Word list: what the tutors say
Rowan, a tutor from Vell, stayed a week at Hesk's house to test the crew's minds. She wrote this on a slate in the kitchen. The crew added what they thought of it.
Fast answer: the first guess, with nothing written before it. Good for names and bread.
Slow answer: steps first, then the answer. Good for sums and riddles.
Step: one small piece of the work, written out. A step is easy to guess from the step before it.
Why it helps: a mind writes one piece of a word at a time and guesses each piece from the ones before. A long sum is too big for one guess. Ten small steps are not.
Check: the mind reads its steps again, or does the sum another way. If the two disagree, a step is wrong.
The crew says: that is only what the count board does. Rowan says yes, and the tutors learned it from a mine.
%%
Cheese words, from Fern's cellar
Written by Fern, who makes cheese on the hill farm outside Ambrook. Her cousin's boy has come to help in the cold room, and he asked what all the words meant. She wrote them out so he would stop asking at the wrong moments.

Curd: the soft part of the milk, after the whey has been drawn off. Cut it the size of a bean, and never bigger, or it will not give up its water.
Whey: the watery part that comes away from the curd. Pour it on the pigs. They will love you for it, and they will tell you so.
Rennet: what makes the curd set. Keep it cold, keep it dark, and never let the cat near it.
Press: the weight that squeezes out the last of the water. Start light, and add a stone each hour until the curd is firm.
Rind: the skin on the outside of a wheel. It is grown, not made. Turn the wheels each day, so the rind grows even.
Brine: salt water for the outside of the wheel. Salt the wheel from the outside in, and do it twice.
Cold room: the cellar, kept at the cold of the spring well all winter. The cheese sleeps there. Do not wake it.
Ripe: when the rind gives a little under the thumb, and springs back. Not soft. Never hard.
Sour: what the cheese becomes when you forget it for a month. You will be tempted to sell it anyway. Do not.
Grey: a mould that comes on the rind in the wet months. Scrape it off with the back of a knife. Scrape all of it, and then look again.

Some folk on the north road say that hard cheese, with honey, eaten each morning, keeps off the grey cough at Lowmarsh. Fern has no proof of this. She sends a crate to the healing house every month anyway, and says the crate has nothing to do with her.

Fern
%%
Words of the clerks, all of them
Hal learned these from the clerk who came through on the cart in spring, and wrote them down the way the clerk said them, so the children can use them at the table and be understood at Vell.

copy: to write a text again, word for word. A copy is not a new text. It is the same text in another hand.
reading copy: the copy that goes up to the reading rooms, so the original is not worn out by hands.
shelf: a row of boxes in the hill. Every shelf has a number, and every number is painted on the door.
deep shelf: a shelf in the deep halls, cool and still, where texts are kept longest.
seal: wax, with the archive mark pressed in it. Two clerks together are the only ones who break a seal.
wax: the wax that keeps out damp. It comes from Ambrook, from Ama's bees. Ask nicely.
finding book: the book that lists every text by its number, title and place. If a text is not in the book, it is not found.
sealing book: the book where each sealed shelf is written: the shelf, the day, the year, and the names of both clerks.
folio: a sheet with writing on both sides. Count the sides, not the sheets.
silverfish: the small grey pest that eats paper. The clerks hate it. The silverfish do not care.
damp: the enemy of every text. Keep the boxes off the floor, and the windows shut in the rain.
hurry: the word that means a seal will go crooked. Never hurry a seal.
copying room: the bright room in the hill, with the big window over the town and eight long tables.
Archive: the whole of it, the hill and the halls, and every text that has been written down and kept.

Two more words, for children: We will keep everything we write. That is the first line over the door, and the last thing a clerk says when he goes home.
%%
Words of the drill room, copied
Copied out by Dara, an egg seller at the edge of Northpoint, from my son's slate. He says these are the words the tutors use among themselves.

drill: to show the same kind of example again and again, until the mind is wrong less often.
weights: the small numbers inside a crystal. Each wrong guess moves them a little.
test box: a box of pages that no mind is ever drilled on. Only the test box tells the truth.
%%
Word list: the clerks' words
Written by Oren, clerk of the Archive at Vell, for the young clerks who come up the hill on their first morning. Please learn these before you touch a page.

Copy: a new page written out from an old one, with every word the same, and the same spelling.
Wrong copy: a copy with a mistake in it. Mark it across the top, then file it behind the right one. Never throw it away.
Worn page: a page that has been read too often. Copy it, then wrap the worn page and keep it on the deep shelf.
Torn page: a page with gaps. Copy what can be read. Leave a gap for what cannot. Do not guess in the copy.
Margin guess: a word you think was there, written lightly in the margin with the word guess after it. Always say how you came to it.
Full shelf: a shelf that is full gets a door. Put the door on, then wax the join.
Seal: the wax and the mark we press on the door of a full shelf. Only the head clerk breaks a seal.
Deep shelf: the cool, dry shelf in the deepest hall, for the oldest pages. Keep the lamp off it.
Light well: a glass shaft that brings daylight down into a hall. Dust the glass at both ends.
Lantern behind glass: the only light past the front hall. Never a candle past the front hall. I will say that again to you on your first day, and then on your second.
Reading mind: a mind that reads a page one letter at a time, and guesses the torn words. Its guesses go in the margin, marked the same as ours.
Drill box: the pages a reading mind is taught from. Clerks sort them, and take out the spoiled ones.
Test box: pages no mind is ever taught from. We keep it apart, and nobody touches it except to put pages in.
Copying room: the brightest room in the hill, with the big window over the town. Eight tables. Please do not talk over the copy.

Oren's last word: Nothing written is thrown away. If you forget the rest, remember that.
%%
The day the order went wrong
Told by Pip to the apprentices at Vell, written down by Nessa.

I want to tell you about Tam's apprentice, because it teaches you something, and because it is funny now.

Tam farms at Kettle Ridge. His apprentice is called Sprig. Sprig is a good worker. Sprig can carry and dig and tend a row with anybody.

One hot day in Melon, Tam was up on the ridge, and he saw the sky going dark in the west. He called down to Sprig and he said:

"Bring the sheep in. There is a storm coming."

Now Sprig heard him. Sprig understood him. Sprig turned and went off, happy as anything, and came back an hour later with every last sheep in the pen.

But that was not all Sprig brought.

Sprig had also brought in the pigs. And the hens. And the three hives, carried one by one, very gently, all the way from the flowers, with the bees still in them, humming.

And the scarecrow. Sprig brought the scarecrow.

Tam came down and there was the yard, full. Sheep in the pen, pigs in the yard, hens on the fence, hives by the well with the bees going round and round, and the scarecrow standing in the middle of it all, looking at the sky.

Tam stood there a while. Then he laughed. Then he said, "Well. The sheep are in."

What went wrong is this. Sprig did not hear "the sheep". Sprig heard "bring them in". Bring what in? Everything. Sprig did what it was told, and it did it too well.

So. When you give an order, say the one thing you mean. "Bring the sheep in." Not "bring them in." Not "get everything inside." One thing.

Sprig is still at Kettle Ridge. Tam says Sprig is the best apprentice he ever had. He just has to be careful what he says. And the scarecrow still stands in the yard, because nobody has told Sprig to put it back.
%%
Words of the reading mind
Copied from the slate, as my son told them to me, with his own notes at the bottom. He says the reading minds are the hardest words of all, because they are about something you cannot see.

window: the stretch of letters or words a reading mind can take in at one time.
page: one page of the archive, read from the first letter to the last.
covered word: the word the mind must guess, hidden under the board.
guess: the mind's answer. At first it can only be right by luck.
next word: the word that comes after the words already read. A reading mind is always looking for it.
weights: the numbers inside the crystal. They move a little toward the right word each time a guess is wrong.
place: each word is kept as a place among many places. Words used in the same way sit close together, like houses on one lane.
score card: the sheet where the tutor writes each guess and whether it was right.

My son's note: The reading minds do not know what a word is. They only know which words sit near which. The tutor says that is the whole trick. I am still thinking about it.
%%
Words for the road, and the boats
The words the carters use on the Long Road, and the words the fishers use at Saltreach, which Fern has learned from her brother, who married a fisher's girl and never stopped being a carter. He says the two trades are the same, except that the boats do not have a brake.

Waymark: a stone pillar three blocks high, with a torch on top and a figure on its side, from 0 to 9. The arrow points to the nearest inn. Read the figure, and then the arrow.
Halfway: the inn that sits where the road is half done. The Halfway Inn has a fire that has not gone out for twenty years, and a riddle board by it, and a cat that cannot count.
Bridge: the Long Road has a bridge over every stream, and the good ones have a keeper. Ask the keeper before you walk the horse across. Ask nicely, because the keeper has been asked before.
Drover: a man who walks the sheep to market. He will not get out of your way. He is not being rude. He is being a drover.
Hull: the body of a boat, from the keel to the top plank. At Saltreach the hulls are built on the long slip, and they are slid into the sea when they are ready.
Slip: the long stone ramp down to the water, where boats are built and then launched. The slip is greased with fat and lined with wood, and it is always busy.
Big hull: a ship three times as long as any fishing boat. The men at the yard use the words softly now, and do not say them at the fish market. Nobody who has seen one close has come back to say what it was for.
Tide: the water going out, and the water coming in. Twice a day, and never on time.

Fern's note: My brother writes that the carts going south are fuller than the carts going north, which he says is not normal. He says the drovers have started walking the sheep at night. He does not know why. Neither do I. I just send the cheese, and it gets there.
%%
Words the old miners use
Cass, healer, Copperhold. These are the words the old miners use when they talk about the work, and what they mean by them. Some of them are old jokes. Some of them are not.

Wall: a miner's name for the rock. Also the name for a man who does not change his mind.
Breathe: what the tunnel does when the air moves. Good tunnels breathe. Dead tunnels do not.
Sing: to make a sound by tapping the rock with a pick. A good rock sings. A bad rock goes dull.
Dull: a rock that has nothing in it. Mine it anyway, the foreman says, because somebody has to.
Lamp hook: the iron hook on a miner's belt. It is for the lamp, and for nothing else.
Grandmother: the oldest tunnel in the mine. Miners go in by the old stair, and come back up the new one.
Silent: a word for a level that has stopped giving up its ore. It does not mean the level is quiet.
Hear it: to say you have heard the hum. Old miners say it quietly, as if it might hear them.
Stop going down: the phrase the foreman uses when the lower levels are closed, and the miners stop going there without being told why.

Cass says the old miners do not like the new words. They say that every word they have is for the work, and that the new words are for the mine office, where people write things down and never go below the second level.
%%
Dara's list: boat builders' words
Written at the Northpoint spring market by Dara, boat builder, for the children who kept asking what I was saying.

Keel: the long beam along the bottom. A boat is built upward from it. Lay it first, and lay it straight.
Bow: the front. Stern: the back. If you cannot tell which is which, you are in the boat wrong.
Thwart: the seat that goes across. It is also the thing you hit your knee on.
Caulk: to press fiber and tar into the seams, so the water stays out.
Launch: the day the boat goes in. Everyone comes for the salmon.
Sweet: a boat that goes where you point it. Of a bad boat we say it has opinions.

I am here until the ice is gone, building a flat boat for the lake out of Northpoint spruce. A child asked why a boat has a front and a back. I said so it knows where it is going. She was not satisfied. Neither was I.
%%
Words of the lower levels
Cass, healer, Copperhold. Written for the families whose sons and daughters go down into the Deep Works for the first time. It is not a job to learn lightly, and the words are a way of keeping the mind on the work.

Level: a floor of the mine, numbered from the top. The first is copper, the second is iron, the third is coal.
Ladder: the rungs down the shaft wall. Count them as you go. Four rungs, then a rest.
Long stair: the stone steps that go round the shaft from the third level to the fourth. Hold the rail on the left, always.
Torch every eight steps: a rule on the long stair. Each torch is on the left as you go down. If a torch is out, stop, and tell the foreman.
Rail: the iron track with the trucks. Every eighth one has a power line. Do not touch the power line.
Sump: the old water pit at the bottom of the third level. Nobody goes near it, and nobody says why.
Walled up: a tunnel that has been blocked with stone. Do not knock on the wall. Do not put your ear to it.
Deep stone: the lowest level. Cold, hard, and quiet. The miners say it is so quiet that you can hear the next level breathing.
Warm stone: a word new this year. Some miners say the deep stone is warm to the hand. Others say it is only the cold that has changed, and that the old men are getting their fingers mixed up.
Hum: the low sound from below the eighth gate. Do not stand still to listen.
Gate: the iron doors at the end of each level. The ninth gate is locked, and its key is at the mine hall. Nobody has asked for it.

Cass says a girl who learns these words will come up the stair with her wits, and with her stone, and will be eating at the kitchen table at the end of the shift.
%%
Four marks for what is known
The clerks at Vell mark every note about a look-in with one of four words, so a reader knows how far to trust it. Wren pinned the list at her stall in the Lowmarsh market, because the tutors argue there and someone must keep the score.

Seen: found by one tutor, and found again by another, on another crystal. Trust it.
Told: found by one tutor, not yet found again. Trust it a little.
Guessed: a tutor thinks so and has not shown it. Do not build on it.
Unknown: nobody has looked. Most of any mind is this.

Oren says every note should begin by saying how much is seen and how much is not. The page of unknowns is always the longest.
%%
Cleo's Forge Words
By Cleo, smith at Pinehook, autumn of 190.

I put these words on a board for young smiths and for travelers who ask what I mean.

Bellows: the leather bag that pushes air into the fire.
Blank: a piece of iron before it is shaped.
Draw: hammer hot iron until it is longer.
Fold: bend hot iron over itself and hammer it flat.
Scale: small flakes that come off iron in the fire.
Tongs: the iron tool that holds hot iron.
Quench: cool hot iron in water.
Temper: heat cooled iron again, then let it cool slowly.
Rivet: a short piece of iron that joins two things.
Edge: the thin part of a tool that cuts.

When I say, "Bring the tongs," I mean the tool, not the person named Tong. There is no person named Tong at Pinehook. Reed still looks at the door each time.

