The stable rent
At the Brown Hen, in winter. Written by Pell.
Nerin said he paid for two nights in the stable. The keeper, Rull, said he paid for one. Nerin's horse had slept there twice, and Rull said one of those nights was free because the road was blocked with snow.
Nerin said a blocked road was not his doing. Rull said it was not his doing either.
They had both kept their tally. Nerin had a mark for each night. Rull had written one night beside Nerin's name, then rubbed it out and written two.
I asked the cook, who remembered carrying hay to the stable on both nights. She said the horse had eaten well. The horse was not asked to settle the bill.
We decided Nerin would pay for one night now. He would owe one night if he stayed again before spring. Rull agreed. Nerin agreed after Rull gave the horse an extra armful of hay.
That evening, the snow covered the waymark by the inn. Rull put a little stone on the hearth ledge so nobody would forget to clear it in the morning.
%%
Dispute: the house line on Frost lane
Heard at the Vell market, after the Haskell family moved into the house at the top of Frost lane. Written up by Wren, with the paper from the Archive that the clerks had found, which was very old and very dry.

The two sides. Haskell, who has moved his family and his cart and his three hens into the house, says the back wall of the yard belongs to the house, and that the house was sold to him with the wall. Tobs, who lives next door, says the wall is his, because his father built it, and that the line goes along the middle of the old apple tree, which is his.

What each side said. Haskell brought his bill of sale and read it aloud. It said: the house, the yard and the wall at the back. Tobs brought his father's word, which was given in front of the market in the 180th year, and which said that the apple tree was the line. Both said that the other was a liar. Both said that they were only telling what they remembered.

What was found. The clerks found the old survey of the lane, in the drawer under the map. It shows the house, the yard, the wall and the apple tree, drawn in a neat black line. The tree is drawn right on the line, and the line runs through the trunk. The survey is dated, and the year is not the year of the bill of sale, nor the year of Tobs's father's word. It is older than both.

What was decided. The survey is the line. The wall is shared, from the apple tree to the back gate, and the apple tree is shared too, with its fruit going to whoever picks it. Haskell and Tobs will each pay for half of any mending. The hens are to be kept on Haskell's side, away from the tree.

Wren asked both men why they had quarrelled for so long. Haskell said because he did not know the survey was there. Tobs said because he did not want to be told by a stranger where his own tree stood. Both said they were sorry, and that the apples were very good this year, and that they would share them.
%%
A complaint about the pigs on the new
To the council of Copperhold, from the farmers of the north slope, the eighth of Apple, 191.
We write about the pigs.
When the new road was cut round the north side of the hill, the cutting took a corner off our wall, and the pigs found the gap. Now the pigs walk on the road. They walk on the road in the morning and they walk on the road in the evening and they stop in the middle of it to think about things. A cart cannot pass a pig that is thinking.
We do not blame the pigs. Pigs are pigs. We blame the gap.
We have put stones in the gap twice. The pigs took the stones out twice. We have asked the miners to bring us good deep stone from the sorting shed, the hard dark kind, and they have said they will, but the mine is busy and we understand.
What we ask:
1. That the gap be walled with deep stone, three blocks high, before Frost.
2. That until then a sign be put on the road that says PIGS and an arrow.
3. That if a cart is delayed by a pig, the driver not shout at the pig, because it only makes the pig stand stiller.
We are not angry. We like the road. The road has been good for us. We sold our potatoes at the shaft head market and bought a new plough.
Signed for the north slope farmers, Corr the elder, who dug in the Deep Works before any of you were born.
Decided at the mine gate, the tenth of Apple: the deep stone will be cut and laid before Frost. A sign will be made and set. Hesk will choose the stone. The pig is not to be shouted at.
%%
Dispute at the Halfway Inn
Written by Pell, on a winter evening.
Mara said the cart had brought six sacks of potatoes. Pell said it had brought five. The sixth sack was in the inn's dry store, under a wool blanket.
Mara said the blanket was hers. Pell said it belonged to the inn.
The keeper, Joss, said the blanket had been left by a traveler last winter. Nobody had come back for it.
We looked at the sack. It had Mara's red mark on the tie.
The decision: the potatoes go to Mara. The blanket stays at the inn until its owner asks for it.
Joss gave us beetroot soup. Mara said it needed salt. Joss said the salt was on the table. It was.
%%
Letter: Una to her sister at Ambrook
Dear Sedge,
The winter is long and the lamps are all right. I walk the lane at dusk with the oil can and the wick knife and I know every post by the creak it makes. The post at the corner still leans. Rell says it leans because the ground leans. Brin says it leans because I lean on it. Both are wrong. It leaned when we set it.
The tutor came. Osric, from Vell, a thin man with cold hands and a good coat. He stayed a month to drill Clank, who is Hesk's apprentice at the mine, and he drilled him in our barn because the barn is warm. He set a little board on a barrel with a field drawn on it, and Clank stood in his row and did his drill, over and over. Osric would say: bring me some coal. And Clank would go and fetch coal. Then Osric would say it again. Then again. Then he would say: bring me some bread. And Clank would go to the coal. And Osric would say: no. And they would begin again.
The first days were hard to watch. Clank stands very still when he is wrong. Osric says that is the mind thinking. I say that is Clank. Either way, by the end of the month he could bring the bread and the coal and not mix them, and Osric tested him on a board he had never seen, and Clank did well. Osric wrote it in a little book and gave Hesk the page.
Osric is a good guest. He eats a lot and says little and he split wood without being asked. Before he left he mended the lamp at the corner and did not say it leaned. I think he liked the farm. He said at Vell the lamps are behind glass and never a candle past the front hall, and I said here we have the wind and no glass, and he said that is why the glass.
The snow is deep on the north field. Rell's cow is in the barn and eats better than we do. Brin's boy has a new coat and will not take it off, even to sleep, his mother says. Send word of the bees. Are they well in the cold? Do they hum in the hive, or do they sleep?
Your sister,
Una
%%
Broadside: the new road to the ridge
By order of the council of Copperhold and the council of Kettle Ridge, a new road is open.
The old way from Copperhold to Kettle Ridge went up over the shoulder of the hill and down through the birch wood. It was narrow. Carts stuck in the mud in Sowing and broke axles in Frost. It took a cart a long day and a half.
The new road goes round the hill on the north side, through the low ground, and joins the Long Road at the waymark with the figure 4. It is packed earth with a cobblestone edge, the same as the Long Road, and there is a torch on a post every twelve blocks, as the road law says. There are two new bridges on the streams. One is stone. One is oak, for now.
The road takes a cart a day, and a fast walker half a day.
The road was cut by the miners of Copperhold in the spring, on days when the mine was slow, and the farmers of Kettle Ridge brought the stone for the bridges. The torches were set by the relay keeper's apprentice from Ambrook, who came with a cart of posts and a list.
The council asks that carts keep to the middle, that walkers keep to the edge, and that nobody takes the waymark stones. Little stones on top of a waymark are a kindness to the next traveler. Leave them.
There will be a market at the shaft head on the first market day of Reaping to mark the road. Bring what you have. The bakery will bring bread. The forge will bring nails. There will be a contest of carrying for the apprentices.
Set by Maud at the mine gate, the twentieth of Longday, 191.
%%
Notice: the mended roof, and the school
Notice from Dace, mayor of Three Wells, by the east well.
On the mended roof. Some of you have asked why the school roof took so long. Here is the honest account, because the archive keeps everything we write and I would rather it kept the truth.
The old roof leaked over the east desk. The east desk is where the little ones sit. In Sowing the rain came through and made a puddle on the floor, and the little ones made a game of it, and the teacher, Sorrel, did not think it was a game.
Jory's mill at Ambrook had a new stone and Jory had a mind to trade. So the council traded with Jory for oak beams, and the school roof was mended in Swarm. The mending is good. The roof is dry. Sorrel has her east desk back and the little ones have no puddle, and they miss it a little.
The school house is of Copperhold stone and Saltreach glass. The door was painted by the children in the old year and it still shows. If you look at the door you will see a sun, a hen, and a thing that is meant to be a horse. Nobody knows which child painted the horse. It is a good horse.
The bell rings for market on the first day of each month. The notice board is for notices. It is not for riddles, though the riddles are better than the notices. I have put a board for riddles by the bakery.
The wall of cobblestone, cobblestone, deep stone stands at the south side. The top row sticks out one block against spiders. Do not sit on the top row. The spiders do not mind but I do.
Dace, mayor of Three Wells
%%
Hesk's note on the warm wall
Twelfth of Longday, 191.
Roped off the far end of the fourth level today. Renn gave me a rope and a sign. I wrote on the sign: WARM STONE. KEEP BACK. ASK HESK.
Put a torch on the rope. Torches down there burn steady and I know what steady means.
The wall is warm like a loaf just out of the oven, not hot. I put my hand on it this morning and it was the same as last month. I will put my hand on it every morning. I have a book for it. The book has one line a day.
The men grumbled and then they stopped grumbling. Clank carried the rope down and stood by the sign all afternoon. I told it to stay and it stayed. Good apprentice.
Supper was bread and beetroot and a little cheese. Sella's bread is better when she is worried. I do not know why. I am not going to ask her.
%%
Dispute: the bread and the bench
Heard at the Vell market, at the foot of the hill, on a bitter morning in the winter of the 190th year. Written up by Wren, who has kept her healing stall at the market for twelve years and was not sure she should sit in judgment on it.

