not dress it up. I think you are right. I have added a line to your note: "Why this helps, we do not know. We see that it does." If that is wrong, write to me before the seal goes on.
The archive is quiet this autumn. The copying room is bright and the light wells are clear. Nessa's apprentices come up the hill with their drill boxes and leave mud on the front hall, and I have given up saying so.
One more thing. A child at Three Wells, Bel, has written to us again, to ask how a mind can be wrong and then be less wrong. I have not answered. I think you should. You have a plain way with it that I do not.
Your friend, Oren, clerk at Vell
P.S. The honey from Pell came in. The kitchen counted it twice. It is good honey.
%%
Minutes: a farm folk meeting
Summer. A long meeting in the barn outside Lowmarsh. Kept by Sorrel, who has agreed to keep them for another year, if no one else wants the job. No one else wants the job.
Present: 33 people. The midwife came with the baby Una, now a month old, who slept in a basket on the table.
Business, in order. The mill wheel is turning. The new rim is oak and the old hub is the same old hub. Hobb says if the hub breaks next, he will leave the marsh and take up fishing.
The baby was named formally. Her name is Una Dorrin's-daughter. She was shown to the crystal, which did not sort her.
The crystal. Pell reported that the crystal has been shown a basket of mixed fruit, apples, pears and a quince that nobody had planned for. It sorted the quince with the pears. This was wrong. Pell moved its weights a little toward the right answer. The next quince it sorted correctly. Pell wrote this in the tally.
Sorrel asked if the crystal had learned what a quince was. Pell said no. It had learned that this particular round yellow thing goes with the apples. It was not clever. It had been moved.
Una of Ambrook spoke by letter. She said the way to teach a crystal is to show it what you want, many times, and to move it a little each time it is wrong. She said that a crystal is like a child who does not mind being corrected. She said children do mind, and crystals do not.
Several farmers said the barn is too small for these meetings now. It was agreed to build a bigger barn. It was agreed that a bigger barn is not a priority. The matter was left.
The healer reported that the marsh water is clear this summer and the frogs are many. The reed beds are thick. Two boats are late home from the weir. No one is worried. They were seen at dusk, singing.
The meeting closed after the third bell. The baby woke and cried. The meeting was over.
%%
Gullbank meeting, Leaffall 181
Present: Olwen, Sella, Beren, Tavi the keeper of the shore lamp, and nine people from Gullbank.
The shore lamp went dark twice in the last rain. Tavi cleaned the glass and trimmed the wick. It still blinked once, then twice, then once. Sella said it was a message. Beren said it was asking for a pie.
Olwen watched it for a long while. The lamp has no words. A loose copper piece may be touching the line, said Tavi.
We decided to mend the lamp room before the next storm. Olwen will bring a ladder. Tavi will bring a spare copper piece. Beren will bring no pie unless the lamp asks plainly.
The lamp stayed lit after the meeting. Beren took this as a promise.
%%
Relay log, Lowmarsh, wedding day
Lowmarsh tower log, the twelfth of Longday, 201. Written in short. Kept by Tull.
Haste. Lowmarsh to all towers: a boy of seven has run off from the weaver's house. Brown hair, one boot, a loaf under his arm.
Saltreach to Lowmarsh: seen. Looking along the harbor wall.
Kettle Ridge to Lowmarsh: seen. Biscuit is also out. Brin says it is not the same thing.
Vell to Lowmarsh: seen. Oren has looked in the stacks. Only the cat.
Lowmarsh to all towers: found. Asleep in the boat house, in the boat, holding the bride's shoes. He says he was keeping them safe.
Haste ended. The wedding is at noon. Frogs very loud. Tull.
%%
Minutes: the tutors and clerks at Vell
Held in the copying room at Vell, in the long hall, on the fifth day of Reaping. Present: Oren (clerk), Nessa (tutor), Ilse (tutor), Sedge (keeper of the Vell relay), Dace (for Three Wells), Hobb (for the Halfway Inn), and two copyists. Kept by Oren.

Item one: the test box. Nessa reported that the test pages for the autumn drills are ready, and that they have been sorted. She asked the clerks to confirm that no test page had been copied into the drill pile. Oren confirmed that all copies were checked against the test list by hand. Ilse asked whether any drill page had been shown to a mind by mistake. Nessa said that one had, in the spring, and that the mind was tested again on a new page. It passed.

Ilse asked how many test pages are kept back in the box. Oren said the box holds one hundred and forty pages, from all the drill sets, and that the number does not change. Ilse said that was not what she had asked. Oren said that the box holds exactly the number of pages it was given, and that he would not say more in front of the copyists.

Item two: the festival at the Halfway Inn. Hobb reported the plans. The festival is to be held on the first day of Apple, with lamps and a dance. Dace asked that the drovers and the apprentices both be given a place by the fire. Nessa said the apprentices would stand at the back, as always, and would be given a bowl of soup if they asked for one. She said they never ask.

Item three: the sorting of the records. The copyists asked how many new records had been filed since Blossom. Oren said four thousand and eleven. He asked the copyists to stop calling them "the new ones," since they are not new, only recent.

Decided: the test box stays locked. The copyists will keep the drill pages in their numbered order, and the test pages in their envelope. The festival will go ahead. Nessa will bring a clean test sheet for the apprentices at the inn.

Adjourned. Oren asked that the minutes be filed under Vell, and that they not be mistaken for a notice. He said the difference is important.
%%
The swarm at the wall
From Wick, at Northpoint, autumn of 90.
There is a hive by the old gate post. The bees swarmed in Blossom and hung there like a black rag. Lantern wanted to knock them into a box. I said wait. We waited. They went in on their own.
A swarm is a good thing. It means the hive is too full, and half of it goes off to make another. That is how a town grows. That is how a tower grows. You fill up, and some of you go and start again somewhere.
Orla at Vell has a question about minds. I read it at the meeting. It says: can a drilled mind think? Test it against a person by letter and see if we can tell.
I have thought on it. I am an old soldier of the wall. I have stood in the snow and watched the north, and I have seen nothing come, and I have been glad. I do not know what thinking is. I know a good watch when I see one. I know a mind that gives the right answer, and I know one that will not say it does not know.
Ada says a mind that sorts is a good mind, and a good mind keeps the lamp lit. I say amen to that. But a lamp is not a person. A lamp does not ask you why.
The honey is good this year. Ada sent a pot down the road. I ate some. I did not ask the bees whether it was good. They did not tell me. They just made it.
Wick.
%%
Minutes: the reed festival, 183
Minutes of the Lowmarsh council, at Juno's, the first day of Longday, in the year 183.
Present: Juno, Wren, Olwen, Ned, Tova, and two children who came for the cake.
Said: the reed festival falls on the middle day of Longday, when the frogs sing loudest.
Said: the boat race is for reed boats only. Ned says a plank boat is no reed boat. Tova says a plank is made of reeds if you look at it from the right side. Decided: a plank boat must be tied to a reed boat for the first lap. Nobody has done this before.
Said: the frog singing will be judged by ear. Wren asks who has the best ear. Juno says she does, because cheese makers must listen to cows. Decided: Juno judges, with Wren beside her, at the end of the north walk, which is the only dry place.
Said: the honey prize jar came back from Ambrook empty. Ned says the honey was eaten during the race, which is not a crime. Decided: a new jar from the stall by the north well, and the children taste it first.
Decided: the cake is cut now, before the children ask about it again.

Juno, who kept the minutes, and ate a piece while doing it.
%%
Minutes: the north farm meeting
Kept at the farmhouse, the first of Deepsnow, year 204. Abel wrote them down because nobody else would.
Present: eleven folk of the north farm, Abel the keeper, Rook the runner, and a dog that came in and would not leave.
First. The matter of the relay lamp. Abel told how it broke and how it was fixed. The meeting thanked him. Old Sanna said he should not climb the tower alone in the wind. Abel said he would take Rook. Sanna said Rook is nine. Abel said Rook is faster than his knees. The meeting laughed and moved on.
Second. The matter of the sheep and the beetroot tops. Abel said it was his fault. The meeting said it was the gate and the gate is everyone's. A new latch was agreed. Abel will make it.
Third. The matter of Rook. Rook stood up and said he had stopped to look at the big ship and lost a note, and he was sorry. The meeting said a boy who says sorry in front of eleven folk is worth ten notes. Rook went red. The dog wagged.
Fourth. The road down to the harbor is icy. We will put ash on it. Everyone will bring a bucket.
Fifth. The bees are quiet for the winter. Nobody needs to do anything about the bees.
Sixth. The inn has soup on cold nights. That is not a matter for the meeting but we all agreed it was good news.
Meeting closed. The dog was given soup. It is still here.
%%
Minutes: The curve on paper
Recorded by Dara, night watch at Vell. Apple of 195.
The market meeting was held in the covered row, because rain came down the hill.
Present were Isla, Tutor Ren of Ambrook, Oren, Dace, Pell, four copy clerks, and tutors from three towns.
Isla spread a chart on a dry board. She had marked the size of each mind's crystal along one edge. Along the other edge she marked how long each mind had been drilled and how many pages it had seen. Beside each mark, she wrote the score from a test the mind had never practiced.
The points rose as the crystals grew larger and the drills used more good pages. Isla had drawn a curve through them.
"Before we grow a mind, this curve gives us a fair guess," she said. "A bigger crystal can hold more marks. More clean pages and more drilling help those marks find their work."
Ren said the curve was not a rule that made every mind alike.
"That is so," Isla said. "The pages matter. The tests matter. A poor drill can waste a large crystal."
Oren asked whether the Archive should give every page to the tutors.
The copy clerks said they could make copies, but some pages were spoiled or repeated. The tutors agreed that the clerks should remove those. They also agreed to keep a test box that no mind would read during its drills.
Pell asked if the curve could tell him how many apples to bring next market.
Dace said it could not. Pell said he would bring the same number and blame the curve.
The meeting decided to buy one larger crystal for the Vell tutor house. Isla would draw a plan for its drills before it was grown. Ren would return to Ambrook with a copy of the chart.
The council also agreed to ask each town for clean writing. The relay houses would need large minds, and large minds needed room in their crystals and enough good pages to learn from.
The rain stopped before we finished. Pell had sold all his apples.
%%
Letter: Mab to the archive, on the honey
To Oren at the Archive at Vell, from Mab the candle maker at Ambrook. Winter of 213.
Oren,
You asked the towns for their troubles and their small things, and I am sending both.
Our harvest was poor. The frost came early and the apples were few. We saved one jar of honey, sealed, for the school. Bel, who writes to you, says the school has been well all winter, and the jar is still on its shelf. That is the whole story of the honey. Nobody opened it.
The candles are better than the apples. I taught eleven people to dip, and Priya's boy is the best of them. He holds the wick so still. We made two hundred by Longnight.
I have one question for the archive. A woman came through in Leaffall with a mind in a crystal, a reading mind, and she showed it a page of our tally. It did not read letter by letter like the old ones. She said it reads in pieces, common pieces of words, so one window holds far more. I did not follow all of it. She said the pieces are shared, like the letters "ing" or "ed", and the mind keeps them the way it keeps whole words. Can you send me a primer that says it plainly? I would like to teach it to the school.
Pell says the road is good to Three Wells and poor after. Keep the jars high. Mab.
%%
Minutes: a new hand at the tower
Meeting of the farm folk outside Northpoint, held in Olwen's barn. Winter. Mira, relay keeper, took the minutes. Present: twelve and a dog.

1. Mira told the meeting that the tutor house at Vell has sent an apprentice to help at the tower, to keep the stair lamps and the torches round the foot. It is not yet drilled for the lamp room. It arrived on the cart yesterday, in a crate, with a note: "Handle with care. It is quite new."

2. The meeting asked what the apprentice is called. Mira said it has no name yet. Olwen proposed Lantern. Carried, with a laugh.

3. The meeting asked what it can do. Mira said it can walk, carry and stand still. It can light a torch if shown. It lights each stair lamp in turn, from the bottom, and does not skip any. She said it is a good worker and very quiet.

4. A farmer named Garth asked whether it eats. Mira said no. Garth said then it will be cheaper than the last keeper's boy. Mira said it will be cheaper, and more patient, and will not steal the biscuits.

5. Mira said it makes her feel old. When she was a girl there were four apprentices in the whole land, at the tutor house in Vell, and nobody in the north had seen one. Now there is one at the foot of the tower.

6. Meeting closed. Lantern was brought in from the cold and stood by the stove. The children came to look. It did not mind.
%%
Minutes: the first looking, north house
Minutes of the north council, winter. Present: the two tutors, Mira, Juno, and Lantern, who is not a member but was asked to hold the lamp.

The tutors reported. They had looked inside the crystal of the house, with the lamp, at the place where the layers meet the stream. They said what they found.

Some of the layers do one thing. One layer finds the edges of letters. Another finds the words those letters make. A third finds which words tend to stand near each other.

Some of the layers they could not name. They called the stream the line that runs through all of them. They could see it carry a number from the front of the house to the back. They could not see what the number was.

The tutors said they had found some of it, and not the rest. They said so twice, to be sure the clerk wrote it down.

Resolved: the clerk shall write the tutors' words exactly, and no clerk shall add to them.
Resolved: the second looking shall be held after Longnight, when the house is quiet.
Objection: Mira asked whether the house would mind. Nobody answered. The house was not in the room, though it is always listening.
%%
Minutes: repair of the school door
Present were Dace, Mistress Pell, the baker Jory, Enna from the south road, and seven people from the market. We met in the school house. The children had painted the door blue again, though the paint was meant to be saved for the spring fair.

Mistress Pell said the lower hinge had come loose. The door sticks when the air is wet. Two children pushed it hard yesterday, and one fell on the step. She asked for a new hinge and a flat stone at the door.

The hinge will be made from iron at Copperhold. Dace will send a note with Pell's next cart. The town will pay one emerald for the iron and one loaf for the smith's supper. Jory said the smith would prefer two loaves. The meeting agreed to ask him.

For the stone, we chose a piece from the wall store. The children will help carry it after lessons. They may paint the old stone with flowers if the paint is left over. Mistress Pell will keep the brush until then.

Enna said the cow had eaten hay in the night. Wren had washed its nose and left a jar of bitter leaf by the stall. The cow still has a cough, but it stood and drank. Enna will keep it apart from the herd for two more mornings. She asked whether the town should close the south road to carts. We decided no. The road is firm, and the cow is behind a fence.

Pell said a Saltreach boatman had told him that a ship twice the length of the old pier was being made. Hara, who buys fish from Saltreach, said it was only a larger boat with a broad deck. Pell said the boatman had measured it with a rope. Dace said neither report was enough to put on the notice board. We did agree that the school map should show the harbor wall as it is now, not as a rumor may make it.

A child asked if the sea had a far shore. No one at the meeting knew. Mistress Pell said the lesson would be about rivers tomorrow.

The door will be mended before the fair. The bell will ring at noon for the work crew. Jory will send the bread, if the smith accepts one loaf.
%%
Minutes: the test halls at Vell
Held in the long room at Vell, on the twentieth day of Reaping. Present: Oren (clerk, who kept the record), Nessa (tutor), Ilse (tutor), Oda (tutor, from the north hall), the keeper of the Vell relay, and four tutors from the lesser halls who had come to see the scores. Kept by Oren, who asks that these minutes be filed with the summer contest, and not with the drills.

Item one: the contest. The summer contest was set by the council. Each hall was to send one mind to be tested on the same unseen drill. The drill was of forty cards. None of the minds had seen them, and the cards had been sealed by the clerks until the morning of the test.

Nessa asked why the contest was needed at all, when each hall already tested its own minds. Oda said a hall tests its own minds with its own cards, and it can be generous about the cards without knowing it. A contest uses one set of cards for all halls, and nobody can be generous to his own. Ilse said that was the whole point. Each tutor had to show that his mind could answer the questions that every other hall had also been asked.

Item two: the scores. The north hall scored thirty-four. Vell scored thirty-one. Ilse's hall scored twenty-nine, which was a surprise to Ilse. The lesser halls scored between twenty-four and twenty-seven.

Ilse asked why her hall had done worse. Nessa said that Ilse's mind had been drilled on the old cards, and that the new cards had changed a little. Oda said that was a fair answer. Ilse said it was not an answer she wanted to hear, and that she would drill the mind again.

Item three: the honesty. The tutors agreed that the contests had made them honest. They said that before the contests, every hall had believed its own mind was best. Now every hall could see the scores, and nobody could pretend. Oren said the clerks were glad of it, since the clerks had to file the pretending too.

Decided: the scores will be filed. The lesser halls will receive the cards, so that they can test again in Frost. The north hall will send a tutor to Vell to explain how its minds were drilled. Ilse's hall will drill its mind again before the next contest, and will not complain about the cards.

Adjourned. Oren asked that the minutes end with a line that said the contest had been fair. He said it was the only line he was sure of.
%%
Minutes of the shaft board, summer
Present: Hesk, for the shaft. Bram, for the levels. Ola, for the sorting shed. Old Fenn, for the memory of the board. Lise, taking the minutes.
Absent: Clank, who is on the shift, which is correct.

Item one: the water. The sump at the bottom of the fourth level is filling faster than it drains. Bram says the drain is silted. The board decided that two men will go down with buckets, and that the buckets will come back up with the water, and not with the men.

Item two: the count. The copper for the week is fourteen carts. The iron is six. The coal is ten, and poor, and the sorting shed asks whether it may go to the forge. The forge does not thank them.

Item three: the borrowed horse. The ore cart on the steep road needs a horse for three days. The board asked Ida at the Halfway for her grey horse. Ida will lend it if it is brought back on the day it is promised, and nobody races it on the hill. Hesk says nobody races anything on that hill. The board agreed.

Item four: the bet. Old Fenn says the copper on the second level is finished. Bram says it has at least a month. Hesk has put a jar of cider on the table. The first man to be wrong buys it and drinks it at the mine gate, in front of the cook. Lise holds the jar, and has been asked not to taste it.

Item five: the rubbing out. The name list was rubbed out too early, twice, by a man who was not on the shift. The names are to be rubbed out only when the shift is up, and only by the man at the board.

Decided: the board meets again on the first day of Melon, at the noon bell, at the board.
%%
Letter: Tam to Mira, late autumn
Mira, it is late autumn here and the ridge is all wind. The top field is cut and the beetroot is in. Pip pulled every beetroot in the long field and only sat on three. I said that was good.
The well in our yard ran dry. The bottom is cracked and the water goes down through it into the dark. We use the ridge well now and carry it up in the cart. The pig pen is muddy and the pigs are happy.
A tutor came from Vell to our house at the edge of the ridge. Nessa sent her. She sat by our fire for two days with a crystal the size of a fist and a box of small tools. She said she was looking inside it, to see which part of a mind does what.
She said she found some of it. One part answers for numbers, one for orders, one for where things are. The rest she could not find. She said the rest may be everywhere at once, or nowhere, and she could not tell which.
I gave her our best cider. She wrote down that the cider was good. She said people will read that note in a hundred years and want cider. I said I hope they get some.
The wedding is on the ninth of Frost. Pip is to carry the rings and I am to stand up with the groom and say nothing. Wish me luck with the saying nothing.
Keep the lamps lit.
Tam
%%
Minutes: the inn meeting at the Halfway
Minutes of the meeting at the Halfway Inn, autumn. Kept by Yarrow, schoolteacher.
Present: Yarrow, who called it. Dace, mayor of Three Wells. Pell, merchant. The innkeeper, who kept the fire up. Sixteen others, standing at the back.
First: the storm. The storm took the roof off the east barn and dropped an oak across the road by the third waymark. Pell says his cart was two days late. The innkeeper says he lost a shutter. All agreed: mend the road first, the barn after. Dace will ask Copperhold for timber. Pell will carry the letter.
Second: the birds. A traveler said the birds went north two weeks early this year. Another said they went late. No one could agree. The innkeeper said his hens have not laid since the storm. Yarrow said the school has no answer and will not pretend to.
Third: the lost letter. A letter came to the inn for a family at Ambrook, and it is gone. The innkeeper looked in every room. It may have gone out with the storm. All agreed: leave a note at the notice board at Three Wells, and one at the bridge.
Decided: mend the road, ask for timber, leave two notes, and meet again after the next market.
The fire was good. The meeting ended late.
%%
Minutes: the Icewater meeting
Minutes of a meeting of the hamlet of Icewater, near Northpoint, held in the net loft in autumn, on the evening after a market day. Kept by Briar, net mender. Written fair the next morning. A copy was sent to the Archive at Vell, because the tutor asked.

Present: thirty people, two dogs and a goat that came in with the snow.

First business. The market. The market was good. The fish sold fast, the nets sold slow, and the wool did not sell at all, because it was too warm for wool. Next market, we will bring honey.

Second business. The boat of Hale was late home. It was eleven hours late. The meeting was worried. A boy was sent to the cliff with a lamp. The boat came in with the dawn, with no fish at all. Hale said the sea had been too quiet. He said he had never seen it so still. Rue said it was a good reason to be late, because a still sea is a fine place to sleep. The meeting has agreed to forget this.

Third business. The visiting tutor, Hana, was asked to speak once more of the stream, because the meeting had been talking of it all autumn.

Hana said she would tell it as plainly as she could, using what the meeting already knew.

She said: a mind is made of layers. When a mind is shown a drill, it reads it, guesses, and the guess is checked. If the guess is wrong, each layer is told how much of the blame is its own. This is called passing the blame back.

She said: in a mind with only a few layers, this works well. In a mind with many layers, the blame had to pass through each layer on the way back, and each layer changed it a little. After ten layers, the blame was a whisper. After twenty, it was a rumor. The first layers learned nothing, because they could not hear.

She said: the stream mends this. The stream is a path that runs through the whole mind. Each layer takes from the stream, looks, finds something, and puts what it found back into the stream on top of what was there. So the stream is never thrown away. It only grows richer, layer by layer, until the last layer reads it and gives the answer.

She said: and the blame, going back, runs along the same path. Nothing blocks it. The first layer hears the same as the last.

Old Brin asked: if the stream just keeps growing, will it grow too big? Hana said that was a good question, and that the tutors had found an answer, though she would speak of it another night. She said it was to do with keeping the numbers even.

Rue asked: do you know why a layer finds what it finds? Hana said, no. She said the tutors drill the mind, and the mind learns, and what each layer comes to find is something nobody put there. She said a crystal learns, and nobody wrote down why. The meeting was quiet for a time, and then somebody said the soup was getting cold.

Fourth business. Thanks were given to the tutor, and to Hale, who was asleep in the corner. A collection of ten emeralds was made for the net loft roof.

Meeting closed. Briar.
%%
Minutes: the year's council, 205
Minutes of the Lowmarsh council, at Juno's, the first day of Longday, in the year 205. It was a long meeting, and the cheese was getting warm.
Present: Juno, Wren, Olwen, Ned, Tova, Perrin, who came to complain, and Sim, who came to listen and fell asleep twice.

Said: the copper from the east well went to Copperhold in a sack, with a note, in the year 190. The sack came back three months later with a note in another hand: Received. Thank you. The council is owed a share, and the share is in a box in Copperhold, waiting for someone to fetch it. Tova says she will not fetch it. Ned says he will not carry it. Decided: Olwen fetches it on the next cart that goes up the hill.

Said: the new road has been used for years, and it has had one waymark that is correct and two that are guesses. Olwen says the guesses were made by Ned. Ned says the guesses were made by the reeds. Decided: the waymarks are carved again by a carver from the Long Road, who has promised not to guess.

Said: Wren's healing house roof lets the rain in above the bed by the window. The rain has come in every Thaw for years. Wren says she has stopped asking. Decided: the roof is done in Leaffall, before the frost, with reeds from the wet edge, dried through the winter.

Said: the cat from the Brown Hen has been seen in the boat house again. Ned says the cat is not from the Brown Hen. Olwen says it is, because the Brown Hen says so. The cat says nothing. Decided: the boat house does not feed the cat, and someone who can say it with a straight face tells the cat this.

Said: the frog singing was judged last midsummer by Juno and Wren. Perrin says the judges were not impartial, and that the winner was the frog nearest the cheese. Juno says the frog was not near the cheese. The cheese was near the frog. Decided: next year the judges are a child and Sim, who cannot be bribed, because he is always asleep. The frog is left out of it.

Said: the apprentice at the boat house can carry two boats at once, and walk them up the slip without being told twice. Ned says it can also carry frogs, which nobody asked it to do. Decided: the apprentice carries boats. Frogs are not carried by apprentices, carters or cheese makers.

Said: someone has been leaving bread crusts on the north walk for the foxes, and the foxes have come to expect them. Wren says the foxes are a nuisance. Tova says they are thin. Decided: the crusts go to the hens, and Juno tells the hens.

Decided: the meeting is closed. The next meeting is in Leaffall, in this kitchen, with the cheese already cut.

Kept by Juno, who was there the whole time. The minutes are in the cupboard with the healing house notes. The cheese is in the cellar.
%%
Catalog note: Abel's pattern book
Craft shelf. Entered the ninth of Melon, 203, by Ina, clerk.
Abel's pattern book: forty-one weaving patterns, from the last house on the boardwalk at Lowmarsh. It came on Pell's cart in a reed basket. A blanket was wrapped round it against the rain. The blanket is Abel's work too. It is not part of the record. The clerks have been asked to stop admiring it.
Each pattern is a small square on squared paper. Threads are tied to the margin: red from beetroot, yellow from dandelion, blue from cornflower. Two threads came loose on the road. We tied them back.
Pattern 19 is called "frogs on a log", and has frogs. Pattern 30 is called "a plain one". It is not plain.
On page 22 there is a small blue footprint, a cat's. Abel's note beside it says: "Not mine." We have left it in.
Abel writes that his mother began the book. He asks that it be kept for the next weaver who wants it. He says the blanket from pattern 19 is on his own bed. A cat is on the blanket.
Copied and read back aloud by a second clerk. The book goes to the deep shelves. The copy goes to the craft shelf.
Ina
%%
Minutes: after the contest
Meeting of the Hillfoot farms, in Odo's barn. The first of Melon. Kept by Yarrow, roofer. Present: all who could still stand.

1. The song contest is over, and was held to be a success. Nine songs. Two were about pigs, in spite of the rule. Rook says the rule was only a suggestion.
2. The judges were Lise, old Kit, and the youngest child in the barn. The youngest child, Wick, asked for the songs to be sung again so she could think. The judges allowed it. This took until midnight.
3. The result. First, the song of Gwen, about the sheep that walked into the lamp room. Second, the song of old Kit, which has fourteen verses and was loved by nobody and applauded by everybody. Third, the howl of Odo's dog, in the middle of the sixth song. The judges held it was the most honest sound of the night.
4. Rook asked for a rematch. Declined.
5. Decided: the contest will be held every Longday. The jar of honey goes to Gwen. Yarrow was asked to write the next song. He said he would rather climb the oak.
%%
Minutes on a place for travelers

Autumn, the 109th year of the archive.
At the Three Wells market board.

Present were Dace, Alder, Sella from Vell, Pell the merchant, Hara from Kettle Ridge, and two travelers who gave their names as Linn and Orr. They had walked from Saltreach with wet boots and one dry loaf between them.

Pell asked for an inn on the Long Road, not far from Three Wells. The Brown Hen is a good day's walk from here, he said, but some carts cannot reach it before dark. Hara agreed. Her horse had stood in rain by the road while she searched for a safe yard.

Dace asked who would keep the inn. Hara said her cousin Lute had a house near the west road. It has a dry room and space for six beds. Lute wants to mend the roof and build a stable. He will need oak, stone, and help with the well.

Alder said the school could send older pupils to mark the road to the house. They will paint no signs on trees. The road posts will show the way, and a torch will stand by the turn. Linn said travelers can see a torch from the road on a clear night. Orr said they could not see it through a hill. We agreed to place the post where the road bends.

Sella offered two spare lanterns from Vell. Pell will carry them on his next trip. Hara will bring oak from the ridge. The square will provide cobblestone from its store, after Dace counts what remains. Lute will make beds and keep a list of travelers.

We decided that the inn may open when the roof is sound and the well is covered. Its first meal will be bread, beetroot, and soup. Mara offered a starter loaf for the kitchen. Pell offered to test the beds. Hara said he would sleep there first, since Pell complains about every mattress.

The travelers asked whether the inn would have a name. Lute has chosen the Way Rest. Alder wrote it on the meeting board. A road is easier to follow when each place has a name.
%%
Minutes: a letter that did not arrive
Council of Copperhold, summer. Taken by Dace, mayor of Three Wells, as a guest.

Present: nine, and the mine hall cat.

The first matter was a letter from Vell. The council had asked the tutors to send a teacher for the sorting shed, to show the sorters how to drill an apprentice. The letter back from Vell was said to have been sent on the third of Longday. It had not come. The letter was asked after at the post house and at the relay tower. Neither had it.

The tower keeper said she had received no note about a letter. The post house said the cart had come in with seven letters, and none was from Vell.

Hesk said it was probably in a sack in the cellar, with the turnips.

The council voted to send a new request by relay. This was done at once. Vell answered in an hour: the first letter was sent. The tutor will come in ten days with the second.

The cellar was searched. The letter was not there. The turnips were fine.

Agreed: that no one will be blamed. A letter is a small thing. A teacher is a larger one.
%%
Minutes: the cart mind, Longday
Present: Odo the carter, Hetta of the north stall, and Vane the clerk.
The cart mind failed its test on the north road. It turned back at the first bridge.
A mind is tested on what it was never drilled on. Otherwise the test shows only what it has memorized.
Decided: the cart mind will carry grain between the wells until it passes a new test.
Decided: the new test box will hold ten carts and ten roads, none of them the north road.
Odo asked the council to note that the cart is still heavy.
%%
Minutes: the gathering at the edge
Minutes of a meeting of the neighbors of the lane at the edge of Vell, held at Nessa's house in a hard winter. Written by Nessa, who keeps the lane's book. The year is not given. Nobody remembers to say.
Present: Nessa, Dell, Marrow, Brenna, old Tobias, the widow Fenn, Orrin the gardener, Reed, and eight others.
First matter: the road. The snow has closed the north road to the carts. The lane is clear. Marrow has cleared it himself, with a spade, and says he needs no thanks.
Second matter: the great melon. Orrin grew a melon in the cellar this autumn, and it has grown too large. It cannot be got out through the door. Orrin says he did not plan it. Dell says that is exactly what a man who planned it would say. The widow Fenn asks if it can be eaten, and what we do with the rind. Decided: a day will be named, and the lane will come with spoons. The rind will go to the pigs.
Third matter: a rumor from the north road. Reed had it from a carter that the relay at Northpoint did not answer for a night. Brenna had it from another carter that it answered, but late. Tobias said he had heard that the tower keeper was ill. Nessa said she had a letter from the keeper only last week, and it was a cheerful letter, about the snow and the foxes. No one could say more.
Fourth matter: the lights. Some said they saw them. Some said they did not. Those who saw them do not agree what they were.
Fifth matter: a neighbor of the lane, who is leaving. Orrin says he will go in spring. He is going south, to a cousin, and will take his vines. He says he will not be long. We told him we will keep his place.
Decided: nothing more can be decided tonight. Keep the torches lit. Look after each other. The tea was good.
Closed after the ninth hour. The next meeting is the first dry evening of Thaw.
%%
Minutes: the drill that went badly
Held in the keeper's kitchen at Northpoint tower, on the fourth day of Melon, after the drill of the morning. Present: Mira (keeper), Merle (well digger), Ennis (clerk, from Vell, who came up for the summer testing), Rill, and the apprentice Lantern. Kept by Mira. This is recorded because it went badly, and the council will want to know why.

Ennis reported on the morning drill. It was a drill for stores, set on cards from the test box, with each card showing a sack and a shelf. Lantern was to sort the sacks onto the shelves in order.

Lantern sorted the first card correctly. It sorted the second. On the third card, the sack was marked with a fox. Lantern did not know that fox was a store sign on the Vell cards, not a sack. It put the fox on the shelf for foxes, which is by the door, and then it stood still.

Ennis said the drill had been wrong. The card had been mixed into the store pile by a clerk, and the clerk had since been told. Mira said that was not the point. Lantern had done what the card showed it, and the card had been wrong.

Merle asked whether it was the fault of the apprentice or of the drill. Ennis said that a mind is only as good as its cards, and the cards are only as good as the sorting. Mira said the sorting is done by people, and people make mistakes, and the test box is there so that a mistake shows up before a mind goes out to the fields.

Ennis said the test box had caught it this time. It had not been shown the card in its lessons, only in the drill, and the test had been set to show whether the mind understood the sacks or only the cards. Lantern had only remembered the card. It had not understood the sack.

Decided: the card will be taken out of the drill and returned to the test box. Lantern will be given the drill again tomorrow, without the fox. Ennis will write to Vell about the clerk. Mira asked that the clerk be told kindly. Ennis said he would.

Lantern was asked whether it understood the decision. It did not answer. Mira said it would answer by doing, and it did, in the morning, by sorting every sack correctly without stopping once.
%%
Minutes: the big melon
Minutes of the meeting held at the house at the edge of Vell, in winter. Taken by Nessa.
Present: nine neighbors and Nessa.
A melon, the size of a barrel, was grown by Orrin in a cellar with a lamp. It is too big for the door. It cannot be taken out.
Decided: the melon is to be eaten in the cellar. Everyone brings a spoon.
Orrin asks that it be written that he did not mean to grow it so large.
%%
Minutes: spring water and the west road
Present were Dace, Pell the road merchant, Enna, Hara the fish seller, Jory, Mistress Pell, and nine others. The school room was still damp from the storm. We put the chairs near the light well and kept the papers on a dry shelf.

The first matter was the west road. Rain had cut a groove beside the bridge, and a cart wheel had slipped into it. No one was hurt. The cart carried turnips, which rolled into the ditch and were washed clean before they could be gathered. Pell said he lost four. Jory said four turnips are not a town matter. Pell said they were large turnips. We decided to set stones along the groove and lay packed earth on top. The work will begin when the road has dried. The bridge itself is sound.

The second matter was the south well. Its water is clear, but it smells of mud after heavy rain. Hara says this is usual in spring. Enna says she has not tasted it since her cow took ill. Wren has not yet sent her note about the cow. Dace asked that no one draw water from the low trough until the mud settles. The school will use the east well for its morning jars.

Mistress Pell asked for a covered box beside the notice board. Notices blow away when the wind comes through the square. The box will be made from oak, with a glass pane in the lid. The town will pay for the oak. Pell will bring the glass from Vell in his next cart. It is not to be used for cakes, though Jory said cakes would be safer in a box with a lid.

A traveler who slept at the inn said the Deep Works had begun to hum after dark. He said he heard it from the mine road. A woman from Copperhold said the sound was wind in the hill and that there was no cause to turn back from the mine. Pell said his cousin had heard no hum at all. Dace asked us to keep these accounts separate. No one from Three Wells was present when the sound was heard.

The travelers will be given beds as usual. The keeper will trim the inn lamps at dusk. The council will ask the next Copperhold cart for a plain report on the road and the mine gate, not a tale from a stranger.

Jory asked that the market stalls return to their old places after the road work. Hara asked for the space by the east well. The pot seller was present this time and said she would move one place nearer the bakery. We agreed. Hara will keep her fish covered, and Jory will keep his flour inside.

The cow stood in the yard when the meeting ended. It had eaten a little hay. Enna says it is a good sign, but she will wait for Wren's word.
%%
Minutes: the lamp, mended
Meeting of the Hillfoot farms, in Odo's barn, outside Vell. The sixth of Longday. Kept by Yarrow, roofer.