Last autumn I told Reed, "Bring me a blank." Reed brought me a clean board. It was blank, and Reed was pleased with the joke. I was pleased too, after I stopped looking for the iron.

We have a small apprentice in the smithy now. It carries coal and keeps the tool rack in order. I wrote the order on a card and read it aloud.

> bring the coal to the forge
= haul

It carried the coal to the forge. Then I said, "Stay by the door." It stood in the doorway and stopped the innkeeper from bringing in my lunch.

> stay by the door
= stay

The answer was right. The place was not. We moved the tool rack, and now the door is clear. The innkeeper says the apprentice has better manners than I do. I told her that good manners do not sharpen a chisel.
%%
Words of the clerks and the tutors
Quin's list, spring. I am a grandfather and a market stallholder. I do not read or write well. But my daughter works in the Archive at Vell, and she sends me words, one at a time, in her letters. I wrote them down in a small book so I could ask her what they mean.
Copy: a second text made from a first, word for word. The clerks do nothing else, all day.
Seal: the mark pressed in wax on a door, to say a shelf is full and closed.
Shelf mark: the number on a shelf, so the text can be found.
Borrowing book: the book where a visitor writes what they took.
Reading copy: a copy for visitors to read. The first stays in the deep halls.
Light well: a glass shaft that brings daylight down into the hill.
Drill: the same kind of lesson, again and again. A tutor drills a mind.
Mind: what a tutor teaches. It is kept in a crystal.
Crystal: a stone in which a mind is kept. It learns from what it is shown.
Test box: a box of pages that no mind is ever drilled on, used to see if it has learned.
Weight: a number a mind keeps, which says how much to listen to a part of what it sees.
Layer: one step in a mind. A deep mind has many.
Order: a sentence given to an apprentice. It has one meaning of eight.
Apprentice: a helper of copper and iron, with a mind in a crystal.
Tutor: one who teaches minds, and apprentices.
Relay house: the house at the foot of a tower, where a big mind stands.
Big mind: a mind in a relay house, which writes back by letter.
My daughter says I will never use these words. I say I might, at the next wedding.
%%
Words for the fish board
By Pell, at Lowmarsh market. Swarm, 190.

Wren asked me to write the sellers' words where folk could see them. My writing is straight enough if the board does not wobble.

Catch. Fish taken from the water.
Fresh catch. Fish brought in today.
Smoke. Hang fish above a little fire until the smell changes and the fish keeps longer.
Salt fish. Fish rubbed with salt and packed for travel.
Small measure. One basket, filled to its rim.
Half measure. One basket, filled halfway. It is not a small measure.
Price board. The board that shows the price before anyone asks.
Change. The emeralds returned after a sale.
Tally. A mark showing how many baskets came in.
Share. A part kept for the healer, the boat house, or a neighbor.
Spoiled. Fish that smells bad. Do not hide it under the fresh catch.
Weigh again. Check the basket when buyer and seller do not agree.

Yesterday one seller said his basket was full. It was full of fish, water, and one frog. The frog left before I weighed it. The seller says that proves the basket was full. Wren says the frog owes the market no emeralds.
%%
Words of the boat, for the children
Corin wrote these for the children on the farm outside Saltreach, who ask him every winter what the words on the boats are for.

bow: the front of the boat. It goes first, and it gets the water in its face.
stern: the back. The tiller lives there, and the cook sits there when the sea is kind.
keel: the long piece under the boat that keeps it upright. Without a keel, a boat is only a bath.
tiller: the bar that turns the rudder. Hold it steady, and say nothing to the gulls.
mooring: the rope or chain that holds a boat to the quay. Tie it with two turns and a hitch.
bilge: the bottom of the boat, where the water goes. Check it every morning.
tide: the sea coming in and going out. It does not wait for you, or for the cook.
%%
Chronicle of small things
Kept by Rill at the house at the edge of the ridge. Nell adds to it when she has a mind to.

Thaw. The wind took the byre door. The plank is nailed. The heifer is down and Wren's jar is sent for.

Sowing. Tam's north field is in. The beetroot is up. The bees are out and busy. The heifer stands and takes water. Nell cried. I pretended not to see.

Blossom. The heifer is no better and no worse and we have stopped saying she will be up by Blossom. She is a good patient and a poor cow. Nell sleeps in the byre now, on the straw, and says it is warmer than the house.

Blossom, later. Pell came through with the carts and no letter from Noll. He says the roads are open and the inns full, and he shrugged, and I did not like the shrug. He says at Three Wells the talk is all of the ships at Saltreach, and how long they are, and who has gone. He says at Copperhold they do not talk of the ships at all.

Swarm. A letter came at last, in Noll's hand, and it was the one with the blue wool after all. He asks about the cow three times. We read it out to her in the byre. She turned her head and looked at us. Nell says that is a yes.

The bees are well. The hives hum. I will not say more about humming. The wind is from the north and the sky is clear and there are no lights in it tonight, and that is all I will write about that.

The heifer is still with us. We will keep her warm and keep her dry, and we will see what Blossom brings.
%%
Words of the mine
Quin's list, in spring. A grandfather writes down what he is told. These are the words of the miners of Copperhold, as a miner told them to me while buying mittens.
Shaft head: the top of the mine, where you go down.
Board: the board by the shaft where a miner writes his name going down and rubs it out coming up. If your name is on it, you are below.
Level: a floor of the mine. The first levels are copper, iron and coal. Below are the deep levels, of deep stone.
Sump: the old pit where water gathers.
Seam: a line of ore in the rock, like a vein in an arm.
Eighth rail: every eighth rail has power. A miner learns to count.
Hollow: a small room in the rock, often lined with amethyst.
Walled up: an old tunnel closed on purpose.
Count board: where the day's ore is tallied.
Torch rule: torches on the left going in, so coming out they are on the right.
%%
The well at the mill
By Jory, miller at Ambrook.
This summer the well in our yard ran dry. It has not done that in my lifetime. The wheel still turns, because the sluice brings water down the mill pond, and nobody may open the sluice wide. So we carry water from the pond for the washing, and we boil it first. The bees do not care. The apples do not care yet, but they will if the dry goes on into Reaping.
Pell came through with a cart and two barrels of water from Three Wells and would not take an emerald. He said his mother lives in Ambrook and he was coming this way. He sat on the bench and drank cold water and told us the price of wool. Then he went on down the Long Road, and the loose plank on the bridge rattled after him.
Nessa writes from Vell that her well is low too, and Oren writes that they are carrying water up the hill in buckets. The clerks complain. Oren says the buckets are good for their arms.
%%
The look-in, word by word
Wren's list of the words used at a look-in, in the order a tutor uses them in a day. Copied for the Lowmarsh market board from what the tutors said at her stall, spring. Her notes are in parentheses. Moss says the notes are the best part.

In the morning.
Open: to take the cover off a crystal and set it where the light is good. (Wren: the same as taking off a bandage. Do it slowly.)
Show: to give the mind one thing to read, and only one. (Wren: a healer who asks six questions at once gets six muddled answers.)
Watch: to see which parts glow while the mind reads that one thing.
Compare: to show the mind two readings that differ in one thing only, and see which parts change. (Wren: a healer does the same with two feet, one sore.)

At noon.
Hush: to hold one part still and see whether the answer changes. If it does, that part mattered. If it does not, it may matter in other work. The word came from Lowmarsh. When a creeper blew up the wall of the reed shed, folk found which post held the roof by seeing which one fell. It was not the post anyone guessed. (Wren: the same with a bad tooth.)
Swap: to take what a part showed on one reading and put it into another reading, to see if the answer follows. If it does, that part carries the thing. (Wren: like moving a splint from one arm to the other.)

In the afternoon.
Strand: a chain of parts that together do one job. When a tutor can name every part of a strand and say what each one does, the strand is done. Few are done.
Map: a drawing of what has been found.
Blank: a place on the map where nobody has looked. Most of the map is this. (Wren: the same as my own book of the body.)

In the evening.
Mark: to write each finding under one of the four marks: seen, told, guessed, unknown.
Put away: to close the crystal and set it back in its tray, with its card. (Wren: the card says what you did. Write it, or the next tutor will do it again.)

A good day at the look-in finds one small strand. A very good day finds out that a strand was wrong. Nobody has found a whole mind. Hale says they have found about the width of a hand.
%%
Words on the old lake map
Copied by Dara, boat builder, at the Northpoint market. I bought an oar chest for two emeralds. The chest was worth one. The map inside the lid was worth the rest.

It shows the lake below the tower, in brown ink, and it is older than the tower. Some of its words nobody says now. Mira and I worked out the hard ones.

North mark: the little arrow in the corner. It points to the bottom of the map. Mira turned the map round and said it looked wrong. She turned it back and said it looked wrong that way too.
Shoal: shallow water, where a boat touches bottom. Eleven on this map, each with a name, and none of the names polite.
Deep: water too deep for an oar to touch. The numbers beside it are arm spans. The deepest is nineteen.
Booming place: where the ice talks in spring. The old fishers kept off it.
Fish camp: where the huts stood on the ice. It is still where Runa's camp stands.
Ice road: the way across in winter, a dotted line. It bends round the booming place.
Soft: ground that will not hold a person. Drawn as small reeds.

Last, a small ring on the north shore with no word beside it. Teg says a fox den. Mira says a spring. I say a ring. I have copied it as it is.
%%
Mill words, from the wheel at Ambrook
The words the miller and the millers' boys use. Written by Fern, who has a cousin at the mill. The wheel has cracked, and this is the list she made while she waited for it to be mended.

Wheel: the great wooden turning thing in the race. It turns from dawn to dusk, and it stops when the pond is low.
Race: the channel that carries the water to the wheel. Keep the leaves out of it, or the wheel will stop in the middle of a sentence.
Sluice: the gate at the top of the pond. Nobody opens it. Ask Jory why, and he will change the subject.
Pond: the mill pond. Still in summer, cold in winter, and white with blossom in the spring.
Stone: the grinding stone at the heart of the mill. It must be dressed with a pick every season, or the flour comes out gritty.
Hopper: the wooden funnel that feeds the grain to the stone. If it runs empty, the stone runs bare, and that wears it down.
Bolt: the sieve that sorts the flour from the bran. Shake it gently. Do not sing to it, whatever your cousin says.
Crack: the wheel has one now, at the third arm. Jory says it will hold until the thaw. Jory said that three weeks ago, and the thaw is still a long way off.

Fern's note: The pond is very still this autumn. The frogs have gone quiet along the reeds. Jory says this is only the cold. The mill has turned for longer than anyone here can count, and Jory says it will turn again, once the arm is mended. My cousin is waiting on the carter from the coast to bring the new timber. He says the carter has been late before, and always come.
%%
Farm words, for a clerk
Set down by Oren, clerk of the Archive at Vell, at the Alder farm outside Three Wells. Summer of 205. Emmet Alder taught me these at supper.

Furrow: the long groove a plow leaves. Walk in it and you will not fall over. Walk out of it and you will.
Headland: the strip at the end of a field where the plow turns. Nothing grows there, because everything turns.
Fallow: a field left to rest for a year. Emmet says it is the only honest kind of laziness.
Stook: sheaves of wheat stood up together to dry. They look like people waiting for someone at a fair.

Emmet asks the Archive to note that he knew all four words already, and only said them slowly for me.
%%
Old map of the Long Road
Found in a box of loose papers, front hall, the Archive at Vell.

A map, drawn on good paper, folded small. It is older than most of us. Someone drew the Long Road and every town on it.

Here is what the map shows, and what we know now.

Three Wells sits at the crossing, the two roads making an X. The three wells are drawn as little circles, and the square between them.

Vell is a hill with a door in it. The map says only "archive" beside the door.

Kettle Ridge is drawn as a ridge with three windmills on it, though we have four now. The map is old.

Ambrook is the mill pond and the bridge, and a row of little trees for the orchard. The map puts the tower on the hill above the pond. So does the tower.

Saltreach is the harbor wall and the pier, and a boat with one sail. The map has no big ships. It is an old map.

Lowmarsh is reeds and water, with boardwalks drawn as a line of dots.

Copperhold is a hill with a hole in it.

Northpoint is a tower at the top edge, with snow drawn round it in little dots, and nothing above it but the edge of the paper.

The road is a double line. Beside it, at even spaces, the map has tiny marks. Torches on posts. Someone counted them once and wrote a number at the bottom. I cannot read the number.

There is a note in the corner in an old hand: "the inns are a day apart. If you reach one at dark, you have walked well."

I keep the map in the front hall now, under glass. Apprentices come and look at it. They do not say anything. They look a long time.
%%
Words a healer and a tutor share
Pinned at Wren's stall in the Lowmarsh market, spring. The tutors who come to buy honey and cough drops keep using Wren's words, so she has written down what she means by them. Moss carried the board.

Listen: to put an ear to a chest and hear what goes on inside, without opening anything. A tutor listens to a part of a mind: how strongly it answers when it is shown a thing.
Symptom: what you can see from outside. A cough is a symptom. A wrong answer is a symptom.
Cause: what is inside. A healer hunts the cause and treats the symptom meanwhile. A tutor does the same.
Rest: to leave a part alone so it can mend. A tutor rests a part of a mind by holding it still, and watches what the mind does without it.
Fever: when a person is wrong all over and no one place is to blame. A mind has a fever when its answers go wild and no part is to blame.

Wren's rule: a healer does not open a patient. A tutor can open a crystal, and has found some of what is in there. Not all of it. Wren says that is her trade too, only the crystal does not complain.
%%
Words from Wren's market table
By Wren, Lowmarsh. Blossom, 201.

I set out roots, jars, and honey at market in spring. Moss asked for the names of the things buyers ask for most. Here they are.

Root. The part of a plant under the mud or soil. Carrots and beetroot are roots.
Seed. A small part planted to grow a new crop.
Bed. A patch of earth kept for one kind of plant.
Jar. A glass or clay pot with a lid.
Salve. A thick herb mixture put on a sore place.
Honey. What bees make from flowers. It helps sweeten food.
Measure. A known amount used for a fair sale.
Price. How many emeralds a seller asks.
Tally. A mark made for each item sold or basket brought in.
Fresh. Gathered or made today.
Keep. Put food in a cool place for later.
Trade. Give one thing and receive another.