The two sides. Ida, who has the bread stall next to Wren's healing stall, says Wren's bench has been put across the front of her bread, so that nobody can see the loaves until they have passed the bench. She says she has lost a whole morning's sales. Wren says the bench is where it has always been, and that Ida's bread trays have been pushed out past the line of the healing stall, so that the customers who come to buy for their sick children have to walk through the flour dust.

What each side said. Ida said the bench had been moved. Wren said the trays had been moved. Both said it was a small thing, and then each said it was a very big thing. The market children, who had gathered to watch, said that the bench was obviously in the wrong place and the bread was obviously in the right one.

What was found. The market board shows the stalls drawn to scale, with a line for the healing stall and a line for the bread stall. The lines are a finger apart. Wren and Ida measured them with a string, from the board to the stalls, and found that both were exactly where the board said. The bench, however, was a hand past its mark, and the trays were a hand past theirs. Each had been moved, by a hand, a little at a time.

What was decided. The bench goes back to its mark. The trays go back too. Both women agree that the line on the board is the line, and that a finger's width is enough for a loaf and a bench to share. A small boy of the market, who had asked for a loaf all morning, has been given a heel from Ida for his good manners.

Wren wrote afterward: it is always a hand, and never a finger, that brings a quarrel to the market. Ida read this and said it was true of bread as well.
%%
Letter: Bera to her sister
Bera of Kettle Ridge, to my sister Nel, who is minding the hens.
Nel, the market at Vell went well. The beetroots sold. I want to tell you about the corner by the west wall, because you will hear a wrong version from Hal's cousin.
Hal of Lowmarsh and I both sell at that corner. He sells eels. I sell beetroot. We have stood there nine summers each and never once agreed about who was first. This year we asked Sedge to settle it and he did, and the settling was fair, though I did not say so at the time.
Hal is not a bad sort. He is loud about eels. But he swept the corner and left his stone, and so did I. That is the whole of it.
Now the roof. The barn roof still leaks over the grain sacks. The mended bit holds, but the mending was done by Pip and Pip is ten and mends like a ten year old. Get Tam to look at it before the next rain, or move the sacks to the dry side. The dry side is the north side. The north side has the good beam.
Also: a fox has been at the hens. Nel, I saw the tracks by the hedge, going under the fence where the post is loose. Mend the fence. A loose post is an open door to a fox. The fox is clever and the hens are not, so the fence must be the clever one.
The bees are well. The hives by the flowers are heavy. Do not take the honey yet. Wait until the comb is capped, and do not listen to Pell, who says honey is honey. Pell sells honey. He should know better.
I am home by the third of Melon. Put the kettle on.
Your sister, Bera
%%
Notice: dispute at the summer market
Posted by Oren, clerk of the Archive at Vell, on the notice board by the front hall.
On the twelfth of Longday, at the summer market, two sellers quarreled over the same corner by the west wall. Bera of Kettle Ridge sold beetroot there. Hal of Lowmarsh sold eels there. Both claimed the corner. Both had sold there before. Neither had a paper saying so.
Bera said: I have stood here nine summers. My beetroots are heavy and the wall gives shade. The shade keeps them firm. Hal's eels do not need shade. Eels need water and a clean board. He can stand in the sun.
Hal said: I have stood here nine summers too. The wall keeps the wind off my eels. Wind dries an eel. A dried eel is a sad thing to sell. And Bera's beetroots would do well anywhere. Beetroots are not fussy.
Bera said: Beetroots are not fussy. People who sell eels are fussy.
Hal said: That is true.
The market keeper, Sedge, heard both sides. He looked at the corner. He looked at the shade. He looked at the eels and the beetroots.
Sedge said: You are both right, which is the worst way for a dispute to go. So here is the rule. Bera keeps the corner for the first half of the market day, when the sun is high and the shade is worth most. Hal takes it for the second half, when the wind rises and the eels want shelter. Each of you sweeps it before you leave it. Each of you leaves a stone on the wall to show the corner is kept.
Bera said: I can sweep.
Hal said: I can leave a stone.
Both swept. Both left stones. By the end of the market the wall had two stones on it and the corner was the cleanest spot in Vell.
Oren, clerk, the Archive at Vell
%%
Dispute settled: the fair prize
Heard by Dace, mayor, in the front hall of the oldest house at the edge of Three Wells, in the autumn after the fair. Written the same evening and posted on the board next morning.

