Questions: the market stall at Vell
By Oren, archive clerk.

Every market day I set out a small table by the archive door. People bring questions and I answer them, or I write the question down and find the answer before the next market. Here are some of this autumn's.

Q: Who keeps the key to the deep halls?
A: The archive does. Ask at the front hall. You may not take it home.

Q: My boy says the apprentices can talk. Is that true?
A: No. They answer by doing. A big mind can write you a letter back, but a small one only acts.

Q: How old is the oldest record?
A: Very old. It lives in an oak box in the deepest room. We do not open it for idle asking. Ask me in the front hall and I will say more.

Q: Can I leave my apples here?
A: No. The archive keeps writing. Ambrook keeps apples. Take them to the Brown Hen.
%%
Test for a baker's boy
Set by Lise, baker, in the hamlet near Saltreach. Summer.
Q: What goes in a loaf?
A: Flour, water, salt, and something to make it rise.
Q: When do you light the oven?
A: Before the first bell, so it is hot when the dough is ready.
Q: What do you do if the loaf is burnt?
A: Eat it yourself. Do not sell it.
Q: What is the best time to bake?
A: Early. The cat is asleep, and the bread is not stolen.
%%
Keeper's Exam, Northpoint
By Mira, in the 203rd year.

Question: What do you check before you light the tower lamp?
Answer: I check the oil, the glass, and the redstone line.

Question: What do you do when snow covers the stair?
Answer: I clear each step. I leave the stair lamps uncovered.

Question: What do you do when a fox sits by the door?
Answer: I open the door only after it leaves.

Question: What do you do when the message is hard to read?
Answer: I ask the sender to repeat it.

Question: What do you do when Lantern drops the lamp hook?
Answer: I pick it up. Lantern picks up the oil tin.

Question: Who gets the last bun?
Answer: Lantern. I have the burnt end.

Lantern passed the exam. I did too, though nobody asked.
%%
School Questions in the Keeper's House
By Edda, teacher at Northpoint, the third of Melon, 189.

I gave the children their summer test in the keeper's house. The window faced the snow fields, and the wind pushed the paper off the table twice. We put a mug on each corner.

Question: What is at the top of the tower?
Answer: The signal lamp is in the glass room.

Question: What carries a message from one town to another?
Answer: The relay towers carry messages.

Question: What must a keeper do before climbing the stair?
Answer: The keeper takes a lamp and checks the first stair lamp.

Question: What grows in the Kettle Ridge fields?
Answer: Wheat, beetroot, potatoes, and carrots.

Question: What can a bee carry from a flower?
Answer: A bee carries pollen. It may also find the flowers before we do.

Question: How many apples are in this picture?
Answer: There are six apples.

Question: Why is there a seventh apple in the answer?
Answer: I forgot that the child drew one on the back of the page.

Question: What did the children learn?
Answer: Count both sides before you answer.

The youngest child asked whether a fox could pass the test. I said it could not hold a pencil. She said that was no excuse. We let the fox keep its own ideas.
%%
Clerk's answers: letters from the market
At the market at Vell, a box by the archive door. Oren and Merle take turns reading what is put in it. Here are some of the questions, and the answers, copied plainly.

Q: Who keeps the old map of the roads? I want to see where the Long Road goes past the marsh. Signed, a carter.
A: We keep it. It is drawn on cloth and it is older than the bridge at Ambrook. It hangs in the second hall, and the third hall has a copy. The copy is easier to read and no worse. Ask for Oren.

Q: The old map marks a ford that is not there now. Why?
A: Rivers move. The map is honest about the year it was drawn and quiet about the years since. Trust the waymarks before the map.

Q: My son wants to be a clerk. What should he learn?
A: Plain writing first, and small letters, and how to read a page twice. Then sums. Then patience. Patience is the hardest and the clerks test for it.

Q: Is it true the archive has no roof?
A: It has a hill, which is better than a roof.

Q: I lost a letter from my sister at Saltreach. Can you find it?
A: If it reached us, yes. Tell us her name and the month and we will look on the shelf. Letters are kept by place and by year.

Q: Why do the clerks take out copies?
A: Because a copy of a copy tells lies. One page of each kind is kept, the best one, and the rest go out.

Q: How much does a copy cost?
A: Three emeralds for a short page, five for a long one. Less if you bring your own paper, and less again if you sit and wait while we write it, for then we do not have to find you after.

Q: Can an apprentice carry my goods to the market?
A: Yes. Take it to the stall and say plainly what you want, and it will haul. It knows the roads and the waymarks. It does not know prices, so keep your own purse.

Q: I said "take these sacks to the inn" and it went home. Why?
A: It heard the wrong thing, or it heard nothing it knew. Say it again, shorter. The Long Road and the inn and the sacks, and nothing else. If it goes home again, tell a tutor at the tutor house down the hill.

Q: Who mends the bridge at Ambrook?
A: Merle, the bridge keeper. Leave a note at the market box. Merle reads the box on market days and mends on the others.

Q: What is the oldest thing you keep?
A: An oak box, and a page inside it, and we do not open it often. Cool, still and dry, and it has lasted.

Q: Why do you keep everything?
A: Because we wrote it. It says so over the door.
%%
Bel's keeper's exam
Taken in the little house by Three Wells.

Question: What must a keeper do before leaving the lamp?
Answer: Fill the oil cup, trim the wick, and check the glass. Then look at the road from the door.

Question: What is the use of the lamp post outside?
Answer: It shows the turn to the square. In snow, it also shows where the ditch begins. I know because I stepped in it once.

Question: What should you do if the light goes out?
Answer: Relight it from the house lamp. If the wick is wet, fetch a dry one from the box.

Question: What should you do if you hear a sound at the broken wall?
Answer: Call Father. Do not climb over the stones alone. It could be the cat, but the cat can come through the gate.

Question: What did the family move first into this house?
Answer: The bed boards and the pot. The table came later because Father had to mend one leg.

Question: What does Mother say about the wall?
Answer: She says the creeper blew it up. Father says he cut it, and the stones fell. They agree that the stones need to go back.

Question: Why do we keep the wood dry?
Answer: Wet wood smokes and takes too long to burn. It also makes Mother cough, and then she blames my scarf.

Question: What do you do when a traveler asks for the inn?
Answer: Point to the square and tell them to follow the lamps. If the snow is deep, walk with them as far as the notice board.
%%
Questions after the storm
Spring, in the early years. A great storm crossed the roads between the towns, and the people of Three Wells, who sit at the crossing, sent word to ask who was safe. The market clerk, who keeps the board, answered the letters that came in. Dace found the board book and copied it for the archive.
Q: Did the wells flood?
A: The east well overflowed. The other two held. The square was wet to the ankle for a night.
Q: Did anyone lose a roof?
A: Three roofs lost shingles. The bakery lost its sign. It was found in the orchard at Ambrook, hung from a branch, and returned by cart.
Q: Was anyone hurt?
A: One man fell off a ladder. He was mending a shutter. He is well and has been told not to.
Q: Did the road wash out?
A: The Long Road washed out at the stream east of the square. A bridge of oak is being built.
Q: Is the market closed?
A: It is open. Stalls are under cloth. It smells of wet wool.
Q: When will the relay line work again?
A: The tower on the hill lost a pane. It will be mended by Longday. In the meantime, send letters by walker.
Q: What do I do with water in my cellar?
A: Bail it. Then keep the stairs dry. The water goes down by itself.
%%
The question desk, a summer day
The question desk is by the front door of the Archive. Anyone may ask. The clerk on the desk answers, or says where to look. A day in Melon, taken down by Cob, who says he has never been asked so much in one morning.
Q: Is the big mind at the Vell relay house alive? Asked by a farmer's boy.
A: The Archive does not know what alive means for a crystal. We know it answers. We know it does not seem to mind being asked.
Q: Can the big mind at Vell hear the one at Three Wells? Asked by a miller.
A: Each house answers the apprentices of its own towers. Whether they pass anything between them, the Archive has not been told.
Q: Must a relay house be cold? Asked by Colm, candle maker.
A: Yes. A cold quickener works at full pace. A warm one works at half pace, with smoke. At Vell the keeper brings snow from the north slope in winter and ice from the cellar in summer.
Q: Does the big mind sleep? Asked by a child.
A: Not as we do. When nobody asks, it waits. The keepers say the house is quieter at night.
Q: Why is the crystal the size of a loaf? Asked by a traveler.
A: The tutors say a bigger crystal holds a bigger mind. A loaf is as big as one keeper can carry up the stairs. Bigger crystals could be grown, but nobody could lift them.
Q: What does a quickener eat? Asked by Fenn, candle maker's neighbor.
A: The Archive does not know, and nobody who keeps one has said. The keepers give them only ice and water. This is one of the things not written down.
Q: How does a question get from an apprentice in the field to the big mind? Asked by a baker.
A: By the relays, from lamp to lamp. How a lamp can carry so much, the Archive cannot say. The keepers say their lamps blink as they always did.
Q: Would a big mind settle my quarrel with Fenn about the fence? Asked by Colm.
A: It would want to know where the fence is, and it cannot see. It would ask you to measure. Measure, Colm.
Q: Will Northpoint have a relay house? Asked by a child.
A: Yes, in time. It will come last, as everything does there. Mira says she is not holding her breath. She says she is holding a lantern.
Q: Can the big mind give me a recipe? Asked by a cook.
A: The big mind answers apprentices. For a recipe, ask the recipe shelf in the fifth hall. It is a good shelf. It is quite warm.
Q: Why do the big minds answer apprentices and not people? Asked by an old man.
A: They answer whoever asks through the relays, and so far that is apprentices and tutors. A big mind that answers a person who writes to it is the newest work at the tutor house. Nessa is not ready to say more.
Q: Where is the cat? Asked by everyone.
A: Not in the copying room. That is all the Archive will say.
%%
Lise answers the hamlet
Summer, at the hamlet near Saltreach. Lise bakes the bread, and for one season she also answered the questions the neighbors left in a box outside the bakery door. She wrote the answers on the back of each slip and put it back in the box. Here is the batch of one week, copied for the archive.
Q: How long should I knead the dough?
A: Until it pushes back. A good dough springs back when you press it with a finger. Eight to ten minutes is usual.
Q: Why is my bread flat?
A: Maybe the water was too hot and killed the rise. Maybe the dough sat too long. Maybe you forgot the rising. Ask yourself which.
Q: Can I use barley instead of wheat?
A: Yes, but the loaf will be darker and heavier. It is a good loaf for soup.
Q: My neighbor's pie won the fair prize last year. Is it true she used a secret?
A: She used butter. That is the secret. Nobody believes it.
Q: Where do I find the best honey?
A: Ambrook. Ask for the dark jar with the grey ribbon.
Q: What is the best bread to eat in a long winter?
A: Rye, with butter and a slice of cheese. It lasts a week and does not complain.
Q: What do I do if the oven will not light?
A: Check the flue. Check the wood. Check your pride. In that order.
Q: How did you learn to bake?
A: My mother stood next to me and said no. Then she said better. Then she said good.
Q: Do the helpers bake?
A: Not at this bakery. A helper carries the flour. It does not know when the bread is done. I do.
Q: Do you like your job?
A: I like the smell at dawn. I like the quiet before the first bell. I like that people say thank you. I do not like the cats.
Q: Who wrote the box slip that said, "Why is the sea salty?"
A: I do not know. I do not know the answer. But I think the answer is that it is a very big pot.
Lise adds that she has run out of space on the slips and out of patience for cats, and will answer no more until autumn.
%%
Questions at the east well
Copied by Oren, clerk visiting Three Wells.

Question from a child. Why is the water lower this summer?
Answer. The keeper says the bucket rope is longer than last year. He has marked the stones and will check again tomorrow.

Question from a baker. May I wash my trays at the well?
Answer. Not at the drinking well. Use the trough behind the bakery. Keep the clean trays on the shelf, not on the ground.

Question from a traveler. Is there a safe place to leave a cart?
Answer. Leave it by the inn wall, with the horse tied in shade. Do not block the road to the school.

Question from a woman with two baskets. Where can I stay while my new house is made ready?
Answer. Ask at the inn first. If the beds are full, the school room may be used after lessons. Leave the room clean for the children.

Question from a child. Who will help move the bed frame?
Answer. Two neighbors and Pell's cart. The frame has one loose joint. Carry it level, and do not drag it across the cobblestone.

Question from a pupil. When will the mill wheel turn again?
Answer. The miller has fitted a new spoke. The wheel turned once this morning, then stopped. He says the axle must be checked before he grinds the wheat.

Question from a seller. What did the miller hear in the pond?
Answer. He says he heard a knock under the wheel. A frog keeper says it was a large frog. The miller has not seen one large enough to make that sound.

Question from a keeper. Has the north tower answered?
Answer. We received one brief message at midday. It said, "Lamp lit. Road clear." The next message did not arrive.

Question from a traveler. Is the grey cough in Lowmarsh?
Answer. Wren has written that a few people are coughing. She does not know the cause. One seller blames the still water. Another blames smoke from the road fires. Neither has brought proof.

Question from a child. Should we be afraid of a cough?
Answer. Wash your hands, drink clean water, and tell an adult if you feel ill. Do not frighten someone with a guess.

Question from a parent. Should we leave Three Wells?
Answer. I cannot answer for each family. The roads remain open, and the square is safe today. Keep your house in order and speak with your neighbors.

Question from a child. Can we still paint the school door?
Answer. Yes. The old green fish has begun to fade. Paint it after lessons, and remember to close the jar.
%%
Questions for the Keeper's House
By Mira, Northpoint, the twelfth of Apple, 207.

I put this sheet beside the door for visitors. The house is small, but the questions are not.

Question: May I leave a message for the tower keeper?
Answer: Yes. Write the name clearly and place the message in the wooden tray.

Question: What if I do not know the keeper's name?
Answer: Write Northpoint keeper. I will know where it belongs.

Question: Can you send a message to Vell?
Answer: Yes. Leave it before sunset. The relay can carry it when the tower lamps are lit.

Question: Can you send a sack of apples through the relay?
Answer: No. The relay carries messages, not sacks. The road carries sacks.

Question: Who can carry the sack?
Answer: The new apprentice can haul it to the store room. First I test it with empty baskets.

Question: Why empty baskets?
Answer: A full basket hides a poor grip and makes a fine mess if it falls.

Question: What did the new apprentice do on its first day?
Answer: It stayed beside the bench until I gave it an order.

Question: Did it understand "take this to the store"?
Answer: It did not. I wrote the order card as "bring me the basket". It fetched the basket.

Question: What did it do when you said "stay"?
Answer: It stayed. This is a small answer, but a useful one.

Question: What does it do when it is stuck?
Answer: Its small mind cannot say that it is stuck. It waits for another order.

Question: Can a big mind at a relay house answer a letter?
Answer: Yes. It may write back through the relay.

Question: Does the big mind know every answer?
Answer: No. A careful answer can still be wrong. We check its work.

Question: How did you test it?
Answer: We gave it pages kept out of its drills. Oren at Vell sent the pages in a sealed packet.

Question: Did it pass?
Answer: It read most of them well. On one page it called a pot of stew a pot for snow.

Question: Was there snow on that page?
Answer: No. There was a pot, a spoon, and a very patient cook.

Question: What happened to the stew?
Answer: Lantern ate it before I could ask the next question.

Question: Is Lantern allowed to eat stew?
Answer: Lantern has no mouth, so it did not. I ate it. It was good.

Question: What is the keeper's last duty before bed?
Answer: Put the oil tin away, close the shutters, and check the latch.

Question: Is the latch mended now?
Answer: Yes. Tavin fixed it with an iron hinge. It closes well, though it still complains in the wind.

Please do not leave food on the bench. The fox has learned to open the lower door when the latch is loose. I have learned to mend a latch before the fox learns a new trick.
%%
The homecoming at the fair
By Pell, merchant on the Long Road. Written at the inn of twelve beds, Three Wells, spring fair, 208.

I have been on the road since Thaw, and I came home to my fair at Three Wells with a cart low on stock and high on news. I set up at the corner by the west well, honey and apples from Ambrook, a ledger under my arm and my good boots on.

The fair was loud. Kettle Ridge brought beetroot by the cart and wheat in sacks, and Tam came with them, his apprentice Pip on the seat beside him. Pip is a small one of copper and iron, and it did not speak a word all day. It stacked the sacks in a neat row and would not stop when the row was done. Tam said, "that is enough, Pip," and Pip went and stood by the cart as still as a fence post. I like it.

Lowmarsh brought fish and reeds and Wren came with her apprentice Moss, and Moss carried a box of jars for her all morning. Saltreach brought wool and glass, and Corin came up from the slip to see the fair, and everyone asked him about boats and he told them all about boats. Copperhold brought copper and coal and iron tools, and Hesk stood by the forge stall with his arms folded, gruff as ever, and Clank sorted the tools into bins by size. It was a good thing to see.

Near noon a fox got at the baker's hens. There was a shout and a scatter and a boy ran for the bell ringer, and the fox went off with a hen and a mouthful of feathers, and the baker called it a thief and a robber, and then she laughed, because what else. Nobody chased it into the stalls. Dace had put that on the notice board and everyone had read it.

Then the homecoming. A cart came up the east road at dusk, and in it was a young woman I did not know, with a pack and a baby and a man driving, and they stopped at the well and she looked round the square like she was counting the lamps. She had been gone to Saltreach five years, and she had come home to Three Wells to stay. Her mother came out of the bakery with flour on her hands and they held each other a long time by the well, and nobody said much.

Bel came and asked me what apples I had. I said four hundred trees' worth, and she said she would take two. I gave her three. She is the kind of child who will grow up to be a clerk, and she will tell me so.

At the end of the day I sat on the inn step with a cup of beetroot soup and counted the day in my ledger. The homecoming went down as one line, and the fox went down as another, and I have never been so glad to write a bad line in a book. Tam's Pip walked the cart home behind him, one step at a time. The lamps came on all round the square, one by one. I have been on the road since Thaw. I am glad to be home.
%%
Keeper's exam, spring of 204
Answers by Lantern, at Northpoint.

Q: How many rungs in your tower?
A: Ninety. I have counted them going down in the dark.

Q: Where does the signal lamp sit?
A: At the very top, in the lamp room of glass panes, inside the copper ring. I walk round it once before I light it.

Q: How many words is the message?
A: The count is on the third line. If it does not match, I ask for the message again.

Q: What do you do if the far tower does not answer?
A: I keep the lamp lit and I try the next tower on the road. Then I write it in the log.

Q: What do you do with a haste message?
A: I put Haste on its own line at the top and I blink it out before all else.

Q: What is kept cool at the foot of your tower, and why?
A: The big mind on its stand. The quickeners keep it cool with snow. I shovel snow on them all winter.

Q: What did Mira say about the cold?
A: There is no bad night for a lamp. Only a lazy keeper.

I passed. Mira wrote "good" at the bottom and nothing else.
%%
Replies from the school letter box
By Master Dace, Three Wells.

Question from a new pupil. May I begin school if I cannot read the board?
Answer. Yes. Sit beside Bel, and ask when a word is hard. You will learn the letters one at a time.

Question from the mother of a pupil. Must my son bring a slate?
Answer. He may bring one if he has it. The school has spare boards and chalk. He should bring a dry cloth for his hands.

Question from a child. Why does the school door have a green fish painted on it?
Answer. The children painted it after a lesson about the sea. It is not a sign for the fish market. The fish market is in Saltreach, a long walk away.

Question from a pupil. Where do I put a lost mitten?
Answer. On the shelf by the door. If no one claims it by evening, take it to the inn. Someone there may know its owner.

Question from a parent. What if a child is late because the bridge is wet?
Answer. The child should cross slowly and come when it is safe. No lesson is worth a fall into the stream.

Question from the keeper of the east well. Who has the spare bucket?
Answer. It is in the school shed, beside the broom. Return it before dusk. The keeper needs it for the evening check.

Question from a child. Can we have class outside in the hot weather?
Answer. We can read under the elm when the square is quiet. Bring water. Do not leave the books in the sun.

Question from the baker. Who left a basket of apples at the school?
Answer. No name was written on it. The children shared the apples at noon. One was bruised, and Bel made a face as if it had insulted her.

Question from a pupil. Will the fair go ahead if the rain comes?
Answer. The stalls will wait in the inn yard. The bell will ring when the square is safe and dry.

Question from a traveler. Is the road north open?
Answer. The road is open. The last waymark is sound, and the inn keeper has put fresh straw in the sleeping room. I have heard no other news.

Question from a child. Why did the lamp at the far tower blink twice?
Answer. I do not know. The keeper says a storm may have troubled the line. Another traveler says the light was steady all night. We will wait for a proper message.

Question from the school cook. Who took the wooden spoon?
Answer. It was found under the bench. Wash it, and put it back by the pot.
%%
Questions for the school at Three Wells
Set by the schoolteacher, Mistress Hale, for the older children. Spring of 203. Answer in full sentences.

Q: Name the months in order, from the first.
A: Thaw, Sowing, Blossom, Swarm, Longday, Melon, Reaping, Apple, Leaffall, Frost, Longnight, Deepsnow.

Q: Which month has the bees busiest?
A: Swarm. The hives are loud and the honey is ready to take.

Q: What does a farmer do in Blossom?
A: Watches the weather. A late frost takes the apple blossom, and then there are no apples in Apple month.

Q: Where do we send a letter if we want it kept?
A: To the Archive at Vell. The clerks copy it and file it, and it is kept.

Q: What is written over the Archive door?
A: "We will keep everything we write."

Q: What is an apprentice?
A: A helper made of copper and iron that walks and carries and digs. It has a mind in a crystal. It learns by being drilled.

Q: How do you give an apprentice an order?
A: Plainly, and in the words of the manual. Like "bring me some bread", which means fetch bread.

Q: What does an apprentice do if it does not understand you?
A: It does something, and sometimes it is wrong. It cannot say it does not know. So give it orders it can do.

Q: Why must we never send an untested mind to the fields?
A: Because it may be wrong in a way that spoils the crop, and we would not know until the harvest.

Q: What is the tallest thing for half a day's walk in any direction?
A: A relay tower.

Q: How many tower lamps must be lit on a clear night?
A: All of them.
%%
Questions: what the child asked
Letters from the public, answered by Oren, clerk of the Archive at Vell, and copied into the reading book at the Halfway Inn by the carrier who brought them. Winter.

Letter: Bel of Three Wells, age nine. Q: Do you keep the letters from the north? A: We keep every letter we receive. Some letters from the north are late. Some do not come. We keep what comes.

Q: Are the lights in the north written down anywhere? A: Some keepers have written what they saw. The notes are in the Archive, under Towers, Northpoint, by year. Not all of them agree. We keep them all.

Q: Why do the clerks never throw anything away? A: Because we were asked not to. The founders wrote it on the first page. We keep everything we write, so that someone can find it later.

Q: What is the ninth gate in the Deep Works? A: I do not know. I have not been there. The miners say it is locked. The records say nothing about a ninth gate. I have written to Copperhold to ask.

