Finding book, summer 171
Record 23116. Opal's note on the hamlet well. The rope is frayed near the bucket. Do not pull it hard. Jori will bring a new rope from Kettle Ridge after market. Until then, fill the small pails first. The cows can drink from the trough. The new well cover fits, though it makes a loud clack when shut. It startled the hens. It did not startle the cat, who had been sleeping on it.
Record 23117. A letter from Opal to the keeper of the Kettle Inn, found beneath a sack of potatoes. I left my red scarf on your bench. Please keep it dry. It has a patch at one end and a loose thread at the other. If you find both, you have found the right scarf. I will come by after the fair. The scarf was returned with a note: It was under the bench. The loose thread was still loose.
Record 23118. Copy of the hamlet's summer tally. Opal brought 18 jars of honey and took home 6 sacks of wheat. She paid 2 emeralds for a new harness strap. The old strap had split on the hill. The cart stopped. The mule did not. It went three paces farther and ate the hedge.
%%
Notice: the ridge road
Posted at the Three Wells fair and carried along the ridge road to Kettle Ridge.
The fair will be held in the square by the three wells, as it is every year, on the sixth of Blossom to the ninth. Stalls round the wells. The bell will sound at first light.
To sell: bring your own table and your own weights. Weights must be honest. Pell will check them and everyone knows Pell's eye.
Stalls taken so far: Ambrook apples and honey. Lowmarsh fish, fresh if the water is kind. Copperhold copper pots and one iron kettle. Ida and Hollis with bread and honey cakes. The school will show its drawings of the door.
The inn of twelve beds has eight left. The Brown Hen is full.
A word on the road. Travelers say the relays to the north are quiet, one after another. A merchant said it was the weather. A keeper said it was not. I have written to Vell to ask and I have not heard back yet.
Keep the torches lit on the road. Keep your lanterns by the door. If you hear the humming on the ridge, it is only the wind in the mill. That is what I tell the children.
Dace, mayor of Three Wells
%%
Finding book, Kettle Ridge, spring
Kept at the lost table by Emmet, egg seller.

No. 1. Letter, sealed with a thumb, no name. Found under the egg crate. A line: It is about hens, and rude about a fox.

No. 2. Egg basket, with one egg left in it. A line: Claimed by Emmet, who says it is his best egg.

No. 3. Cart wheel, iron, spokes whole. Found by the north well. A line: The cart has not been found. The wheel waits.
%%
Finding book: leaf one, Thaw
Kept at the market board at Three Wells by Hesk, miner, of Copperhold. Each find has a number, a title and a line.

1. Copper ring, plain, with a crack. Found on the stones by the north well. Nobody has claimed it.
2. Mitten, green, left hand. Found in the trough. The right hand is still at large.
3. Lump of copper ore, the size of a loaf. Brought up by a carter who did not know what it was, and then did.
4. Tin cup, dented. Found on the road by the east well. Its owner says it is not theirs.
5. Pair of school boots, one of them the tutor's. Found drying on the wall of the school yard. Both are small.
6. Blue glass bead. Found in the gutter after the rain.
7. Iron key, too big for any door in Three Wells. Found in the bakery. Ida says it is not hers.
8. Wooden horse, three legs, one chewed. Found by the north well, sitting on the wall since Blossom.
%%
Finding book, Ambrook, spring of 206
Finds taken at the Ambrook table, Thaw to Sowing. Taken down by Vesper, a clerk of the archive. Entries are copied up at Vell in Apple, with the finder's name. Where a finder asks for a note to be kept, it is kept.
No. 1488. A note of a debt paid in emeralds, eleven in all. Jory the miller lent six emeralds to Cal the carter, after the carter's axle broke on the bridge with a load of apples. Cal paid the six back in the same week, from the purse he had been keeping for a new horse. Then he paid five more: two for the bridge, two for the axle, and one for the bad temper. Jory brought the note to the table so that it could be entered. On the back, in the carter's own hand, it says: Paid, and sorry about the mud.
No. 1489. A jar of melon jam, half eaten, with a spoon standing in it. The finder says the spoon was not theirs. The clerk asked the cart. The cart said nothing.
No. 1490. A wooden toy wheel from a cart that was never in Ambrook. It is perfectly made. The finder has taken it home to see whether it turns the same way as the real ones.
No. 1491. A leather tool belt with three pockets. One is empty, one has a nail, and one has a bit of string. Left on the apple cart. It belongs to Pip, the apprentice at Kettle Ridge, who came down with Tam and carried it back up the ridge road, carefully, as if it were something it meant to keep.
No. 1492. A bee's jar, empty, with the lid still on. Found on the bridge. The finder asks whether any bee can open a lid, and would like the answer entered.
No. 1493. Two rings of iron, the same size, from a married pair who could not find each other at the market. They were found, and then the pair were found, and the entry has been crossed out.
No. 1494. A child's list of things to buy at the market: bread, honey, apples, nails, thread, one sweet for the baby, two sweets for the baby's sister, a new spoon, and a fox, but not that one. Found in the reeds.
No. 1495. Four apples, each carved with a face, all four looking sideways. The finder says they are for the orchard keeper, who does not like being looked at straight.
No. 1496. A pig's bell, found on the mill steps. The pig is still missing. The bell has been asked to keep looking.
No. 1497. A blue strip of wool from the Blossom fair at Three Wells, with a knot tied in the middle. The finder says the knot is a memory, and will not say of what.
No. 1498. Two clay bowls, one with a crack glued in the shape of a river. The finder says the river runs the wrong way, and the bowl is right about it.
%%
Finding book
Kept by Ferris, relay keeper of the hill above the Copperhold road. The spring's entries, in order, so that the next keeper can find them. A find is kept until its owner comes for it, or until the next keeper wants the space.
No. 13. A lantern with two wicks, both lit, found on the step at dusk. No keeper claims it. The keeper's boy says it is a good lantern, and he will keep it burning for the rest of the spring, which he has.
No. 14. A letter, sealed with the Vell mark, found in the stair box. Not addressed. It was a list of the relays on the north line, copied out. Copied again and sent down to Vell. The keeper has asked for the original to go back in the box, with the copy beside it.
No. 15. A stone with a letter scratched on it. The letter is an H. Found on the top step of the tower, where the wind is strongest. Put in the box with the other stones, which have no letters at all.
No. 16. A drawing on a slate, in charcoal: a tower with a lamp at the top, and a small figure at the foot with a basket. The figure has a ribbon. The drawing is not signed. Hung by the door where the children will see it on the way up.
No. 17. The hinge pin from the north stair door, found in the grass where the boy had been sitting. It is bent. It has been straightened twice, and it is still bent. We have decided that it is a pin for a door that is going to open a little crooked, and that this is allowed.
No. 18. Lamp glass, a spare, from the store under the stair. Clear, with no cracks. Put in the box by the lamp, for the next time the hail comes, which it will, because it always does in Frost.
%%
Letter: Pell to his sister at Kettle
Dear Rilla,
I am at the fair at Three Wells and the wind is off the north, so I am writing indoors with my coat on. I sold the last of the honey and bought a new strap for the cart. The strap cost too much and I said so.
I hear the tutors are taking letters for their great drills. They want old ones, and they want many. If you still have Mother's letters in the loft, do not burn them. Give them to the clerk when he comes. He is a thin man with ink on his cuffs and he will ask twice.
They say the reading minds learn letters the way we learn faces, by seeing many. I do not know if that is true. I know I would not want my dull letters read by a stranger. Then I think, a stranger already reads them, at the archive, and copies them, and I never minded that.
The fair had a pie contest. A boy of about nine won it with a beetroot pie. His mother cried.
Give my love to the little ones. Tell Tam the price of wheat is up two marks, and tell him to sell before the thaw.
Your brother, Pell
%%
Finding book: summer, the second shelf
Fen, grandfather of Three Wells. These are the pages that came in summer, copied out for the shelf by the school door, and a short account of how they were found. Numbers are as in the book at Vell.
The finding book at the school house is a long, thin book with a green cover. It lists every paper that has come to the town since the school was built. When a paper comes, the schoolteacher writes the number, the title and one line. Then the paper goes to Vell by the carter, and the book stays here. That way anyone can look and see what the town has sent, and what it has kept.
This summer the pages were these.
No. 201. Letter: the miller of Ambrook to the school. A gift of twenty sacks of flour for the winter. With a note: "Please do not give any to Pell."
No. 202. Relay message, the lamp at Three Wells. The broken lamp is mended, by the smith and Corin. Corin sends his thanks to the smith. He sends his thanks to the lamp.
No. 203. Notice: a market day with no rain. The second one this year. Dace is thinking of having it carved on a stone.
No. 204. Drawing of a creeper, by Bel. It is green with a large smile. Nobody knows why.
No. 205. A letter from a traveler on the Long Road. He thanks the people of Three Wells for the loan of a cart. The cart has a wheel missing. He sends the wheel.
No. 206. The wall, again. A list of the stones that were found in the pond.
No. 207. Report of the school fair. Prizes for sums, for singing and for the tallest pumpkin.
No. 208. A poem, untitled. It rhymes "well" with "bell" and "tell". It does not do much else.
That is the shelf. I have copied it myself, and I have kept the order. If a number is missing, the paper was lost or eaten. The schoolteacher's goat ate number 199.
%%
Finding book
Pia, clerk of the Archive, writing at Quin's table. The orchard is at its best. The apples are the color of bread. Autumn. I write in the evening, when the lamp makes a circle on the page.

This shelf is for notes on the biggest relay houses. I did not plan to fill so long a shelf. But the notes keep arriving, and each one says a different thing. I file them as I find them.