Who came: Bram the cheesemaker, Tessa the weaver and her mother Old Ness, who owns the house.

The matter: the fair prize of the year, a copper kettle, was won by Tessa for a blue wool blanket. Bram said the blanket was dyed with cheap dye, and not fairly judged. He said his own cheese, which came second, was the work of three generations.

What Tessa said: the blanket was made from the wool of her own sheep, and the dye was woad from her mother's garden. She showed me the roots. She showed me a bowl of blue water still on the stove.

What Old Ness said: the house was old, and the prize had been won in it before. She said her own grandmother had won the kettle in the first year of the fair, and that was why she owned a kettle. She said nobody had asked her. I said I was asking her now.

What Bram said next: that he did not mind losing, but that the judges had tasted the cheese last, when they were tired. He said a cheese should be judged before a blanket, because a blanket does not spoil.

Dace's decision: the judges were tired, and that was our fault. Next year the cheese is judged first. This year the kettle stays with Tessa, who made a good blanket honestly. Bram gets a second kettle, a small one, from the town, with his name on it. Old Ness gets her old kettle polished, and a seat at the front of the fair.

Everyone agreed. Bram stayed for supper. Old Ness said it was the best fair she had ever sat in on. She said that every year.

Late in the evening, Tessa asked if the lights in the north were an omen. I said I am a mayor, and I deal in kettles. She said that was a good answer. It was not an answer. It was a kettle.

Dace
%%
Note from Sedge to the market keeper
Keeper. Two things about the winter market.
First, the lamp oil. Lantern says the barrels were left by the tower door again. He carried them to the relay house himself in the dark. He is nine and he carried them alone. Please speak to the oil merchant.
Second, my stall. The wool merchant says my table leans into her row by a hand's width. I measured. It leans by a finger. I have moved it anyway. Tell her the finger is hers.
The festival is on the last market before Longnight. I will bring the honey cakes. Mira says she will come down from the tower for one hour. One hour only. She says the tower can mind itself for an hour. I have never seen it mind itself, but I am not the keeper.
Sedge
%%
Dispute settled: the shared well
Heard by Dace, mayor, in the yard of the house at the edge of Three Wells, under the apple tree. Autumn. Written the same evening.

Two families share a well behind the last house. One family has four children and a dog. The other has two old people and a goat. All of them drink from the well. All of them say the water has tasted odd since the first rain.

The old woman said the water was bitter. The father of the four said it was fine, and the children were never sick. The old man said that the goat would not drink it. The father said that the goat was a fool.

I went to the well and tasted. It was a little bitter. I do not think it was harmful. I told them I would send the bucket to Wren at Lowmarsh, who knows water. It would take a week.

Then they began to argue about why. The old woman blamed a rumor she had heard from a carter: that a cough has come to Lowmarsh and the marsh water was turning. The father said that was nonsense. The old man said the Deep Works have been humming and the water runs down from the hills, past the mine, and maybe the stone has warmed it. The father said that was also nonsense. Then both sides turned to me and asked which was right.

I said I did not know. I said that is why we send the bucket.

Decided: until the answer comes, both families will draw water from the east well in the square, which is clean and was tasted by me this morning. The bitter well will be covered with a board. The goat will be given a bowl from the east well and watched.

Dace
%%
Dispute: the cart that blocked the flood
Heard at the Vell market, in the spring after the water came up. Written by Wren, who sat for the market, with the carters' steward and the miller from the hill mill.

The two sides. Dorn, the carter from the north road, says his cart was stopped by the miller's men on the flood road, on the morning the water came over the lower bridge, and that his horse was made to stand in the rain for an hour. He wants the miller to pay for the lost day and the wet hay. The miller says the flood road was closed, by the watch, at the first bell, and that Dorn's cart went round the closed sign and onto the road anyway, and that the watch had to fetch it back.

What each side said. Dorn said the sign was small, and that the sign was hidden by a hedge. The watch captain said the sign was tall, and that it had been painted red, and that a red sign is the first thing a carter should see. The miller said it did not matter what the sign looked like. He said the water was rising and the road was going under, and a cart on the road in flood is a cart in the river.

What was found. Wren walked the lower bridge with both sides. The water was at the second post. There was a red sign on the hill, and a hedge of birch in front of it, which had grown up in the summer. The hedge had been cut back by the watch two weeks before. Dorn's horse had been stopped at the second post, not the first. The road was already under a hand of water.

What was decided. The hedge is to be cut back every spring by the men who cut the bridge hedges, not by the watch. The red sign is to be moved to the top of the hill, where a carter sees it from the top of the rise. The miller will pay for the wet hay. Dorn will pay for the sign, which he has already knocked over, twice, with his cart wheel.

Dorn said that was fair. He said he would rather pay for a sign than a horse. The horse was asked, and it said nothing, but it did eat the apple Wren gave it, which the miller took as a good sign for the wet hay.
%%
Dispute settled: the flood at the lower
Written by Piper, innkeeper at the edge of Vell. Spring. The rains came in the night, and the stream beside the lower mill rose to the window sills. By morning there was a flood in the lane, and a dispute in the inn.

The miller, Garth, said the flood came because the mill pond at Ambrook had been opened. He had heard it from a carter, who had heard it from the ferry man at the ford. The water came down from the north, he said, and it had been let go on purpose.

The baker, Linnet, said that was nonsense. The sluice at Ambrook is kept by Jory, and nobody may open it. The flood was only rain, and the stream was too narrow.

Garth said the stream was never too narrow in his father's time. Linnet said nobody could say what happened in his father's time, because his father is not here to say it, and the stream has been dug out and filled in so many times that no one knows its shape.