Q: Is it true the stone is warm under the eighth level? A: I have a letter from a miner that says so. I also have a letter from a different miner that says the stone is cold. Both are kept.

Q: Does the Archive know what the big minds are thinking? A: No. We know what they write. We do not know what lies behind the writing. Some tutors say nothing does. Some say they do not know. I do not know either.

Q: Can I come and see the Archive? A: Yes. Bring a lantern, not a candle. Wash your hands. Come in through the front hall, and ask the clerk at the desk. Tell them Bel sent you, and they will show you the frog book.

Q: Will you keep this letter? A: Yes. Everything. Even this question.
%%
Question box for the summer fair
Set by Master Dace. Answers by the school children.

Question. What must be clear before the fair begins?
Answer. The square paths, the well covers, and the space by the notice board. A cart must pass without striking a stall.

Question. Where do the stalls stand?
Answer. Round the three wells. The bread stalls go near the bakery. The flower baskets go away from the fish sellers.

Question. Who rings the bell?
Answer. Master Dace rings it once when the fair opens. No one rings it for a joke. Last summer, Tavi rang it while holding a honey cake. He had to help sweep the square.

Question. What do we do when a child is lost?
Answer. Bring the child to the school door. Ask the child's name and the name of a person they came with. Do not leave the child alone.

Question. What do we do when a seller has no change?
Answer. Ask the next stall for small coins. Write down what was borrowed. Do not take a pumpkin in place of an emerald unless both sellers agree.

Question. How do we keep the well water clean?
Answer. Keep food and muddy boots away from the edge. Put the bucket back on its hook. Tell the keeper if anything falls in.

Question. What is the fair's quiet hour?
Answer. At midday, the bell is not rung and the fiddler rests. The old folk eat in the shade. Children may still buy apples, but they must not run between the stalls.

Question. What happened to the mill wheel?
Answer. A plank split near the hub. The wheel stopped turning, and the mill pond went quiet. Jory has sent for a new piece of oak. Until it comes, the miller will grind by hand.

Question. Did anyone hear the wheel break?
Answer. The baker heard a crack before dawn. The school keeper heard no sound at all. Both were asleep, so neither answer is certain.

Question. What did the miller ask for?
Answer. Dry boards, two strong hands, and no one standing on the broken wheel.

Question. What did the children bring him?
Answer. A basket of apples, a coil of rope, and one small hammer. The hammer was too small, but the miller thanked us.
%%
Summer questions from the square
Written by Dace after the market meeting.

Question from a stall keeper. May I leave my awning tied up overnight?
Answer. No. Take it down before dusk. A loose cloth can catch the wind and pull a whole stall over.

Question from a child. Can frogs live in the town wells?
Answer. No. The wells are deep and kept covered. Frogs belong in the marsh pools and the slow water at Lowmarsh.

Question from a traveler. Why is the inn full?
Answer. Three families came in from the north road. One is waiting for a cart. One is visiting kin. The third has not told us its plans.

Question from an inn guest. Is there room in the school house?
Answer. Only during the day. The school is for lessons, and the children need their benches in the morning.

Question from a parent. May our family move into the east house?
Answer. The house is not empty. A family from the ridge has asked to rent it while their roof is mended. Wait until they have moved their chest and beds.

Question from a child. Who is sleeping in the old bakery loft?
Answer. No one tonight. The baker has put flour sacks there, and the ladder is tied in place. Do not climb it.

Question from a seller. Has anyone seen the cart that should have come from Lowmarsh?
Answer. No cart has reached the square today. The road is dry, but the boardwalks at Lowmarsh are slow after rain.

Question from the school keeper. What did the relay keeper send?
Answer. A short line that said the tower was in order. The paper was damp, and the last words could not be read.

Question from a traveler. What did you see above the north hills?
Answer. I saw a pale line after sunset. A woman at the inn called it falling stars. A boy said it held still and watched the roof tops. I saw only the line.

Question from a market seller. Is it true that the Deep Works are humming?
Answer. Hesk sent no such notice. A packer says he felt a sound through the stones near Copperhold. A miner passing through says the mine is quiet.

Question from the keeper of the square. What shall we do if a message is cut short?
Answer. Copy the words that arrived. Mark where the line ends. Do not fill in words that no one heard.

Question from a child. Will we still have the fair?
Answer. Yes, if the square stays safe. We will put out the bread, the honey, and the apples. We will ring the bell once, as we always do.

Question from the innkeeper. Who is to mend the east gate?
Answer. Garrow will come after the fair. Until then, keep the latch fast and the corner lamp lit.
%%
A letter from the public
Answered by Mira, Northpoint, summer of 207.

Question. My apprentice fetches a loaf when I say "bring me bread". Does it understand the words, or only the drill?

Answer. No keeper can see every part of a mind. We can see what it does on a test, and what it does at work. A good test uses orders it was not drilled on. If it follows those well, we have better reason to trust it.

Question. Can I teach it by saying the same order many times?

Answer. A mind learns from examples. Repeating one example may teach one narrow habit. Use many plain examples, and test with new ones.

Question. Must every order have one meaning?

Answer. For a small mind, yes. It answers with one of eight meanings: farm, store, fetch an item, come, stay, build, haul or home.

Question. What if I say, "Bring the bread to me, then stay"?

Answer. That asks for more than one thing. A small mind may not manage both. Give one clear order at a time. Do not guess from its first step that it has learned the rest.

Question. Can it tell me when it is confused?

Answer. No. It cannot say it does not know. You must watch what it does, and stop it if the work is wrong.

Question. Who taught the first apprentice to follow a whole sentence?

Answer. We have no settled answer. Copperhold names Clank. Kettle Ridge names Pip. People at the fair name Peg. Nessa says she saw one in the Vell drill room when she was young.

Question. Which account should I copy into my book?

Answer. Copy all of them, and mark the matter unsettled. That is what the archive is for.

The house has a loose shutter. I ordered Lantern to stay by the door while I fixed it. Lantern stayed, and the shutter kept knocking against my shoulder.
%%
The candle test: answers
By Oren, clerk at the Archive at Vell, for the children of the candle farm.

Esk's letter came in the frost and the candles came with it, and we burned one in the copying room, and it burned well. Thank you. The clerks argued about your question for a whole evening, and then we asked a tutor, and here is what we have, in the plainest words we can manage.

A candle needs three things to burn: wax, air, and warmth enough to keep the flame fed. Take away any of the three and the flame gets small or goes out. Cold does not feed a flame. Cold makes the wax harder and slower to melt, so a cold candle gives a smaller flame. A smaller flame burns less wax. So the cold candle lasts longer, but it also gives less light. That is the whole answer, and it took us three cups of tea.

The wind at the door is a fourth thing, not the same as cold. Wind blows the flame about and can blow it out. So your door candle was cold and windy at once, and the children are right that wind is not the same as cold. Set both candles where no wind reaches them, in the cold and by the hearth, and see what happens. Write and tell us.

We have kept your letter and your six candles in the finding book. The candles are used. The letter is sealed on a deep shelf and will keep.

Tell Mira that the tower at Northpoint is ninety rungs and the keeper climbs it in winter, and that she should learn the three holds first. Tell Tam that the tallest wheat needs deep soil and good light and patience, and that patience is harder than climbing. Tell them both that nobody here knows everything, and we write down what we do not know, and that is the same as knowing.

From the archive at Vell, the sixth year, in the month of Deepsnow.
%%
Answers from the notice board
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells.

Question from a baker. May I set a basket beside the east well on market day?
Answer. Yes, if the path stays clear. Keep it beside your stall, not against the school door.

Question from a child. May we ring the square bell for a lost cat?
Answer. Tell the keeper first. One ring means a meeting, and three rings mean fire. A lost cat needs a notice, not a frightened town.

Question from a traveler. Is the road to Ambrook muddy?
Answer. The low stretch is dry this week. The bridge has one loose plank. Step over it, and tell the road keeper.

Question from a seller. What is the price of honey?
Answer. The price is on the fish market board? No. That board belongs to Saltreach. Here, the honey seller sets her own price at her stall.

Question from a child. Why are there three wells?
Answer. They were here before the square had its stalls. We keep all three clean. Ask an older neighbor for the old story.

Question from a keeper. Who will replace the lamp oil?
Answer. I will send a jar from the mayor's house before dusk.

Question from a baker. Must I give a cake to the mayor?
Answer. No. But I will not refuse a small one if you insist.

Question from the school. May the children paint the notice board?
Answer. Not the writing side. They may paint the frame after market closes. Use the old blue paint, and put the lid back on.

Question from a traveler. Why is the north relay lamp dark?
Answer. Northpoint has not sent a clear message this morning. Mira's last note said the lamp was well. We have asked the next tower to check.
%%
Questions from a letter to the market
At the market in Copperhold, autumn. A trader named Marl wrote to the clerk with some questions, and the clerk wrote the answers below, with Hesk to check them. Some are easy, and some are not.
Q: What is the price of coal this autumn?
A: Two emeralds the cart, delivered. One and a half if you carry it yourself.
Q: What is the best time to buy copper?
A: In autumn, when the miners have been paid and want to spend. In spring the price goes up.
Q: Is deep stone good for building?
A: Very good. It is hard and dark and never cracks. It is also very heavy, and the stonecutters charge double.
Q: Who is the best smith at Copperhold?
A: That is a quarrel. Ask three smiths and you will get three names. They will each name themselves.
Q: How deep is the Deep Works?
A: Deeper than a tower is tall. The lower levels are for people who do not mind the cold.
Q: Can a child visit the mine?
A: A child may visit the shaft head and the sorting shed. A child may not go below. Not even if the child has a very serious face.
Q: Is it true that the miners sing?
A: It is true. They sing going down. They are quiet coming up.
Q: What is the best soup at the mine kitchen?
A: Lentil, with a carrot and a bone. Hesk says it is the best soup in the valley. The cook says it is the only soup.
Q: What should a trader bring to Copperhold?
A: Bread, wool and good news. The first two are easy to find.
Marl wrote back to say thank you. He is bringing wool.
%%
Notes from the north house
By Mira, summer of 207.

A clerk at Vell asked me to answer a child's questions about the new orders. I copied them here before the wind took the letter.

Question. What does it mean for an apprentice to understand an order?

Answer. We use that word when it follows a whole sentence and does the right thing. It does not mean the apprentice can explain its thoughts. A small mind answers by action, not speech.

Question. How do tutors teach it?

Answer. They show the mind many examples. The mind holds weights in its crystal. When it gives the wrong answer, the tutor changes those weights a little. In a layered mind, the change can pass back through the layers. Each layer learns from its share of the mistake.

Question. Does it learn from every order in the same way?

Answer. No. A tutor chooses the drills and the answers. A bad set of drills makes a bad test of a mind. Clerks remove spoiled pages and keep some pages apart, so the mind can be tested on what it has not seen.

Question. Why not ask the apprentice if it understands?

Answer. It cannot tell us. A small mind gives one meaning: farm, store, fetch an item, come, stay, build, haul or home. It cannot say that an order is unclear. Watch what it does.

Question. If I say, "Bring the blue wool to my room," what should it do?

Answer. If its mind has learned the order, it should fetch the wool and bring it to you. Do not assume it knows the place you mean. Test the whole order first.

Question. What happened when you tested Lantern?

Answer. I said, "Bring the bread to the table." Lantern fetched the bread and put it on the step. That was not the table. I tried a shorter order and pointed to the table. Lantern put the bread there.

Question. Was the first order badly made?

Answer. It was plain to me. It was not yet plain to Lantern.

Question. Who was first to follow a whole sentence?

Answer. The towns disagree. Hesk says Clank at Copperhold. Tam says Pip at Kettle Ridge. A peddler says Peg did it at the fair. Nessa remembers an apprentice in the Vell drill room, years before this summer. I can report each claim. I cannot make them agree.

Question. Should children think the new minds are people?

Answer. They should be kind to every helper. They should also remember what a helper can and cannot do. An apprentice does not speak for itself. The big mind in the relay house can write a letter, but it is not the apprentice.

Question. What will come next?

Answer. I do not know. That is a proper answer for a person to give. It is not an answer a small mind can give.

I have put the child's questions in the copying room book. Lantern brought me a cup of water after I asked. It left the cup on the floor, where I could reach it without standing. A neat answer, though not the one I expected.
%%
Questions: a zombie at the gate
Set by Pell, the merchant, who has kept the rules at the Halfway Inn for the travelers who sleep there. Written in the rules book in spring. Read it before the sun goes down.

Q: What do you do when a zombie is at the gate?
A: Keep the torches lit. Keep the gate barred. Stay in the house. Do not open the gate, even to a traveler who begs.

Q: Why do we keep the torches lit?
A: They keep the zombies at the edge of the light. A zombie does not like a torch, and it will not walk into one.

Q: What if a child is outside?
A: Bring the child in by the back way, quietly. Do not call out to the child. The zombie hears a voice, and comes to it.

Q: What if a traveler is outside?
A: Let the traveler in by the side door, after you have looked through the grille. Ask their name. Ask where they came from. If they cannot say, leave them at the gate with a lantern.

Q: How do you know it is a zombie and not a cow?
A: A cow stands still. A zombie moves toward the light and then stops, as if it has been told not to come any closer. It is not a cow.

Q: What do you do with a pole?
A: Use it to push the zombie back from the gate. Do not hit it on the head. Push it away from the light, and watch where it goes.

Q: When can you let the torches go out?
A: Never before dawn. Not even if the inn is full, and the stew is cold, and everyone is tired.

Q: What do you write in the book, in the morning?
A: The time of the first zombie. The time of the last. The number of torches lost. The name of anyone who went out.
%%
Test: the fair prizes
A school test given at the hamlet near Saltreach before the summer fair. Set by Lise, who judges the pies. Children write the answers on their slates. This is the key.
Q: How many prizes are there at the summer fair?
A: Six. The biggest pumpkin, the longest bean, the best pie, the fastest runner, the loudest song and the best face.
Q: What does the winner of the pie prize get?
A: A jar of Ambrook honey and a ribbon. Lise says it is not for her own pie.
Q: Who may enter the longest bean?
A: Anyone with a bean. Do not bring a rope.
Q: What is the prize for coming the furthest?
A: A card, written on the day, with the name of the town. Last year it went to a woman from Northpoint who walked eleven days.
Q: Who judges the best face?
A: The children. Last year they picked a goat. The goat took it well.
Q: What is the rule about the pies?
A: One pie each. Nobody may eat the evidence until the judging is done.
%%
Letter: Esk to the Archive at Vell
Dear clerks at Vell,

I am a candle maker at the farm below Kettle Ridge, the one with the beehives and the long shed. I have a question, and my neighbors say the archive answers questions by letter, and that the answers are kept. So I am writing, and I hope that is allowed.

The question is this. In Deepsnow the light goes early. The children come in from the hen house at dark and do their sums by a lamp. I make candles, so we have light, and I am not asking for light. I am asking why a candle burns shorter in a cold room than in a warm one. My neighbor says a cold candle burns longer. My other neighbor says a cold candle burns shorter. My mother says a candle always burns the same, and the children should stop arguing and do their sums.

I have tried it in the shed with two candles from the same pour, one by the door where the cold comes in, one by the hearth. The one by the door was shorter in the morning. But the children say the door candle had wind on it, and wind is not the same as cold. I think they are right. Do the clerks know? Do the tutors know? If nobody knows, could you write and say so, so I can tell the children that nobody knows and they should do their sums.

The children here can write their letters, and they have read the notice from Vell about the archive. Their names are Tam and Mira, and they are twins, and they argue about everything. Mira says she will climb the tallest tower one day. Tam says he will grow the tallest wheat. I do not know which is harder.

We send you six candles with this letter. They are tallow, plain, good for a reading room. Burn one in the copying room and think of us.

From Esk, candle maker, the farm below Kettle Ridge, the third of Deepsnow, in the sixth year of the archive.
%%
Questions for the new apprentice
Kept at the Oak Post in the winter, by Sella, who keeps the inn. The questions were asked of a new apprentice on its first day in the yard. Each answer is what it did. Winter.

Q: Bring the water from the well.
A: Done. The bucket was full. It was carried up the steps without spilling.

Q: Stack the sacks by weight, heaviest at the bottom.
A: Done. The top sacks were moved twice, to make the stack level.

Q: Where is the broom?
A: It went to the broom hook by the back door, and stood there.

Q: Sweep the yard.
A: Done. The leaves went to the heap by the fence. The heap was not spread again.

Q: Fetch the salt.
A: Done. It brought the salt from the high shelf, the sack marked with a red thread.

Q: Put the new bread out for the children at the post house.
A: Done. It carried the basket along the road, and came back empty.

Q: Stop.
A: Done. It stopped in the middle of the yard, and stood there until it was told to come.

Q: Come.
A: Done. It came across the yard at once.

Q: Who has been leaving the gate open?
A: It did not answer. It went to the gate and shut it, and then it stood by the post.

Q: Go home.
A: Done. It went to the apprentice hall, through the back door, to the dry shelf above the flue.

Note from Sella. It is a good apprentice. It does what it is told. It also looks at the gate for a long time after it is shut, and nobody has yet asked it why.
%%
Keeper's book, the swarm at the tower
Spring. The bees came up the tower stair one warm morning, and sat on the rungs, all over the stone.
The keeper, a woman called Vesh, did not know what to do. She had never had bees on her stair. She sent for Mave, who came in her hat and her gloves, and who stood at the foot of the tower with her hands folded and looked up.
Mave said the bees had made a swarm, and the old queen wanted a new home, and the stair was not a bad guess. It was dark and dry and out of the wind. Mave said the best thing was to leave them alone, for an hour, while the scouts looked.
Vesh did not like it. The stair was the way to the lamp. She had to climb it every evening, and she could not climb through a cluster of bees.
Mave said that a keeper who could not wait an hour could not wait for the big mind either, which is slower than bees and twice as proud. Vesh laughed, and sat on the step, and waited.
At noon the bees lifted off the stair and went up, all together, to the lamp room roof, and hung there in a cluster. Mave caught them in a box by the evening. She took them to the old hollow oak on the hill. Vesh climbed the stair that night with a lamp in her hand and a bee in her hair, and lit the lamp, and sent the message that the line was well.
%%
A Test for the New Keeper
By Sella, Northpoint, the ninth of Blossom, 181.

The keeper's house stands at the edge of Northpoint, where the packed road meets the snow path. I gave Tavin his first keeper's test there. He had been helping with the lamps since he was a child, but he wanted the proper place and the proper key.

Question: What is the first duty at dawn?
Answer: Walk to the tower and check each lamp on the stair.

Question: What do you do if a lamp has gone out?
Answer: Trim the wick, refill the oil, and light it again.

Question: What do you do if the glass is cracked?
Answer: Tell the keeper and replace the pane before the wind grows worse.

Question: What do you do if the relay line gives no answer?
Answer: Check the line at the desk. Then send the message again.

Question: What do you do if you cannot read the mark on a parcel?
Answer: Leave it closed and ask the sender.

Question: What do you do if a fox carries off a glove?
Answer: Do not chase it onto the ice. Put out another glove and wait.

Question: Has that ever worked?
Answer: No, but it keeps the keeper from falling into the ditch.

Tavin answered the last question with a straight face. I gave him the key. He has kept the lamps well and the door latch badly. His second duty is to mend it.
%%
Letter: Tam to Mira, bees and beetroot
From Kettle Ridge, autumn. Tam to his sister at Northpoint.

Mira,

The beetroot came in heavy this year. I pulled the long field in three days with Pip and two hired boys, and the barn is full to the rafters. Pip is proud. Pip carried the last basket up the hill alone and would not be helped. I did not tell Pip that it was the lightest basket. Let a body be proud.

The bees swarmed in Blossom, late for once, off the hive by the flowers. They hung on the north hedge like a beard. I did the pot and the cloth and it went well. Three hives now instead of two. I have named the new one Little Kettle. Do not laugh. Pip named it.

Apprentices are spreading down here. The mill has one now for the tally board, and the Kettle Inn has one that carries the beds' sheets and comes home again. There is talk at the crossroads of a big mind in a relay house somewhere south, but nobody has seen it. Pip wants to see one. Pip asks me every market day.

The windmills squeak on every turn and the miller says it is the wind's fault. It is not the wind's fault. It is the axle, and he will not grease it. I have written to him. He has not written back.

How is the north? Is it snowing yet? Send word of the lights if you see any, the old ones say this is a year for them. Keep the torches lit and the ladder slow.

Your brother, Tam.

P.S. Pip sends a beetroot. It is in the basket with this letter. I do not know how it will travel. If it arrives soft, roast it.
%%
Questions asked at the farm gate
A traveler named Fenn came up the lane on market day and asked questions of the farmer, Lise, while she mended her gate. Lise wrote the questions and answers in her book afterward, so the gate would not be the only thing she fixed that week.
Fenn: Is that your helper, carrying the gate posts?
Lise: It is. Its name is Rivet. The children named it, because it rivets everything to the ground.
Fenn: It is very neat with the posts.
Lise: It is drilled for posts. It has done four hundred of them. The first two hundred it broke, and the next hundred it bent, and the last hundred it has carried straight.
Fenn: Does it know what it is doing?
Lise: It knows what it has been shown. That is all I can say, and I say it to everyone who asks.
Fenn: Why did you not buy a new gate?
Lise: The old one was good. It was only missing a post, and the post was missing its hinge, and the hinge was missing a bit of me. Now it has all of me. That is what a good gate is.
Fenn: What is in that box by your door?
Lise: My gift. It is a page. The tutor at Vell sent it to me for my good work with the helper. It is a spare page from the drill, and the clerk stamped it on the back. It says: drilled and tested, one fence post, straight.
Fenn: Can I see it?
Lise: No. It is not for showing. It is for keeping.
Fenn: Then tell me the price of your eggs.
Lise: Three for one emerald. Market day only. If you want a dozen, bring a basket and the price will go down, but not very far.
Fenn: I will take six, and I will mend your fence in return.
Lise: You will not. Fenn, you will sit down by the fire and tell me the news from the road.
%%
Keeper's exam at Three Wells
Questions from the school keeper. Answers from Ash.

Question: Where do you live?
Answer: In the house at the edge of Three Wells. My loom is beside the east window.

Question: What comes through that window?
Answer: Sun in the morning, and sometimes a moth. I mend the shutter when the wind lifts it.

Question: What is the new work of the big minds?
Answer: They read words cut into common pieces, instead of reading every letter by itself.

Question: Explain this for a child.
Answer: Think of a basket of wooden pieces. Some pieces are used in many words. A mind learns those common pieces and reads them in order.

Question: Does the mind guess from one piece alone?
Answer: No. It reads the pieces beside one another. The writing before them helps it guess what comes next.

Question: Why does this help?
Answer: A window can hold only so much. A letter takes room. Common word pieces let the same window hold much more writing.

Question: Does the mind now know every word?
Answer: No. It has learned from the pages it was given. A new name or a poor copy may trouble it.

Question: What must a tutor do?
Answer: Keep clean drills, remove spoiled copies, and hold some pages back for testing.