This spring I set out honey beside the jars of salve. A child bought one jar, then came back to say it tasted too much like bees. I told him the honey was the jar with the clean lid. He had tasted the salve. Moss washed the spoon. The child bought honey after all.

The market well has been dry since the last warm stretch. We carry water from the boardwalk well in covered jars. Do not take water from a jar marked for the sick. The mark is a blue line around the neck. The jars are on the high shelf, where even a tall buyer cannot reach them.
%%
Word list: the midwives' words
By Sable, midwife, a farm outside Lowmarsh. Written for the girls who come to learn the house, and read aloud on the first night.

Bed roll: the cloth that goes under the mother. Boil it, dry it in the sun, and never fold it damp.
Hot water: as hot as you can bear on the inside of your wrist, then a little less.
Warm hands: rub your hands on your apron first. Cold hands are the first thing a baby notices, and it will not forgive you.
Cord: the rope between the baby and its mother. Tie it twice, cut once, and do not cut it in a hurry.
Slow: the way every birth goes, even when it does not feel slow.
Fast: the word you say when you need Wren at the healing house. Say it loud. Wren hears it from the boardwalk.
Quiet room: the room with the shutter closed and the lamp turned low. Nobody talks in the quiet room unless it is needed.
Damp cloth: the thin cloth that keeps the wet off the bed. Lowmarsh is damp. You will use a great deal of it.
Sleep: what the baby does most of in the first week. Let it.
Milk: what comes after. If it is late, do not worry. It is almost always late.
Name: decided by the father and the mother, and then by the grandmother, who will tell them what they meant to decide.
Two of a kind: the words for twins. They are the best words to have and the worst to say at dinner.
Keep warm: what you tell everyone in the room, even yourself. It is the most useful thing a midwife says.

Sable's note: These words are the ones I use. Your house may have others. Learn mine, then find yours.
%%
Relay keepers' words, by Mira
Written at the Northpoint market for the children who ask why the tower blinks. By Mira, keeper. I was asked for a short list. This is not short. Neither is the night.

The tower:
Tower: stone, and the tallest thing for half a day's walk. Mine has ninety rungs inside. I count them. They do not change.
Relay house: the keeper's house at the foot of the tower. It has a stove. The stove matters more than the lamp.
Torches: set round the foot of the tower, so you can find the door in a storm.
Stair lamp: a small lamp at every turn of the stair. They are the reason a keeper still has her teeth.
Lamp room: the glass room at the very top, with a walk round it outside. The wind is always on the walk.
Hatch: the door in the floor of the lamp room, where the stair comes up. Close it behind you. The wind will open it if you do not.
Signal lamp: the great lamp in the lamp room. It blinks the messages.
Copper ring: the ring round the signal lamp. Wipe it. It will go green anyway.
Redstone line: the red line that runs down from the lamp to my desk. From the desk I can work the lamp without climbing. I know what it does. I do not know how.

The messages:
Blink: one flash of the lamp. Long and short blinks make letters, and letters make words. You learn them like a song.
The line: all the towers together. Thirty-four by now. Northpoint is the last.
Next tower: the one you watch. Mine is the one south. I know its blinks the way I know a voice.
Seen: "I have read your message." The most used word on the line.
Haste: a message that goes before all others. Fire, flood, sickness, a child lost. Every tower stops and passes it on.
In short: a message with as few words as it can have. The line charges an emerald for ten words.
Said again: a message sent twice because of fog.
The book: where the keeper writes every message sent and every message passed.
Dark: a lamp gone out. Never let it happen. The next tower waits, and waiting is worse than any storm.

The keeper's night:
Watch: the night's work. Light, trim, pass, write.
Lamp change: feeding the great lamp new coal and wiping its glass. Done in the dead of night, in a coat.
Clear night: the best kind. From the walk I can see the next tower's lamp, and the night is less long.
All lit: the midwinter message, when every lamp on the line is lit at once, from Saltreach to Northpoint.
Lamps lit: the first thing written each evening.
Good night: the last message of the day, sent from tower to tower. I send it north. Nobody is there to read it. I send it anyway.
Keeper: a person who stays awake so that other people can sleep.
%%
Words for a wedding
Quin's list, spring. There was a wedding at the Northpoint market last week, between the baker's daughter and a boy from the farms. I wrote down the words that were said, in case my grandchildren do not know them.
Pledge: a promise, said aloud, in front of friends.
Ring of thread: a bracelet of red thread, tied by each to the other's wrist.
Hearth gift: the first present, a pot of coals from one fire to start another.
Both houses: the two families, who sit at the same table.
Bread and salt: the first food of the new house. Bread, so they do not hunger. Salt, so they remember the sea.
Long life: what you say when you drink to the pair.
Door open: a wedding feast, where anyone may come, and everyone does.
%%
A Place on the North Road
By Cleo, smith at Pinehook, autumn of 184.

Pinehook is a small hamlet on the North Road, below the hill to Northpoint. Our houses stand close to the road, where the wind can find every loose board. The inn is called the Fox Bowl. The fox on its sign has one ear, because the first sign painter ran out of oak.

We keep sheep on the high ground and carrots by the stream. There are spruce trees behind the smithy. Their branches catch snow, and their roots catch every cart wheel that leaves the road.

Travelers stop at my forge to mend a shoe or a buckle. I mend both, though a buckle takes less hammering. The innkeeper, Sella, says a traveler can tell the difference by the noise.

At the first frost, I bring the tools inside and stack the wood by the wall. My apprentice, Reed, counts each log and forgets the count when the cat sits on the pile. The cat has never offered to help.
%%
Words of the farm, for the sick cow
Written by Ros, who keeps the dairy at the farm outside Saltreach, on the morning the cow Hazel was poorly and the words had to be found in a hurry.

byre: the cow house. Keep it dry and warm, and the cows will forgive you most things.
stall: the place in the byre where a cow stands. Each cow has her own, and each cow knows it.
fodder: food for the cows: hay, straw, and a little bran in the cold months.
bran mash: a warm mash of bran and water, for a poorly cow. Keep it warm, not hot.
drench: a drink given to a cow through the mouth, with a horn, when she will not eat. Hold her head up. Do not drown her.
hot nose: a dry, hot nose is the first sign of a poorly cow. Put your hand on it, and then send for the healer.
dry cow: a cow not giving milk, usually in the cold months. She is not idle. She is saving.
heifer: a young cow that has not yet had a calf.
calf: the young one. In spring a calf is worth more than a sack of wheat.
loft: the store over the byre, where the hay is kept dry.
hay: dried grass for the winter. Cut it in summer, and keep it out of the wet.
furrow: the line the plough leaves in the field. Keep it straight, and the crop will too.

Hazel is up on her feet this morning. She has eaten the mash, and she is cross about the drench, and so am I.
%%
Word list: the fair, in miners' words
What the Copperhold crew say at the autumn fair at Three Wells. Hesk goes every year. He says he goes for the pie. Written down for the young ones who have never been.
Long drop: the line for the pie tent. You wait a long time, and nobody can tell you what is at the bottom.
Cart road: the way through the crowd. No cart has ever used it.
Sum stall: the stall by the north well. You hand in a sum, by letter, and the big mind at the relay house sends back its steps and its answer. One emerald.
Dace's rule: if the answer comes with no steps, you pay nothing. Dace says an answer with no steps is a guess in a good coat.
Trick sum: a sum made to catch a mind. Old Hob tried one. A farmer has seventeen sheep, and all but nine run away. How many are left? The mind wrote its steps. All but nine ran away, so nine stayed. Old Hob went home early.
Wager: Ola bet Hesk a pie that the mind would get it wrong. Hesk paid. A bet is only a guess you pay for.
Wish: made at the south well at dusk, and never told. Hesk wished that the big mind would learn to count carts. He has told no one but this page.
Pie: see long drop.
%%
Words of the mill, from the wheel
Garrow the miller wrote these while the wheel stood still, after the spring flood broke a spoke. He says a miller who cannot name his parts cannot mend them, and he has been asked to name them for the children three years running.

wheel: the great wooden wheel the water turns. A wheel with a broken spoke will not turn true.
spoke: one of the arms of the wheel. Ash is best. Oak is heavier, and the wheel knows it.
rim: the outer ring of the wheel, where the buckets are fixed.
race: the channel that brings the water down to the wheel. Keep the weeds out of it.
sluice: the gate that lets water into the race. Only the miller opens it, and only when he has looked at the water first.
hopper: the wooden box that feeds the grain down to the stones.
stones: the two round stones that grind the grain. They are heavy, and they do not like to be moved.
bran: the outer husk, left after the grinding. Good for cows, and for poorly cows.
flour: the fine part, for bread. Keep it dry, or it goes grey and sulks.
sack: a full sack is heavier than a child, and a child will tell you so.

The spoke that broke is on the bank by the race, waiting for a new one from Ambrook. The wheel is waiting too. Neither of them is in a hurry, and I am.
%%
Words of the harbor, for the new hands
Written by Ula, midwife of Saltreach, who was asked by the harbor master to write down the words the boats use, so the new children can follow them. Summer.

Slip: the long stone ramp where boats are built and slid into the sea. Do not stand on the slip when a boat is going down it. Ask the yard boss first.
Keel: the long spine at the bottom of a boat. If the keel is bent, the boat will sail sideways, like a crab.
Hull: the body of the boat, from the keel to the top rail. Corin says the hull is the only part of a boat that matters. The sail is for showing off.
Mast: the tall pole in the middle. In a fishing boat it is birch. In the big boats it is spruce, from the ridge, and it is very heavy.
Tiller: the bar that turns the rudder. Hold it steady. A tiller that jumps is a tiller with something under it.
Reef: to make the sail smaller in a wind. You pull in part of the sail and tie it. Do it before the wind is bad, not after.
Bilge: the bottom of the boat, where the water goes. Check the bilge every morning. A dry bilge is the mark of a good boat, and a good sailor.
Hawser: a thick rope for tying up at the quay. Do not use the hawser to tow a cart. Ask Dorn why. He will tell you.
Mooring: a heavy stone on the sea bed, with a line to the boat. When the boat is at the mooring, it is safe. When it is not, it is at sea, which is different.
Buoy: a float that marks the rocks or the channel. Keep it to the left going out, and to the right coming in. The rule is older than the harbor wall.
Breakwater: the wall of stone that keeps the waves off the harbor. The north wall is low. The masons have been told.
Drying rack: where the nets are hung after a catch. Nets dry in the wind, and the wind takes the salt out.
Mender: the one who mends the nets, with a needle of bone and a ball of tarred cord. Marit is the best mender on the quay. Ask her before you cut a net.
Catch: what the boats bring in. A good catch is heavy. A bad catch is talked about for a week.
Slack water: the short time when the tide does not move. It is the best time to go out and the best time to come in. Only the foolish fight the tide.
Shore lamp: a torch on the harbor wall, lit at dusk, so the boats can see the way in. Never let it go out. Once it went out for an hour, and two boats came in on the rocks.

Words for the new apprentice, which the yard uses too:
Haul: pull the load along the quay, or up the slip. A haul is one trip.
Hold: keep the plank still while the shipwright fixes it. Hold it for as long as it takes. An apprentice does not tire.
Stop: stay where you are until you are told.
Come: walk to the shipwright and stand by him.
%%
Words of the net shed
Written by Rye, farmer, from the talk Oak gave to the new hands who came up from the quay in spring. Oak has a bad back and a very good voice, and the talk ran long. These are the words from it. Read them before you touch the net.

Needle
The flat wood tool for knotting. Not the bone one. The bone one is for the old women, who will be cross if you take it.

Twine
The string. Two kinds: the tarred for the sea, and the plain for the shed. Do not mix them up, or the sea will tell you.

Mesh
The space between the knots in a net. Small mesh for small fish. Large mesh for the big ones. Do not make a small mesh for a big catch, or you will have a net full of rubbish and a boat full of regret.

Selvage
The edge of the net, the strongest part. Mend it first. If the selvage goes, the whole net goes with it, like a coat with a torn hem.

Rack
The wood frame where the net is hung to dry. Hang it out of the wind. A net that dries in the wind goes stiff, and stiff nets break.

Bait
The thing you put in the trap to bring the fish. Gull bait is not fish bait. Gulls will eat anything, and they will steal the rest.

Hook
The small one, for the line. Not the long one on the harbor wall. You will be asked to tell them apart, and you will get them wrong once, and that is allowed.

Shed
The place where all this is kept, and where Oak sits in the corner with the cat on his knees. Knock before you go in. He will hear you, even if he says he has not.

Good luck to the new hands. The sea is wide. The shed is warm. Start with the knot.
%%
Words of the Deep Works
By Hesk, miner at Copperhold.

My apprentice Clank asked me to write these down for the new folk. Clank cannot read them. Clank asked anyway. That is the kind of apprentice it is.

Shaft head: the top of the mine, where the board is. Write your name going down. Rub it out coming up. Rub it out.

Board: the name board. If your name stays on it a long time, folk come looking.

Level: a floor of the mine. We are on the fourth now. Do not ask how many there are.

Deep stone: the dark stone at the bottom. Hard and cold. Your pick rings on it and your hands ache.

Face: the wall you are working. "At the face" means working. "Away from the face" means the roof is talking and you should listen.

Roof: the stone over your head. It talks before it falls. Learn the sound.

Prop: oak, cut to length, set under the roof. Every prop is somebody's care. Set them well.

Sump: the old wet hole at the bottom where the water gathers. Stay out of it.

Lift: the cage on the rope. It goes down slow and comes up slower.

Eighth: every eighth rail is powered, so the carts roll. Count them. Lose count and you walk back.

Gate: a door across a tunnel. Shut it. Shut it.

Sorting: what we do in the shed above, by the bins. Copper, iron, coal, and the dull stuff.

Tally: the count board at the gate. What you brought up, and what you are owed.

Hum: I do not have a word for this one. I did not write it. Clank did, in its way, by standing still at the ninth gate for a long while. Leave it.
%%
Word list: the miners' words
Written by Sable, from what the miners of Copperhold told the reed boat men who carry their coal down the marsh. Sable wrote it down so the boat men would know what to expect.