A third voice said, from the corner, "The relay tower at Vell sent word at dawn. The water rose all the way up the line. It was a wet spring everywhere. It was nobody's fault."

This was Alder, a woman who keeps the lamp at the lower tower. She had a cold and a cup of tea. She had been awake all night.

Garth and Linnet looked at each other. Garth said, "Then I was wrong to blame Ambrook."

Linnet said, "And I was wrong to blame the stream."

Settled: nobody opened anything. The rain did it. The mill will be dried out, the lane will be cleared, and the stream will be dug by everyone in turn, as it should have been long ago.

Piper added a line. The relay line says it was a wet spring everywhere, and some of the towers in the north have been quiet for two days. That is likely the weather as well. Piper will say no more. The tea is hot.
%%
Letter: Hesk to the clerk at Vell
To the clerk at the Archive at Vell, from Hesk at Copperhold, the fourteenth of Longday, 191.
Friend,
You do not know me. I am a miner. I dig copper and iron and coal and I write down what I see. The council here asked me to send to you.
We have a wall at the end of the fourth level of the Deep Works that runs warm. The air around it is cool. The lamps are not near it. It has been warm all summer and it was warm last winter too, though I did not have a book then. Now I have a book. Every morning I put my hand on it and write one line. Warm. Warmer. The same. That is all the book says.
The council has roped it off. We are not opening it. I am not asking you to come down and open it. I am asking you for the maps. You keep everything we write. Somewhere in your halls there is an old map of the fourth level, older than ours, and maybe it shows what the wall is. If it does, send me a copy. If it does not, send me a letter that says so, so I can put that in the book too.
I will tell you what the men say, because you will hear it anyway. Some say it is the old sump and the water runs warm behind the stone. Some say it is a seam of something we have no name for. Old Corr says we walled up three tunnels on the eighth level when he was young and never said why. I asked him why. He said he did not remember. I think he remembers.
The stone is warm and the stone is quiet. That is all I know. I will keep writing it down.
Hesk, miner, Copperhold. My apprentice is Clank. It is a good carrier and it does not talk, which suits me.
%%
Manual: Nessa, drill notes for the fair
Drill notes of Nessa, tutor of apprentices at Vell. For the summer market, Longday of 206.
The market at Vell is a good place to test a mind. There is noise and shade and many orders at once. A mind that works in the quiet drill room and fails at the market is not ready for the fields. Never send an untested mind to the fields.
We bring two small minds to the market, each in its apprentice. One is new and one has had a season of drills. We bring the drill box and the cards with the orders. We bring a tray of crystals, each on its card, and the cards read Farm. Build. We bring water for the quickeners, though these are small minds and run cool.
The drill. We stand the apprentices in their row behind the stall, where people can see them and the shade is good. We give an order. We watch. We write down what the mind does, and we do not help it.
Order one. Bring me some bread.
The new mind fetches an apple. It has not learned bread. It has learned fetch, and an apple is what is near. We write: fetch, wrong thing. We do not scold. A mind is wrong until it is less wrong.
Order two. Bring me some bread.
The drilled mind goes to Ida's stall and comes back with a loaf and sets it down and waits. We write: fetch bread, right. Ida laughs and says the loaf is on the house. It is not on the house. We pay Ida. A tutor pays.
Order three. Stay.
The new mind follows us to the next stall. The drilled mind stays. It stays so well that a child of Three Wells, Bel, comes to look at it and asks if it is asleep. I say it is staying. Bel says staying looks like sleeping. Bel is not wrong.
Order four. Farm.
Neither mind has a field at the market, so both do nothing, which is right for a field order in a market. We write: no field, no work, correct to wait. A mind that digs up the market square when told to farm is a mind that has not been taught where the field is.
Order five. Come.
Both minds come. This is the easy one. It is the one the little ones like. The children stand in a row and say come and the apprentices come, and the children laugh, and the apprentices wait to be told again.
We test on what the minds were never drilled on. At the end of the day we give the new mind an order it has not heard: haul the crate to the cart. It does not haul. It fetches an apple. We write it down. Next season it will haul, or it will not, and we will write that down too.
The best minds understand a whole order. The small minds answer with one of the meanings and cannot say they do not know. When a small mind does not know, it does something near, and we must be patient and drill it again.
The fair is loud and the shade is good and the beetroots are heavy. We drill in the morning, when the minds are fresh and the market is quiet. We write it all down. The Archive keeps it. That is the rule.
Nessa, tutor house, Vell
%%
Dispute settled: whose wall fell down
Piper, innkeeper, at the table in the front room of the inn at the edge of Vell. Spring.

The spring rains came hard and the stream by the lower houses rose in the night. A stone wall between two gardens fell down. The garden of Ames was covered in mud. The garden of Corrie was covered in stones.

Ames said the wall was Corrie's, because it stood on Corrie's side of the line. Corrie said the wall was Ames's, because it was built by Ames's grandfather, and nobody had asked her.

Piper heard both. Piper asked them to bring the old deed. It was found in the box in the Archive at Vell, number 20418, by Oren's own hand. It said the wall belonged to both gardens, and both must keep it.

Settled: the two will build the wall again, each laying one side. The stones in Corrie's garden go back to the wall. The mud in Ames's garden goes back to the stream. They will share the work, the soup and the blame.