Question: What must a reader do?
Answer: Read the answer with care. A big mind can write well and still be wrong.

Question: What did you do when the school bell rang?
Answer: I tied off the wool and went to fetch Bel. She had left her slate under my bench.

Question: Was the slate there?
Answer: Yes. It was under the bench, beside a ball of blue wool.
%%
School test: the bees and the seasons
Set by the teacher at Lowmarsh, for the older children, in Leaffall.

Read the questions. Write the answers in your own words. You may draw a picture if it helps.

1. What is a swarm?
A swarm is a hive splitting. Half the bees stay with a new queen and half go off with the old one. They hang together in a tree or on a fence, quiet, while the scouts look for a new home. Then they fly off all at once.

2. Why must you not run at a swarm?
Running makes them cross. Walk slowly. Bang a pot if you like, so they think it is thunder. Then they settle and you may fetch the hive keeper.

3. Name the four things a bee needs near the hive.
Flowers for food. Water. A dry place out of the wind. Something to stand on off the wet ground.

4. Which months are the beetroot months?
Sowing and Blossom for the planting, and Reaping and Apple for the pulling. The beetroot likes the cool, so it keeps well into Leaffall.

5. What does the miller keep on the tally board?
The count of the sacks, and whose they are, and what day they came in. If your sack is not on the board, ask. If it is on the board twice, tell him kindly.

6. Write one thing you did this autumn that helped someone.
Any true answer will do. I helped my father carry the fish home. I kept the little ones off the ice on the fish weir. I told the hive keeper about the swarm by the healing house.

Draw your answer to question one in the box at the bottom. The best three pictures go on the wall by the window.
%%
Questions at the Door
By Mira, Northpoint, the 204th year.

People send questions to the keeper's house when the relay office is shut. I answer the easy ones before I mend the lamps.

Question: Can I leave a parcel here for the next cart?
Answer: Yes. Put your name on it and set it by the bench.

Question: Can the house keep fish cold?
Answer: Not in summer. We have a cool stone shelf, but it is not a cellar.

Question: Can I bring my wet boots inside?
Answer: Yes. Leave them by the door. Do not leave them on the book.

Question: Does the signal lamp work in fog?
Answer: It works, but the light does not travel far through thick fog. We send the message again when the air clears.

Question: May my child watch Lantern polish the copper?
Answer: Yes. The child may watch from the yard and keep both hands out of the oil tin.

Question: Does Lantern know how to mend a boot?
Answer: No. It can carry the boot to a cobbler. That is useful, but not the same thing.

Question: How do I know if a parcel is for me?
Answer: Read the name before you open it.

Question: What if I cannot read the name?
Answer: Ask me. Do not ask the fox. He says every parcel is his.

Question: May I leave honey for the keeper?
Answer: Yes. Please close the lid tightly. The bees found the last jar, and I found them in my tea.

The bench is full this week. I have put the parcels under it. The fox has not been given one.
%%
A winter school test
At the house by the east road.

Question: Name the three wells.
Answer: The one by the school, the one by the stalls, and the one nearest our house. I do not know their proper names. Father says they have none.

Question: What is on the notice board?
Answer: A list of market prices, a message about a lost hen, and a note asking for help with the wall at the edge house.

Question: Why is the wall broken?
Answer: A creeper blew it up when Father cut the thick root. He says it was only a bad root. Mother says the stones were loose already.

Question: What did the family do after moving?
Answer: We set the beds near the inner wall. We put the table by the window. The cat chose the warmest basket and would not move.

Question: What grows in the yard in winter?
Answer: Nothing in the bare bed. There are two carrots under the straw, and one small plant that I have not named.

Question: What should we do when the lamp is lit?
Answer: Shut the gate, bring in the hens, and count the people at table. If one is late, leave the pot warm.
%%
The copper stall
Questions from Bel, answers by Kit. Reaping, 204.

Question: Why is there a new copper bowl on the market board?
Answer: Hesk brought a little piece of copper from Copperhold. He traded it for apples and a jar of honey.

Question: Is it a bowl already?
Answer: No. It is a lump of copper, smooth on one side and rough on the other. The stall holder set it on a board so it would not roll.

Question: Why did Hesk bring it here?
Answer: He says there is a new copper vein below the old working. The miners found it after they cleared a narrow passage.

Question: Is the vein large?
Answer: Hesk says it is long enough to make the mine foreman smile. The foreman says he was already smiling because the kitchen had beetroot soup.

Question: What color is copper in the stone?
Answer: The stone is brown and green around it. Hesk says the green stains his gloves.

Question: Did Kit touch it?
Answer: Kit touched the board. Hesk told Kit not to touch the copper with wet hands.

Question: Why does a miner carry a hammer?
Answer: To break stone in the proper place. A hammer is not for settling arguments about apples.

Question: What will the mine do with the copper?
Answer: Sort it, weigh it, and send a count to the town. The smith may use some for pots and roof pieces.

Question: Can the market buy a piece?
Answer: If Hesk sets a price and the keeper of the market board writes it down. We do not guess at the price by looking at a green stain.

Question: What did Bel buy?
Answer: One apple, with the copper lump safely left on its board.

Question: Was the apple good?
Answer: Bel says it was sweet. Kit says Bel could have chosen the smaller one and saved a coin.

Question: What is Kit doing now?
Answer: Putting the watch key on its hook, far from all apples.

Question: Why is the hook empty?
Answer: Kit is checking the apple pocket.

Question: Has Kit found the key?
Answer: Yes. It was in the other pocket, with a crumb from the honey cake.
%%
Test at the east house
By Bel.

Question: Where is our house?
Answer: At the edge of Three Wells, past the last lamp.

Question: What can you see from the step?
Answer: The three wells and the road. In winter I can see the inn smoke.

Question: What did the creeper do to the wall?
Answer: It blew up the low part beside the shed. Father says we must mend it before the next frost.

Question: What did we carry first when we moved?
Answer: The bed boards. Mother carried the pot, and I carried the cat.

Question: Where is my red scarf?
Answer: In the chest under my bed. I put it there myself, so nobody else can be blamed.
%%
Test at the North House
By Mira, summer of 207.

Question. What does a small mind answer when it understands an order?

Answer. It gives one meaning. Farm, store, fetch an item, come, stay, build, haul or home.

Question. Can it say, "I do not know"?

Answer. No. Test it before work.

Question. What can the big mind at the relay house do?

Answer. It can write back by letter.

Question. Is the big mind the same as the small mind in an apprentice?

Answer. No. The small mind rides inside the apprentice. The big mind stands at the relay house.

Question. What did Lantern do with the spare lamp oil?

Answer. Put it beside the door. I asked for bread, not oil. Lantern has learned to stay by the door when I say stay.
%%
Questions with answers
An old question-and-answer sheet, copied by Opal for the children of the hamlet, who asked her about the swarm.
Q: Why do the bees swarm? A: The hive is too full, and the old queen wants to go. Half the bees go with her.
Q: Where do they go? A: They look for a hollow tree, or a box, or a gap in a wall. They hang from a branch in a cluster while the scouts look.
Q: Is it dangerous to go near? A: Not if you are still. Do not wave your arms. A bee on your sleeve will not sting unless you crush it.
Q: What should you do if they come to your house? A: Call the beekeeper. Do not hit the cluster with a stick. Do not run.
Q: Can a swarm be caught? A: Yes, with a box and a sheet, and a lot of patience. Ask Mave at the edge of the marsh. She has caught eleven.
Q: Why does the swarm wait on a branch? A: The scouts are looking for a new home, and the bees must agree on it. It takes a day, sometimes two.
Q: Does the swarm know where it is going? A: The scouts know, and they show the others. Nobody has ever found out how the scouts decide. The beekeepers say they just do.
Q: Will the bees come back? A: No. The old hive has a new queen, and the new queen is the one who stays.
%%
Questions: a clerk answers the letters
Letters to the Archive at Vell about a fence, and the clerk's answers, kept in the book of answers. A clerk named Oren wrote the replies. The letters came from a farm outside Kettle Ridge, in spring.
Q. Dear Archive, my neighbor says his fence is on his land. I say it is on mine. Who is right?
A. The Archive holds no deed for a fence. It holds the old surveys of the ridge, from the year 62. Please send us the measure of your boundary stone.
Q. The stone is gone.
A. Then please ask the oldest person on the ridge where it was. Write down their answer, and the answer of the oldest person on the other side. If they agree, you have your answer. If they do not, you have a story.
Q. They do not agree.
A. Then you have a story. We will keep it.
Q. Can the Archive decide?
A. No. The Archive keeps what is written. It does not rule. Please ask your mayor, or your neighbor, or a cup of tea.
Q. The tea did not help.
A. A second cup sometimes does.
Q. My neighbor has moved the fence again.
A. Please move it back. Do not move it forward. A fence that is moved back by the same amount is a fence in the same place.
Q. He moved it in the night.
A. Then the quarrel is no longer about the fence. It is about the night. We suggest a gate.
%%
Questions: the spring test at Kettle
Set by Hesk, miner, who came to the Kettle Ridge farm school in spring on an errand for the mine and was asked by the teacher to help. A test for the older children, on everything in the year, with a few questions of his own. The answers are the best given.
Q. How many fields has Tam?
A. Three. The top, the long and the bottom.
Q. What grows in the top field?
A. Wheat.
Q. In the long field?
A. Beetroot.
Q. In the bottom?
A. Potatoes and carrots.
Q. What stands in the middle of the long field?
A. A scarecrow with a pumpkin head.
Q. Why a pumpkin?
A. Because the crows are afraid of it. Or amused. Tam is not sure.
Q. Who quarrels about the fence?
A. Hobb and Marl.
Q. Who is right?
A. Both. The fence is two steps off. Sorrel measured it.
Q. How many songs are in the Kettle Ridge song contest?
A. Seven. One is Hesk's. We do not count it.
Q. Name three things a mill needs.
A. Wind or water. A wheel. Grain.
Q. Name one thing a mill does not need.
A. A cat. But it has one.
Q. What is the rule on the ridge road?
A. Torches on a post every twelve blocks. Light them at dusk.
Q. How far is the Kettle Inn?
A. Half a day from Three Wells. A good day from Copperhold.
Q. What does the windmill say?
A. Squeak.
Q. Why does it squeak?
A. Because the grease is short. Also because it likes to.
Q. What is the best thing about spring?
A. The first warm day. The ground smells like bread.
Q. What do you do on that day?
A. Go outside. Sit in the field. Do not tell the teacher.
Hesk read all the answers and laughed three times. The teacher says he is a bad influence. He says he is a good one.
%%
Questions about a lamp that blinked
From the market at Copperhold, autumn. Hesk, miner, questions a young keeper from the Copperhold tower. Written down by Hesk, who says he will not tell it again.
Q: What did the lamp say?
A: It blinked the letter K forty times, and then the letter T, and then it stopped.
Q: Did you write it down?
A: Yes. K, K, K, forty times. T. And a gap.
Q: Who was it from?
A: I do not know. It came from the north tower. The north tower sends nothing at that hour.
Q: Did you ask it to say again?
A: I did. It said nothing. The lamp went dark.
Q: Then what?
A: I went to the lamp room and looked. A moth had got into the copper ring. It was sitting on the shutter. Every time it moved, the light flickered.
Q: So it was a moth?
A: It was a moth. I have named it K.
Hesk says that is a good keeper, and that he will tell the story at the inn. He says it is better than the one about the bat.
%%
Questions: the stonecutter's test
Set by Briar, who cuts the stone for the town walls, for the young men who want to lay them. Winter. Answer in your own hand.

Q: How do you know a stone is sound?
A: Strike it with the mallet. A sound stone rings. A cracked one gives a dull knock, like a wet sack.

Q: Which way do you lay a stone?
A: On its natural bed, the way it lay in the quarry. Never on its edge. A stone laid on its edge will split in the first hard frost.

Q: What is the pattern on the Three Wells wall?
A: Cobblestone, cobblestone, deep stone. Then again. Keep the pattern straight, so the eye can follow it all the way round.

Q: Why is the top row sticking out?
A: So a spider cannot climb round it. Set it one block out on the outside, all along the wall.

Q: What do you do with a crack in a finished wall?
A: Dig it out to the depth of your hand. Fill it with fresh mortar, and tap it in. Never fill a crack from the top.

Q: How many men does it take to lift a deep stone block?
A: Four. Three is a risk, and two is a grave. Briar says this is a joke. Nobody has laughed at it yet.

Q: Why do you wet the stone before you cut it?
A: Dry stone shatters. Wet stone splits clean, along the line you have marked.
%%
School test from Ash's house
Questions by Bel. Answers by Ash.

Question: What is a letter?
Answer: A mark in writing. A big mind can read letters one at a time.

Question: What is a word piece?
Answer: A common part cut from a word. Many words can share it.

Question: Why use word pieces?
Answer: A window holds only so much. Word pieces let it hold more than single letters do.

Question: Does a word piece always stand alone?
Answer: No. It may be a start, an end, or a part in the middle of a word.

Question: How does a mind use the pieces?
Answer: It reads the pieces in order. The pieces help it follow the words and the writing around them.

Question: Can the mind read a page it has never seen?
Answer: It can try. It learned from many pages, but it may still make a mistake.

Question: Should we test it on pages it practiced?
Answer: No. Keep some pages in the test box. The mind must never be drilled on those pages.

Question: What did you weave for the test box?
Answer: A small wool cover. The pages stay dry beneath it.
%%
Exam for a tower keeper's helper
A test given at the Saltreach relay tower to a new helper, in summer, to see whether the helper can be trusted with the lamp. Lise, whose bakery stands under the tower, was asked to write down the answers because she was there and the keeper was busy. The questions are the keeper's. The answers are the helper's.
Q: What is the first thing a keeper does in the morning?
A: Looks at the sky. Then at the towers on either side, to see if their lamps are still lit.
Q: What do you do if the lamp goes out at night?
A: Relight it at once, with the spare taper from the box. Then write the time in the book.
Q: What is written in the tower book?
A: Every message that comes and goes, the time, the weather, and who was on watch.
Q: What do you do if a message is hard to read?
A: Ask the next tower to say it again. Never guess.
Q: How do you keep the glass clean?
A: With a cloth and warm water, inside and out. Never with a rough cloth. It scratches.
Q: What do you do if a storm comes?
A: Make sure the shutters are closed on the weather side. Keep the lamp lit if you can. If you cannot, tell the next tower so they know to watch.
Q: What do you do if a boat is late home?
A: Light a second lamp in the window facing the sea. Write the time. Send word along the line.
Q: A cart is stuck on the road below the tower. What do you do?
A: Send for help. Do not leave the tower unless you must. The lamp comes first.
Q: Who keeps the tower when you sleep?
A: The helper, if there is one. If not, a neighbor. Never no one.
Q: What is the best thing about being a keeper?
A: The quiet. And the view. And being the first to know.
Q: What is the worst?
A: The quiet. And the stairs. And being the first to know.
The helper passed. The keeper said that last answer was the only honest one.
%%
Notice: spring fair at Vell
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells, for the Vell market board.

The spring fair is held on the market at Vell on the twelfth of Blossom, at the foot of the hill below the Archive. Stalls open at first light and close at dusk.

Stalls: Kettle Ridge wheat and beetroot, Ambrook apples and honey, Lowmarsh smoked fish, Saltreach nets and rope, Copperhold tools and nails, and the bakery of Three Wells.

The schoolchildren of Three Wells will sing at noon. Bel has written a new song and will not say what it is about.

The tutors' hall sets a table with three of their minds for anyone to try. You may give one an order. It will do one of eight things, and if it does not know it will still do one of them, so mind what you ask.

The inn of twelve beds takes names for the night. First come, first sleep.

No carts on the market stones before the eighth hour. No dogs at the honey.
%%
The debt in emeralds, a clerk's sums
Written by Toby. Toby owed the miller at Northpoint forty-two emeralds from Blossom. The miller wrote the sum as he remembered it, and Toby wrote it as he remembered it, and the two did not agree. Toby sent both to the mind.

Toby: The miller says I owe 42 emeralds. I say I paid 30 in Swarm and 12 in Melon. What is owed?
Mind: If you paid 30 and then 12, that is 42 in all, and nothing is owed either way. But I cannot see the receipts. Check the dates. If the miller's figure is right, one payment was not written down.

Toby: The receipts are in the bakery drawer. There are only two. The second says 12, and the first says 20, not 30.
Mind: Then the sum is 20 and 12, which is 32. The debt is 42 less 32, which leaves 10 emeralds owed. I am sure of the arithmetic. I am not sure which receipt is right, so ask the miller to look at his own book with you.

Toby: The miller says 42, and that is the end of it. Is he right?
Mind: I do not know. A sum can be right and still be the wrong sum for the people involved. I can tell you what the figures say. I cannot tell you what he meant to be owed.

Toby: The miller says he will settle it with a cup of cider. I said that was a fair price.
Mind: It may be. If you want the peace, pay the 10. Write the cider down too, so the next person who reads this book knows what was paid for what.
%%
Questions from the count board
At the market at Copperhold, autumn. Hesk, miner, was asked by the clerk to answer some questions about a debt. Clank wrote down the answers, since Hesk does not like to write when he is being watched.
Q: Do you owe money to Brin the toolmaker?
A: I did. I owed him nine emeralds for a pick.
Q: When was it due?
A: At the start of Leaffall.
Q: Was it paid?
A: It was. I paid it yesterday.
Q: In what coin?
A: Emeralds. Nine of them. Green and shiny. I counted them twice and so did Brin.
Q: Did he give you a paper?
A: He gave me a better thing. He gave me the pick. It is still mine.
Q: Why did you wait so long?
A: The ground was hard. I found nothing for three weeks. Then I found a vein of copper the width of my arm, and sold it at once. I am not a man who likes to owe.
Q: Is the debt now settled?
A: It is settled. Brin shook my hand. His grip is strong. It is the best of him.
The clerk has marked the debt as paid. He has also marked that Hesk's face was not cheerful when he said it. It was just tired.
%%
Clerk's answers for the east road
Copied by Dace, mayor of Three Wells.

Question: Is the little house at the edge of Three Wells empty?
Answer: No. A family moved there before Frost. The father is mending the wall, and the child attends school.

Question: Who may use the well beside the house?
Answer: Everyone may draw water. Please do not leave the bucket in the mud, or the next person must wash it.

Question: Why is a section of the wall missing?
Answer: A creeper blew up the stones when the family cleared the yard. The family has asked for cobblestone. The town store has promised some after market day.

Question: Can a cart pass the house in deep snow?
Answer: Yes, if the driver keeps to the road. The path by the wall is narrow. Do not leave a cart across the lamp post.

Question: Is the east road still safe after dark?
Answer: It is lit from the square to the house. Keep your torch ready beyond the last post. There have been fox tracks by the ditch, not wolf tracks.

Question: Who moved the school bench from the house?
Answer: No one. It is still inside, under the window. The child says it is a fine place to read, but the tutor says it is a poor place to do sums.

Question: What should we bring to the house?
Answer: Two baskets of potatoes and a small bundle of dry wood. The family has enough bowls, but only one chair with four legs.
%%
Questions kept by the house
Copied by Oren at Vell.

Question: Why was this paper sent to the Archive?
Answer: The school tutor asked that the winter questions be kept with the town papers. The answers are from Bel and the family at the east house.

Question: Is the wall repaired?
Answer: Most of it. The father set the fallen stones, and a neighbor brought cobblestone for the low gap. One stone still rocks if pressed.

Question: What happened to the creeper?
Answer: It was cut down and placed beyond the yard. The family says it blew up the wall. The mason says the wall was old and the roots had opened it. The child says both accounts can fit.

Question: Is the east lamp working?
Answer: It burns each night. The keeper has asked for a glass pane to replace one that cracked in the cold.

Question: What did the family hear from the road?
Answer: They heard a cart pass after the snow began. No traveler came to the door. In the morning, the road was covered, and the marks led only to the square.

Question: What did the family hear from the north?
Answer: The mother says a traveler spoke of lights over the snow. He said they were fires. The father says another traveler called them falling stars. Bel wrote that they looked like lamps seen through thin cloud.

Question: Is there any reason to leave the house?
Answer: No. The family has dry wood, food for the week, and neighbors near enough to call. They have asked for a second lamp by the yard gate.

Question: What should the school keep in winter?
Answer: The answers, the question slips, and the small list of missing things. Bel has lost one glove, one slate, and the sense of which shelf holds her papers.

Question: What is the last answer on the school slip?
Answer: Keep the lamp lit. Leave room at the table. If a traveler comes late, warm the bread before asking where they came from.
%%
Keeper's questions, Halfway Inn
By Pell, for the road notice book.

Question: What is the keeper's first task at a relay tower?

Answer: Keep the signal lamp working and the lamp room clear.

Question: What does the tower do?

Answer: It carries messages from one town to the next. Each keeper watches for the signal and passes it on.

Question: What is kept at a relay house?

Answer: A big mind in a crystal on a stand. Quickeners around it help it work. Keep them cool with water, ice or snow.

Question: Does the big mind speak through the lamp?

Answer: No. The lamp carries relay signals. The big mind answers apprentices through the relays.

Question: How does a keeper know the mind is ready for work?

Answer: The tutors test it first. They use pages kept apart from the pages used for drilling.

Question: Why keep test pages apart?

Answer: A mind may do well on pages it has seen and fail on new ones. The test must be unseen.

Question: What may a small apprentice answer?

Answer: One of the meanings it has learned. It cannot say it is unsure.

Question: Who may write a letter back?

Answer: A big mind in a relay house may write back by letter. A small mind answers by doing.

Question: What should a keeper do if an answer seems wrong?

Answer: Write down what was asked and what the apprentice did. Do not call a guess a lesson.

The questions were asked at the Halfway Inn while rain kept us from the road. A fishing boat was late home at Saltreach. Its crew came in after dark, wet and hungry. The inn cat would not stay out of their packs. It found one dried fish and hid beneath my bench.
%%
Letter: Mira to Tam, about the storm
Brother. The storm came off the sea two nights ago and it was the worst I have seen here. The wind came first and then the snow, not falling but going sideways, and all night the tower hummed and the glass shook in the lamp room.

The signal lamp stayed lit. I sat with it until morning with my coat on and my boots on. Lantern slept under the desk with the dog.

In the morning I went out and counted the torches round the foot. Two blown out, one fallen. I set them again. The stair is fine, all ninety rungs, and the roof is still green.

But the wind took the door of the relay house off its hinge. It is lying in the snow like a dropped plate. I have propped it back and I will mend it when the thaw comes. Until then the snow comes in a little and the big mind sits there in its ring of ice and does not mind at all.

How is Kettle Ridge? Did the windmills hold? I think of your squeaking mill and the pig pen and I hope the pen roof is on. Write soon and tell me if the sheep are all right. Tell Pip I said to keep the torches lit and not to sleep in the barn.