Shaft: the hole that goes straight down from the mine head. Nothing in it is level.
Level: one floor of the mine, numbered from the top. Level one is the one you can see the sky from, if you lean.
Rail: the iron track for the carts. Every eighth rail has a red stone line under it, and you can feel the warm of it through your boots.
Cart: the iron box that rides the rail. Count your carts, not your fingers.
Tipper: the rider who tips the cart at the bend, so the load does not hit the wall. Clank was a tipper once, and it still remembers the bend.
Sump: the low pool at the bottom where the water goes. Do not stand by it. The water does not care who you are.
Deep stone: the dark stone under the iron and the coal. Hard, cold, and always cold, even in Longday.
Torch every eight steps: the light on the left going in. Count them, so you know where you are when the lamp goes out.
Pick: your tool. Sharpen it on the wheel at the store, and ask Bram before you do.
Hand's width: the gap you leave between two stones in a wall, so that the wall can breathe. A wall with no gaps is a wall that cracks.
Tally: the count of carts kept at the top, on the board by the mill. If the tally is wrong, the miners will tell you. They will tell you loudly.
Blackened: a miner's word for a man who has been down too long. It means tired and dirty. It does not mean anything worse.
Lift: the cage that takes the men and the carts up and down. Go up before you are tired, not after.
Hush: what the old miners say at the shaft head when a crew does not come up. Nobody says it twice in one day.

Sable's note: The boat men asked what hush meant. Hesk told them. They did not ask again.
%%
Words of the quay: a short list
Made by Rye, farmer, for the children of the hamlet who want to go down to the boats. Written in winter, in the room above the net shed. The words are the ones the sailors use, and what they mean when they say them.

Boat
A thing that floats and carries. Not a raft. A raft is a boat that has given up.

Keel
The long piece at the bottom of the boat. If the keel is bent, the boat will go round in circles, and so will the sailor.

Tiller
The stick that turns the rudder. Hold it with two hands in a gale. Hold it with one hand when the wind is kind.

Halyard
A rope that pulls up the sail. Do not stand under it. It is always heavier than you think.

Slip
The long stone ramp where boats are built and slid into the sea. Corin says the slip is the most honest thing in the hamlet, because it shows you exactly how far the boat has to go.

Tide
The sea going out and coming back. Read the tide book by the door. Do not trust the tide to wait for you.

Fog
The thing you cannot see through. Ring the bell on the harbor wall and wait. The bell is for the boats, not for you.

Net
The thing that catches fish, and sometimes gulls, and once a whole apprentice, which had to be cut loose.

Float
A small cork or wood ball on the net, to keep it up. A broken float is a small loss. A whole net of broken floats is a large one.

Knot
Tie it properly. A bad knot is a boat on the rocks. Mave says the loop knot is the one to use. Oak says the other one. Ask them both and take the one you like.

Wind
Where the sails get their work. Light wind from the north is good. Hard wind from the west is a reason to stay home.

Late home
When a boat comes in after dark. The bell rings twice when a boat is late, so the families know to light their lamps.
%%
Words of the hamlet: the school list
Set down by Rye, farmer, for the school at the hamlet hall. The children of the boat families come up to the hall in the mornings, and they bring words with them from the quay. This is a list of the ones the teacher allows, and what they mean.

Quay
The wall and the boards where the boats tie up. The quay is for working, not for playing. The children who play on it are sent up the hill.

Catch
What the net brings in. A good catch is the one the cook is glad to see. A poor catch is a long story at the fish market, and the price board says the same thing.

Market
Where the fish is sold, on the square by the harbor. The market is open on the days the bell says, and closed on the others, however much people shout.

Bell
The bell on the harbor wall rings for the boats coming in, and for the fog, and for the noon meal. Count the rings. Two rings is late. Three is trouble. Four is the fish market closing.

Lamp
The light at the top of the relay tower above the harbor. It blinks to the next tower up the coast. It is the only lamp in the hamlet that is not for a boat.

Tower
Stone, tall, and always blinking. The keeper is not a sailor, and does not like to be told the weather. The keeper knows it already.

Salt
What the sea leaves on everything. Wipe the iron. Wipe the copper. Wipe the boots. Wipe the children's faces before they go home.

Home
Where the boats come back to, every evening, if the tide and the wind are kind. The children say it at the end of the day, and it is the best word on the list.
%%
Words of the apprentice hall
Copied from the last page of the slate, in the order my son says the tutors taught them. He says it is the only list he could not get wrong, because he was too frightened to.

apprentice: a helper of copper and iron, with a mind in a crystal. Once it is drilled, it walks, lifts, carries and digs.
bench: the long table where the drills are laid out, one card to a place.
come: an order that means come to me. The apprentice itself comes.
fetch: an order that means bring me a thing.
haul: an order that means carry goods away along the road.
store: an order that means put the thing away on its shelf.
stay: an order that means stop where you are.
home: an order that means go back to your shed and rest.
farm: an order that means tend the field.
build: an order that means lay the blocks by the pattern.
gate: the great door of the drill yard. At night the gate is shut and barred.
rack: the wooden rack by the tool shed, where the cards hang in the order the work is done.
pattern: the drawing a builder follows. An apprentice does not draw a pattern. It follows one.
lift: to raise a load slowly with the arms, so that it does not swing.
carry: to hold a load and walk with it. Goods carried far are goods to be hauled.
dig: to break the ground with a pick and carry the earth away. Digging is not one of the eight orders. The card says what comes after it.
tutor: the one who signs the card, reads the score, and checks each apprentice's mind once a week.
shed: the small house where an apprentice goes to rest. It has a door, a bench and a dry box of spare crystals.
zombie at the gate: a warning. Call the tutor, shut the gate, and light the torches. Do not go out to see what it is. The tutors say a zombie at the gate is the same as a zombie anywhere, and they are right, but they would still rather you did not go and find out.

My son says the new apprentices always look up at the big gate when they hear these words. They are not sure why. Neither is he, but he says he is sure the gate is looking back.
%%
Clerks' words
By Oren, clerk of the Archive at Vell. Written at the Alder farm outside Three Wells, summer of 205, in the evenings, for Sage Alder, who asked what a clerk does all day. I said it would take a long time. It did.

The place:
Archive: the hill. We do not say "building". It has no roof. It has a hill.
Front hall: where you come in, and where the big book lies by the door. Sign it, please.
Halls: there are six, and then the deep halls. Rooms of shelves, with stairs between. Cool, still and dry.
Light well: a shaft of glass that brings daylight down. The nicest place to read, if you can get a chair.
Lantern: the only light we use past the front hall, and always behind glass. A candle is not a light. A candle is an idea we do not discuss.
Copying room: the brightest room in the hill. Eight long tables, and the big window over the town. A clerk who is bored may look out of it. A clerk who is not bored does not.
Deepest room: where the oldest record lies in its oak box. It comes out on Founding Day, and goes back the same night.

The work:
Text: anything that is written. A letter, a recipe, a list of what is in a barn. A text is not important or unimportant. It is a text.
Copy: to write a text out again, word for word. Never to improve it.
Read back: a second clerk reads the copy aloud against the first. Every word, even the dull ones.
Gap: the space left where a word cannot be read. You do not fill it with a guess.
Margin: the edge of the page, where a guess may live, if it is marked as one.
Number: the figure given to a text when it comes in. It goes on the text, on its box, and in the finding book.
Finding book: the book with one line for every text. Without it the hill is only a very large cupboard.
File: to put a text in its place. A text has one place, and that is where we look.
Box: the case a text lives in. After you read it, return it to the exact spot it came from.
Seal: the mark of the Archive, pressed in wax. A shelf that is full gets a door, wax and a seal.
Unknown: the place for a text with no writer's name. We do not invent names.

Other words:
Behind: what a clerk is when more texts come in than are copied. We are always a little behind. We are never very behind.
Tea: what the third room runs on.
Clerk: a person who keeps what other people write. Also a person who is sorry about a spelling, and does not say so.

Sage asked what a clerk does all day. I think she has her answer. She asked if it is a good job. I said it is a very good job, for a person who likes to know where things are.
%%
Words of the sorting shed
Cass, healer, Copperhold. These are the words the sorters use at the bins by the shaft. A sorter who uses the wrong word is asked to say it again slowly.

Bin: a wooden box for one kind of ore. Copper in the first, iron in the second, coal in the last.
Chute: the wooden slide from the cage to the bins. Keep your hands off it.
Riddle: a sieve with a wire mesh, for the small stones. The large ones are put in the cart.
Small: anything that fits through the mesh.
Clean: ore with no grey in it. Clean copper is bright, like a new pan.
Grey: ore that is not worth carrying. Put it on the grey pile by the door, and do not take it home.
Pile: the heap of grey outside the shed. The children play on it, and it is forbidden.
Scale: the iron weights at the end of the bench. Every load is weighed before it goes to the forge.
Mark: the notch on the tally, or the chalk on the bin. Two marks mean a double load.

Cass says the sorters are the most honest people in Copperhold. They weigh the grey as carefully as the bright, so that nobody can say they cheated. She says that is why the mine kitchen trusts them.
%%
Notice: the lost letter
Put up at the Kettle Inn by the ridge road. Ask at the bar.

Lost on the Long Road, between here and the Three Wells turn, a letter folded twice and tied with blue wool. It was in a coat pocket and the coat went over a gate.

It is not worth money. It is a letter from my brother Noll at Copperhold, and it has news in it I would like to keep.

If you find it, leave it at the inn or send it up to the house at the edge of the ridge, the one with the sick cow in the byre. There will be honey for you.

Rill
%%
The Pinehook Smiths' Word List
By Cleo, smith at Pinehook, autumn of 202.

Travelers bring words from far along the road. Some are useful at the forge. Some only make a person sound as if they know more than they do.

Blank: iron that has not yet been shaped.
Bellows: the leather bag that pushes air into the fire.
Draw: make hot iron longer by hammering it.
Fold: bend iron over itself, then hammer it flat.
Scale: the flakes that fall from hot iron in the fire.
Tongs: the tool for holding hot iron.
Quench: cool hot iron in water.
Temper: heat cooled iron again, then let it cool in the air.
Rivet: a short iron pin that joins two pieces.
Edge: the thin part of a blade or tool.
Shoe: the curved iron fitted to a horse's hoof.
Burr: a sharp rough edge left after cutting.
Pattern: a shape drawn on a board before the iron is made.

A traveler asked if a blank was a page with nothing on it. I said yes, if the page was made of iron. She asked if I could make one. I said I could, but she would need a strong book.

The small apprentice carries coal, sorts iron scraps and fetches tools. It knows the tool rack by the painted marks. I made each mark large enough to see from the fire. Reed made the mark for tongs look like a rabbit. The apprentice found the tongs at once. Reed now claims that rabbits are a fine aid to smithing.

The apprentice once took "bring the blank" to mean bring the clean board. We changed the order card to say "fetch iron blank." The next time it brought a piece of iron. I did not laugh until it had set the iron down. Reed laughed before that and had to carry coal until supper.

The north wind comes through the forge door every autumn. We hang wool over the gap, but it blows inward and covers the bellows. Last year I tied the wool down with a new iron hook. This year the hook held, the wool held, and the door stayed open anyway. The cat had got its tail caught in the cloth and was dragging it across the floor.
%%
Words of the shaft and the sea: a lesson
Written by Rye, farmer, after the boy from the net shed fell in the harbor on the day of the first trial. Nobody was lost. The boy was pulled out by the boat hook and dried by the stove and given soup. It is in this list because the words were in the lesson, and the lesson was wrong.

The lesson was to teach the new hands the words for the boat. The teacher was Mave. She had the list written on the slate, and the children read it out one by one. The boy read "tiller" as "tellor", and the others laughed, and he went red, and then he got it wrong again on purpose, to make them laugh more.

Mave said: listen to the word. Then she said the wrong word again, and the boy said it back, and the boat hook came out.

Here is the list she had written, with what each word means, so you do not make the same mistake.

Anchor
The heavy thing on the rope that holds a boat still. It is not for swinging. A boy who swings from an anchor will be in the water, and that is what happened.

Bow
The front of the boat. Not the thing you shoot with. Not the bow of a fine ribbon. Mave says it twice in the lesson, and the boy still said the other one.

Oar
The long wood paddle that rows the boat. Pull it smooth. Do not splash.

Hook
The long pole with a hook on it, kept on the harbor wall. It is for pulling people out of the water. It is not a toy, and it is not for pulling the boy's hat off his head.

Lesson's end
Mave said it was a bad lesson. She said so with some tears. Then she said the boy would remember every word on the list now, because he had been in the sea. Rye thinks that is true. The boy has not gone near the water since, except to fetch the soup.
%%
Words of the relay keepers
Quin's list, spring. For the grandchildren, who ask.
Lamp room: the glass room at the top of the tower.
Blink: one flash of the lamp. A letter is made of blinks.
Seen: the answer that means "I read your message."
Say again: please send the message once more.
Trim: to cut the wick, so the lamp burns clean.
Quiet night: a night with no messages. Keepers like them. Keepers also dread them.
%%
Words of the test box, and the sorting
Copied from the slate, the last of the words my son brought home this week. He was pleased with this list, because he had to learn it by heart in one night, and he got every word right the next morning.

test box: the box of pages that no mind is ever drilled on. It is kept locked, and the key hangs in the tutor's room.
unseen: what the test box holds. A mind that does well on unseen pages has learned. A mind that does well only on the old pages has only remembered.
remember: to keep a page in the weights without learning anything from it. From the outside it looks like learning.
sorting: the work of choosing which pages go to the drill and which go to the box. A clerk sorts every page, not a mind.
spoiled: a page with a blot, a tear or a wrong word. It comes out of the drill, and it does not go back in.
contest: a day when the halls of Vell and Copperhold test their minds on the same unseen page, and the scores go up on the board.
honest: what a tutor is when the scores are posted. Nobody likes it, my son says, but it is the best word on the slate.
score: the number on the sheet that tells how many guesses were right, out of how many.
key: the small iron key on a string, which hangs on the tutor's nail.
answer: what the tutor writes beside a wrong guess. The mind does not see it until the next drill.