Piper was thanked. Piper said it was not hard. The deed was in the book. The book is always there. Piper has noticed that once the book is read aloud, people stop shouting and start counting.
%%
Log: the foxes at the hen house
Kept by Tam, at the hen house on the ridge. Summer.
The hens are in the long coop by the barn. The fox came at night. We know because of the tracks and because of the noise, which was terrible.
Night one. Six hens. Morning. One hen gone and a hole under the fence where the post is loose. The fox dug under. I mended the hole with a stone and said that would do it.
Night two. Five hens. Morning. One hen gone again. The fox came over, not under. It climbed the fence and went along the top like a cat. There were feathers on the top rail, which I did not like to see.
I said to Pip: the fox is winning.
Pip said: the fox is clever.
I said: the fox is clever and we are not, so we must be the fence.
Night three. We dug the fence down a full block and put stone along the bottom. We set torches all round the coop, one every few steps, so the fox would not like the look of it. Pip drew a fox on a board and put the board up, which I said would not help, but Pip is ten and I did not want to be unkind.
Night four. Four hens. Morning. Four hens. The torches held and the stone held and the board of the fox held, or the other things did. No tracks inside. Some tracks outside, going round and round, like a fox thinking.
Night five. Four hens. Morning. Four hens.
Pip says the fox is our fox now and we should give it a name and some eggs. I said a fox with eggs is a fox with a reason to stay. We keep the fence high and the torches lit. That is the rule. Keep the torches lit.
The roof over the grain is still leaking. The mended bit holds. The rest wants a proper look before the next rain. Bera will not stop saying it. She is right and I will do it.
Tam, Kettle Ridge
%%
Minutes: the matter of the lamp
At the Copperhold farm of Una, lamp tender, on the twelfth of Longnight, the neighbors met in the barn because the barn is warm and the house is not.
Present: Una, who keeps the lamps; Rell, who farms the north field; Brin, who farms the south; and Osric, a tutor of Vell, visiting to drill an apprentice at the mine.
The matter: Una's lamp post stands where the two farms meet, at the corner of the lane. It is Una's post. She lights it at dusk and puts it out at dawn. In Deepsnow the wind comes off the hill and the light falls on Rell's yard and not on Brin's. Brin asked that the post be moved three steps south. Rell said the post is fine and the light is fine and Brin only wants the light because Brin's own post is out.
Brin said Brin's post is out because the wick is old and the oil is thin.
Una said she would mend Brin's post in Thaw.
The decision: the post stays. Una will trim the wick and fill the oil every second night, and Brin will keep the snow off the glass. Rell will give Brin a jar of oil from the winter store, and Brin will give Rell a sack of coal. Nobody moves anything. All three signed. Osric signed as witness and said at Vell they settle such things with a bell, and Una said a bell is no good in the dark.
%%
Dispute settled: the borrowed ladder
Written by Piper, who keeps the inn at the edge of Vell. Spring.

Ames said Corrie had his ladder for three weeks. Corrie said Ames lent it to her for the wedding garlands and never asked for it back. Both agreed the ladder was a good one.

Settled: Corrie returns the ladder on the first fine day. Ames writes his name on it in paint. Both come to supper, and Piper pays for the soup.
%%
The boundary by the wood store
Written by Pell at the Halfway Inn.
Toma said the wood store stood on his land. He said his father had set the first oak post there, before the inn had its new roof. The keeper, Hara, said the post had been moved when the Long Road was widened. She said the store belonged to the inn and held the inn's wood.
Toma brought an old tally from Ambrook. It named a strip of ground and two apple trees, one fallen. Hara brought the inn's building list. It named a wood store, but gave no boundary.
We walked out after breakfast. Snow lay on the packed earth and along the cobblestone edge. The store stood beside the road, close to the old post. One apple tree grew behind it. Its branches reached over the roof.
Toma said the tree proved the ground was his. Hara said the tree had never paid rent.
The oldest carter at the inn remembered the post. He said it had stood by the road before the store was built. He could not say who owned the soil. He did remember Toma's father letting the inn take fallen branches after a hard winter.
We decided that the inn may keep the wood already stacked inside. Hara will not add to the store until the boundary is marked in spring. Toma may gather fallen branches from the apple tree, but must leave the sound limbs alone. They will ask Dace to look at the old tally when he travels this way.
Hara served apple pieces with the bread. Toma said they were small. She said the tree was old and had done its best.
%%
Dispute settled: the old map
Heard by Dace, mayor, in the kitchen of the last house on the north edge of Three Wells. Autumn, after the harvest.

Two neighbors came. Odrin said the hedge between the gardens was his. Pia said it was hers. They had argued since the first frost.

Odrin brought an old map, drawn on leather, from his grandfather's chest. It showed the hedge on the north side of the lane. Pia brought a newer map, drawn by her aunt. It showed it on the south side.

I looked at both. I looked at the hedge. The hedge is in the middle of the lane. Both maps were drawn from memory. Neither was wrong, and neither was right.

Odrin said, with the old map, that the old hedge was a better hedge. Pia said, with the new, that the new hedge was nearer the well.

Decided: the hedge belongs to the lane. Both neighbors will trim it, each their own side, on the same morning. The old map goes to the Archive at Vell, with Odrin's name on the back. The new map goes on Pia's wall.

Both said it was fair. Neither looked glad. Pia gave Odrin a jar of plum jam. He took it.

Dace
%%
The map on the inn wall
The Frost Inn keeps an old map over the hearth, and people argue about it every winter.
The map is drawn on a sheet of hide, brown at the edges. It shows the coast, the marsh, the ridge and the hills, and a line for the Long Road. It shows the towers. There are fewer towers on the map than stand now. The map is old.
Old Pell, who is no relation to the Pell on the road, says the map is wrong about the marsh. He says Lowmarsh is drawn too far east, and that he has walked it and knows.
Wren of Lowmarsh stayed here one winter. She looked at the map a long while and said the marsh is where the marsh is, and the map is where the map is, and the water moves. She would not say more.
Tam of Kettle Ridge says the map has his ridge too flat, and the top field is not drawn at all, and where the map shows a field there is now a hedge. He offered to draw a better one. The innkeeper said no.
So the dispute went to the keeper of the market, who is also the keeper of the inn, and this is what was decided.
1. The map stays on the wall. It is old and it is ours.
2. Nobody may draw on it. Tam may not draw on it. Tam has been told twice.
3. A new map is to be drawn by anyone who wishes, on a board, and hung beside the old one, and marked with the year.
4. When the new map and the old map disagree, the old map is not wrong. It is old.
5. The marsh is where the marsh is.
The new board went up in the 206th year. It shows the towers, thirty-two of them, and the ridge, and the top field, and a small careful hedge. Under it, in Tam's hand: the ridge is not flat.
The old map stays above the hearth. People still argue about it. That is what it is for.
%%
Dispute settled: the fair ribbon
Heard by Dace, mayor, at the last house on the east road of Three Wells. Autumn.

Siv said her pumpkin won the fair ribbon. Harl said his did. Both were big. Both were orange.

I weighed them on the bakery scale in front of the whole house. Siv's was heavier by the weight of a loaf.