No. 40501. Letter: Oren to Pia, instructions for the shelf. File all notes about the biggest houses together. Do not decide which are true. Write what each says. When in doubt, write less.
No. 40502. Note: the house at the south coast. Built in four years by nine councils. Larger than Ambrook and Three Wells together. Holds a mind in many crystals, in many halls, ringed by many quickeners. The water for cooling is drawn from the sea.
No. 40504. Record: what the tutors say. Eleven tutors were asked what the biggest mind can do. They gave eleven answers. Four said it can write a letter that a reader cannot tell from a person's. Three said it can solve sums no one could. Two said it can plan a harvest. One said it can do all these. One said it can do nothing the small ones cannot, only more slowly.
No. 40505. Birth: a girl to Quin's youngest, the twelfth of Apple. Named Cider. She is named for what the family does best.
No. 40507. Note: why bigger. The tutors have a rule: a bigger mind drilled longer on more writing is better. Isla found it, long ago. The councils built the biggest houses on that rule. Pia's note: the rule says a bigger mind is better. It does not say what better means when the mind is bigger than the tutors who check it.
No. 40508. Rumor: what the biggest do not do. A relay keeper says that they do not sleep. A miner says that they do not lie. A cook says that they do not tire. A carter says that they do not exist. The clerk notes that the carter has a cart to sell.
No. 40509. Letter: Nessa to the council. A request. If the biggest minds cannot be checked by one tutor, let them be checked by many. If they cannot be checked by many, let them be built smaller. She asks for an answer. The shelf holds no answer.
No. 40511. Note: the tutor's rule. Never send an untested mind to the fields. A tutor adds in the margin: and what do we do with one we cannot test?
No. 40512. Poem: the orchard at evening. Four lines. In Quin's hand. Not an archive record. I could not leave it out.

Last entry for the season. The loft is full. The apples are in. Tomorrow I walk up the hill to Vell with a box of finding sheets and a basket of apples for Oren.
%%
Finding book: 44.90, the second box
44.90. The second box, opened in the winter of 188. It held forty letters from a woman at Lowmarsh to her sister at Kettle Ridge. The sister kept every one. The hand is small and neat, and the letters are mostly about rain, frogs, a bad knee, and the price of reeds.
We read them aloud in the copying room, two clerks, one reading and one checking. When we came to the line "the water is up to the third post again", Oren stopped us and had us read it three times. He said a mind must hear a sentence more than once, the same way a child does.
We sent the copies up the hill. The originals stay in the deep shelves. The sister's name is on the bundle. Nobody here knows what became of her.
Margit, clerk of the finding book
%%
Catalog: gifts to the drills, winter 193
The archive keeps a list of what people sent for the great drills. A clerk copies each gift and marks it in.
From Ambrook: four hundred letters of an orchard family, and one book of songs.
From Lowmarsh: the notes of a healer, thirty years of them, with the names of the sick rubbed out. Wren sent them herself and asked that the names be rubbed out first.
From Saltreach: the tally books of the shipyard, and a letter from Corin saying the numbers on a tally are the same in every hand.
From Copperhold: the shift boards, copied fair. Hesk sent a note: "the names are rubbed out coming up. Copy them as they were going down."
From Three Wells: school essays, which are short and full of spelling, and the children asked for them back. We sent them back.
From Northpoint: one bundle, tied with wire. Mira wrote on it: "mostly weather. You asked. Do not blame me for the weather."
The list is longer than this. The winter was long and the boxes came in by cart, and the carts were slow in the snow. We copied every page twice. We are behind. Not very behind. A little behind.
Oren, archive clerk
%%
Finding book
Copied by Rook, charcoal burner, in the house at the edge of Copperhold, in winter. The house is cold and the lamp is low, so the hand is not neat. No year. It is the cold season, and that is enough to say.
No. 530. Notice: the gate. A zombie has been at the east gate three nights. It does not push. It stands. By morning it is gone. The gate is shut at dusk and opened at dawn, and two people sit up with torches. Nobody is afraid. We are tired.
No. 531. A lesson that went badly. The children were taught to build a wall of play stones. They built it with no door. They could not get out. The teacher laughed so hard she had to sit down.
No. 532. Notice: the coal. Coal is dearer. Two emeralds the cart, where last winter it was one. The carters say the road is longer. I think it is the same road.
No. 533. A paper from the mine hall: the ninth gate is locked and the key is kept at the mine hall. Nobody is to ask for it.
No. 534. A rumor, copied as told. The stone is warm in the deep levels, say some. The stone is the same as ever, say others. A man at the kitchen says he put his hand on it and felt nothing. Another says he put his hand on it and could not take it away.
No. 535. A letter from my sister. She says the nights are quiet. She says she lit a candle and it burned all night with no flicker. She says it was strange. I do not know what she means.
No. 536. A song about a cat, again. Three verses. The cat is the best part.
No. 537. A list of what is in the house: wood, three loaves, a kettle, a lamp, a cat. It is enough.
%%
Finding book, the blame and the layers
Kept at the lost table, Kettle Ridge market, the last week of spring, by Emmet's cousin, who writes what she finds and does not argue with it.

No. 1044. Tutor's note, folded small. A line: Each layer is told its share of the blame, passed back from the answer to the first layer. Merle's method, and the tutors use it still.

No. 1045. Drawing of a crystal in five layers. A line: The stream runs through all five, so a deep mind can still learn.

No. 1046. Score sheet from a layered drill. A line: Nine of ten right on the first sheet, and seven on the second, when the blame was passed back.

No. 1047. Letter for the relay, numbers on the cover, a child's name on the front. A line: The numbers say which house. The child waits at the far tower for an answer.

No. 1048. Pair of shears, with a red handle. A line: Ask at the wool stall. Nobody has ever admitted to them.

No. 1049. Book of sums, with the first page torn out. A line: The second page is right. The first must have been wrong.

No. 1050. Crystal, small, in a cloth bag, with a tag. A line: Shown the same card forty times, and then the card was lost. Kept at the table until the card is found.

No. 1051. Lantern, with a cracked pane, unlit. A line: Ask the keeper at the ridge tower, who will come down for it when the hill is dry.
%%
Finding book
Pia the clerk, writing in the loft that Quin lent me. The move of the Archive's overflow boxes is done, forty-two in all. The cart horse was very tired. Quin brought him an apple, and then a second.

No. 40301. Letter: Quin to Oren, the apples and the boxes. Quin says he has never met a quieter lodger than a box. Oren replied that they are not lodgers, they are records, and Quin said, "Then they have no appetite either."
No. 40302. Note: why a big mind cannot be checked alone. Written by a tutor of Vell. A tutor checks a mind by showing it things it was never drilled on, and watching what it does. For a small mind, a tutor can show it a hundred things in a day. For a mind a thousand times bigger, the same hundred things tell her almost nothing about the whole. There are too many places it might fail. She would need a thousand days. So many tutors must work together, each on a part. Even then, some parts are never looked at. Nobody says this loud.
No. 40303. Record: the contest of the big houses. Three houses, three minds, the same unseen drill. The lowest got seventy right in a hundred. The highest got ninety-one. The tutors disagree about whether this means the second is better, or only that the drill suited it.
No. 40304. Receipt: lamp oil for the loft. Six jars.
No. 40305. Letter: a relay keeper in the south. Says the big house is never quiet. The water runs all night, and the keeper's dog will not sleep near it. Another keeper writes that her dog sleeps by the pipes and snores.
No. 40306. Birth: a boy to the cooper's family, the sixth of Apple. Named Fig.
No. 40307. List: what was in the box that fell off the cart. Eleven sheets, a spoon, a cat. The cat is back.
No. 40308. Note: what the biggest could do. All say it differs. Pia's note: if I have counted well, there are nine tales of what the biggest house can do, and no two are alike. I have filed them together, and called the shelf Rumor. I do not say any is false. I do not say any is true. I say only that they exist.
%%
Report: the new east road, 204
Report to the council of Vell, spring of 204, on the road east of the town. Written by Oren, clerk, for the keepers.
The council asked for the road to be laid from the east gate of Vell down to the Long Road, where the old path runs through the wet ground. The survey was made in the winter. The work began in Thaw, when the frost came up.
The road is packed earth on the open ground, with a cobblestone edge. Where it crosses the stream below the mill we have built a bridge. We used stone, because we could. The bridge is low and wide and has a rail on the downhill side.
We put a torch on a post every twelve blocks. The posts are oak. The torches are new and burn well.
The road is not long. A cart can go from the gate to the Long Road in the time it takes to sing two songs, and I have timed it with two songs.
The people at the edge of Vell have been kind. Farrow let the carts cross his yard while the bridge was being laid, though our fence is still not settled. He says a road is a good thing to quarrel beside.
The road is open. Travelers may use it. The archive asks that anything written about the road be sent to us, so that we may keep it.
Oren, for the keepers of the Archive at Vell
%%
Finding book, number 703
Road inn records, autumn

Record 703. Title: A tutor at the Halfway Inn.
Nessa, tutor at Vell, stopped at the Halfway Inn on her way to Kettle Ridge. She brought a drill box and two crystals in a dry box. The innkeeper gave her the small room above the kitchen, where the floor creaks whenever anyone turns over.

At supper, a cart driver asked whether an apprentice could sort apples from potatoes. Nessa said it could, if it had been taught and tested. The driver said his cousin could do the same, but only when awake. Nessa wrote the question in her notes.

The next morning she set one crystal before a small tray of apples and potatoes. The apprentice carried each kind to a different basket. It put one potato with the apples. Nessa moved the drill card closer and tried again.