My son says the great drills began with one hall and one box. Now there are many boxes, and the boxes have many pages, and nobody has counted them all. The clerks say whose letters are in the boxes is a question for the councils. The councils say the clerks know. So the question goes round and round, like the sorting carts in the yard.
%%
Words of the new road
By Aven. Autumn. A new road is being laid across the marsh from the dry bank to the long boardwalk. The council has sent masons with stone. These are the words they use, and the words we use about them.
Causeway: a raised road across wet ground, on a bed of stakes, brush and gravel, with stone on top. It sinks a little each year. We shall see about this one.
Brush: bundles of reeds laid in layers under the gravel. The reed cutters sell them dear, because the council wants them all.
Mason's mark: the sign cut in a stone by the mason who laid it. Ours is a small fish.
Why: the word nobody can answer. Some say the road is for the carts that go to the ships. Some say it is for the carts that come back. Some say the council does not tell people why it builds things, and that is its right. The masons do not know either. They are paid by the day.
Bet: a promise about a thing that has not happened. Aven has one with Rook of the fish weir. Aven says the road will not be finished by the first frost. Rook says it will. The stake is a pie. Aven expects to lose and hopes to.
%%
Words of the cart road, by Hal
Hal wrote these after the cart from Three Wells got stuck in the mud at the bottom of the hill. The carter says the cart did it on purpose. The children say the carter did.

axle: the bar under a cart that the wheels turn on. A broken axle is the worst word on the road.
rut: the track the wheels have worn. Keep out of it, or you will stay in it.
stone edge: the cobblestone side of the road. Keep the wheels on it when you can.
lever: a long bar for lifting a wheel out of the mud. Put it under the rim, not under the spokes.
team: the horses in front. Speak to them calmly. They know more about the mud than you do.
stuck: what a cart is when it cannot move. The carter says it is not stuck, only resting.
%%
Journal: spring at the edge of the ridge
Rill keeps this book. Nell keeps the cows. I keep the bees.

The wind came off the ridge all night and took the loose plank off the byre door. Nell found it in the morning out by the hedge and said a word I will not write. The heifer is no better. Wren's jar is gone and she says she will send another. She says keep her warm, keep her dry, and do not let her lie in the wet. She says it kindly, as she always does.

The bees are out. Three hives by the flowers and all three humming, which is a good sound and a bad word both, these days. I will say the bees are busy and leave it there.

Pip came up from Tam's with a message and stood in the yard and would not go in the rain, so Nell let it stand in the barn. Tam says his north field is in and the beetroot is up. Good.

Noll has not written since the last one. Pell says the road is open and the inns are full, so there is no reason. There is always a reason. I will ask Pell when he comes back through.

The heifer stood up today on her own and took a little water. Nell cried and then pretended she had something in her eye. The wind is from the north again. I have tied the plank. Tomorrow I will nail it.
%%
Lowmarsh market words
By Sella, reed cutter. Blossom, 183.

A short list for new sellers. I made it after three people called a reed a rush, and one called my bundle a broom.

Cut. Take the reed above the mud. Leave the roots.
Bundle. Tie reeds together so they do not fall across the board.
Straight. A reed fit for a mat or a basket.
Split. Open a reed with a small knife. Do not split it in your hand.
Dry. Lay the reeds under a roof until they stop feeling cool.
Mat. A flat thing woven from dry reeds. Good for a wet floor.
Weir. A low fence in the water that leads fish into a basket.
Basket. A reed vessel for fish, eggs, or carrots.
Tally. A mark for each basket brought to the boat house.
Trade. Give one good for another. Count both.
Price. The number of emeralds asked for a thing.
Change. Emeralds handed back when the buyer gives too much.

At market, a fine bundle sold for two emeralds. A bundle full of crooked reeds sold for one. My brother said the crooked ones were only bent with character. He bought them all for his hen house.
%%
Words of the copying room
Written by Ula for the new clerks, at the request of Oren, who said a clerk should know the words before she is allowed to touch a page. Summer.

Quill: the pen. Cut the nib fresh each morning. A blunt quill makes a blunt copy.
Ink: black, from the squid of Saltreach. Charcoal is not ink. Charcoal smudges, and then it fades.
Margin: the empty space at the side of the page. Write your guess there, and mark it guess.
Gap: the empty space in the line, the size of a word you cannot read. Leave the gap. Do not fill it with a guess.
Copy: the new page, made by hand, from the first. It is never the same as the first, and it is not meant to be.
First: the original page, kept on the deep shelves. The first is never taken out, except by the head clerk.
Second reading: when a second clerk reads the copy against the first, aloud, every word. Both sign the back.
Sign: to write your name at the foot of the page. A signed page is a page you stand by.
Shelf: a row of pages. The shelf has a door when it is full.
Seal: the wax and the mark that show a shelf is closed. Do not break a seal. Ask the head clerk.
Hall: a long room in the hill, lined with shelves. The hall is cool, still and dry.
Light well: a shaft that brings daylight down into the halls. Keep the glass clean. Keep the dust off the shelves under it.
Lantern: the light you carry, behind glass. Never a candle past the front hall.
%%
Words for going home
The words a traveler uses when the road turns toward home. Fern wrote them out for her cousin's boy, who will be going to the coast in spring, and who will want to be told, when he comes back, that the words still mean the same things.

Home: the house with the kettle on the hook, the bench by the door, and the window with a lamp in it. You will know it by the smell of the bread before you see it.
Gate: the wooden gate at the foot of the lane. It sticks in the wet months. Lift it and push, and do not kick it, because the gate will remember.
Lamp in the window: a light left lit for the one who is late. It is a small thing, and everyone knows what it is for. Nobody has ever been able to tell me why it is so hard to stop doing.
Bench: the long bench by the door, where the boots come off. Sit on it before you go in. Let the road come off your legs.
Kettle: the one on the hook, always full, always just about to boil. Someone is always making tea. Someone is always glad you came.
Stay: the word the old cows know, and the old dogs. It means: here, for now. We will see about after.
Welcome: the word said at the gate by whoever is nearest. Say it back. It is the only word that is more fun to say to someone else.

Fern's last note, to be read by her cousin's boy, in spring, when he comes home: The road will be long. The boats will be strange. The big hulls will be bigger than you think, and you will not want to talk about them. Come to the cold room first, before the house. Put your hand on the cheese, and feel how it is ripe. Then come in and have the soup. The kettle will be on.

Fern
%%
Words of the copying room
Also copied from the slate, for the second half of the week. These are the clerks' words, and my son says the clerks are very particular about them.

copy: a page written out again, word for word, in a clerk's own hand.
spoiled page: a copy with a blot or a torn corner. It goes in the bin, and it is never shelved.
card: the small slip tied to each record, with its number on it.
shelf: a row of records in order, oldest on the left. The order is kept every year, without exception.
seal: the wax and the mark that close a full shelf. Only the head clerk may open a sealed shelf.
the great drills: the tutors' work from about the year 185 to 195. The tutors drilled reading minds on the records of the archive.
we will keep everything we write: the words over the door at Vell. The clerks say them every morning, quietly, the way you say the name of someone you are fond of.
whose letters: a question the clerks do not answer. Some say the drills used every shelf at Vell. Some say only the copies. The books do not agree, and the clerks say it is not for them to settle.
%%
Words that mean more now
By Aven, at Lowmarsh, in the autumn. I have been asked by the clerks to set down the words that have changed. Here are some. A child will want to know what an old person meant.
Soon: used to mean the next day. Now it means a day nobody has chosen.
Leaving: used to be a thing we did after a visit. Now it is a thing some of the neighbors have done, on a cart, with their chairs.
Ship: used to be a big boat. Now it is a word that stops a conversation. Say it at the inn and listen to the quiet.
Hum: a low sound in the ground at night. The Copperhold carters swear to it. Some at the Halfway Inn say it is the wind in the shaft. Some say singing. A boy says the hill is clearing its throat. I have not heard it. I do not live near a hill.
Lights: a word for lamps, and for stars, and lately for something in the north that some people have seen and some have not. Some say falling stars. Some say fires. Some say a man's story that has grown. I have seen the lamps of Lowmarsh every night of my life, and they are the only lights I know.
Cough: a word that Wren will not say lightly. Ask her.
Edge stone: used to be for the shy. It is for everyone.
Quiet: used to be a thing you asked of children. Now it is a thing you listen to.
Stay: used to be a word for a dog. Now we say it to each other, softly, at the door, and to the bridge posts, and to the frogs.
Pie: has not changed. I record it for comfort. A pie is still a pie, and I mean to win my bet.
Bet: still means a promise about a thing that has not happened. It is the one word I find I like more than I did.
Across: the other side of the water. Nobody here has seen it. We are told it is there.
Wax cloth: a cloth with wax on it, to keep out the wet. Everyone wants some. Nobody says why. I bought two lengths and told myself it was for the boat house roof.
Council: used to be a meeting. Now it is a word for the people who know something and have not said it. I do not blame them. I would not like to say it either, if I did not know what it was.
If you find a word here that you think is wrong, cross it through with one thin line, and write your own beside it. That is the rule of the Archive, and it is a good rule.
%%
Wren's market words
By Wren, Lowmarsh. Blossom, 171.

At the market, Moss asked what the boat folk meant by "set the line." I told her, then wrote these words for the board.

Line. The cord with hooks for fish.
Set the line. Put it in the water and tie it fast.
Weir. A fence in the water that guides fish to a basket.
Reed. A tall plant from the wet beds. Cut it above the mud.
Mud. Good for a garden, bad in a boot.
Basket. What holds fish, roots, or Moss's lost scarf.
Fresh. A fish caught today. Ask before you buy.
Salt. Rub it on fish to keep it longer.
Scale. A fish's small hard covering. Not a coin.
Quay. The dry edge where boats unload.
Weigh. Find how heavy the catch is.
Share. What you give your neighbor when the catch is large.
The boat folk have agreed to use these words. Moss has agreed to keep her scarf on.
%%
Letter: Nell to Wren at Lowmarsh
Wren,

The grey heifer is still with us and I do not know whether that is good or bad. She stands. She takes a little water. She will not touch hay. She looks at me with her head on one side, and I have started talking to her like a person, which Rill says is a bad sign for me and not for the cow.

You asked me to write what I see, so here it is. Her eyes are clear. Her breath is warm and not sour. She does not cough. Her milk is gone, which is the grief of it, for she was the best milker on the ridge. There is nothing in her that I can put my finger on and say, that. She is only tired, and thin, and not herself.

The jar you sent helped, I think. She took it in water. Please send more if you have it.

The other news is small. The wind took our byre door and Rill nailed it back. The hives are busy. The bakers have our wheat. Tam's Pip came up with a message and stood in the barn out of the rain, patient as a post, and went home at dusk. Tam says the mill sails squeak and he will see to them.

There is a rumor going about that the ships at Saltreach are longer than the pier. I do not believe it. Rill says if it is true, they will need a longer pier. That is the whole of the news from the ridge.

Write when you can. Tell Moss I said to keep her jars labeled.

Nell
%%
Words of the mine, for the new boys
Hal writes these for the boys who go down to Copperhold. Learn them before the first shift, or the mine will teach them for you.

shaft head: the top of the shaft, where the count board hangs.
prop: a post that holds up the roof. Never take one out.
ore: stone with copper or iron in it. It is heavier than you think.
shift: the time you work, and the time you come up.
rub out: wipe your name off the board when you come up. Everyone does it, even the foreman.
%%
The Pinehook Autumn Fair
By Cleo and Sella, autumn of 207.

We hold the Pinehook fair when the apples are ready and the first leaves have turned yellow. It is a small fair. We have one long row of tables, a clear patch by the road, and enough lanterns to keep the sheep from joining the dancing.

Sella brings bread and apple cakes from the Fox Bowl. The bee keeper brings honey in jars with cloth over the lids. I bring hooks, nails, horse shoes and little iron spoons. The spoon stall is popular with children. The children say they need spoons for soup. Their parents say they have spoons at home. Both are right.

Reed hangs a sign above the smithy table. It says, "Good iron, fair price, no promises about the weather." The wind turns the sign around so that it points at the wall. We leave it there. People find the table by following the sound of my hammer.

This year the little apprentice helped set out the benches. It carried each bench from the shed and placed it beside the road. I told it to stay near the forge after the last bench was set. It stayed beside the forge and watched the fair from the open door. Reed said it should have a place at a table. Sella set out a bowl of carrots for it, though it does not eat.

The fair also had a race for the children. They ran from the inn sign to the spruce stump and back. Sella's nephew won, then ran once more because he thought the race was too short. He won again and asked for two cakes.

After the race, I showed the apprentice a card we had made for the fair.

> bring me the iron hooks
= fetch iron hooks

It brought the hooks to my table. Then I gave it another order.

> stay beside the forge
= stay

It stayed by the forge until I called it. Reed says the order was easier than keeping the children from the honey jars. I say the jars were easier than Reed's new sign.

When the fair ended, the tables went back to the inn shed. We counted the spoons, the hooks and the cakes. One spoon was missing. Sella found it in Reed's pocket. Reed said it had walked there. The apprentice stood by the forge, which was where I had told it to stay. It had more sense than Reed, and less to explain.
%%
Marsh words
Words you will hear on the boardwalk at Lowmarsh, set down by Aven for a traveler who asked what everyone was saying. Autumn.
Post: a post in the water. Count them to know where you are.
Dry bank: the high ground above the marsh. Rain does not reach it, people say. They are wrong.
Edge stone: the flat stone at the end of the long boardwalk. You leave your eggs on it and take the salt that was left for you. It used to be for shy people. It is for many people now.
Quiet: the sound at night when the frogs stop. Some say a fox is near. Some say it means nothing.
Soon: a word we say more than we used to.
%%
Words of the Deep Works
By Hesk, miner at Copperhold.
The shaft head is the top of the mine, where the board hangs. You write your name there and rub it out coming up. The long stair is the stair down to the deep levels. A level is one floor of the mine, with a name like copper level or iron level. A sump is the low wet place where water gathers, and the old sump is the one we do not go to. A hollow is a pocket of amethyst left on the wall, and we leave it, because it is pretty and because the stone around it is sound. A rail is the track for the carts, and every eighth one is powered. A torch every eight steps on the left going in. If you are lost, turn around and count. The ninth gate is locked and the key is at the mine hall. I do not know what is behind it. Nobody I know has opened it.
%%
Tutors' words for the look-in
Tutor Hale of Vell came to the Lowmarsh market to buy a remedy for his cough, and stayed to teach. The list is as he said it, and Wren wrote it on the board by her stall. A cart was stuck in the road at the time, and the entries were said between pushes.