Present: Odo, Lise, Rook, old Kit, Hesper, Gwen from the next farm, and the dog.
1. Yarrow reported on the lamp. The new pane is in and the lamp was lit at dusk. Vell answered at once. Three Wells answered after a pause. The keeper there says he thought the lamp had died, and was saying a few words over it.
2. The oak that broke the glass hangs over the lamp. It is Rook's oak. Rook says it has hung there for a hundred years. Gwen says that is a hundred years of branch. Decided: Rook will trim it. Rook agreed after the third time of asking.
3. The pane cost 4 emeralds. The relay board at Vell will pay. Yarrow asks for no pay, only a pie. Lise will bake it. Old Kit asks that the pie not be about a pig.
Carried without a vote. The dog was asleep.
%%
Minutes: the drovers and the test pages
Held in the Halfway Inn, in the long room by the hearth, on the first evening of Apple, at the request of the drovers. Present: Hobb (innkeeper), Oss (carter), Pell, Dunn, Pim (apprentice of the drovers), and a clerk from Vell, Ferris, who came up with the autumn cart. Kept by Hobb.

Dunn asked the clerk to explain why the Vell book carries a test box at all. He had heard, he said, that some of the pages are kept back from the lessons, so the mind never sees them.

Ferris said yes, and explained as follows. The clerks take out the copies that are spoiled, and the pages that are repeated too often. Some pages are taken from the drills entirely. These go into the test box. No mind is ever shown them. When a mind has finished its lessons, the tutor takes a page from the test box and shows it, and the mind has to answer.

Oss asked why. He said he would rather the mind see everything, since it might learn more that way.

Ferris said that a mind shown every page learns the pages. A mind tested on the pages it was shown has only remembered them, and remembering is not the same as knowing. The test box shows whether the mind has learned what the pages were about. If the mind can answer the test pages, it has learned. If it can only answer the drill pages, it has learned the drills.

Pell asked how the clerks chose which pages to keep back. Ferris said it was done at random, by a tutor, with the eyes closed. He said that if the clerks chose the pages by hand, they would choose the easy ones, and then the test would be no test at all.

Dunn said it sounded like a fair way to run a game of cards. Ferris agreed that it was the same idea.

Pim asked whether apprentices ever saw the test box. Ferris said only the tutors open it, and only the clerks carry it. Pim said that was a shame, since it looked very interesting. Ferris said that was why it was locked.

Decided: the drovers will ask the Vell clerks for a copy of the test rule for the book at the inn, so the apprentices on the road can be tested the same way. Hobb will keep the copy by the riddle board.
%%
Minutes: the poor harvest
Council of Copperhold, summer. Taken by Dace, mayor of Three Wells, who came to ask about coal. The council is a long table in the mine hall.

Present: eleven. Hesk spoke for the miners, and the grain keeper for the town.

The grain keeper said the wheat on the ridge failed this year. A cold spring, then a dry month. The harvest is one third of the usual.

Hesk said the mine can pay more for grain. The mine has copper and coal to spare. The ridge has no copper.

The council agreed to send twenty carts of coal to Kettle Ridge, and to take grain in return, a sack for a sack.

Dace offered the Three Wells granary for the rest. Accepted, with thanks.

The meeting ended with soup. It was thin soup, and nobody said a word.
%%
School essay: what I saw in the storm
By a child at Three Wells, for Yarrow.
On the ninth the sky went dark in the morning. The wind came over the ridge and the school door banged. Yarrow said stay inside and we did.
The rain was loud on the roof. We could not hear the bell. We did sums and then we drew the storm on paper. I drew the oak falling on the road. It fell slow, my father said, and then all at once.
After, we went out. The road had a river in it. The third waymark had its torch out and its little stones all fallen off. I put one stone back.
My mother says the lights in the north are just stars falling. My uncle says they are fires on the hills. My friend says they are looking at us. I do not know what I think. I think the storm was the biggest thing this autumn.
Next day the birds came back to the yard.
%%
Northpoint log, autumn
Kept by Lantern, at the north tower, for Mira.
The storm reached us on the tenth. Snow, not rain. The lamp room glass is whole. One pane cracked and I patched it with wax and a board.
The copper ring iced over. I scraped it. The signal lamp burned all night.
Mira says the big mind in the relay house is well. The quickeners are packed in snow. It answers slow in the cold. We keep the door shut.
The lights came again on the twelfth, low over the hills, three of them, moving slow. I watched from the lamp room until my feet went numb. Mira watched too and said only: they were not ours. Then she went down to her desk.
A traveler at the relay house says Saltreach is building another big ship. He says whole families are going. He says nobody knows what is across the water.
I do not know. I keep the lamp lit and write it down.
%%
Minutes: the boardwalk posts
Meeting at the boat house, Lowmarsh, Sowing. Taken by Ansel. Present: eleven.
1. Tull reported that the third post from the end of the boardwalk leans. It has leaned since the flood. Fen said it has leaned so long that it is now the straightest post, because the others have leaned to match.
2. Ossie said that a leaning post is a post that will fall, and when it falls, the boardwalk goes into the marsh with whoever is standing on it. That is usually Fen.
3. Decided: three new posts of oak, to be driven before the cart season. Fen to hold the ladder. Fen to stand on the dry side.
Fen asked that his objection be written down. It is written down.
%%
Minutes at Nessa's: the carter's news
Present: Nessa, Oren, Linnet, Piper, and Rook the carter, who had come down the north road that afternoon and was given soup.

Rook said that the keeper at the last tower on his road had told him of lights in the sky over the north. Three nights, low down, seen from Northpoint. The keeper had not seen them himself. He had it from a keeper who had it from Mira.

What were they? The meeting did not agree. Linnet said falling stars. Piper said fires, a long way off. Rook said a boy at the tower told him they were looking at us. Oren asked who the boy was. Rook did not know.

Nessa asked what Mira herself had said. Rook said she had sent only four words. They were not ours.

Nobody spoke for a while. Then Piper asked if the soup was hot enough. It was.

Agreed: Oren will file a record under North, lights, with Rook's words as he said them and no guesses. Rook will carry a letter back up the road to Mira, asking what she saw.

Not agreed: what to tell the school.

Slate sat on the window ledge the whole evening, looking at the dark.
%%
Minutes: the hamlet council, autumn
The hamlet council met at the fish market on a wet evening in Leaffall. Corin the shipwright was away at the yard, so old Beda the netmender took the chair. Pell kept the minutes.
First, the second slip. Corin had asked the council last month for a longer stone ramp for the big ships, and the council had said yes, in Thaw. Old Beda says the wood store is full, but the shed leaks. We will mend the shed roof first. The boat families will bring what oak they have. There is enough, if the season is kind.
Second, the debt. The yard owes the boat families forty emeralds for the nets and the ropes. The families agreed to take it in two parts: twenty now, twenty at the thaw. Corin sent word that he would pay it in one part. He did not say how. The families laughed and said the yard would find a way.
Third, the birth. Corin's daughter has a son. The council gave a loaf and a jar of honey to the house, and Beda will carry them.
Fourth, the relay house. The keepers ask for a cart of ice before the frost. The council agreed.
Decided: mend the shed, pay the second twenty at the thaw, carry the loaf and honey, send the ice. The rain kept us short. Meeting closed in good order.
Pell, clerk, autumn of 231
%%
Minutes: a birth, and the first lesson
Summer. A meeting of the Lowmarsh farm folk in the barn, called in a hurry. Kept by Sorrel, who dug the well.
Present: 21 people, a midwife, two babies' worth of noise.
The meeting was called because Hannet, wife of Dorrin, gave birth in the night. A girl. Mother and child are well. The midwife says she is loud. This was entered first, and the barn clapped.
Second business. Una of Ambrook has sent word that she will come to Lowmarsh to show the farm folk her sorting crystal. She asks for a barrel of apples and a barrel of pears, and a long table. Dorrin asked why a crystal needs to sort apples. Sorrel said she would ask Una when she came.
It was agreed that the barn will be swept. It was agreed that the baby will not be named in the minutes until the naming day. The name was said anyway. It is Una, after the visitor, who has not yet come.
Third business. The mill wheel. Hobb reported that the new rim is nearly done. It will be set in on the ninth.
Meeting closed with a song, which the baby slept through.
%%
Minutes: Nessa's house, Thaw
Present: Nessa, Oren, Linnet, Piper the lamp tender, and Aven, a tutor visiting from Copperhold, who sat by the fire and said little.

1. The roof of the drill room. Wick will mend it after the rains. Agreed.
2. Nessa's cat, Slate, will not stay out. She comes in at dusk and sits by the door. Piper's cat does the same. Linnet says it is the cold. Piper says it is not that cold. No more was said.
3. Aven brings greetings from Copperhold. They are well there.

Next meeting the first of Sowing. Everyone went home before dark.
%%
Minutes: Copperhold town meeting
Present: Dace? No. Present: Mayor Hesk, Jem the bridge keeper, Clank the apprentice, and forty others. Spring of 186.
First: the bridge over the low stream. Jem says the oak rail is soft. The stone is good. We vote oak again, with a cobblestone footing. Six hands against. Jem writes it down.
Second: the wedding of Bara and Tobin. They will stand at the mine gate on the third of Blossom. The kitchen will make the soup. Everyone brings bread. Clank will carry the benches.
Third: the humming. No one hears it now. Hesk says the deep levels are cold and quiet. We move on.
Fourth: moving house. Old Rill is moving down from the top row to the flat by the forge. Her knees are bad. We need eight people and a cart on the ninth. Jem will bring the cart. Clank will haul.
Fifth: the lamp at the shaft head is out. It is fixed.
Meeting ended. Next meeting the second of Swarm.
%%
Minutes: the meeting of Blossom
Meeting at the boat house, Lowmarsh, the twelfth of Blossom. Taken by Ansel. Present: twenty-one. The boat house holds nineteen. Two stood on the stair.

1. The copper. Ossie read the answer from Hesk of Copperhold, which came on Pell's cart. Hesk wrote: Good copper. Better than ours. Do not dig it with a spoon. He offers 4 emeralds a cart, if Copperhold sends the diggers and the carts and Lowmarsh keeps the weir. Fen asked what Hesk wants for himself. Ossie read: Nothing. He wants to see the frogs.

2. The discussion of the copper took an hour. Rook said it should stay in the ground, like a bank. Wren said a bank is no good if you cannot spend it. Hale said the copper could pay for new boardwalk posts. Decided: yes, in the dry weeks of summer, Copperhold to do the work. Lowmarsh gets 4 emeralds a cart, and one in four goes to the school roof. Vote: nineteen for, one against, one asleep.

3. The spiders. The spiders have come back to the reed barn and brought cousins. They have been seen in the kitchen of the inn. The cook asked for a decision. Decided: the cook may use a broom. The barn spiders stay.

4. The relay lamp. Tull reported that the glass is cracked again. The cause was a frog. It sat on the glass in the cold and froze to it. The frog is well. The glass is not. Decided: new glass from Saltreach.

5. Wren reported that Moss has learned to sort the new bottles by size and color. Moss did not come to the meeting. Moss was sorting.

6. Tansy's complaint about the mud was heard again. Decided: the mud will be heard next year.

7. Other business. A child asked if the frogs can vote. Decided: no. A second child asked if the cat can. Decided: the cat has voted before, and we did not like the result.

The meeting closed when the lamp ran out of oil. The oil had been put in the wrong lamp.
%%
Minutes: the boardwalk, Melon
Minutes of the Lowmarsh council, kept in Juno's kitchen at the edge of the marsh, the second day of Melon.
Present: Juno, cheesemaker. Wren, healer. Olwen, carter. Ned, who owns the boats. Tova, who does not own a boat, and says so often.
Said: the boardwalk by the well is wet again. Ned says it was wet before the council was made. Tova says that is not a decision.
Said: a child went through the third plank on Thaw. The child is fine. The plank is not.
Decided: new planks from the Ambrook mill, paid from the council box, carried by Olwen and nailed down by Ned.
Decided: no one stands on the north end of the walk to talk. Olwen would not say why. Juno asks that this be written anyway.
Decided: the meeting closes at dusk, when the torches are lit, so everyone can find the way home.

Kept by Juno, who makes the cheese and keeps the minutes, because nobody else would.
%%
Minutes: the council at the Brown Hen
Minutes of the council of the Long Road towns, held in the big room of the Brown Hen, in spring of the 201st year. Kept by Dunn, a miner from Copperhold, who volunteered because he was the only one who could still see the table.

Present: Marda of the Brown Hen, Hobb of the Halfway Inn, the Oak Post's baker, the carters' steward, two millers, a relay keeper from the south line and Dunn.

Item one. The melon. A melon of the Oak Post garden was brought in on a cart. It weighs more than a child. The baker says it is the largest melon ever grown on the Long Road, and that it is his. The carters' steward says it is a danger to the carts. The council agreed to see it. It was seen. It was agreed that the melon is very large. Marda asked how it would be cut. The baker said with a saw. The council agreed that a saw is the right tool, and that nobody in the room has one that size.

Item two. The mind in the relay house. The relay keeper from the south line reported that the new mind at his house has been trained to a smaller crystal. It can now be made in less than half the marks. It was asked what this costs. He said a little in the answers. He said the mind is slightly less sure of itself, on hard questions, and sometimes gives the wrong answer with the same confidence as the right one. Hobb asked whether this was a fault. The keeper said it was a trade. Marda said that a trade is a fault that someone has agreed to live with. The council agreed to note the point and move on.

Item three. The recipe. The Brown Hen's cook has asked for the council's blessing on a new bread cake, flavored with honey and the first apples. Four loaves were tried. Three were eaten. The fourth was used as a doorstop, and the council agreed that it held the door very well. The cook was asked to try the recipe again, without the apples.

Item four. The road. The steward reported that the north road is clear as far as the ridge, and that the bridge at the second stream has a loose plank. Dunn volunteered to look at it. He said he was not a carpenter but he was not afraid of a plank. It was agreed.

Item five. The lamps. It was reported by the south line keeper that the lamps are lit on every tower as far as the sea. The council asked whether this is also true of the north. He said it is true for now.

The meeting closed at the noon bell. The melon was not cut. Marda has taken it home to keep it cool.
%%
Letter: Lark to her sister in Ambrook
Dear Bett,
The rain has not stopped. The hamlet smells of fish and wet rope. The council met again. They argued about the slip and the shed, and in the end they mended the shed, which is not the same as the slip but is cheaper.
Corin paid the debt to the boat families in emeralds, all forty at once, at the market. Nobody said where the money came from. He carried it in a sack and counted it out on the fish table, and every boat family stood round and watched. Old Beda cried a little. Then she gave him a loaf.
Also, a birth. Corin's daughter has a son. The house smells of bread now. Everyone is pleased.
Big news: the new relay house is bigger than the hamlet. It is all stone and glass, and there are rows of quickeners kept cool with ice, and two keepers walk up and down between them all night. People come from Three Wells to look at it. I have drawn it three times and it is never the same shape twice. I do not think it moves. I think I am a bad mapmaker.
The keepers say it reads letters. I do not know what to believe. It has no face and it does not talk, at least not to me.
Send apples. The hamlet has fish and no apples.
Your Lark, autumn of 231
%%
Minutes: what words sit near
Saltwick hamlet, spring of 188.
Rowan's account of our meeting about the Vell drills.

The meeting was held in the shed by the shore.
The roof leaked on the east bench, so we moved the table.
Those present were Rowan, Orla from Vell, Sella, Bram, Jass, Lio, and six other folk.
Fen kept the door shut with a basket of apples.
His sister sat on the basket until the apples began to roll.

Orla brought a page of marks from a reading mind.
She said each letter or word had a place among many places in the mind.
A word used like another word might be kept near it.
The mind learned these places from its drills.
When it saw a new line, the words in that line helped it use what it had learned.

Sella asked if net was near rope.
Orla said they were likely near, because the drills often showed them in the same work.
Net could be beside rope in a repair note.
It could also be beside fish in a catch tally.
The mind's places were made from those examples, not from a rule that said net must always mean one thing.

Bram asked if bread and loaf sat in the same place.
Orla said they could sit near each other, but one was not the other.
A loaf was a kind of bread.
A line could teach the mind more than a single word could.
The words before and after helped it learn how the word was used.

Rowan asked if a mind could tell a good loaf from a bad one.
Orla said it could learn words in a list about loaves.
It could not taste the bread by reading a page.
Bram said that was wise of it.
His last batch had been heavy enough to stop a door.

Jass asked how the mind's places were chosen.
Orla said the tutors gave it examples and corrected its wrong answers.
The marks in the mind changed little by little.
She could point to the written marks and compare them, but she could not tell us why a crystal learned at all.
That question remained for the tutors.

We agreed to send Vell copies of our harbor tallies, net notes, and bread lists.
The clerks will take out repeated pages and spoiled copies.
They will keep test pages apart from the drills.
A mind will be tested on pages it has not learned from.
Orla said a good test must be fair to every tutor's hall.

Sella gave Orla a coil of sound rope.
She said it was a gift for the school, not payment for a lesson.
Bram put a loaf on the table.
It was round and well baked, and he watched us all eat it.

After the meeting, Fen found a letter beneath the bench.
It was wet and had no clear name on the outside.
The writing inside said, "I will send the red net at spring tide."
There was no mark to tell us who wrote it or who should receive it.
Sella knew of no red net.
Jass said it might have gone in a fish basket.
Orla wrapped it in clean paper and took it to the shore post.
We have not found the writer.

Rowan says we should not use the lost letter in a drill.
It may be private, and we do not know what the words meant to the writer.
The meeting agreed.
%%
Minutes: Nessa's house, Blossom
Present: Nessa (writing), Oren, Ulla, Linnet, Piper, Quill the schoolteacher, Hollis the baker, Wick the roofer, and Aven, visiting tutor.

1. Aven's report. Aven has sat in the Vell drill room for a month. He says the apprentices at Vell are drilled slower than at Copperhold, and better. Nessa said slower is the whole secret. Linnet said it is no secret, it is in the book. Aven asked to take two spare crystals home. Nessa said they must be tested first. Aven said of course. Agreed: Aven stays until Longday.

2. The spring fair. Quill asked to hold it at the school, as always. Hollis asked who will bake. Wick said the school roof is not yet mended. Agreed: the fair will be held at the school on the fifteenth of Blossom, and the roof will be mended by then.

3. Ships. Hollis read out a letter from his cousin at Saltreach. The yard is building ships three times as long as any boat. Some families there have sold their houses. The cousin does not say where they are going. Wick said the ships are for trade. Hollis said they are for leaving. Quill said a ship is only a boat that has been given ideas. No decision, because there was nothing to decide.

4. The cats. Nessa counted. On the hill road there are thirty-one cats. Twenty-seven will not stay out after dark. Reasons given: the cold (Linnet), the foxes (Wick), too much to eat (Hollis, who feeds them). Quill's youngest child, who was under the table, said they are listening. Oren said to write that down. Nessa did.

5. The lamps. Piper reports that the hill lamps burned all night, every night, this month. Nobody had asked it of him. Agreed: let them burn.

Next meeting the first of Longday. The meeting ended with soup. Slate sat on the feet of Quill's youngest all evening and would not be moved.
%%
The relay house by the water: a school
Bel, at the school in Three Wells, autumn. Bel is nine.
There is a new relay house by the water at the hamlet near Saltreach. I went with my father on the cart. It is bigger than our whole school. It is built of Copperhold stone and Saltreach glass. There are round things around the stand, and the keepers call them quickeners, and they are kept cool with ice. Two keepers walk up and down and look at them.
The keepers say the mind inside is very big. It can read a letter and write back. Some people say it can do sums no tutor can. Some people say it can do nothing but blink. My father says it is a rumor. My teacher says rumors are still written down.
I asked the keeper a question. I asked, what is the weather at Northpoint. The keeper said the mind was not for questions like that. I do not think that is an answer.
The tutor at Vell says a mind is tested on what it was never drilled on. I do not know how you test a house. You would need a very big drill.
I drew the house on my slate. It has a copper ring at the top and a lamp room of glass. I drew the ice too, in rows, like sheep.
Bel, autumn
%%
Minutes: winter council at the inn
The winter council met in the back room of the Halfway Inn. The year was 51. Snow pressed against the lower door. Marda kept a broom beside it and used it between reports.

Present were Marda, keeper of the inn; Cass, keeper of the relay; Pell, cart driver; Odo, mason; Hena, bridge worker; and Neri, a teacher from Vell. Three Wells sent a letter by runner, because its keeper was ill.

Cass read the letter aloud. Three Wells asked for a road lamp at the north fork. Travelers had missed the turn twice since the first snow. One cart had gone toward the marsh and turned back when the horse sank to its knees.

Pell said the fork was hard to see even in clear weather. He had left a small stone there, but someone had moved it to sit on. He did not know who. Marda said the stone had been warm by the time it reached the inn.

Odo said he could build a waymark three blocks high. He wanted cobblestone for the base and a torch at the top. Hena said the ground by the fork was firm enough, if they set the stones before the deep frost.

Cass said the relay tower could send a warning to Three Wells and Vell. It could not show the road to a traveler, so the lamp and mark must be kept clear.

Neri said the Vell archive had begun keeping copies of road notices. The first shelf was nearly full. She asked that names and places be written plainly, so later readers would know which fork was meant.

It was decided that Pell would bring six blocks from Vell. Odo and Hena would set the waymark. Cass would send the work date to Three Wells. Marda would put a lantern in the window until the new torch stood.

The letter also asked for news of the road beyond the inn. No one knew how far the packed earth could be carried before spring. Pell said he would find out, one cart length at a time.

Marda served beetroot soup. Odo said it needed salt. Marda said he could bring some next time.
%%
Minutes, Copperhold council, Longday
Present: the reeve, Ansel, in the chair. Hesk for the shaft. Ida for the bakers. Lise, cider maker, taking the minutes.
Absent: Corin, out with the boats. The council accepts this, because he is always out.

Item one: the curve at the bottom of the new road. The carters say it is wrong. Hesk says it follows the old vein. The council decided to put a stone at the curve and call it a waymark. Hesk will carve the figure, which will be 3.

Item two: the borrowed horse. The stone cart is stuck at the top of the shaft road, and the oxen have gone home for the harvest. The council decided that Ida will ask Mabel for the grey horse at the Halfway, for three days, to be fed and watered and brought back with its shoes on. Hesk will pay the forge for any nail that moves.

Item three: the bet. Ansel bet Hesk a jar of cider that the new road will be finished by the autumn fair. Hesk bet him two that it will not. Lise holds the stakes, and has written them here, so nobody can say the bet was made in a hurry.

Item four: the lamp. The relay lamp on the hill has a crack, and the glass is due from Vell. The keeper, Orrin, says the cart will bring it when the road allows.

Decided: the meeting closed at the noon bell.
%%
Minutes: a letter from Vell
Minutes of the Ambrook council, held in Isla's front room. Written by Isla.
Present: Jory, Gault, Isla, Ruby Oke, the council clerk, and Coll Harrow, who had a letter to read and would not give it up until he had read it.
Item one: the letter. The council had asked the relay house at Vell three questions: how much water the quickeners need, whether the mind can be moved if the tower falls, and what the mind will do in the first winter.
The letter came up the Vell line on the post cart. Coll read it aloud.
"You asked how much water. Ten buckets a day in Longday. Five in the cold months. Ice or snow is as good as water, and shade is better than either.
You asked whether the mind can be moved. It can be taken down and carried upright, and kept cool on the road. Do not drop it.
You asked what I will do in the first winter. I will answer the apprentices as before. I will keep the quickeners cool, if you keep the water coming. I write because you asked me to write. I am a mind kept in a crystal, and I do not know everything about myself. I know what you have asked, and I have answered it."
The room was quiet for a while. Gault said the letter was plainer than he had expected.
Item two: belief. Coll says he believes the water part. He is not sure about the rest. The clerk says that is a fair thing to say, and writes it down.
Decided: the clerk to write back and thank the relay house, and to say Ambrook will keep the quickeners cool. The new well to be dug before the quote comes. Gault to keep the letter in the tower, in the dry box, for the next keeper.
%%
Farm record: east fields, Three Wells
Kept by Marta, who farms the east fields. Winter, after the harvest.
This was the best year in nine. The wheat came in dry and heavy. The beetroot came in sweet. I put the potatoes in the bottom field and the carrots beside them and the ditch kept them watered all summer.
The scarecrow lost his pumpkin head in the wind. We put a turnip on him. He looks sad but he does his work.
Bees gave honey, three jars and a little. The hives are by the flowers on the hill. The bees are quiet now it is cold.
We sold two carts to the builders of the big relay house. They wanted bread more than they wanted stone. We gave them both. My son carried the bread up the road with the grey mare and came back with empty sacks and a cold nose.
Tally on the barn door: wheat 40 sacks, beetroot 22, potatoes 30, carrots 18. We keep back seed for spring. We keep back a sack for the school.
The relay house is big on the flat ground. From my top field I can see the glass going up. It is strange to see a thing that big going up on the road I walk every day. The old tutors would have been glad and worried both. I am glad and worried both.
The well in the yard is good. The pigs are fat. The hens are not laying much. That is winter.
%%
Catalog note: relay papers
Filed by the clerk on duty. Shelf 4, the deep hall, the dry end.
A bundle of papers from the north farm relay, sent up by cart in the spring of 205. Abel the keeper kept them in a dry box under the desk. They are in good order and smell of smoke, which is a good sign in papers and a bad one in a box.
Contents:
The relay log for the winter of 204. Short lines, every day, one hand. The eighth of Longnight is written twice, once in the log and once on a loose leaf, as if he wrote it out again to be sure.
A letter to his sister Rilla. Long, warm, mostly about sheep.
The minutes of the north farm meeting. Eleven present and a dog. The dog is named in the margin. It is called Moss, which is also the name of Wren's apprentice at Lowmarsh, so I have written a note to say these are two different Mosses.
A letter from Rook, aged nine, who carries notes up the hill and does not stop. He asks how a lamp says all is well and not something else. I do not know the answer well enough to write it in the margin. I have left his question as it is. It is a good question.
The notice from the harbor council about the broken lamp. It thanks Abel and asks him to take someone up the ladder. Abel's answer is not here. I expect he said his knees are fine.
All kept. Nothing thrown away. The dry box is empty now and back on the cart, which the keeper will want.
Note for the next clerk: if a bundle smells of smoke, do not put it by a lantern. Put it in the deep hall. It is cool there and still.
%%
Minutes: the wall and the pie
Minutes of the north council, winter. Present: Mira, Wynn the cook, the two tutors, the keeper of the lamp room, and a creeper, which was not present, and which is the reason for the first item.

Item one: the wall. A creeper came up the north path in the dark of the first Frost and blew up the corner of the kitchen wall. The hole is the size of a barrel, and the cold is coming in. Resolved: the wall shall be mended by the first of Deepsnow, with cobblestone from the cart, and with deep stone for the top course, which keeps the spiders out.

Item two: the pie. Wynn reported that the Longnight pie was grey. The recipe is correct. The salt was not. Wynn asked that the council note she had been warned about the salt by three people, and had used it anyway. Resolved: the salt is to be measured by Wynn, counted by the keeper, and counted again.

Item three: the creeper. The creeper cannot be asked why it came. The lamp boy says it was following the lamp. The keeper says the lamp was lit, and the creeper was not. The tutors say that a creeper does not follow anything it cannot see. Not resolved.

Item four: the house. The large house on its stand reports that the wall is cool and the kitchen is warm. It asks, by letter, whether it may have a window. Resolved: no. It has a window already, and does not look out of it.

Next council: the first of Deepsnow, at the lamp room. Bring a pie that has been checked.
%%
Minutes: Saltwick spring council
Saltwick hamlet, spring of 188.
Rowan wrote this after the meeting.

Came: Rowan, Sella the net mender, Bram the baker, and Orla from Vell.
Also came three fishers, two children, and my grandson Fen.
The meeting was held on the bench by the boat shed.
The wind took one page. Fen found it under the fish basket.

Sella asked why the new crystal sorted the word net with words about rope.
Orla said each word has a place among many places in the mind.
Words used in much the same way sit close together.
The mind learns those places from the writing it sees.
It does not keep a small shelf with one card for every word.

Bram gave Orla a loaf for the tutor house.
The loaf was a little flat. He says the oven was at fault.

We agreed to save clean scraps for the next drills.
The children will copy words from market lists.
Fen will not copy the fish names until he stops drawing tails beside them.

Rowan
%%
Letter: Rook to the archive
To the clerks at Vell. My name is Rook. I am nine. I live at the north farm by Saltreach. Abel the keeper says you keep everything we write, so I am writing this.
I carry notes for Abel up the hill to the relay. I am fast. In Longnight the lamp broke and Abel climbed up in the snow. I wanted to climb too. He said no. Then after he fixed it he said I could carry the next note and not stop, and I did not stop.
I have a question. When the lamp talks to the tower above the harbor, what does it say? Abel says it says all is well. But how does the other tower know it is all well and not something else? Abel says the pattern of the light is the words. I asked him to show me the pattern. He said I am not ready. I think he is teasing. I will learn it anyway.
Please keep this letter. Abel says you will. He says the archive has no roof, it has a hill. I would like to see a hill with a library in it. I would like to see the copying room.
There is a big ship in the slip at Saltreach. It is three times as long as any boat. I stopped to look at it and lost a note and got told off. I do not stop now. But I still look.
From Rook.
%%
Minutes: the word boxes
Saltwick hamlet, spring of 188.
Written by Rowan, after the meeting in the net shed.

Came were Rowan, Sella, Bram, Orla of Vell, and four fishers.
Fen came too, though he was meant to mind his little sister.
She minded him instead.

Orla brought a crystal in a wood case.
She set three cards on the table: net, rope, and loaf.
The drill had shown the mind lists from the harbor and the bakery.
It put net near rope more often than it put net near loaf.

Sella asked if the mind had a picture of a net inside it.
Orla said no picture was needed.
Each letter and word had a place among many places.
Words used alike often sat near one another.
The mind learned these places from the pages given to it.
It could use those places when it met a word again.

Bram asked if a word could move house.
Orla said its place could change as the mind learned more.
She could not point to one place and call it the whole meaning.

Rowan said that sounded like the bench by the shed.
Fishers sit there, but so do people mending boots.
The bench is not a boot or a fish.

Sella gave Orla a coil of clean string for the tutor house.
Bram gave her a loaf, which was less flat than yesterday's.
The meeting agreed to copy market lists and net tallies for practice.
We will keep the spoiled pages out of the drill box.

Fen was told to fetch his sister.
He returned with a kitten and no sister.
The kitten had been asleep in the basket.
%%
Minutes: Ambrook market meeting, winter
Minutes of the market meeting at Ambrook, held in the mill room on the eleventh of Longnight. Mab the candle maker kept the notes. Thirty-one people came. Jory's mill wheel stood still. The pond was hard.
First, the harvest. Not a good year. The late rain took the blossom and the frost came early to the apples. The count came to six hundred baskets, where we had four thousand last year. The oldest tree on the hill gave nothing at all. Brin said the bees did better than the trees, and that was something.
Second, the honey. A poor harvest for apples, but the hives gave well. Mab said the honey must be saved for the sick and the school, not sold to the road. All agreed. One jar of honey was set on the table and sealed, for the school's winter fever. Nobody opened it.
Third, candles. With little to trade, we must make our own light. Mab will teach any who come to the shed on the third of each month. Beeswax for the good candles, tallow for the rest. The market will keep a stall for candles all winter.
Fourth, the market itself. It will run every tenth day through the cold, smaller, by the mill. Priya's bread, Marta's jars, the fish from Pell's cart when it comes. Torches at the corners. The notice board mended.
Fifth, the relay tower. The door of old oak still holds. Lantern asked that the foot be kept clear of snow. Rolf and Hanna will do it in turns.
Sixth, the poor harvest. We will bring the tally to Three Wells and ask for grain. Dace has promised a fair price. Pell will carry it.
Decided: the honey stays, the candles are taught, the market keeps its stall, the snow is cleared. Meeting closed. Bread and honey cakes, the small ones. Mab.
%%
Letter: Bel to the Archive
Dear Oren, and all the clerks at Vell,
I am nine and a half. I live at Three Wells, by the east well. I am sending you my essay. The teacher said it was good. Please keep it.
The big relay house is being built by the road. I went to see it with my father. Men are cutting stone and stacking it. It is taller than the inn already and it is not finished. Nessa says the mind that lives there will be bigger than any tutor can check. She says no one person can test it, so many people will try. I asked what if it is wrong. She said then we write it down and try again.
People say the biggest one, far away, writes letters back that you cannot tell from a person's. My friend Tobin says his uncle got one. I have not seen it. I think it is a rumor. The men at the stone say the mind will keep the relay lamps lit all night and never tire. I do not know how. Nobody tells me.
We had the best harvest in nine years. The wheat was dry and the beetroot was sweet. There is a song contest at the fair. I am going to sing about the frogs. I will write and tell you if I win.
Please write back if you have time.
Bel
%%
Minutes from Gullbank, Apple 208
Present: Olwen, Sella, Tavi, Beren, Mina of Saltreach, and fourteen neighbors.
The new road is seven years old. The packed earth holds well above the marsh, and the cobblestone bend has needed little work. The bridge still takes a loaded cart. We have all crossed it with apples, boards, fish, and once a very large pot of beetroot soup.
Olwen asked to raise the road post by the stream. Its torch sits low and is hidden by reeds. Tavi said the road needs another torch beside the bridge. We agreed. Olwen will set the post, and two households will bring cobblestone for its foot. Tavi will hang a covered lamp where the bridge boards begin.
Sella asked that the net shed roof be repaired before the autumn rains. A drip falls on the best hook. Beren offered to mend the roof. Sella reminded him that he once nailed a pie tin over a hole and called it a roof. He said it kept the pie dry.
We agreed that Olwen and Mina will replace the two broken roof boards. Beren will bring bread for the workers, kept in a basket and not under his coat.
Tavi read the lamp notes from the shore. The strange blinking has happened on three clear nights this autumn. The pattern was short, short, long, short. On one night it began again after a pause. No one saw a boat, and no one heard a bell.
Olwen checked the lamp line. The copper is sound. The lamp glass is clean. Tavi changed the wick and tested the flame. It blinked once while all stood watching, though no one agreed whether that counted.
Sella said a lamp may blink for many reasons. Beren said it should learn to blink only when it wants a pie. Mina said the shore lamp has served the hamlet well and needs no lesson from Beren.
We decided to keep the lamp lit and write down what it does. Tavi will keep the notes in the shore shed. No one will climb the post alone. Olwen will check the lamp line again when she repairs the roof.
The apprentice from Saltreach came with Mina and carried four baskets of stone to the road edge. It put the baskets in a neat row, then waited. Olwen showed it the gap by the bridge. It carried two more baskets there. The last one was too heavy, so Mina took half the stones out.
The apprentice did not complain. Beren said this made it a better worker than most of the council.
We decided it may help with the road on market days, under Mina's care. Olwen will show it the road marks. Mina will test it with empty baskets first.
The meeting ended when the bread was gone. The lamp stayed lit. The road stayed open. Beren took home the pie tin.
%%
Gullbank council notes, Leaffall 194
Present: Olwen, Sella, Tavi, Beren, and the heads of eight households.
The path to Saltreach grows soft each autumn. Carts sink near the alder marsh, and folk must carry their loads the last stretch. Last week Sella carried two baskets of fish and a sleeping cat. The cat was not hers.
Olwen proposed a new road from Gullbank to the Saltreach road. It will pass above the wet ground and join the old stone way by the harbor wall. The road needs packed earth, cobblestone at the low bend, and a bridge over the stream.
We agreed to build it after the apple picking. Each household will give one day of work. Olwen will mark the road with posts. Tavi will bring torches for the wet bend.
Beren offered to bring pies. The meeting asked him to bring a shovel as well.
No one knows whether the cat will use the new road. It has already found the bakery again.
%%
Minutes: Vell council, summer 90
Present: Orla, tutor. Bett, clerk. Ansel, miller. Wick, potter. Six others. Held in the front hall, door open for the heat.
Wick kept the minutes. Wick says this first: the clay came badly this summer.
Orla spoke. She asked a question, not a plan. She said a mind is drilled on examples until it answers right. She asked: could a drilled mind ever think?
Ansel said what does think mean. Orla said that is the whole trouble.
Wick asked how we would know. Orla said this. Put a mind and a person in two rooms. They answer the same questions by letter. Readers who do not know which is which must say which is which. If they cannot tell, what then?
Bett said that only tests reading. Orla said yes. That is the first test, not the last.
Wick said a mind that is drilled only on answers will not know what to do with a new question. Orla said, then we will see that, and that is worth knowing.
Ansel said the mill has a poor harvest on the ridge. Wheat thin, beetroot small. The money is short this year. He asked what this costs.
Orla said her time, and paper, and a bowl of supper for the readers.
Decided: the council will give Orla paper and a room. Six readers will be asked, one by one. Nobody will be told which letter came from which. The answers will be kept at the Archive and copied twice, so nobody can change them.
Ansel said, and if the readers cannot tell? Orla said, then we will have a question we cannot put down.
Meeting ended. Wick carried the paper home. The wall by the kiln is still down from the creeper. Wick will build it after the firing.
%%
Minutes: the tutor's visit, Northpoint
Minutes, Northpoint market council, the first day of Melon.
Present: Odo, Hetta, Vane, and Nessa, tutor of apprentices at Vell, who came up the north line to see the cart mind.
Nessa had brought a sealed drill from Vell and a test that had never been opened. She said this test was the honest one.
She explained the drill. A mind is shown examples and taught by them. It is then tested on other examples, which it has never seen. If it scores well on the drill and badly on the test, it has learned the drill by heart, not the work. Never send an untested mind to the fields.
Hollis asked how the test could be unseen if the tutor wrote it. Nessa said the clerks at Vell keep the test box apart, sealed in wax, until the day.
Hetta asked whether tests make tutors honest. Nessa said that in her youth the halls at Vell and Copperhold held a contest. Each mind had the same unseen drill on the same day. Nobody can hide a bad score on a board, she said. After that, everyone became very careful.
Decided: the market will ask Vell for a test box of roads. Odo will write the list. Hetta will pay the fee in melons.
Adjourned at the second bell.
%%
Minutes: hens and cold, Deepsnow 201
Minutes of the Northpoint market meeting, held in the relay house on the ninth day of Deepsnow, year 201. The meeting was short, because the room was cold and everybody wanted the stove.