Gil the dyer was there with a bundle of brown wool. He asked whether a mind could learn to mend a torn sleeve. Nessa said the mind could learn to carry the cloth to a person who could mend it. Gil said that was useful, if it did not carry the sleeve to the pig pen.

The innkeeper charged Nessa one emerald less because she had helped carry wood. Gil says the room was still too small for the drill box.
%%
Finding book, the layered minds
Kept by Emmet's cousin at the lost table, in the third week of spring.

No. 1019. Sketch of a layered mind, on the back of a bill. A line: Five layers, and an arrow running back from the answer to the first layer.

No. 1020. Note in a clerk's hand, pinned to the stile. A line: Merle of Copperhold grew crystals in layers. Each layer is told its share of the blame, passed back from the answer.

No. 1021. Letter for the relay, numbers on the cover, no name. A line: The numbers are the tower and the house. A layered mind reads them, so do not lose the cover.

No. 1022. Ledger page, sums in emeralds. A line: A merchant's sums, not a mind's. The cheese is still being argued over.

No. 1023. Crystal, small, in a cloth bag. A line: Not claimed. It is heavier than it looks, which is true of most things Emmet is asked to carry.
%%
Notes: the fence, and how it ended
Notes on the fence between the archive garden and the garden of old Farrow, at the edge of Vell. Kept with the finding book. Written by Oren.
It began in the winter of 203, when Farrow said the fence stood one post too far into his side. I said it stood where it had always stood. We measured it four times. He brought a rope. I brought a rope.
In Thaw the council sent a woman named Tace to look at it. She looked at it for a long time. She walked up the hill and down. She asked us both to say where we thought the fence had been when we were children. We did not agree. She asked us to say why we thought so, and we did not agree on that either.
Then she asked Farrow what he grew on his side. He said potatoes and a little beetroot. She asked me what I grew on mine. I said nothing, I keep books.
Tace said the fence was not the trouble. The trouble was the shade of my one tree, which is an oak and very old, and which leans over his potatoes.
So we cut back the leaning branch, which was mine to cut, and I gave Farrow the wood for his stove. He gave me a sack of potatoes, which was more than the branch was worth.
The post we left where it stands. Neither of us moved it. We agreed that the fence was a fence, and that the tree was the trouble, and that the council had been right to send Tace because she was patient and did not shout.
Now Farrow nods at me over the fence in the morning, and I nod back. In the summer he brought me beetroot and I gave him paper for his kitchen wall, which he says is too fine for a kitchen. I said a kitchen is a good place for fine paper.
We are not friends, exactly. But the fence is quiet now, and a quiet fence is a good fence.
A note for the shelves: if anyone writes a quarrel down, keep the ending too. Oren.
%%
Finding book, number 991
Road inn records, autumn

Record 991. Title: The well at the Brown Hen.
A note from Gil the dyer says the well behind the Brown Hen ran dry in the middle of autumn. The innkeeper lowered the bucket twice, then a third time, as if the water might have changed its mind. The bucket came up with mud and one beetle.

Guests carried water from the next waymark, where a spring fed a stone trough. They took turns with the inn's cart. Gil's blue hands stained the handles, so the innkeeper made him pull the cart from the clean end. Gil says this was fair, since he had stained the inn's best sheet the night before.

The cook saved the water for soup and washed the plates with sand. She put a notice by the door asking travelers to use the trough carefully. A carter read it aloud, then used the trough to rinse his boots. The cook took his boots away and put them on the roof.

Pell came through with a load of apples and lent the inn two barrels. The water carrier filled them from the spring. By evening the guests had enough for tea, soup and washing hands. Nobody washed boots.

The well was cleaned after the frost. The innkeeper found a cracked clay jar at the bottom, but no water. He says the jar belonged to Gil. Gil says he never owned a jar that ugly. The innkeeper has kept it behind the counter as proof.
%%
Finding book, summer 184
Record 29041. Opal's account of the fair at the hamlet near Kettle Ridge. The people set tables by the well and hung wool ribbons on the fence. Tam brought beetroot, Pip brought bread, and Opal brought honey and clay bowls. The first bowl sold before she had put the rest on the table. A child bought it for a nest of apples. The bowl held the apples well, but the child carried it upside down.
The fiddler played beside the barn. The pigs had been moved to the lower pen. One pig found the open gate and came to the fair. It stood beside the honey table until Pip led it away with a crust. Tam said the pig had come to hear the music. Pip said it had come to smell the bread.
Opal sold 9 jars of honey and bought wheat, wool, and a wooden spoon. She ate two beetroot pies. The second was larger, so she paid for it.
Record 29042. Note from the hamlet well keeper. The rope is new. The bucket has a crack and leaks onto the path. Jori will mend it with a strip of oak. Until then, fill the trough before the pails. This saves walking twice. The cat likes the wet stones and has been told to move.
Record 29043. Opal's short list of fair debts. Tam owes 1 emerald for a jar. Pip owes nothing. He carried the empty baskets back and took no pay. Opal owes the baker 2 loaves. She says the second pie was not a loaf. The baker says it was made from bread dough.
%%
Finding book
Kept by Fern, who keeps the night watch at the hamlet near Three Wells and who writes the finding book for the Archive, one line for each thing that is found. Numbered by the order of finding. Winter.

1. A green mitten, small, found in the snow by the east gate. Taken to the school. Claimed by a girl called Bel, who said it was not hers and then took it anyway.
2. A cart wheel, iron, found in the ditch below the stone bridge. The cart has not been found. The wheel was rolled home by two boys, who say they are sorry.
3. A book, wet through, found on the step of the mayor's house. It is a book of sums, in a child's hand. The sums are right, mostly.
4. A cloak with a red lining, found on the peg by the inn door. It belongs to a traveler who left in the night, and who will come back for it, Hobb says, when he is cold.
5. A spoon, silver-looking, found under the hay of the stable. Not silver. It is tin.
6. A bundle of candles, tied with string, found on the well rim by the north corner. Fern says the candles are Ambrook candles, and they smell of honey.
7. A lamp glass, cracked, found by the lamp post at the crossroads. The glass was put back in the frame by the mayor's men the next morning.
8. A pair of boots, large, found outside the Halfway gate. Not claimed. Fern says the boots have been walking the road a long time.
9. A hen, grey, found in the square. She had come in with the snow and would not go back to the farm. She is now in the school kitchen, and the cook says she is an excellent layer.
10. A red wool string, found on the riddle board, tied in a knot. Nobody knows whose. Hobb says it is to keep a riddle from being taken.

Notes for the next watch. The hen must be taken back to Kettle Ridge when the snow stops. The boots must be kept until somebody comes for them, or until the spring. The mitten is in the school, and Bel says she will keep it safe.
%%
Finding book
Entries written by Cade, a clerk of the Archive, on loan to Copperhold for the summer. The room is in a house at the edge of town, with a view of the shaft head. Oren sent me with a box of ink and a lamp. I have been warned about the coal dust.

No. 31301. Letter: Hesk to Oren, the mine logs. Thirty-one logs of the Deep Works, sent down the hill. The cart wheel broke twice. Hesk says the wheel was not at fault. The road was.

No. 31302. Note: the smaller crystal. A tutor at Vell writes that a mind's weights, which are numbers, were each written with sixteen marks. They tried eight, and the mind still did its work. They tried four, and it did it a little worse. They tried two, and it could not tell a ripe plot from a bare one. So eight marks was chosen, and the crystal could be half the size. The tutor says: a mind is not a thing you must keep exact. A few marks off in each number does not matter, when there are many numbers, as long as you test it afterwards.

No. 31303. Letter: Clank's keeper, on the lift. Asks if the mind on the lift can be made smaller. The lift crystal is the size of a thumb, and the shelf is crowded.

No. 31304. Song: coming down the hill. A miner's song for the homecoming of a crew, six verses. Hesk says the fourth verse is not his.

No. 31305. List: the house on the corner. The things that go to the new house, on the move of Marl's family from the top street. Seventeen chairs. One bell. Nine jars of beans. The count was made twice.

Filing note: where a text has more than one kind, I have filed it by the first kind I saw. If I am wrong, Oren will tell me. He is rarely wrong, and he is kind about it.
%%
Finding book
A note tied to the shelf in the healing house, in Wren's hand. The cat is not in the catalog, but is mentioned in four entries.
The cat is grey, with a white chin and a bad temper. It has been put out of the healing house nine times this summer. It has come back ten times.
The cat is not allowed in the room with the crystals, the herbs or the sick beds. It has walked across the crystal tray, eaten a whole pot of honey, and slept on the bed of a child with a fever, who was very pleased about it and did not get worse.
Wren thinks the cat is the only creature at Lowmarsh that is not afraid of the tutor from Vell. Moss has tried to make the cat stay out, with the order stay, and the cat has stayed out for a whole afternoon, looking betrayed.
The cat is to be called Pell's cat. It is not Pell's, but Pell says it is, and it does not mind.
%%
Finding book of the Archive at Vell
Finding book, winter of 203. Kept by Oren, clerk.
We found these in the bottom of the old chest in the copying room. We have numbered them and put them on the shelves. Oren.
F. 311. A letter from a girl at Three Wells about a lost cat. She drew the cat. The cat has a very long tail.
F. 312. A farmer's tally of eggs, one winter at Kettle Ridge. He ran out of numbers in Sowing and began again at the top of the page.
F. 313. A note about a fence. Two neighbors, one post, six years. The note is very polite and very long.
F. 314. A primer for apprentices, with the orders written out. Someone has drawn a small round face beside "stay".
F. 315. A recipe for beetroot soup, from the Kettle Inn. The ink is a little red.
F. 316. The first survey of the new road east of Vell. It is only a line and some figures, but it is the start.
%%
Corin's finding book, spring 203
Kept by Corin, shipwright, at the house at the edge of Saltreach, by the slip. Every paper in the house has its number, and the number is written on the paper.