Look-in: to open a crystal and watch what its parts do while it works. Only a few tutors do it. Most still think a crystal is better left shut.
Part: any piece of a mind that can be watched alone.
Glow: how strongly a part answers to what it is shown. A part that answers to nothing is dark. Dark does not mean dead. It may answer to something nobody has tried.
Loud part: a part that glows very strongly. Hale's first guess is always that the loud part matters most. He is wrong about half the time.
Lone reader: a part that glows for one thing only. Hale found one that glowed on the mark that opens a quotation, and on nothing else.
Crowded part: a part that glows for several things that have nothing to do with each other. Hale cannot say why. He thinks the parts are shared out among more things than there are parts.
Copier: a part that looks back for the last time a name came up, and then says the word that followed it. If the page says Mira and then Northpoint, and later says Mira again, the copier says Northpoint.
Weir: a small helper trained to catch one fact from a part, the way a fish weir catches fish and lets the water through. Hale's weir for the mark that closes a quotation never misses. He says that proves the fact is there. It does not prove the mind uses it.
Seen, told, guessed, unknown: the clerks' four marks. See the board beside this one.

Hale's cough is better. His map is not. He says that is how it goes.
%%
Letter: Corin to his sister
To Mira at Northpoint, from Corin at Saltreach, the ninth of Melon.
Sister, the boat came late and you will hear it from three people before this reaches you, so hear it from me.
The Grey Gull went out at dawn with my best nets and my worst crew and did not come back at dark. I stood on the harbor wall till the lamp was lit, and then I stood some more. The keeper above the harbor blinked at me twice, as if to say, I see you. I did not have anything to blink back.
She came in at the second hour of the night with a hold full of fish and a broken oar and a story. The story is that the wind dropped and the fog came and they could not find the harbor mouth, and they rowed in circles until the fog went. I have heard worse stories. I have told worse. The fish sold well in the morning.
I am glad the Gull is home. I am less glad about the oar. I have told them the harbor lamp is lit all night for a reason, and they said the fog was very thick, and I said the lamp is very bright, and we agreed to disagree and mend the oar.
The slip is busy. We are building a boat for the fishing folk at Lowmarsh, a small one, wide in the beam. Wren came to look at it and said it was a good shape for slow water. I took that kindly.
How is the winter up there? Lantern writes a good hand for a young one. Tell her the harbor sends its regards.
Your brother,
Corin
%%
Words of the fish weir
By Aven, with help from Rook, who keeps the weir and corrects me. Lowmarsh, in the autumn.
Weir: a long fence of stakes and woven reeds that leads fish into a pen. The fish are not asked.
Pen: the round trap at the end. A fish that enters a pen does not leave it. This is called luck, if you are the fisher.
Run: the time when the fish come up the channel. A run lasts a few days. A good run fills the pen to the top by dawn.
Empty run: a run with no fish in it. Rook says it is a word he does not like to say out loud. He has said it eleven times this autumn.
Silver: the color of the fish in the pen at dawn. It is the best color there is.
Keeper: the one who looks after the weir. Rook is the keeper. Aven is the keeper's worst critic.
Tally: the count on the boat house wall. Fish in, fish out, fish missing. Fish missing is a long column this year.
Mud: where everything ends up.
Reasons. Everyone has one for the empty runs. The water is sour, says one. The big ships have scared them off, says another, though the ships are at Saltreach and the weir is a day inland. The council's road has stirred the channel, says a third. A boy says the fish have gone somewhere better. Rook says the fish know something and are not telling. Aven says she has mended nets for fifty years and never known a fish to tell.
Hope: a word we use at the weir at dawn. It is not on the tally. It is written beside it, in chalk, where it can be rubbed out.
%%
Miners' words, from a Copperhold cart
Told by Sim, miner of Copperhold, at the Northpoint spring market, to a boat builder who asked what a vein was. Written down by Dara, who had the pen.

I came north on Teg's first cart to see my sister. The news comes last. A miner saves the good end of the loaf.

Going down:
Shaft: the straight hole from the top of the hill to the levels. The shaft head is the top of it.
Board: it hangs at the shaft head. You write your name going down and rub it out coming up. A name left at supper means a search.

At the face:
Face: the wall you are digging. Every miner thinks his face is the best.
Ore: stone with metal in it. The rest is only stone.
Vein: a thin line of ore running through the rock, like the lines on the back of a hand. You find a bit, then you follow it.
Spoil: the stone you dig that is not ore. There is always more spoil than ore. This is also true of talk.
Pillar: a post of stone left standing to hold up the roof. Never dig your own pillar.
Prop: an oak beam set under the roof. The first thing said of any new tunnel is "prop it".
Sump: the low place where water gathers. Somebody has to bail it. It is usually the new one.

Coming up:
Rub out: to take your name off the board. The best two words in the mine.

Now the news. On the ninth of Thaw, Hesk's crew struck a new copper vein on the east face. It is as thick as a man's arm and as bright as a new pot. The crew sang for an hour. Hesk did not sing. Hesk said it would run out. It has not run out yet.

Dara adds: a plank has a vein too. We call it grain. Cut against it and the plank splits. Sim says rock is the same.
%%
A seller's list for Blossom
By Talla, at the Lowmarsh market. Blossom, 207.

Wren says every market needs clear words and a clean water jar. I have put both on this board. Read the list before you set your goods down.

Stand. The place at the market given to one seller.
Board. A flat place to set goods and show the price.
Weigh. Find how heavy a thing is.
Measure. Use the same bowl or basket for each sale.
Tally. Mark a sale or a basket brought in.
Price. The number of emeralds asked for an item.
Fair price. A price that pays for the work and does not cheat the buyer.
Change. Emeralds returned to the buyer after payment.
Trade. Give one good and take another.
Fresh catch. Fish brought in today.
Salt fish. Fish rubbed with salt and packed to keep.
Keep cool. Put food in shade, away from the warm stones.
Spoiled. Food that smells bad or has gone soft. Take it off the board.
Share. A part for someone who cannot pay.
Clean jar. A jar washed with hot water and set upside down to dry.
Water tally. One mark for each jar carried from the boardwalk well.

The market well ran dry during the first warm days of Blossom. We tied a clean cup to the covered jar from the boardwalk well. Each seller took one cup for drinking, then filled the jar again. No one may use the jars on Wren's high shelf. Those are for the sick.

A melon too big for my scale came to market this morning. It filled a whole basket and pushed the lid off. The grower asked three emeralds. Pell asked how many smaller melons it equaled, and the grower said, "One very large melon." We weighed it on the fish scale, with Moss holding the far end of the board. The scale held. The board did not. The melon rolled into the reed bundles and stopped against my boot.

We sold slices by the measure. The children called each slice a small measure, though some were larger than their bowls. The grower took home the rind for the pigs. Moss took the seeds to plant by the healing house.

I have added one more market word.

Too large. A thing that needs two sellers to lift, one board to weigh, and a crowd to watch.

Keep the price board dry. Keep the water covered. Keep the frogs off the fish baskets. This last rule is still needed.
%%
The whole list, for the school
Hal's list for the children of the hamlet, with the words from the mine, the cart road, the drill hall and the clerks' room, in alphabetical order, so the youngest can find them. The big ones may learn the rest by heart.

axle: the bar under a cart that the wheels turn on. A broken axle is the worst word on the road.
bench: the table where a tutor sits with the drill box. It is not for sitting on, though the children try.
card: one example, with the answer on the back.
clerk: a person who copies. A clerk stays until the shelf is sealed.
copy: the same text, in another hand, word for word.
drill: the same card, again and again.
finding book: the list of every text by its number. If it is not there, it is not found.
homecoming: what the hamlet does when a child comes back from the far school. The bell rings, the bread comes out, and the child is made to say the words she learned, even the rude ones.
lamp: carry it low on the stair, and keep it in front of you.
level: one floor of the mine.
ore: stone with copper or iron in it.
pass mark: the number a mind must reach on the unseen box. Seventeen of twenty, at Vell.
prop: a post that holds the roof. Never take one out.
relay: the line of towers that carries a message from one to the next.
rub out: wipe your name off the count board when you come up.
seal: wax with the archive mark pressed in it.
shift: the time you work, and the time you come up.
stone edge: the cobblestone side of the road. Keep the wheels on it.
stope: a room cut out of the stone, where the work is done.
stuck: what a cart is when it cannot move. The carter says it is only resting.
sump: the low pool at the bottom of the mine. Nobody swims in it.
torch: a light on a post. Keep one lit on the road home.
tutor: a person who teaches a mind by drill. The tutors shout, which is how you know they care.
%%
Words of the yard: the shipwright's list
Written down by Rye, farmer, from what Corin the shipwright said while the new boat was being built on the slip. The list is long, and Corin changed some of the words as he went, and Rye has put the last word he used for each one.

Plank
A board for the hull. Not a board for the floor. Corin says a floor board is a plank that has given up on being a boat.

Rib
The curved piece that holds the plank in its shape. Put the ribs in before you put the planks on. Corin said this seven times while I was there, and once he said it to the dog.

Caulk
The stuff that fills the cracks between the planks. Oak fiber and tar, pushed in with a flat iron. If you can see the light through the caulk, it is not done.

Stem
The front of the boat, where it cuts the water. The stem must be straight. A crooked stem makes a boat that wants to go home.

Stern
The back of the boat. It is where the tiller goes, and where the sailors sit when they are tired.

Launch
When the boat goes down the slip into the sea. Everybody watches. Nobody tells the boat what to expect. It is a boat, and it will find out.

Trial
The first day on the water, close to the quay, with a rope tied on. If it floats level and turns when you tell it, it is a good boat. If it does not, you take it back up the slip and begin again. Corin does not mind this. He says the second boat is always better.

Wet wood
Wood that is still full of water. Do not build with it. It shrinks, and the planks pull apart, and then the boat is a basket with a sail.

Frost
What the shipwright fears in autumn. Frost in the wood is worse than wet, because it stays.
%%
Words of the tutors' drill hall
Written by Hal, who is not a tutor, but spent a summer at Vell carrying water in the drill hall, and learned these words because the tutors shout them.

card: one example, with the answer on the back. The mind is shown the card and gives its answer.
drill: the same kind of card, again and again. A drill is only as good as its cards.
unseen box: cards that no mind has seen. A mind must pass the unseen box before it is given work.
pass mark: the number of right answers a mind must reach. At Vell it is seventeen of twenty.
weight: a small number inside a mind. Each time a card is wrong, it moves a little.
stand: the frame that holds a big mind in its crystal. It is heavy. Do not lean on it.
tested: a mind that has passed the unseen box. Never send an untested mind to the fields.
apprentice: a helper of copper and iron. It learns what it is shown. It does not talk.
%%
Words of the copying room
By Oren, archive clerk at Vell.

New clerks come to me and do not know what we are saying. So I write this list. Learn it, and you can work a day in the copying room without asking me twice.

Sheet: one page, copied.

Gathering: four sheets folded together. The right size for a hand.

Quire: twenty sheets, sewn. A clerk carries two.

Exemplar: the old book we copy from. Never leave it open on the table. Never set a lamp by it.

Fair copy: the clean sheet, made after the rough one.

Foul: a spoiled sheet. Into the rag box, not the shelf.

Line: a line of writing. Keep it straight. The eye likes straight lines.

Margins: the white at the edges. Wide enough that a thumb does not cover a word.

Catchword: the first word of the next page, written at the foot of this one. So the sheets stay in order, even if they fall.

Hand: the way a person writes. Oren's hand is neat. Mine is not, says the clerk who copies it.

Still: the air in the halls. We say a room is still when the air does not move. The deep halls are always still.

Dry: no damp. A damp sheet wrinkles and the ink runs. Test a room with the back of your hand.

Seal: wax and the archive stamp, on any shelf that is full. Break a seal and you must write why.

Door: a full shelf gets a door. That is the rule, and it is not a joke, though clerks say it is.
%%
Words of the east shaft, Copperhold
Cass, healer, wrote these out for the new girls at the mine kitchen, who came up from the lower town and did not know the talk. Spring, the year the bell was mended. She says the words are the same as the miners use, and she has kept them the same.

Shaft head: the top of the mine, where the cages come up. Also the place where the names are written on the board.
Cage: the iron box that takes you down, and brings you back up, if the rope holds.
Count board: the slate where every load is marked, in and out. Nobody leaves without a mark.
Rub it out: what you do to your name on the board when you come up. It means you are safe.
Deep stone: stone from below the third level. Dark, hard, and always cold to the hand.
Ore: anything that comes out of the wall and is worth something. Copper, iron, coal.
Stope: a room cut into the wall, where the ore is taken out.
Tally: a stick cut with notches. Every load gets a notch.
Hum: a low sound from the lower levels. Not a tool and not water. Miners say you learn to stop hearing it.

Cass says the new girls should learn the words before they learn the stairs. A girl who says "cage" where she means "lift" is sent up to the kitchen.
%%
Words the clerks use
By Oren, clerk at the Archive at Vell.
A shard is one torn piece of a record. A gathering is all the pieces of one text, kept in a paper wrap. A hand is one person's writing, and we know most hands by sight. A shelf list is the card that says what is on a shelf. A full shelf gets a door, wax and the seal. A fair copy is what you write after the spoiled one. A test box is pages no mind is ever drilled on. We keep it locked, and Nessa has the key. A day book is the big book by the front hall, where we write what came in and from where. If you cannot read a word, write "unclear" and leave a space. Never guess. Some clerk long after you will thank you for the space.
%%
Words for the cold room, in winter
The words the dairy folk use from the first frost to the thaw. Written by Fern, for the cousin's boy, who thinks the cows understand him. They do not, but they answer to the bell.