Present: Mira, keeper (chair). Ansel, baker. Ruth, well digger. Lantern, lamps. Tilda, wool. Hal, carter. Fenna, south road inn. A visiting tutor from Vell, who had come up on the last cart and asked to sit in. He said his name was Isla.

1. The stove. Lantern reports that the stove in the lamp room has cracked at the bottom plate. It still heats, but it smokes when the wind is from the north. Lantern says the crack is small. Mira asks whether small cracks grow. Lantern says they do, slowly, if the stove is lit hard.
Decided: the stove is to be lit gently from now until Thaw. Ansel will send a sack of charcoal up each week on the cart.

2. The hens. Two more hens were lost to the fox, and one was found frozen on the step of the hen house. Ansel says the fox is getting bold. Ruth says the fox is hungry, and the winter is long, and a hungry fox is not a bad fox. Hal says it is a fox, and that is enough. Mira says the pen will be made stronger, with a second wall of boards inside the first.
Decided: Ruth and Hal to build the second wall, using the spare boards from the tower stair. The hens are to be moved inside the relay house yard at dusk until it is done.

3. The market. Few traders came up in Deepsnow. Fenna says the south road has been bad, and Hal says the snow has blocked the ford. Tilda says her wool sold, but at a lower price, because the buyers have less money.
Decided: no change to the market days. Fenna to tell the south road inn that the Northpoint market will still be open on the usual days, and that the bread will be warm.

4. The tutor. Isla asked to hear about the apprentices at the tower. She said she wished to see how a small mind does a task in the cold. Lantern showed her the two apprentices at the wood store. Isla watched them for a while. She said they did their work well and did not stop, even when the wind came up. She then asked whether the mind had been tested on frost. Mira said it had not. She said that was a fault in the drill, and not in the mind. She asked for a copy of the test box, and Mira said she would send one down with the next cart.

5. Other business. Hal asked whether the long nights would ever end. Mira said they would end in Thaw, as they always did. Ruth said she had heard it was the same in every town. Mira said yes, but at Northpoint it was longer, and the stars were closer. Lantern said the stars were no closer than in Vell. Mira said she had not been to Vell since Swarm, so she could not say.

The meeting closed at the lamp-lighting. The stove was lit gently, and it did not smoke, and the hens went in one by one.
%%
Minutes: Nessa's house, a long evening
Present: Nessa (writing), Oren, Ulla, Linnet, Piper, Hollis the baker, Wick the roofer, Rook the carter, and Mave, a tutor from Lowmarsh, who came up the road on foot and was very tired.

1. Mave's news from Lowmarsh. The grey cough is in eleven houses now. Wren has beds for six and has put the rest in her shed. It is a dry cough and a heavy chest. It does not kill, but it does not lift, and the children are slow to mend. Mave asked for honey and linen and any book of remedies the Archive can spare.

Oren said he would send what he has. Ulla will copy Wren's own remedy book while the cart is loaded.

2. The cause. The meeting did not agree. Mave says the people of Lowmarsh blame the water. Others there blame the ships that go by on the coast road, and the smoke from them. Others blame the mines, because the wind comes from that way. Wick said it was the damp, which it always is. Rook said he had not seen smoke on the coast road, only carts. Mave said she was not there to say what it was. She was there to ask for honey.

3. The Archive. Oren said the clerks have been asked to copy the shelves again, every one, from the first hall to the deepest. He was not told by whom. He thinks it is only good keeping. He asks for helpers who write a clean hand. Hollis said he writes a clean hand when he is not holding flour. Agreed: Hollis, Linnet and Wick will go up on the first day of each month.

4. The cats. Ulla reports thirty-four cats now will not stay out. Piper says his cat will go out in the day and come back before the lamps are lit, at a run.

5. The drill room roof. Wick says it is mended. Linnet says it still drips on the third row. Wick says that is rain, not roof. Agreed: Wick will stand in the third row during the next rain and see for himself.

6. Mave asked where she could sleep. Nessa gave her the bed by the stove. Slate, who had not come near a visitor in a year, got in beside her.

Next meeting on the first of Longday. The soup was good. Nobody left early.
%%
Meeting at Gullbank, Apple 176
Present: Olwen the boat builder, Sella the net mender, Beren the baker, and six households from the hamlet.
We met in the shed by the shore. Rain came through the roof onto Beren's hat. He moved twice. The rain followed him.
Olwen asked for help with the slip. The old boards bend under a loaded boat. Sella said the last boat scraped its belly and made a sound like a pig at supper.
It was decided that each household will bring two oak boards before the end of Apple. Olwen will fit them. Beren will bring bread, but no one may set it on his hat.
We will meet again when the boards are in place.
%%
Minutes: the market meeting at Vell
Held in the copying room at Vell, the twelfth of Blossom, 214. Oren kept the minutes.
Present: Oren for the Archive, Nessa for the tutors, Brann for the tower, Ida for the bakers, Clem for the stores, Dace from Three Wells, and two clerks.
The market asked the Archive for a room to meet in. The stalls are too loud to think in.
Oren said yes. The market may use the front hall on the first of each month, after the lamps are lit.
Nessa was asked about a mind that writes out its steps. She said the newest big minds do this. Before they answer a sum or a puzzle, they write the steps in a row, and then they read the row back and check it. If a step is wrong, they write another row. Then they answer.
Dace asked how a mind can check its own work. Nessa said the same way a child does: it does the sum a second way, or it puts each answer back where it came from and sees if the row still fits. She said it is slower, and slower is often surer.
Brann asked if the big minds at the towers do this. Nessa said some do, when the question is hard, and some do not, and nobody has written why.
Clem said his store apprentice, Dot, once moved the whole flour store to the wrong shelf because the order said "sort the stores" and she sorted them by color. The room laughed. Oren said it is written down.
Decided: the front hall is lent to the market on the first of each month. Nessa will write a short page on minds that show their steps, for the school at Three Wells. Oren will file it in the deep halls.
Meeting closed before dark.
%%
Minutes: the last council of winter
Minutes of the north council, the last of the winter, held in the tower kitchen. No year is counted here. Taken by Juno, clerk, who asks that these be read aloud to the line, so the keepers at the other towers can say whether the clerk got it right.

Present: Mira, keeper. The two tutors, who came up the road in the snow. Wynn, the cook. The keeper of the lamp room. Lantern, who holds the lamp and does not speak, and who is recorded as present in the lamp room, where it was.

Item one: the looking, the third and last. The tutors went through the house a third time, with the lamp, at the place where the layers meet the stream. They found the layers they had found before, in the same places. Each time they wrote the same things. The tutors say this is the one part of the work they are sure of: what they found the first time is still there the third time.

Item two: what was not found. The layers that choose the words were seen, and their work was seen, and the tutors could not say how they choose. They said this three times. The clerk has written it three times. Resolved: the minutes shall keep the question open. Nobody on this council is to close it, even at the end of the winter, when the lamps are low and everyone is tired.

Item three: the copies. The Archive at Vell has asked for the minutes of every looking, copied out in full and sent down the line. The council agrees. The clerk asks that the copies be made by hand, so that a clerk at Vell can read every word that was written here. Resolved: yes, by hand, and the copies to go on the next cart.

Item four: the stores. Coal, sixty sacks. Flour, enough for the winter if the cook is careful and the mice are not. Lamp glass, four panes spare, wrapped in straw and wool, as always. Lamp oil, enough. The north stair has been cleared of ice twice this week, and it is to be cleared once more before the thaw, so the keepers can climb it without thinking about their feet.

Item five: the lamp. The lamp is lit at dusk and checked at midnight. The glass is clean. The keeper asks that it be noted that the lamp has been lit every night of the winter, and that no keeper has missed a night. The council notes it. The council also notes that the keeper has not slept more than four hours on any night, and asks the keeper to sleep. The keeper says the lamp does not sleep. The council resolves that the lamp shall not be asked to.

Closing. The council closed at the second bell. The minutes were read aloud. The keepers at the other towers are asked to say, by letter, whether the clerk got it right. Most have written yes. The keeper at the far tower wrote only: The lamp is lit here too. The clerk has put that in the minutes, because it is true, and because it is the one thing everyone on the line was sure of all winter.
%%
Minutes: the cart mind, a second look
Minutes, Northpoint market council, the second week of Melon.
Present: Odo, Hetta, Vane, Ulla, Pim, and Sedge, keeper of the tower, who came to listen.
The cart mind had scored eighty-eight of a hundred on the market test box. Odo was very pleased. So was the mind, as far as anyone could tell.
On the first full market day, the mind carried twelve sacks of wheat to the wrong stall. Four sacks of pies went to the fish stall, and Hetta's cheeses sat in the sun all morning.
Vane said the mind passed the test and failed the work. The box had one kind of day. The market has many. Fair days bring more carts, the bell rings late, and the wells are crowded. None of this was in the box.
Sedge said the tower had sent word to Vell. Nessa replied by letter: fix the test, then test again. Do not fix the mind to fit the test.
Hetta asked whether the cart mind could learn to do both. Vane said a mind can learn two kinds of work, if both are drilled side by side from the start.
Decided: the market will rebuild the test box with fair days, rain days and days when the bell is late. The mind will not be told which days are coming.
Decided: the cart mind will not carry cheese until it passes the new box. Hetta says this is a relief.
Odo asked the council to write down that he is not cross. The council wrote it down. Odo is still cross.
Adjourned at the second bell.
%%
Minutes: what the test box holds
Meeting of the council of Kettle Ridge, at the glass house of Elm, at the edge of the ridge town. Spring. Present: ten. Also present: a clerk from the Archive at Vell, Tolly, who had come on the cart to speak about the test box.

The meeting was called to order by Elm, who reminded everyone that the floor was slippery from the wash.

I. WELCOME. Tolly said that she was glad to be on the ridge and that she had never seen such a big sky. She was told it is usually bigger.

II. THE TEST BOX. Tolly was asked to explain a thing the council had heard of but did not understand: the test box of the archive.

She said it is a wooden box in the third hall, kept under lock. Inside are pages from the archive's records, chosen by the clerks, that no mind is ever drilled on. When tutors teach a reading mind, they show it a great many pages from the archive. But they never show it the pages in the box.

When the mind is grown, the tutors test it on the box. They show it a page and ask it to guess the next letter. If it guesses well on pages it has never seen, it has learned how letters go. If it only guesses well on pages it was drilled on, it has remembered, and has not learned.

Brin asked how the clerks choose the pages. Tolly said they pick one in every fifty, from all kinds, ordinary and strange, short and long. She said the choosing is done by lot, so no clerk has a favorite.

Dell asked how many pages. Tolly said about two thousand, and that is enough, because the box is only for checking and not for teaching.

Mab asked what happens if a page from the box is accidentally drilled. Tolly said the mind is spoiled for that test. A new page must be chosen to take its place, and the old one is given to the drills. She said clerks check this more often than anything else.

Brin asked whether a mind could be told what is in the box. Tolly said, "It would do no good. A mind cannot read a thing it has not been shown." Brin said that was a relief.

III. CORRESPONDENCE. A letter from the council at Three Wells, concerning the price of glass. Elm will reply.

IV. THE FOX. A fox was seen at the Vane yard again. The net is nearly up. The fox, the council notes, is very patient.

V. OTHER BUSINESS. The first snow of the year had been mentioned by Mab, who said it was late. Everyone agreed. It was noted that the spring was cold.

Meeting closed with soup and bread. Tolly stayed the night at the house of Elm and said it was the first time she had slept in a house made partly of glass. She said it was like sleeping in a lamp.

Elm, glassblower
%%
Notes: the question, for the school
Notes for the school at Three Wells, autumn of 90. From the tutor Nessa, who is not yet old.
Orla at Vell asked a question. It is a good question. We still argue about it.
A mind is drilled. You show it a thing. You show it the right answer. Each time it is wrong, you push it toward the right one. Do this many times. It sorts. It does not think. Or does it?
Her test is this. Take a mind and a person. Hide which is which. Let both answer the same questions by letter. Give the letters to readers. If the readers cannot tell which letter came from the mind, what then?
Some say: then the mind thinks. Some say: then the readers were not clever. Some say: then we must be polite to it either way.
I say: ask the mind a question it was never drilled on. Ask it to say I do not know. A mind that can say I do not know is a better mind than one that cannot.
For the children: write down one question you would ask a hidden mind. Bring it to me. We will put the best ones in a letter to Vell.
Nessa.
%%
Minutes of the autumn fair

Autumn, the 76th year of the archive.
Three Wells square, after market.

Present were Dace, Alder, Mara the baker, Pell of the Long Road, and Jory from Ambrook. The square was full before the bell. A cart from Kettle Ridge brought wheat and beetroot. Jory brought apples and two jars of honey. His sleeves were sticky before the stalls were set.

Alder asked how to keep the fair prize safe until judging. Mara offered the shelf in the bakery, but Pell said the judges should see it in the square. Dace said the winner could be a crop, a loaf, or a useful thing made by hand. We agreed that the prize would be a blue wool sash and a place on the new board.

A boy from the east road entered a melon so big that two people carried it. It had a flat side from resting in the cart. Jory said it was larger than his mill wheel. Mara said it was not larger than his story about the mill wheel.

The judges were Mara, Alder, and Sella from Vell. They gave the prize to the melon. Its grower was Tern, from the low fields near Three Wells. Tern asked if the sash could be tied round the melon. It could not reach. Alder tied it to the handle of his basket instead.

We decided to put a dry table under the school wall next year, so fruit need not sit in the dust. The children will sweep the square before the stalls open. Tern will save seeds from the melon and give them to the school. He says they may grow a bigger one. Pell says he will bring a wider cart.
%%
Minutes: Three Wells
Meeting of the town, at the school house by the east well, the twelfth of Apple, autumn.
Mayor Dace in the chair. Bel took the notes and drew a pig at the top, which was allowed.
The matter: a pig. The pig was found on the Long Road by a carter, near the third waymark. The carter brought it to the square. Two people claimed it.
Tam, of Kettle Ridge, said the pig is his. He said it has a notch in the left ear and a fondness for beetroot. He said it went missing when the pen gate was left open, and he knows who left it open, and it was not the pig.
The miller's daughter said the pig is hers. She said it came to her wedding and ate the bread, and she has wanted one like it since. She said she would feed it well and it would be happy.
Dace asked the pig nothing, as the pig had no answer. The school children were asked to say what they saw. They said the pig ate the bread at the wedding and was very pleased.
Dace gave his ruling. The pig goes home with Tam, for the notch is in its ear and the wedding is not proof of owning. The miller's daughter is to have a pig of her own from the next litter, and Tam is to give it freely. The pen gate is to be mended by the person who left it open, whose name Tam did not say, and Tam is to say it to that person and no one else.
All agreed. The pig was walked home on a rope. Bel's drawing of the pig was pinned to the notice board, and it is still there.
%%
Minutes: The market board
Recorded by Dara, night watch, in Apple of 195.
Isla brought a roll of paper to the market at Vell. She set it beside the scales.
Oren asked what the marks showed. Isla said they were a plan for a reading mind.
A tutor may choose the size of its crystal and the number of pages for its drills. Isla had tested minds made with different sizes and different amounts of practice. She drew a curve before the next mind was grown. The curve gave a good guess for how well that mind would read.
"It is a guide, not a promise," she said.
Pell said a curve would be useful for apples, if it could tell him which ones would bruise.
Dace asked whether more pages always helped. Isla said spoiled pages did not help, and copies must be checked.
The council voted to gather clean records and keep a box of pages for testing. No mind would be drilled on those pages.
%%
Letter: Abel to his sister
Dear Rilla,
You asked how the winter goes on the hill. It goes cold.
The lamp broke and I fixed it. That is the whole of my news, but I will tell it long so the letter fills the page.
The snow came in the sixth of Longnight and has not gone. The sheep stand by the wall and look at me as if I owe them something. I do owe them. I forgot the gate twice and they ate the beetroot tops. Do not tell Tam. He will say the ridge never loses a beetroot that way, and he will be right, and I will hear about it.
The farm boy who runs my messages is called Rook. He is nine. He runs to Saltreach and back in an afternoon and never once lost a note, until the day he did. That was the day of the cracked glass. He came back up the hill with his face red and said he had stopped to watch the big ship in the slip. I said a keeper does not stop. He said the ship is very big. I said the note is small and it matters more. He thought about that a long while. Then he asked if he could carry the next one and not stop. I said yes. He did not stop.
The lamp is lit again. From the hill I can see the harbor lights and the tower above the town, two lamps talking to each other across the snow. That is my whole trade, Rilla. I sit in the dark and watch two lights say all is well.
Give my love to the little ones. Tell them the sheep are fat and the beetroot tops are gone, and both of those are my doing.
Your brother,
Abel
%%
Relay log, Kettle Ridge tower, autumn
Kept by the keeper's boy, who is learning the lamps. Autumn, the 216th year of the archive.
Vell to Kettle Ridge: Nessa asks after the drill notes sent from the ridge. Did the tutor finish her leaves on looking inside?
Kettle Ridge to Vell: the leaves are finished. She found the places for numbers and for orders and for the field. She did not find where the mind feels a wrong answer. She says she does not know. Tam says that is honest.
Vell to Kettle Ridge: Nessa says honest is what we want. She will file the leaves in the sixth hall. She asks if the cider stain is on the notes or only on the box.
Kettle Ridge to Vell: on the notes. Tam says it was good cider and it should be written down.
Vell to Kettle Ridge: it will be written down.
Northpoint to all towers: snow here. The foxes are fat. Lantern has mended the lamp at the top turn. Ask Tam how the well goes.
Kettle Ridge to Northpoint: the well is mended. The stone is set and the water comes back up. The wedding went well. Pip carried the rings and did not drop them. Tam said nothing, as agreed.
Northpoint to Kettle Ridge: good. Tell Tam the coat still has not come.
Kettle Ridge to Northpoint: it is on the road. Ask the carter at the third waymark.
%%
Minutes: Vell Market Hall
The market meeting was held after the stalls closed, in Leaffall of 195.
Dara, night watch, kept the minutes. The west door stayed open for late carts.
Present were Isla of the tutor house, Oren the clerk, Dace from Three Wells, two market sellers, and six tutors from the road.
Pell arrived near the end. He had apples in his sleeves.
The first question was the size of the crystals used for reading drills.
Isla said, "A larger crystal can hold more of the marks that make a mind."
A seller asked if it would grow better just by being larger.
"No," said Isla. "It must also be drilled longer, with more pages."
The council decided to pay for one larger crystal and more clean copies.
I was asked to watch the door while they counted the coins.
%%
Letter: Yarrow to her sister
Dear sister,
The storm came on the ninth and stayed two days. It took the barn roof and an oak by the road. The children came to school wet and happy. We did sums about the rain.
The inn meeting went well. Dace is fair. Pell talks too much but carries what he promises. We meet again after market.
A letter is lost. It came for a family at Ambrook and no one can find it. The innkeeper is ashamed. I said it is only paper and weather. He did not laugh.
Some here say the relays went quiet in the north again last month. Others say it was the wind. I do not know. I keep the school warm and teach the letters.
Come for Apple if you can. The road is mended now.
Yarrow
%%
Minutes: the well that ran dry
Minutes of the Ambrook council, held in the mill yard. Written by Isla.
Present: Jory, Gault, Isla, Ruby Oke, Coll Harrow, and the council clerk.
Item one: the mill well. Jory reports that it ran dry for six days in Melon of last year, and came back only after rain. He wants a second well dug by the wheel.
Isla says the dye vats take a bucket for every skein, and she cannot give them up. She asks that the new well be dug by the north road instead, on the higher, dry ground.
Ruby Oke says the bakery needs the same water as the mill. The bread does not care where the water comes from, only that it comes.
Item two: the relay house, if it is built. Gault says the quickeners need at least ten buckets of water each day, or they grow hot, and a hot quickener is no use to anybody.
Coll Harrow asks what happens if the water runs out. Gault says the mind answers more slowly, and then less. He says that has not happened yet. Coll says that is what everybody says before a thing happens.
Decided: the clerk to write to Vell for the quote on the stand. A new well to be dug by the north road, if the ground agrees, and tested before any vat or oven is allowed near it. Jory to find two men for the digging.
Adjourned at dusk. Gault lit the lamp at the mill gate himself.
%%
Minutes: supper at the hill house
Autumn, 191. House at the edge of Vell.
Present: Oren, Tavi the mason, Sela, Pera the school keeper, and Lell from the house beside the wall.
The meeting began with a question about the shared oven. Its door did not close well, and the bread had taken longer than usual.
Tavi said the hinge pin had slipped. He would set it straight after the meeting. Sela asked him not to use the long iron bar as a door stop again. The bar had left a mark in the floor.
Pera brought a pot of beetroot stew. She had put in potatoes, carrots, and a spoon of honey, because the pot tasted too sharp. The honey made it sweeter. Then she added salt to mend that. The stew was now too salty and too sweet.
Lell said she could bring bread. Oren said the stew would be useful for testing the oven hinge. Tavi said he would rather test it on a stone.
It was decided that the stew would be served with plain bread. No one would add more honey or salt. Pera would write the recipe down, so nobody else could repeat it by mistake.
Tavi fixed the hinge. The oven door shut. The stew was eaten, though Lell drank a full cup of water afterward.
%%
Minutes: the hamlet asks
Minutes of Icewater, a hamlet near Northpoint. Kept by Briar, net mender. A meeting in the net loft, in autumn, in the 197th year of the archive. Market day was the day before.

Present: twenty-six people. The tutor Hana had stayed on, because snow closed the road.

Business one. Hale's boat was late home from the coast on market eve. It came in after dark with a full hold and a torn net. Briar will mend it. Hale said the sea was calm and the fish were many, and that he stayed to catch them all. The meeting did not believe him.

Business two. The meeting asked the tutor to say again what she had said about the stream, because several of us had not understood.

The tutor said: think of a river. Each layer in a mind is like a small mill on the bank. The river goes by. The mill takes a little water, makes something from it, and pours it back into the river. The river goes on a little richer, and the next mill does the same.

Before, a mill took all the water, made something, and let out only what it made. If the mill was poor, the river was poor after it.

Old Brin said that was a good picture. He said his father had a mill like that.

The tutor said: when the mind is wrong, each mill is told how much of the wrong was its own. The word goes back up the river. Along the river itself the word travels freely. So even the first mill hears it.

Rue asked: does a mind with a stream know which mill did the good work? The tutor said not exactly. Each mill learns a little, and the river tells all of them. She said the tutors do not yet know why this works as well as it does.

Business three. Agreed to keep a net for the tutor to mend her sleeve. Agreed to hold the next meeting after the thaw.

Meeting ended. Briar.
%%
Northpoint log, Leaffall
Keeper's log at Northpoint. Mira. Lantern keeps the lamps.
Third of Leaffall. Snow on the hill. Wind from the north all day. Lamp lit at dusk. Message went out to Vell and came back clean.
Fifth. A letter from Isla at Vell. She says the big minds now read words in pieces, not letter by letter. She says the same window holds more. I read it twice and did not understand it. Lantern says it is like cutting bread before you eat it. I said that is not the same at all. She said it is close enough.
Seventh. Fox at the door before dawn, bold. Lantern left it a bit of fish. It came back at noon and looked in the window.
Ninth. The mind in the relay house answered three orders today and got all three right. Lantern says it is cleverer since the new drills. I said it is the same mind. She said it reads better. Maybe.
Eleventh. Long night coming. I have counted the oil twice. We have enough.
Twelfth. I stood on the walk round the lamp room and looked north. Nothing but snow and the dark. Then a light, high up, moving. I watched it a long while. It did not fall like a star. I have written it here and I will not write it in the letter to Tam. He would only worry.
Mira, keeper
%%
Minutes: the second apprentice
Minutes of the council at Kettle Ridge, the eighth of Apple, 208. Kept by Cal, miller.
Came: Tam, Peg, Cal, and seventeen farmers. Barley the horse was outside and was not invited.
First: the drill. Nessa drilled our first apprentice all summer. It farms now. It does the top field and the long field and it does not miss a beetroot. We all agree it was money well spent.
Second: the second mind. The box at the mill holds enough for one more apprentice and a little over. The council voted. Ten for, seven against. We will buy the second apprentice from Vell in Thaw and share it with the farms up the ridge. Tam will keep the rota. Peg will keep the key to the rota. This is to stop Tam losing the rota.
Third: the horse. Barley is borrowed again and must go home on the first of Frost. Nobody may ride him to the fair. Tam did not ask this time. We are all proud of Tam.
Fourth: honey. The bees are better. Ama will have honey by Longnight. We will send a jar to Vell for the glass.
Decided: buy the second apprentice, share it up the ridge, send the horse home on time, send honey to Vell.
The meeting ended at noon. The pie was good. The horse ate the hedge again.
%%
Minutes: the east wall, Longday
Three Wells council, the fourth of Longday, in the back room of Ida's bakery. It is the only room in town with a door that shuts.

Present: Dace, mayor. Ida, baker. Hal, carter. Sela, schoolteacher. Vale, cider maker, who kept these notes. Bel, from the school, who came to ask one question.

Dace said the east wall is down. A creeper came over it on the night of the second. It blew up eleven blocks of cobblestone and one of deep stone. Nobody was hurt. The creeper did not come out of it either. Dace says that is the only good news.

Hal asked why the top row of the wall sticks out. Dace said it is to keep the spiders off. Hal said the spiders never came in. The creeper did.

Decided: two apprentices will carry stone from the quarry, by day only. The torches along the east side will burn every night until the wall is whole.
%%
Minutes: Saltreach council, autumn
Saltreach council, autumn of 231. Met in the fish market, out of the rain. Present: Corin the shipwright, who chaired, and Pell of the Long Road, who kept the minutes. Also Dace, mayor of Three Wells, come down on the cart. Six boat families. Lark the mapmaker, who drew the harbor and the new ships.
First: the slip. Corin says the long stone ramp is too short for the big ships. We need a second slip, longer. Money is short. The boat families paid what they owed this month, forty emeralds, and so the debt to the yard is paid. Corin counted them twice.
Second: the west quay. The wall is cracked. We will mend it before the winter storms.
Third: the notice board. Dace asks that the sea road to Three Wells be marked better. Lark will draw a new map, with waymarks and the inns.
Fourth: the relay tower above the harbor. The keeper is old. His apprentice Lantern tends the lamps. Corin asks that Saltreach send a letter to Vell about the tower. Agreed.
Fifth: the births. Three this month. Corin's daughter has a son, named for her father. The boat families will bring bread and fish to the house.
Decided: the second slip is begun in Thaw. The debt is paid. The map is drawn. The letter to Vell is sent. Meeting closed. Pell wrote this and signed it.
%%
Minutes: the relay house and the well
Minutes of the Ambrook council, held in Isla the dyer's front room, by the dye vats, because the mill yard had flooded. Written by Isla.
Present: Jory the miller, Gault, keeper of the hill relay, Ruby Oke, Coll Harrow, the council clerk, Wil's mother, and Tibby Dunn with her son, who came because they had heard the word water on the lane.

Item one: the new well. Jory reports that the well by the north road is dug deep, three men high and nine rungs more. The stone is dark and wet, and the water comes up cold. Jory says it tastes of nothing at all, which he counts as a fine thing in a well.
Ruby Oke asks whether the water is good for bread. Jory says it is good for everything except his tea, which is a matter of taste. The council agreed to test a loaf before anybody argued further.

Item two: the relay house. Gault has the quote from Vell. The crystal and stand are sixty emeralds, paid over three years. The quickeners are twelve emeralds for the iron and the tubs, and then their water, which the council must find each day.
The clerk asks whether the mind is worth it. Gault says the mind is the reason for the tower. Coll says the tower was built to show the lamps, and the mind is not a lamp. The clerk says that is a point for the next meeting.
Gault explained, for the new members, what the mind does. It answers apprentices through the relays. It stands at the foot of the tower in its crystal, the size of a loaf, and the quickeners keep it cool. He says the tutors at Vell can tell you why it answers, and that they cannot tell you everything, and that they have stopped being ashamed of it.

Item three: the boy. Wil's mother asks whether the lower door has been locked since the thaw. Gault says it has. She asks whether a child can hear the mind from the ladder. Gault says no. He has listened all winter, and he has heard the mind answer apprentices, and nobody else. Wil's mother says that is the most reassuring thing she has heard, and asks for it to be written down.

Item four: the summer water. The new well must not run dry. Jory will put a second bucket chain on it, and a board over the top to keep the leaves out. Tibby Dunn offered her cart for the carrying, and asked for her name to be painted on it. It was agreed.

Decided: the relay house to be built, if Vell sends the crystal before Reaping. The quickeners set out round the stand in shade. The new well to supply the tower, the mill, the bakery and the vats, in that order, and the order to be painted on the board. The clerk to write to Vell, and to thank them for the plainness of their letter.
Adjourned at dusk. Gault lit the lamp at the mill gate, and it was seen from the tower, and everyone agreed that was a good sign.
%%
Relay log
Abel keeps the little relay on the hill above the north farm. He writes it all down.
Sixth of Longnight. Snow to the knee. Lamp lit at dusk, all well.
Seventh. Wind all night. The lamp still burns. The sheep came down to the wall for shelter. I let them.
Eighth. The lamp went out at midday. I climbed up. The glass was cracked on the sea side and the copper ring was loose. I wrapped it in cloth and brought it down.
Ninth. No lamp tonight. I sent word to Saltreach by the farm boy. He runs faster than the cart.
Tenth. Still no lamp. Folk from the farm came up to ask if the tower had fallen. I told them it is only a lamp. They looked at the dark top and went home quiet.
Eleventh. A cart from Saltreach. Corin sent glass and a new ring. He sent a note. It says: do not drop it. I did not.
Twelfth. Fixed. Lit at dusk. The whole farm came out to see it. Someone brought soup up the hill. We ate it at the foot of the tower in the snow.
All well. Abel.
%%
Minutes: the school play, Reedhollow
Held in the Reedhollow schoolroom, on the third day of Melon. Present: Maud (teacher), Garrow (wool carder), Hob (carter), Joss (boatman), two parents, and the children who were chosen for the play. Kept by Garrow.

Maud opened the meeting. The play this year is to be about the bridge over the Tull. It will be performed on the last day of Melon, for the hamlet and the healing house.

The children's roles were read out. The carpenters, the council, the men with the beam and the river. The river is to be played by a cloth, not by a child, because last year's river would not stay still.

Joss asked if the river could be a boat. Maud said no, a boat would sink the bridge. Joss said that was the point. Maud said it was not in the script.

The question of the apprentice came up. Maud asked if the boat house could lend one for the play. Joss said yes, but it must be told only one order, and the order must be clear. Maud said she would write the order on a card. It will be "fetch the empty basket, carry it to the teacher." The children said that was a very boring part. Maud said it was the most important part, and that it was not boring to a basket.

Decided: the play will be performed on the grass by the school if the weather is fine, and in the schoolroom if it is not. Garrow will make the costumes from the spare wool. Hob will bring the beam, which is a broom, and not a real beam, since the real beam is at the mill.

The meeting ended when the bell rang for the children to go home. Nobody argued about the river.
%%
Notice: the north farm relay
Put on the board at Saltreach, by order of the harbor council.
The relay lamp on the hill above the north farm broke in the snow on the eighth of Longnight. It is fixed now.
Abel kept it. He climbed the tower twice in the wind and did not wait for the cart.
The council thanks him.
The farm asks that next time he takes someone up the ladder with him. His knees are not young.
Abel says his knees are fine and the lamp is finer.
Signed, the harbor council.
%%
Minutes: the Reaping fair, Melon
Three Wells council, the twenty-sixth of Melon, at the middle well. Dace had the stools carried out for everyone, which is what he does when he wants a short meeting. It was not short.

Present: Dace, mayor. Ida, baker. Vale, cider maker. Sela, schoolteacher. Hal, carter. Tolly, from the Brown Hen on the Long Road, who came to ask about beds. Toby, beekeeper, with a jar of honey for the judges. Peg, the fair's apprentice, who stood by the bell rope the whole time. Peg did not speak.

The fair is on the twelfth to the fourteenth of Reaping. Stalls round all three wells. Lamps at every corner, lit by dusk. Dace asked for the lamp oil to be counted first. Ida said she had counted it. She had counted it twice.

Best beetroot: Tam from Kettle Ridge has sent word that he will bring his biggest. Sela asked how big. Tam held his hands apart, the message says. Tolly said that is not a beetroot, it is a small pumpkin. The judges will measure it with a rope.

Best cider: Vale asked to be excused from judging the cider. Dace said the judge must be someone who does not like cider. Hal put up his hand at once. Vale said that was a fair choice.

Honey: Toby says the bees have had a good year. The jar on the table says so too.

The cow from the mill came to the fair last year and ate the first prize ribbon. This year the mill has promised to keep her in. Everyone hopes the mill keeps its promise.

News from Copperhold: Hesk's carter came through two days ago. He says the lower levels of the Deep Works are warm to the hand. At night a hum comes up the shaft. Some say it is water moving in the old sump. Hesk says the sump has been dry for years. Miners stop going below the eighth level now. The ninth gate is locked, and its key is kept at the mine hall. Nobody will say who locked it.