Decided: the ribbon goes to Siv. Harl gets the seeds of her pumpkin, and may grow a bigger one. Both agreed to eat the pie.
%%
The wedding at the top farm
In the last week of Longnight, when the days are short and there is nothing to do in the fields, Rell's daughter Tamsin married Brin's son Hollis, and the two farms at the corner of the lane became one farm, which is what everyone had wanted for years.
They were married in the barn, because the barn is warm and the house is not. The barn was swept and hung with wool and spruce. The lamps from the lane were brought in and stood along the wall, and Una lit every one of them and said it was the best use the lane ever had.
The whole ridge came. There was bread and beetroot soup and a great pot of potatoes. There was honey from Ambrook and apples kept since Apple. There was a barrel of cider that Brin had been saving and would not say for what, and now we know. The wind blew and the barn door banged and nobody minded. Old Pell from the Long Road came and sold nothing and danced twice.
Osric the tutor was there, still at the farm to drill Clank. He gave them a gift of a little lamp with a copper ring, made at Vell, and said it was for the window. Tamsin said it was the best gift and put it in the window then and there, and it is there now, and it burns all night, and no one has asked who fills it, but it is Una.
There was a moment. When the vows were said, the apprentices were in the barn, because they live here now. They stood in a row at the back, still as posts, and their crystals glowed. Clank was among them. When the vows were done, Clank stepped forward and set a loaf on the table, which was not asked of him, and went back to his place. Nobody told him to. Tamsin cried and Hollis laughed and Rell said well, the mind knows what a wedding is.
Osric says he does not know how Clank knew. He says a mind is tested on what it was never drilled on, and that is the whole question, and he wrote it in his book.
So the two farms are one farm now, and there is one lamp at the corner and one lane, and Una keeps the light on it.
%%
The wall comes down
Maud's account, kept at the mine gate.
The tenth of Apple, 191. The council met about the pigs and the gap. Hesk was asked for deep stone for the wall on the north slope. He said he would cut it himself.
He went down to the fourth level that morning with his book, as he does. He came up at noon and said the wall was cooler. Not cold. Cooler. He wrote it in the book. He said: I do not know why and I am not going to guess. I am going to write it and put the book on the shelf.
The council asked him if the fourth level could open. He said no, not yet. He said a wall that gets cooler might get warmer again. He said the rope stays and the sign stays and the book stays.
Then he went and cut deep stone for the pigs.
The wall on the north slope went up in three days. Hesk laid the bottom row himself. Clank carried the stone and did not drop one. The pigs came and looked at the wall and went away. The farmers gave Hesk a pie. He gave half to Clank, who cannot eat pie, so he ate it himself and said it was a good pie.
The sign went up on the road: PIGS, with an arrow. The carts pass. Nobody shouts at the pig.
The book on the shelf at the mine gate says, in Hesk's hand, one line a day: WARM. WARM. WARM. COOLER. COOLER. THE SAME.
That is all it says. That is enough.
%%
Northpoint log, winter
Mira, keeper.
The lamp is lit. The wind is from the north and the snow is up to the door.
The tutor came up from Vell with the last cart of the season, a woman called Nessa, to drill the apprentice at the tower. She stayed two weeks and would not stay longer. She said the north is no place for a tutor in Deepsnow, and I said the north is no place for anyone, and she said then why are you here, and I had no answer that would fit in the log.
She drilled Lantern in the lamp room, where it is warm, with a board on the desk. Lantern is quick. Nessa said so. She said the mind is better than the drill she brought, and that is not a thing a tutor says often.
The foxes come to the door for scraps. Three of them now. They are thin and bold and they sit in the snow and look at the lamp.
Tam writes that the ridge is well and the wedding at the top farm was a good one and there was cider. He says the two farms are one farm and the lane has one lamp and Una keeps it. He says he wishes I had been there. I wish it too. But the lamp must be lit, and there is no one else to light it, and the tower is mine.
The lamp is lit. It is lit every night. That is the whole of my work and it is enough.
Mira
%%
Dispute: the cow
Heard at the Vell market, in the spring after the new calf came to the dairy. Written by Wren, who had been sent for by the dairyman to settle a quarrel between himself and the farm at the foot of the hill.

The two sides. Oddo, the dairyman, says that the farm at the foot of the hill has been feeding its cows from his hay, which he bought in the autumn from the Ambrook carts. He says twelve bales are gone, and the calf is growing fat on them. The farmer, Maud's husband Gil, says he has not taken a bale of hay in a year, and that the cow who is in his barn is not Oddo's cow at all.

What each side said. Oddo said the cow in Gil's barn had a white star on her forehead, and that Bramble had a white star too, and that the calf was Bramble's calf, which was true. Gil said that every cow in the valley has a white star, if you look hard enough, and that the calf had come to his barn by itself, through a broken gate, and that he had only fed it because it was starving.

What was found. Wren went to the barn at the foot of the hill and looked at the cow. The white star was not a star. It was a patch of white hair on the brow, and it was the same shape as the patch on Bramble's brow, but it was on the other side of the head. Bramble's calf had gone through the gate, and the cow in the barn was Bramble's sister, the brown and white one, who had been wandering the orchard since Frost. The hay had been eaten by both of them. Gil had fed them because they were there.

What was decided. The cow goes back to the dairy, with the calf. The hay is shared out evenly, and the bales that were already eaten are to be paid for in cheese. Gil is to mend his gate. Oddo is to put a star on Bramble's other side, so that no one can make the mistake again.

Oddo said that was fair, and that he would paint the star. Gil said he would rather have the cheese. The calf, which had been quiet through the whole dispute, bellowed at the end, and the market laughed, and that was the end of it.
%%
Dispute: the stall that moved
Heard at the Vell market, at the north wall, in the second week of Frost. Written up by Wren, who was asked to sit as the market's fair person, because she is the only one nobody is afraid of.

The two sides. Garrick, who keeps the tool stall, says his stall was moved four paces to the east in the night, so that it sits under the edge of the roof where the snow drops. He says his nails rust under the drip. Ulla, who sells candles, says her stall has been in the same place for twenty years, and that Garrick moved his own stall to block her light, and then blamed the night.

What each side said. Garrick said the stall was where the market board says it should be, and the board was wrong, because someone had changed the board. Ulla said the board was right, and that the board had been moved too. Both agreed that somebody had been in the market hall after the lamps were out.

What was found. Wren walked the north wall with both of them. She found the marks of the stall's feet in the frost. Garrick's four feet had dragged the stone, and there were two fresh gouges in the flags. She found a candle stub in the snow beside the gouges. It was Ulla's, and it had been lit.

What was decided. Garrick did not move the stall in the night. But he had dragged it, in the dark, to see where the drip fell, and he had done it by lamp. That is against the market rules, which say no lamp is to be carried in the square after the bell. Ulla had been out with a candle to look at the dark, and had come on the stall while it was half moved.