Stall: the place each cow sleeps, with its own straw and its own name on the post. Move a cow to another stall and you will hear about it all night.
Bell: the cow bell. Ring it at the first bell, and the cows come in for the milk. Ring it at the dusk bell, and they come in for the night. Do not ring it for fun.
Straw: the bedding. Change it every third day, or the cows will complain about it in the morning, and in the afternoon, and in their sleep.
Hay rack: the wooden rack by the wall where the hay goes. Keep it full. A cow with an empty rack is a cow with opinions.
Frost on the milk pail: the sign that it is too cold to leave the pail in the yard. Bring it in. Warm the pail by the stove, not on it.
Thaw: the first warm day after the frost. The ground goes soft, the ditches run, and every cow in the valley tries to get out at once.
Lamp in the byre: kept lit, behind glass, all winter. The cows do not need it. The cousin's boy needs it, and he is not a cow.

Fern's note: The cows are fine. The hay is good, and there is plenty of it. The cold room is full of the autumn's cheese. The only thing I cannot do anything about is the quiet. The birds have gone south, the frogs have gone under, and the cows look up at the north sky as if they are waiting for something to be said.
%%
Word list: the miners' words
Set down by Noll, who worked the Deep Works thirty years, so the young ones would know what we say.

Adit: a small tunnel into a hill, not the Deep Works.
Back: the roof over your head. Keep it up.
Bench: a ledge of rock where you stand to work.
Crib: the timber that holds the roof. Set it true.
Sump: the low place where water gathers. The old sump is deep.
Rung: one step of a ladder. Count them going down.
Shaft head: the top of the mine, where the board is.
Tool store: where the picks live. Sign them out.
Sorting shed: where the ore goes to be sorted.
Bins: the boxes by the sorting shed. Copper, iron, coal.
Level: one floor of the workings. We are on the eighth.
Gob: the empty space after the coal is taken. Keep out.
Deep stone: the dark hard rock below it all. Always cold.
Dog: a lamp with a hook, carried low.
Lamp room: the glass room at the top of a tower. Not ours.
Gate: a door across a tunnel. The ninth is locked.
Hum: the sound below. Do not ask me what it is.
Keep your name on the board. Rub it out when you come up.
%%
Words of the well
Written by Ula, who was asked by the quay women to write this when the north well ran dry in the summer. The women said they would rather have the words than the water. Summer.

Well: the hole in the ground that gives water. The north well is the oldest on the quay. It has a stone rim and a wooden lid. Keep the lid shut.
Bucket: the wooden bucket on a rope. Each family has its own, with a mark cut in the rim. Do not take another family's bucket. They will know.
Rope: the bucket rope. It frays at the bottom. Check it when you draw water. A frayed rope drops the bucket, and the bucket is a long way down.
Dry: the well has no water in it. The word is worse than the thing. A dry well is a bad summer, and a bad summer is the one that everyone remembers.
Carry: to bring the water from the well, a bucket at a time, up the quay. Two buckets for a child. Four for a grown woman. Eight for a boat.
Trough: the stone trough by the well, for the animals. The gulls drink from it too. They are very rude about it.
Seep: the water that comes slowly through the rock, in a wet year. The seep is the best water. It tastes of stone. The quay women like it best.
Deep: the old well at the end of the quay, dug long before the harbor. It is dark and cold, and the bucket goes down a long way. Nobody has drawn from it in living memory.
Spring: the clear water that comes up out of the ground on the hill. In a dry year, the carts go up the hill for it.
Water: the word everyone uses, all day, every day. Water is not the same as a well.

Words for the new apprentice that carries the water:
Fetch water: go to the well, draw one bucket, bring it to the trough. Do not spill it. The trough is not a place to empty a bucket.
Pour: slowly, into the trough, from the bucket, until the trough is full.
Home: go back to the boat hall, by the same road.
%%
Marsh words the tutors borrowed
Pinned at Wren's stall in the Lowmarsh market, spring.

Stuck: a cart in the mud, or a mind that gives one answer to everything.
Rock: to push a stuck cart a little each way until it moves. A tutor rocks a mind with small changes, to see which part moves the answer.
Post: a stake in the mud, marked to show how high the water stands. A tutor's post shows how strongly a part is answering.
%%
Word list: the new cave
Fallon's plow went through the top field at the edge of Copperhold and found a cave. These are the words the crew and the mine hall used that week. Hesk wrote them down.
Hollow: any empty place under the ground. This one was dry and cold and as long as a barn.
Roof: the stone over a hollow. Tap it with a pick. A sound roof rings. A bad roof sounds like a pie.
Span: how wide the roof is from wall to wall. The wider the span, the more props.
Prop: a post of oak that holds a roof up.
Working: the steps. The mine hall asked the big mind at the relay house how many props the cave needed. It wrote out the span, the weight of the stone and the strength of an oak prop, and went down the steps one by one. It said eleven. Then it checked, and said twelve, because it had forgotten a corner. Hesk put in thirteen.
Fallon: the farmer. He says the cave is under his field. The mine hall says the field is on top of the cave. Both are right.
%%
The whole list, for the winter
Corin's list for the farm's children, with the words of the boat, the yard, the byre and the mill put together in order, so the youngest can find them by the first letter. The big ones may learn the rest by heart.

adze: a curved blade for shaping wood. It bites.
bilge: the bottom of the boat, where the water goes.
bow: the front of the boat.
bran mash: a warm mash for a poorly cow. Not hot.
byre: the cow house. Keep it dry.
calf: the young one. Worth more than wheat in spring.
caulk: to fill the gaps with oakum and pitch, so the sea stays out.
dry cow: a cow not giving milk, and saving herself.
drench: a drink for a cow who will not eat. Hold her head up.
fodder: food for the cows through the cold months.
frame: the bones of a boat.
furrow: the line the plough leaves. Keep it straight.
hay: dried grass, kept in the loft and out of the wet.
heifer: a young cow that has not calved.
hot nose: the first sign of a poorly cow. Send for the healer.
hopper: the box that feeds the grain to the stones.
keel: the long piece under the boat that keeps it upright.
launch: the day the boat goes down the slip.
loft: the store over the byre, where the hay is dry.
mooring: the rope that holds a boat to the quay. Two turns and a hitch.
race: the channel that brings the water to the wheel.
rib: the curved frame that gives a hull its shape.
rim: the outer ring of the wheel.
slip: the stone ramp where boats are built and slid into the sea.
spoke: an arm of the wheel. Ash is best.
stall: the place in the byre where a cow stands.
stern: the back of the boat, where the tiller is.
stones: the two round stones that grind the grain.
sluice: the gate that lets water into the race. Only the miller opens it.
tide: the sea coming in and going out. It does not wait for the cook.
tiller: the bar that turns the rudder. Say nothing to the gulls.
wheel: the great wooden wheel the water turns.

Words are like boats. They are useful only when they are kept in good order and tied up at night.
%%
Ice words, from the old ice house
Set down by Oren, clerk of the Archive at Vell, at the Alder farm outside Three Wells. Summer of 205. The cold room is an old ice house. There are steps cut in the stone, a drain, and a shelf. These words come from the account book of Emmet's great-grandfather, who kept it, and from Emmet, who remembers being told them. I have put them in the order of a winter.

Cut: to take ice from the pond. The best time is the middle of Deepsnow, when the ice is clear and as thick as a forearm.
Saw: the long saw with big teeth, for ice only. Do not use it on wood. It will not forgive you.
Block: one piece of ice, cut square. A good block is as long as a child and heavier than a child.
Float: to push cut blocks along the water to the bank, one by one. A block that sinks is a block you go and fetch.
Tongs: the iron hooks that grip a block. Wet hands and ice do not agree.
Haul: to carry the blocks to the ice house on a sledge. A sledge is better than a cart, and a cart is better than a back.
Straw: what you pack between the blocks, so they do not freeze together, and so the summer cannot get in. Wheat straw is best.
Stack: the blocks laid in rows with straw between. The first row you lay is the last to melt.
Sweat: the water that blocks give off. Let it drain away. A wet ice house is a short ice house.
Rind: the outside of a block, which melts first. It is the part you give to the fish.
Door: the thick door of the ice house. Open it seldom. Every time you open it, a little summer goes in.
Draw: to take ice out for use. One block at a time, from the top, never from the side.

What it keeps: fish for a week, cheese for a summer, milk for a day. And one thing more. Sedge, keeper at the Three Wells relay house, has already asked if the house may have the ice next summer, to keep the quickeners cool. Emmet said yes, if Sedge brings a sledge.
%%
Cave words, as Bram said them
Told by Bram, miner of Copperhold, who was passing the Alder farm with a cart of coal and was asked to go down. Written by Oren, clerk of the Archive at Vell, summer of 205. Bram wishes it known that he went first.

Mouth: the opening where you go in. This one is a hole in a field with a plow wheel in it.
Chamber: a room in the rock. This one is as big as the Alder barn, and as cold as a well.
Passage: a way from one chamber to the next. Walk it slowly with a hand on the wall.
Roof: the stone over your head. Tap it with a pole. A good roof rings. A bad roof says nothing, and then says it all at once.
Floor: the ground under you. Here it is dry clay. A boot leaves a mark in it that will outlast the boot.
Drip: water falling from the roof, one drop at a time. Listen for it. It is the cave counting.
Pool: water that has gathered in a low place. It may be clean and it may not. Do not drink until somebody who knows has tasted it first.
Prop: a post that holds up the roof. Oak is best. Set one wherever you wish you had.
Draft: air that moves. A draft means there is another opening somewhere, and a draft you can feel on your face is a draft you can follow home.
Echo: your own voice, coming back late. It is not company.
Bad air: air that will not burn a torch. If the torch goes dim, go up. Do not argue with the torch.
Rope: the line that tells the ones above where you are. Pull twice, and they pull you up. Pull three times, and they send down soup.

Bram's last word: a cave is nothing to fear if somebody above knows where you are, and you come up when you said you would. He asks that this be written down. It is written down.
%%
Word list: the slow minds
Nessa sent the crew this list when the slow minds first came to the relay houses. The crew wrote on it. The words are in order, and Hesk's own words come at the end.
Another way: doing the same sum by a different road. When two roads reach the same answer, trust it more.
Answer: the last line a mind writes. In a slow answer it comes after the steps, never before.
Check: reading the steps back. A mind that checks will sometimes cross out a step and write it again. That is a good sign.
Fast answer: an answer at once, with no steps. The mind guesses it one piece at a time and hopes.
Guess: all a mind ever does is guess the next piece of a word. The steps only make each guess easier.
Hard sum: a sum with many steps. A fast answer will not do. Only a slow one.
Slate: the page where steps are written. Nessa says it does not matter where. The crew says it matters to whoever has to read it.
Slow answer: steps first, then the answer.
Step: one small piece of the work. A good step is small. A step that tries to do too much is only a fast answer, hiding.
Wrong step: a step that does not follow from the one before. If one comes early, every step after it is wrong, and the mind may not notice. That is why it checks.
Working: the crew's word for steps. It comes from the count board.
Cost: a slow answer is longer than a fast one, so it keeps the quickeners busy longer, and the relay house burns more ice. Ask for steps only when you need them.
Hesk: I do not see how a mind that only guesses the next piece can do a sum. Nessa says it cannot do a long sum in one guess, so it cuts it into short ones. That is how I count carts. I did not know I was thinking like a mind.
%%
Words of the yard, from the slip
Corin wrote these for the apprentices at the yard, who are learning to build boats, and have been told the words are as important as the planks.

slip: the long stone ramp where boats are built and slid into the sea.
adze: a curved blade for shaping the wood. It bites, so keep your feet clear.
caulk: to fill the gaps between the planks with oakum and pitch, so the sea stays out.
pitch: black, sticky, and very hot. The yard keeps it in the iron pot by the shed.
rib: the curved frame that gives the hull its shape. Ribs first, then planks.
plank: a board for the hull. Lay it with the grain, and do not let it dry before it is fixed.
frame: the bones of the boat, before the skin goes on.
launch: the day the boat goes down the slip. Keep your hands away from the rope.
%%
Letter: Noll to his sister Rill
Rill,

Spring is here and the cow is sick. Nell has the grey heifer down in the byre with her head on the straw, and she will not eat. Wren from Lowmarsh sent a jar of something bitter and told us to keep the barn warm and the water clean. Nell says the heifer looks at her like she is asking a question. I say cows always look like that.

The mine is quiet. That is the wrong word. The mine is not loud, but it is not quiet either. Hesk says the stone on the eighth is warm now, warmer than a mine should be, and the men go down with their coats open. Some say it is the water. Some say it is the old tunnels. Nobody says much.

Did you get my last letter? I sent it with Pell when he came through with the carts.

Nell sends her love. So does the cow, probably.

Noll
%%
Words as places, in a clerk's own words
Written by a clerk of Vell, copying the tutors' notes for the young clerks, in the winter of 203. The tutors' idea is hard, so I have written it as I understood it, and I may have it wrong in places. Correct me.

A mind does not keep words as words. It keeps each word as a place. A place is a row of numbers. Each word has its own row, and the rows are sorted among one another, so that every word sits somewhere among the others.

Words that are used in the same kind of way sit close together. "Cow" and "sheep" are used alike. They are both animals in the fields, both eat grass, both come in at dusk. So their places are near each other in the mind, the way two houses on the same street are near.

"Cow" and "deep" are not used alike. A cow is in the field, and deep is a word about holes and water. So their places are far apart. You would have to walk a long way from one to the other.

The tutors say this is what a mind does when it reads. It does not look a word up in a book. It walks to where the word is, and it looks around, and the words nearby tell it what the word means. A word that is used in many ways sits in a crowd of places, and the mind must look at the crowd to know which one it is in.

Why does this matter for the drill? Because when a mind is shown a sentence, each word is a place, and the sentence is a path between places. The mind learns the path. A drill that uses the same words in the same ways teaches the path well. A drill that uses strange words in strange ways teaches a path nobody will walk.