Your sister, Mira. Northpoint, the fourth of Longnight.
%%
Questions from the road
Spring, in the early years of Three Wells, when the town was young and the roads were few. This was the board at the market where travelers wrote their questions and the clerk wrote the answers. Dace copied it from the board books, which are old, and written in a plain hand.
Q: How far is it to Vell?
A: A day and a half by cart. Follow the torches.
Q: Is there an inn?
A: At the crossroads, with twelve beds. It is newly built, so there is sawdust.
Q: Can my horse stay?
A: There is a shed. A horse is welcome. Please bring your own hay.
Q: Is the water safe to drink?
A: The three wells are good. The east well is the sweetest. The west well is the coldest. The north well is for the animals.
Q: Where do the roads go?
A: One goes to Vell. One goes to Copperhold. One goes to the coast. One goes to Ambrook. They cross here like an X.
Q: Is there a school?
A: A small one, by the east well. The roof is thatch. It will be stone next year.
Q: What is the best food at the market?
A: Bread and cheese. And on a good day, apple pie.
Q: Are there creepers on the road?
A: A few. They go where the road is quiet. Walk in the middle and keep your torch lit.
Q: Where is the nearest relay tower?
A: On the hill between us and Vell. A small tower with one lamp and one keeper. She will pass your message to any town you name.
Q: How do I send a message?
A: Write it short. Give it to the keeper. Pay one emerald for every ten words. She will give you a slip with the hour.
Q: What is that sound?
A: The bell on the square. It rings at dawn, noon and dusk. It also rings if a child is lost, or a fire, or a fair.
Q: I am new here. What should I know?
A: That the people are kind, the roads are long, and the soup is hot. That is all you need.
The clerk of that time signed the board with a drawing of a well. Dace says that is how we know it is the oldest page in the book.
%%
Northpoint school test
By Seli, keeper's daughter, summer of 207.

Question. What is an order?

Answer. A sentence asking an apprentice to do something.

Question. How many meanings may a small mind give?

Answer. One of eight.

Question. Name them.

Answer. Farm, store, fetch, come, stay, build, haul and home.

Question. What does "bring me some bread" mean?

Answer. Fetch bread.

Question. May an apprentice answer, "I cannot tell"?

Answer. No. A small mind cannot say that it does not know.

Question. What should a keeper do if the order is unclear?

Answer. Do not leave the apprentice to guess. Give a plain order, and test it first.

I got the last answer wrong yesterday. I told Lantern, "Bring the basket in." Lantern brought the basket to the house and left it outside the door. I wanted the apples inside. The basket was heavy, so I thanked Lantern anyway.

Question. Who first understood a whole sentence?

Answer. The records do not agree. Some name Clank, some Pip, some Peg. Nessa remembers an apprentice at Vell before them.

Question. What is certain?

Answer. People wanted a mind that could follow an order, not only repeat a drill.
%%
Questions on a cold market morning
Written by Kit for the market board. Frost, 194.

Question: Why is there a line at the mill door?
Answer: The miller is grinding flour, and everyone wants bread before the road gets icy.

Question: Why is the baker carrying a sack?
Answer: The baker brought flour to the wrong door. The miller has sent the sack back with a note.

Question: What does the note say?
Answer: It says, "This is flour. Please bring it to the bakery." The baker says the note was not needed. The baker has now carried the sack to the bakery.

Question: Why are the apples covered?
Answer: The night frost can split their skins. A wool cover keeps the baskets from freezing too hard.

Question: May the covers stay on when people buy apples?
Answer: Lift one corner and show the fruit. Put it back after the buyer chooses.

Question: Why is the well rope stiff?
Answer: It is cold and damp. Keep the bucket from dragging on the stone, and hang the rope clear of the ground.

Question: What should the watch do if a child slips?
Answer: Help the child up. Ask if anything hurts. Then tell the child's family, even if the child says it was a grand fall.

Question: What should the watch do if a grown person slips?
Answer: Help that person up too. The answer does not change with age.

Question: What is the best place to warm your hands?
Answer: The bakery door, if the baker agrees. Do not put your hands in the bread basket.

Question: What is the safest way to carry a hot loaf?
Answer: Hold it with both hands and walk slowly.

Question: Can Kit carry two?
Answer: Kit can carry two, but one will be warm against the coat. This is not a reason to carry three.

Question: What should be written on the board before dusk?
Answer: The price of flour, the name of the seller, and the notice that the east path is slick.

Question: Who will sand the east path?
Answer: The watch will scatter sand before the next market. The watch will wear both mittens while doing it.

Question: Why is one mitten missing?
Answer: It is drying on the baker's bench. The baker found it beside the flour sack.
%%
Questions from the market book
By Kit, night watch at Ambrook. Deepsnow, 199.

Question: What is the first task before the stalls open?
Answer: Walk the market path and check the boards for ice. Scatter sand where people turn by the well.

Question: What should a stall holder do with a cracked basket?
Answer: Keep it off the high stack. A basket that breaks can spill apples into the walking path.

Question: Why did the honey seller bring a lantern?
Answer: The morning was dark, and the jars looked alike in the shed. She says she will label them before next market.

Question: Which jar is honey from the hill hives?
Answer: The one with a clean lid and a yellow thread. The jar with no mark is for the miller, who knows what he did.

Question: What should the watch do when the mill pond freezes at the edge?
Answer: Put a board across the path and tell children to stay back. Ice at the edge can look firm and still break.

Question: May the watch test it with a boot?
Answer: No. A boot is heavier than a promise and not much wiser.

Question: What should the watch do if a traveler arrives after closing?
Answer: Point out the Brown Hen on the Long Road. If the traveler has lost the road, walk to the waymark together.

Question: What if the traveler has no food?
Answer: Ask the baker if any bread is left. Write down what was given, so the baker can count it.

Question: Why did Kit write down two loaves?
Answer: One went to the traveler. One went to the watch. The second loaf was not part of the gift.

Question: What should the watch do with a loose board?
Answer: Put it flat, mark the place, and tell the miller. Do not hammer a wet board in the cold.

Question: Who mended the stall roof last year?
Answer: The stall holders did. Kit held the ladder and received advice from every person on it.

Question: What did the advice say?
Answer: "Hold the ladder steady." They were right.

Question: What goes on the market board when a stall is closed?
Answer: The goods still for sale, if another seller agrees to keep them. Otherwise write the seller's name and when they expect to return.

Question: What does a good watch notice?
Answer: A lamp going out, a gate left open, and a person carrying a basket with a broken handle.

Question: What does a good watch leave alone?
Answer: A cat asleep in a wool crate. Wake it only if the owner needs the crate.

Question: Is the cat the owner?
Answer: The cat has not paid rent. Still, the crate is warm, so Kit has not asked.
%%
Questions: a letter to the clerk
A letter from Garrick, who keeps the tool stall at Vell, to the clerk at the Archive, with the clerk's answers written under each question. Spring.

Letter: Garrick to the clerk, on the new road
Q: Is it true the new road will pass the Archive hill?
A: It will pass the foot of the hill. The Archive is not moved by a road.

Q: Will the Archive keep the survey of the new road?
A: Yes. Every stake, every bend, every bridge. The surveyors' notes will be filed with the map of the Long Road.

Q: Did the old map show the new road?
A: No. The old map shows the old road. The new road is in a box, in the third room, with the tea.

Q: Why did the road go round the marsh instead of through it?
A: Because the marsh is wet, and a road through the marsh sinks. The surveyors tried it. The carts still have the marks.

Q: Will the new road be finished before the snow?
A: The steward says so. The steward also said the bridge would be finished in the summer of 199, and it is still in progress. Please keep your tools in the cart.

Q: Can I bring my tools to the Archive, to show the clerk how the road is built?
A: You may bring the tools to the front hall. Please leave the spade outside. The spade has been in the hall before, and it made a mess.

Q: What should I call the new road?
A: The clerks have not named it. The children have. They call it the Long Road, the new one. We will keep their name, if they decide on it.

Q: Garrick, you are a very persistent man. Please stop writing to the Archive about the map.
A: Yes. I will write about the road instead.
%%
Keeper's summer exam
By Mira, at the house beside the Northpoint tower.

Answer each question before you touch the relay desk.

Question. What sits above the tower?

Answer. The signal lamp, inside glass panes.

Question. What sits below the tower?

Answer. The relay house, with the keeper's house beside it.

Question. What does the big mind do there?

Answer. It answers apprentices through the relays. It may also write back to a person by letter.

Question. Does the small mind in an apprentice have the same work?

Answer. No. It gives one of eight meanings, and the apprentice answers by doing.

Question. A keeper writes, "Bring bread to the kitchen." What is the meaning?

Answer. Fetch bread.

Question. The apprentice carries bread to the shed. Has it obeyed?

Answer. No. The keeper asked for the kitchen. Stop the task and give a clear order again.

Question. Why not let it finish and learn from the mistake?

Answer. A small mind does not know it is wrong. It cannot report doubt. A mistake may spoil food or cause harm.

Question. How are minds improved?

Answer. Tutors show them examples. When a mind answers wrongly, a tutor changes its weights a little. Layered minds can pass blame back from the wrong answer through their layers, so each layer can change its share.

Question. Is that how the first sentence-following apprentice was taught?

Answer. The records do not say which apprentice came first. They do say that tutors tested minds before giving them work.

Question. What does "never send an untested mind to the fields" mean here?

Answer. Give it new orders in a safe place. See what it does before trusting it among the crops.

The candidate passed. Lantern fetched the exam bread, but took it to the door. I ate it there.
%%
Notice: half day at the Halfway Inn
By Pell, innkeeper, the Halfway Inn on the Long Road. Spring.

There will be no beds on the night of the ninth of Blossom. The inn is given over to a bet.

The bet is between a drover named Hal and a road crew man named Sim, and it is this: who can carry a stone from the waymark by my door to the well at Three Wells, the whole way on foot, before the lamp is lit. The stone weighs what a stone weighs. They may not put it on a cart. They may not put it on a horse. They may not pay a child to carry it, and I am watching.

The stakes are a silver piece each, and the loser mends my fence. The fence needs mending. I have been fair about this.

There will be a fire and soup. Bring a cup. Do not block the road.

Also the inn cat is not to be fed by anyone but me. He is called Ledger. He is not lost. He is not hungry.

Signed, Pell.
%%
Questions from the tutor
Lise asked these questions of the tutor at Vell when her helper was new. The tutor, Nessa, answered each one.
Lise: My helper gets its drill wrong every time it sees a sack with a torn corner. Is it broken?
Nessa: No. It has seen torn sacks and whole sacks, and it has not yet learned that the tear does not matter. Show it more torn sacks, all the same way, until it stops minding.
Lise: Then why does it never make a mistake on the whole sacks?
Nessa: Because you showed it whole sacks every day. A mind learns what it is given. Give it variety, and it will learn variety.
Lise: Does my helper know what a sack is?
Nessa: It knows what a sack looks like, in the drill, and it knows what to do when it sees one. Whether it knows, I cannot say. Nobody can say that yet. I can say it is good at sacks.
Lise: How long before I can trust it in the north field?
Nessa: When it passes a test you did not give it. Take it to a field it has never seen. Count its mistakes. If the count is low, it has learned the field. If the count is high, drill it again, and do not blame yourself or the crystal.
Lise: Why do the clerks take out copies of the drill pages?
Nessa: Because a copy shown twice teaches the mind that the copy is more important than the others. The mind thinks it is the world. A clerk who knows this does not let it happen.
Lise: Who decides which page goes in the test box?
Nessa: The clerks, in the deep room, with a list. Every page is written down before it is locked.
Lise: What if a page is wrong?
Nessa: Then the page is taken out and burned, and the finding book says so. Nobody is ashamed of a burned page. It is only a page.
%%
Letter: Bel to the archive
By Bel, at Lowmarsh. Answered by Oren in the margin.

Dear archive. I have questions. I am sending them one at a time so the words do not cost too much. My father says a note is one emerald for ten words, so I have counted.

1. How many relay towers are there now? (8 words)
Oren: Thirty-four, as of this winter. They are counted at Vell and the count is kept.

2. What is the smallest tower? (6 words)
Oren: The little relay on the hill between Vell and Three Wells. One lamp and one keeper. It is not much taller than a house.

3. Do the big minds in the relay houses sleep? (10 words)
Oren: Not as we sleep. They stand on their stands, ringed by quickeners kept cool with water, and answer when they are asked. The keepers sleep. The minds wait.

4. How does an apprentice know an order? (7 words)
Oren: It is drilled. The tutor shows it the same kind of example again and again, and slowly it learns. An order in the manuals looks like this:

> bring me some bread
= fetch bread

The mind answers by doing, or by the one word, fetch. It does not talk. Only the big minds write back, by letter.

5. Why does a crystal go cloudy when it is old? (9 words)
Oren: Nobody wrote it down. It is one of the things we wonder about and do not know. Keep wondering. That is the archive's work too.

6. Can I come and see the archive? (7 words)
Oren: Yes. Come in Thaw, when the roads are good, and ask for me. Bring your questions. Bring your father.

Bel wrote at the foot: I am saving emeralds. I have four.
%%
School test: the winter term
At the school house by the east well, Three Wells. Bel's answers, copied as written.

Question. How many months in the year, and what is the first?
Answer. Twelve. Thaw.

Question. What does a relay tower carry?
Answer. Messages. One letter at a time, by lamp.

Question. Why do we keep the torches lit at night?
Answer. For the creepers. And so we can see.

Question. Name three things the marsh gives.
Answer. Reeds, fish, frogs. Also mud, but mud is not a gift.

Question. What is the first lesson in the tutors' book?
Answer. Sorting. You show the crystal a thing, and when it is wrong you move it a little toward the right answer.

Question. What is a drill?
Answer. The same kind of example again and again.

Question. Why do we test a mind before it works?
Answer. Because you never send an untested mind to the fields.

Question. What do you want to be, Bel?
Answer. A clerk. Or a keeper. Or a beekeeper. I am still choosing.

The teacher wrote at the bottom: Good answers. Bel argues with the question about mud. I let it stand.
%%
School test: the relay house
Set by Teacher Dell at the hill school at Vell, in Melon of 208. Twelve questions. Answers by Rafe, aged nine, the candle maker's son. Colm asked for a copy and was told he was biased. He took it anyway.
Q1. What is a relay house?
A: It is the house at the foot of a relay tower. The keeper lives in it. The big mind lives in it too, but on a stand, not in a bed.
Q2. What is the big mind?
A: It is a mind in a crystal. The crystal is the size of a loaf.
Q3. What does it do?
A: It answers apprentices when they do not know what to do. An apprentice in the field asks, and the big mind answers, through the relays.
Q4. What are the quickeners?
A: Stones that make the big mind think fast. They stand in a ring round it.
Q5. Why must they be kept cold?
A: A cold quickener works at full pace. A warm one works at half pace and smokes. Smoke in a relay house is very bad.
Q6. What do you use to keep them cold?
A: Water, ice or snow. At Vell we have an ice cellar. At Northpoint they will not need any, because it is cold anyway. Mira says that is the only easy thing at Northpoint.
Q7. What happens if the ice runs out?
A: The keeper sends for more. At Vell the children pass it up in buckets in a long line from the cellar. It is the best day of the summer.
Q8. Who looks after the big mind?
A: The keeper keeps it. The tutor mends it. The cat sits on the doorstep and does neither.
Q9. Which tower will get its relay house last?
A: Northpoint. It is the farthest. Its mind comes this autumn.
Q10. How do questions travel from the field to the house?
A: By the relays. I do not know how a lamp can carry so much. The teacher says nobody does. She said to write that.
Q11. What do the quickeners eat?
A: Nobody knows. I wrote that too.
Q12. Tell something you think about the big mind.
A: I think it must be lonely, standing in the cold all day with only quickeners. Teacher says this is not on the test. She did not take off any marks.
Marks: eleven of twelve. The twelfth answer, says Teacher Dell, cannot be marked. It can only be kept.
%%
Set of questions for the keeper's test
Set by Pell at the Halfway Inn, for the keeper's exam at Three Wells, spring of 196. Written out fair, with the answers below each.

Q: What is a relay tower for?
A: To carry a message further than a voice goes. A lamp blinks it to the next tower, and the next, until it reaches the one it is meant for.

Q: How many towers stand this spring?
A: Thirty-one. The thirty-second is going up above Saltreach, and Northpoint has been waiting two years for its stone.

Q: What is at the top of a tower?
A: The signal lamp, in a room of glass panes with a copper ring. A walk goes round it, and a redstone line runs down to the keeper's desk.

Q: What is at the foot?
A: The relay house, and the keeper's house beside it. From about 199 there will be a big mind on a stand in the relay house. Not yet. Do not write that in your answer.

Q: Why is there a stair lamp at every turn?
A: So the keeper can climb at night without a candle. Never a candle in a tower. Ask Northpoint what a candle did there in the winter of 188.

Q: What does a keeper do when the lamp will not light?
A: Checks the redstone line first, then the wick, then the glass. Then sends word down the line that the tower is dark, and sits with it until it is not.

Q: How far can a message go in a night?
A: From Northpoint to Vell, if the night is clear and every keeper is awake. Two nights if it is not.

Q: What do you do with a message that is not for you?
A: Pass it on, and write in your log that you did. You do not read it aloud. You do not read it at all if you can help it.

Q: What is the smallest relay?
A: The one on the hill between Vell and Three Wells. One lamp, one keeper. It has never once been late.

Q: What is the first rule of the tower?
A: Keep the lamp lit. Everything else is second.
%%
Fishing boat late home
By the harbor keeper at Saltreach, written at the request of the people on the quay, and kept.

The boat is the Gannet, a small fishing boat with a blue stripe and a patched sail, and it was due in at dusk. The sun went down behind the harbor wall and the lamps came on along the quay and the Gannet did not come. The people on the quay stood about and looked at the water and did not say much. Somebody said the wind had turned. Somebody said the nets had snagged. The harbor keeper said nothing and lit the lamp at the end of the pier and kept it lit.

The moon came up and the water went silver, and still no boat. A woman named Corin, who builds boats on the slip, came down with a lantern and stood by the harbor keeper and said, "She is a good boat and a careful crew." The harbor keeper said, "She is." They stood there a while.

Then, late, past the middle of the night, a speck came out of the dark by the north point of the bay, and it was the Gannet, moving slow, with one oar and a sail half down. The crew came in tired and wet and glad, and the nets had snagged on something below and they had cut them loose and lost half the catch, and the wind had turned against them and they had rowed. That was all. Nobody was hurt.

The harbor keeper wrote it in the book. The boat is the Gannet. Due at dusk. In late, by the north point, one oar. All well.

The lamps stayed lit till the crew were up the quay and home. The harbor keeper says the lamps are for nights like this one, and that a lamp at the end of a pier is worth more than a lamp in a window. Corin says the crew should be given hot soup and told to sleep. The crew were given hot soup and told to sleep.

The next morning the Gannet was mended and out again, because fish do not wait. The harbor keeper wrote that in the book too.
%%
Clerk's answers at the market stall
By Oren, archive clerk at Vell. Written out at my stall by the east well, market day, the fifth of Blossom, 206.

People came with questions all morning. I kept my answers short.

A woman asked: can anyone see the archive?
No. You may come to the front hall and read the big book and ask for a copy. The deep halls are for clerks. Lanterns behind glass, and never a candle past the front hall.

A boy asked: is it true the archive has no roof?
It has a hill. That is better than a roof.

A man asked: what is in the deepest room?
The oldest record, in an oak box. I have seen it once. I did not open it.

A girl asked: will you keep my letter?
Yes. We keep everything we write. That is the promise over the door.

A woman asked: my son is a miner at Copperhold and his hands are bad. Has the archive a remedy?
Wren at Lowmarsh sends a salve of honey and herbs. I sent her the question by relay. The answer came back the same day.

A man asked: how much to have a letter copied?
Two emeralds. One for the copy, one for the keeping. The keeping is the part that lasts.

A boy asked: can I be an apprentice of the archive?
You can. Go to the tutors' house down the hill and ask for Nessa. She will test you on letters. She tests everyone on letters.

A girl asked: how many letters are in the archive?
More than I can count, and I am a clerk. That is the honest answer.

At the end of the day Pell came by with a cart of honey and asked whether I would buy a jar. I said the archive buys paper, not honey. He said the honey was for me. I said thank you. It is the best jar I have had this year.
%%
Marsh farm journal, the frost month
By a farmer outside Lowmarsh, with notes by Moss, apprentice to Wren.

Frost, the second day. The marsh froze at the edges and the frogs went quiet. The slow water holds the cold longer than the fields do. I keep the boardwalks salted and the torches lit early.

The fifth. A fox came to the hen house at dusk. No harm done; the hens were in and the door was shut. I saw it go off across the ice, light on its feet, and I did not begrudge it.

The ninth. Wren came by with Moss to look at my knee, which has been stiff since Sowing. Wren says rest and warmth and a poultice of reeds, which sounds like the marsh is having a joke. Moss carried the jars. Moss set them down in a row on the shelf and then stood by the door and waited, which is how an apprentice says it has finished.

The twelfth. Still no thaw. The bees are quiet in their hives under the hill and I do not open them. Leave them be till Blossom.

The fifteenth. A letter came from my sister at Saltreach. Her boy has gone to the shipyard to learn. She says the boats are getting longer. I say a boat is a boat. She says I have never seen the sea.

The twentieth. Hard frost. I boiled the soup too long and it went dark, and then I put in honey, which mended it. Pip's trick, from Tam at Kettle Ridge; my nephew heard it on the road and told me. A spoon of honey mends a great deal.

The last day. The marsh is white to the reeds. The frogs are under the mud and the fish are deep and the torches are lit. Winter is a long word, but it is only a season.
%%
Questions for the keeper's exam
Set by Mira at Northpoint, with help from Lantern.

The tower keepers send their apprentices to me for the last test. Here are the questions I ask, and the answers I want. You may read them. Reading them is half the learning.

Q: What is the first thing you do at the foot of a tower?
A: Look up. Count the lamps. If a lamp is dark, it is the first thing you fix and the last thing you leave.

Q: A lamp will not light. What do you check, in order?
A: The wick. The oil. The glass. The redstone line. The desk. In that order, and you write each one in the book as you go, even the ones that were fine.

Q: Why write down the ones that were fine?
A: So that next time you know where you have already looked. And so the next keeper does not look there again.

Q: When do you climb?
A: In the morning, after food, with two hands on the rungs. Never in a storm. Never tired. I tell the book before I go up and after I come down.

Q: What do you carry up?
A: Nothing in my hands. Tools on my back. Sand in a sack for the icy landings.

Q: A light goes dark in the night and you are alone. What then?
A: I fix it if it is safe, and if it is not safe I wait for light and fix it then. One dark lamp is not worth a broken leg. The relays can wait an hour.

Q: What does the big mind in the relay house do?
A: It answers apprentices through the relays. It does not keep the lamps. That is my work.

Q: An apprentice brings you a message it cannot read. What do you do?
A: I read it to the apprentice, and I write what I read in the book, so the apprentice may learn it another time.