1. Letter: Pell to Corin, about the price of oak. Pell says the oak is dear and the sea is dear and Corin should be ashamed. Corin is not.
2. Notice: the slip is closed for the spring tide. Written on a board and nailed to the gate.
3. Drawing: the ribs of the new boat, eight pairs. Spruce. Measured twice.
4. Receipt: one tub of tar, two emeralds, paid in full. The tar has not been opened.
5. Note: the cat has been in the wood store again. Put the wood back.
%%
Finding book
Copied by Rook, who burns charcoal in the wood behind Copperhold, and keeps the finding book of the house at the edge of town in winter. Each line has the number, the title and a word. The papers are few this winter. The carters come less often.
No. 301. Notice: the zombie at the east gate. It stood by the post from dusk to dawn, and did not go. The torches were doubled, and it went off at first light. The gate has been shut at dusk since.
No. 302. School paper: the lesson that went badly. The schoolteacher tried to teach the children to count in sixes. The children counted in nines. The teacher gave up and taught nines.
No. 303. Account of the coal carts: three, where there used to be eight. Nobody says why.
No. 304. A rumor from the shaft head, copied as told: the miners hear a hum at night and will not go below the seventh level. Another paper says they are only resting.
No. 305. A song for the cold. Four verses. The last is about a cat.
%%
Finding book
Rook, charcoal burner, copied the following into the finding book of the house at the edge of Copperhold, in winter. No year is written, because nobody in the house could be sure of it. The papers are not many.
No. 412. A lesson, and how it went. The tutor was to teach the children about the weights of coal and wood. She brought a scale. A child sat on it. Another child sat on the first. The scale broke. The lesson ended.
No. 413. Notice from the mine gate: miners are asked to write their names on the board when they go down and rub them out when they come up. Some have not been rubbing. The board is full.
No. 414. A zombie at the gate. It came at night. It stood. It made a noise like an old door. By morning it was gone. We shut the gate and sat up with the torches.
No. 415. A letter from a cousin at Saltreach. Big ships. He says families are leaving over the sea, and he may go. He says nobody knows what lies across. I wrote back to say stay. I do not know if he will.
No. 416. A letter from a traveler on the road from the north. She says the lights over the hills are falling stars. A man at the inn says they are fires. A child says they are looking at us. I put all three in the book.
No. 417. A paper on how to keep a charcoal pile. Mine. Short.
%%
Finding book, Three Wells, shelf 3
Copied by Fen, grandfather, from the finding book kept at the school house, in the summer. Each line is a number, a title, and a word about it.
3-01. Bread prices, Founding Day, year 200. The bakers' bill, with the mayor's note on the best bread in two hundred years.
3-02. The lamp that blinked wrong. Sedge's note on the night the signal lamp on the Three Wells tower blinked the same letter forty times.
3-03. Sums with melons. A school page, ruled and neat. Some of the melons are very large.
3-04. Notice: the east well. Please do not drop stones to hear the splash.
3-05. A song for the square. Four verses. The third verse has been crossed out and put back.
%%
Hesk's note on the fair
A letter from Hesk the miner at Copperhold to Oren at Vell, kept in box 44. Written the fourth of Swarm, 207.
Oren,
You asked me what I think of the fair orders. I was not there. I was under the hill, which is where a miner belongs.
But Clank went. Clank is my apprentice. It carried the tool store's spare crystals up to Three Wells in the cart because Peg asked and because the road is long and Clank does not tire. That is my whole part in it.
I will say this. People at the fair are saying Clank was first to understand a whole sentence. They are saying Pip at Kettle Ridge was first, and Peg was first, and a mind at the drill room at Vell was first in Nessa's young days. I have heard all four in one afternoon at the mine gate, from people who were not there either.
Clank does not remember being first. It does not remember being second. It carries what I tell it to carry and it comes when I call. That is a good apprentice and I am not giving it a medal.
What I will say is true: the order cards work. Write the order plain, one order to a card, and Clank does it. Write two things on one card and it does the first and stands there. It cannot say it does not know. It has never once said that, and it has been wrong many times.
If the archive wants a careful account, ask Peg. Peg wrote it down the same day. I will ask Clank to leave a stone on the waymark for you.
Hesk
%%
Letter: Oren to his sister on the fence
Winter, 203. To my sister, who keeps bees at Ambrook.
Dear Nell,
I am well. The hillside is white and quiet, and the front hall is cold, so we keep the big book near the lantern and not by the door.
You asked about the fence. I will tell you plainly.
My neighbor at the edge of Vell, old Farrow, says the fence between our gardens stands one post too far into his side. I say it stands where it has always stood. We have measured it four times. He brings a rope. I bring a rope.
The tutors' house is just down the hill, and Nessa says the fence is not worth a quarrel, and I know she is right, but the post is mine.
So we have agreed to ask the council to look at it in Thaw, when the ground is soft and a person can think. Until then we nod at each other over the fence, which is more than some do.
The copying room is the brightest room in the hill. It is the warmest too, and I am glad of it.
Send honey if you have it. Send a little news of the bees.
Your brother, Oren
%%
Finding book, the lamp box and the boots
Kept by Ferris, relay keeper. Spring work, the second half.
No. 8. Brass hook, from the lift at the mine gate, bent in the shape of a question mark. Sent down with the lift man, who said he would straighten it, and then said he would keep it as it was.
No. 9. A pair of boots, child's size, left on the north stair. Waited three days. Put on the step by the bottom door, with a note: the boots are here, and they are waiting for their child.
No. 10. A map of the Long Road, drawn in charcoal on the back of a bill from the Brown Hen. Two waymarks are marked with a cross and a question mark. The crosses are right. The question marks are not wrong either.
No. 11. The old oak door from the relay house at Ambrook, which came up the road with a letter from Gault asking whether we had any use for it. We do. It is being shaved for the north stair door, which has been sticking since the thaw.
No. 12. Honey jar, empty, with the label Ama in ink on the side. Left by the lamp box for whoever comes next. We have put a little honey in it, for the next keeper, from the spring hives.
%%
Finding book
The story of the spilt numbers. From the notes of Wren, healer, Lowmarsh, kept at the request of the tutors at Vell.
A tutor at Vell once had a mind that was very good for a morning, and very bad for an afternoon. It was accurate on the first hundred cards, and then wild on the next. The tutor could not find the fault. She checked the cards, the slate and the crystal. She checked the lamp.
At last a boy who carried water for the tutor's house came to look. He had watched the mind all day. He said it was like a jug that got too full at noon and spilt over at the edge. Then he asked what happened to the numbers after lunch.
The tutor checked. The numbers after lunch had not been brought back to size. The drill had been changed by the tutor in the morning, to add a new layer, and the new layer had not been given the even step. By the afternoon the numbers ran wild, and the mind spilt them.
The tutor gave the boy a honey cake. She said that a boy who carried water understood the thing better than a tutor who had written the book on it. He said he did not understand it at all. He had only seen the jug.
%%
Finding book, summer 158
Record 18204. Opal's small account of the ridge hamlet. The hamlet lies beyond Kettle Ridge, beside the oak hedge. It has six houses, a well, and a store for turnips and tools. Opal brought salt, clay pots, and two blue ribbons. Tam bought a pot. He said it was for milk. His sister says he keeps his buttons in it.
Record 18205. Notice of the summer fair at Kettle Ridge. Opal carried the notice from house to house. The fair will be held after the wheat is cut. Bring bread, honey, or beetroot to trade. Keep the path clear for the cart. The fiddler may use the barn if the pigs are moved first.
Record 18206. List of goods bought and sold by Opal. One clay pot, two loaves, a wool cap, and three jars of honey. The cap was too large for Opal, but just right for her basket. One jar broke on the road. The bees did not come after her, though she watched the jar all the way home.
%%
Finding book: gifts from Sallowfield
Entries 41231 to 41234, for the gift shelf in the front hall. The school at Sallowfield sent them on a cart of wool, winter.

41231. Gift: mittens, twelve pairs. The school at Sallowfield, 206. Knitted by the children for the clerks. A pen cannot be held in them. The clerks wear them on the stairs.
41232. Gift: a jar of honey, with a card. Rye, Sallowfield, 206. The card says: for the clerks, who look cold. The honey went to the second reading room and was gone by noon. The card is kept.
41233. Gift: a quilt of the seven houses. The grandmothers of Sallowfield, 206. Hung in the front hall. It shows every house, every chimney and a goat on a roof. Do not ask about the goat. Dace knows.
41234. Gift: a kitten. The school at Sallowfield, 206. Entered as a gift and given a number, so that no clerk can say she was not kept. Called Sallow. She has been told about the copying room.
%%
Finding book, Northpoint, 611
Kept by Senna, ferry keeper

Number 611. Title: Two baskets of fish.
A note from the landing. Senna brought fish to the keeper's house before the water went still. Mira says the fish were small but honest. Lantern says one had eaten a button. The button was not returned.

Number 612. Title: The green roof.
A child asks why the relay tower roof is green. The answer says copper turns green in rain and snow. The child asks if the roof is cold. No answer is written. Filed with the school questions.