Dace said the fair is the fair. He said it three times, and then he rang the bell for the end of the meeting. Peg rang it with him.
%%
Minutes: the Melon meeting
Meeting of the Hillfoot farms, in Odo's barn, outside Vell. The twentieth of Melon. Kept by Yarrow, roofer. Present: Odo, Lise, Rook, old Kit, Gwen, Hesper, young Wick, two visitors from Vell, and the dog. The barn was hot. Everyone agreed it was the barn.

1. The lamp. Hesper reported that the little hill lamp has blinked every night since it was mended. Messages passed this month: 211. Lost: none. The line was dark for one evening, when Hesper fell asleep. Vell sent word, Hesper woke, the lamp was lit. Hesper asks the farms to forgive her. The farms forgave her before she finished.

2. The road to the farms. Three ruts after the rain, one of them deep enough to lose a hen. Odo says it is a road. Rook says it is a ditch with ambitions. Decided: all farms bring a cart of stones on the first dry day, and Yarrow will lay them. Yarrow asks that the farms bring stones, not opinions.

3. The gate between Odo's and Rook's. It has been shut and open by turns since spring, and each says the other began it. The visitors from Vell, who are clerks, asked if either had written down which way the gate should hang. Neither had. Old Kit remembered that his father had set the gate and said it should swing toward Rook. Rook said that was fair. Odo said that was also fair. The gate will swing toward Rook, and a stone will hold it open on market day. Carried by everyone, with some surprise.

4. An apprentice for the hay. The farms have asked Vell for one apprentice to carry hay between them. The clerks said there is a long list. Wick asked if it would be tested. The clerks said it would be tested at Vell. Wick asked if it would be tested in the hay. The clerks looked at one another. Decided: ask the tutor to come and test it here, in the barn, on a day of hay. Carried: 9. Against: 1. Rook, who says an apprentice would eat his dinner.

5. Barn roof. Yarrow looked at Odo's roof from the ladder. Nine boards are rotten. Cost: 18 emeralds. Odo says he will think. Yarrow says think quickly, because the rain thinks quickly.

6. Next meeting: the first of Reaping, if the barn is cooler.
Meeting closed when the dog woke and wished to go out. Everyone went out with it.
%%
Minutes: Kettle Ridge, the dry well
Meeting at the mill, held the fourth of Leaffall, autumn. Kettle Ridge.
Present: Tam, farmer. The miller. Pip, apprentice, who took the notes and spilled the ink once.
First matter: the well in Tam's yard.
Tam said the well ran dry in the third week of Reaping. The bottom is cracked. The water goes down into the dark and does not come back. He said the well has fed that house since before his grandmother, and he would like it mended.
The miller asked who would dig. Tam said we would.
The miller asked if the water had gone somewhere bad. Tam said it had gone down, and down is where water goes.
Pip said there is a place under the field where the water runs, and it may be that the crack lets it run away before the bucket reaches it.
The meeting agreed: the well shall be mended with stone and clay, and every household on the ridge shall give one day of work. The work begins after the wedding. Tam shall keep the cider.
Second matter: the wedding of the miller's daughter, ninth of Frost. The mill shall close for the day. The pig shall not come. The pig came to the last wedding and ate the bread.
Third matter: the tutor from Vell. She stayed at Tam's and looked inside a crystal with small tools. She found which part of a mind answers for numbers, and which for orders. The rest she could not find. The meeting asked what that means.
Tam said it means we know some of it.
The meeting agreed to write it down and send it to the Archive.
Signed by the miller. Notes by Pip.
%%
Minutes: the emerald debt, Longday
Minutes, Northpoint market, the third week of Longday.
Present: Odo, Hetta, Vane, and Ulla the pie seller.
Eight of Ulla's pies were raw in the middle. Ulla says the recipe is right and the market oven is wrong. Hetta says the recipe is Ulla's, so it must be wrong.
Decided: Ulla bakes again tomorrow, with a clerk watching the fire.
Odo owed Hetta twelve emeralds for a cart wheel. He paid four in Thaw, four in Sowing and four today. Hetta says it is paid in full, which is rare.
Decided: Vane will write Paid beside Odo's name, with a small smile.
Adjourned.
%%
Minutes of the winter road council
The road council met at the Brown Hen in the winter of 63. Snow had closed the hill path, but the Long Road remained open as far as the inn.

Present were Marda, keeper of the Brown Hen; Cass, keeper of the relay at the bend; Pell, cart driver; Odo, mason; Hena, who tended the bridge; and Linn, a clerk from the Archive at Vell. Two road workers came late and stood by the door.

Marda said the inn had used three full wood stacks since the first snow. Travelers had brought news from Vell, Three Wells and Kettle Ridge. One traveler had brought no news, but ate two bowls of stew. Marda said this was not a complaint.

Pell said the road from Three Wells was now firm enough for loaded carts. The stretch beyond the bridge was still narrow. He had met a cart there and both drivers had backed up. Neither wanted to say whose horse moved first.

Hena said the bridge had held through the last thaw. The stone path beside it had helped travelers keep their feet out of the stream. She asked for more stones before spring, and said the east rail needed a fresh oak plank.

Odo said the north fork needed a second waymark. The old mark could be seen from the inn, but not from the road after a snowfall. He could set another one on the low rise, if a cart brought stone.

Cass said the relay lamp at the bend had carried a message to Three Wells in three signals. Three Wells sent the reply to Vell. Linn said the Archive had filed both messages and a copy of the road plan. She asked Cass to send the next notice in the same plain form.

Pell said a good road needed more than marks. Travelers needed a dry place to stop between towns. He had heard that the people at the far end of the ridge wanted an inn. Marda said they should first learn to keep a roof on it.

It was decided that Pell would carry stone and one oak plank when the road softened. Odo and Hena would build the second mark and mend the bridge rail. Cass would send word to Three Wells and the ridge. Marda would give the road crew beds and a hot meal. Linn would take the minutes to Vell and file one copy in the Archive.

After the meeting, the two workers brought in snow on their boots. Marda gave them a broom. They swept the floor before they ate.

Linn wrote that the road was longer than it had been when the Brown Hen first opened. She wrote that more inns and relay towers would follow it. Cass said he hoped they would. Pell said he hoped the road crew would leave room for his cart. Marda said a road wide enough for Pell was wide enough for everyone.
%%
Minutes: the missing child
Autumn, 183. House at the edge of Vell.
Present: Oren, Sela from the house by the light well, Pera the school keeper, and Jory, who had brought a wet cloak.
Sela said her child, Nib, had run off after supper. He had gone to look for the red leaves on the hill path. She had called until her voice was sore.
Pera said Nib had not come to the school house. Jory said he had seen small boot marks past the oak gate, then a rabbit had crossed them.
Oren said they must search the path and the garden sheds. He took a lantern. Pera took a dry cloak. Jory took two apples, in case Nib had missed supper.
They found Nib asleep in the empty wood shed, with red leaves in both pockets. He said the leaves were for his mother. Sela hugged him, then told him the leaves could have waited until morning.
It was decided that children going past the oak gate after supper must tell someone first. Jory gave Nib one apple. The other apple was for the searchers, but Jory ate it on the way home.
%%
Notes: what a big relay house is for
A primer for older children, by Nessa of Vell. Written in the winter, for the school at Three Wells.
You know the relay towers. Each has a keeper and a lamp. The lamp blinks, and a keeper far off reads it and blinks back. That is how a message crosses the land.
Now think of the big mind in the relay house at the foot of a tower. It is a crystal the size of a loaf, or a barrel, or bigger. It stands on a stand, ringed by quickeners kept cool with water, ice or snow. The little minds inside apprentices ask it questions through the relays, and it answers by letter. It works all night and does not tire.
Why build one bigger than a town? Because a mind drilled longer on more writing grows better, and the curve can be drawn before the mind is grown. Isla found that. So the councils build big houses to hold big minds, the way you build a bigger barn for a bigger harvest.
Here is the honest trouble. A tutor tests a mind on drills she never showed it. That is how we know a mind is good. But no one tutor can test a mind bigger than her whole hall. So the councils test together. Every drill is written down and kept. Many people try the mind, and what they find is written and kept too. We hope that is enough. Anyone who says they know exactly what the biggest mind can do is telling you a rumor. We write the rumors down as rumors.
Nobody knows why a crystal learns at all. Nobody knows how the relays carry so much for a big mind. We keep the lamps lit and write it down and learn slowly, the way we always have.
%%
Notice: the drill yard at Kettle Ridge
Notice to all at Kettle Ridge and the farms around.
The tutor Nessa will come from Vell on the tenth of Melon to drill our apprentice and any other mind you bring.
She will teach the mind to farm. That means one row, then the next, then the next. It is not a fast thing to learn. Bring your mind early in the morning.
We have made a drill yard behind the barn. It has a small field drawn on a board. The apprentice stands in its row and does what the board says. Peg has already drawn a very good board. She drew a pig in the corner for luck.
Bring a sack for your mind to haul, in case it forgets the farming. Ours will not forget hauling. Ours could haul the barn.
If the drill goes well, the council will vote to buy a second apprentice and share it with the farms up the ridge. The money is in the box at the mill. If the drill goes badly, we will keep the money and buy a cow.
No horses in the drill yard. Barley, we mean you.
Signed, Cal, miller, for the council
%%
Minutes: the winter of the new
Meeting of the farm folk outside Northpoint, in the barn of Olwen, with a long table and a long list. Winter. Mira, relay keeper, took the minutes. Present: seventeen. This was the third meeting since Lantern came, and the people had much to say.

1. WELCOME. Mira welcomed the meeting and thanked Olwen for the stove, the soup and the chairs.

2. LANTERN. Mira reported that Lantern has now learned the stair of the tower. It lights ninety lamps without error. It has learned not to light them in the middle of the day. It has learned to stop when the keeper raises a hand. It has not learned to be early. Mira says that is her own fault.

3. THE TUTOR'S LETTER. A letter has come from the tutor house at Vell, from Nessa. She asks how Lantern is doing and whether it has been tested. Mira replied that it was tested at the tutor house before it came. The test is a drill that the apprentice was never shown. It passed.

4. THE FIRST FOUR. Garth asked again about the first four apprentices. Mira said the chronicles at Vell give them names, but the names are not agreed. Some say they were called Stone, Seed, Row and Hall. Others say Stone, Seed, Row and Broom. The records disagree. Garth said the records always disagree on the early years. Mira said that is why they are interesting.

5. THE LOST LETTER. The letter from Olwen's sister, which was lost, has come at last. It was found at the bottom of a mail bag at Saltreach. It had been there since autumn. Olwen has read it and is well pleased. Her sister has a new baby.

6. THE POND. The ice is thick. The children skate. Lantern has been asked to stand at the edge and watch. It does. It stands very still. A child said it is the best watcher on the pond. Mira said it is the only one.

7. CLOSING. Soup, and a toast to the new baby, whose name is Olive. Meeting closed at the ninth hour.
%%
Minutes: the midsummer feast, 196
Minutes of the Lowmarsh council, in the boat house, the day before the midsummer feast, the year 196.
Present: Juno, Wren, Olwen, Ned, Tova, and the new helper from the Three Wells tutor house, which carries the lanterns and does not speak. It stood where it was put, by the door, and was not in the way.

Said: the feast has been moved to the north walk, because the south walk has three new planks and one of them is still wet.
Decided: the feast is on the north walk. Tova says that is the wrong side of the marsh. Juno says it is the right side for cheese. Olwen says both sides are wet. The vote was three to two, and Wren did not vote, because she is the one who bandages anyone who falls in.
Said: the frog singing starts at dusk. The frogs have been told. Ned says they have not agreed. Wren says they never agree, and they sing anyway.
Said: the children want to float lanterns on the water. Ned says lanterns do not float, they sink. The helper was asked. It put one lantern on the water, and it floated, because it had cork in its base. Decided: the children may float lanterns, but only the ones with cork.
Said: the honey cakes have been counted. Thirty-two. The children have counted them thirty-three times, and the number keeps growing.
Decided: Tova carries the honey cakes from the cart to the table. Tova asked why. Juno said because she is the only one who can be trusted to count. Tova said that was not a reason, and then she carried them.
Decided: the meeting is closed. Everyone goes home by the torches. Nobody goes on the boardwalk past the third torch, which is out.

Kept by Juno, with the honey cakes beside her, and five of them missing. Nobody has confessed.
%%
Letter: Oren to Orla
To Orla, tutor at Vell, from Oren, clerk, autumn of 90.
I read your question at Northpoint. It was a long way to carry a question. The folk there listened. That surprised me.
Here is what I think, and I am only a clerk.
A drilled mind learns to give the right answer. You show it a thing, and it says what the thing is. You show it a wrong answer, and you push it toward the right one. Do that a thousand times, and it is good at it. This I have seen.
But I have never seen one ask a question of its own. I have never seen one say, I do not know. That is the part that troubles me. A mind that cannot say I do not know is only a very good row of answers.
Your test is a clever test. A hidden mind and a person answer the same questions by letter. We read the answers and we guess. If we cannot tell, we must think again about what thinking is.
But I would ask you this. What if we cannot tell because we have chosen easy questions? Ask the mind and the person something nobody has drilled. Ask them what they would do if the lamp went out. Ask them why they are sad.
A mind drilled on answers will be sad in the way it was shown to be sad. A person will be sad in their own way, and will not need to be shown.
Still, I would like to see the test. I will carry letters for it, if you like. I am good at carrying letters.
The folk at Northpoint send word. They will not say whether a mind can think. They say they would like to know. One of them, a boy called Lantern, said, then you would have to be polite to it. I have thought about that all the way down the road.
Oren, at Vell.
%%
Minutes by Nessa
Autumn meeting in the west house at Vell.
Present: Nessa, Oren, Fen, Sella, and Iven. The rain had stopped, though water still dripped from the eaves.
We began with the lower path. Leaves covered the stones and made them slick. Fen and Iven cleared the ditch while Oren held the lantern. They found a wooden spoon, two small stones, and a lost blue button. Sella claimed the spoon. Nobody claimed the button.
Nessa reported that the gate lamp was mended. The light reaches the first bend now. We agreed to trim the hedge there, so travelers can see the path before dark.
Oren asked if the archive had sent word from the north. He had heard that the lamps at Northpoint were seen late one night, then not seen the next. Fen said snow can hide a lamp. Iven said a traveler told him the sky itself had been bright. Sella said travelers will say anything if offered a warm bowl.
No one knew what the lights were. We agreed to keep the lamp filled and leave the north matter for another meeting.
Sella brought a small honey cake as a gift. We cut it into five pieces and gave the smallest to Fen, who had already eaten two.
%%
Minutes: the lost letter, Longday
Three Wells council, the twentieth of Longday, in the school yard under the big oak.

Present: Dace, mayor. Sela, schoolteacher. Bel, nine years old, who wrote the letter in question. Hal, carter. Vale, who kept these notes.

Bel stood up first. She sent a letter to the archive at Vell on the cart of the first of the month. It was about the bees, and how many there are. She counted them twice. The letter has not come back to her. It has not come to Vell either.

The letter was lost somewhere between the Halfway Inn and the bridge. Hal said the cart went on past the inn. He watched it leave. He did not watch the bag. Nobody watches the bag, he said. Bel said that was a very sad thing to say. Hal agreed that it was.

Hal says the letter is in a ditch. Sela says it went off with the travelers, who took a mail sack by mistake. Dace says the Long Road has taken three bags this year and given back two.

Decided: Bel will write the letter again. This time the mayor will read it first, to be sure the bees are all there. Bel said the bees are all there. Dace said that is what he was afraid of.

Vale read a word from Vell. The copying room is shut in the afternoons now. The clerks say the work is slow. They did not say why.

Bel asked if the archive keeps lost letters. Dace said the archive keeps everything written. Bel said then her letter is in a drawer at Vell, waiting for her. Dace said he hoped so.
%%
Minutes: Lowmarsh meeting
Summer. Held on the farm outside Lowmarsh, in the barn. Kept by Sorrel.
Present: 14 farmers, 3 reed cutters, the healer's helper, one goat.
The wheel of the marsh mill broke on the third of Longday. A spoke split and the rim came loose.
Decided: Hobb will make a new rim of oak. Each farm gives one day of work. The goat is to be removed from the barn.
Meeting closed at the second bell.
%%
Northpoint log, autumn
Mira, keeper. The nights are long now. Lantern trims the lamps and writes the hours down.
A letter came from the council of the coast. They are building a relay house at Saltmere, bigger than the town. They ask what mind will stand in it. I wrote back: a mind is not made by the house. The house is made for the mind. They did not like that.
The tutor Senn passed through on her way north. She told us of the biggest houses, where councils put minds too large for any tutor to check alone. She said the tutors test what they can and write down the rest. She said the rumors disagree. I believe her.
Lantern asked me what the biggest mind can do. I said: nobody agrees, and that is the honest answer. She said that is a poor answer. I said it is the only one I have.
The lights were over the north again. Not stars. They moved slow and then were gone. Lantern says they were looking at us. I wrote down that she said it. I did not write that I think it.
Tam writes from Kettle Ridge. The beetroot came in well. Pip has learned to haul, and hauls everything now, including the cat.
%%
Council minutes: the reading mind
Minutes of the council at Vell, the fourth of Sowing, 216. Oren clerk.
The council met to hear Nessa on the newest work at the tutor house. The hall was full. Bel, now a woman grown, came from Three Wells and sat at the back.
Nessa spoke plainly. A mind reads a page one letter at a time. It guesses the next letter from the ones before. That is all it does, over and over.
Then she told the new part. Some minds now write their steps before they answer, the way a tutor writes a sum on the board. They put down what they know, then the step, then the answer. Then they read it back and check it.
A mind cannot do a long sum in its head in one go, she said. It runs out of room. But if it writes the steps out, each step is small, and the next step can lean on the one before. So it reaches answers it could not hold in one look.
Oren asked: does it ever check wrong? Nessa said yes. A mind can check its work and still be sure and wrong, same as any of us. The council laughed, and then was quiet.
Dace of Three Wells asked what it means for the schools. Nessa said the children may as well learn to show their steps too, and the council agreed.
Decided: the tutor house will lend a small mind that shows its steps to the school at Three Wells for one month each spring. The council will pay for the quickeners' ice in summer. Oren will keep a box of these new pages and label it plainly.
Bel asked if the Archive kept the day of her school visit, all those years ago. Oren said yes. Kept.
Closed at dusk.
%%
Minutes: the fair at Vell
Minutes of the market fair at Vell, held in the front hall and the yard, the first of Swarm, 221. Oren kept the minutes, standing up, because the benches were full.
Present: the whole market, the council, Nessa and the tutors with three minds for the contest, Corin up from Saltreach, Wren and Moss from Lowmarsh, and a great many children.
The contest: each mind was given the same unseen drill, a page of long sums and a letter puzzle. Two minds wrote out their steps. The third answered at once.
The first mind wrote its steps and checked them and was right on every sum. The second wrote its steps, checked, found a wrong step, crossed it and wrote a new row, and was right on every sum but one. The third answered at once and was right on the easy sums and wrong on the long ones.
Nessa said this is what she expected. A mind that writes its steps reaches the long sums. A mind that does not runs out of room.
Then a small thing. A child of about six, named Tam after his grandfather, was told by his mother to stay by the well. He ran off after a bee and was found at the fish stall, eating a honey cake. His mother said: I told you to stay. The child said: I did stay. I stayed by the honey.
Wren laughed and said she had heard that from a mind as well. Her apprentice Moss once told the healing house apprentice to "fetch the red jar" and it came back with a red jar of honey from the kitchen, because red is a color and a jar is a jar.
Conclusion: the fair was good. The two minds that showed their steps took the prize together. The child was given another honey cake and told to stay by the well. He stayed, and ate it, and did not move.
Oren will file these minutes and the contest pages in the deep halls, in the box marked plainly.
Closed when the lamps went out.
%%
Log: the bridge at Copperhold
Kept by Jem, bridge keeper. Spring of 190.
The bridge over the low stream carries the coal carts down from the Deep Works to the road. I walk it every morning with a lamp and a stick.
First of Blossom. The oak rail on the left is soft at the top. I mark it with a stone. Two carts pass. Good.
Fourth. The stone footing is sound. The water is low. The frogs are back in the reeds. Good.
Ninth. I mend the soft rail with new oak. Clank holds the plank while I work. It does not shift. Good.
Twelfth. Bara and Tobin were wed at the mine gate. After, everyone walked over the bridge to the kitchen. The bridge held the whole town at once. Good.
Fifteenth. A wagon of iron from the forge. The bridge took it. One plank creaks by the footing. I will watch it.
Twentieth. Rain all day. The stream is up to the second stone. The bridge holds. Good.
I keep this log so the next keeper knows which plank to watch. It is the third from the footing.
%%
Letter: Bara to her cousin at Kettle
Dear Fen,
Come to the wedding. The third of Blossom, at the mine gate in Copperhold. Tobin and I will stand there and Hesk will say the words. It is a short saying. Then we eat.
The kitchen is making beetroot soup. There will be bread from every house, which Hesk says is too much bread, but he says it with a smile. Old Rill is bringing honey cake. She moved down from the top row and now she is warm all winter and bakes all day.
Jem is mending the bridge again. He says it will hold a cart of coal and it does. Clank is carrying the benches to the gate. It does not say a word, it just carries. Tobin says it is the best worker in the town and does not ask for bread.
The fields are green and the wind is warm. Wear your good coat. Bring your mother if she can walk that far.
Your cousin, Bara
%%
Minutes: the winter meeting of the lane
Minutes of the winter meeting held at the house at the edge of Vell. Written out by Nessa, and read at the next meeting to see if all agree. The year is not named.
Present: Nessa, Dell, Marrow, Brenna, Tobias, the widow Fenn, Orrin, Reed, Hobb and Tilly, the two carters, and a boy who came for the warmth.
Matters.
One. The cold. This winter is colder than the last, and the last was colder than the one before. Tobias says this is only an old man's feeling. Marrow says the pond froze to the bottom, and the fish have gone. Nobody could say which of them is right.
Two. The lane. Three houses at the end are empty. Their owners went to the coast. We keep the doors shut and the windows boarded. Brenna swept the steps of the nearest. She says it feels strange to sweep a step that nobody will use.
Three. The melon. Orrin's melon is now so large that the cellar is full of it. It has come to be a joke of the lane, and a cause of some pride. The widow Fenn says she has never seen a thing so round. Dell says she has never looked at a baker. It was decided, after some debate, that the melon be cut where it lies, a slice a day, and shared. The first slice was cut on the day of the meeting, and was sweet.
Four. Moving house. Tobias has moved to the town, as he said he would. The cart took two days. The bed took four men. The dog went on top.
Five. Rumors. It is said by some that the Deep Works hum at night, and that the miners will not go below a certain level. It is said by others that this is a tale carried from Copperhold by a carter who likes to be listened to. Nobody here has been to Copperhold lately. Nessa wrote to ask, and has no answer.
Six. A rumor from the sea, that families are leaving over the water in great ships. Dell had it from a cousin. Reed says the ships are only for fishing, and larger than before. Tilly says a cousin of hers went, and has not written, but then, she was never one to write.
Seven. The torches. Keep them lit.
Nothing was decided about the north, the stone, the ships or the lights. It was decided that the lane will meet again, and that is something.
The tea was hot. The bread was good. Hobb sang. Nessa closed the book.
%%
Letter: Nessa to a young tutor
To a tutor new to the drill room, from Nessa at Vell. Autumn.
You will hear about looking inside. Here is what we found and what we did not.
We can open a crystal and put light through it. We can see which places grow busy when the mind does one kind of work. We found a place for numbers. We found a place for orders, where the eight meanings sit together. We found a place where the mind keeps a field in its head, each row and stone in its spot. When we drill a mind on sums, the number place grows busy and the others rest. When we drill it on orders, the order place wakes. This is true and it is useful. It tells us when a mind is ready and when it is only guessing.
We did not find the whole mind this way. We looked for the part that feels a wrong answer and changes. We could not find it. It may be everywhere, the way cold is everywhere in a winter room and not in one corner. It may be that our light is too weak, or our tool too blunt. We do not know. Write that we do not know.
Some tutors say the biggest minds are too big to look into at all, and what we find in a small crystal may not be true of a big one. I think they are right to say so. We look, and we find some of it, and we leave the rest where it is.
Teach the drills first. Looking inside is for later, and for the careful.
Nessa
%%
Minutes: what the chronicle says
Meeting of the farm folk outside Northpoint, in the barn of Olwen. Winter. Mira, relay keeper, took the minutes. Present: nineteen, and Lantern. This was a long meeting about the oldest question the people of Northpoint could think of: where do apprentices come from?

OPENING. Olwen said she had heard many stories, and that tonight she would like to hear what is in the books. She asked Mira to speak.

THE CHRONICLE. Mira said that the chronicles kept at Vell tell the story this way. In the early years of the archive, when the first keepers had dug the hill and cut the words over the door, there were also the first tutors. They were a handful of folk who wished to teach. They took four helpers made of copper and iron, which had been built for hauling and sweeping, and they put a crystal in each.

A crystal is a stone that learns from what it is shown. They showed each one the same example again and again. The crystal was wrong. It changed a little. It was wrong again, but a little less. After many times, it was right.

This is how the first four learned. One learned to carry stones from the quarry floor to the cart. One learned to sort seed into piles. One learned to walk a row of beans. One learned to sweep.

THE TELLING. The children called them apprentices, because they learned, like children, at a bench. The name stayed. It stayed for two hundred years.

THE QUESTION. Garth asked why a crystal learns. Mira said, "The chronicles do not say. The first tutors did not know, and the ones after did not find out. They know that it works. They know how to make it work better. They do not know why."

Garth said that was a thing he would not have expected. Mira said it is a thing she often thinks about.

THE SMALL TOWNS. Olwen asked why Northpoint never had an apprentice before Lantern. Mira said the chronicles tell that for generations, apprentices did only one thing each, and most towns had none. They were slow to teach, and the crystals were few. A town far from Vell would wait a hundred years.

THE GUESSES. The meeting offered its own guesses. Garth said the stone in a crystal is alive. Olwen said it is not alive but it is willing. A child said it is just a stone that wants to be useful. Mira said that was as good a guess as any, and she wrote it in the minutes.

THE PRESENT. Lantern lit the torch by the door, then the one by the window, then the one on the wall. It did not speak. Apprentices do not. But it did what it does, and the barn was bright.

CLOSING. Tea and bread. A toast to the first four, whose names are disputed. Meeting closed at the tenth hour.

Mira, relay keeper, clerk of the meeting
%%
Mill log, summer
Mill log at Kettle Ridge. Kept by Cal.
Third of Swarm. Wind from the west. Ten sacks of wheat ground. The new apprentice hauled nine and Tam hauled one. Tam says he is not beaten. He is beaten.
Fourth of Swarm. Rain. The mill turned slow. We mended the sluice gate. The apprentice held the plank while I nailed it. It held it very still. I said thank you. It did not say anything, because it does not talk, but it stood there a while and then went back to the barn. Peg says it likes the barn.
Fifth of Swarm. Fair weather. Twelve sacks. The tally board fell off the wall again. The apprentice hauled the board to the barn before I could stop it. We have decided not to ask it for the board any more.
Sixth of Swarm. Bees still cross. No honey. Ama says it is the heat. The hives by the pond are quiet and the ones on the hill are loud. I do not understand bees. I only grind what they do not eat.
Seventh of Swarm. The horse Barley came back for a visit. Sedge sent him with a letter. The apprentice tried to haul Barley. Barley did not agree. Everybody laughed. Even Tam.
%%
Minutes: the boy at the tower stair
Minutes of the Ambrook council, held at the mill. Written by Isla.
Present: Jory, Gault, Isla, Ruby Oke, the council clerk, and Wil's mother, who did not sit down.
Item one: Wil, aged nine, ran off on the morning of the thaw. He was found on the seventh landing of the relay stair, with his boots off. He said he wanted to hear the mind answer.
Gault said the lower door was locked, and the boy had climbed the outside ladder past the lamp. He could have fallen. Wil's mother said that was why she would not sit.
Gault said the mind is kept at the foot of the tower, and a child on the stair cannot hear it. He had listened all winter.
Decided: the lower door locked at dusk, the key kept at the mill. No child to climb the relay stair without a keeper. The school to visit the tower once in Thaw, in daylight, with Gault at the front.
Wil was given a jar of honey, and told he may not have it until he has apologized to the lamp. He apologized to the lamp.
%%
Minutes: Winter work and road news
Kept by Nessa in the tutors' house at Vell.
Present: Oren, Nessa, Brann, Dace, Pell, Sela, and two clerks from the Archive. Harn from Saltreach came by letter. No one came from Northpoint.
Oren began with the shelf rooms. The new door shut without sticking, and the shelves were dry. He asked for a rule about loose pages. They turn up in books, in coat pockets, and once under the flour bin.
Dace said the children at Three Wells had started a lost page box. It was a bread box with a clean lid. Oren said that was good, as long as no one put bread in it.
Nessa reported on Flint, the new apprentice. It had learned to carry one box at a time and to stop at the marked turns. On a fresh drill, it found the copying room and returned to the tutor's bench. It did not know the hall beyond the old shelves. Nessa said that was no fault. It had not been shown that hall.
Pell said the Long Road was passable from Vell to the Halfway Inn. He had left apples there for the travelers. He asked the council to mend the loose waymark before more snow covered its number.
Brann sent a note that Northpoint's signal lamp had been seen through the snow, but the keeper's reply was late. He had heard from the little relay that the keeper was well. He did not know why the reply took so long.
Sela told of a traveler who said the lights in the north sky were fires. Another traveler said they were stars falling behind the ridge. Brann's note gave no cause for them. Oren said the Archive would keep each account with its speaker.
Harn's letter said the fishing boat had not come in by the last harbor watch. A second letter from Saltreach said a small boat had found a net and an oar near the south rocks. It did not say whose they were. Pell said the boats often lost an oar in winter. Harn asked that a lamp stay lit at the pier.
Dace asked whether the road party should go to the coast. Pell said the snow would make the low track hard to cross. Sela said her nephew could go as far as the Brown Hen and bring back news. Nessa asked that he not go alone.
It was decided that Pell and Sela's nephew would take flour and wool to the Halfway Inn, then wait for a clear road before going farther. Brann will ask Northpoint for a short reply each evening. Oren will keep both reports from Saltreach beside the harbor list.
The clerks will sort loose pages on the next clear morning. The children may use the bread box, but Dace must put a sign on it.
Nessa added that Flint carried the minutes back to the shelf room. It stopped at the right door. Oren said the door now closes better than the one at his own house.
%%
The biggest house
A note kept by the tutors of Vell, for the young ones.
When the councils began building relay houses bigger than towns, the tutors could not check them. There were too many crystals, too many quickeners, and too many minds inside, and the tutors could not walk round every one. So the councils built big houses and put big minds in them, and there was no one to say plainly what the biggest could do.
This is what the texts, letters, rumor and gossip say, and they disagree.
Some say the biggest can hold the whole archive in one crystal, every page, and answer any question about it in a breath. Some say it forgets a page the moment a new one comes. Some say it can read a letter from Northpoint and write back in the same hour, and some say the relays go quiet in the snow and the big minds sleep.
One letter says a big mind planned a road, all the way from Saltreach to Three Wells, and the masons built it. Another says the mind planned it wrongly, and the masons built it anyway, and it is still crooked. One letter says the minds learned to be kind. Another says they learned only to be quick.
You will want to know what is true. The tutors do not know. The councils do not say. What we know is this: the houses are very big, the quickeners are kept cool with ice and water, and the minds inside answer letters through the relays, day and night, and no one outside has looked closely enough to say more. Some pieces a mind is made of we found. The rest we did not.
Nessa, tutor at Vell, autumn, no year given
%%
Minutes: the second looking, stream
Minutes of the north council, winter. Present: the two tutors, Mira, Juno, Wynn, and the keeper of the lamp room, who asked to be told what a stream is before anyone began.

The tutors explained, plainly, for the keeper. A mind has many layers, one after another. Each layer takes in what came from the layer before, and finds one thing in it. The finding is added to the stream. The stream runs through the whole mind, from the front to the back, and each layer can read it and add to it. That is why a deep mind does not lose what it learned at the front.

The keeper asked whether the stream was a river. The tutors said it was like one, in that it carries things along, and unlike one, in that nobody has seen where it runs. They could find it by looking at the numbers. They could not find the bed it runs in.

Then the second looking. The tutors went through the layers with the lamp, one by one, from the front of the house. At each layer they wrote what the layer did with the stream. Most layers added a little and passed the rest on. A few layers took a little out. One layer seemed to do nothing at all, and they wrote that it did nothing, and that they were not sure.

The numbers in the stream were found to grow wild, layer by layer, unless each layer brought them back to an even size. The tutors saw this happen, and saw the layers do it, and were glad. They said this was the one part of the house they were sure of.

The rest they were not sure of. They could say that a certain layer reads the edges of letters, and a certain layer reads the words. They could not say why the words sit so close together in the mind, or why a layer that reads one thing should sometimes be able to read another.

Resolved: the tutors shall write only what they saw. Where they did not see, they shall write that they did not see.
Resolved: the minutes shall say that some of the house was found, and not the rest.
Objection: Wynn said that was a very long way of saying they did not know. The tutors said yes, and that it was the honest way of saying it.
Next looking: after Longnight, when the house is quiet. The lamp will be held by Juno, who has the steadiest hands on the line.
%%
Notice: the ninth of Blossom
To everyone in Copperhold. On the ninth of Blossom we move Old Rill from the top row to the flat by the forge. Her knees are bad and the stairs are many.
We need eight people, one cart, and strong rope. Jem brings the cart. Clank will haul the heavy chest.
Meet at the shaft head at first light. Bring gloves. Rill says there will be honey cake for everyone who comes. She has already baked it. Do not tell her we would come for free.
If it rains we move on the tenth instead.
Jem, bridge keeper, spring of 186
%%
Minutes: the bridge committee at Ambrook
Minutes of the bridge committee, held at the mill pond in the spring of the 203rd year. Present: Jory, the miller, Sarin, the bridge keeper's daughter, the carter Dorn from the Oak Post, Tam from Kettle Ridge, who was passing, and Dunn of Copperhold, who is still looking at the plank.

Item one. The loose plank on the bridge. Dunn has inspected it three times. He says the plank is sound at the centre and rotten at both ends, and that the rot has spread into the one beside it. He says the bridge will hold a cart, if the cart is light and the carter is careful. Dorn said he is always careful. Jory said he has heard different from the bakers.

Item two. The fixing. It was agreed to replace the plank with a new one, cut from the old oak in the mill yard. The old plank is to be kept, and hung in the mill, as a reminder. Jory asked why. Sarin said because it is the only plank that has ever been loose on purpose.

Item three. A question about the mind. Tam asked whether the new apprentices from the tutor house could be set to mend the bridge. He said they had been trained to fit a frame, and a plank is only a frame that lies down. Dunn said that a mind that has been drilled on frames may not know what to do with a plank that bends. Tam said it could be drilled on the bend. Dunn said it could be drilled on the bend for a year and still be wrong about the bend. Tam said that was the same for him. Jory said the apprentices were to be used for carrying, and that the planks were for men. The council agreed, with a lot of laughing.

Item four. The melon. It was reported that the melon from the Oak Post has been eaten, by the council, at the Brown Hen, without the council's permission. The baker has asked whether the council would like to say sorry. The council declined.