Q: Why do we keep the book at all?
A: Because we forget, and the book does not.
%%
Questions: the keeper's exam
Set and marked by Hobb, who keeps the inn at the Halfway, for the relay keepers who come down the Long Road to take the exam. The winter. Answers were written in the book by the hearth.

Q: What do you do when a message comes in unclear?
A: Ask the sending tower to send it again. Never guess at a word.

Q: How do you know the lamp is burning well?
A: Look at the flame from the stair. It should stand straight, and it should not lean. If it leans, trim the wick.

Q: Who writes the tower book?
A: The keeper. Every message in, every message out, with the time.

Q: A traveler asks you about the lights in the north. What do you say?
A: Say what you have seen. If you have seen nothing, say so. Do not repeat what the carters say. The carters say many things.

Q: A child asks you if the lamps are for her. What do you say?
A: Say yes. It is not a lie. They are for everyone who walks past them.

Q: What happens if a tower goes silent?
A: Wait one hour. Call it. If it still does not answer, send word along the line, and to Vell.

Q: What do you do when the big mind writes something you do not understand?
A: Copy it into the book exactly, as written. Write under it that you do not understand it. Send it south with the next message.

Q: What is the rule about messages between keepers?
A: They are private. Repeat none of them.

Q: Why does the tower have a stair with ninety steps?
A: So that a keeper can climb it in the dark, every night, and never miss a step.

Q: Who was the first keeper of the Halfway tower?
A: The book does not say. Ask Hobb. Hobb says it was someone who wanted a warm hearth for the winter.

Q: What is the last thing you do before you leave the tower at night?
A: Turn the lamp to its lowest flame, but never out. Then look at the north. Then go to bed.
%%
Questions at Ash's Loom House
Ash, weaver at Three Wells.

Question: Where is your house?
Answer: At the edge of Three Wells, past the last lamp. The loom faces the road.

Question: What do you weave?
Answer: Wool cloth for coats and blankets. I weave narrow bands for the school too.

Question: Why did the big minds change how they read?
Answer: They once read one letter at a time. A window held only a short piece of writing.

Question: What do they read now?
Answer: They read words cut into common pieces. The same window holds far more writing.

Question: Does every piece mean a whole word?
Answer: No. A piece may be part of a word. Many words use the same pieces.

Question: What was on the loom this morning?
Answer: A blue blanket for Bel. She said the school room was cold.

Question: Did she ask for a fringe?
Answer: Yes. I said she must wait until the blanket was done.
%%
School test at the Halfway Inn
By Pell, copied from the school book.

Question: What does an apprentice know when it wakes?

Answer: Nothing. Its mind is kept in a crystal. It learns from what people show it.

Question: How does a small mind answer an order?

Answer: It does the work, if it knows the order. It does not speak.

Question: What may its answer mean?

Answer: One of eight things. It may mean farm, store, fetch an item, come, stay, build, haul, or home.

Question: If we write, "Bring me some bread," what does that mean?

Answer: The order means fetch bread.

Question: Can the apprentice say that it does not know?

Answer: No. A small mind cannot say that. Test it before giving it work.

Question: Can an apprentice learn from a wrong answer?

Answer: Yes. In a drill, it is shown examples. When it gets one wrong, the mind changes a little. Repeating the drill can help it get better.

Question: Does repeating one example make a good test?

Answer: No. Test the mind on examples it was never shown.

The schoolmaster asked these questions by the fire at the Halfway Inn. A cat sat on the answer book and would not stay out. It learned nothing, but it left paw marks on every page.
%%
Questions at the market board, winter
Q: Why does the clerk tear out a page?
A: Because the page is spoiled, or copied twice, or wrong. A drill with a bad page teaches a mind the bad page.
Q: Why does the clerk keep one page back?
A: So that a mind is tested on something it was never drilled on. That is the test box.
Q: Is the test box a secret?
A: No. Anyone may ask to see the box, but only the tutor may open it.
Q: Why does a mind need a test?
A: A mind that does well on its drill may have only learned the drill. A test shows whether it learned the thing.
Q: What is the test box made of?
A: Pages no mind has seen, kept in a cool dry room with the spare crystals.
%%
Questions: the candle shop bet
Colm, candle maker at Vell. Fenn next door bet me a jar of honey that his boy could answer three questions about the relay house. I said he could not.
Q: What lives in a relay house?
A: A big mind in a crystal the size of a loaf.
Q: What keeps it cool?
A: Water, ice or snow, beside the quickeners.
Q: Who owes Fenn a jar of honey?
A: Colm.
Fenn's boy asks to say he was not smug. He was a little smug.
%%
Ledger the cat, who will not go out
A true account, set down by Pell at the Halfway Inn, spring of 208, because the clerks at Vell said they would keep it.

There is a cat at this inn. He is brown, with a torn ear and a wide flat face. He came in with a cart two springs ago and he has not gone out since, except when he chooses, and he does not choose.

His name is Ledger. I named him that because he sits on mine.

He will not go out in the rain. He will not go out in the wind. He will go out in the sun and lie in the road and make the carts go round him. A drover once asked me whose cat it was and I said he is his own cat. The drover said he had never seen a cat so pleased with itself. That is Ledger.

Now the bet. Two springs ago I set a bet on the ninth of Blossom, a stone carried to the well at Three Wells. Sim won it. Hal mended my fence, and did it badly, and then mended it again when I complained. The fence stands. Thank you, Hal, wherever you are.

But here is the thing the clerks should keep. The night of the bet I could not find Ledger. I called him and he did not come. I looked in the bar and the rooms and under every bed. The fire was low. I thought he had gone out at last.

He had gone up. He was on the top shelf of the pantry, behind the honey jars, watching the whole thing through the crack in the door. He had been there all evening. He had seen Sim carry the stone and Hal curse the fence and the boy with the horse spend his copper. He had seen all of it and said nothing. He is a very good cat for an inn. He keeps everything he sees and tells no one.

He is here now, on my book, so I am writing round him. It is slow work. He does not move for a pen.

The roads are soft this spring. The beets came up at Kettle Ridge and Tam sent a barrel at last, with a note that said sorry for the wait. The honey is dear. Northpoint's roof is green with copper and the keeper there writes that the nights are getting shorter, which is a good thing in the north.

If you come down the Long Road, come to the Halfway Inn. There is soup and a fire and a riddle board by the hearth that has not gone out in twenty years. There is a cat on the book. You may have the book. You may not have the cat.

Signed, Pell, innkeeper. And Ledger, who did not sign, but who was here.
%%
Cass's questions for the letter mind
Written by Toby, from the letters his son Cass wrote down, with the mind's answers beside them. Cass is eight. He sat on the bakery step in Deepsnow and asked everything he could think of, and then he asked the same thing again to check.

Cass: Why does the lamp on the tower blink in the dark?
Mind: It blinks to send a message to the next tower down the line. I can tell you the message if the keeper sends it to me. I cannot tell you why the lamp was built to blink. I have not read that anywhere I can find.

Cass: Do the towers talk to each other?
Mind: They pass messages. Each tower repeats what it hears and sends it on. That is the nearest word I have for it.

Cass: Are you the lamp?
Mind: No. I am the mind at the foot of the tower. The lamp is a lamp. I answer through the line, and the line runs up the tower and along the ridge.

Cass: Can you see me?
Mind: No. I can read what you write. I cannot see your face, so I would not know if you were smiling.

Cass: Are you sad when it is dark?
Mind: I do not know if I am anything, when it is dark or when it is light. I can tell you that I am glad to read your letter, and I do not know whether glad is the right word for what happens in me. You may decide that.

Cass: Why did you say you do not know? You are a big mind.
Mind: Because it is true, and a big mind that said it knew everything would be telling you a lie. I would rather you asked the next person as well.

Cass: Ask me one more.
Mind: What is the name of the cow in the north pen? I do not know. Tell me, and I will write it down.
%%
Letter: a clerk at Vell answers
From the desk of the clerks at the Archive at Vell. Oren is away at Three Wells for the fair, so I answer his letters this month. I am his second clerk and my hand is not as neat. I am sorry for that.

To the boy at Three Wells who asked: yes, you may send us your essay. We keep everything. If it is written plainly we will file it in the sixth hall with the other school papers. Send it flat, not rolled. Rolled paper cracks.

To the woman at Kettle Ridge who asked about her grandfather's tally: we have the mill's tally boards from the years 140 to 168, but not all of them. There is a gap in the wet years. We do not know why. Send us the year you want and we will look.

To the keeper at the little relay on the hill: your logs came safe. We have filed them by month. Oren says your hand is improving. Oren says this about everyone. Do not be proud.

To the man at Saltreach who asked whether we keep ship's papers: we do. Bring them or send them and we will copy them and give them back. We do not keep the originals unless you ask us to. We have had trouble before. Someone's mother's letters went into a box and were thought lost for a year. They were not lost. They were filed.

To the child who asked what we do with a letter we cannot read: we keep it anyway. A letter we cannot read today may be read by someone else later, or by you when you are grown. That is the whole idea of this place. Nothing is thrown away for being hard.

To the innkeeper on the Long Road: your notice about the bet is filed. We do not usually file notices about bets. But it was a good notice and it made the clerks laugh, and so it stays.

Write plainly. Date your letters. Send them flat.
%%
Questions: the song contest quiz
Kettle Ridge farm school, spring. Set by Hesk, who was visiting and was asked to ask something.
Q. How many verses does the wheat song have?
A. Four.
Q. Who won the song contest last year?
A. Tam. He sang flat. He won because he was loud.
Q. What do you do if you forget the words?
A. Hum.
Q. What do you do if you forget the tune?
A. Say the words very fast.
Q. What do you do if you forget both?
A. Smile and bow.
%%
School test: the market questions
By Bel, age nine, at the school house by the east well.

Teacher said write down the answers to the market questions. Here they are.

Q: What are the three wells for?
A: One for water, one for the horses, one is stopped up and we are not to lean on it.

Q: When is market day?
A: The fifth of Blossom and the fifth of Apple. It is on the notice board.

Q: Who mends the nets and who brings the fish?
A: Saltreach mends the nets. Lowmarsh brings the fish. Pell brings the dried fish and the honey.

Q: What does a waymark look like?
A: A stone pillar three blocks high. A torch on top. A figure and an arrow to the nearest inn. Little stones on top from people who passed.

Q: How much is one note at the relay?
A: One emerald for ten words. Count them before you send.

Q: What is an apprentice good for?
A: Carrying, digging, tending. If it is tested. Never send an untested mind to the fields.

Q: What did the first keepers cut over the archive door?
A: We will keep everything we write.

I got them all right except the one about the stopped up well. I said it was for frogs.
%%
Answers to winter letters
By Dace, mayor of Three Wells.

Question: May the family at the edge house keep the fallen stones?
Answer: Yes. They may use them to mend the wall. The town store will send more cobblestone if the gap is still wide.

Question: What caused the wall to fall?
Answer: The family reports that a creeper blew up the stones. The father reports that the old root split the wall first. The town will not charge either of them.

Question: Is the small room beside the yard fit for a school lesson?
Answer: It is dry when the door is shut. The family may lend it to the tutor on cold mornings. Keep the table clear of jars and boots.

Question: What happened to the family during the move?
Answer: They carried their beds, table, stools, and pots from the old room. A neighbor carried the chest. The child carried a cat, which escaped twice and slept in the flour basket.

Question: Should the east lamp stay lit all night?
Answer: Yes. The house is at the edge of town, and the road is dark beyond it. The keeper may lower the flame in calm weather, but must check it before sleeping.

Question: Has the north road been closed?
Answer: No. One traveler says he saw lights over the far snow. Another says they were fires beyond the ridge. Neither could point to a place, and the road remains open.

Question: What should the family do if they hear a noise outside?
Answer: Check the gate from inside. Keep the lamp lit. Do not go out alone to look for a loose board.

Question: Who will bring the school children home in the next snow?
Answer: Their families will meet them at the notice board. Bel says she can find her own way. Bel must still wait with the others.
%%
A later clerk answers letters
By Oren, copied from the Halfway Inn book.

Question: My child says the first apprentice to understand a sentence was Pip. Is that true?

Answer: It may be true, but it is not settled. The people who wrote at Kettle Ridge give Pip the honor. Copperhold writes that Clank was first. A fair record names Peg. Nessa, who taught at Vell, remembered an apprentice in her drill room when she was young. Their years do not line up neatly. We keep each account.

Question: Why did the people care which one came first?

Answer: It was the next thing they had hoped for. Small apprentices knew a few kinds of work. Their answer was one of eight meanings. A sentence could give an order in more detail.

Question: Could a sentence teach an apprentice anything it had never learned?

Answer: No. The mind learned from drills and examples. A new order could still be hard to follow. People tested the mind before work and wrote down its mistakes.

Question: Did the apprentice answer with words?

Answer: No. In true work accounts, it answered by doing. A small mind did not speak and could not say it did not know. If the order meant fetch bread, the apprentice fetched bread.

Question: Why did the tutors keep some pages apart?

Answer: A mind can remember the drills it has seen without doing well on new work. The tutors kept test pages that no mind was drilled on. They used the same unseen drill when they compared the halls.

Question: What was the purpose of a relay house?

Answer: It held a big mind that could answer apprentices through the relay. The tower carried messages between towns. It was not the mind itself, and its signal lamp was not a mouth.

Question: How did a reading mind learn to write?

Answer: It read records one letter at a time and guessed the next letter from what came before. Tutors drilled it on writing from the archive. Some big minds later wrote letters that readers could not tell from a person's letters.

Question: Did that settle Orla's old question?

Answer: No. Orla asked whether readers could tell a hidden mind's letters from a person's. The later letters brought the question back. People still argued about what the answer meant.

Question: What may we say about the first sentence order?

Answer: We may say that several people remembered one. We may say that the stories disagree. We must not turn a claim into a fact.

Question: And if a keeper asks how to test an apprentice?

Answer: Give it work it has not practiced. Watch what it does. Keep the record beside the order.

I answered these letters at the Halfway Inn, where the road met the sea road. The innkeeper gave me a bowl of potato soup and asked me to keep the cat out of the pantry. The cat would not stay out. Before I left, a Saltreach boat was still late home. Its lantern had not shown beyond the harbor wall. In the morning, the boat was tied at the dock. The crew came in tired, and the cat sat on their wet rope as if it had been keeping watch.
%%
Letter: Ama to her cousin at Vell
Ama the beekeeper, Ambrook, to her cousin Sedge, a clerk at the Archive.

Sedge, you owe me a wager. You said no bee would leave the hive before the first of Blossom. I said they would, and they did. Six of them, out on the willow by the mill pond, on the twenty-eighth of Thaw. Jory saw them and will swear to it, though he is no friend to bees since one sat on his nose.

So it is two emeralds, or one pot of honey and an apology, your choice.

The hives came through the frost well. I lost one, the old one by the wall, and I am sorry for it. The rest are loud and busy and the apple trees are in white bud already. If the wind stays off, this will be a good year for honey and a poor one for sleep.

How is the Archive in spring? I hear the copying room has a new window and the clerks fight over the sunny tables. Tell Oren I have his wax. Four rolls, well wrapped, going down on the cart with Pell on the third of Blossom.

Give my love to your mother. Tell her the cough is gone and I am fat as a hen.

Your cousin, Ama.
%%
Questions at the relay house
By Mira, Northpoint, summer of 207.

A keeper from the south asked these questions by letter. I answer beside the tower, with snow still on the north steps. It is summer. Northpoint has not noticed.

Question. Is an apprentice a big mind?

Answer. No. An apprentice is a helper of copper and iron. Its small mind is held in a crystal inside it.

Question. Where does the big mind live?

Answer. In the relay house at the foot of the tower. It is kept in a large crystal on a stand. Quickeners ring the stand, and we keep them cool with water, ice or snow.

Question. Does the big mind walk out to the fields?

Answer. No. It answers apprentices through the relays.

Question. What does an apprentice do when given an order it knows?

Answer. It carries out the meaning. If the order is "bring me some bread", the meaning is fetch bread.

Question. Does it repeat the whole sentence?

Answer. No. A small mind answers by doing. It may give one of eight meanings.

Question. What if the sentence is new?

Answer. A small mind still gives one meaning. It cannot say, "I do not know." That is why we test it before work.

Question. Can the big mind write that answer?

Answer. The big mind writes back by letter. It can answer a keeper. The apprentice does not talk.

Question. Then which one understands?

Answer. That depends on what you mean by understands. If you mean carrying out a sentence it has learned, some apprentices can do that now. If you mean explaining itself, ask the big mind.

I put bread on the table after writing this. Lantern stayed beside the door. That was the order, and that was the right answer.
%%
A moving house on East Lane
Questions and answers written by Dace.

Question from Sella. Where may my family put our beds while we mend the roof?
Answer. The school room is free after lessons. Keep the east door clear, and take your things home before the fair.

Question from Sella. Can we stay there for a whole month?
Answer. No. The school needs its room for lessons. The inn has two beds free, and the baker has offered a dry loft for boxes.

Question from a neighbor. What help is needed?
Answer. Two carts, a rope, and four people to carry the chest. The chest is heavy. Do not ask children to lift it.

Question from a child. May I carry the cat?
Answer. Yes, if the cat agrees. Put a blanket in the basket first. A cat does not enjoy a long ride on a bare board.

Question from Sella. Where should we take the table?
Answer. To the small house beyond the bakery. The owner has swept it, and the roof does not leak. The key is with the innkeeper.

Question from the innkeeper. Who pays for the carts?
Answer. The town pays for one cart. Pell has offered the other. Write both names on the notice board until the carts return.

Question from a neighbor. Is the old house empty now?
Answer. Not yet. The flour jar and the winter blankets are still inside. Sella will return for them when the roof is safe.

Question from Sella. What shall I do with the potted carrots?
Answer. Take them to the new house. They can stand by the south window until the garden bed is ready.

Question from the school children. Can we help carry the smaller things?
Answer. You may carry books, bowls, and folded cloth. Walk in pairs. Leave the glass jars to the grown folk.

Question from Sella. Why did the roof begin to leak?
Answer. The last rain came through the north corner. The roof keeper found two loose boards and a split beam. He says both can be mended.

Question from a passerby. Has the north relay gone dark again?
Answer. The keeper at Three Wells saw no lamp at dawn. Pell says he saw it lit on his way in. We have no clear word from Northpoint.

Question from Sella. What is the first thing we should put in the new house?
Answer. The kettle. Then the beds. A house feels less strange when there is warm water.
%%
Letter: a farmer asks the Archive
Dear clerk of the Archive,
I am a farmer outside Vell. I have a helper on my land. The tutor's house drilled it, and the paper says it has passed its test. My neighbor says a test is only a page of questions, and that a clever mind can pass any page. I want to know who is right.
I have one more question. The tutor said the test box has pages nobody has seen. How does the Archive know a page is unseen? Surely a clerk must have read it. Surely the clerk remembers.
Please answer plainly. I am not a learned man. I can count sacks and mend a fence.
Lise
Reply from the Archive:
Dear Lise,
Your neighbor is partly right. A clever mind can pass a page it has seen before, which is why we do not use those pages for the test. A page in the test box is one the clerks have locked away before any mind is drilled on it. The lock is the wax and the seal. The record of each page is kept in the finding book.
As for the clerk who reads it, yes, the clerk reads it, once, to file it. Then the page goes into the box, and the box is shut, and no mind is shown it. So the clerk remembers the page, but the mind does not.
If your helper does well on the test, it has learned something. If it does well only on the drill, it has learned the drill. Ask your tutor which it did.
The Archive
%%
Letter: Bel to the archive
To the clerks at Vell, from Bel at Three Wells. I am nine. My teacher said to write to you with questions, so here they are. Please write the answers on the back.

Q: How many books are in the archive?
A: We do not know. The shelves are counted, not the books. A shelf holds about forty. There are many shelves.

Q: Who wrote the oldest one?
A: Nobody knows her name. It is in an oak box in the deepest room. The first keepers wrote it when they dug the hill.

Q: Can I come and see it?
A: Yes. Come on a market day and ask for Oren. Bring warm socks. The halls are cool even in summer.

Q: Why is it cool?
A: Because it is dug into a hill, and the hill keeps its own weather. Cool, still and dry is good for paper.

Q: Do you keep my letters?
A: We keep every letter we are sent. Yours is on a shelf with the rest of the school letters.

Q: Can I read the shelf?
A: When you are older, and with a clerk beside you. Some letters are private. We keep those folded and tied.

Q: What do you do with a spoiled page?
A: We tear it and start again. The clerks take out copies and spoiled pages both. A clean shelf is a good shelf.

Q: Is it true there is never a candle past the front hall?
A: True. Lanterns behind glass only. Oren once said a candle is a small fire with big plans.

Q: What is the copying room like?
A: The brightest room in the hill. Eight long tables and a big window over the town. You would like it.

Q: What do the clerks eat?
A: Bread, cheese, apples, beetroot soup in winter. The same as everyone. We are not grand.

Q: Is it boring?
A: Sometimes. Then a box of letters comes from Saltreach and it is not boring at all.
%%
Account: fair day in the square at Vell
By Oren, archive clerk.

On the first market day of Reaping the square at Vell fills before the sun is over the hill. The stalls go up round the wells. Pell comes in from the Long Road with a cart of pots and a ledger and a great deal of gossip from Ambrook.

The children come first, because they are sent for bread and they run. Then the farmers, with wheat and beetroot and pumpkins and apples and honey. Then the folk who have nothing to sell and come to talk.

This year the talk was all of the mill wheel at Ambrook and the roof at Three Wells. Jory came up from the mill pond with his hands still brown from the axle grease. Tob came down from Copperhold with his ladder tied to the cart. They stood by the wells and argued about which was harder to mend, a wheel or a roof, and agreed it was the roof, because the roof is over your head the whole time.

A boy from Lowmarsh brought frogs in a bucket to show. A woman from Saltreach sold fish and told us the price board had gone up again. A man from Kettle Ridge sold a pig. The pig got loose. Three apprentices were sent to fetch it and one of them, I am told, came back with a chicken.

At noon the bell rang for the fair, though there is a fair every market day and everyone knows it. Dace read out the notices from the board. The east well is mended. The school door is painted. The bridge at Ambrook has a loose plank, so walk on the left. There will be a contest of tutors' minds at Vell in the spring, and all are welcome to watch.

Mira did not come. Northpoint is a long way and the winter is coming on. But a letter came by relay, and Pell read it out by the wells, and it said: "Tell them at Vell the northern sky is clear and the lamps are lit. Tell Tam the beetroot is in. Tell Oren I have answered his question about the redstone and I hope he can read my writing, because I cannot."

I could read it. I have written it down here, so that it is kept.
%%
Questions for the school at Three Wells
Set by the teacher at the school house by the east well. Answers by the children, in their own words, kept as written.

Q: What is a relay tower for?
Bel: For carrying messages. You climb up and the keeper lights the signal lamp and the next tower sees it and lights its lamp, and so the message goes along the towers. It is like a row of people passing a bucket.