The market agreed. The stall goes back to its place, four paces to the west, under the roof edge that drips. Garrick is to fit a gutter, at his own cost, and Ulla is to keep her candle indoors. Both are to say sorry in the square, and both did, in short words, and not very kindly.

Wren's note at the foot. The snow came back the next day and covered the gouges. Nobody has asked Garrick about the lamp. He has said he will not do it again. Ulla says she believes him. Neither has forgotten.
%%
Chronicle: the corner by the west wall
From the chronicles of the Archive at Vell. The summer market, Longday of 197.
The summer market at Vell fills the square before the Archive door and the road up to it. Stalls of oak and birch stand in rows, and the smell of the market is apples and hot bread and the smoke of the cooking fires. Everyone comes up the hill for it. Kettle Ridge brings beetroot and wheat and honey. Lowmarsh brings eels and reeds and fish from the weir. Saltreach brings salt and rope and a clever little boat in a bottle that Oren bought for the Archive and then could not think where to keep. Copperhold brings copper pots and iron tools and one very fine lamp. Ambrook brings apples and honey and the comb for the candle maker. Three Wells brings the school and the mayor and a great deal of talk.
And in the corner by the west wall, where the shade is, two sellers have quarreled for nine summers. Bera of Kettle Ridge sells beetroot there. Hal of Lowmarsh sells eels there. Each year they arrive early and each year they claim the corner and each year the market keeper hears both sides and each year nobody can find a paper that settles it.
This year the keeper was Sedge, who is patient and has a good ear. This is how he settled it, as Oren wrote it down the same evening, in clean ink and very neatly.
Sedge said: You are both right, which is the worst way for a dispute to go. So here is the rule. Bera keeps the corner for the first half of the day, when the sun is high. Hal takes it for the second half, when the wind rises. Each sweeps it before leaving. Each leaves a stone on the wall.
Bera said she could sweep. Hal said he could leave a stone. And so the corner was swept and the stones were left, and by the end of the market the wall had two stones on it and the corner was the cleanest spot in Vell.
Oren wrote, at the foot of the page: The rule holds. I have seen it hold for two summers now. I do not know how long it will hold. People are fond of rules that let them keep half a corner. It is the keeping of a half that is hard.
The market was good that year. The beetroots sold and the eels sold and the little boat in the bottle went into the Archive with a label Oren made himself, which said, in his careful hand: A boat, in a bottle. From Saltreach. Do not shake.
%%
The spiders in the barn
Winter account from the Halfway Inn. Written by Pell.
We settled the matter of the hay loft on the first cold evening after the snow came. The inn had put two carts of hay in the barn. The first cart belonged to Rell, who had brought it from Kettle Ridge. The second belonged to the inn. Both were dry. Both smelled of dust and old grass.
Rell said the inn had stacked its hay over his. He wanted his cart moved out before the snow melted. Hara said the barn door would not open wide enough with the second cart in the way. She had asked Rell to leave the first cart near the wall, and he had done so. She said there was no other place to put it.
Rell said the loft was empty. Hara said it was not empty. There were spiders in the rafters, and she would not have guests sleeping below them while the hay was moved. Rell said spiders had been in barns since before he was born. He said they did not bite unless a person put a hand where it did not belong.
Hara said a guest had found a spider in a blanket last winter. She did not want another complaint. Rell said the guest had brought the spider in on his own coat.
We went to look. There were webs across the high beams. Several spiders sat in them. None came down. The floor was clear, except for hay, a broken rake, and one of Rell's mittens. Rell took the mitten and said it had been missing since Leaffall.
The decision was that the hay would stay where it was until morning. The cook would carry a lantern into the barn, and Hara would stand at the door. Rell would move his cart first, one armful at a time, and the inn's hay would wait. Nobody would sleep in the loft. The spiders could keep the rafters.
By morning, the snow had stopped. Rell moved his hay without trouble. Hara swept the floor. The spiders stayed above us, where they had been all along.
That night, Edren came in from the Long Road. He said the relay tower near Northpoint had gone dark for a time. He had heard that the keeper was still there. A carter who had come from the north said the tower lamps had never failed; he had seen them from the ridge.
Hara asked which man had been nearer. Edren said he had not seen the tower, only a pale light over the hills. The carter said he had seen the lamp clearly, though snow had covered the road.
They did not agree. We kept the inn torches lit, as we always do. The barn door shut well, and the spiders kept their place. Rell left a small bundle of hay by the wall for the horse that comes tomorrow.
%%
The letter under the bread board
At the Brown Hen, in deep winter. Written by Pell.
A letter went missing from the desk by the hearth. It was addressed to Sella in Ambrook. The fold bore a red seal, still whole when it was found. No one had opened it.
Merrit said he had put the letter beside the ink and the tally book. He remembered it because the ink had frozen at the rim of the pot. He warmed the pot near the hearth, then went to carry oats to the stable.
Hara said she had seen no letter. She had cleared the desk before supper and found only a crust and a loose button. She said the crust was from Pell's loaf. I said it was not. It was from the cook's.
We searched the room. The letter was not in the desk, under the bench, or in the dry box. The cook looked in the flour bin. She found one spoon and a small beetroot.
A traveler named Edren said he had seen a paper by the lamp. He had used the lamp to mend his boot and could not say if the paper was the letter. He left before we could ask him more.
Then Noll moved the bread board to sweep beneath it. The letter slid out, folded once, with a crumb pressed into its seal. Hara said the board must have covered it when she cleared the desk. Merrit said he had never put it there. Neither could prove it.
We decided the letter had not been taken, and that nobody owed an apology. Hara gave Merrit a clean sheet so he could write Sella's address again. He copied it carefully. I carried the letter to the waymark in the morning and gave it to the first cart going east.
The road was white all day. At dusk, a traveler said he had seen lights above Northpoint. Another said they were fires beyond the hills. Hara said both stories had been told before. She banked the hearth and put the bread board back in its place.
%%
The Longnight fair at Northpoint, 203
Every year on the last market before Longnight, Northpoint holds its fair. The days are short now, and the snow comes and goes, but the square fills.
The stalls go up at first light, in rows, facing the tower. Sedge keeps the rows. She has a stick with a mark on it for measuring, and she does not smile when she measures.
The wool merchant brings her wool in three colors: grey, brown and a white she calls snow. The fish merchant brings salted fish, because the boats cannot go out, and he says salted fish is better than no fish and nearly as good as fresh. Nobody agrees with him. Everybody buys.
Ida sends honey cakes up from Ambrook by cart, and they come wrapped in cloth against the snow. Ama sends the honey for them, one jar, as every year. The cakes sell out before noon. Sedge always saves two: one for the inn, one for the tower.
The children build a snow figure in the corner of the square. Last year it was a sheep. This year it was a tower, with a lamp on top made of a lantern with a candle in it, and Lantern the boy was very pleased with it until the real lamp on the real tower lit at dusk and the snow tower did not. He stood and looked at it a long while.
At dusk Mira comes down from the tower. She comes down for one hour, no more, and she stands by the braziers with her hands out and lets people thank her for the year. She does not like thanks. She says the tower does the work and she only watches it, and the tower cannot eat a honey cake, so she eats it for the tower.
Then she says the thing she says every year: the nights are long now, keep the torches lit, and the tower will keep the light.
Lantern climbs back up with her. He carries the lamp oil. He is careful with it. He is nine, and he carries it slowly, and he does not spill.
The fair ends when the last stall comes down. The snow begins again. Somewhere out on the ridge a fox is moving, and does not care about the fair at all.
%%
Dispute settled: the cart
Spring, the inn at the edge of Vell, as written by Piper.