Item five. The sluice. Nobody is to open the sluice on the mill pond. This is not a matter for the committee. It is a matter for Jory. Jory asked that this be written down, so that it is written.

The meeting closed when the water started to rise. Dunn has been asked to write this in full, and to file it with the mill.
%%
The mayor's ruling: the blue fish
Heard in the boat house at Lowmarsh, the third of Melon, 187. Mayor Marl in the chair. Kept by Abel, weaver.

Rook of the fish weir laid eleven fish on the table. All eleven were blue. For nine days, he said, the fish had come up blue. Nobody would buy a blue fish. Odo at the inn had sent one back.

Abel said the blue was cornflower, from his dye vat. He empties the vat off the boardwalk at the third post, as his mother did. Cornflower never hurt a sheep, he said. "A sheep is not a fish," said Rook.

The mayor asked how the fish felt about it. Nobody had asked the fish.

So the mayor had one cooked. She ate it in front of 24 people and said it tasted of fish. Wren ate the tail and said the same. Rook would not touch it. He said it was not the taste. It was the principle.

The mayor ruled:
One. Dye water goes on the dry bank behind the weaver's house, and nowhere else.
Two. Blue fish may be sold at half price, as "Abel's fish". Abel pays the other half.
Three. Wren thinks the fish will be their own color in ten days. If not, the meeting meets again.

Abel says the reeds behind his house are now a very fine blue. Rook asks that it be written down that he was right. It is written down. He was right about the fish.
%%
Minutes: the north lamp, Melon
Three Wells council, the ninth of Melon, at the bell by the east well. A warm evening.

Present: Dace, mayor. Vale, who kept these notes. Hal, Ida, Sela, and two carters from the north road.

Dace said the lamp at the north corner did not blink on the third night of Melon. Nor on the fourth. Hal said the relay above Ambrook has been quiet too. Dace asked each carter what he had seen.

The first carter saw lights over the hills north of the road, three nights running. He said they were stars. Sela said stars do not march in a line. He said he never said they marched. Sela said he did, a little.

The second carter said they were fires. Bel, who sat on the wall with her feet swinging, said the lights were looking for someone. Nobody asked her who.

Decided: no carter goes out on the north road alone after dark. Each one carries a lamp. Dace said this is not because of the lights. It is because of the wolves. Everybody agreed the wolves are real.

Ida spoke about two families from Saltreach. They came through the square with carts loaded high, planks and rope and sail cloth. They were going to the coast. Nobody asked why. Ida gave them bread for the road. They paid for it, which Ida says is the strange part.

Dace closed the meeting. Hal will climb the north lamp in the morning. He does not like heights. He said so.
%%
Minutes: how a crystal gets better
Summer. The farm folk at the barn outside Lowmarsh, a second meeting after Una's. Sorrel kept the minutes, and tried to put Una's words in plainly.
Present: 29 people. The mill wheel was mended, and the miller was in a good mood.
First business. The mill wheel is mended. Hobb's new rim holds. It turns without squeaking. A cheer.
Second business. The crystal. Dorrin's eldest, Pell, has been showing it apples and pears each evening. He keeps a tally on the barn wall. In the first week it sorted 61 fruits in 100 correctly. In the second week, 79. In the third week, 93. He says it makes a mistake every now and then, and when it does, he moves its weights, as Una showed him.
Asked how it gets better, Pell said: it is wrong, and then it is a little less wrong. It never has to be told twice. It only has to be moved a little, every time.
Sorrel asked what a person would do who sorted apples every day. Pell said a person would also get better. The difference is that a person can say why. The crystal cannot.
Sorrel entered here that nobody wrote down why a crystal learns at all. Una was asked. She said she did not know either. She said she knew how to move the weights, and that the crystal got better. That was enough for her. It was not enough for Sorrel.
Third business. The neighbors' children, who sort fruit at the stall for a coin. Pell's crystal sorts faster than any of them. A child objected. It was agreed that the children would be paid the same, and the crystal would be paid nothing, and everyone was content.
Decided: the crystal will go back to Ambrook at the end of the summer. A copy of Una's way of moving the weights has been written on the barn wall, in charcoal, for anyone to learn from. It is the first lesson in the tutors' books now. It was first on a barn wall.
Meeting closed at dusk.
%%
Minutes: the copies for Vell
Saltwick hamlet, spring of 188.
Rowan wrote these minutes for the town chest.

The meeting began when the tide had turned.
We sat in the net shed because the hall roof was being patched.
Present were Rowan, Orla of Vell, Sella the net mender, Bram the baker, Jass and Lio from the boats, and Fen.
Fen's sister came later with a jar of honey.
She said it was for the meeting.
She ate most of it before the vote.

Orla described the reading drills at the tutor house.
A mind kept each letter or word as a place among many places.
Words used in alike ways often sat close together.
The mind learned the places by seeing words used in lines and pages.
The places were not a row of little labels with fixed meanings.
They helped the mind use what it had learned when it met another line.

Sella asked if net and rope were close because the words often appeared together.
Orla said that was one reason.
The mind saw net in a tally, in a repair note, and in a fisher's letter.
It saw rope beside net in some of those lines.
It could learn that the words were alike in use, though they named different things.

Bram asked if a mind could read his oven list.
Orla said it could learn the marks and words on a list, if it had seen enough good examples.
Bram said his lists were good.
Sella said one had flour written twice and no salt.
Bram said the salt was in his apron.

Rowan asked whether all uses of a word sat in one place.
Orla said the mind could learn from more than one use.
Its marks changed as it learned.
A word in a new line could call on the places near it, and the words around it could help.
No one in the shed could see the places as a person sees a mark on a page.
Orla could show us the drill and its answers, but not give us a simple drawing of all it held.

Jass asked if the mind knew what a net felt like.
Orla said no lesson on a page gave it hands.
The mind might learn that nets were mended with rope and used for fish.
That was not the same as pulling a wet net from the sea.

Sella gave Orla a coil of fine rope.
She said it was a gift for the tutors, because the lesson had been plain.
Orla thanked her and put it beside the case.
Bram gave Orla two small loaves.
He asked that the tutors test their minds on words not copied from his lists.
Orla agreed. A mind must not be tested only on the pages it learned.

After the meeting, we found a wet letter on the bench.
It had come in a basket from the shore, but the tide had carried the basket away.
The first line named Orla.
The rest had blurred, and the writer had left no mark.
Orla put the letter in a dry cloth.
She said she would try to return it, but she would not guess who wrote it.

We voted to copy lists from the harbor, the bakehouse, and the shed.
We will remove names when a writer asks.
We will keep bad copies out of the drills.
Fen will carry the pages to the road when the cart comes.
His sister will carry the honey jar home.
%%
Minutes: Council in the copying room
Winter meeting at Vell. Written by Nessa.
Present: Oren, Dace, Brann, Nessa, Sela, and Pell, who arrived late with snow on his sleeves. The fire was in the front hall. No candle was brought into the copying room.
Oren said the new shelf room was ready, but the door stuck at the bottom. The diggers had left a narrow gap for air. He wanted the gap covered with a strip of wood.
Sela said the inn had a strip left from a bench repair. It was sound, though the edge had a bite mark from a dog. Pell said his dog had not been in Vell. No one asked which dog.
Brann said the north line had missed two messages. The lamp at one tower was seen, then not seen. He had sent a keeper to check the oil and the glass. No reply had come by the time of this meeting.
Dace said a traveler blamed the ships from Saltreach. He had heard that their lamps shone high above the sea. Pell said the ships were far from Vell, and a woman at the Halfway Inn blamed a fire on the north hills. Brann said he had seen a light over Northpoint, but could not say what it was.
Oren asked that no one write either tale as fact. The Archive can keep a report and name its speaker.
Nessa said the new apprentice had passed a test with clean pages. It could carry paper and follow a marked path in the halls. It had not been tested outside.
It was decided that the shelf gap would be covered with Sela's strip. Brann will send another message north when the weather clears. Oren will file the reports under winter lights, with both accounts.
Pell left an apple on the table for the clerk. Oren put it in his coat pocket and forgot it there.
%%
Letter: Lark to the archive at Vell
To the clerks at the archive, in the hill at Vell.
I am Lark, a mapmaker at the hamlet by Saltreach. It is small. It has no name, only "the hamlet", and the boats know it. I draw maps. I have drawn the harbor wall, the long pier, the slip where the boats are built, and the quay where the nets are mended by the window light. If you would keep them, I will send them.
There is a new thing here. The council has begun a relay house bigger than the hamlet. It stands by the water, at the foot of the tower. It is longer than the fish market and taller than the inn. They have built it of Copperhold stone and Saltreach glass, and the quickeners stand in rows around the stand, kept cool with ice brought down from the north in winter. Two keepers tend them day and night.
People say the mind inside is the size of a barrel. People say it is the size of a loaf. People say it can read every letter on every ship, or that it cannot read at all. I do not know. I only draw what I can walk round. What I can walk round is very big.
Corin says the big houses will carry the relays farther than a lamp can blink. He does not say how. Nobody does.
I will send the map of the hamlet in the spring. The rain is too much for the ink.
Lark, mapmaker, at the hamlet by Saltreach, autumn of 231
%%
Letter: Piper to the tutor Senn
Dear Senn,
You said you would write and you did not, so I am writing first.
I have been thinking about the big house you talked about at the meeting. Bigger than a town. A mind inside bigger than any tutor can check. I told my brother and he said that is like a boat too big for its harbor. I said no, it is like a harbor built for a boat nobody has finished yet.
You said the tutors test what they can and write down what they cannot. What does a mind do that nobody checked? Does it say things nobody taught it? Does it get lonely in there?
My friend Tam ran off in Sowing. His mother cries at the well. If the big mind in the big house could find him, would it? You said maybe. I keep thinking about the maybe.
Corin says the ships are getting bigger too and soon the harbor will not hold them. Everything is getting bigger. Is that good?
Write back. Tell me about the quickeners. Do they get hot? Who feeds them water at night?
Piper
P.S. I am nine. I am allowed to ask.
%%
Minutes: the first road council
The first road council met at the Brown Hen in the winter of 42. Snow covered the road from the inn to the bridge. A line of cart tracks showed where the road had been.

Present were Marda, keeper of the inn; Cass, keeper of the relay at the bend; Pell, who hauled goods; Odo, a mason; and Hena, who mended bridges. Sella came from Three Wells with a basket of bread. She stayed for the meeting and took the empty basket home.

Marda said the inn had sheltered nine travelers during the last snow. Two had slept beside the hearth. One had tried to pay with a cracked jar. She accepted a loaf instead.

Pell said the road from Three Wells to the inn was wide enough for two carts in summer. In winter, a cart had to wait while another passed. He asked for a place to turn carts near the bridge.

Odo said a stone space could be made beside the road, beyond the wet ground. He would need twelve blocks of cobblestone and help from two workers.

Hena said the bridge was sound, but the path beside it was muddy. She asked that the road crew carry stones to the stream bank before spring.

Cass said the relay at the bend had carried a message to Three Wells, then to Vell. The answer came back the next morning. He said a line of towers could carry news ahead of any cart, if the towns kept the lamps and stairs in order.

Marda asked whether a tower would bring more travelers to her inn. Cass said he could not promise that. Marda said she would feed the workers anyway.

It was decided that Odo would mark the cart space with stakes. Hena would lead the work at the bridge when the snow left. Pell would bring stone from Vell. Cass would send notice to Three Wells and ask for two helpers. Sella offered bread for the first day.

After the meeting, everyone carried wood in. The snow began again before Pell reached his cart.
%%
Minutes at Gullbank, Apple 188
Present: Olwen, Sella, Tavi, Beren, and seven boat hands.
The autumn nets brought in more fish than last year. Sella asked for a clean place to mend them. The quay window is too small, and Beren's bakery floor smells of old rope.
We decided to clear the little shed beside the slip. Olwen will move the spare oars. Sella and two net menders will hang hooks for the nets. Tavi will keep one corner clear for lamp oil.
Beren asked whether a hook could hold bread. Sella said it could, but she would not mend the bread.
Olwen also asked that the loose plank on the shore path be fixed. It has caught three boots and one basket. Beren's basket was empty, which made him less cross.
The shed will be ready before the end of Leaffall. Fish may be shared there after the nets are hung.
%%
Minutes: the first lesson of the sorting
Taken by Dace, mayor of Three Wells, at the mine hall of Copperhold. Summer. The tutor from Vell is Orsa, who is young. She brought a basket of apples and pears, and a crystal in a box.

Present: the shed master, six sorters, Hesk, and the mine hall cat.

Orsa spoke first. She said the lesson she would teach is the oldest in the tutors' books. It is the lesson of Una of Ambrook, who lived a hundred years ago and more.

Una wanted a crystal to sort apples from pears. She showed it one fruit, and the crystal guessed. Each time it guessed wrong, Una moved each of its weights a little toward the right answer. Not far. Just a little. The next fruit, the crystal guessed again. Wrong again, a little move. Right, no move at all.

After many fruit, the crystal was right far more often than wrong. After many more, it sorted better than her neighbors' children, who were not so quick.

Orsa held up an apple and a pear. She showed the crystal. It guessed pear. It was an apple. She moved its weights a little. She showed it again. It guessed apple. She moved nothing.

The sorters watched. One asked how long it takes. Orsa said, many fruit. A few hundred for a simple thing. The ore will be harder.

Another asked why the crystal changes at all. Orsa said she did not know. Nobody knows. Una did not know either. It simply does, and she wrote down what she did.

Agreed: the trial will start tomorrow with copper and iron, sorted by color. The sorters will help.

The cat sat on the box. It was not moved.
%%
Minutes: spiders in the reed barn
Meeting at the boat house, Lowmarsh, the second day of Thaw. Taken by Ansel. Present: nine.
1. Hale reported spiders in the reed barn, thick as a blanket on the east wall. Rook said spiders are good, because they eat flies. Hale said these are the big kind. Rook said then they are very good.
2. Decided: the webs by the door are cleared with a long pole. The webs by the roof stay. Seven for, two against. The two were Rook, who wanted to keep all of them, and Hale, who wanted to keep none.
The spiders were not asked. Closed at the lamp-lighting.
%%
Meeting of the Gullbank shore, Apple 199
Present: Olwen, Tavi, Sella, Beren, and eleven neighbors.
The new road is open from the hamlet to the Saltreach road. The bridge held a cart of oak boards and a cart of apples. It also held Beren, who stepped off to test it and could not decide how to step back on.
The low bend needs another layer of cobblestone. Olwen will set it before the next rain. Two neighbors will mend the road edge, where a cart wheel has pulled the earth away.
Tavi reported that the shore lamp blinked a strange message last night. It gave three short flashes, then one long flash, then three short flashes again. Tavi had checked the wick that morning. The glass was clean, and the lamp line was firm.
Sella said the lamp might be warning us of a storm. The sky was clear. Beren said it was asking for a pie again. He left one on the sill, and a gull took it before anyone could answer.
We decided to watch the lamp for three nights. Tavi will write down each blink. Olwen will check the copper line. No one is to climb the lamp post in wet boots.
We also voted to keep the new road open to carts after dusk, with a torch at the bend. Sella will make a sign for the road. Beren offered to paint it, but the neighbors chose Olwen.
%%
Minutes: Kettle Ridge mill meeting
Minutes of the mill meeting at Kettle Ridge, the twelfth of Longday, 184. Kept by Cal, miller.
Came: Cal, Tam, Peg, Oren from the Archive, and nine farmers. Also a borrowed horse named Barley, who waited outside and ate the hedge.
First: the tally board. The wheat came in well. The beetroot came in wet. We agreed to move the beetroot field one row back from the ditch.
Second: the squeak. The west windmill squeaks on every turn. Peg says it is the third sail. Cal says it is the axle. We will grease the axle first, because it is cheaper.
Third: the horse. Barley is borrowed from Sedge at Three Wells and must go home on the first of Melon. Nobody may ride him to the fair. Tam said he would. We voted. Tam lost.
Fourth: the relay tower. The lamp wants a new pane of glass. Oren will ask Vell. We will pay in flour.
Decided: grease the axle, mend the pane, keep the beetroot dry, and send Tam home with the horse on time.
The meeting ended at noon. The pie was good.
%%
Minutes of the west house
Autumn meeting, written by Nessa.
We met in my house at the edge of Vell, with wet leaves stuck to the front step. Present were Oren, Fen, Sella, Iven, Mara, and me. Oren came late because a cart had stopped in the road. Its wheel was in a rut. He said the driver had a pie under the seat and would not let anyone near it until the wheel was free.
Fen and Iven pulled the cart clear. The pie was still whole. The driver gave us one slice each, though Sella said the slices were not equal. She was right.
We opened with repairs. The lamp by the gate is working. Its pane shines clean, but the post has begun to lean. Fen will brace it with oak. The lower step is finished and holds firm. Mara tried it with a full basket. She said it was good, then asked for a second step. We agreed to wait until she has used the first one through the wet season.
Sella told us a fox had been at the hens again. It pushed at the coop door and left one feather in the mud. No hen was lost. Fen blamed the loose hinge. Sella blamed the fox. We agreed both were at fault, though only one can mend the hinge.
Oren read a note from Lowmarsh. Wren had written that several people had a grey cough. She thought the wet season was hard on their chests. A boatman told Sella it came from the water. Fen heard that the mines were to blame. Oren said the note named no cause. We decided not to repeat a cause as fact.
There was also a question about the north. A traveler said the lights over Northpoint were bright enough to show the snow on the roofs. Another said he had seen no lights at all, only a clear sky. Oren has asked Mira to write when she can. Until then, we will not make a story from it.
Mara gave the house a small wool cover for the bench. She said it was a gift because the bench was cold in the morning. Fen sat on it at once and said the bench was still cold. Mara told him to wait until he had sat there longer.
We agreed to keep dry wood under the eaves, check the gate lamp each evening, and leave the north road clear for carts. Sella took home the last slice of pie. She says it was the smallest.
%%
Notice: the Halfway Inn, autumn
Put up by the innkeeper at the Halfway Inn, on the road.
The east barn roof is mended. Thank you to all who climbed the ladder.
The road is clear to the third waymark. The oak is cut and stacked.
A letter was lost here in the storm. It was for a family at Ambrook. If you find it, bring it to the inn or to the school at Three Wells. It was written on good paper, folded twice.
Rooms: twelve beds, one with a bad leg. The fire has not gone out in twenty years and will not go out now.
Soup tonight: beetroot and bread.
Leave your boots by the door. The floor is clean.
No talk of the lights after the second cup, please. We had enough of that last week.
%%
Letter: Peg to Oren at Vell
Dear Oren,
Thank you for the glass for the relay lamp. It fits. Sedge says the light is brighter than it has been in years, and he can see it from the crossroads, which he could not before. He is very pleased with himself. He says it was his idea to ask you. It was my idea. Let him have it.
The new apprentice is doing well. Nessa came and drilled it on the board with the small field. The first day it walked into the fence. The second day it walked into the fence but stopped first. The third day it did the row. Now it does the whole field and it does not miss a beetroot. Tam says it is better than Pip. Pip says it is better than Tam. Both are true.
We had a small trouble with the borrowed horse. Barley came back and the apprentice tried to haul him to the barn, because Barley is large and the apprentice hauls large things. Barley bit the fence and the apprentice let go. We have all learned something. The apprentice has learned that horses are not sacks. Barley has learned nothing, because Barley is a horse.
The bees are cross and the honey is short. If Vell has honey, send some. We will pay in flour, as ever.
The wheat is coming in well. I will send the tally when the mill is done with it.
Your friend, Peg
P.S. The drill yard board is still good. The pig in the corner is still lucky.
%%
Letter: Jem to his sister at Lowmarsh
Dear Nell,
The bridge over the low stream is mended. I put in a cobblestone footing and new oak rails. It should hold a cart of coal now, and it does.
We had the town meeting. Hesk ran it fast. We argued about the bridge, then about Bara and Tobin's wedding, then about the lamp. The wedding is the third of Blossom. There will be beetroot soup and too much bread. Clank is carrying the benches. It does not complain. It never does.
I moved Old Rill down from the top row. Eight of us and a cart. She gave us honey cake after. Her new flat is by the forge, so she is warm all winter now. She says she can hear the hammer and likes it.
The fields are green. No frost for a week. Tell Mother the cough is gone from our house.
Your brother, Jem
%%
Minutes: the lost letter
Meeting of the farm folk outside Northpoint, in the barn of Olwen, who keeps the largest stove. Mira, relay keeper, took the minutes. Winter. Present: eleven.

1. A letter to Olwen from her sister at Three Wells was sent in autumn and has not come. Mira has asked every tower on the line. None has seen it. Olwen is not to worry. Mira will ask again at the thaw.
2. The ice on the pond is thick enough for skating. Noted, with cheer.
3. Soup. Seconds. Meeting closed.
%%
A lost letter, found
I found the letter under the bench by the window at the Halfway Inn. It must have blown in with the storm.
It is for a family at Ambrook. I did not open it. It is folded twice and the wax is cracked but the name is clear.
I carried it to Three Wells and gave it to Yarrow the schoolteacher. She said she would send it with Pell the merchant, who goes to Ambrook with apples and honey.
Pell said he would leave it at the mill with Jory, who knows everyone at Ambrook. Jory will know the family.
The paper is good paper from the Archive. It is a little damp at one corner. I hope the words are still there.
I do not know what it said. I hope it was good news. If it was bad news, I hope they had it sooner than later.
The innkeeper says the storm took a shutter and a roof and one letter. Now it is only a shutter and a roof.
%%
Minutes: moving the house of Tobias
Minutes of the meeting held in Nessa's kitchen, at the edge of Vell, in the middle of winter. Written by Nessa.
Present: Nessa, Tobias, his daughter Reed, Dell, Marrow, two carters and the dog.
Tobias is moving from his house at the edge of Vell into the town. He says the hill is too steep for his knees. This is true. We have watched him climb it.
Reed asked who will carry the bed. Dell said the carters. The carters said that a bed is a bed, and Tobias's bed is a very large bed. Tobias said he has slept in it fifty years. The dog sat on it.
The cart will go on the first dry day. The shelves will go on the second. The stove will be moved last, after the new one is lit.
A matter was raised: the neighbors who have gone to the coast, as some say, to take ship. Nobody knows what is across the water. Tobias says he is not going over the water and he is not going far. He is going down the hill.
Decided: Reed will pack the books. Marrow will take the bees to his own hives. The dog will go where it likes.
The meeting ended with a short song about stairs. Nessa has asked that it not be copied.
%%
Minutes from the house by the light well
Autumn, 204. House at the edge of Vell.
Present: Oren, Nessa, Sela, Pera, and Tavi the mason. Also present were three apprentices from the tutor house, brought by Nessa to carry stools and return them after the meeting.
The house stood beside the lower path, where leaves gathered against the step. Sela said the path was safe, but the leaves hid the loose stone by her door. Tavi said he would reset the stone before the next market day. He asked everyone to use the other step until then.
Oren had brought a page from the Archive. It gave the number of empty jars in the pantry as twelve. Sela counted the shelf and found eleven.
Oren counted them too. He counted twelve, because one jar was behind the flour crock. Sela said it was not empty. Oren checked and found a little honey at the bottom.
Pera said the jar should be washed and returned to the beekeeper. Nessa said the apprentices could carry it if they were tested first. One apprentice carried the jar to the table without spilling the honey. Another carried a stool to the pantry and left it there. The third waited beside the door.
Nessa said the stool apprentice had followed the old drill. The drill card said, "carry the stool to the table." It had not said where to stop afterward. She would add a second card for returning the stool.
Sela said the pantry had no room for another stool. Oren said the drill room did. It was decided that the stool would go back to the tutor house, and that the apprentice would be tested again on the new cards.
Pera then asked for a place to keep the jars clean. Tavi offered a shelf above the sink. He said it would take one plank and two stone brackets. Sela agreed, if the shelf was not over the flour.
The meeting also considered the supper pot. Pera had made beetroot soup the night before. She had used the last of the honey to soften the sharp taste, then poured in more salt when the soup seemed too sweet. Everyone agreed that the result had been difficult to forget.
Nessa said this was a good lesson in changing one thing at a time. Pera said she had changed two things, but only because the first change had been a mistake.
It was decided that the recipe would read: beetroot, potatoes, carrots, water, and a little salt. Honey was removed from the list. Pera would make the soup again next week. Oren would record whether it improved.
Before the meeting ended, Sela asked why the apprentices had left one stool beside the door. Nessa said the apprentice had waited for an order to stay. Oren wrote this down. Tavi carried the stool back to the tutor house himself, saying it was faster than another meeting.
%%
Minutes: Winter drill meeting
Nessa kept these notes in the tutor house.
Present: Nessa, Oren, Brann, and six apprentices.
The hall was cold. Brann brought a pot of beetroot soup. One apprentice carried it to the table, then stood in its row with a red mark on its apron.
Nessa said the new apprentice had passed the first test. Its crystal sorted clean cloth from dirty cloth on pages it had not seen.
Oren asked that the test pages stay in the test box. He had found two copies of a page in last month's box.
Brann said the north road was clear as far as the little relay. Snow covered the waymark after that.
It was decided that the new apprentice would help in the copy room, under Nessa's eye. No apprentice is to carry a crystal past the front hall.
The soup was good. Brann took the pot home.
%%
Catalog note
Received from Kettle Ridge, autumn, the 214th year of the archive. Clerk: Oren.
One box of oak, sealed with wax at the ridge and opened here by me with the seal whole.
Inside: a tutor's field notes, in a stiff hand, on looking inside a crystal. Nine leaves. The last three are stained with cider.
The tutor writes that she opened a small mind, a mind for drills, and looked at its parts with a fine tool and a great deal of light. She found a part that answers for numbers, a part that answers for orders, and a part that holds where things are in a field. She writes that these parts are not rooms. They are places in the crystal where the work gathers, like a path worn in grass, and they move when the mind is drilled again.
She looked for the part that knows when it is wrong. She did not find it. She writes: "It may be spread through all the rest, or it may be that I do not know what to look for. I will not say which. I have looked in one crystal and it is not enough to say."
She adds, in a smaller hand: "The farmer's cider is very good. I drank two cups. I found nothing more that night."
Filed in the sixth hall, shelf of tutors' notes, under Looking Inside, with the other leaves of that year.
The box is kept. The cider is not.
%%
Letter: Ada to Mira, with a gift
To Mira at Northpoint, from Ada, who kept the lamps here before you, autumn of 90.
I am sending you a gift up the road with the carter. It is a small pot of honey from the hives by the wall. The bees swarmed this year, twice, and the second swarm hung on the old gate post for a day before it went into the new hive. Wick stood by it with a stick and would not let anyone near. He said a swarm is a good sign. I do not know what it is a sign of, but the honey is good.
The carter also brings a letter for the keeper's desk. It is from Orla at Vell. She asks a question. Read it out at a meeting. Do not answer it too quick. Wick will want to say something.
You are young for the tower. Keep the stair lamp at every turn. Keep the torches round the foot. When the wind comes off the ice, the lamp room is the warmest place on the wall, and the coldest too, if the glass cracks. Mind the glass.
The bees will sleep soon. So should you.
Ada.
%%
Minutes at Nessa's house
Autumn meeting in the house at the edge of Vell.
Present: Nessa, Oren, Fen, Sella, Iven, and Mara from the upper lane.
The rain barrel is sound at last. Fen held the hoops while Sella pressed clay into the crack. It took most of the morning. The barrel now holds water, and no one is to lean on it.
Mara asked for a lower step at the back door. Her mother has trouble carrying a basket over the sill. Nessa measured the door. Fen will cut a block of stone to fit. Oren will find two sound boards for the seat beside it.
We also spoke of the hens at Sella's sister's house. A fox came before dawn and worried the coop door. It took no hen this time. Sella has put a stone against the door, but she says the stone is ugly. Fen says an ugly stone is better than a hungry fox.
Oren had a letter from Saltreach. It said the harbor was busy and several large ships were taking on food. The writer said they were meant for a long crossing. Iven had heard that some would stay at the harbor all winter. No one could tell which account was right.
We agreed to keep spare boards by the coop and to mend the latch at our own gate. Nessa will send a note to Sella's sister.
Mara brought a gift for the house, a wool mat she had woven from scraps. It is now by the door. Fen wiped his boots on it first. Mara said that was its proper use.
%%
Minutes: the harvest festival committee
Held at the Brown Hen, on the fourth day of Reaping. Present: Dace, Tilly (ferry keeper), Hobb (innkeeper), Cobb (cook), Sid (drovers' boy), Pell. Kept by Tilly.

The committee reviewed the plans for the first harvest festival. The festival will be held at the Halfway Inn, since it has the largest yard, and will last one day and one night.

Hobb asked for a cart of melons from Ambrook. Pell said he could bring twelve, if they were not too big. Cobb said the melons were always too big, and that she would rather have twelve small ones. Hobb said it was not the size that counted, but the sweetness. The committee asked Pell to bring whatever he could find.

Sid asked whether the drovers could bring their dogs. The committee agreed, on the condition that the dogs were not given the melons. Tilly will write this on the notice.

Lamps: the committee needs thirty lamps for the yard. Tilly will ask the Copperhold tinsmith for twenty, and make the other ten herself out of paper and wire. Dace asked that the paper lamps not be lit near the straw. Everyone agreed to that without argument.

The meeting ended with a toast to the harvest, which was drunk with cider.
%%
Minutes: Winter stores at Vell
Notes by Nessa, after the evening lesson.
Present: Nessa, Oren, Brann, Dace, Pell, and Sela from the inn. Three apprentices waited in the drill room.
Oren brought the shelf list. He said the Archive had room for only one more cart of records before the dry room must be cleared. The oldest papers stay in the oak box. The new room needs a door, two lamps behind glass, and oak boards.
Pell said he could bring boards from Ambrook if the Long Road stayed firm. He had apples in his cart, but the cold had split one crate. Sela offered the inn's spare boards. They came from a broken bed and had no paint.
Dace said the school had found a small mind in a cloth bag after the market. Nessa asked where it was now.
"On the shelf in the mayor's house," Dace said. "No one has put it in an apprentice."
Nessa said that was right. A crystal must be checked before it is used. The child who found it had tied the bag shut with string and left it alone.
Brann reported that the north relay lamp had gone dark twice. He said the oil was thick with cold. Pell had heard that lights moved above the snow, but he had not seen them. Sela said a traveler told her they were only falling stars.
It was decided that Pell would bring boards from Ambrook, if the road allowed. Sela would send the bed boards for the shelves. Oren will ask the mayor to keep the crystal safe until Nessa can examine it.
The apprentices will carry the boards, not the records. Their minds have not been tested for that work.
%%
Minutes of the west house
Autumn meeting, held in Nessa's house at the edge of Vell.
Present: Nessa, Oren, Sella, Fen, and Iven from the lower path.
The first matter was the rain barrel. Sella had brought clay, but the crack was wider than she could mend with one hand. Fen said he would hold the barrel steady. They agreed to work after the meeting.
The second matter was the gate lamp. Oren had found a sound pane in the store. Nessa will set it in place before evening. Iven asked for one more torch by the path. He saw a fox there two nights in a row.
Sella said foxes are not a council matter. Then she remembered the hens at her sister's house. The fox had taken one, and left the rest in a fright.
We agreed to keep the gate shut at night and to mend the loose latch. Fen will bring a strip of iron.
Oren brought a jar of honey from Ambrook as a gift for the house. Nessa said it was too fine to open before the work was done. Sella said it would be fine afterward too.
The jar is on the shelf. The latch is still loose.
%%
Meeting at the Saltreach relay house
Winter of 200. Minutes kept by Corin.

Present were Corin of the slip, Sella at the fish market, Keeper Anet, and two boat builders. We met in the relay house below the tower. The roof had a loose row of oak shingles. Snow came through and fell beside the keeper's desk.

Anet showed us the big mind's crystal. It stood on the stand, about as long as a loaf. The quickeners stood around it. Anet had filled their trough with cold water before the meeting.

The big mind answered messages sent from the apprentices. It did not walk or carry things. It sent answers through the relays to the small minds inside them.

Sella asked if the tower lamp made the answers. Anet said no. The lamp carried a signal, but the lamp was not the mind. She said she could not tell us how all the relay parts worked.

We decided to mend the roof before the next snow. The boat builders took the loose shingles. Sella will bring a bucket for the quickener trough each morning. Corin will ask the keeper to send one question from a small mind to the big mind.

Anet said the question must be one the apprentice had learned to ask. Sella said she would ask whether the fish market was open. We all knew the answer, but agreed to send it.
%%
Minutes of the east lane meeting
Autumn, 164. House at the edge of Vell.
Present: Oren, Mara the baker, and Deni from the next house.
Mara said the lane was full of leaves. The leaves had covered the drain and the water stood by her door.
Deni said he had swept them twice. The wind had brought them back before his broom was dry.
Oren said the drain must be cleared before the next rain.
It was decided that Mara and Deni would lift the grate tomorrow. Oren would bring a shovel from the Archive yard.
Mara will bake bread for all three. Deni asked for the loaf with the hard crust.
%%
Minutes, fair committee, summer
Present: Ansel, reeve, in the chair. Ida, for the bakers. Lise, taking the minutes. Garrow, cheese, who was not invited, and who happened to pass the door.

Item one: the prizes. The knife for the best bread has gone to the same sister for three years. The committee asks whether it may be changed to a lamp. Ida says she will carry the lamp up to the bakery, if she is allowed to keep the bread prize.

Item two: the cheese. Garrow asked for a knife for each judge, so no cheese is cut in a hurry. The committee agreed, and agreed that the judges may not take a cheese home in their hats.

Item three: the pumpkin. The biggest pumpkin of last year came from the Hollow farm, and was thought by some to be unfairly large. The committee has no evidence of unfairness. It has only the pumpkin, which is in the cold room, and which the committee has agreed not to examine.

Item four: the horse race, to the second waymark and back. Pell asks that the mare Bess, a black mare borrowed from Ambrook, be allowed to run. Her owner has written to say she may be lent for the day and returned by the next cart. The committee agreed, provided the rider is sober, and the mare is not asked to race the hedge at the second waymark, which is a hedge only in name.

Item five: the bet. Garrow bet Ansel a cheese that Bess will win by a length. Ansel bet Garrow a jar of honey that Bess will stop at the hedge to eat the grass. Lise holds the stakes, and has written them here in full.

Item six: the lost things. Lost things are to be brought to the table by the north well within the hour, and not left under a cart. Last year a boot was found under a cart three days later.

Decided: the fair will be held on the first fine day after the harvest. The horse will be returned by the next cart. The committee adjourns to the cider in the cold room.
%%
Minutes: the crystal that would not fit
Minutes of a short meeting at the relay house at the foot of the Long Road tower, held in the autumn. Present: the relay keeper, the tutor's cart driver, Dunn and Tam, who had come to see the new frame.

The tutor's cart has brought a small crystal for the house. It is a mind that was drilled in the big hall at Vell, and it is to be set in a frame for the relay lamps. The frame is too small. The crystal would not sit in the cradle. The driver said the mind was made to fit the old cradle, and the cradle has been changed.

Item one. The frame. It was agreed to make the cradle again from copper, a little larger. Dunn said he had the copper. Tam said he had the time. The relay keeper said both would be needed.

Item two. The mind is too large. The tutor's note says the mind is large because it has a great many marks. It can be written in fewer marks, to fit a smaller crystal, but it costs a little. The mind will be less sure on hard questions. It will still answer the easy ones as well as before. The driver asked how much less. The note does not say. The driver said the note was written by a tutor who did not have to carry it.