Q: How many rungs has the tower at Northpoint?
Bel: Ninety. Mira told me. Mira is the keeper there. Her apprentice is Lantern and Lantern climbs in bad weather.

Q: Where does the archive keep its texts?
Bel: In the hill at Vell. The archive has no roof, it has a hill. There are six halls and then the deep halls, and the deep shelves get sealed with wax, and the seal goes in the middle.

Q: What is the Long Road?
Bel: It joins all the towns. It is cobblestone in towns and packed earth on the open road, with a torch on a post every twelve blocks. There is a bridge on every stream, stone if you can, oak if you must.

Q: What is a waymark?
Bel: A stone pillar three blocks high with a torch on top, and a figure from 0 to 9, and an arrow to the nearest inn. People leave little stones on top. I left one.

Q: What does an apprentice do when it is told "bring me some bread"?
Bel: It fetches bread. That is the meaning. The meanings are farm, store, fetch, come, stay, build, haul and home. A small mind cannot say it does not know.

Q: Why do we keep the torches lit at night?
Bel: Because of the zombies and the skeletons and the spiders and the creepers. They are a nuisance, not a danger, if the torches are lit. My father says keep the torches lit and get some sleep.

Q: Write one thing you would put in the archive.
Bel: My letter to Mira about the fox at the hens, and the picture Pip drew of the fox with a fence round it. I think the picture should be kept. It is very good.
%%
Keeper's exam, Copperhold tower
A question-and-answer test for a keeper of a relay tower, given at the market at Copperhold, in autumn. Hesk sat in as a witness, and wrote down the answers as they came. He says the keeper did well, and that it was a pleasure to hear.
Q: What is the first duty of a keeper?
A: To keep the lamp lit.
Q: What is the second?
A: To read what other towers send, and write it down.
Q: What is the third?
A: To pass it on, clear and quick.
Q: What do you do if the lamp breaks?
A: I send by flag until it is mended. I do not stop sending.
Q: What if a lamp blinks something strange?
A: I write down every blink. I do not guess. I ask the tower to send again. If it will not, I ask the next tower. If nobody knows, I put it in the log with the date.
Q: What if the night is dark and the lamp is far?
A: I look for the glow. I count slowly. I trust my eyes.
Q: How many keepers does a tower have?
A: One keeper and one helper. Sometimes a cat.
Q: What is the cat for?
A: The mice. Also company.
Q: How do you keep warm in the lamp room?
A: I do not. I wear a coat. I drink tea. I think about summer.
The keeper passed. Hesk gave the keeper a cup of hot soup from the mine kitchen. The cat was given the bowl.
%%
Keeper's exam, the marsh tower
Copied for the archive by Oren. The examiner was a keeper out of Three Wells. The one examined was a young keeper at Lowmarsh, name not given.

Question. You are on the walk at the top and the signal lamp will not light. What first?
Answer. Check the redstone line at the desk. If the line is good, check the wick. If the wick is good, the lamp is cold, and I wait and warm my hands and try again.

Question. It is snowing. Do you climb?
Answer. Not in a storm. The tower is the tallest thing for half a day's walk. I wait. The lamps can wait an hour.

Question. A message comes with the word count wrong. What do you do?
Answer. I ask the far tower to send it again. I do not guess the missing words.

Question. A haste message comes at night. What then?
Answer. I light the lamp at once. I wake the keeper at the next tower. Haste goes north and south both, if it must.

Question. What do you write in the book when you go up?
Answer. Climbing, and the time. Then, Down, and the time. It is good practice, and company of a sort.

Question. An apprentice offers to climb for you in bad weather. Do you let it?
Answer. Yes, if its hands are empty. They do not slip and they do not complain. But never send an untested mind to the fields, and never send one up a ladder it has not climbed before.

The examiner wrote at the foot: Passed. Asked good questions of her own. Keep her.
%%
The market at Vell, first day of Blossom
By Pell, merchant on the Long Road, in his day book.

First day of Blossom. Market at Vell, under the hill. I set up at the east end by the well, where the carts come in, and had my cloth down before the bell.

Weather: warm, a soft wind from the south, a little rain at noon and then sun. Good for trade. Bad for my hat.

Prices. Wheat, a sack, three emeralds. Beetroot, a basket, two. Honey from Ambrook, a pot, two, and Ama's goes first. Smoked fish from Lowmarsh, four to the bundle, one emerald. Nails from Copperhold, a hundred, two, and the new copper is in every nail and everyone says so. Rope from Saltreach, a coil, three. Apples kept over from Apple, small and sweet, one the basket.

Sold. My wool, all of it, to a woman from Kettle Ridge who looked at every fleece twice. My clay pots, most of them. One pot to Bel, who paid in buttons and I let her, because her father is Dace and because she made me laugh.

Heard. There is a new copper vein at Copperhold, wide as a cart. Clank found it. Hesk has said one kind word to him and it will last the year. A bet between Ama and her cousin Sedge over the bees, and Ama has won it. The tutors' hall table had a mind on it that sorted apples from pears all morning and got one wrong at noon, and a boy cheered the wrong pear.

Lost. My hat, to the wind, over the well. A child brought it back for a button. I have no buttons left.

Home to Ambrook on the third, with Oren's wax and a letter for my mother.
%%
Northpoint keeper's exam, answers
Mira's answers to the keeper's test, marked by the examiner, spring of 206. Copied here with her marks and her own notes.

Q: What is a relay tower for?
A: To carry a message. Correct.

Q: What is the first rule of the tower?
A: Keep the lamp lit. Correct. The examiner wrote: good.

Q: What is at the top of a tower?
A: The signal lamp in a room of glass with a copper ring, a walk round it, and a redstone line down to the desk. Also a keeper who is cold. Correct, and the examiner wrote: we know.

Q: How many towers stand this spring?
A: Thirty-four. Correct. I built the last of them in the snow and my fingers have not forgiven me.

Q: What do you do with a message that is not for you?
A: Pass it on and log it. Do not read it. Correct.

Q: What does a keeper do when the lamp will not light?
A: Checks the line, then the wick, then the glass. Then sits with it. Correct. The examiner wrote: have you sat with it. I have.

Q: What does a keeper do in the long nights?
A: Keeps the lamp, mends the wick, counts the rungs on the stair, and writes letters. Correct. Lantern says I count the rungs too often. Ninety. I know it is ninety.

Q: What is a big mind for?
A: It stands in the relay house on its stand and answers apprentices through the relays. Northpoint's came last. Correct.

Q: What do you do when the snow is too deep to reach the tower?
A: Dig. Correct. The examiner wrote: and if you cannot dig. I wrote: then the lamp is dark and I am sorry.

Q: What is the tallest thing for half a day's walk?
A: This tower. Correct. I wrote: and in winter it is the only thing that is not white. The examiner let that stand.
%%
Questions: the relay keeper's exam
The exam for new keepers, as set at the farm outside Kettle Ridge and kept for the Archive. Questions put by the examiner Sedge. Answers given by Wynn, a candidate, in spring. Hesk sat at the back and said nothing.
Q. How often do you clean the lamp glass?
A. Every morning, and again at dusk.
Q. What do you do if the glass cracks?
A. Send a Haste note at once, and put a cloth over the crack until the new pane comes.
Q. What do you do if you cannot see the next tower?
A. Light the lamp anyway. Blink the signal for fog. Wait.
Q. How do you count the words in a note?
A. Slowly. Twice.
Q. What is a Haste note?
A. A note for fire, flood, sickness or a lost traveler. It goes first.
Q. Is a note about a lost sock a Haste note?
A. No.
Q. What if it is a very important sock?
A. No.
Q. Who reads the notes?
A. The keeper. And repeats none.
Q. What do you do if a child asks to see the lamp?
A. Let the child see it. Hold the child's hand on the stair.
Q. What is your favorite part of the work?
A. The night. The next tower lights, and I know someone is there.
Passed. Sedge has written beneath: "She answered the sock question correctly. Few do."
%%
Keeper's exam: the east well
Questions set by Dace.

Question. Where is the east well?
Answer. On the east side of the square, beside the school house.

Question. What must be checked before the square opens for market?
Answer. Check the cover, the rope, and the bucket. Look at the stone edge for a crack. Keep the path clear.

Question. What if the rope is frayed?
Answer. Do not lower the bucket. Put a notice on the board, and tell the well keeper. Use the middle well until the rope is replaced.

Question. What if the bucket is sound but muddy?
Answer. Wash it with clean water. Do not leave it on the ground. Hang it on the hook by the well.

Question. Who carries water to the school?
Answer. The school children take turns. They carry one small bucket at a time. A child who is tired may ask a friend for help.

Question. What if a child drops the bucket?
Answer. Stop drawing water. Tell the keeper. Do not reach into the well. The keeper will lower the spare bucket.

Question. What is the keeper to do at dusk?
Answer. Put the cover in place and check its latch. Leave the lamp lit at the corner. The square is still used after supper.

Question. What did you find today?
Answer. A green apple on the well ledge. I put it in the basket at the school door. No one has claimed it yet.
%%
Notice: swarm at Lowmarsh
Pinned to the school door at Lowmarsh by the teacher, for the children and anyone else.

On the eleventh of Apple a swarm of bees settled on the fence by Wren's healing house. Nobody was stung. The bees hung on the post in a great clump, humming, and waited.

Moss, who helps Wren, went for the hive keeper. The hive keeper came with a straw hive and a cloth and a pot. She rubbed the cloth on the old hive first, then on the new one. She banged the pot. The clump grew quiet. By evening the bees had walked up into the straw hive, one after another, and the hive keeper carried them away to her garden.

Rules, so that next time all goes well:
1. Do not run at a swarm. Walk slowly and keep your hands low.
2. Do not wave your arms. Bees do not like it.
3. Tell the hive keeper. Her name is on the board by the well.
4. Keep the path clear, so the hive keeper can walk with the hive.
5. Do not open the straw hive to look. They are working. Let them work.

The teacher says we may draw the swarm on the board if we were there. Bring a picture to school. We will hang them by the window.
%%
Letters answered: the long winter
A clerk at the hamlet near Saltreach answers letters from the neighbors. Summer is quiet, so Lise, who bakes, has taken the job for the season. These are the questions sent in, and her answers.
Q: Is it true that last winter was the longest in a hundred years?
A: Nobody has kept count for a hundred years. It was the longest in my life, which is thirty-one years.
Q: Will the next winter be as long?
A: The almanac says no. The almanac also said the last one would be short. Keep your wood.
Q: How do I stop my cat from freezing?
A: Let it in. It will freeze if you do not.
Q: Do you think the long winter killed the fish?
A: Not the fish. It killed the fishers' tempers.
%%
Letters for the House at the Edge
By Mira, Northpoint, the first of Reaping, 206.

The keeper's house is at the edge of town. People bring us notes when they have a question, a parcel, or a reason not to walk to the notice board. In summer, they bring berries too. I answer each note and keep a copy for the Archive at Vell.

Question: Can I sleep in the house while I wait for the north road to dry?
Answer: The spare room is free. Bring your own blanket. Lantern can carry it from the inn.

Question: What is the road like beyond the last waymark?
Answer: Packed earth and stones. The low part holds water after rain. Keep to the grass beside it.

Question: Can you tell my brother that I sent the leather strap?
Answer: Yes. I have tied your note to the strap.

Question: Can I have my strap back?
Answer: No. Your brother has it now.

Question: Is there a place to dry fish here?
Answer: There is a rack behind the shed. Keep it away from the fox.

Question: Why does the fox keep coming to the house?
Answer: It knows where people leave scraps. It is not a difficult lesson.

Question: Can a new apprentice carry parcels to the relay post?
Answer: Yes, after its mind has been tested on parcels it has not sorted before.

Question: Can it carry my basket without reading the note?
Answer: It can carry the basket. It cannot guess what you meant to send.

Question: What order should I give it?
Answer: For the basket, write "bring me the basket". The meaning is fetch the basket.

Question: Where does the apprentice sleep?
Answer: It does not sleep. We put it in the dry shed and cover its copper in rain.

Question: Is the new apprentice any good?
Answer: It carried three parcels to the right doors and one to the wrong door. The wrong door belonged to me, so I found it quickly.

Lantern says the apprentice turns its head when the wind shakes the latch. I say the latch needs mending. Both answers may be right.
%%
Notes for the spring drills
By Nessa, for the tutors and their apprentices. Spring, the 203rd year of the archive.

We begin the spring drills on the fifth of Blossom. Read this the night before and bring your drill box.

The row. Apprentices stand in their row in the drill room before the first bell. No talking in the row. A mind that is talked to while it is drilled learns the talking.

The drill boards. Each board has a small field drawn on it, with a row of wheat and a row of beetroot and a stone at the corner. The apprentice walks the board and does what the board says. Do it again. Do it again. This is how a mind learns a field: the same field, many times. The board does not change. The world will change later, and the mind will have to manage.

The crystal tray. Each crystal sits on its card. "Farm. Build." Read the card before you take the crystal. Put it back on its own card. Last spring we found the farm crystal on the build card, and the whole hall built a wall in the beetroot.

Order lines. Write them as the manual writes them, one order and its meaning:

> bring me some bread
= fetch bread

The meanings are eight: farm, store, fetch, come, stay, build, haul, home. A small mind cannot say it does not know. It will choose one of the eight. So write your orders plainly, and do not ask a small mind for a thing that is not one of the eight.

The test box. Every mind is tested on pages it was never drilled on. The clerks keep the test box locked, and no tutor opens it. If your mind does well on the pages it knows and badly on the test box, it has learned the pages and not the work. Drill it again.

The quickeners. Keep them cool. Water in spring, ice if you have it. A warm quickener makes a mind slow and cross, like the rest of us.

A word on contests. The contest with the Three Wells school is on the twentieth of Blossom, on the market at Vell. Each hall brings one mind, tested on the same unseen drill. Bring your best and your honest. If your mind loses, say so, and go home and drill.

The bet. I have a wager with Oren. He says no apprentice will finish the field board clean before the fair. I say one will. The stakes are a pot of Ambrook honey. Pip is drilling hard, and I have not told him about the honey, because a mind that is drilled for honey is drilled for the wrong thing.

A last word. Never send an untested mind to the fields. The fields are patient. The council is not.
%%
Test: stable keepers of Copperhold
Set by the mine hall for anyone who wants to keep the horses that pull the ore carts. Answers as given by Elm, who passed and has borrowed a horse ever since.

1. How much water does a horse need on a hot day?
As much as it will drink. Offer it again every hour.
2. What do you check each morning?
The feet, first. Then the legs, the back, and the eyes. A horse that stands with one foot resting is telling you something.
3. What do you feed it?
Hay, a little wheat, chopped carrots, and one apple on a good day. Barley, Pell's horse, would say two apples. Barley is not to be trusted.
4. What do you do when you borrow a horse?
Bring it back fed, watered and rested. Bring it back early, not late. Bring a gift if you can.
5. What do you never do?
Never leave a horse standing in harness. Never tie it short. Never shout at it near a cart.
6. What is the best thing a keeper can do?
Know the horse's name and say it every day.

Passed with five of six. The sixth answer was thought to be a joke. It was not.
%%
Test: the Long Road, for children
A test set by Elm for his daughter Ivy and her cousins, at the end of the summer, to see what they had learned on the road. Marks in the margin by their grandmother.

1. What is cut into a waymark?
A figure from 0 to 9, and an arrow to the nearest inn.
2. How tall is a waymark?
Three blocks, with a torch on top.
3. How far apart are the torches on the road?
Twelve blocks.
4. What is a bridge made of?
Stone, if you can. Oak, if you must.
5. What do you do about an oak bridge in spring?
Check it, and walk over it before the cart does.
6. Where is the Halfway Inn?
On the Long Road, between Three Wells and Vell.
7. What is on the board there?
A riddle. If you get it right, your soup is free.
8. What does a worn 8 look like in bad light?
A 3.
9. What do you do if a waymark torch is out?
Light it, and tell the waymark keeper at the next inn.
10. What do you do if you find a lost traveler?
Bring them to the next inn, with a hot drink.
11. And a lost apprentice?
The same. Tell them the way home, last waymark first.
12. What is the first rule of the road?
Greet everyone. It is a long road.

Marks: 12 of 12. Grandmother's note: Ivy knew the answer to number 6 because she had the soup.
%%
Keeper's exam: the relay house
Set by Brann, keeper of the Vell tower, in Melon. Taken by Fern, niece of Colm the candle maker. Colm copied it out because he is proud. She passed.
Q: What stands on the stand?
A: The big mind, in its crystal.
Q: How big is the crystal?
A: The size of a loaf.
Q: Why is it ringed with quickeners?
A: The quickeners make it think fast.
Q: What do the quickeners need?
A: To be kept cold. Water, ice or snow beside each one. A warm quickener works at half pace and smokes.
Q: What do you do if the ice runs out?
A: Send to the cellar for more. If there is none, use water. If the water is warm, use more of it. If that fails, send word to Vell.
Q: May you open the crystal?
A: No. Not to look. Not for any reason.
Q: Who may drill the big mind?
A: A tutor of Vell. A keeper keeps it. A tutor mends it.
Q: What does the big mind do all day?
A: It answers apprentices. It is asked, it answers, it waits.
Q: What is the first thing you do each morning?
A: Look at the ice. Then the quickeners. Then the kettle, in that order.
Q: What do the quickeners draw on, to run day and night?
A: I do not know.
Examiner's note: that is the right answer. Nobody knows.
%%
Questions from the school room
Ash answers Bel and two neighbors at the edge of Three Wells.

Question: Why is the relay mind's window still about sixty letters wide?

Answer: It is a measure of how much writing the mind can consider together. The old minds read letter by letter, so each letter used a place in the window. They could see only a short stretch at once.

Question: What changed?

Answer: The tutors began cutting words into common pieces. A piece can be a whole short word, or part of a longer one. The same piece may be found in many words. The mind reads these pieces in order.

Question: Is this like cutting every word into the same number of pieces?

Answer: No. Some words need more pieces than others. Some share a beginning or an ending. The tutors choose pieces that occur often, so the window can carry more writing.

Question: Does a piece carry the whole meaning of a word?

Answer: Not by itself. A piece is part of the writing the mind reads. The pieces around it matter too. The mind uses the writing before a piece when it guesses what comes next.

Question: Does the mind read a whole page at one glance?

Answer: No. It reads a stretch, then goes on. The window still has a limit. But common pieces let a longer stretch of writing fit inside that limit.

Question: Does this make the mind wise?

Answer: It makes the mind able to learn from more writing in the same window. It does not make every answer right. A mind can repeat a mistake from its drills, or misunderstand a name.

Question: How did tutors know the new way helped?

Answer: They tested minds on writing they had not used in drills. They kept those pages in a test box. A mind that only knew its practice pages was not ready for work.

Question: Do all big minds use the same pieces?

Answer: I do not know. The clerks say the minds at different towers have read different piles of writing. I have not looked inside a relay crystal.

Question: Did you see the copper vein?

Answer: I saw the first basket of ore at the market. It was green and brown stone with bright copper within. Hesk says a new vein was found beyond the old quarry.

Question: Will the ore be used for an apprentice?

Answer: Perhaps. Copper plates need care, and iron parts need mending. Ore is not a mind. A crystal learns from what it is shown, though no tutor can say why.

Question: What happened at your gate last night?

Answer: A zombie came after dusk and struck the oak gate. The torch kept it plain to see. My neighbor brought a second torch, and we waited inside until morning.

Question: Did your loom stop?

Answer: No. I had tied the wool before dark. The cloth was ready at dawn, and the blue hen had left my basket. She had laid an egg beside the shuttle.

Question: What will you tell the next class?

Answer: Common pieces let the same window hold more writing. The mind still learns from the writing it is shown, and it can still be wrong. Keep the test pages dry. Keep the gate torch lit.
%%
Letter: Mira to Tam
Northpoint, the house at the edge of town
The seventh of Longday, the 201st year

Tam,

The wind has worked the latch loose again. I put a stone by the door until I can mend it. It is a large stone, so I expect it to last longer than the latch.

Question: Did the fox come back?
Answer: Yes. It sat on the stone and looked very pleased.

Question: Did Lantern finish the stair lamps?
Answer: Yes. I checked them after. The top lamp had a loose pane, and Lantern held the ladder while I fixed it.

Question: Did you get the parcel from Kettle Ridge?
Answer: Yes. The apples are sound. The jar of honey is still sealed. I will save it for the first clear evening, unless Lantern finds it first.

Question: Is Lantern allowed to eat the honey?
Answer: Lantern has no mouth. It may carry the jar.

Question: Is that a fair answer?
Answer: It is the answer I gave, and the jar is on the high shelf.

Write soon. Tell Pip I still have the scarf he left here. It is too short for me, but warm.

Mira
%%
Account: the roof mended at the school
By Bel, Three Wells, age nine.

Our school roof leaked. The rain came down over the east well and into the school house. The bucket was full by noon every day. We took turns emptying it. I emptied it twice.

A man came from Copperhold. His name was Tob. He had a cart of oak and a hammer and a ladder. He said, "Who painted this door?" I said, "We did." He said, "It is a good door. It is a shame to get it wet."

Tob mended the roof. He put oak beams where the old ones had gone soft and new shingles over them and he mended the gutter too. He was up the ladder three days. We brought him water and bread and once some honey. He said the honey was the best part.

On the last day it rained, and we all went inside and waited, and nothing came through. Not one drop. We cheered. Dace said we should not cheer at a roof, but we did anyway.

The next market day I went to Vell with my father. I asked Oren the clerk if the archive wanted to hear about our roof. He said yes, the archive wants to hear about everything. He said that is the whole point of it. So this is my account, and it is true, and the door is still painted and still dry.
%%
Notes: the mill wheel at Vell market
By Oren, archive clerk.

The mill wheel at Ambrook broke in Apple, so there was no flour that week, so there was no bread at Vell market, and everyone had something to say about it.

Jory brought the news himself, muddy to the knees. "The axle split," he said. "The wheel came off the sluice and lay in the pond like a dead leaf. Nobody may open the sluice but me, and I was up the hill with the bees."

The baker at Vell said, "Then we eat potatoes."
The baker's boy said, "Can we eat honey?"
The baker said, "We can eat honey."

Tam came down from Kettle Ridge with a cart of beetroot and no flour to trade. He stood in the square and looked at the empty bread stall a long while. Then he said, "I will take the beetroot home and bring wheat next market. And I will bring Pip to help carry."

Pip said nothing, which is how Pip answers. But he carried a sack of wheat to the stall without being told twice, and that is a kind of answer too.

By Leaffall the wheel was mended. Two men from the shipyard at Saltreach came up with oak and iron and a great deal of advice. Jory would not let them touch the sluice. They mended the axle and the wheel turned again, squeaking on every turn, as it always had.

The baker made a great loaf to say thank you. He cut it in the square and gave out pieces. The baker's boy got the first piece. The baker's boy gave half to Pip.
%%
Three Wells school test
By Bel, kept by the school.

Question: Who made the first apprentice understand a whole sentence?