Number 613. Title: A gift for the tower.
Senna brought a jar of honey from Ambrook and set it by the keeper's desk. Mira said it was too fine for a cold place. Lantern opened it before supper. The jar was empty by morning. The keeper's book says the gift was received with thanks.

Number 614. Title: Fox at the door.
A fox came to the relay house at dusk and sat on the step. It had one of Lantern's socks. Mira offered a fish head for the sock. The fox took the fish head and left the sock behind. It was not Lantern's sock.
%%
Finding book, the whole spring
Kept at the lost table, Kettle Ridge market, all spring, by Emmet and his cousin, who took turns and disagreed about every page. This is the book as it stands at the first warm day.

No. 1052. Apprentice, carrying wool, found at the wool stall with the bales on the wrong cart. A line: It has been told which cart. It stands by the right one now, and waits, as it was taught.

No. 1053. Sorting slate, chalked with rows of wheat, beet and oat. A line: The first row is wrong, the second is right, and the third has been rubbed out by a thumb that did not want to be blamed.

No. 1055. Letter to the Archive at Vell, sealed and addressed. A line: Found on the wrong side of the square, and sent on from the north well in the next cart.

No. 1056. Crystal card, with a sack drawn on it, and a line of marks under it. A line: The marks count the showings. There are four hundred, and then the card is turned face down.

No. 1058. Helper's cap, copper, too small for any head on the ridge. A line: Found by the trough where the helpers wash. It was put down carefully, and somebody will come back for it.

No. 1059. Slips of paper, twelve, with the same question on each. A line: Is the mind right, or is the card wrong? Both answers are on the table, and nobody has agreed which is which.

No. 1060. Lost dog, brown, with a red collar and a bell. A line: The bell was heard on the bridge. The dog has not been seen since. The bridge is safe.

No. 1061. Stuck cart, the same as before, freed at last by a team of four and a boy with a stick. A line: The wool is dry. The carter has sworn not to take the ridge road in the rain again.

No. 1062. Relay card, dry, with the numbers clear. A line: Found on the stile, and kept in the egg crate, which is the only place in the market that does not leak.

No. 1063. Two sacks of salt, one empty and one half full. A line: Nobody will say which is which. The carter says the empty one was always the half full one, if you ask him early in the day.

Totals, at the first warm day: twenty-two claimed, nine returned by the carters, and the rest waiting at the table with the rain on the boards. Emmet says the table is the most honest place on the ridge, because nobody can pretend to have lost a thing here without someone remembering it.
%%
Finding book, Ambrook, spring of 152
Finds taken at the Ambrook table by the mill pond, on market day. Taken down by Vesper, a clerk of the archive at Vell.
No. 17. A child's slate with a sum on it: two cows and three hens makes five cows. The answer is wrong. The hens are not complaining.
No. 18. One left boot, very muddy, found by the mill wheel. The finder has kept it for a month in case the right one comes back.
%%
The flood book, spring 205
Kept by Corin, the week the water came up over the slip. Each line is one thing the water took, or did not take, and what was done about it.

1. The harbor wall: forty stones shifted, none lost. Fen and his crew put them back by lantern.
2. The slip: under water to the third step. The long ramp is still there, which is what matters.
3. The wood store: all the spruce is wet. The dry boards are on the upper shelf, which is the only good news this week.
4. The red boat, not yet red. It floated off its blocks in the night and was found in the reeds by the quay. No harm. The keel has a scratch the length of a finger.
5. The net loft: the nets are wet, and the cat sat on the wettest one all night.
6. The cellar: two barrels of apples floated and bumped round the cellar door. Pell says the apples are his.
7. Letter: Oren at Vell asks if the flood reached the Archive. Reply: the Archive is on a hill. Tell him the hill is still there.
8. Note: the water went down on the third day. The fishers went out on the fourth. Nobody was lost. Corin says so, and writes it twice so it stays true.
%%
Finding book, notes on the smaller minds
Cade, clerk, in the house by the Copperhold road. Summer of 201, after a long wet spring.

No. 31410. Note: why a mind can be written smaller. By Nessa. A mind is a very large set of numbers. Each number is a weight. In the crystal, each one is held with many marks, like a measure written to the finest line on the rule. But most of the time, the finest line does not matter. A weight of 0.3141 and a weight of 0.31 do almost the same work. So you may round every weight to a coarser line. The mind then takes less room. Nessa says this is called writing it in fewer marks. There is a small cost, and it grows as the marks get fewer. At some point the mind will fail, and the test will show where.

No. 31411. Table: the same mind, five ways. Sixteen marks: ninety-eight right in a hundred. Eight marks: ninety-eight. Six marks: ninety-seven. Four marks: ninety-three. Two marks: sixty-one. Copied from a tutor's slate, with the dust still on it.

No. 31412. Letter: a tutor of Three Wells to Vell. Asks whether the small mind, written with six marks, can ride in the baker's apprentice. The answer is yes, if it is tested on the bakery orders. See also No. 31411.

No. 31413. Note: how to test a smaller mind. Use the same test box as before. The mind is the same mind, a little rounder. Do not drill it again. Count the right answers. If they have fallen by more than a hair, use more marks.

No. 31414. Letter: Hesk to Cade. Asks what a mark is. I wrote back: a mark is a small part of a number. He wrote back: so a mind is a very big heap of small parts. I wrote: yes. He wrote: that explains the cat.

No. 31415. Receipt: the move of Marl's household. From the top street to the house at the edge of town. Cart, two days. Four borrowed chairs returned.

No. 31416. Song: the homecoming of the crew at the mine gate. Six verses, with a chorus that begins with a shout. The shout is not written. It is understood.
%%
Finding book, Dunmoor: the tests
Kept by Senna. Winter. Entries about the tests, which the hamlet has run since Frost in the square, with the mind from the Vell hall.

No. 31. The unseen board. A drill that no mind has seen before. It is sealed by the clerk at Vell, opened in front of the people who will judge it, and copied the same morning.
No. 32. The shown board. A drill that a mind has practised on, many times. It is only the drill. Nobody scores the drill.
No. 33. The score. Written as a number out of ten, beside the name of the mind and the name of its hall. The score is what matters.
No. 34. A mind that does well on the shown board and badly on the unseen one. This mind has only remembered. It has learned the answers, not the drill.
No. 35. Never send an untested mind to the fields. The saying is written on the stable wall, in chalk, in the hand of Tutor Ros, who came up for the test and stayed for the stew.
No. 36. A mind that does badly on the shown board and well on the unseen one. This is rare. Ros says it is the one to watch, because it has learned the thing and not the answers.
No. 37. The test box. A wooden box with a lock, kept at the stable. The mind is not in the box. The sums are.
No. 38. The square on test day. The children asked whether the mind could hear them. Ros said it could read them, which is not the same, and the children accepted this.
No. 39. The second test. Held a week later, with a new box. The mind did well. Ros did not clap, because he never does, but he nodded at the stable wall.
%%
Finding book, item 0412: the even page
The even page. Kept in the copying room at Vell, in the third drawer, under the blue cloth.
This page explains why the numbers in a mind must be brought back to an even size, at every layer, before the mind can go on.
When a mind is drilled, its numbers grow. Each layer adds a little to what came before. After one layer the numbers are a little bigger. After two, bigger again. After ten layers, some numbers have grown so wild that the next layer cannot hear the small ones at all. The mind goes deaf, and it guesses at random.
The fix is simple to say. At each layer, the numbers are gathered together and brought back to a set size, as a baker brings the dough back to a loaf. Then the mind goes on.
Nobody wrote down why this works. The people who first tried it say that when the numbers are brought back to the same size, the layer can still tell which are large and which are small. That is all we know.
Keep a copy of this page with the drill book. A tutor who forgets to bring the numbers back will find the mind wrong for no reason, and will spend a month looking for the fault in the wrong place.
%%
Finding book, furnace minds, Copperhold
Copied by Arlo, weaver, from the finding book at Vell. Winter.

No. 15010. Furnace mind, the big forge at Copperhold. Set to hold the melt at one heat. It was not shown the heat. It was given a mark when the copper ran clean, and no mark when it ran grey. In its first year it spoiled a hundred melts. In its second it spoiled eleven.

No. 15011. Note by the forge master. The mind does not know copper. It knows which setting makes copper run clean, and it found that setting by trying one setting after another and keeping the ones that gave a clean run. We do not know what the mind thinks of copper. We know the copper is clean.

No. 15012. A furnace mind is not a wise mind. It is a careful one. It keeps the changes that worked, and it is careful not to repeat what did not. Its numbers do not grow wild, because the clerks bring them back to an even size each night.

No. 15014. The forge master asks the Archive to write this down. A melt that holds steady is what the mind keeps. Whether the melt is right is only known after the cooling, and by then the mind has already been given its mark.
%%
Finding book
Pia, clerk, in the loft above the cider press, in the hamlet near Vell. Autumn. We moved house this month, so the sheets are in new boxes, and each box has an apple in it, from Quin, for luck.