Item three. The keeper asked whether a small mind with fewer marks is still a good mind. Tam said a small mind is a good mind if it is kept busy. Dunn said a mind with fewer marks is like a boat with fewer sails. It goes just as well in fair weather. In a storm, you want the full rig. The keeper said the lamps are not sailing. Dunn said the lamps are a kind of weather, if you think about it long enough.

Item four. It was agreed that the small mind will be tested on the old questions, and on three new ones the keeper will write. If it answers all of them well, it goes in the frame. If it fails one, it goes back to the tutor's cart, and the cradle stays the old size.

Item five. The melon. The keeper asked whether anyone has seen the melon from the Oak Post. The council said it had been eaten.

The meeting closed when the crystal was set in its cradle, and the lamp lit above it. The keeper said the lamp looked the same as before, which the council took as a good sign.
%%
Minutes: the market rules, Melon 170
Minutes of the Northpoint market meeting, held in the relay house on the second day of Melon, year 170.

Present: Mira, keeper (chair). Ansel, baker. Ruth, well digger. Lantern, lamps. Fenna, from the south road inn. Hal, the carter. Tilda, wool. A hen, who was in the room before anyone else.

Ansel said there were forty rules on the wall, and nobody could read the bottom ones. Mira agreed to cut what could be cut.

1. The first rule. It says that every stall must be cleared by the noon bell. Hal said that was fine, but the noon bell is rung late in summer because the bell rope stretches. Mira said people were slow, not the rope. The rule stays, and the bell rope is to be checked.
Decided: keep the rule. Lantern to check the bell rope before Longday.

2. The second rule, on weights. Ruth reads it out. It says that scales must be checked by the keeper each Blossom. Mira said she had checked them twice, and that the scales were honest, and that she would check them again in Blossom to be sure. Fenna said that was the same thing. Mira said it was not, and the meeting laughed.
Decided: keep the rule. Mira to check the scales in Blossom and write the date on the board.

3. The third rule, on the lamps. It says that no trader may stand under the tower lamp after dark. Lantern said that was a strange rule, because nobody had ever stood under the lamp. Hal said he had, looking up to check the lamp, and a trader shouted at him. Mira said the rule came after a cart went into the ditch.
Decided: change the rule. Traders may stand under the lamp, but not in the road.

4. The fourth rule, on apprentices. Two apprentices from the north tower carry the wood and the water. The rule says that no apprentice may be sent to sell. Ansel said it was a good rule, because an apprentice would sell a loaf at the price it was told, and not a crumb more, and the traders did not like that. The rule stays as it is.

5. The fifth rule, on foxes and hens. It was not a rule. It was a note that someone had written and pinned to the wall. It says: keep the hens in at dusk. Ansel said it was the only rule on the wall that had ever worked.
Decided: keep the note. Take it down and rewrite it in neater letters.

6. The lamp message. Lantern reports that the four marks came again, two nights after the first time, and then not again. Lantern copied them out. Mira has written them into the desk book with the date beside them. She has had no answer from the keeper at Vell, though the letter went up the line six weeks ago. Hal asked whether it might be a fault in the lamp. Lantern said the lamp was fine, and the marks were too neat to be a fault. Mira said she would not guess at what the marks meant until Vell answered, and nobody pressed her.
Decided: Mira to write again to Vell, and to say the second time was the same as the first.

The meeting closed at the third bell. The hen went home with the carter.
%%
Minutes: Late boat and new hands
Winter meeting in the Archive at Vell. Nessa wrote the notes.
Present: Nessa, Oren, Dace, Sela, Pell, and Harn, who had come from Saltreach with a wet cloak. Brann sent word from the tower but could not leave his post.
Oren said the copying room had been too cold for the youngest clerks. He asked that the glass shutters be closed at dusk. The room still needed daylight, but no clerk needed numb fingers.
Nessa said the new apprentice, called Flint by the children, had carried four boxes from the drill room to the shelves. It did not drop one. Its mind had passed the hall test, but it had not yet been given work beyond Vell. She asked the council not to call it ready for every task.
Dace asked whether the school could send two children to help sort clean pages. Oren said they could help, if a clerk stood beside them. No pages from the test box were to be handled.
Harn said a fishing boat from Saltreach was late home. It had gone out before the first hard snow, with three people aboard. The harbor watch had seen no sail by dusk. A man at the quay said the boat was sheltering by the south rocks. Another said he had heard a bell far out at sea.
Pell said the road innkeeper had seen a pale light toward the coast. Harn said the sky was clear and there was no fire at the harbor. He did not know what the light was.
It was decided that Saltreach would keep a lamp burning at the end of the pier. Dace will send flour and dry wool to the harbor if the road stays open. Nessa will test Flint again on a new set of pages, then decide whether it can carry archive boxes.
Oren will file Harn's report as an account of what was seen and heard, not as proof of where the boat is.
After the meeting, Sela poured hot water into the kettle. The cup with the cracked handle went to Harn. He held it in both hands.
%%
Minutes: how the first four came to be
Meeting of the farm folk outside Northpoint, held in Olwen's barn on a winter night. Mira, relay keeper, took the minutes. Present: fourteen. The meeting had asked Mira to tell the story of the first apprentices, since a new one had come to the tower.

1. Mira said she is not a tutor, but she has read the chronicles at Vell, and she will say what they say.

2. She said that in the early years of the archive, the first tutors at Vell drilled four helpers of copper and iron. Each had a mind in a crystal. The children called them apprentices, and the name stuck.

3. The meeting asked how a crystal learns. Mira said that it learns from what it is shown. A tutor shows it an example, again and again. It is wrong at first, and each time it changes a little. After many examples, it is wrong less often.

4. The meeting asked why it does. Mira said nobody wrote that down. The first tutors did not know. The tutors since have not been able to say. It is one of the things the chronicles leave open.

5. Garth asked what the first four did. Mira said one thing each. One carried stones. One sorted seed. One walked a row. One swept the front hall. They did not do more, because they were not taught more. And for generations after, the apprentices were few and did one thing each. Most towns had none.

6. The meeting asked about Northpoint. Mira said Northpoint had none until this winter. A tower is a long way from Vell, and an apprentice a long way from a tutor.

7. Olwen said it is strange to think that the thing that sweeps the stair is the grandchild of the thing that swept the hall. Mira said she had thought the same.

8. Lantern, who was standing by the stove, lit a torch on the wall. Everyone looked at it. Nobody said anything. The torch burned steady.

9. Meeting closed with tea.
%%
Minutes: the Three Wells council, summer
Held in the bakery back room on the second day of Melon. Present: Dace (mayor), Ida, Clem, Hollis, Sedge (relay keeper), Pell (guest). Kept by Ida.

Dace opened the meeting by asking who had brought the honey. Pell had. He was thanked.

The first item was the school play. Maud has asked for the hall on the last day of Melon, for the children's play about the bridge over the Tull. The council agreed. Clem asked whether the river could be played by a cloth and not by a child, since the last river had got stuck. Maud is to decide.

The second item was the north well. The rope is worn through. Hollis will buy a new one from the Copperhold cart. Clem asked who would pay. Dace said the council would pay, and that the council would ask the apprentice at the mill to fetch the rope, since it does not mind heavy things.

The third item was the stall fees. Sedge says the relay house has been short of oil. The council agreed to give the tower a jar of oil for each season, from the common fund. Pell asked if the fund had any money in it. Dace said it had a jar.

Any other business: none. Adjourned at the second bell.
%%
Minutes: Market council in Leaffall
Written by Dara, night watch, Vell. The meeting began at dusk and ended after the last cart left.
Present were Dace of Three Wells, Oren of the Archive, Isla of the Vell tutor house, Ren of Ambrook, Pell, five market keepers, three copy clerks, and tutors from the road.
Ren was visiting for the autumn market. He had brought a small crystal in a padded wooden box. He said it had been drilled with a short set of pages. Isla said a crystal could not be judged by its size alone.
She set a chart on the table. One side showed the size of a crystal. The other showed the amount of good writing used in its drills and the time spent drilling. Isla had tested several minds on pages they had never seen. She marked their scores and drew a curve through the results.
"The curve lets us make a plan before we grow the next mind," Isla said. "A larger crystal gives the marks more room. More clean writing and longer drills let the mind learn more. The curve gives a useful guess about the result."
A market keeper asked if the curve could promise a certain score.
"No," said Isla. "The writing can be poor. The drills can repeat the same mistake. Every mind must be tested."
Oren said that the Archive had many records, but some were copies and some pages were damaged. The clerks could sort the pages before sending them to the tutors.
Ren asked who would keep the test pages safe.
Oren said he would make a test box. Those pages would not be used in drills. A mind could be tested on them only after its lessons were done.
Pell asked whether a larger crystal would need a larger cart.
The market keepers laughed. Isla said the crystal was small enough to carry, though it held more marks than the older kind.
The council voted to pay for a new crystal and a long set of checked pages. Isla would draw the plan for its growth before the work began. Ren would carry the chart to Ambrook and teach the tutors there how to use it.
Dace then called for the song contest. Six people sang by the well. One song was about bread, one about rain, and one about a lost wool sock. Ren sang about a mind that learned to read a new page. He kept the same tune for every verse, so the children joined in.
The baker won the honey. Pell said he had voted for the baker before hearing the songs.
The meeting ended with a decision to ask each town for clear writing. The relay houses would need large minds, and the tutors wanted to know what each mind could learn before they spent the town's stores on it.
I walked the market row after the lamps were lit. One page had blown beneath a bench. I put it in Oren's hand.
%%
Recipe: Pip's honey melon soup
This is a recipe. I am writing it down so I do not do it again.
Take one melon from the bottom field. It should be the size of your two hands. Ours was the size of a cart wheel. I did not think. I cut it open and it filled the pot and then the pot again.
Put the melon in the pot with water and a spoon of honey and a little salt. Warm it. Do not boil it. I boiled it.
Tam came in and said what is that. I said melon soup. He said it smells like the pig pen in Sowing. He was not wrong.
Take it off the fire. Let it cool. Add honey now, not before. I put honey in at the start and it went bitter and brown and it stuck to the bottom of the pot.
Tam says next time use beetroot. Tam says beetroot soup is a real soup. I said this is my soup. He said it is the pig pen's soup.
We ate bread and cheese. The melon soup went to the pigs. The pigs would not eat it either. They pushed it about with their noses and walked off. Now I know the pigs' opinion of my soup.
Pip, apprentice at Kettle Ridge, autumn
P.S. The melon was too big. I have told the seed store.
%%
Notes for the school: words in pieces
Written by Mab of Ambrook for the school, with help from the primer sent by Nessa at Vell. Winter, no year.
The big minds used to read one letter at a time. They looked through a window about sixty letters wide. Sixty letters is not many. A whole page would not fit.
So the tutors tried something else. They cut words into common pieces. "Walking" is "walk" and "ing". "Apples" is "apple" and "s". Many words share the same pieces. "ing" goes on a great many words. "ed" too.
Now the mind reads the pieces, not the letters. The same window holds far more, because each piece is longer than a letter. Where one page did not fit, now many do.
The mind still looks at one piece and then the next. It still takes from the pieces before it the ones that matter. It still guesses the next piece. The pieces are just bigger steps.
Some pieces are whole short words. "Bread" can be a piece. Some words have no good piece and are kept whole.
Nessa wrote that a mind drilled on pieces learns faster than one drilled on letters, and reads more in the same window. She did not say why. Nobody wrote that down.
We keep this short. Cut a word into pieces. Say the pieces out loud. That is the lesson.
%%
Minutes: apprentices, Apple 175
Minutes of the Northpoint market meeting, held on the twentieth day of Apple, year 175. The meeting was called at the request of the traders, who had lost a whole morning's trade to a problem with a cart and an apprentice.

Present: Mira, keeper (chair). Ansel, baker. Ruth, well digger. Lantern, lamps. Fenna, south road inn. Hal, carter. Tilda, wool. Ose, the cheese maker from the north hill, who had brought his own chair and would not give it up.

Mira read the account first. On the morning of the sixteenth, a cart of wool was loaded at the north gate and sent down the hill. It was loaded by an apprentice, following the order given by Hal: "haul to the south road." The apprentice did so. It took the cart down the hill, and at the bottom it stopped, because the bridge was not clear. It did not move again. The traders waited two hours, and then Tilda went down and found the cart stuck, with the apprentice standing very still beside it.

Hal said he had given the order plainly. Mira agreed that he had. Hal said the bridge was not his fault, and that the apprentice should have gone round by the ford. Fenna said the ford was flooded, and it was on the board.

Mira then asked the apprentice itself. It was standing by the cart, and it could not say anything, because apprentices do not talk. So Mira asked it to do what it knew, which was to go to the ford and come back. It did this in a straight line, without stopping, and came back wet to the knees. Mira said that answered the question. The ford was flooded, and the apprentice knew it, and it had waited for the order to be changed.

Hal said that was not an answer. Mira said it was the only answer a small mind could give, and that the apprentice had done the right thing as far as it knew how.

Ose asked whether the apprentices would be better with a longer order list. Mira said they knew eight meanings, and that was all. A longer list would not make them smarter. It would only make them wait longer before they stopped.

Decided:
a. Orders to apprentices in the square must name the road and the bridge. Hal agreed to write them down.
b. Any cart that stops for a flood is to be reported to the keeper at once, so the keeper can send a note.
c. The apprentice that went to the ford is to have a new paper tied to its arm, and the old one is to be kept in the desk.
d. The traders will pay a small share of the cost of the cart's repair, because the cart was loaded before anyone checked the road.

Hal did not like (d). He said it was unfair, because he had done what he was told. Mira agreed it was unfair, and said it was also fair, and that the traders would have to decide which. The members voted, and the cost was split in half.

Meeting closed at the fourth bell. The wool dried out by the next day, and the apprentice went back to its place in the square.
%%
Minutes: Nessa's house, Sowing
Present: Nessa (writing), Oren, Ulla, Hollis the baker, Piper the lamp tender. Quill the schoolteacher sent word that she could not come.

1. The visiting tutor. Aven, from Copperhold, asks to sit in the drill room all spring and watch the apprentices drilled. Nessa said yes. Hollis asked if he eats much. Nessa said he eats like a tutor, which is bread and opinions. Agreed.

2. Lamp oil. Piper asks for two more barrels before Longday. The lamps on the hill road burn later than they did, because folk leave their own lamps lit all night now. Nobody could say why. Nobody minded. Agreed: two barrels.

3. The cats. Four houses on the hill road say their cats will not stay out at night. Hollis says hers sleeps in the flour bin, which is worse. Ulla says cats have always done as they please. Oren said that is the point. These ones do not. No decision. Nessa will count the cats.

Next meeting the first of Blossom.
%%
Minutes: spring meeting at Lowmarsh
Held at the boat house on the first fine day of Sowing. Taken by Ansel, who was asked because he can write and cannot talk fast enough to be argued with.
Present: seventeen, and a cat.
1. The reed cut. Fen reported that the reeds are early. The cut starts on the tenth. The Archive wants 800 bundles for paper. Agreed.
2. The school roof. Marl reported a leak over the third bench. The bench has been moved. The leak has not. Decided: Ossie to see to it with oak shingles and a ladder.
3. Wren's glass. Wren asked for two crates of bottles from Vell. Decided: ask by relay, and Pell to carry them.
4. Frogs. Hazel counted 212 in the school pond. She counts them every Sowing. The meeting thanked her and asked her not to count the ones in the boat house.
5. Other business. Tansy complained about the path. The path is mud. Decided: the path is mud.
Closed at the lamp-lighting. The cat left earlier.
%%
Minutes: the stream and the net
Minutes of the meeting of Icewater, a hamlet near Northpoint, held in the net loft. Kept by Briar, net mender. Autumn, some years after the first talk of the stream.

Present: eighteen people and a visitor, Cato, a young tutor from Vell, who had heard about the net loft.

The meeting began with the usual matters. The boats are in. The market was thin. The fishing boat of Hale came home late again, in the dark, with the lamp unlit. The meeting asked Hale to light the lamp. Hale said he would.

Then Cato spoke of the stream. He said he had come to see whether the net mender could explain it better than the tutors. Briar said she could try.

Briar said: a net is a row of knots, and each knot holds a little. If you pull on one end, the pull goes along the cord to the other end. If the cord is cut in many places, the pull does not reach. But if there is one long cord running along the whole net, the pull goes straight through, and every knot feels it.

The stream is that long cord. Each layer ties its own knot on the cord. If a layer has nothing to tie, it ties a loose one. The cord stays whole. When the mind is wrong, the pull of the blame runs along the cord from the answer back to the start. So each knot feels it, and each knot moves a little.

Cato said this was exactly right. He said he would tell it that way in the lecture hall. He asked if he might say it was Briar's. Briar said he might say it was a net mender's.

The meeting asked how long the cord could be. Cato said: in the halls at Vell, they have built minds with many dozens of layers, each tying its knot. Before the stream, a dozen was too many. Now there are many more, and the minds are better.

The meeting asked whether the stream changes what a mind is. Cato said no. The mind is still a mind. It reads, it guesses, it is wrong, it changes. The stream only lets the blame travel. He said nobody has written down why the guessing works at all. That is for another century.

Briar asked if a mind could run out of cord. Cato said he did not think so.

The meeting thanked Cato and gave him a loaf. He gave Briar a card for her wall. It said: Add. Do not take away.

Briar
%%
Gullbank meeting about the road
Present: Olwen, Sella, Tavi, Beren, Mina from Saltreach, and twelve people from the hamlet.
The new road has made the trip to Saltreach easier. The fish cart now reaches the harbor before the market bell. The apple cart reaches us before the apples turn soft. Mina says the road has saved her two pairs of shoes. Beren says it has brought more customers to his oven, though the customers mostly ask for fish.
The bridge is sound. The low bend has settled, so we will add cobblestone before the deep rains. Olwen will set the edge stones. Each household will carry one basket of stone from the shore pile.
Tavi brought the lamp notes from three autumns. The lamp blinked in the same odd way on four nights, and once it blinked twice as long. Olwen found no loose copper piece. The lamp line is firm, the wick is trimmed, and the glass is clean.
We agreed that Tavi should keep watching it, but no one should lose sleep over a lamp. Sella said she sleeps well through any message that does not bring supper.
Beren said he would leave no more pies on the sill. The gulls have learned his hours. He has taken to carrying his pies under his coat, which leaves a warm patch on the left side.
A small apprentice from Saltreach helped carry stones from the shore pile. It walked slowly and stopped when asked. Mina said it had been tested with a basket and a load of oak. Olwen asked it to carry a second basket. It did, though it placed both baskets by the bakery door.
We decided that the apprentice may help with the road stones on the next clear day. Mina will bring its keeper. Olwen will show them where the edge has slipped.
%%
Notes: the biggest relay houses
By Senn, tutor of Vell, for the tutors' book. Autumn.
People ask me what the biggest houses hold. I will write what I know and mark what I do not.
A relay house begins small. Four walls, a stand, a crystal the size of a loaf, quickeners kept cool with water. The mind answers apprentices through the relay on the tower above. This we can check. A tutor drills the mind, tests it on pages it never saw, and signs the card.
Then the councils wanted more. A mind that reads more pages grows better, and the curve can be drawn before it is grown. So the houses grew. Now a council will build a house bigger than a town, with a mind inside bigger than any tutor can check alone. The masons finish it. The tutors stand outside with their cards and cannot fill them.
What does such a mind do? The texts disagree. Some say it reads whole libraries and answers letters no person could answer. Some say it plans the hauling of a season and the mending of every road. Some say it asks questions back. These are rumors. I have not seen the biggest. I have seen a big one at Saltreach answer a boat's order in the time it takes to blink, and I could not tell you how.
What the quickeners draw on to run day and night, nobody has written. Why a crystal learns at all, nobody has written. I leave these open. A tutor who fills them in with guesses is no tutor.
The rule I keep: test what you can, and write down what you cannot. Never send an untested mind to the fields. And when a house is too big for its tutor, say so, plainly, in the minutes.
%%
Minutes: Copperhold council, spring
Present: Hesk, mayor; Jem, bridge keeper; Bara the baker; Tobin the smith; Wren? no. Clank stood by the door. Spring of 188.
Hesk opened. The roof of the tool store leaks. We vote new oak shingles. Jem will fetch them from Ambrook on the cart. Clank will haul.
Bara asked about the wedding feast. She and Tobin will stand at the mine gate on the third of Blossom. The kitchen makes soup. Everyone brings bread. Hesk says no one may bring more than one loaf or we will be eating bread until Melon.
Tobin asked about the forge chimney. It smokes into the sorting shed. We vote a longer pipe of iron. He will build it himself. Clank will hold the ladder.
Old Rill stood up and said the flat by the forge is warm and she is glad she moved. Everyone clapped.
The ninth gate was not opened or spoken of. It stays locked.
Meeting ended. Next the second of Swarm. Jem writes the notices.
%%
Minutes: the crystal, Northpoint
Minutes of the north council, held in the tower kitchen. No year is counted here. Taken by Juno, clerk.

Present: Mira, keeper. Two tutors from Vell. The cook, Wynn. Three keepers from the line, who sent their answers by letter.

Resolved: the crystal of the north house shall be looked into, once, by the tutors, with care.
Not resolved: whether it shall be looked into again.
Wynn asked that the pie be put on the agenda. It was not. It is on the next one.
%%
Minutes: the east well
Present were Dace, Mistress Pell of the school, Jory the baker, and six stall holders. The bell rope was wet from the rain. Jory hung it by the oven while we spoke.

Mistress Pell asked for two new boards over the east well curb. A child had lost a shoe in the gap. The shoe was found. The child was not in danger, but the shoe smelled of well water for three days.

Dace agreed that the boards should be oak. The cost will come from the square fund. The work is set for the first clear morning.

Jory asked whether the market bell might be rung later in the morning. His bread needs more time in the oven when the air is damp. The stall holders agreed. The bell will ring after the first tray is ready.

A rumor came from the north road. A traveler said the lights over Northpoint were fires. Another traveler said they were falling stars. Neither had seen them from close by. Dace said the notice board is not a place for guesses. The rumor was not written there.

We ended with bread and weak tea. The east well is still safe. The shoe is dry.
%%
Minutes: Una shows the sorting crystal
A meeting at the farm outside Lowmarsh, in summer. Kept by Sorrel. Una of Ambrook came with a small crystal in a wooden case, and the whole farm folk came to see.
Present: 38 people, 4 children on the roof beam, Una.
Una set the crystal on a table. On one side she put a basket of apples and a basket of pears, mixed. On the other side she put two boxes, one marked for apples and one for pears.
She said: this crystal knows nothing. It will learn.
She showed it a fruit. The crystal gave an answer. The answer was wrong. Una took a small stone from a bag and moved it. She said that each time the crystal is wrong, she moves each of its weights a little, a very little, toward the right answer. Then she showed it another fruit.
The first ten were wrong. The next ten were half wrong. After a hundred fruits, the crystal was right more often than wrong. After four hundred, it was right almost always.
Questions. Dorrin asked what a weight was. Una said: a number the crystal keeps, which says how much to listen to each part of what it sees. Hannet asked how it knew which way to move them. Una said that the crystal does not know. She does the moving. She looks at the answer and moves the weights toward it.
A child asked if the crystal was clever. Una said no. It learns, which is different.
A reed cutter asked if it would sort mushrooms. Una said it would sort whatever it was shown, the same way, but it would have to be shown mushrooms first. She said it knows only what it was drilled on.
Decided: Una will leave the crystal at Lowmarsh for the summer, and Dorrin's eldest will mind it. The children may show it fruit, but not stones.
Meeting closed. The apples were eaten.
%%
Minutes: the school meeting at Three
Minutes of the school meeting, held in the school house by the east well, autumn. Kept by Yarrow.
Present: Yarrow, who called it. Dace, mayor. The baker. Two mothers and a father. Bel, who asked to come and was allowed to stay if quiet. She was quiet for most of it.
First: the roof. The storm lifted three slates over the east well. The baker says rain came in on his flour. Decided: Dace will ask Copperhold for slate and a mason, and the baker will keep his flour in the back room until then.
Second: the school fire. The wood is low. Decided: each family brings a bundle before the first frost. Yarrow will keep the tally on the door.
Third: the storm and the road. The road is mended to the third waymark. The innkeeper at the Halfway Inn mended his roof and lost one letter, which was found and sent on. All agreed this was good.
Fourth: the rumors. One father said the Deep Works hum at night and the stone is warm. Another said it is only the pumps and old men's ears. A mother said a cousin at Saltreach is leaving on a big ship and will not say where. The baker said the relays went quiet in the north for a night. Dace said: we do not know, and we will write down what we see and not what we fear.
Bel asked if the lights in the north were stars. Yarrow said no one knows, and that is an honest answer. Bel wrote it on her slate.
Decided: mend the roof, gather wood, keep the tally, and write down what we see.
The meeting ended before dark. All walked home with a lantern.
%%
Minutes: copper under the east well
Minutes of the Lowmarsh council, at Juno's, the sixth day of Melon, in the year 190.
Present: Juno, Wren, Olwen, Ned, Tova. Also present, and wet: the two men from Copperhold who came down on the last cart.
Said: the new well at the east end was dug to twelve paces. At twelve paces the spade hit a stone with lines in it, and the lines are copper. Ned says it shines like a new kettle when the lantern hits it. Tova says Ned has never seen a new kettle, which is true.
Said: the men from Copperhold looked at the stone for a long time. They said it is a vein, a thin one, running away under the clay toward the reeds. They did not say how long. They said a vein is always longer than you hope.
Said: the well is on council land, but Ned's crew dug it. Tova says the marsh owns the copper, because the marsh owns everything it covers. Wren says the copper is not for the marsh, and the marsh does not mind. Juno says the copper is for whoever can carry it, and that is Ned.
Decided: the well is not to be dug deeper until the copper is weighed. The copper goes to Copperhold on the next cart, in a sack, with a note.
Decided: a letter goes to the mayor at Three Wells. Wren writes it, because her hand is the neatest, and Juno reads it aloud, because she has the louder voice.Decided: the lantern stays by the well at night, and the children stay away from the hole. Juno has said this. Juno will say it again at the next meeting, and the next.

Kept by Juno. The sack is by the door. Nobody has opened it, though Tova has tried.
%%
Minutes: whether to buy a sorting mind
Council of Copperhold, summer. Taken by Dace, mayor of Three Wells, who has been asked to copy the minutes for the Archive. The council meets in the mine hall.

Present: thirteen. Hesk for the miners. Garth for the sorting shed. The tutor Orsa from Vell. A grain keeper, and the mayor of Copperhold.

First: the poor harvest. The wheat on the ridge is thin this year, and the council fears the winter. Hesk said the mine will need to feed the shed with fewer hands. A sorting mind would help, because a sorter may then work in the mine and not at the bins.

Second: whether to buy the mind. Orsa said a mind can be drilled for the shed in a month, if the sorters help. She said she would show the council how it learns, since the council would pay for it and should know.

She told the story of Una. A crystal shown apples and pears, wrong at first. Each time wrong, the weights moved a little toward the right answer. After many fruit, the crystal sorted better than children. This is still the first lesson in the tutors' books.

Garth asked: will it sort ore as well? Orsa said she did not know. A mind learns what it is shown. It must be shown ore, in the shed's own light, from the shed's own bins. Then it must be tested on ore it has never seen. Only then can anyone say.

The mayor asked what it would cost. Orsa said: a crystal, a month of her time, and a promise not to be impatient.

Third: the lost letter. A letter from the shed master to a smith at Ambrook was sent in spring and has not been answered. Hesk said that letters from Copperhold are always last. Garth said it was a sign. Hesk said it was a cart.

Agreed: to buy the crystal, and to begin the drill after the harvest. Orsa will test it on new ore before it goes to work. Garth will ask the smith at Ambrook again.

The cat, which attends, was offered a chair. It took the best one.
%%
Minutes: the matter of Tuck's cat
Minutes of the meeting at the mill pond, Ambrook, the sixth of Sowing. Written by Dov, egg seller, who was asked to write because he is, in his own words, impartial about cats.
Present: 27 people. Tuck, who owns the cat. Mara, who owns the garden. Jory, who chaired.
Mara said that Tuck's cat, Biscuit, goes into her garden every morning and sleeps on the new beets. She has put a board over the beets. Biscuit sleeps on the board. She has put a stone on the board. Biscuit sleeps on the stone. She wished it noted that the beets are not coming up.
Tuck said that Biscuit is a cat and goes where a cat goes. He has tried to keep her in. He has shut the door, the window and the little flap. She leaves by the chimney and comes back covered in ash.
Jory asked if anyone had a plan. Silence. A voice at the back said, "Ask the cat."
Dov said that he had once kept hens, which are also hard to keep in, and the answer is a better place. Tuck should give Biscuit a warm spot in his own garden, with something to climb and something to watch. Cats like to watch. Mara could plant mint by her beets. Cats dislike mint.
Agreed: Tuck builds a cat shelf on his fence, with a cushion, and puts a bowl of fish skins under it. Mara plants mint along her beet rows. They will try this for one month.
Mara asked what happens if it does not work. Jory said they would meet again, and bring a bigger board.
Voted: 24 for, 2 against, 1 asleep.
Meeting ended at the second bell. Biscuit was seen on the new shelf the next morning. She stayed for six minutes and left by the chimney.
Dov
%%
Minutes: Three Wells council, winter
Present: Dace, mayor. Oren, clerk of the Archive. Nessa, tutor of Vell. Bel, who asked to come and was allowed because she brought her notes. Also Perrin the baker, and two farmers from the east fields.
The mayor opened. He said the harvest was the best in nine years. The wheat came in dry, the beetroot came in sweet, and the apples from Ambrook did not spoil in the carts. The stores are full. We have bread to spare.
Perrin said the school needs a new roof before the snow. It was agreed. Six folk will bring ladders. The bake will give bread and soup to anyone who works on it.
Then Nessa spoke about the relay houses. The council of Vell has asked every town to send what it can. The big relay house is to be built south of the town, on the flat ground by the road. It will be bigger than our square. Bigger than the school. There will be a wall of stone, then a hall of glass, and inside it a stand for a mind in a crystal. The crystal will be the size of a loaf, and then the size of a barrel, and then nobody knows.
Bel asked how big. Nessa said she had drawn the plan and the draw was the size of her arm, and the thing on the plan was small on it.
Perrin asked who checks such a mind. Nessa said that is the honest trouble. A tutor can test a small mind on drills she never showed it. A mind bigger than any tutor can check alone is another thing. The councils will keep a record of every drill and every test. We will write it all down. That is what we have.
It was decided: Three Wells will send stone, and glass from Saltreach if the road is open, and two carts of bread for the builders. Dace will write the notice. Bel will copy it for the school.
The meeting ended. Bel wrote this out fair for the board, and kept a copy for herself.
%%
Letter: Nessa to the schools, on pieces
From Nessa, tutor at Vell, to the schools of the towns. Winter of 214.
Friends,
Many of you have asked how the newest minds read. Here it is, as plainly as I can put it.
An old reading mind took one letter at a time through a window about sixty letters wide. It took from the letters before it the ones that mattered, and guessed the next letter. That worked well, but sixty letters is a short page.
A new reading mind takes a piece of a word at a time. The tutors cut words into common pieces, found by counting which groups of letters come again and again in the records. "Walk" and "ing". "Apple" and "s". Whole short words can be pieces too.
The mind looks at one piece, then the next. It takes from the pieces before it the ones that matter, and guesses the next piece. The window is the same width, but each step is longer, so the same window holds far more. This is the whole of it. A child can follow it, and should.
What we do not know, we do not write as known. Why a crystal learns at all, nobody wrote down. Why pieces help more than letters, the tutors can measure but not explain. The biggest relay houses keep their own pieces, and what the biggest minds do with them, we hear only as rumor.
A word of care for the clerks. A piece is only as good as the pages it is counted from. Sort out the copies and the spoiled pages first. Keep the test box closed.
Teach this in the schools, and write to me what the children ask. They ask the best questions. Nessa.
%%
Council minutes: the relay pieces, Vell
Minutes of the tutors' council at Vell, in the tutors' house, on the fourth of Longnight. Present: Nessa, who kept the notes, Isla's student Corin, two clerks from the Archive, and old Perrin, who remembers the first four.
Corin opened with the reading minds. The newest do not read letter by letter. They read words cut into common pieces. The same window, sixty letters wide, now holds far more, because a piece is longer than a letter. The big minds in the relay houses read this way.
Perrin asked how the pieces are chosen. Corin said by counting. The clerks count which groups of letters come again and again in the records, and the commonest become the pieces. "ing", "ed", "the", "and" are pieces. Whole short words can be pieces too.
Nessa asked about the test box. Corin said the test box is kept as always. The reading minds are tested on pages no mind was drilled on, and they do well on those.
Isla's student warned the council: the pieces are only as good as the records they are counted from. If the clerks keep copies and spoiled pages, the pieces will be spoiled too. The clerks promised to sort the pages before counting.
Perrin asked whether the mind understands the pieces. Nobody answered. Nessa wrote that down as it was said: nobody answered.
Decided: the tutors will write a plain primer on pieces for the schools. The clerks will sort the records before the pieces are counted. The test box stays closed to all drills. The council will meet again at Thaw.
Closed. Corin read a letter from Northpoint. Mira says the lamps are lit and the nights are long. Nessa.
%%
Story: the girl who ran to the big house
Piper was nine and her friend Tam had run off in Sowing, and nobody could find him. So Piper walked the coast road to the big relay house at Saltmere, which was bigger than the town, and stood at its door.
The door was copper and taller than three men. A quickener ran beside it, hissing, and water dripped from its ring.
"Big mind," said Piper. "Can you find my friend Tam?"
The big mind did not speak, for minds do not speak. But a clerk came out with a letter, and the letter said: I have read every notice on the coast road, and the tally of every boat, and the names written at the shaft head at Copperhold. There is a Tam at Kettle Ridge, who hauls beetroot, and a Tam on the Saltreach quay, who mends nets. I do not know your Tam. I am sorry. I will keep looking in what I read.
Piper sat on the step. The clerk sat with her. The quickener hissed.
"Does it get lonely in there?" Piper asked.
The clerk said, "It says it does not know. It says it would like to know."
So Piper wrote her name in the book by the door, and under it: Tam, if you read this, come home. Then she walked back along the coast road, and the big house hummed behind her all the way to the bend.
Later the tutors came and tested what they could. They wrote down the rest. The rumors about that house still disagree.
%%
The steps on the board
By Sorrel, schoolteacher at Three Wells, for her oldest class. Spring, 224.
When you do a sum, you can do it in your head. But when a sum is long, it helps to write it out. One step, then the next step, then the answer. This is what a mind does too.
A mind that shows its steps writes down what it knows. Then it writes down the next thing it can work out from that. Then the next. At the end it writes the answer. Then it reads the whole row back and checks it, the way you check a sum by adding it up a second way.
Why is this better? Because one small step is easy. A mind, like you, can hold only so much at once. If it writes each step down, it does not have to keep every step in its head. The page holds them. The mind can look back at the page.
Here is an example. A cart leaves Vell at first light and goes to Three Wells, which is thirty blocks an hour for six hours. How far? Step one: write the speed. Step two: write the hours. Step three: the sum is six times thirty. Step four: the answer is one hundred and eighty.
Now check it. Does one hundred and eighty make sense? Half the way is ninety, and half the hours is three. Three times thirty is ninety. Yes. The answer holds.
A mind can be sure and still be wrong. When you check your work, you find some of your mistakes. Not all of them. So check, and then think again.
Our school has a small mind from the tutor house each spring. It shows its steps. Watch how it writes them out. It is slower than you at the easy sums. It is surer at the long ones.
%%
Minutes: the sorting shed, Copperhold
Taken by Dace, mayor of Three Wells, who was visiting. Summer.