A wedding was to be held at the inn on the first fine day after the rains. The groom's family came in a cart from Three Wells with the cake. The bride's family came in a cart from Kettle Ridge with the wine and the flowers. Both carts reached the inn gate at once. The gate is narrow.

The carter from Three Wells said his cart came first, because he had been waiting at the milestone. The carter from Kettle Ridge said his cart came first, because his horse's nose was through.

They argued while the bride, the groom and sixty guests stood in the road. The cake sat in the sun. The flowers began to droop.

Piper settled it. Piper asked each carter to back up ten paces. Then Piper lifted the gate off its hinges, which is easier than it sounds, and both carts came in at the same moment, wheel by wheel.

The cake was fine. The wine was fine. The flowers were fine in a bucket.

The carters were friends by the third cup. The bride says she will remember it as the wedding where the gate was taken off.

Piper has put the gate back. It is a little crooked. The inn is a little crooked. It has been that way for a long time.
%%
Dispute settled: the pig
Heard by Dace, mayor, in the front room of a house at the very edge of Three Wells, where the town ends and the fields begin. Autumn.

Who came: Marek the farmer, his neighbor Elsie, and an uncle who would not give a name.

What Marek said: Elsie's pig had broken through the fence three times that week and eaten his late beets. He wanted four emeralds for the beets, and a new fence.

What Elsie said: the fence was rotten. Her pig was only walking. She said she would pay for the beets if he would mend the fence on his own side.

What the uncle said: the pig had been restless since the night of the lights in the north. He said animals know. He said a pig will not stay in when something is wrong. He said the wolves have been quiet, and the foxes too.

I asked him what lights. He said, the ones the traveler spoke of at the inn. I said I had heard of them, and that I had also heard they were fires, and falling stars, and a child's idea. He said I should listen to the pig. I said I would.

Decided: Marek will mend his fence. Elsie will pay two emeralds for the beets. The pig will be kept in at night for a month, and given extra bread to be calm.

The uncle left saying nobody listens. I wrote his name down anyway, as Tobin. He was pleased.

Dace
%%
Minutes: the matter of the warm wall
Minutes of the mine council, Copperhold, the twelfth of Longday, 191st year of the archive.
Present: Hesk, miner; Vell, foreman of the day shift; Renn, keeper of the tool store; Maud, who keeps the mine gate; and two folk from the town, Sella the baker and old Corr, who dug here before any of us.

The matter: the wall at the end of the fourth level, the one that runs warm. Hesk says it has been warm all summer. He put his hand on it every day for a month and wrote it down. Sella says the men come up from the fourth level and eat twice what they eat coming up from the third. She says she is glad of the trade but she wants to know why.

Hesk said: the stone is warm but the air is cool. It is not the lamps. It is not the sun, which never comes down there. It is the wall, or something behind the wall. He said: I am a miner, not a scholar. I do not like a thing I cannot write down.

Vell said: it is a warm seam, and seams run warm near the old sump. The water down there has always been tepid. He said the fourth level is safe, he has walked it a thousand times, and he will not have the men frightened by a warm wall.

Renn said: the wall is not on any map. We have maps of the fourth level. The wall is drawn on the map, but the map does not say what is behind it. He said: we should not open what we cannot draw.

Old Corr said: when I was young we walled up three tunnels on the eighth level and never said why. Some things you wall up and leave. He said: warm stone is not a monster. But it is not a friend either.

Maud said: the count board at the gate is short two names every evening, and then they come up late with red faces. She said: whatever it is, it is making my board lie, and I do not like a board that lies.

Sella said: I will keep baking. Two loaves more a day. But someone should tell me if the men are digging toward something.

Decided: the fourth level beyond the warm wall is closed for now, not walled, but roped, with a torch on the rope and a sign. Hesk will write on the sign in his own hand. The council will send to Vell for a clerk to look at the old maps. Nobody will open the wall this year. The men who worked the far end will work the near end and keep their pay. Sella will bake two loaves more a day.

Hesk said at the end: I will keep putting my hand on the rope and writing it down. If it gets hotter, we will know. If it stays warm, we will know that too.

Maud wrote the minutes at the mine gate, by the kitchen, where the light is good.
%%
Dispute settled: the rumor
Piper, innkeeper at the edge of Vell. Spring. Written down because three guests asked me to.

Two travelers from the south sat at my long table on a rainy evening and began to argue about a rumor.

The first, a carter, said the stone at the Deep Works had grown warm. He said a miner told him so at Copperhold. He said the miners no longer go below a certain level.

The second, a woman who sold cloth, said it was not true. She said she had been to Copperhold last month, and she had put her hand on the stone herself, and it was cold, as it always is. She said the miners are cautious, that is all.

The carter said, "Then why do they hum at night?"

The woman said, "Who hums?"

"The mines," said the carter. "I heard it."

"You heard a song," said the woman. "The miners sing."

"It was not a song."

They stared at each other. The guests at the next table stopped eating.

Piper settled it, in the only way an innkeeper can. Piper said: you were both there at different times. Either may be right. Neither may be wrong. Eat your soup.

They ate their soup. The woman said she would go back to the Works in the summer and put her hand on the stone again. The carter said he would go with her, but he would stay above ground.

Piper has not been to Copperhold in two years and does not mean to go. But Piper has put a stool by the door for anyone who wants to talk about it. Four people have sat there.