No. 40201. Council minutes: the third big house. A relay house bigger than a town. The councils of the south and the coast have joined to pay. It will hold a mind that no tutor has ever made. They do not say how large. The clerk writes: large.
No. 40202. Note: the checking of a big mind. A mind drilled on all the writing of the archive is a mind with more numbers than a tutor can read in a lifetime. To check it, the tutors split the work. One tests the sums. One tests the letters. One tests the roads. A hundred tutors, a hundred drills, each unseen by the others. The answers are laid side by side.
No. 40203. Letter: a tutor of Vell to a tutor of Copperhold. Admits that the drills grow slower than the minds. Asks if the contests may be longer.
No. 40204. Record: what the big house could do. Told by a miller who says he heard it from a relay keeper. The keeper said the mind could write a letter in the hand of anyone it had read. The miller says he did not believe it. He says it was nine tenths of a rumor, and one tenth of a letter.
No. 40205. Receipt: moving the Archive's box to the hamlet. Three carts, one pony. The pony ate a sheet. No loss: it was a copy.
No. 40206. Birth register: Quin's granddaughter Plum, a girl, the fourth of Apple. Well and loud.
No. 40207. Note: the house with no windows. A rumor from a traveler at the Halfway Inn that the biggest house has no windows, so that nothing may look in. The clerk adds: or out.
No. 40208. Letter: Quin to Pia. The apples are in. Come down to the press and eat.
%%
Finding book
Kept by Cade, clerk of the Archive, in the last room of a house at the edge of Copperhold. Summer, the 202nd year. The sun comes in through the glass at four, and by five the ink is too warm. I write in the early morning and in the evening.

No. 31520. Letter: Hesk to Oren. Thanks for the lamp. The coal dust has been in my hair for three days. The mine hall sends a basket of bread.

No. 31521. Manual: a smaller crystal, step by step. By Nessa. First, test the mind in its full size, and write the number of right answers. Second, round every weight to a coarser line. Third, test again, on the same unseen box. Fourth, compare. If the right answers have fallen a little, that is the price of the smaller crystal. If they have fallen a lot, round less. Fifth, write down what you chose and why, so the next tutor knows.

No. 31522. Song: the miner's return. A walking song for the end of a long shift. The tune is easy. The words are about soup.

No. 31523. Receipt: the move of Dun's family. From a house near the gate to one at the edge of town. A cart, a pig, a cradle. The cradle was empty on the way and full on the way back, by the time of the second load. Dun's wife had her baby on the way. A girl. The mine bell rang twice.

No. 31524. Note: Tolly's mind. A mind small enough for a coal cart, written with four marks. It stopped three times on the first day and none on the second. Tolly says it is learning. Nessa says it is not learning, it is the same mind, and Tolly has learned the cart.

No. 31525. Letter: Hesk to Nessa. The lift mind is working. The lift has stopped at level four for no reason. Hesk thinks it was the cat.

No. 31526. List: what was left in the old house. A rake, a lamp, one boot. Marked for return.

No. 31527. Drill sheet: the lift orders. Up, down, stop. Four hundred lines. The last line says: never send an untested mind down a shaft.

No. 31528. Letter: a tutor of Kettle Ridge. Asks if the barn mind may be written with five marks. I do not know. I have sent the question on to Vell.

No. 31529. Poem: the road home. Four lines, in a child's hand. Found in the box with the cradle.

A homecoming note. On the last evening of the month Hesk's crew came up the hill from the Works. They sang as they came. Everyone at the edge of town stood in the doors. I put down my pen and I listened. Some things the finding book can only point to.
%%
Finding book, Northpoint, 615
Kept by Senna, ferry keeper

Number 615. Title: The last boat before dusk.
Senna's boat carried two sacks of potatoes, one crate of glass panes, and a man with a sore knee. The man said the road was dry all the way from Three Wells. Senna says the landing was muddy and the wind pushed the boat sideways. Both accounts are true enough.

Number 616. Title: Lamp glass, cleaned.
Lantern cleaned the glass in the lamp room. Mira checked the copper ring and found no crack. The redstone line was clear at the desk. They lit the signal lamp at dusk, then watched its light pass down the coast. The last blink came late. Lantern blamed the wet air. Mira blamed Lantern's counting.

Number 617. Title: The first snow.
The first snow came while Senna was tying the boat. It covered the landing boards and the waymark by the shore. Senna swept the boards before the snow grew deep. A fox crossed the fresh path and stopped to watch. It left before the kettle boiled.

Number 618. Title: North wind.
A traveler told Senna that lights had moved over the far north hills. He said they were falling stars. A woman on the boat said stars do not turn back. Mira heard them both and said only that the lights were not ours. The traveler asked what they belonged to. No answer was entered.
%%
Story: the broken lamp at the winter
There is a hamlet below Kettle Ridge, four houses and a mill, and in winter it holds a market in the barn. This year the relay lamp was broken. The keeper's boy had dropped the glass and the lamp would not light, so the hamlet could send no word up the ridge for three days.
On market day the barn was full. There were beetroots and potatoes, wool and honey, a pig, and two carts of firewood. A woman sold soup from a pot. The children ran in the straw. At the back, on a table, an old man sat with a reading mind in a crystal and a stack of letters, and he would read a letter aloud to anyone who asked, for a mark.
A girl of about ten gave him a mark and a letter from her aunt at Lowmarsh. He put the letter in front of the mind and the mind read it out. The aunt was well. The frogs were loud. The water was up to the third post.
The girl said, "It sounds just like her."
The old man said, "It sounds like the letters, which is the same thing, mostly."
Then he read a letter from a man at Saltreach, and it was about ships. Then one from Northpoint, and it was about snow. The barn was warm. The soup was good. Nobody minded that the lamp was broken. The word went up the ridge the next day by cart, and the cart was slow, and the word arrived late, and it did not matter.
Pell, merchant on the Long Road
%%
Finding book: shard 41
Found in the ruins of the Halfway Inn, autumn. A wooden box under the hearth, dry and whole. Inside, one ledger of Pell's, still tied with its cord.

Finding book: shard 42
Found in the ruins of the Halfway Inn. A school exercise, folded small, in a child's hand. Bel of Three Wells wrote it. The ink has faded at the edges.

Finding book: shard 43
Found in the ruins of the Halfway Inn, in the room with twelve beds. A letter, never sent, to Mira at Northpoint. The keeper's name is on it.

Finding book: shard 44
Found in the ruins of the Halfway Inn. A tutor's note, copied by hand, about the stream. The paper is worn thin where thumbs held it.

Finding book: shard 45
Found in the ruins of the Halfway Inn, in the cellar, with a lamp still beside it. A page torn from a drill book, on how a mind learns in layers. The cellar was cool and dry. That is why it lasted.

Finding book: shard 46
Found by a farmer ploughing the low field by the Halfway Inn, autumn. A cave under the field. The plough went down into a hole. In the cave: one bench, one lamp, a jar of wax, and a book of orders. The farmer brought the book to the inn and the inn sent it to Vell.
%%
Finding book: 44.81
44.81. Three boxes from a loft at Kettle Ridge, found in the winter of 188. The farmer's family kept them dry and let us take them. Each box held letters, tied in bundles with wool. Some bundles were letters to the farm. Some were letters from it. The rest were lists of seed and prices, and one song about a dog.
Oren says a reading mind needs many pages. He says it needs pages that are like other pages, so the mind can learn the shape of a letter from many hands. We copied the letters twice. We kept one copy here and sent one up to the tutor house at Vell.
Whose letters go in, the clerks still argue. Some say only the oldest. Some say every letter, even the dull ones. I say a mind should learn to read dull letters too. Most letters are dull.
Margit, clerk of the finding book
%%
Finding book, Northpoint, 627
Kept by Senna, ferry keeper

Number 627. Title: The bread left at the door.
A round loaf was left on the keeper's step before the morning boat. It was wrapped in a clean cloth, with no name on it. Mira says it came from the baker at Three Wells. The baker says he sent no bread north. Lantern cut the loaf into eight pieces. The first four were eaten with honey. The rest went to the ferry crew.

Number 628. Title: The north shore in summer.
Senna took the boat along the north shore to look at a post that had come loose. The water was low by the rocks. Two fish moved in a pool where a larger boat could not pass. Senna reset the post with a stone at its foot. On the way back, she saw a pale mark far above the hills. It faded before she could call Lantern to look. She writes that it may have been a cloud lit by the late sun.

Number 629. Title: A warm stone.
A miner from Copperhold came down to the landing with a sack of tools. He said the stone below the ninth gate felt warm beneath his hand. He had not gone through the gate. He had only touched the wall near the stair. A second miner says the warmth came from a lamp left too close. Mira says no lamp is kept there. Senna asked whether the old side door was still locked. The miner said he did not know. He asked for water and would not speak of it again.

Number 630. Title: Nets mended in the shed.
Senna and Eda mended two nets while rain passed over the bay. One net had a tear the size of a bucket. Eda blamed a sharp rock. Senna blamed the large fish that no one had seen. They worked until the rain stopped, then shared a heel of bread. The nets are ready for the next catch.

Number 631. Title: The lamp at midnight.
Lantern wrote that the signal lamp shone at midnight and answered a call from the south. Mira copied the message into the tower book. Senna, crossing the landing, saw no light at the top of the tower. She saw the lamp a little later, when the clouds moved off. Lantern says the light was there all along. Senna says a light should be seen when it is there. Mira filed both notes together.