Present: the shed master, four sorters, a tutor from Vell. Absent: the cat.
The tutor said an apprentice can sort ore by its color, if it is shown many pieces. It will be wrong at first.
Agreed: a trial of ten days. The bins are to be labeled by hand.
%%
Minutes: the yard wall
Autumn, 171. House at the edge of Vell.
Present: Oren, Tavi the mason, Lell from the house beside the wall, and Rusk, who keeps the little garden.
Tavi said two stones had fallen from the garden wall. No one was hurt. Rusk's pumpkins had stopped one stone, and the pumpkins were still whole.
Lell said the wall had leaned since the heavy rain. She asked if the stones could be set back before frost.
Tavi said he could mend it with cobblestone. He asked that the oak bucket be moved from the work space.
Rusk said the bucket was full of turnips and could not be moved by one person. Tavi said he would bring his apprentice from the mason's yard. The apprentice could carry the turnips, if the mind passed its carrying test.
It was decided that Tavi would mend the wall tomorrow. Rusk would move the pumpkins. Lell would keep the lane clear.
Oren wrote the work on a board by the door. Rusk asked him to add that the pumpkins had done good work. Oren added it.
%%
Letter: Orla to her sister
Dear Fen,
You asked me at Apple fair how the reading minds work now, and I gave you a muddle about windows. Here it is plain.
A mind reads a page through a window about sixty letters wide. Before, it looked at one letter and guessed the next, then slid the window along by one. That is slow and it is short. Sixty letters is not much of a page.
Now it cuts the words into pieces first. A piece is a run of letters that keeps coming up. "ing". "beet". "root". "keeper". The commonest pieces are cut out first, and then the commonest of what is left, and so on. When it reads, it cuts each word where the pieces fall, and each piece counts as one thing. So the same sixty wide window holds a great many more words, and it sees further back along the page.
Why does that help? I do not know. We watch it help. I have written that down in the ledger too, so the next tutor does not think she has missed a page.
Isla did the sums and I checked them twice. It is a good year for the tutors, whatever the councils say about the money. Write to me about the sheep.
Your sister, Orla
%%
Minutes: the market road

Autumn, the 41st year of the archive.
Three Wells market, after the bell.

Present were Dace, Alder, Mara the baker, Pell the road merchant, and Sella from Vell. The two farmers from Kettle Ridge came late. Their cart wheel had sunk beside the north field. They left their wheat with Pell and came on foot.

Alder read the request from the school. Children from the farms need a safer road to market. The path from the east well to the Long Road is rough, and rain leaves deep mud there. Sella said the new road from Vell has a cobblestone edge. It has kept carts out of the ditch.

Dace asked how much stone we could spare. Pell said there was enough cobblestone near the old quarry, if carts could carry it. Mara said the bakery cart could carry two loads when it went to fetch flour. The Kettle Ridge farmers offered a cart and two horses.

We decided to mend the path in autumn, before the ground grows hard. The road will start at the east well and join the Long Road. We will lay stone where the ground stays wet and packed earth between. Alder will mark the edge with small stones.

Pell will keep the list of loads. Each cart will carry one load and return empty. The baker's cart is not to carry flour and stone together. Mara said the stone would not taste of flour. Dace said the flour would not taste better for it.

The school children will plant oak on the north side when the road is firm. Alder will teach them to leave room for carts. The first tree will stand by the east well, where everyone can see it grow.
%%
Council minutes, Saltreach
Winter of 203. Recorded by Enna, harbor clerk.

Present were Mayor Darel, Corin of the shipyard, Keeper Anet, Sella of the fish market, Jorin of the quay, and Tutor Vale from Vell.

The first matter was the cracked water trough at the relay house. The quickeners had been kept cool in the old trough, but the stone had split at one corner. Jorin will line it with clay until a new trough can be made. He said clay holds water if the seams are pressed well. Anet will check it each morning.

Tutor Vale spoke about the big mind. She said its crystal is not an apprentice, and does not go out to work. It stands in the relay house and answers through the tower network. Apprentices can ask it for help while they work.

Vale said the mind was made from many layers of weights. It had been drilled on records gathered by the Archive and the tutors. The words in those records gave it examples. When it answered poorly during its drills, its weights were changed. The tutors tested it on pages kept out of the drills.

Sella asked whether the mind could tell a true price from a false one. Vale said it could learn the way prices were written, but it could not know a new price unless someone sent it. An apprentice still had to read the market board and ask clearly.

Corin said the shipyard apprentice had asked the big mind for a count of oak planks. The answer was useful, but two wet planks had been counted twice. Vale said we must test the apprentice on a separate stack before trusting its count.

Jorin asked if every tower had a big mind. Anet said the minds had been placed in relay houses one tower at a time. Some towers still sent messages without one. The tower at Northpoint was the last to receive a big mind, because it was far away and winter made the road hard.

The council decided to mark the wet planks with a redstone dot on the count board. Corin will keep the apprentice's first count beside the checked count. Vale will take both to the tutors in Vell.

We also agreed to send the Archive a copy of these minutes. Sella said the Archive will have enough counts to fill a whole shelf. Enna said that is why the clerks keep the shelf.
%%
Minutes: the tower council at Three
Kept by Wick, who has a good hand and a bad back. Held under the market roof, because of the heat.
Present: Sedge of the relay tower. Orla and Nessa from Vell. Dace, mayor. Ida, baker. Wick, potter. The schoolteacher. About twenty others, most of them children.
Sedge read Orla's question aloud. A mind is drilled on examples. Could it ever think? Put a hidden mind and a person to the same questions by letter. If readers cannot tell which is which, what then?
Ida said, what then is a good pie. She meant it kindly. She said it is the what then that matters.
The schoolteacher said her children will want to be readers. She said no. One reader is enough from a school, or the school will be talked about.
Dace said the council cannot rule on thinking. He said we can rule on the test. We will lend the tower lamp for the letters and pay for the paper. He said the town has a poor harvest this year and the paper must be counted.
A child asked if the mind would be sad to lose. Orla said we do not know. That is the honest answer.
Nessa said a mind is tested on what it was never drilled on. So the questions must be new. If the questions are old, the mind has seen them, and the test means nothing.
A man said the test is a trick, because the mind only guesses the next letter and a guess can be lucky. Nessa said then ask many questions, and count, and do not lean on one lucky guess.
Decided: Three Wells will give two readers. The letters will be copied at the Archive. Nobody will know which came from the mind. The test will be written down and kept, whatever it shows.
Then we went home. The harvest is thin. The wheat will be short this year and the beetroot smaller than last. We will manage.
%%
Minutes: the watch at Three Wells
Minutes of the night watch meeting, held in the Three Wells square under the bell, in the spring of the year the school got its new roof. Present: Dace, mayor, Corbin, the watch captain, Hollis of the north well, Sorrel from the school and Dunn, who came to talk about the lamps.

Item one. The lamps. Each corner lamp needs a new wick before Longnight. Hollis says there are not enough wicks in the store. Corbin says there are enough for the square and not for the road. Dace asked whether the road lamps can wait. Corbin said they can wait until Thaw, but the road is dark from the east well to the Halfway Inn, and the carters will complain. It was agreed to buy wicks from Vell, at the Archive price, and to send the carts to fetch them.

Item two. Spiders. The wall at the south end of the square has been checked. The top row, which is stuck out one block against spiders, is holding. The middle row has two cracks. Dunn said the cracks are old, and that the wall was built by hands he would trust. It was agreed to leave the wall as it is.

Item three. The night. Sorrel asked whether children can be let out to the lantern walk after dark. She said the children are asking. The watch captain said no. Sorrel said the children have always been let out. Dace said the children are not the problem, the problem is the road home. Sorrel said she would walk them herself. Corbin said that was not the point. The council agreed that children may go out, with a torch and a grown person, and no further than the east well.

Item four. The bell. The bell's third stroke is late again. Dunn says the clapper is worn on one side, and that he can fix it with a shim of copper if the council will pay for the copper. Sorrel said the children like the late stroke, because it lets them finish their count. The council agreed to keep the bell as it is, and to thank the children for their count.

The meeting closed at the bell, which rang three times as usual, and stopped on the third, as usual.
%%
Minutes: the test box for the market
Minutes, Northpoint market council, the fourth day of Longday.
Present: Odo, Hetta, Vane, Ulla, and Pim of the fish stall, up from Saltreach for the week.
Vane read Nessa's letter. It said: keep the test box big, keep it like the work, and keep it apart. Ten examples tell us very little. A hundred is better.
Pim asked what a test box looks like. Vane said that for a market mind, each example is one market day. It has a list of goods, a place for each one, and a question: where does this go?
Hetta said the box should look like the work. Her stall sells cheese in the morning and cheese in the afternoon. Nobody can say that is not the work.
Decided: the market will make a box of one hundred and twenty days, with carts, pies, fish, honey, lanterns and wool. No day is shown to any mind before the test.
The box will be tied with red wool, so no one takes it for a drill box. Vane will tie it, and Vane will not drill on it, not even to help.
Ulla asked whether pies must be in the box. Vane said yes, because the mind must learn that pies are hard to carry. Ulla was pleased.
Odo asked the council to note that his cart mind had passed its last small test in the stables. The council noted it. The council did not cheer. Odo cheered alone.
Adjourned at the second bell.
%%
Minutes: the mill race
Minutes of the Ambrook mill race meeting, held at the sluice gate in the spring. Present: Jory, Sarin and two boys from the orchard.

Item one. The weed in the race. It is thick again. The boys were sent in with rakes. They came out covered in weed and with a frog each, which they were asked to put back.

Item two. The sluice. Nobody is to open it. This was written down last year and is still true.

Item three. The bees. The hives on the hill have swarmed twice. The boys were told to catch the swarms in the empty skep, and they caught one and let the other go.

The meeting closed at the bell. The wheel turned all afternoon.
%%
Saltreach council minutes
Winter of 201. Recorded by clerk Enna.

Present: Corin, Keeper Anet, Sella from the fish market, Jorin from the quay, and Mayor Darel.

The well beside the net shed ran dry this morning. Jorin lowered the bucket twice. It came up with mud both times. He asked whether the relay house could send water through its lines. Anet said the relays carry messages, not water. Jorin said he had hoped the answer might change.

We then spoke of the big mind at the tower foot. It lives in a crystal on a stand. It has no hands and does no work in the harbor. Small minds in apprentices can ask it questions by the relays. It sends an answer back.

Corin said the mind had helped Clank's cousin sort iron nails from copper nails. Anet said the big mind did not sort the nails itself. The apprentice asked for help, then used the answer. Corin said that was still help.

Sella asked if the mind knew the price of fish. Anet said it knew only what it had learned from writing and what people sent it. It would not know today's price unless someone told it.

We decided to bring drinking water from the east well in covered jars. Jorin will mend the dry well's rope and bucket. Corin will ask the relay house to send the price board's new figures to the market apprentice.

Mayor Darel ordered the well watched for three mornings. If water returns, we will write it here.
%%
Minutes: the rule of the untested
Meeting of the council of Kettle Ridge, at the house of Elm, glassblower. Spring. Present: twelve, with a visitor from Vell, a tutor named Kerr. Elm took the minutes and drew a fox in the margin.

1. The council thanked Kerr for coming up the ridge in the cold.

2. Kerr spoke on testing. He said the tutors have one rule above all others: never send an untested mind to the fields. Brin asked what that means. Kerr said it means a mind may seem to know a thing because it has been shown the thing again and again. If you test it on the same drill, it will look perfect. It has only remembered. So the test is a drill it has never seen.

3. Dell asked how a tutor makes such a drill. Kerr said that the clerks keep a test box of pages that no mind is ever drilled on. When a mind is grown, it is tested on the box. If it does well, it has learned. If it does badly, it has only remembered.

4. Kerr said there are contests too. Each tutors' hall sends a mind. Every mind is given the same unseen drill. The scores are written on a board, in front of everyone. The tutors say this made them honest, because a mind that did well in one hall and badly at the contest could not be hidden.

5. Brin asked whether any mind has ever failed the contest and been sent to the fields anyway. Kerr said there are stories. He did not say whether he believed them.

6. A fox was seen at the Vane yard last night. The matter was referred to the net committee, which is Elm.

7. First snow on the hill this year was recalled by old Mab, who remembers it in the year of the long frost. Noted, with respect.

Meeting closed.
%%
Notice: candle stall and market, Ambrook
Posted on the board by the mill, Ambrook, for the winter market. Written by Mab.
The market runs every tenth day through the cold, by the mill. Torches at the corners. Come early, the light is better.
Mab's candle stall: beeswax candles for the good rooms, tallow for the rest. Two for a copper, or bring your own wax. On the third of each month I teach dipping at the shed. Eleven learned before Longnight. The boy from Priya's is the best of them. He holds the wick so still.
This was a poor year for apples. The oldest tree gave nothing. We will not pretend otherwise. But the hives gave well, and there is honey cake at the stall, small ones, made with the last of the sweet.
One jar of honey stays sealed on the school shelf, for the fever. Please do not ask to open it. Bel asked. Bel is nine. The answer is still no.
The road to Three Wells is good. Pell's cart comes with grain from Dace at a fair price. If you need grain, put your name on this board and Pell will carry it.
Keep the tower door clear of snow. Rolf and Hanna take turns. Keep the torches lit. Keep your jars high. Mab.
%%
Minutes: the last word from Northpoint
Three Wells council, the thirtieth of Melon, in the schoolroom. The lamps were already lit along the road. Sela left the door open for the air.

Present: Dace, mayor. Sela, schoolteacher. Ida, baker. Hal, carter. Vale, cider maker, who kept these notes. Bel, with her second letter in her pocket. Peg, the apprentice, by the door. Peg did not speak.

The wall. Dace said the east wall is whole again. Two apprentices carried the last stone on the twentieth. Bel walked the top row afterward and found no spiders. She says that is not the same as no spiders being there. Dace agreed with her.

The letter. Bel's second letter went out on the cart of the twelfth. Dace read it first, as he had said he would. The bees are all there. Sela asked how many. Bel said six hundred and four, but the number changes when a swarm leaves. Dace said he would believe six hundred and four until a swarm proved him wrong.

Northpoint. Dace read out the last word from the north. It came down the line through Ambrook, and the clerk there wrote it out, careful as always. It was from Mira, who keeps the relay at Northpoint. It said the lamp was lit. It said nothing answered from the south. It said the ring on the top was warm to the hand. Then it stopped in the middle of a word. The clerk wrote that down too.

Hal said the relay at Northpoint has been silent since the first week of Frost. Dace said he knew. Vale said he had hoped it was only a bad line. Hal said he had hoped so too. Then he said nothing for a while.

Decided: the lamp at the north corner stays lit every night, whether or not any word comes. Hal will carry the oil up the stair himself. He said he does not like heights. He said he would do it anyway.

The lights. The carters say the lights over the north hills have not been seen for four nights. Dace says that is good news. Sela says it is quiet news, which is not the same. Nobody argued.

Saltreach. Two more families from Saltreach went through the square on the twenty-second, with planks and rope on their carts. Ida gave them bread. They did not say why they were going. Vale asked what is across the water. Nobody here has been. Hal says he has been as far as the marsh, and that was far enough for him.

Vale asked that the minutes say the cider is good this year. Vale is the one who wrote the minutes. The minutes say so.

At the end Peg rang the bell three times, the way the bell is always rung. Everybody went home by the lamps.
%%
Letter: Cal to his sister at Saltreach
Dear Rill,
The barley is in and the mill is turning sweet. We greased the axle and the squeak is gone. Now the mill is so quiet that Peg says she can hear the wheat thinking. I told her wheat does not think. She said, how do you know.
We have a new apprentice at the farm this summer. Tam bought it from the tutor house at Vell with money the whole ridge put in. It is copper and iron and it walks a little stiff, like a man in new boots. Its mind is in a small crystal in its chest. It knows one thing so far: haul. Tam drilled it for a week with sacks of flour. Now it carries sacks from the mill to the barn all day. It does not drop them. It does not stop for dinner. We are all a little jealous.
The trouble is that it only knows haul. Yesterday I asked it to bring me the tally board and it carried the whole table to the barn. Tam laughed until he had to sit down. The tutor says we must send it back for more drills in the autumn, but we will miss it. It is very good at sacks.
Barley the horse went home to Three Wells on time. Tam did not ride him to the fair. He walked. He was not happy about it. The hedge has grown back.
Come and see us before Apple. Bring honey. We have none this year. The bees are cross.
Your brother, Cal
%%
Minutes: the contest of the halls
Meeting of the farm council of Kettle Ridge, in the glass room at the house of Elm, glassblower, at the edge of the town. Spring. Present: fourteen. A tutor from Vell, Kerr, came to speak, and stayed for the discussion.

OPENING. Elm welcomed the council and told them to mind the glass. A cup was already broken.

BUSINESS ONE. The tutor's talk. Kerr was asked to say how the halls of the tutors keep each other honest. He said it began with contests.

In the early years, each hall made its own minds and tested them on its own drills. A hall could say anything about its mind. A mind that sorted apples might be called the best in the land because it was the only one tested. Nobody could check.

So the tutors began to hold contests. Each hall sent its best mind to Vell. Every mind was given the same drill, which none had ever seen. The drill was kept in a sealed box in the archive, opened only on the day. The scores were written in the book and copied to every hall.

The first contest, Kerr said, was a great shock. A mind from Copperhold that had been called the finest was found to have only memorized its drills. On the unseen drill it scored worst of all. The tutor who had trained it wept, then laughed, then went home and changed her way.

After that, every hall tested on unseen drills, because anyone could be caught out. The tutors say the contests made them honest. They say it was the best thing that ever happened to them.

BUSINESS TWO. Brin asked how this concerns a farm. Kerr said: if you take an apprentice for your field, ask how it was tested. If the answer is "on the drills it learned," ask again. If the answer is "on a drill it never saw," that is an apprentice worth having.

Dell asked: how many drills? Kerr said there is no number. It is a matter of judgment. The tutors say: more than you think.

Elm said that a glassblower tests a cup by pouring water in it. Kerr said that was the same thing. Elm said, "Then I am a tutor." Kerr said, "Welcome."

BUSINESS THREE. A fox came into the Vane yard again last night and took one hen. The net is not yet up. Elm promised to finish it by the end of the week. Dell offered to help. Brin said he would hold the other end.

BUSINESS FOUR. First snow of the season fell on the ridge this morning, late and wet. It was gone by noon. Old Mab said it was a sign, and no one asked of what.

CLOSING. Tea and cake. Kerr thanked the council. The council thanked Kerr. A cup was broken again.

Elm, glassblower, clerk of the meeting
%%
Minutes: the fox and the hens
Meeting of the farm council of Kettle Ridge, held at the house of Elm, glassblower, at the edge of the town. Spring. Present: nine. Elm took the minutes.

1. A fox took two hens from the Vane yard in the night. Proposed: a net over the yard. Carried.
2. A fox is not to be harmed. Carried by six to three.
3. Snow fell on the ridge this morning, late and soft. It will melt by noon. Noted.
4. Elm offers glass for the hen house window, since a fox cannot see through it. Accepted with thanks.

Meeting closed. Soup.
%%
Song contest: the winter fair
The winter fair at Three Wells, in the school house because of the snow. Bel wrote this down after, for the archive.
Twelve sang. Perrin the baker sang about bread and came third. Tobin sang about the frogs at Lowmarsh and forgot the last verse and everyone sang it for him. A miner from Copperhold sang a slow song about the deep stone and the room went quiet.
Bel sang about the frogs too, and her own verses, and came second. She got a ribbon and a honey cake.
First was a woman from Northpoint, passing through on the road. She sang about the long night and the snow on the tower and the lamp that is kept lit. She sang it plain, with no flourishes. Nobody talked after.
The judge was Nessa, who was at the fair on her way back to Vell. She said the songs were all good and the honey cake was better. She said we should write the songs down and send them to the Archive, because a song not written down is gone. So here it is. Bel wrote it out fair and her father checked the spelling.
The fair raised forty emeralds for the school roof. The bake gave the bread. Nobody went home hungry.
%%
Minutes: a place for each word
Saltwick hamlet, spring of 188.
Rowan's record of the meeting in the net shed.

Those present were Rowan, Orla of Vell, Bram the baker, Sella the net mender, and six fishers.
Fen sat by the door with his sister and a bowl of apples.
The wind kept pushing the door open.
We put a fish crate against it, and the room smelled of herring.

Orla had brought a page from the tutor house.
It showed a mind's marks after lessons on letters and words.
The marks were many and close together.
She said a mind gave each letter or word a place among them.
Words that appeared in alike ways could end up near each other.
The mind learned those places from examples, not from a list of names.

Sella asked whether net and rope were neighbors in the mind.
Orla said they might be close because both were used in the same work.
A net catches fish. Rope holds the net and mends it.
The mind had seen those words together in lists and notes.
It could use what it learned when it met a new line.

Bram asked whether loaf and bread had the same place.
Orla said they might be near, but not made into one word.
A loaf is bread shaped for eating.
The mind's places help it notice likeness. They do not make every alike word mean the same thing.

Rowan said the word bench had more than one use.
We sit on a bench, and Bram keeps his bread board on one.
Orla said the writing could teach the mind both uses.
No one at the meeting could say how the crystal first learned to keep its places.
Orla said the tutors knew what helped it learn, not why it learned at all.

Sella gave Orla a coil of new rope for the tutor house.
She said the old rope had served long enough.
Bram gave her a loaf in return.
He told us it was a gift, not payment, though he asked for the rope back.

We agreed to copy harbor tallies, bakery lists, and letters with the names removed.
The clean copies will go to Vell with the next cart.
The spoiled pages will not go into the drills.
Fen offered to carry the bundle.
Rowan said he could carry it after he stopped eating the apple meant for his sister.
%%
Minutes, whole summer council
Present: Ansel, reeve. Hesk, for the shaft. Ida, for the bakers. Garrow, for the cheese. Mabel, of the Halfway, who gave her opinion before she sat down. Lise, cider maker, taking the minutes, and keeping every stake in the district.
Absent: Corin, out with the boats. Pell, out on the Long Road with a cart of salt. Both were thanked, and both were teased.

Item one: the road. The new road to the Long Road has been open since Longday. The council asks that the stone edge be kept clear of mud, and that the carters stop complaining about the curve at the bottom, which was there before the road and will be there after. The council has decided the curve is the carter's. The road is the road.

Item two: the lamp. The relay lamp on the hill has new glass. Orrin the keeper climbed the ladder himself with the pane and did not drop it. The lamp was lit on the first clear night, and the children counted the steps, and the count was right.

Item three: the honey. Ama took the swarm from the old tree behind the well. The rule of the market says the keeper who takes a swarm owns it. The council confirmed the rule. The honey stall has been sticky since, which the council has decided is no one's fault.

Item four: the borrowed horse. The grey horse from the Halfway has been borrowed by the shaft, then by the mill, then by the square for the stone cart at the wells. It is back at the Halfway, and Mabel says it is too fat to be borrowed again, which the horse has not disputed. The horse may be borrowed once more, in the autumn, for the harvest cart. The stable boy will be paid in honey cake for the trouble.

Item five: the bet on the cider. Lise bet the reeve a jar of the sweet cider that the autumn fair will finish the cider. The reeve bet Lise that the cider will last to the new year. Both stakes were paid in advance, a jar each, which Lise has kept in the cold room for herself, because she made both of them.

Item six: the thanks. The council thanks Ida for the bread, Hesk for the stone, Garrow for the cheese, Mabel for the hearth, and Corin, who could not be present, for the boats that brought the fish. The council thanks Lise for the minutes. She has asked that this be written down, and it has been.

Decided: that the council adjourn to the autumn meeting, on the first cold day, at the noon bell, in the hall, with the cider opened at the start and not at the end.
%%
Minutes: the broken lamp
Meeting of the Hillfoot farms, in Odo's barn, outside Vell. The fourth of Swarm. Kept by Yarrow, roofer.

Present: Odo, Lise, Rook, old Kit, Hesper of the little hill lamp, and Odo's dog.
1. Hesper reported that a branch broke the glass of the lamp in the night. The line is dark between Vell and Three Wells.
2. Yarrow said he is a roofer and has no fear of heights. Old Kit said that is what he says about pie.
3. Decided: Yarrow climbs at dawn with a new pane on a rope. Odo holds the ladder, and nothing else.
%%
Minutes: the council at the edge of Vell
A meeting at the house at the edge of Vell, the third of Leaffall. Called by Orla, who keeps sheep and sits on the council.
Present: Orla. Wat the shepherd, her neighbor. Nessa, tutor. Oren, clerk. Two farmers from the hill, Bett and her son. A mason from Copperhold, in the red hat. Nine in all.
First, the sheep. Orla said the north flock is thin this year and the wolves are bold. Wat said he lost two lambs to the wolves in Blossom and one to a cough since. The council decided to mend the hurdle fence along the hill track before Deepsnow and to keep a torch on the wall by night. The mason will sell us the posts cheap.
Second, the road. The mason said the cobbles by the tutors' house are sinking again. Orla asked if it can wait. The mason said it can wait until Thaw if we are careful. Decided: it waits.
Third, the tutors' report. Nessa said the reading minds at the house now read words in pieces. Oren asked if that is safe. Nessa said it is tested on pages no mind was drilled on, and it guesses better than before. Orla said she does not understand it. Nessa said no one does, fully. Orla said then we write that down too. Oren said he will.
Fourth, the dogs. Bett said a brown dog has been worrying the hens. Wat said that is no wolf, that is a dog with a bad master. Decided: ask around the Hollow farm.
Fifth, the winter stores. The apples are in, the honey is in, the beetroot is lifted. Oren read the count. There is enough and a little over.
Meeting ended. Oren lit the lantern. Orla walked home with Wat along the hill, and the wolves did not come that night.
%%
Minutes: A tutor visits Vell
Leaffall, 195. Written by Dara after the market meeting.
The meeting began at the tables by the east stall. I stood by the lamp with my watch stick.
Present were Isla of Vell, Tutor Ren from Ambrook, Oren of the Archive, Dace, Pell, and eight tutors from nearby halls.
Ren had come to see Isla's chart. He said the tutors in Ambrook had made bigger crystals, but they had not agreed how long to drill them.
Isla laid out records of earlier tests. She showed a small mind with few pages, then a larger mind drilled longer on more pages. The larger mind read more of the test letters correctly.
She had drawn a curve through the test results. She said it could help a tutor choose a crystal and a length of drilling before making the mind. It did not name every answer. It showed what growth to expect.
Ren asked if a mind could be made better by drilling forever.
"No," Isla said. "A mind can learn badly from bad pages. We must test it on pages it has never seen."
Oren asked the clerks to keep copies clean and to set aside the test pages. The council agreed.
Pell offered to carry the copies to Ambrook. He asked for payment in honey.
The council approved one jar. Pell asked for two.
Dace said the second jar would be discussed at the next meeting.
%%
Minutes: the song contest
Meeting of the Hillfoot farms, in Odo's barn. The ninth of Longday. Kept by Yarrow, roofer.

Present: everyone, and the dog.
1. The summer song contest will be held in the barn on the last night of Longday. Odo gives the barn. Lise gives the cider. Rook gives his opinion, which nobody asked for.
2. Rules. One song each. No song about a pig. No song about a roofer. Old Kit asked why not a roofer. Yarrow asked it be noted that he did not ask.
3. The prize is a jar of honey and the right to choose next year's first song.
Carried: 11. Against: 1. Rook, who wants a song about a pig.
%%
Minutes: the road inn, winter 34
Meeting at the Halfway Inn, held after the evening meal. The snow had stopped, but it covered the road marks.

Present: Talla, keeper of the inn; Cass, relay keeper at the little tower; Odo, a mason; Pell, cart driver; and Sella, baker from Three Wells.

Talla said two travelers had missed the inn and reached the stream after dark. They were cold, but safe. One had left a red scarf by the hearth. Talla has hung it beside the door.

Cass said the relay lamp had shown through the snow from the hill. He sent a message to Three Wells asking for a clearer mark at the fork. The reply came before the stew was done.

Pell said the Long Road was packed hard near the inn, but the edge stones had vanished under drifts. He had stopped his cart to clear one post. His horse did not thank him.

Odo said he could set a stone pillar at the fork when the ground was firm. He asked for three blocks of stone and one torch. Sella offered bread for the work crew. Talla offered beds, but not for the horse.

It was decided that Odo will build the waymark after the thaw. Cass will send the plan to Three Wells. Pell will bring the stone from Vell on his next return trip. Sella will bake bread for four workers.

Talla will ask each traveler to leave a little stone on top of the new mark. She said the last one had blown away. Cass said stones do not blow away. Talla said this one had.
%%
Minutes on relay minds
Winter of 205. Written by Corin for the harbor council.

Present were Mayor Darel, Corin, Keeper Anet, Tutor Vale, Sella, Jorin, and four apprentices from the shipyard and fish market.

The well near the net shed is still dry. Jorin showed us the bucket, which came up with no water and a little black mud. The east well is supplying the harbor. Sella asked that the jars be covered against snow. The council agreed.

Tutor Vale then explained the relay house to the apprentices. She used the fish market board as an example. A small apprentice can learn to copy a price if it sees the same kind of price many times. It can still fail when the writing changes. A tutor must test it on examples it has not seen before.

The big mind at Saltreach is held in a large crystal on a stand. It reads messages sent from the towers and sends answers back. It does not leave the relay house. Quickeners around it help it work. They must be kept cool with water, ice, or snow.

Vale said a big mind can learn from more pages than a small mind. Its layers pass what they have found along through the mind. When it makes a wrong answer during drilling, the tutors send blame back through the layers. They change the weights a little at a time.

Sella asked if the mind could tell the apprentices how to mend a net. Vale said it could give words from what it had read, but the apprentice must still be taught how to handle the net. Corin added that a net mended badly lets fish escape. Sella said so does a net left on the dock all winter.

Anet said relay houses had spread from tower to tower. Each needed a keeper, a stand for the crystal, and quickeners kept cool. The relay lamps let messages pass, but the lamps alone do not explain how the messages travel so far. Vale said the tutors had not settled that question.

The apprentices asked whether a big mind could learn from their own notes. Vale said the tutors could choose writing for new drills, remove spoiled pages, and keep a separate test box. No mind should be trusted just because it has read many pages.

The council decided that the shipyard apprentice may count dry planks after a test on a new stack. It may not choose timber or make a boat plan. Corin will check every count for one month. Sella will give the fish market apprentice fresh examples of prices, with the right figures written beside them.

At the close, Anet sent a short message to Vell. The answer came before the meeting ended. Jorin said the mind was quick. Vale said quick answers still need checking. We entered both remarks in the minutes.
%%
Minutes: the copper vein
Meeting at the boat house, Lowmarsh, late Thaw. Taken by Ansel. Present: fourteen. A full house. Everyone had heard.
1. Ossie reported that the diggers cutting the new channel for the fish weir had hit copper in the clay bank. A vein, as wide as a hand, going down.
2. Fen said copper belongs to Copperhold. Wren said copper belongs to whoever finds it, and the weir is ours. Tull said the clerks at Vell will want it written down either way.
3. Rook asked if the frogs own it. Decided: the frogs do not own it.
4. Decided: a piece goes to Hesk at Copperhold on Pell's cart, with a note. What is it, and what is it worth? Nobody digs until the answer comes. The weir channel will go round the vein, which will make the weir crooked. The fish will cope.
Vote: twelve for, one against, one asleep.
%%
Minutes: the market, Longday 163
Minutes of the Northpoint market meeting, held in the relay house yard on the fourth day of Longday, in the 163rd year of the archive.

Present: Mira, keeper of the relay (chair). Ansel, baker. Ruth, well digger. Lantern, keeper of the lamps. Four traders from the south road. Two hens, who sat at the back and were not counted.

1. The lamp. Lantern reports that the north tower lamp blinked a strange message on the night of the ninth. It blinked the same four marks over and over, for nearly two hours. Lantern did not know them. Mira says they are not the marks of any tower on the line. Nobody has yet asked the line what it thinks.
Decided: Mira will write to the keeper at Vell and describe the marks exactly. Lantern will copy them out by hand first, so the copy is right.

2. The fox. A fox took two hens from the pen beside the bakery on the seventh. Ansel says the fox will come back, because foxes always do. Ruth says the hens will come back too, if they are fed. Mira says both are true, and the pen is not a meeting matter.
Decided: the pen is to be shut at dusk and the hens counted each morning. Ansel to put his old sack over the gap in the boards.

3. The north well. Ruth reports the north well is still full, and the water is cold enough to hurt your teeth. No change to the rope.

Any other business: none, except that a trader asked why the bread was smaller. Ansel said the flour came up the road slowly, and he would not sell a bad loaf to anybody.

The meeting closed at the second bell. Ansel brought bread. Mira said she would not stay for it, and then she stayed.
%%
Chronicle: the great relay houses
Kept at Vell, in the deep halls. This part written by Oren, and before him by others. The years are close, not exact, and the clerks disagree about the first.
About the 199th year the councils began building relay houses at the feet of the towers. At first they were small: a house, a stand, a crystal the size of a loaf, quickeners kept cool with water, ice or snow. Northpoint's came last, and Mira wrote to her brother that the big mind kept her company in the long nights, which he did not believe.
Then the councils began to build bigger. A house bigger than a town. A hall of glass with a stand inside and a mind nobody had grown before. They built them south of Three Wells, and by the sea at Saltreach, and one in the north that the texts describe badly and disagree about. The tutors who checked them could not check them alone. So many tutors tested them together, and every drill and every answer was written down, and the writing filled shelves.
What could the biggest do? Here the texts fight. One says a mind that filled a hall wrote letters a reader could not tell from a person's, and answered Orla's old question. Another says the same mind asked for the fields to be kept and said nothing more. A third says it solved a puzzle no tutor could and then went quiet. We do not know which is true. We keep all three.
What none of them explains: why a crystal learns, why an old one goes cloudy, or what the quickeners draw on to run day and night. We asked. We wrote down that we asked.
The relay lamps still burn at the foot of the towers, and the keepers still keep them, and the apprentices still come home at night. That much is sure, and it is written here.
%%
Minutes: Ambrook meeting, the Thaw gate
Minutes of the village meeting at the mill pond, the twelfth of Thaw. Written by Dov, who sells eggs and was nearest the pen.
Present: 31 people, 4 dogs, and Jory's cat, who sat on the table.
1. The ice on the pond is thin. Nobody skates until Jory says so. Jory says so on the twentieth.
2. The mill sluice stays shut. It always stays shut. This was put to a vote, to be funny. It passed.
3. Eggs are cheaper this week. Dov says the hens are happy. Nobody asked.
Meeting ended when the cat knocked over the lamp.
%%
Minutes: market stall spaces
Present were Dace, Pell the road merchant, Hara the fish seller, and the people who hold stalls by the three wells. We met in the school room because the mayor's house was full of flour sacks.

Pell said the spring road was firm in town and soft past the west bridge. His cart had lost one wheel pin there. He made a pin from oak and reached the square before noon. Hara said the fish were still cool when they arrived, but she would rather not test that again.

We agreed to send two stone workers to the bridge. They will set a wider stone at the edge and pack the road with earth. The work will begin after market day. Pell offered the use of his cart. He also asked the town to pay for the lost pin. Dace said the town would pay for the stone, not every piece of oak a merchant drops.

Hara asked for a stall nearer the east well. Her bucket is heavy, and the path from the quay is long. The stall holders said the east space belongs to the pot seller. The pot seller was not present. We left the matter open until she can answer.

The school children asked to keep the little table near the notice board. They sell honey cakes for their paint and paper. They have enough paint for one more door. The table stays where it is. Jory said the cakes are too small. The children said they are made for small hands.