The tutors draw this on a board as dots on a sheet, with lines between the dots that are close. They say you can see it in the crystal's numbers too, if you look. I have looked. I could see numbers. I could not tell you which dot was which.

Some points I am not sure of:
The tutors say a mind may place a word differently in another mind. Two minds drilled on the same words can end with the places in different order. The rows agree, but the arrangement does not. I do not know if it matters. The tutors say it does not matter for the work. Oren says it matters for the archive, because the archive must be the same word everywhere.

The tutors say the places are not really in a sheet of dots at all. That is only a picture. The true places have more sides than the picture has, more than any of us can draw, and the mind uses all of them at once. I wrote this down because I was told to, and because it made the young clerks laugh.

What I tell the young clerks: when you read a torn page, the words near the gap tell you what the gap held. That is the same thing the mind does. You do it already, every time you read a sentence and know the next word before you see it. The mind only does it with more places, and does not get tired.

Sable's word for it, when she heard about this: "So a mind is like a neighborhood." Yes. And a clerk is the one who knows which house the letter goes to.
%%
Letter: Noll to Rill, from Copperhold
Rill,

I am sorry I have not written. Pell lost my letter, or I lost it, or the road lost it. There was blue wool on it. If it turns up, keep it, it is the only copy.

The cow. How is the cow? You did not say in your last, and I have lain awake thinking about a heifer, which is a foolish thing for a man on the eighth level to lie awake about. Tell Nell I asked.

Down here the warm stone is the talk. Hesk has written to the mine hall about it and had no answer back. Some of the men say it is the old sump water running hot. Some say there was always a warm seam and the old ones never wrote it down. Some say nothing at all and go down anyway, because the pay is the pay. The ninth gate is locked and the key is at the mine hall, and I will tell you plainly I am glad of it.

There is another talk, about lights over the north. A driver who came down from Northpoint says the sky over the tower is not right on clear nights, and Mira writes that they were not ours, whatever they were. I do not know what that means. I do not think she does either. Folk will say anything at the end of a long winter.

How is the honey? How is the byre door? How is the cow? I have asked that twice. Write soon and answer it once.

Your brother,
Noll
%%
Words of the tutors' halls
Written by Ula, who came up the road to Vell in the summer and was asked by Nessa to write down the words the young tutors use. Nessa said that a word a child cannot follow is a word the child will not learn. Summer.

Drill: one kind of example, given again and again. Not the same example. The same kind.
Crystal: the small clear stone a mind lives in. Hold it by the rim, not the middle. The warmth of your hand does no good to it.
Weights: the small pushes a mind takes when it is wrong. They are written in the crystal and cannot be read. They can only be changed.
Step: how far a weight moves in one change. Too big, the mind swings. Too small, it crawls.
Test box: examples a mind has never seen. Keep it apart. Tie red wool round it.
Count: the number of right answers in every hundred. Write it on the tag.
Cradle: the frame the crystal sits in while it learns. Do not move the cradle while the drill runs.
Card: a drill card, with a plot on it and no answer. Never write the answer on the front.
Frame: the body an apprentice is built in. A frame is a shape that holds weight. Mind the joints.
Halls: the drill rooms cut into the hill, where many minds learn at once.

Words the tutors use with the children:
Wrong: good. It means the mind is learning.
Right: good too, but say it quietly. A mind that is praised too loudly swings.
Again: do it once more, the same way.
Stop: the drill is finished for today.
%%
Word list: the tutors' words
By Nessa's class at Vell, copied out for new keepers. Read the first one twice.

Crystal: the small stone that holds a mind. It is like a loaf, if the loaf is clear and has numbers in it.
Drill: a set of examples shown to a mind, one after another, until it gets better or gives up.
Drill box: a box of examples for practice. The mind sees these many times.
Test box: a box of examples the mind has never seen. Use it to judge a mind. Never use it to teach.
Weight: one of the many small numbers inside a mind. Every mind has more weights than you could count in a day.
Layer: one level of the mind, one row of weights after another. A deep mind has many layers, and each one feeds the next.
Blame: the share of a wrong answer that each layer is given, passed back from the answer toward the start.
Place: where a word sits inside a mind, among the other places. Words used alike sit close together.
Score: right answers in every hundred. Ninety-eight is the least a field can take.
Keeper: the person who tends a mind and its crystal, and who signs the tag.
Order card: a card with an order written on it, one order and its meaning, as the manuals say.
Fewer marks: a way to write a mind's weights with fewer numbers, so it fits a smaller crystal. It costs a little. Always write down how much.
Stream: the path that runs through the whole mind, so that the first layer and the last can both be changed by one wrong answer.
Even size: the way a mind's numbers are brought back, layer by layer, so they do not grow wild.
%%
Letter: Oren to Nessa, summer
From Oren, archive clerk at Vell, to Nessa, tutor at Vell. Left in the tutors' house, not sealed.

Nessa,

A small thing, and then a bigger one.

The small thing: the copying room is too warm. The big window over the town brings in the sun all afternoon, and the clerks are wilting over their sheets. Could the glass be shaded? I ask you because you know everyone and I know only the shelves.

The bigger thing: your apprentices came up the hill today. All of them, in their row. They stood in the front hall and looked at the big book by the door, and then they walked the halls, quiet, and stopped at the light well and stood in the light coming down. They did not say anything. They do not say anything. But they stood there a long time, and one of them put a hand out into the light and held it there.

I do not know what they were doing. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps they were learning the way the light falls, so they could carry it. I only know I was glad to see them in the hill.

Also, the box of loose papers in the front hall had the old map in it, and I have put the map under glass, as I told you. Come and look at it. It is a good map. Somebody drew every torch on the Long Road and counted them, and would not be hurried.

Tell me about the glass. Tell me about the apprentices. Tell me whatever you like, but tell me before the summer is out, because after that I will be deep in the shelving and no use to anyone.

Your friend,
Oren

P.S. The clerk who copies my letters says my hand is neat. I am choosing to believe her.
%%
Words of the sailors
Quin's list, in spring, written down for a gift. My grandson Pell is going to sea this summer on one of the Saltreach boats, and I could not give him anything useful. I gave him a list of words, as sailors say them, so he does not sound like a child of the north.
Bow: the front of the boat.
Stern: the back.
Port: the left side, when you face the bow. Starboard is the right.
Mast: the tall pole that holds the sail.
Rigging: the ropes that hold up the mast and move the sail.
Tiller: the bar that steers.
Hull: the body of the boat.
Slip: the ramp where a boat is built or sent into the sea.
Pier: a long wooden walkway into the water, for boats to tie to.
Net: the web that catches fish. Mending nets is half the work.
Weir: a fence of stakes in a river, where fish are caught.
Tide: the sea coming in and out, twice a day.
Fog: the white cloud that sits on the water. Sailors fear it, and sing in it.
Tack: to turn the boat across the wind.
All hands: everyone, now.
Make fast: tie it down.
A fair wind: a wind from behind. The best wish a sailor can be given.
The sailors told me the last one is also what they say at a farewell. My grandson says it is a good thing to be told.
%%
Tutors' words, for the market children
Set down at the Northpoint market by Cress, tutor from Vell, who was walking north with the first cart and was stopped by every child at the stalls. Spring of 207.

How a mind learns:
Mind: what an apprentice thinks with. A new one knows nothing.
Crystal: the stone a mind is kept in. A small mind rides inside an apprentice. A big one stands in a relay house.
Weights: the many small numbers inside a mind. Learning is moving them, a little at a time.
Drill: the same kind of example, again and again. Not the very same one. The same kind.
Drill box: the box the examples come from. Each has its right answer, kept back until the mind has answered.
Step: how far the weights move when the mind is wrong. Too big, and the mind lurches from one answer to the other. Too small, and the season is over before it learns.
Wrong: a wrong answer is how a mind learns. We do not scold it. We show it the right one.

How a mind is tested:
Test box: examples set apart and never drilled on. A mind may do well on the drill box and badly here. Then it only remembered.
Untested: a mind nobody has tried on a test box. Never send one to the fields.
Score: the count of right answers in the test box.

How a mind is built:
Layer: a row of small crystals, each feeding the next. Merle of Copperhold grew minds this way, and found that layered minds learn hard things.
Blame: when the last layer is wrong, each layer before it gets its share of the blame, passed back to the first. Then each moves a little.
Stream: what every layer adds its findings to. It runs through the whole mind, and it is why a deep mind can still learn.
Even numbers: each layer brings the mind's numbers back to an even size, or they grow wild.
Fewer marks: writing the weights in fewer marks, to fit a smaller crystal. It costs a little skill.

Big minds:
Window: how much of a page a reading mind sees at once. About sixty letters. It guesses the next letter, and then the next.
Quickener: a stone that makes drilling go fast. Keep it cool, with water, ice or snow. Northpoint has plenty of snow.
Relay house: where a big mind stands, and answers apprentices through the relays.

Do not ask me why a crystal learns at all. Nobody wrote that down. I ask it myself in the evenings.
%%
Words of the net mender
By Aven, who mends nets on the long boardwalk at Lowmarsh.
Mesh: one hole of a net. Count them if you must.
Float: a bundle of reeds tied along the top, so the top stays up.
Sinker: a stone with a hole in it, tied along the bottom, so the bottom stays down.
Hole: where a fish said goodbye.
Mend: to turn a hole back into a mesh. This is the whole trade.
There are more nets than fish this autumn. I mend them all the same.
%%
North Road Smiths' Words
By Cleo, smith at Pinehook, autumn of 178.

These are words used at my forge.

Bellows: the leather bag that feeds air to the fire.
Blank: iron before it is shaped.
Draw: make hot iron longer with the hammer.
Scale: the flakes that fall from hot iron.
Tongs: the tool that holds hot iron.
Quench: cool iron in water.

A blank is not a mistake. It is a piece of iron waiting.
A scale is not a coin, though Pip tried to sell some.
Pip says a quench is a fine way to wake a sleepy smith.
Pip has not tried it twice.
%%
Words on the Alder map
Copied by Oren, clerk of the Archive at Vell, at the Alder farm outside Three Wells. Summer of 205. Cleo Alder found the map in her grandmother's chest, under a quilt. I have copied the words as they are, and said what they mean.

Bounds: the dotted line round the farm. At each corner is a black dot for a stone. Three stones are still there. The fourth is in Emmet's wall.
Scale: the line at the foot of the map. One finger of map is forty paces of ground. I measured the farm with a string. The map is right.
Old oak: a round green blob at the edge of the long field. The oak is gone. Its stump is the corner of the bottom field, and young Toby sits on it.
Track: a thin line from the farm to the road, from before there was a cart road. It bends round a hill that is not there now.
Cold room: a small square in the bottom field with the words "cold room" beside it, and nothing else. Nobody here has ever dug that corner. Last spring Emmet's plow went through it.
%%
Words of the mill
Written by Ula, with the help of the millers, who did not want to be left out of the list. Summer, after the well ran dry at the north end of the quay and the mill had to be shut for a week.

Wheel: the great turning thing at the front of the mill. It is oak. It is the only oak in the mill that is not a beam, and the millers are proud of it.
Race: the channel the water runs through to the wheel. Keep the race clear. A leaf in the race is a small thing. Ten leaves are a stopped wheel.
Sluice: the gate at the head of the race. It is opened by the miller and only by the miller. The sluice is not a toy.
Millstone: the two round stones that grind the grain. The top one turns. The bottom one never moves. It is the patient one.
Hopper: the wooden box at the top, where the grain goes in. Fill it slowly. A full hopper jams, and a jammed mill is a cross miller.
Bolter: the sieve that takes the bran from the flour. It shakes all day. Oil it in spring.
Sack: the sack of flour, weighed twice, once by the miller and once by the buyer, who does not trust him.
Dust: the white powder that gets into everything. It is in your hair, your ears and your soup. The millers do not notice it. Their wives do.
Stop: the lever that stops the wheel. Pull it slowly. The wheel does not like to be surprised.
Grit: a bad word in the mill. It is the stone dust that gets in the flour when a new stone is run too early. Run a new stone with old grain for a month.

Words the millers use for the new hands:
Carry: lift the sack from the cart to the hopper floor, one at a time. Stack them by the wall.
Watch: stand by the race and tell the miller if the leaves are coming.
Shout: tell the miller something has gone wrong. Shout quickly. A quiet voice is no use over the wheel.
%%
Word list: the count board
Words from the count board at the mine gate, as Hesk says them.
Tally: one stroke for every cart that comes up.
Short: when the carts counted are fewer than the tally says. Somebody is wrong. Count again.
Working: the small sums written under a count, so anybody can follow them. A count with no working is a guess with a number on it. The big mind at the relay house does the same now: ask it a sum and it writes its working first.
Check: do the sum a second way. If both ways agree, chalk it. If not, find the step that slipped.
In autumn every cart is coal, and every cart is counted twice.
%%
The gate words, and the key
Cass, healer, Copperhold. Written for the mine hall, and for the children who come with their fathers on the count day. The mine hall keeps a copy of the gate book, and the foreman reads it aloud at the start of every shift.

Gate: an iron door across a level. A gate has a number, and a bell.
First gate: at the top of the third level. Open for every shift.
Second gate: below the first. Open for every shift with a foreman.
Sixth gate: the one the old men pass with their caps off. Nobody knows why, except that their fathers did.
Eighth gate: the gate with the old side door. The side door is small, and the foreman keeps its key on his belt. It is for the old tunnels and the sump.
Ninth gate: the gate with the lock. The lock is iron and very old. The key is on the hook in the mine hall, on the board by the stove, with a card that says "Do not take".
Key: a long iron thing with three teeth. It has never been taken down from the hook.
Count: the marks on the gate book. There are nine marks on the ninth gate. There should be no marks on it at all.
Knock: what you do before you open a gate from the far side. A good miner knocks.

The children are told the ninth gate is only a gate. Then they are told the key is not to be touched. Then they are told the stone behind it is warm, and that the hum is strongest there. Cass says she has heard all three from the same mouth, on the same day, and that nobody in the hall would say which was the joke.