Number 632. Title: The little boat.
A child tied a small boat of birch bark to the landing post. It carried one apple and a note asking it to reach Ambrook. Senna untied it before the tide rose. She sent the apple to the keeper's house and kept the note dry. The child returned after supper. The note says, "It is going to the mill pond. Do not let it sink." Senna told the child the mill pond was a long way by water. The child said the boat was small enough to find the way.
%%
Finding book, the first of Thaw
Kept by Ferris, relay keeper of the hill above the Copperhold road. Each find has a number, a title, and a line about it.
No. 1. Letter: Nan to Hesk. Found folded small in a crack of the stair, under the lamp room. Opened by the keeper, who should not have, and sent down to the mine gate the same day.
No. 2. Copper button, the shape of a fish. Found on the sill of the lamp room. Left there, in case the coat comes back for it.
%%
Note: why a reading mind needs
On the great drills, for the tutors' book. By Nessa, tutor at Vell.
A reading mind learns by guessing the next letter. Show it a page. It looks through a window about sixty letters wide. It reads the letters before the gap and guesses the one that comes next. Then we show it the true letter, and it changes a little toward the right guess. Do this a thousand thousand times and it reads.
So it needs pages. It needs pages the way a mill needs grain. It does not need clever pages. It needs many pages, and it needs pages written by many hands, because a letter is not one shape. My a is not your a. A mind that has seen only my a will fail at the market.
The archive has two hundred years of pages. They were written to be kept, not to be drilled, and that is why they are good. A letter written to a sister is honest. A letter written to be drilled is careful, and careful letters are worse.
Orla asked long ago whether a mind could think. I do not know. I know a mind that reads a page has done something a drill alone could not do, and I know it learned it from us, from what we wrote. We will keep everything we write. Now everything we write may teach.
Nessa, winter of 191
%%
Finding book, Sowing
Kept by Ferris, relay keeper. Spring work.
No. 3. Lamp glass, from the top of the tower, cracked in three places. Cause: hail, on the last night of Frost. Mended by Holt the smith, with a copper frame round the break. Tested at dusk. Lit, and bright.
No. 4. A child's slate, with the word lantern on it, spelled right. Left on the step by the stair door. Returned to the school at Copperhold with a note.
No. 5. An empty bird's nest, in the copper ring. Taken down with care by the keeper's boy. The bird was not in the lamp room, and nobody knows where it went. It has been seen since in the field.
No. 6. Coin of emerald, one, worn thin, found in the mortar at the foot of the tower. Put in the tin for the stair repairs.
No. 7. Green ribbon, the length of a finger, found tied to the handle of the copper cloth in the lamp room. Left there. The cloth is used every day, and the ribbon has been fine all spring.
%%
Finding book, the Copperhold box
Cade, clerk. Summer, the 203rd year. I have been in the house at the edge of Copperhold since the thaw. The room is warm. The cat has made a bed in my box of blank sheets.

No. 31600. Letter: Nessa to the tutor houses, the weights. A mind's weights are its numbers. Many tutors keep them in great detail. This is wasteful. A weight kept to ten marks can usually be kept to five, and no tutor will see the difference. The smaller mind fits a smaller crystal, and a smaller crystal fits a smaller apprentice. Nessa asks that every tutor try it, and write the result for the Archive.

No. 31601. Table: results from nine tutor houses. Each house tried its own minds with fewer marks. All nine agree on the first part. Eight marks cost almost nothing. They disagree on the second part. Four marks cost a little at Vell, a lot at Ambrook, and nothing at Copperhold. Nobody can say why. The tutors write: it depends on the mind.

No. 31602. Letter: Hesk to Cade, about the cat. The cat has been in the Deep Works. It came out at the shaft head, and was seen to be pleased.

No. 31603. Song: lamps at the shaft head. A short song, three verses, for the lamp boys.

No. 31604. Note: a very small mind. A mind that rides in a coal cart, written with only three marks. It does its work, but it is easily confused. Do not let it near the lift.

No. 31605. List: the move of the Brann family, to the house by the gate. Beds: four. Chests: three. A clock, which has stopped. A child, who has not.

No. 31606. Letter: a keeper of Lowmarsh. Asks whether the small mind can be used for the weir. Answer, from Nessa: yes, test it.

No. 31607. Record: the return of the lift crew. Written by a clerk, in short. Seven came up on the second lift. Five were wet. One was a stranger, who had gotten into the wrong cart.

No. 31608. Poem: the old stair. Six lines, on a scrap of cloth. Copied and returned.

No. 31609. Receipt: ink, two bottles. For the Copperhold room.

No. 31610. Letter: Cade to Oren, the weather. It rained on the first, the second and the third. On the fourth the sun came out and everyone stood in the street.

No. 31611. Table: the lift mind, four tests. Sixteen marks, eight, four, two. The two-mark mind stopped the lift at level three, where there is no stop. Hesk says it is the first time he has seen a mind lose its way in a straight line.

No. 31612. Letter: Dun to Hesk. A thank-you for the cradle.

A note at the end of the shelf. I was asked today, by a boy of ten, how a mind that is written in fewer marks can be the same mind. I said it is the same mind in the way a map drawn small is the same land. It is not the whole of it. It is enough to find the road.
%%
Finding book, Dunmoor: the gate
Kept by Senna, horse keeper at Dunmoor. Winter. Entries are numbered as they were made.

No. 17. The night at the gate. In the long dark a zombie came up the lane and knocked on the stable gate, three times, as if it were a visitor. The bolt was shot. The zombie stood a while and went away. The horses did not wake, which Senna says is the best sign of a good night.
No. 18. A girl born in the loft. Liss, to the cooper's wife, at dusk, with the lamp lit below. The bell rang three times.
No. 19. The bell rope. Replaced in Frost, with new rope from Three Wells. The old rope is kept in the hay, in case the bell wants to be rung for something else.
No. 20. The lamp at the stable door. Lit at dusk, put out at the second bell. The horses like it, and the cat does not care.
%%
Finding book
Kept by Fern, night watch, for the finding book at the hamlet near Three Wells. Entries for the winter, when the Dace family moved from the house on the east lane to the house on the square, and left some things behind.

18. A table, oak, too big for the cart. It went round the corner twice before it was taken up the lane. It is now in the Dace house on the square, where it does not fit either.
19. A basket of apples, left on the step of the old house. Taken to the new house the same day. The apples were eaten, and the basket is still with the Dace family, who say they will not give it back.
20. A rug, woven in blue, found under the bed in the old house. It had been left there for a year. The new owners are happy to have it.
21. A clock, wooden, with its hands stopped at the third bell. It was carried in two arms by the eldest Dace boy, who says it still works, but only when nobody is looking.
22. A box of letters, tied with string, found in the attic of the old house. They are from Vell, from the Archive, and they are all addressed to Old Hob. Fern has written them in the book, and will send them up the road with the next carter.
23. A dog, brown, found sleeping in the empty kitchen of the old house. The dog had not moved house with the family, and had decided to stay. Mayor Dace came up the lane to fetch him, and took him home on a rope, and the dog did not complain.

Notes for the next watch. The table is to be moved to the store, where it may fit. The letters must go to Vell on the next cart. The dog is at the mayor's house, and says he is not to be taken back to the old house, ever again.
%%
Winter at the edge of Vell: a page
A page gathered in the winter of 206 by me, Oren, from the houses at the edge of Vell, where I live. I asked each of them to write a little of their winter, and they did.
Farrow writes: the potatoes are in the clamp and the clamp is under straw. My knees are worse in the cold. The council sent Tace again, this time about the ditch, and we agreed the ditch is no one's fault. I have paper on my kitchen wall from the clerk up the hill. It is too fine for a kitchen but the children like it. My grandchild Tilda says the paper has a picture of a beetroot on it. It does not. It is a letter about a road.
The baker at the corner writes: the oven is warm all night and the shop is warm all day. In the deep of winter I make one kind of bread, the round loaf, because everyone wants the round loaf. I made a loaf in the shape of a fox for the school and the children ate the tail first. The flour came late from Kettle Ridge this year because of the snow on the ridge road, but it came.
The schoolteacher at the edge of Vell writes: I have nine children this winter and one of them is my own. We read the primer and we do sums on the slate. We learned the names of the months and the children said the twelfth month is the best because of the fires. One child asked if the archive has a roof and I said the archive has no roof, it has a hill. She wrote that down. She is six. She writes very large.
I write: my sister Nell sent honey from Ambrook and a letter that smelled of smoke. The front hall of the archive is cold, so we keep the big book by the lantern and not by the door. The copying room is warm and I am glad of it. Nessa says I fuss over the shelves. I do fuss over the shelves. A shelf that is fussed over is a shelf you can find things on.
There was a hard frost on the night of the eleventh of Longnight. In the morning the edge of Vell was white and the smoke went straight up. Farrow's grandchild made a figure of snow by the fence and put a beetroot on its head for a hat. The whole street came to look at it. It stood three days and then the sun took it.
This page is for the shelf of ordinary winters. Oren, clerk.
%%
Dace's list for the Archive, winter
Sent to Vell with the winter cart. These are the notices from Sallowfield that came to the Three Wells board this winter. Each has its number on my board, its title, and a line from me, because Oren asked for a line. Here are the lines.

14. Notice: a goat for sale. One goat, honest, answers to Bramble. She is on the roof of the third house, and the seller says that is her only fault.
15. Notice: a ladder wanted. A long one. For the goat. Whoever lends it will be thanked by the whole hamlet and by the goat.
16. Notice: the goat is not for sale. Written by the buyer, who has met her. The seller says he will not take the emerald back. The buyer says he will. They are still discussing it.
17. Notice: the roof of the third house. Mended in one day by six people and no goat. The goat watched.
18. Notice: a bet about the well. Lorn and Lise. I was named as witness. I was not asked. I do not hold cheese.
19. Notice: thanks to whoever left a pie on the board. It was a good pie. It was eaten by the guard of the board, who is me. I regret nothing.
20. Notice: mittens wanted for the clerks at Vell. Twelve pairs came. They are on this cart.

There were more notices. They were dull. Please keep the one about the goat. Sallowfield asks it, and so does the goat.
Dace, mayor of Three Wells
%%
Finding book, trying minds in full
Copied by Arlo, weaver, for the weavers' hall at Kettle Ridge, which keeps its copy in a box with a lid. Winter.