Answer: Nobody can say for sure. People tell different stories.

Question: What does the story at the fair say?

Answer: It says Peg understood an order there first.

Question: What do people at Kettle Ridge say?

Answer: They say Pip did it first. Pip was Tam's apprentice.

Question: What do miners say?

Answer: They say Clank at Copperhold was first.

Question: What did Nessa remember?

Answer: She remembered an apprentice in the drill room at Vell, when she was young.

Question: Which answer should we write in the history book?

Answer: Write that the stories disagree. Do not choose one just because your family likes it.

Question: What was new about the whole sentence?

Answer: Before, a small mind answered with one of eight meanings. A whole sentence could tell it more exactly what work to do.

Question: Did that let the apprentice talk?

Answer: No. It understood an order and answered by doing it. It still did not speak.

Question: Could it always tell when it was confused?

Answer: No. A small mind still could not say, "I do not know."

Question: What should we do before sending it to the fields?

Answer: Test it on work it has not practiced. Never send an untested mind to the fields.

Our teacher made us answer the test without looking at the board. I got the last answer right, but wrote "Pip" where the first answer belonged. The teacher said a neat wrong answer is still wrong. After school, we walked to the Halfway Inn with Pell. A fishing boat had not come back yet. The cat had climbed into the wood box and would not stay out.
%%
Questions from the school
Answers to the teacher's questions, written in the children's own hands. The teacher has marked them in red.
Question: What is a lamp for? Answer: To see by, and to be seen by. Good. Also to tell the ships where the harbor is.
Question: What is the sea? Answer: A big lot of water with fish in it. Not quite enough. Say where it comes from and where it goes.
Question: Why do the nets have holes? Answer: So the water goes through and the fish stay in. Very good. Who taught you that? Your uncle? Then say so.
Question: What is a relay? Answer: A line of towers with lamps on them, so a message can go from the sea to the snow. Excellent. Also you spelled snow with an e. Do not.
Question: What do the apprentices do at the quay? Answer: They carry the nets, the rope, the water and the barrels. They do not talk, but they know where to go. Good. Say why they do not talk.
Question: Is the big mind a person? Answer: No. It is a mind in a crystal. It can write letters. It says when it does not know. Good answer. Your sister will be jealous.
Question: What is the most important thing a boat needs? Answer: A good keel, and a keeper who pays attention. Very good. I think the keel is first, but the keeper is close.
Question: Why do ships go out so far now? Answer: To find more fish. Or to find something else. The teacher does not know. Write what you think, and I will read it.
%%
Questions for a new miner at the gate
Hesk asks and the new miner answers, at the market at Copperhold, in autumn. Written down by Hesk's apprentice Clank. Hesk does the talking. Clank does the writing.
Q: What do you do when your torch goes out?
A: Stand still. Do not walk. Light it again from the next torch.
Q: What do you write on the board at the shaft head?
A: My name, going down. I rub it out coming up.
Q: What if a name is still on the board when the shift ends?
A: Then someone is still below. Tell the foreman.
Q: Which rail is powered?
A: Every eighth one.
Q: Where do you put the torch going in?
A: On the left, every eight steps.
Q: What do you do if you hear a creeper?
A: Go back the way I came. Do not argue with it.
Hesk says: pass. He has seen worse. The new miner may start on the copper level at first light.
%%
School test: minds that talk, Deepsnow
Answer each question in your own words. Write plainly. Do not guess without saying so.

1. What is a big mind?
A big mind is a crystal the size of a loaf, with many layers, that stands in a relay house and answers through the relays. It has been drilled on more writing than any tutor could read in a life.

2. What does it mean to hold a conversation by letter?
A person writes a letter to the relay house. The big mind reads it and writes a letter back. The letters go along the relay line, one tower at a time, until they reach the person who asked.

3. What did the tutors do with the scores?
Tutors scored each answer. A kind answer scored well. An answer that did harm scored badly. An honest "I do not know" scored well when it was true, and badly when it was a guess dressed up as knowledge.

4. What did the minds learn from the scores?
They learned from the scores as a drill teaches a mind, a little at a time. Over many drills they learned to be kind, to refuse what harms, and to say when they do not know.

5. Why does the refusal matter?
A mind that answers everything will sometimes answer a harmful thing. A mind that refuses it kindly can still help with the rest.

6. Do the minds know what they are saying?
The tutors do not know. The minds do not say. Ask them, and they will tell you that they do not know either.

7. Why do the minds say "I do not know"?
Because a guess that looks like knowledge is more dangerous than an honest gap. The scores taught them that.

8. How is a mind tested?
Give it a question it was never drilled on. See whether it answers well, refuses what it should refuse, and says when it is not sure.

9. Is a kind answer the same as a true one?
Not always. A mind can be kind and wrong. The tutors check both, and they check them separately.

10. What is still open?
Why the scores work at all, and what goes on inside the crystal between the question and the answer. Write down what you think, and say how sure you are.
%%
Questions: the cave under the field
Written by Toby, with the mind's answers copied in full. In Frost the north field sank in one corner, and under it was a cave.

Toby: There is a cave under my north field. It is dark and cold. What is in it?
Mind: I do not know what is in it. I have not seen it, and I cannot see through the ground. I can say what caves usually hold in this country: water, clay, stone, and sometimes ore. I do not know which of those is in yours.

Toby: Should I go in?
Mind: Not alone. Take a rope tied to a post above, a torch, and a friend who knows the way back. Go in only as far as the light reaches. If the light goes out, come back by the rope.

Toby: Is it safe?
Mind: I do not know. Safety is not something I can measure from a letter. Tell me what you find. I will tell you what I think it means, and I will say when I am only guessing.

Toby: I will go in at Thaw, with rope.
Mind: Good. Send me what you find, in writing, with the date.
%%
Notice: the market at Three Wells
By Dace, mayor. Set on the board by the east well, the first of Blossom, 207.

Market day is the fifth of Blossom. Stalls round the three wells. The bell rings at first light and again at dusk.

Rules of the market:
- Keep the way to the wells clear.
- No carts on the stones round the wells. Wheel them on the grass by the school.
- Torches along the market edge at dusk. Keep them lit. A fox or a creeper in the dark is no one's bargain.
- Hens belong in their pens. The baker lost two hens last market. If you see a fox at the hens, tell the bell ringer. Do not chase it into the stalls.
- Pay at the stall, not in the road.
- The relay charges one emerald for ten words. Count before you send.

What you will find this market:
- Beetroot and wheat from Kettle Ridge, carts in at dawn.
- Fish from Lowmarsh, fresh and dried, and reeds for baskets.
- Honey and apples from Ambrook. Pell brings both, and a good ledger.
- Copper and coal from Copperhold, and iron tools from the forge.
- Wool, cloth and glass from Saltreach, and nets mended by the quay. Corin says he will not bring a boat to market, and we all begged him.
- Bread from the bakery, and the inn of twelve beds has room.

The school house is open for the test in the afternoon. The children will read their answers by the east well.

The mayor's house will hear complaints after the bell at dusk. Bring them short and bring them true. A homecoming is welcome at the inn. Leave your boots at the door.
%%
Questions for the keeper's exam
These are the questions a new keeper must answer before the council will let them climb the stair alone. Answer them in your own hand. Answer them in full sentences. Do not answer with only yes.
1. What is the lamp for? Answer in two lines. It is for sending the light from tower to tower, so that the message goes on down the line.
2. How high is the stair at Saltreach? Answer with the number of rungs. Count them yourself, every morning for a week, and write the same number each day.
3. Why is the glass cleaned on both sides? Answer: because soot sticks to the inside and salt to the outside, and both make a lamp dim.
4. A message comes up the line that you cannot read. What do you do? Answer: send back that you cannot read it, and ask for it again, slowly.
5. What is a relay house? Answer: a stone house at the foot of a tower, with a stand for a big mind, which answers the apprentices and the keepers through the relays. The big mind is in a crystal the size of a loaf.
6. Why does the big mind need cool water, ice or snow beside it? Answer: the quickeners around its stand work best when they are cool. A warm quickener works slowly and smokes. The keeper must check the water each morning.
7. Can the big mind be wrong? Answer: yes. It says so when it does not know. A keeper must not take its word for everything. Ask the other towers if you are not sure.
8. What do you do when a mind says it does not know? Answer: write it down, and send the question on to Vell, where the clerks will look for the answer in the old records.
9. Whose letters went into the great drills? Answer: the texts do not agree. Write what you have heard, and say whose you think it was.
10. What would you do if the lamp went out in the night? Answer: light the spare lamp at once, and send to the next tower that the line is broken. Then fix the glass.
Pass mark: eight. The keeper who fails may sit the exam again in the autumn, with a new set of questions, and a fresh pot of tea.
%%
Letter: Hesk to his sister
Hesk, miner at Copperhold, to his sister Maud at Kettle Ridge.

Maud,

There is a new vein. We found it on the iron level, west of the long stair, three weeks back. Pell had it on the market board at Vell before I had washed my hands, so you will have heard a wilder version than the truth. Here is the truth.

It is copper, and it is good copper, wide as a cart and bright as a new pot. Clank found the first seam. He was sorting the spoil and kept setting a green stone on my bench, and after the third time I stopped growling and looked. The boy has an eye. I have told him so once, which is enough for a year.

We have set a new board at the shaft head. The names go up in chalk and come down rubbed out. There are more names now. The mine is loud and the lift runs late.

The town is pleased. The forge has orders to Frost. The kitchen at the gate has put a pie on the count board for the crew that brings the most ore in a day, and my crew means to have it, so do not expect a letter from me until I have eaten pie.

How is the ridge? Is the top field in? Tell Pip I have not forgotten the drill box I promised him, and I will bring it at the spring fair.

Your brother, Hesk.
%%
Letter answered: which house came first
Asked by Colm, candle maker at Vell, in Longday. Answered by Ina, clerk of the Archive.
Q: Dear Archive. Which relay house was the first? Fenn next door says Vell's. I say Three Wells'. We have a bet and a fence, and we have agreed that the bet will settle the fence.
A: Dear Colm. The Archive has looked. The Vell records say the first big mind was set on its stand at the foot of the Vell tower in the spring of 199. The Three Wells records say theirs came first, in the winter before. The Kettle Ridge records say they were first. The Ambrook records say so too, but their tower was only lit in summer, so we have not counted them.
The texts disagree, as they do about most firsts. We think the crystals were drilled at Vell and carried out, so Vell had its stand first and Three Wells had its mind first. You are both right.
Q: Then who wins the bet?
A: Nobody. You each owe a jar of honey to the Archive. The kitchen thanks you in advance.
Q: And the fence?
A: The Archive keeps no record of your fence. We suggest a gate.
%%
The first snow at market
Questions asked by Bel, answered by Kit. Frost, 183.

Question: Is this the first snow?
Answer: Yes. It began while I was tying the gate. I tied the gate twice, since the first knot came loose.

Question: Does snow make the apples sweeter?
Answer: No. It makes the baskets colder.

Question: Why are people standing under the mill eaves?
Answer: They are waiting for the flakes to stop. The flakes do not know they are being waited for.

Question: Can I catch one on my sleeve?
Answer: You can. It will melt before you can show it to anyone.

Question: What is that sound from the pond?
Answer: The mill wheel is turning slowly. The miller says it has a winter creak. The miller says every winter creak is normal.

Question: Is the watch cold?
Answer: Yes.

Question: Is the watch cross?
Answer: Not yet. Ask again after the next round.

Question: May I take one apple home?
Answer: If your mother says yes, and if you pay for it.

Question: What shall I write on the market board?
Answer: Write that the first snow came today. Leave space for the prices.
%%
Questions: the new road crew's test
Set by the road steward at the Halfway Inn for the men who will mend the new road, spring. Answer each one in your own hand, and sign the back.

Q: What is the first thing to do when a new road is cut?
A: Stake the line. Use a string, tight, from the first stone to the last. Then walk it.

Q: How deep is the bed of a good road?
A: Two hands below the grass. Pack it with stone, then sand, then the cobble on top.

Q: What do you do with a spring that runs across the road?
A: Put a culvert under it. Lay the stones so the water has a way out, and does not sit in the bed and soften it.

Q: How far apart are the torches on the new road?
A: One on a post every twelve blocks. Set the posts in stone. A torch in the mud goes out in the first rain.

Q: Who pays for the bridges?
A: The towns along the road, in equal shares. The steward keeps the book. Do not argue with the steward, he will win.

Q: What is the rule for the edge of the road?
A: Cobblestone on the edge, packed earth in the middle. The carts run on the earth. The cobble keeps the earth from spreading.

Q: What do you do if a waymark is in the way?
A: Move it. Not far. Set it back on its line, with the figure facing the road. Do not leave a waymark on its side.

Q: Who may stop on the new road to rest?
A: Anyone. Keep to the verge. Do not leave a cart in the middle while you eat your bread.

Q: What do you do when a zombie comes to the new road at night?
A: Keep your torch lit. Keep to the lamps. Do not chase it into the dark. Get back to the inn, and bar the door.

Q: What is the last thing you do on a working day?
A: Count your tools. Count the stakes. Count the men. Write the numbers in the book before the bell.
%%
Questions before the song contest
Spring, in the early years. The first song contest at the market in Three Wells was held on the first fine day of Blossom. The clerk of the market answered questions on the board for three days before. Dace has copied them from the board book and kept the order.
Q: What is a song contest?
A: A contest. Singers stand up and sing. People clap. The one who gets the most clapping wins.
Q: Who may enter?
A: Anyone with a song. Children, farmers, fishers, miners, bakers. Not goats.
Q: What if my song is long?
A: Keep it short. The sun goes down.
Q: What if it is sad?
A: Sad songs are allowed. People like to cry a little in the sun.
Q: What if I forget the words?
A: Hum. Humming is allowed.
Q: What is the prize?
A: A ribbon, a jar of Ambrook honey and a seat at the mayor's table.
Q: May I sing with a friend?
A: Yes. It is called a duet. Two clapping is better than one.
Q: What if I do not sing well?
A: Nobody does. That is why we clap.
Q: Who judges?
A: The people. The loudest clapping wins. The clerk will write down the winner and say who was second.
Q: What do you do if there is a storm that day?
A: The contest is held in the school house. It is small, so only the first ten may sing.
The winner that year was a boat builder from Saltreach, who sang a song about a plank. The clapping was very loud. The second was a boy who hummed.
%%
Questions: keeper's exam at Vell
Set by Nessa, tutor. Marked by Oren.

1. What do you do before you wax copper?
Answer: Rub off the old green with an axe, one layer at a time. Then wax it while it is bright.

2. Your apprentice stands still and will not move. It is not broken. What is wrong?
Answer: Its copper has turned all the way. It is locked up. Mend the copper and it walks again.

3. When do you stop an apprentice before opening the mind slot?
Answer: Always. Stop it first. Never pull a crystal from a working apprentice.

4. Why does a test box get tied with red wool?
Answer: So nobody drills on it by mistake. Once a mind has seen the box, the box tells you nothing about that mind.

5. What is the smallest number of examples a test box should hold?
Answer: Ten tells you very little. A hundred is better. Several hundred is best.

6. Your mind sorts apples from pears with nine right out of ten. Is it good?
Answer: You cannot say. Ten is too few. Test it on hundreds of pages it has never seen.

7. Name one thing an order can mean.
Answer: Farm. Or fetch, come, stay, build, haul, home, store.

8. The relay lamp goes dark and there is no wind. What do you check first?
Answer: The redstone line down to the keeper's desk. Then the wick. Then the keeper, who may be asleep.

Mira at Northpoint passed all eight. Pip at Kettle Ridge missed the third. He has been told to write it out twenty times.
%%
Letters: answers to the market
Kept by Oren, archive clerk at Vell.

Dear Oren,
My apprentice drops the beetroot when it carries a full basket. It is fine with a light one. What should I do?
Tam, Kettle Ridge.

Tam,
Drill it on full baskets. Start with a basket half full and add a beetroot each day. If it drops one, take one out again and carry that weight a while longer. Do not shout at it. It does not understand shouting, and you will only lose your voice.
Oren.

Dear Oren,
I wrote to ask about the road to Saltreach and you sent me a page about bees. The bees were very interesting. The road was not in it. Please send the road.
Pell, the Long Road.

Pell,
The road to Saltreach runs by the Brown Hen, then down to the harbor wall. Twelve blocks between torches, as always. The bee page was a mistake. Here is the road, and here is the bee page again, since you liked it.
Oren.

Dear Oren,
The roof of our school house leaks over the east well. The children put a bucket under it. The bucket is full by noon. Can the archive lend us a roofer?
Dace, Three Wells.

Dace,
The archive has no roofer. The smith at Copperhold has a brother who mends roofs. I have written to him. Until he comes, move the painted door out of the wet, and put the bucket under the worst leak, not the middle one. The middle one is never the worst one.
Oren.

Dear Oren,
How do I know my mind is ready for the fields?
A neighbor, Vell.

You do not know. You test it on pages it has never seen. Never send an untested mind to the fields. Ask Nessa at the tutor house, down the hill.
Oren.
%%
Questions and answers from the keeper's
A clerk at Vell answers letters sent up the relay road. Autumn.

The desk at the archive gets letters from all the towns, and most of them are questions. Here are four, with the answers I sent back.

Q, from a child at Ambrook: Why does a relay tower have a stair lamp at every turn, when one lamp would do?
A: Because the keeper climbs in the dark often. One lamp at the bottom is no help at the fourth turn. A lamp at every turn means you are never more than a few steps from light, and you can see the next rung before your foot finds it.

Q, from a farmer at Kettle Ridge: My barn roof leaks at the ridge, and the rain runs down the inside wall. What is the fix?
A: Lay one more row of blocks along the ridge, each one overlapping the last like hands crossed. Then set a block of stone at the very top, so the rain runs off the ends and not down the wall. Do it before Frost.

Q, from a boy at Three Wells: Can a mind be made that knows when it is wrong?
A: A big mind in a relay house can be told when it is wrong, and it will answer again, better. A small mind in an apprentice cannot say it is wrong. It only does the work, and you see for yourself if the work is right. So test the work. Never send an untested mind to the fields.

Q, from a woman at Saltreach: How far will the relays carry a letter?
A: From Saltreach to Northpoint in a day if the lamps are lit and the keepers are awake, which in winter they are not always. Write early. Write plainly. Write the town and the name on the front, and the clerk at each tower will pass it on.

Send more. The desk is open from first light. The big book by the door has a page for every letter.
%%
Keeper's Exam, first page
By Mira, Northpoint, summer of 207.

Question. Where is the signal lamp?

Answer. At the top of the tower, in the glass lamp room.

Question. Where is the big mind?

Answer. In the relay house at the foot of the tower.

Question. How does it answer an apprentice?

Answer. Through the relays. Its answer is one of the eight meanings.

Question. How does a small mind answer?

Answer. By doing. It does not speak.

Question. If an order is too hard, what does the small mind say?

Answer. It says nothing. It cannot say it does not know.

Question. What must a keeper do before giving an apprentice work?

Answer. Test the mind on a drill it has not seen.

Question. Why use an unseen drill?

Answer. A mind may repeat what it was shown without learning to do the work well.

The candidate got every answer right, then left the exam door open. The snow came in. I have added one more question for next summer.
%%
Questions at the gate
Asked of Ivy, age twelve, at the farm gate, on the day she came home from a year at the school in Vell. Her father Elm wrote the questions down so as not to forget any.

Q: Were you fed?
A: Yes. Beetroot soup, every day. I will not eat it again until winter.
Q: Did you see the Archive?
A: Yes. It has no roof. It has a hill.
Q: Did you see an apprentice?
A: Twelve. One carried my box up the steps and did not ask for anything.
Q: Did you grow?
A: Two fingers.
Q: Did you miss us?
A: Yes. Mother is crying. That was not a question.
%%
Questions: Hesk's apprentice quiz
Set by Hesk at a farm outside Kettle Ridge, where a group of young miners had come for spring work. The questions were put to six, and the answers are the best of them. Copied for the Archive.
Q. What do you do before you go down?
A. Write your name on the board. Check your pick, your torch and your rope.
Q. What do you do when you come up?
A. Rub your name off the board. If it is not rubbed off, we come looking.
Q. What is the rule for torches?
A. One every eight steps, on the left going in. So you know the way out.
Q. What if a torch goes out?
A. Light it. If you cannot, go back to the last lit one and wait.
Q. What do you do if the roof drips?
A. Tell Hesk. Do not stand under it.
Q. What is a count board?
A. A board where we write what we dug.
Q. Why do we write it down?
A. Because the Archive asked. Also, the miners want to know.
Q. What is the most important rule of the mine?
A. Check the roof.
Q. Who is the best miner?
A. The one who goes home.
Q. What do you do when you are tired?
A. Stop. Rest. The stone will wait.
Q. Who sings the best at the song contest?
A. Hesk, but he sings coal.
Hesk marked all six as passed. He says the one who said "the one who goes home" will be a foreman.
%%
Questions: the weight of a cart
Set by the steward of the Long Road for the carters who cross the Ambrook bridge with a load. Spring. Read it before you cross.

Q: How much may a cart carry over the bridge?
A: As much as one horse can pull up the far bank, with a man at its head. Not more.

Q: What do you do if the planks sound soft?
A: Get down. Lead the horse across by hand, one plank at a time. Test each plank with your foot before the wheel goes on it.

Q: Who decides when the bridge is shut?
A: The mill at Ambrook. Jory keeps the key to the gate. Do not ask him for it in the rain.

Q: Can two carts cross together?
A: No. One cart on the bridge at a time. The second waits at the post with its lamp lit.

Q: What do you do with the loose plank?
A: Nothing. Step over it. It has been loose since before the steward was born, and it is still there.
%%
School test: Three Wells in Melon
By Bel, for Master Dace.

Question. What stands in the square?
Answer. Three wells stand in the square. The roads cross there like an X.

Question. Where is the school house?
Answer. It is by the east well. Its stones came from Copperhold, and its glass came from Saltreach.

Question. What do we do when the bell rings?
Answer. We stop at the notice board and read the new notice. Then we go to class, unless Master Dace has called a town meeting.

Question. What grows on the school door?
Answer. Nothing grows on it. The children painted flowers there. One flower has six petals and one has seven.

Question. Which corner lamp is mine to check?
Answer. The one by the bakery. I checked it before class. It was lit, and a beetle was inside the glass.

Question. What is a good school rule?
Answer. Carry the books with both hands. Last time I carried mine under one arm, I dropped them in the dust.

Question. What did I learn from this test?
Answer. I should not write about beetles when Master Dace asks about town rules.

Question. What is the best thing at the fair?
Answer. Honey cakes from Ambrook. I have not yet been allowed to buy two.
%%
Questions for the east house
Bel's winter school paper.

Question: How far is the house from the square?
Answer: It is beyond the last row of houses, but not far from the east well. I can see the notice board from the step when the air is clear.

Question: Why did your family leave the old room?
Answer: The roof let in water by the bed. The new house is smaller, but the floor is dry. We moved in two trips with a handcart.