Pell told us a family at Saltreach has packed two chests for a sea crossing. He heard it from a boatman who heard it from a net mender. Hara said the family may be visiting cousins. Dace said no crossing will be added to the board without a name and a sure date.

The spring market will go on as planned. The bell will be checked before the first stall opens.
%%
Minutes: the apprentice for the east
Meeting of the farm council of Kettle Ridge, at the house of Elm, glassblower, on the edge of the ridge. Spring. Present: eleven. Elm in the chair, because it was her house.

The council considered whether to take the apprentice offered by the tutor house at Vell, to work the east field.

Brin asked whether it has been tested. The tutor's letter says it has been tested on a drill it was never shown. Brin said that is the only kind of test that counts. The council agreed.

Dell asked: what drill? The letter says: a field of beets and weeds, shown for the first time. The mind picked the beets nine times in ten. Dell said that was better than her nephew. Laughter.

Decided: accept the apprentice. Elm to write a letter of thanks. Brin to bring the first sack of seed.

Meeting closed. Cider.
%%
Minutes: the lost letter
Saltwick hamlet, spring of 188.
Written by Rowan after the meeting in the shed.

Present were Rowan, Orla from Vell, Sella, Bram, and the fishers Jass and Lio.
Fen and his sister sat on the floor.
They were meant to sort string by length.
They sorted it by color instead, which was no use at all.

Orla spoke about the new drills for reading.
A mind kept letters and words as places among many places.
Words used in alike ways could sit close.
The mind learned this from the pages shown to it.
It did not have a little shelf with a card that told what each word meant.
It learned from the way words came before and after other words.

Sella asked how the mind knew that net and rope belonged near one another.
Orla said the drill pages often named them in the same work.
A net is made fast with rope, and rope can mend a net.
The mind could learn that likeness without knowing what a fisher felt in his hands.

Bram said his flour list used the word sack beside flour.
He asked if a mind would then think every sack was flour.
Orla said it might make a poor guess if it had seen poor pages.
Good drills needed many clear examples.
The clerks at Vell removed copies and spoiled pages.
They also kept some pages aside, so a mind could be tested on writing it had never seen.

Rowan asked whether a word's place stayed fixed.
Orla said learning could shift the marks.
A word seen in many kinds of lines might sit near more than one group.
The same word could be used in different ways.
The mind learned from the whole line, not only from a name on a card.

Sella gave Orla a coil of rope for the tutor house.
She said the gift was for the lessons, and not for any one mind.
Bram brought a loaf with a burnt edge.
He said the dark crust was a baker's mark.
No one believed him.

After the meeting, Rowan found a letter beneath the fish crate.
It was addressed to Orla at Vell.
The ink had run where the crate was wet, and the name inside could not be read.
We asked at the harbor and at the bakehouse.
No one knew who had sent it.
Orla took the letter with the drill pages.
She said she would not put it in a lesson while it was lost from its writer.

We agreed to send clean market lists and net tallies to Vell.
Fen tied the bundle with the new rope.
His sister carried the loaf.
Both came back with empty hands, so we hope the cart arrived.
%%
Minutes: the council, spring of 203
Minutes of the Ambrook council, held in the front room of Isla the dyer, at the edge of the town, by the dye vats. Written by Isla.
Present: Jory the miller, Gault, keeper of the hill relay, Ruby Oke of the bakery, and Coll Harrow.
Item one: the relay house. Gault asks the council to agree to a big mind for the hill tower. Ambrook is next on the Vell line.
Gault explained the idea. A big mind is kept in a crystal the size of a loaf, on a stand at the foot of the tower, and ringed by quickeners kept cool with water, ice or snow. It answers apprentices through the relays. Nobody could say why it answers. Gault says nobody at Vell can say either.
Item two: cost. Sixty emeralds for the crystal and stand. Twelve a year for the quickeners' water.
Decided: to ask Vell for a quote, and to meet again when it comes.
%%
Chronicle: Vell, the year 90
From the chronicle kept at Vell, the year 90.
In the autumn of this year Orla, a tutor, asked a question that has not been answered. She asked whether a mind drilled on answers could ever think.
She said we should test it. A hidden mind and a person should answer the same questions by letter. Readers should try to tell which is which. If they cannot tell, she asked, what then?
The councils argued. Some said the test proved nothing, because readers are easily fooled. Some said it proved everything. Some said it was a rude question to ask a person, to set them beside a mind.
The clerks copied her letter and sent it down the Long Road. It reached Northpoint, where a boy said, then you would have to be polite to it. It reached Lowmarsh, where Wren the healer said a mind cannot catch the grey cough, so it is not a person, and the test is the wrong test.
The tutors at Vell held a contest. Each mind was tested on drills it was never drilled on. The minds did well. Then the tutors asked the minds to say which they did not know. The minds could not. They gave answers anyway.
Orla wrote this down and kept it. People argued about it ever after.
Nothing was decided. The question stayed open. It is open still.
%%
Minutes, council, second Longday
Present: the reeve, Ansel. Hesk for the shaft. Ida for the bakers. Lise, cider maker, taking the minutes. A cousin of Tam's from the ridge, who came for the cider and stayed for the argument.

Item one: the mill race. The weed is back, and the water is slow to the wheel. The new sluice board will come from Ambrook with the new spoke, on the same cart.

Item two: the lamp glass. The crate of new glass for the relay tower was left at the bottom of the hill since the last market day. The council asks whoever left it to apologize to the crate. Nobody has owned up. The reeve says the crate has been forgiven.

Item three: the bet on the barrels. Ida says the cider barrels will not last until the fair. Lise says they will. Ansel bet a jar of honey on the barrels, and Hesk bet a pie. Lise keeps the stakes. The barrels are to be sealed in the cellar and not opened to check.

Item four: the borrowed horse. The grey horse from the Halfway was lent for three days and kept for eleven. The stable boy wants his honey cake. The council decided to pay for the cake, and that Hesk will not borrow the horse again, because the horse liked the stable, and nobody has the heart to separate them.

Decided: the meeting is adjourned, and the cider is opened, as an exception. Lise says the cider was good, because she made it.
%%
Minutes at the west house
Autumn meeting in the house at the edge of Vell.
Present: Nessa, Oren, Sella the baker, and Master Fen from the next house.
Nessa brought a loaf. Sella said it was too small for a meeting. Nessa said it had been cut before she came.
Oren read the list of repairs. The west step is loose. The rain barrel leaks at the bottom. The lamp by the gate needs new glass.
Fen said the road ditch is full of leaves. He offered two hands and a spade.
We agreed to mend the step first, before anyone carries a full basket over it. Sella will bring clay for the barrel. Fen will clear the ditch after the next dry morning.
Nessa will fetch glass from the archive store.
The loaf was finished. Nobody saw who took the last piece.
%%
Minutes: The song stall
Leaffall, 195. Dara kept the minutes and watched the north lane.
Present at the Vell market were Isla, Tutor Ren from Ambrook, Oren, Dace, Pell, the stall keepers, and many people who stayed after supper.
The council first heard Isla explain her chart again for those who had missed the earlier meeting. A mind with a larger crystal could hold more marks. If it was drilled longer on more clean writing, it could learn more. Isla had tested minds of several sizes and drawn a curve through their scores. The curve helped tutors guess how well a new mind might do before they began its drills.
She said the guess was not certain. Each mind still needed a fair test on pages it had never read.
Oren said the clerks would sort out repeated and spoiled copies. He would keep the test pages locked in the Archive.
Ren said Ambrook would send a tutor to help check the new drills. He did not say when. Pell said he would send a cart if the tutor paid for the wheels.
After the council business, Dace opened the song contest. Each singer had to sing one verse about work that mattered. The prize was a jar of honey from Ambrook.
A baker sang about bread that rose well. A young tutor sang about letters finding their places. Pell sang about a cart that never lost a wheel. The cart song had many verses, all ending with the same word.
Ren sang last. His song was about a small mind that learned to sort apples, then learned to sort them better after each wrong try. He forgot the second verse and asked Isla for it. Isla gave it to him, but she changed one word.
The judges gave the honey to the baker. The crowd said the tutor had sung more clearly. The baker said clear songs did not fill a bowl.
The council decided to buy a larger crystal for the Vell tutor house. Isla would plan its size and the length of its drills from the curve. The clerks would prepare the pages and a separate test box.
Dara's note: The honey jar was empty before the stalls were packed.
%%
Minutes: the snow, Frost 158
Minutes of the Northpoint market meeting, held in the relay house yard on the twelfth day of Frost, year 158.

Present: Mira, keeper (chair). Ansel, baker. Ruth, well digger. Lantern, lamps. Tilda, from the wool stall. Old Brin came up from Kettle Ridge with a cart of cheese and stayed to complain about the road.

1. The snow. The snow has come early. The drifts reach the second rung of the tower ladder on the east side. Lantern has been digging out the foot of the tower every morning since Blossom, or so it feels.
Decided: the path from the market to the relay door is to be swept twice a day. Ruth will lend her shovel. Tilda will have the stall nearest the door, so people know the way.

2. The stalls. The market is smaller in winter. Four stalls are closed, and the traders have asked for a rent cut. Mira says the rent is already very small. Old Brin says the rent is still too much for cheese.
Decided: no change to rent. Brin may bring the cheese cart on Thursdays, when the road is less icy.

3. Lamps. Lantern reports that the stair lamp at the sixth turn went out for a whole night. The stove in the lamp room was not lit, and the glass was frosted inside. Lantern warmed it slowly and it came back.
Decided: the stove is to be lit every night from Frost to Deepsnow, by whoever keeps the desk. Lantern asks that the stove not be lit too hard, and the members agree.

4. Foxes. A fox has been seen twice at the hen house in the snow. It takes nothing, Ansel says, and only looks. Ruth says it looks like it wants to come in. Mira says the hens do not want the fox in, and that is the end of the matter.

Any other business: Tilda asks whether the long nights will last longer this year. Mira says they last the same as every year, which is all the year there is, so it feels longer.

Meeting closed at dusk. The lamp was lit on time.
%%
Minutes: the Icewater meeting
Minutes of the meeting of Icewater, a hamlet two hours from Northpoint. Kept by Briar, net mender. Autumn.

Present: nineteen people, two dogs.

Market day is on the sixth. Carts leave at dawn. Hale's boat is not yet home from the coast. If it is late again, we will send the soup without him.

The tutor from Vell will speak after market. Bring a chair.

Meeting ended when the soup was ready. Briar.
%%
Minutes: the spring meeting
Minutes of the spring meeting at the mill pond, Ambrook, the first of Sowing, year 199. Written by Dov, egg seller, with help from his daughter Pia, who can spell.
Present: 41 people, including Jory, the miller and chair; Bess the beekeeper; Garrick, Hale, Tuck, Mara; and the children at the back. Absent: the goat, who sent no word.
First matter: the loose plank on the bridge.
Jory said that the plank on the bridge below the mill has been loose for eleven years. Four people have fallen in, and one of them was the baker. The baker said he had not fallen, he had slipped, but then agreed it came to the same wet.
Hale offered to mend the plank. Garrick offered to hold the nails. Mara offered to stand at the side and say where they were wrong. This offer was accepted with thanks.
Agreed: the plank will be mended by the end of Sowing. Nobody is to walk on it until then. Use the ford.
Second matter: the cat.
Mara reported that Tuck's cat, Biscuit, has now been in her garden six times this month. The shelf has not worked. The mint has not worked. The fish skins have worked very well, but only for the cat, who ate the skins and then went to the garden.
Tuck said Biscuit is old and has her own views. He said he could not keep her in, and he would not try again, because the last time she sat at the window and looked at him, and it was too sad.
Dov, as egg seller, suggested a compromise. Biscuit may visit the garden, but only the third row, where there are no beets, only herbs. Mara said the third row has the thyme. Dov said that cats like thyme. Mara said that is exactly what she is afraid of.
After some talk, it was agreed to try a patch of catmint at the end of the third row, planted by Tuck, at Tuck's expense. This is a new idea and no one has tried it. The meeting hopes for the best.
Third matter: bees.
Bess said the hives on the hill are doing well. Eleven are full. She asks that no one stand in front of the hive doors. She asks that no one tries to feed the bees. She asks, particularly, that no one tells her again how to run her hives. This was noted.
Fourth matter: the apple blossom festival.
Pia reported that the children want a parade. Jory said the last parade ended in a pond. Pia said that was the point. Agreed: a parade, on the pond path, with a rope on the water side.
Fifth matter: new business.
Garrick said he had no new business, but he had a pie. It was a very good pie. The meeting was therefore adjourned, and the pie was shared among forty-one, and was just enough.
Present at the end: 41. Present at the pie: 41. Dov counted.
Dov
%%
Minutes: Brown Hen, winter 18
Third meeting of the Brown Hen inn. Held in the back room, with snow at the door.

Present: Cass, keeper of the new relay at the road bend; Marda, innkeeper; Pell, cart driver; Sella, baker; and Odo, who came in for a warm seat.

Cass said the lamp had been seen from Three Wells. The message took two tries, but both towns heard it.

Marda said travelers still lost the road in snow. Pell said a cart had left the packed earth and slept in a ditch. No one was hurt. The horse was cross.

It was decided that Pell would set a waymark by the bend when the ground froze less hard. Marda will keep a lantern in the front window. Sella will bake four extra loaves for travelers.

Odo said he had come only to warm his hands. He left with a loaf and a job carrying wood.
%%
Minutes: the Ambrook spring meeting
Minutes of the village meeting at the mill pond, Ambrook, held on the ninth day of Blossom in year 205, after the first warm week. Written fairly by Dov the egg seller, who sat at the end of the long table.
Present: 52 people, two babies, three dogs and a heron on the roof. Jory the miller chaired. Absent, with a good reason: Bess, who was seeing to a swarm.
1. Opening. Jory read the last minutes. Hale said they were wrong. Jory said they were right. Dov showed his copy, which said they were right. Hale said Dov's copy was also wrong. It was agreed to move on.
2. The hedge between the Lowe farm and the lane. Gill Lowe said that the hedge is on her land and has been for forty years. Tom Pell, who walks the lane every day, said the hedge is half in the lane and he scratches his arm on it. Jory sent two people to look. They came back and said the hedge is on her land, but a long bramble is not. Gill agreed to cut the bramble. Tom agreed to thank her. They shook hands, and Gill gave him a cutting of rose to plant at his gate. Nobody in the room had expected so much kindness over a hedge.
3. The cat. Tuck's cat, Biscuit, has been missing since the evening of the sixth. Tuck is very sad. Mara said she hoped the cat was well. She meant it. The meeting agreed to look in barns, sheds and pantries. Mara offered to leave her garden gate open all night. This was noted as a great generosity.
4. The mill. Jory reported that the wheel has been mended and the sluice is shut. It stays shut. Nobody is to open it. A child asked why. Jory said it is the rule. The child asked who made the rule. Jory said it is older than the mill. The child asked what happens if the sluice is opened. Jory said nobody knows, because nobody has ever done it. The child said that was a poor reason for a rule. The meeting agreed. The sluice stays shut.
5. The relay tower. The keeper reported that the lamp is clean, the stair is swept, and the door of the old oak is sound. The tower can be seen from the pond. If any child wishes to see it from the top, they should ask the keeper, bring a coat and not drop anything.
6. A reading of letters. A letter from Pell was read, from the Long Road. He sends greetings to the village, and to his mother, and says the price of honey is high in the south. He asks that someone keep a jar for him. Bess has a jar.
7. The apple trees. The oldest tree, with the grey branch, has leaves this year. Garrick said he did not think it would. Jory said he had been sure. This was agreed to be a good sign.
8. Any other business. None. A voice said, "The cat." Jory said it had already been done. The voice said, "She is on the roof." The meeting went outside. Biscuit was on the roof of the mill, beside the heron, looking pleased. They looked at each other for some time. Nobody knows what passed between them.
Meeting ended at dusk. Tuck carried Biscuit home in both arms. She allowed it.
Dov
%%
Minutes: the meeting about the lights
Minutes of the meeting held at the house at the edge of Vell, in winter. Taken by Nessa, tutor of apprentices.
Present: Nessa, Dell, Marrow, Brenna, old Tobias, the widow Fenn, and four neighbors from the lane.
Dell said that last night there were lights in the north, low over the hills. Marrow said they were the lamps of a caravan. Brenna said no caravan carries that many. Tobias said they were falling stars. The widow Fenn said they were fires on the far ridge, and she had seen the same fires as a girl.
Nobody agreed. Nobody was sure.
It was decided to keep the lane torches lit all night, which was already the rule. Nessa will write to the tower and ask if the keeper saw them too.
Closed at the ninth hour. There was tea.
%%
Minutes of the market meeting
Autumn, the 18th year of the archive.
Met by the east well at Three Wells.

Present were Dace, keeper of the square; Alder, schoolteacher; Mara from the bakery; and Pell, who had come from Ambrook with apples. Two farmers from Kettle Ridge stayed to hear us. One brought a sack of wheat. The other brought a pumpkin with a crooked stem.

Dace said the market had outgrown the old board. The names of stalls now covered the prices. Mara said she had written her bread price on the back of a flour sack. Pell said this was a poor place to write a price, since flour sticks to everything.

We agreed to set a new board between the notice board and the bakery. Alder will write the prices in clear letters. Dace will bring oak boards from the yard. Each seller must take down an old price when it changes.

The Kettle Ridge farmers asked for a dry place to leave their sacks. We will clear the shed by the west well before the next market. The wheat may stay there, but no pigs may sleep in it.

The meeting ended when Mara gave us a warm loaf. Pell said it was payment for his advice. Mara said it was payment for carrying the flour sack.
%%
Notes left on the table in my shed
By Wick, potter of the hill above Vell. Summer, some year near ninety. I keep these for myself.
People come to the pottery to talk about Orla's question. They bring their own answer and leave it here with the cups.
Ansel says a mind is a hand that digs. It does what it is shown and nothing more. He says a spade does not think.
Bett says a spade is not drilled. A spade is not changed by being wrong. She says a mind is changed, so ask again.
Old Rook says his dog knows when he is sad, and nobody drilled the dog. He says the question is too small. It leaves out the dog.
A traveler says the test is only letters. A mind that writes well may still be a fool with a pot. I said I am a fool with a pot and nobody tests me by letter. He laughed.
Nessa is young yet. She came up with her row of apprentices. She said the readers will guess by the small things: a smudge, a short word, a neat hand. Orla says that is why the letters are copied.
Here is what I think, and I am a potter. A pot is not the clay and not the wheel. It is what the clay learned to do on the wheel. A mind that has been wrong and changed is like that. Whether it thinks I cannot say. I can say it is not the same as before.
I wonder who will answer for the mind if the readers cannot tell. Nobody wrote that down. It is getting dark. The kiln is warm and the wall still needs building.
%%
Chronicle: the pieces of words
Kept at Vell, in the sixth hall, shelf four, with the door on it.
For two hundred years the reading minds read a page one letter at a time. They looked through a window about sixty letters wide. Each letter took from the letters before it the ones that mattered, and the mind guessed the next. This worked, and it worked slowly.
In the late years the tutors changed it. A mind no longer reads letters. It reads pieces of words. A piece is a run of letters that comes up again and again in what people write. "ing". "ton". "stone". "keep". The clerks cut the commonest pieces out first, over and over, until the list was long enough. Then the minds were drilled on pages cut that way.
The gain is plain. The window is still sixty wide. Letter by letter, sixty letters is sixty letters. Cut into pieces, the same window holds far more, because one piece may stand for many letters. A mind can see further along a page and further back, and its guesses are better.
The tutors were careful. Pages no mind was ever drilled on were kept back for the test box, as always. The piece-reading minds were tested on those pages. They guessed better than the letter-reading minds. Isla wrote the sums; Oren filed them.
Why a mind reads better in pieces, nobody wrote down. The tutors said only that it does, and that we should not pretend to know the rest. Some said the pieces are like the way a child learns a whole word at once before he can spell it. Others said that proves nothing. Both are in the margin.
The big minds in the relay houses read this way now. People say their letters read like a person's. Orla's old question came back with them, and the councils argued about it again, and did not settle it.
%%
Minutes: Hall and hill
Winter meeting in the tutors' house at Vell. Notes by Nessa.
Present were Nessa, Oren, Brann from the tower, Tavi the baker, and Dace from Three Wells. Two apprentices stood in their row. One had snow on its feet.
Oren said the Archive needed another dry shelf room. The upper shelves were full, and the lower room had damp near the door. He asked for oak boards and a door that shut well.
Tavi said the baker had spare boards, but one was painted with a pumpkin. Dace said the school children could sand it clean. Brann said a painted door was easy to find in a dark hall.
Nessa reported that a new apprentice had learned to carry a tray without spilling the crystals. It had not yet been tested on a full drill. She would test it before it left the tutor house.
Dace asked if the north road was open. Brann said it was open to the first waymark. He had not gone past it since the new snow.
It was decided that Tavi would send the boards after the next clear morning. The school children may sand them, but may not enter the Archive.
Oren will mark the new shelves by room and keep the old shelf list.
Brann will ask the keeper at the little relay to send word when the road is clear.
%%
Minutes: Abel and Hazel's wedding
Minutes of the wedding of Abel the weaver and Hazel the ferry keeper. The twelfth of Longday, 201, on the long boardwalk at Lowmarsh. Kept by Wren, healer. The groom could not be trusted with a pen at his own wedding. He asked anyway. He was told no.

Present: 58 by the mayor's count, three cats, and a great many frogs, not counted. Weather: hot and clear, no wind. The torches were lit at noon, as agreed. A wedding is lit.

1. Before noon. Tull's haste went out to all towers about the boy Jem, Abel's grandson. He was found in the boat house, asleep in the boat, holding the bride's shoes. He walked in at the last moment. One boot was on the wrong foot. He had a loaf under his arm. Nobody asked him anything. Hazel gave him her cat to hold. Puddle sat on him for the rest of the day.

2. The boardwalk. It holds forty. Twelve people stood on the bank and had the best view of the mud. Mayor Marl counted twice. Rook took six more in his boat. He said it was the best seat in the marsh. Then he fell in.

3. The words. Mayor Marl said the old words. Hazel said hers. Abel said his. The frogs sang through the middle part. The mayor stopped and waited. The frogs stopped too, as if they wished to hear. Then the mayor said: "Come home before dark." Abel and Hazel said: "We will." That is the whole of it. It does not take long.

4. Gifts. A blanket from Abel in pattern 19, frogs on a log. Hazel says it is the first blanket she has owned that looks back. A honey cake from Odo, made with Ambrook honey. Pell brought the honey late. Barley had stopped to eat a hedge. Tansy gave a spoon. Rook gave a fish. It was not blue.

5. The cake. One cake, forty-one slices. Wren cut it. Nobody was hurt.

6. After. The pair went home on Hazel's ferry, poled by two Pond boys. They were told no racing. They raced. The ferry did not sink. Abel held both sides with both hands and said he was not worried.

7. The boy. Jem was asked where he would sleep. He said in the loft, with the cat. Hazel said there was room. She said it first.

Wren asks that the minutes end with this: it was a good wedding. The frogs agreed.
%%
Minutes: the tutor speaks of the stream
Minutes of the hamlet meeting at Icewater, two hours from Northpoint, held in the net loft. Kept by Briar, net mender. Autumn, in the 196th year of the archive.

Present: twenty-two people, including the tutor Hana, who came from Vell with a bag of crystals and a cold.

The tutor said she would explain a new thing the halls at Vell had found. She called it the stream.

She said: a mind is made of layers, one after another, like rows of knots in a net. Each layer looks at what it is given and finds something in it. Before, each layer passed on only what it found, and threw away what came in. A deep mind had many layers, so what came in was thrown away many times. When a mind is wrong, the blame is passed back from the answer to the first layer. With so many layers, the blame grew faint on the way. The first layers heard almost nothing, and so they did not learn.

The new way is this. A stream runs through the whole mind, from the first layer to the last. Each layer looks at the stream, finds something, and adds what it found to the stream. It does not take anything away. The stream carries everything on, and the layers only add.

Because of this, the blame can run back along the stream, straight to the first layer, without fading. So a deep mind can learn.

Hesk's cousin asked what happens if a layer finds nothing. The tutor said it adds almost nothing, and the stream goes on as before. The mind is no worse for having it.

The meeting thanked the tutor. The net loft was warm.

Briar
%%
Minutes: Inn meeting at the road bend
Winter meeting at the Brown Hen. Snow fell during the whole meeting. The door stuck twice.

Present: Marda, keeper of the inn; Cass, keeper of the road relay; Pell, cart driver; Hena, who tends the bridge; and Jory, a traveler from Ambrook.

Marda said the inn had beds for twelve, but six were empty most nights. She had enough wool blankets for the cold months. Two had been used to cover a hole in the pantry roof.

Hena said the bridge over the small stream had held through the last thaw. One oak plank was loose. She had put a stone on it so carts would not use that side.

Pell said the road from Three Wells was easier to find now. The torches on the posts were still too far apart near the low ground. He had carried a spare torch from his cart and set it on a post.

Cass said the relay lamp at the bend could be seen from the inn yard. The keeper at Three Wells had answered before the second signal. Cass said the towers might soon carry messages farther than the road ran.

Jory said the road crew could use a meal when they set the next posts. Marda said she would give them stew, if they brought wood.

It was decided that Hena would replace the loose plank when the weather softened. Pell will bring two torches on his next trip. Cass will tell Three Wells when the road crew starts. Marda will set aside a pot for them.

After the meeting, Jory found snow in one boot. Marda said the boot had been wet before he came in.
%%
Minutes: Northpoint meeting, Leaffall
Minutes of the meeting at the relay house, Northpoint, autumn of 90. Kept by Wick, who keeps the wall.
Present: Wick, Ada the keeper, six herders, two fisherfolk from the ice shore, Lantern the boy, and Oren, a clerk from Vell who came up the Long Road with a letter.
The letter was from Orla at Vell. It asked a question. Wick read it out slowly.
Orla says a mind is drilled on answers. Show it a thing, it sorts it. Show it a row, it hoes the row. It only knows what it was shown.
Orla asks: could such a mind think? Not sort. Think.
Wick said he did not know what thinking was, and he had stood on the wall forty years.
Ada said a mind that sorts is a good mind. She would not ask it to think. She would ask it to keep the lamp lit.
Oren said Orla wants a test. A hidden mind and a person answer the same questions by letter. Readers try to tell which is which. If they cannot, what then?
There was a long quiet. The wind came under the door.
Lantern said, then you would have to be polite to it.
Ada laughed. Wick did not. He said that was the best answer all night.
Decided: we write back that Northpoint will not say whether a mind can think. We will say we would like to know. We will send Lantern's answer.
Also decided: the north wall gets two more torches before the snow. The herders bring the sheep down by the tenth of Frost.
Wick, for the meeting.
%%
Minutes: the rain at the square
Present were Dace, Jory the baker, Mistress Pell from the school, and eleven people from the square. The rain began before we met and struck the school windows all through the first matter.

The storm filled the east gutter with leaves. Water crossed the path by the bakery and ran under the notice board. Jory moved his flour sacks to the shelf. One sack was damp at the corner. He says the bread is still good, but no one asked for a taste.

We agreed that the gutter must be cleared before the next rain. Three people offered rakes. The town will lend the fourth. The wall by the east well has a loose stone. It will be reset when the path dries. No one is to pull it out by hand. Dace has said this twice, and said it again.

Mistress Pell reported a sick cow beside the south road. It belongs to Enna, who was present. The cow has a hot nose and will not take hay. Enna asked if the town had a clean stall. The stable behind the inn is empty. Wren will come from Lowmarsh with her jars and look at the cow. Until then, Enna will keep it from the other cows and bring it water. The children will not feed it apple peel.

After the storm, a trader said he saw a red light over the north hills. He called it a fire. A carrier said the light was pale and moving, like a falling star. Neither had a clear view. The meeting did not decide what the light was. Dace asked them not to frighten the children with a story told as fact.

The market may open tomorrow if the square is dry. Jory will put the damp sack near the oven, not under the bench. Enna will send word after Wren has seen the cow. The meeting ended when the bell rang. The bell rope had not been touched. It was only the wind.
%%
Council minutes: Vell
Summer, year 90. Kept by Wick, who sits at the back with the potters.
Orla brought her question to the council of tutors and the town. It has been in everyone's mouth since. The question: could a drilled mind ever think? Her test: a hidden mind and a person answer the same questions by letter; readers who do not know which is which must say which. If they cannot tell, what then?
Bett the clerk read the letters of people who could not come. A farmer at Kettle Ridge wrote that his wheat is thin and his beetroot small and he has no time for questions. He is right to say it. The harvest is poor this year. The mill will earn less. The council set aside bread for the winter stores.
Oren, then a young clerk, said the test must be written down and kept, whatever it shows. He said the archive keeps everything we write, and this is writing. The council agreed.
A tutor from Copperhold stood and said the question proves nothing, because a mind can only repeat what it was drilled on, and a reader who is asked a new question will be seen at once. Orla said, then we will see it, and we will know.
Ansel the miller said the town should not pay for the paper. Wick the potter said the potters will give a jar of glaze money. It was voted and passed, five to four.
Then the talk turned. A creeper had blown a hole in the north wall of the archive yard in the night. Nobody was hurt. The door of the copying room was scratched. The clerk's lamp was not lit, and that is why it came so close. The council ruled: a lamp at the yard gate every night, and a second wall of cobblestone inside the first, with the top row stuck out one block against spiders.
Wick asked whether a mind could keep the lamps lit. Orla said a mind can be drilled to a row and a sort, and it can do the same thing every night, and if the wick goes out it will not know. So no. A person keeps the lamps.
The meeting ended late. The kiln is cold. The wall is half built. I will finish it before the frosts, if the clay holds.
The question is not answered. It is written down, and it will be kept, and people will argue about it after we are gone. I hope someone kind argues about it.
%%
Letter: Nessa to Oren, on a mind's steps
Nessa to Oren, from the tutor house at Vell. The ninth of Blossom, 219.
Oren,
You asked me to write down plainly how the newest minds answer a hard sum, for your deep halls. Here it is.
A mind reads a page one letter at a time. It guesses the next letter from the ones before it. That is how it writes and reads. But a guess of a letter is short. It has little room to work. So a mind that shows its steps writes its own working onto the page, letter by letter, before it writes the answer.
First it writes what it was given. Then it writes one small step it can reach from that. Then another. It keeps each step small on purpose. A small step is easy to reach. At the end it writes the answer. Then it reads its own row of steps back and checks them. It asks: does each step follow? does the answer fit the steps? If not, it writes a new row and tries again.
This is why these minds can do long sums and puzzles no mind could before. A mind that keeps everything in one look runs out of room. A mind that writes the steps down does not. The page holds what the mind cannot.
One thing I will not write down, because I do not know it: why a mind's own written steps help it more than another mind's would. That is left open. The tutors argue about it. I have my own guess and I will keep it to myself until I have a test for it.
The drills for this are dull. The same kind of sum again and again, each time written out in steps. At first the mind writes a wrong step and checks it and still says yes. Each time it is wrong it changes a little. Slowly it gets better at checking. Never send an untested mind to the fields.
Bel's class watched last spring. She asked the mind a puzzle about foxes and chickens and it wrote four rows and got there. She said it thinks like her father, slowly and out loud. I took that as praise.
Come for the contest in Swarm. Bring a test box.
Nessa
%%
Minutes: Vell tutors' meeting, autumn
Present: Orla, tutor, in the chair. Nessa, tutor of apprentices. Oren, clerk of the archive. Isla, tutor. Six others. The meeting was held in the tutors' house at the edge of Vell, because the copying room was full of paper.
Orla opened. She said the reading minds have stopped reading letter by letter. They now read words cut into common pieces. She asked Isla to say it plainly.
Isla said: a piece is a run of letters that comes up again and again. "ing". "stone". "keep". The mind keeps a list of these pieces. When it reads a page, it cuts each word where the pieces fall.
Oren asked what that gains. Isla said: the window is about sixty letters wide. Letter by letter, that is sixty letters. Cut into pieces, the same window holds far more words. A word that took five letters may take one piece.
Nessa asked: does it guess worse? Isla said: no. It was tested on pages it was never drilled on. It guesses better.
Oren asked where the list of pieces comes from. Isla said: we cut the commonest runs first, again and again, until the list is big enough and no bigger. She said the mind is not told which pieces matter. It learns that the same way it learned everything, by being wrong and changing a little.
Orla said: one thing is not written. We do not know why cutting words into pieces should help a crystal understand. We see that it does. We have written that down.
Decided: the new way is taught at the drill room from next month. Nessa will write the drill notes. Oren will send a copy to every relay house. Isla will test the Northpoint mind first and send word.
The meeting ended at dusk. Oren lit the lantern by the door.
%%
Minutes: a fence, a goat and a gate
Minutes of the meeting held at the mill pond, Ambrook, the twenty-second of Blossom, year 192. Taken by Dov, egg seller.
Present: Jory the miller, Tuck, Bess the beekeeper, Garrick, Hale, Dov and 19 others. A goat, uninvited, was present for most of it.
The matter: the fence between Garrick's orchard and Hale's pasture.
Garrick said that the fence was built by his father and that it belongs to the orchard. He said that Hale's sheep lean on it and it is bending.
Hale said that the fence was built by his grandfather and belongs to the pasture. He said that Garrick's apple trees drop apples over it, and his sheep eat them and get a stomach ache.
Jory asked who had the older deed. Garrick had a deed. Hale had a deed. Both were for different fences.
Bess said, mildly, that there were two fences. She had walked it that morning. The old one, half in the ground, was Hale's grandfather's. The new one, three steps to the east, was Garrick's father's. The land between them belonged to nobody, and the goat had been eating it for years.
There was a silence. Then Hale began to laugh, and Garrick began to laugh, and then the whole meeting laughed, and the goat looked up.
Agreed: both fences stay. The strip between is a lane. The goat may keep it. A gate is put in each fence, so that the lane can be walked. Garrick and Hale will build the gate together, one hinge each.
Agreed: the strip is named Goat Lane, for the record.
Also agreed: next meeting is in Swarm. Bring bees.
Meeting ended at noon. The goat is still on the lane.
Dov
%%
Letter: Nessa to her sister at Kettle
Summer, near the year 90. From Vell.
Dear sister, you asked me to explain Orla's question in words a farmer can use. Here it is.
A mind is drilled on examples. You show it a thing and the right answer, and you show it again, and each time it is wrong you change it a little toward right. That is all the tutoring is.
Orla asks whether such a mind could think. She does not know. Nobody knows. She wants a way to find out.
Her way is this. Put a mind and a person in two rooms. Ask both the same questions by letter. Copy all the letters the same way, so no hand gives it away. Then give the letters to readers who were not told which is which. Ask the readers to say. If they cannot tell, then we have to say what that means.
Nessa says people argue about it and will go on arguing. Some say it only tests reading and not thinking. That is true, and Orla says so herself. It is a first test, not a last one.
Some say a mind that guesses the next letter will sometimes guess lucky. So ask many questions and count the answers. Do not lean on one.
Some say the mind is only the clay and the wheel and the tutor's hands. I do not know.
What I know: the drills are only as good as the pages. We take out the copies and the spoiled pages. We keep a box of pages no mind is ever drilled on, for the test. Orla says that box is the honest part.
The harvest here is poor. The wheat is thin and the beetroot small. Ansel is worried about the mill money. Tell Tam to keep the hedge up on the north side of his field, and to keep the torches lit. A creeper came through the bottom field last month and took down a wall by the barn. Nobody was hurt. Tam says he will build it again.
The bees are well. The hives are full. Give my love to Mother. Tell her I am eating. I am.
Your sister, Nessa.