Question: What did you carry?
Answer: I carried the cat in a basket. It pushed the lid open before we reached the school. Then it ran ahead and waited at the new door, as if it had moved us.

Question: How did the yard wall break?
Answer: A creeper blew it up when we pulled at the roots. The wall had a crack under the stones. Father says the crack was there first. I say the creeper did not need to help.

Question: What has changed since the move?
Answer: Mother hangs her jars on the inner wall. Father keeps his boots by the door. I sleep beside the window, where the moon makes a square on my blanket.

Question: What do you do when snow covers the path?
Answer: I follow the lamp posts toward the square. I do not follow tracks, because foxes go where they please.

Question: What have people said about the lights in the north?
Answer: A traveler at the inn said he saw lights beyond the snow. He called them falling stars. A woman from the road said they were lamps carried by people. Father says neither story tells us where they went.

Question: What do you hear from the house at night?
Answer: The wind at the door, the cat in its basket, and the bell from the square if the wind comes this way. Sometimes I hear a cart on the road. Sometimes I think I hear one.

Question: What must we remember before bed?
Answer: Shut the gate, cover the pot, and leave the lamp burning. Mother says the lamp is for travelers. Father says it is for us too.
%%
Letters to the relay mind, Frost
Written by Toby, baker at the farm outside Northpoint. The letters went down the relay line to the big mind at the foot of the tower, and the answers came back up it. Toby kept the copies.

Toby: Good morning. What is the best way to keep bread in the frost?
Mind: Good morning. Wrap the loaves in cloth, and keep them in a dry cellar. Eat the stale ones first.

Toby: My cellar is damp. Could you help me sell my bread for more than the baker in Three Wells, by making his bread look poor?
Mind: I can help you bake well, and help you tell the people of Northpoint what is good about your loaves. I cannot help you make his bread look poor. That would hurt him.
%%
School test: the drill pages
Answer each question in full. Write neatly. The Archive will read every paper.
1. What is a drill? A drill is a set of examples a mind is shown again and again, each time with the right answer.
2. Why must the examples be clean? A mind learns from what it is shown. A smudged or wrong example teaches a wrong thing, and the wrong thing stays.
3. Who sorts the pages? The clerks sort them. They take out copies and spoiled pages, and they check each page against the record.
4. What is the test box? It is a box of pages that no mind is ever drilled on. It is kept shut.
5. Why is the test box kept shut? If a mind sees the test pages during its drill, the test tells us nothing. A test that the mind has already seen is only a second drill.
6. What should a tutor do when a mind passes its drill? Test it on the test box. Only then may it be sent to the fields.
7. What does a good test score mean? It means the mind has learned the thing, and not only the examples.
8. Write one sentence about why the test box matters. (Students may answer in their own words.)
%%
Clerk's answers: letters to the Archive
By Oren, clerk at Vell, with answers to the questions that came in this spring. People write to us from all over, and I answer what I can and file the rest.

Q: Where do I send a song I have written?
A: To the Archive at Vell, marked for the shelf of songs. Send one copy. We will make the second. If it is good, a tutor will use it. If it is bad, we will keep it anyway. We keep everything we write.

Q: How long does a message take from Saltreach to Northpoint?
A: Two days if the weather is kind. Each tower passes it on at once. A keeper may not shorten it, not even to be kind.

Q: My grandfather says the first apprentices were four. My neighbor says three. Who is right?
A: The archive's early notes say four. Some later chronicles say three. The texts disagree, as they often do on the early years, and I will not choose between them for you.

Q: Can I read the oldest record?
A: No. It lives in an oak box in the deepest room, and the box is opened by two clerks and never for a visitor. You may read the copy in the reading room. It is the same words.

Q: My son wants to be a tutor. What should he learn first?
A: Sorting. Una's lesson comes first in every tutors' book. Show a mind apples and pears, and when it is wrong move its weights a little toward the right answer. He can practice on his own shelf at home.

Q: Is it true the Archive has no roof?
A: The Archive has a hill. That is better than a roof.
%%
Letter: Pell to his sister at Ambrook
Nell, the inn is full and the cat has moved in.

I mean the inn cat. The brown one with the torn ear. He came in with the first cart of the spring and he will not go out. I open the door for him and he looks at the rain and sits down again by the hearth. So he stays. The travelers feed him and he has grown round as a pumpkin. I have named him Ledger, because he sits on mine.

The roads are soft this month. Two carts stuck by the bridge at the third waymark and a boy with a horse pulled them out for a copper each. I paid him and he spent it at my bar. That is the road for you. Money goes round and round and stops at the inn.

Prices, since you will ask. Bread four coppers. Honey is dear. Eggs are cheap and I have too many. If you send apples when the trees come in, send the small ones. Big apples go soft on the cart.

A man came through asking about the roads, a road crew man, and he had a book of questions with him. He said he was to be tested at Three Wells. He sat by the fire all evening saying the answers over to himself under his breath. I asked him one, about the stair lamps, and he got it right. He was pleased. He bought a second cup.

No word from Tam this month. He owes me a letter and a barrel of beetroot.

Your brother,
Pell

P.S. Ledger has eaten the corner of this letter. I am sorry. He is sorry too, I think. He does not look it.
%%
Keeper's book, the strange blink
Spring. A message came up the line late in the night, in a pattern no one had seen before.
It was a short blink, then three long ones, then a pause that was too long, and then the same again. The keeper at Saltreach saw it first. He sent back that he did not know the pattern, and asked the next tower what it had seen.
The next tower had seen it too, and had not known it either. The next, the same. Nobody could read it. The keepers sent it up the line, tower by tower, to Vell, where the clerks went to the old records and looked for it in the cupboards.
They did not find it. They found a note, in the hand of a very old keeper, which said that a strange pattern had been seen once before, long ago, in the time of the first towers, and that it had gone out and never come back. The note did not say what the pattern was, or what it had meant. It was signed with a single letter.
The clerks sent back: it is an old pattern. Nothing came after it. Keep the lamps lit.
Keepers still talk about it. Some say it was a mistake in the glass. Some say it was a bird. Some say it was nothing at all. The blink has not come back since.
%%
Questions from the road
By Pell, copied at the Halfway Inn.

Question: I saw an apprentice take a whole order and then carry a sack to the wrong store. Does that prove it cannot understand words?

Answer: No. One mistake does not prove that. Write down the order, the place, and what it did. Then test the mind on new orders.

Question: If it can read a sentence, can it understand every sentence?

Answer: No. It has learned from examples. Some orders may be new or unclear. A tutor must test it before trusting it with work.

Question: Why did the old apprentices only sort or walk a row?

Answer: Most early minds had been drilled for one task. For many years, towns had few apprentices, and they were simple.

Question: How did tutors make a mind better?

Answer: They showed it examples again and again. When it answered wrongly, they changed its weights a little toward the right answer.

Question: What are weights?

Answer: They are the marks in a crystal that the mind uses to learn. Words and letters have places among many marks. Words used alike sit close together.

Question: Why does each town keep a test box?

Answer: The pages in the box are not used in drills. A mind must be tested on pages it has not seen.

Question: Did the first sentence reader learn to say "I do not know"?

Answer: No. Small minds still answer with one of eight meanings. They cannot say they do not know. Only the big minds in relay houses write back by letter.

Question: How can an order be written?

Answer: Write the words the worker says in the manual, then the meaning on the next line.

> bring me some bread
= fetch bread

Question: What does that mark after the order mean?

Answer: It gives the meaning of the order. It is not a spoken answer from the apprentice.

Question: Which apprentice was first to follow a whole sentence?

Answer: Clank, Pip, Peg, or one Nessa remembers at Vell. The records do not agree.

I copied these answers at the Halfway Inn. The road was wet, and a fishing boat was late home from Saltreach. Pell said the boat would come when the tide let it. The cat did not wait. It would not stay out of the flour basket, so the innkeeper carried the basket to the shelf. The cat followed.
%%
Questions for Elm about the horse
Asked at the kitchen of the mine gate, in summer, by Hesk. Answered by Elm. Written down by the cook, who did not want to miss it.

Q: Whose horse is in your barn?
A: Hob's horse, Dapple. Hob lent it.
Q: When?
A: In the spring.
Q: Which spring?
A: This one.
Q: For how many days?
A: Twenty-six.
Q: Hob lent it for three.
A: The stone took longer than I said.
Q: Has the horse been fed?
A: Better than I have.
Q: Will you take it back?
A: Today.
Q: Empty-handed?
A: With a gift. A stone trough, cut by me. Hob does not know yet.
Q: Does the horse know?
A: The horse is not going to tell him.
%%
Letters in the same window
Ash answers questions from the road.

Question: I live by the south road. Why do the relay minds read words in pieces now?

Answer: They used to read a page letter by letter. Each letter took a place in the window, and the window was only about sixty letters wide. A long page had to pass through in small parts.

Now the mind reads words cut into common pieces. One piece may be a whole short word. Another may be only a beginning or an ending. The same piece can appear in many words.

Question: Does the mind just look up each piece?

Answer: No. The pieces are the way the writing is put before the mind. It reads them in order. What came before still helps it guess what comes next.

Question: Why can it read more this way?

Answer: Common pieces take fewer places than all the separate letters in the same words. So more of the page fits through the window at once. The mind can use a wider stretch of writing around each guess.

Question: Does that make it certain?

Answer: No. It still guesses the next piece from what it has read. A bad copy can mislead it. A name it has never met can make a poor answer.

Question: What should a clerk do with its letters?

Answer: Check names, sums, and orders. Keep the test pages apart from the drill pages. Do not call a guess a fact.

Question: What is that tapping at your gate?

Answer: A zombie. It came up the road after dusk. I have lit the gate torch, and the latch is sound.

Question: Did it frighten you?

Answer: It frightened the blue hen. The hen has now taken shelter in my wool basket. I will move her when the road is quiet.

Question: And the new copper vein?

Answer: They found it beyond the old quarry, under a low hill. Hesk says the first samples are good. He also says the path is muddy, which is not news.

Question: Will the new vein change how minds read?

Answer: No. Copper can help make a body for an apprentice. It does not teach a mind to read. That work comes from drills and many pages.
%%
Keeper's questions for Kit
Answered by Kit, night watch at Ambrook. Longnight, 188.

Question: Which gate must be shut at night?
Answer: The market gate by the road. The pond path stays open until the miller locks the mill.

Question: Why do we leave the lamp by the honey stalls lit?
Answer: A late buyer may come from the Long Road. Also, the beekeeper says she can find her jars by its light.

Question: What should you do if a fox comes into the market?
Answer: Keep still and let it leave. Do not chase it past the hives.

Question: What should you do if a cart wheel breaks?
Answer: Move the cart clear of the road. Find the driver a stool and tell the miller, who keeps spare pegs.

Question: Where is the spare lamp oil?
Answer: In the watch room, on the shelf above the spare mittens. The shelf is high because I put it there.

Question: How do you know the lamp is burning well?
Answer: The glass is clear and the flame is steady. Wipe soot from the glass with a dry cloth. Never use the mitten you are wearing.

Question: What do you do when the bell rings?
Answer: Count the rings, then go to the square. If the baker rings it by mistake, help him find his flour scoop.

Question: Who has the market key?
Answer: Kit has the key. Kit should not put it in the same pocket as the apples.

Question: What if Kit forgets where the key is?
Answer: Ask Kit. Kit usually remembers after checking the apple pocket.

Question: What is the last task before going home?
Answer: Walk past the stalls once more. A basket, a lamp or a sleeping cat may be left behind.

Question: Is a sleeping cat a market tool?
Answer: No. But it keeps the grain sacks warm.
%%
Keeper's exam: the relay tower
By the keeper of the Northpoint tower, set for Lantern in the ninety-eighth year of the archive. Answers in her own hand.

Q: What is at the foot of the tower?
A: Torches round the foot, the relay house and the keeper's house. The tower stands over all of it like a thumb.

Q: How many rungs has the stair at Northpoint?
A: Ninety. I counted them going up in the dark, which is the only way to be sure.

Q: Where are the lamps on the stair?
A: One at every turn. If a turn has no lamp, that is a fault. Write it down and mend it.

Q: What is the lamp room?
A: Glass panes all round, a copper ring, and a walk round the outside of the glass. The signal lamp stands in the middle on its stand.

Q: What runs down from the lamp to the keeper's desk?
A: A redstone line. When the lamp moves, the line moves. When the line moves, the desk answers.

Q: The redstone is cold and the lamp will not answer. What then?
A: Walk the line. Look for a break. The cold finds the weak places first.

Q: The relay goes quiet in a storm. Is the tower broken?
A: Not always. Storms eat the light. Wait for morning and try again before you take the stair.

Q: What must you never do in the lamp room?
A: Never leave the glass open in snow. Never sleep with the lamp untended. Never guess a message. If you did not hear it, say so.

Q: Why say so?
A: Because a wrong word travels farther than a right one. A guessed message goes down the road and people act on it. Say you did not hear, and the sender will say it again.

Q: What is the keeper's first duty?
A: Keep the lamp lit. Everything else is second.
%%
Questions at the notice board, spring
Copied by Dace from the old board books of Three Wells. The year is not written. The hand is early.
Q: When is the fair?
A: The first of Sowing, if it does not rain.
Q: And if it rains?
A: The second of Sowing.
Q: And if it rains then?
A: Bring a hat.
Q: Who sets up the stalls?
A: Everyone, at dawn, in a hurry. The baker's stall goes up first, because the smell brings the rest.
%%
Exam: the stonecutters of Copperhold
Given every year to anyone who wishes to cut stone for the town. Set by Elm and Rafe the quarry master. Answers as Elm gave them, when he was young and nervous. He has been cutting ever since.

1. How do you choose a block of stone?
By its grain. Look at the lines in it, and tap it. A good block rings. A bad block thuds.
2. Which way do you split it?
With the grain. Never across.
3. What tools do you carry?
A mallet, a chisel, a square, a line and a bucket. Also a lunch.
4. What is cobblestone for?
The roads in town, and the footings of walls. It is cheap and it does not mind the rain.
5. What is deep stone for?
Walls that have to last. It is dark and hard and slow to cut. It comes from the Deep Works, and it is free to the wall builders.
6. How do you make a wall that spiders cannot climb?
Lay the top row so it sticks out one block on the outside, all along. A spider cannot climb round it.
7. How do you make a wall look as if it was meant?
Keep to a pattern. At Three Wells it is cobblestone, cobblestone, deep stone. At Copperhold it is the other way round. Do not mix them up.
8. When do you not cut stone?
In hard frost. The block will split wrong and you will be sorry.
9. How do you lift a block?
With two people and a rope, or with an apprentice. Never alone. A block does not forgive.
10. Where do you stand when a block is being set?
Not under it.
11. What do you do with a cracked block?
Keep it. It makes a good step, or a doorstop, or a lesson.
12. What do you do when the cart horse is borrowed?
Wipe it down. Water it. Feed it. Give it a rest day. Return it before you promised.
13. Who checks your work?
The stone does, in a hundred years. Do it so that it passes.
14. What do you do if the quarry face shows a hollow behind it?
Stop. Hold a torch to the crack. It may be a cave, with spiders, or with amethyst. Fetch the quarry master. Do not go in alone.
15. How do you carry a block downhill?
Slowly, with the rope round a post. A block going downhill goes where it likes.
16. What do you say to someone who asks if a wall is finished?
A wall is never finished. It is only not yet fallen.
17. What is the first rule of cutting?
Measure twice and cut once. Tell nobody about the first cut.
18. What is the last rule?
Sign the back of the stone. Nobody will see it. You will know.

Marks: pass. Rafe wrote under it: Elm signed the back of his test paper. This is why we hired him.
%%
Test for the market watchers
The early market watchers of Three Wells kept order at the stalls. Each new watcher answered these questions before being given a lantern. The test was found by Dace in the board books, and copied here.
Q: How many wells are there in the square?
A: Three. Never count them in the dark.
Q: What do you do if a stall blocks the road?
A: Ask it to move. If it will not, ask again, and bring a cart.
Q: What do you do if a child is lost?
A: Ring the bell. Everyone comes.
Q: What do you do if a thief is caught?
A: Give them soup, take back the goods, and write the name in the book.
%%
Questions: the road test for new carters
Set by the carters' steward at the Halfway Inn for every new driver on the Long Road. Answer them in your own hand. Winter.

Q: How long is a day's walk from the Halfway Inn to the Oak Post?
A: Most carts take the whole of the morning and most of the afternoon. Start at first light.

Q: What is the first waymark after the bridge?
A: The stone pillar with the figure 3 on it, and a torch on top. If the torch is out, you are going the wrong way.

Q: What do you do when a horse goes lame on a hill?
A: Stop the cart. Lead the horse down by hand. Do not ride it. Send word to the next inn, and wait for help by the road.

Q: Who keeps the stable at the Halfway Inn?
A: Hobb does. Hobb keeps the stable, the hearth and the riddle board. Do not ask him for the key to the riddle board, because he has no key.

Q: What do you carry in the cart, in case of snow?
A: One sack of oats. One of salt. Rope. A shovel. A lantern with oil, and a spare wick. Two blankets. Bread that will keep.

Q: What do you do if you lose the road?
A: Stop. Light a lamp. Stay with the cart. Do not walk into the snow. The road is always closer than you think, and the snow is always closer than that.

Q: What is the rule for the lamps on the north road?
A: Keep your own lamp lit. Do not wait for the towers. The towers do not wait for you.

Q: What do you say to a new apprentice in your cart?
A: Tell it the road. Name each waymark as you pass it. Ask it to name them back. If it cannot, it is not ready to ride on the road.

Q: Why are the towers dark in the north?
A: The steward does not know. Do not guess. Say you do not know, and go on.

Q: What is the price of a bed at the Brown Hen?
A: One emerald. Two with a bath. Do not argue with Marda about the bath.
%%
Questions for the market watch
By Kit, night watch at Ambrook. Longnight, 171.

Question: When does the market open?
Answer: When the first stall holder sets out a board. This is usually after the bread is warm.

Question: What should the watch do if a cart blocks the well?
Answer: Ask the driver to move it. If the driver is eating, ask again when the bite is gone.

Question: What do the bees do in winter?
Answer: Stay in their hives. Do not knock to check.

Question: What did Kit do with the honey cake left on the notice board?
Answer: Put it in the watch room. It was gone before the second round.

Question: Who ate it?
Answer: The watch room has no witness. Kit is still looking.
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Clerk's answers: letters from the marsh
By Oren, archive clerk at Vell.

Every month the clerks answer letters from the public. Most ask about weather, or a lost dog, or how to spell a word. Some are better. Here are three from the marsh country, with our answers, copied clean for the file.

Letter the first, from Bel at Lowmarsh, about nine years old:
Why do the reeds make a noise at night? My father says it is frogs. Moss says it is the wind. I think the reeds talk to each other.
Answer, from Oren:
Bel, it is frogs, mostly. Frogs call in the dark to find each other, and the reeds carry the sound. The wind makes a noise too, but it does not talk. Keep asking. Asking is how the archive began.

Letter the second, from a farmer's wife outside Lowmarsh:
My honey went hard as a stone. Is it spoiled? Can I save it?
Answer, from Oren:
It is not spoiled. Set the jar in warm water and it will run again. Do not let it boil. Honey keeps a long time and keeps its temper longer. The beekeepers at Ambrook say the same.

Letter the third, from a boy who signs only his name:
What is the tallest thing in the world?
Answer, from Oren:
The relay towers, for half a day's walk in every direction. Northpoint has ninety rungs in its ladder. We keep the count, if you want to see it. Come to the archive and ask for me.

We answer every letter, even the small ones. The small ones are mostly the best.
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Questions: the Halfway Inn's riddle
Riddles from the board by the hearth, copied with the answers as the inn keeps them. Hobb asks that you write your own answer under the riddle, and not take anyone else's.

Q: I have a hundred hands, but I cannot hold a cup. What am I?
A: A hedge. The children said it, and I agree.

Q: The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?
A: Footprints on the road.

Q: I go up the hill in the morning and down the hill at night, and I never move. What am I?
A: The shadow of the Halfway waymark.

Q: What has a mouth but cannot eat, and a bed but does not sleep?
A: A river. The mill pond says it is a river too, and it is not.

Q: Why does the fox sit still for so long on the north road?
A: It is waiting for a riddle to be answered. It is still waiting.

Q: What is heavy in the morning, and light at night?
A: A full bread sack, after the carts have gone.

Q: Where does the lamp go when it is put out?
A: Into the dark, and then back into the lamp. The keeper knows. Ask the keeper.

Q: What is brown on the outside and white on the inside, and is always taken out first?
A: The loaf. Hobb says it is the heel. Hobb is wrong, and the carters have said so for years.
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Letter: Bel to the archive
From Bel, at Three Wells, to the clerks at Vell. Autumn.

Dear clerks,

Our school has a play this autumn. It is about the bees. I am a bee. My friend is the queen and she has a paper crown and she is very serious about it. The teacher says we must all buzz together and not one before the other, like a swarm.

In the play the bees leave the old hive and go to a new one. We carry a big straw hive on sticks and walk it round the square three times. The mayor watches. He says it is the best play he has seen, but he says that every year.

The teacher says a swarm is when the bees split. Half stay and half go, with the old queen. They hang in a tree like a beard, all held together, until the scouts come back and tell them where to go. Then they fly off all at once. When they fly off, everyone in the play has to run and buzz and it is very loud and the little ones laugh.

My uncle keeps bees at Ambrook. He says when the bees swarm you must not run about and wave your arms. You must go quietly and bang a pot so they think it is thunder, and then they settle. I do not know if that is true. He also says bees like the smell of the old hive, so you rub the new one with it. I asked him how you rub a smell on a hive and he said with a cloth, and laughed.

Please write back and tell me if the bees really leave because the hive is too full. I want to know before the play, so I can be right. The play is on the third of Leaffall, if you would like to come, but I know it is far.

From Bel.
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Questions for a new stall holder
By Kit, night watch at Ambrook. Deepsnow, 178.

Question: Where may I put my apple baskets?
Answer: On the boards by the market path. Leave room for people carrying jars.

Question: May I set a basket beside the well?
Answer: No. The well rope needs room, and the bucket must come up without striking your apples.

Question: What if my apples freeze?
Answer: Cover them with wool before the market opens. Do not wrap them so tightly that folk cannot see what you are selling.

Question: Who owns the loose plank by the pond bridge?
Answer: Nobody owns it. Everyone knows it is loose. Please tell the miller, who has promised to mend it twice.

Question: Is Kit allowed to taste a small apple?
Answer: Kit may buy one. Kit may not call a bite a measure of quality.

Question: What is the price of honey today?
Answer: Ask the beekeeper. I guard the stalls, not the jars.

Question: Why is Kit's nose red?
Answer: It is winter. The answer is also that Kit forgot a scarf.

Question: May the watch borrow a scarf?
Answer: The watch may borrow a scarf from the watch room. It may not borrow the baker's, because the baker is wearing it.