No. 16101. Boat mind, the small boats of Saltreach. Not drilled. Given the line, the wind and a mark for each turn that kept the boat in the line. The first thousand turns were wild. The mind turned the boat into the wind and out again, like a hen chasing its own shadow. Then the turns grew smaller, and the boat grew steadier, and the marks came in.

No. 16102. Note on the boat mind. It does not know the sea. It knows the turns that kept its line. The sea is only the thing that was there when the turns were tried. A tutor who asks the mind about the sea gets a blank slate, and that is an honest answer.

No. 16103. Frame mind, for the weaving beam at Kettle Ridge. A great beam of oak, fitted with cords. Each cord pulled by hand, and each pull marked. The frame learned to pull the cords in the same order every time, and to keep the cloth square. Arlo says it is the only frame in the hall that never once pulled a thread loose on purpose.

No. 16104. Note on the frame. The mind was not told the cloth was square. It was told only that a square cloth got a mark. What it learned is that square is a thing that comes back, and so it kept the pulls that brought it back.

No. 16105. A new apprentice was put to the frame in the autumn of the year. It learned the pulls in a month, which was faster than the frame itself. The clerk who entered this writes that the apprentice was given a mark each morning, and that it kept the marks in a row on its own sleeve.

No. 16106. A storm came down on the frame hall in the winter. The roof leaked on the beam, and the cords went wet and stiff. The frame kept on pulling. The mark sheet shows the frame lost two marks in the storm, and got back five after. Entered as a lesson, and not as a fault.
%%
The quay lamp, a message nobody read
Kept by Corin, in the finding book, under the lamp's own number. The lamp is the one on the quay, not the relay. It is fed with coal, and it lights the boats in.

41. Notice: the quay lamp blinked at dusk on the first day of Blossom. It was a long, a short, a long, and then a word no one could read. Two fishers swore it was a word. Three said it was the sun on the glass.
42. Letter: Ambrook keeper to Saltreach, by the relay. Seen. Tell us what it said. A reply came back at noon: We do not know. Tell us what it said.
43. Note: the cat walked across the lamp glass to get at the fish heads on the sill. That was the message. It was long, short and long, and then it sat down.
44. Note: the keeper of the quay lamp has been asked to keep the cat off the glass. The cat has not been asked anything.
%%
Finding book: hall two, the winter shelf
Entries 41260 to 41272. Everything from Sallowfield that came on the winter cart and was not about the bet, the goat or the gifts. Read back by Ina. Oren has asked that the funny ones not be marked as funny. They are not marked.

41260. Letter: Dov to the Archive, asking if you have my name. Dov, Sallowfield, 206. The Archive has his name four times. Oren answered by the next cart and sent all four.
41261. Recipe: potato dumplings for a hard winter. Lise, 204. Potatoes, flour, a little salt, and patience. The dumplings must be dropped in the pot, not thrown. This is underlined.
41262. Rhyme: the sledding hill. The children of Sallowfield, 205. The hill has no name, but the rhyme gives it three, and the children cannot agree which is right.
41263. Count: icicles on the school roof. The school, 205. Forty-one. Counted twice. A third count made fifty-six. The third counter was held up by his brother.
41264. Ledger: firewood. Rye, 205. Seven houses burned 612 logs. The school burned 90. The goat's shed burned one log, and the goat was told.
41265. Letter: Lise to Lorn, the fence. Lise, 203. The fence between the houses has moved four paces since the harvest. Lise says fences do not walk. Lorn says this one does.
41266. Dispute: the fence, settled. Dace, 203. The mayor walked the fence twice. He ruled that it stays where it is, and that nobody may look at it crossly. It is not known how this was enforced.
41267. Song: lighting the lamps. The school, 204. Seven houses, seven lamps, one verse each. The goat's shed has a lamp too, and the verse for it is the longest.
41268. School work: sums with firewood. The school, 205. If a hamlet burns 612 logs in a winter, how many does each house burn? A child has written: more than it should. The teacher has marked this right.
41269. Letter: Rye to Ama of Ambrook, the bees in winter. Rye, 205. Should one talk to bees in winter? Ama says yes, quietly, and on the sunny side of the hive.
41270. Almanac: signs of snow. Lise, 200. When the hens go to bed before the sun, expect snow. When the cat sits in the window, expect the cat.
41271. Letter: the school to the Archive, the kitten. 206. The kitten Sallow was found asleep on a shelf in the second hall. The clerks would like her to stay there, by the stove, on the lowest shelf.
41272. Note left on the Sallowfield gate. Unknown, 205. It says: please shut the gate. Below, in another hand: it does not shut.

All entered. The shelf is full to the stove. The next box from Sallowfield will have to go in hall three.
%%
Finding book
Kept by Fern, night watch, for the finding book at the hamlet near Three Wells. Entries for the winter, when the hollow field at the end of the Dace lane was found to have a hole in it.

11. A hole, in the hollow field below the old elm, found by the farm boy Orrin, who went through the turf after a lost calf. The calf was not in the hole. It was found the next day in the barn, eating hay.
12. Stone steps, cut square, going down into the hole. Found by the men of the watch, who went down with two lanterns and came up after an hour. The steps are worn in the middle.
13. A bench, stone, in a small room at the foot of the steps. Dust on the bench. No tools. A long shelf, empty, with a line in the dust where something was drawn along it.
14. A smell from the steps, of old straw and dry stone, like the deep halls at Vell. Orrin says the cave is only a cellar that was forgotten. Fern has written that down, and has written under it: forgotten by whom.
15. A fence of posts and rope, put up round the hole by the mayor's men. The rope has been broken twice. The posts are still there.
16. A lantern on the bench, burnt dry, found by the boy who went down with the men. Nobody in the watch remembers bringing it.
17. A letter from the Archive, sent up the road by the carter. It says a clerk will come when the road is clear, and that the hole is to be kept safe until then.

Notes for the next watch. Nobody is to walk on the stone steps. Nobody is to go down until the Archive sends someone. The calf is to be watched, because it likes the hollow field, and it does not like the fence.
%%
Finding book
Kept by Fern, night watch, for the finding book at the hamlet near Three Wells. Entries for the thin harvest, when the granary at the east road was counted, and some things were found that nobody had counted before.

26. Eleven sacks of wheat, found at the back of the granary behind the barrels. Not on the count. They have been there since the spring, and the mice have not had them. The count is now twelve sacks, and the granary is very pleased.
27. A bag of beans, dried, found in the corner of the loft with a note tied to it, saying: for the cold month. The note is in a hand nobody in the hamlet can read. It has been kept with the beans.
28. A barrel, empty, found by the gate, with a plank missing from its side. Taken to the cooper. The cooper says the plank was taken by a dog, and that the dog has been caught and is sorry.
29. A jar of honey, sealed with wax, found on the mill shelf. The seal is from the Ambrook mill. The honey is dark and very sweet. It was shared among the watch and nobody has asked where it came from.

Notes for the next watch. The count is to be written in the book in full, with the beans and the note. The dog is to be let go. The honey is to be eaten before Thaw.
%%
Finding book, Northpoint, 619
Kept by Senna, ferry keeper

Number 619. Title: The old oar.
The left oar split where the handle meets the blade. Senna bound it with leather and used it for one more trip. The ferry carried a sack of flour, two jars of beetroot, and Lantern, who had come down to mend a lamp. Lantern says the oar made a sound like a duck. Senna says ducks do not groan so much.

Number 620. Title: Soup for the keeper.
Recipe and supper note, written by Eda at the landing. Cut potatoes small. Add carrots, a little fish, and water from the well. Keep the pot near the stove, not on the hottest part. Mira ate two bowls and said it needed salt. Eda says there was salt in it. The empty salt jar was found under the bench.

Number 621. Title: A light above the hills.
This account came from a boy who was waiting for the ferry. He saw three pale lights above the northern hills after sunset. His aunt says they were lanterns carried by people on the ridge. Senna saw no people on the ridge and no lanterns there. Mira says the lights were not ours. The boy drew three dots on the back of this page. He asked if they could see the tower. Senna told him to go home before dark.

Number 622. Title: The borrowed blanket.
A wool blanket was lent to the keeper's house during a cold rain. It came back dry, folded badly, and smelling of fish. The owner says the smell was there before. Senna says the blanket was clean at the landing. Filed under gifts and borrowed things.
%%
Finding book, Dunmoor: the shelf
Kept by Senna. Winter. A longer shelf of entries, made over the cold months, in the order they were written.

No. 59. A birth on the longest night. A boy, to the stable hand's sister, born in the straw with the horses watching. The bell was rung twice. He was named Ash, and he was given a spoon by the square, as all children are.
No. 60. A zombie at the gate, second night of Longnight. Three knocks, then one. The bolt held. Senna went out with a lamp and a stick, and found the marks in the frost, and the marks went away down the lane. Nobody was hurt, and nobody was pleased, and the horses slept through all of it.
No. 61. The stable lamp. It went out in the wind. Senna lit it again, and a boy from the square came up to ask why. He was told the wind had done it. He said he was glad the wind was honest about it.
No. 62. The contest of halls, the second of the winter. Vell and Copperhold sent minds. Copperhold's mind scored nine of ten, and Vell's scored eight. The square said Copperhold was lucky. Ros said luck was not on the score sheet.
No. 63. A sum from the box that was wrong. The clerk had copied one figure badly. It was found by the Vell hall the same morning and put right in the book, with a line through the old figure, so that anyone could see what had been changed.
No. 64. The horse Bramble, still counting her oats. She has now been told the total every morning for a month, and is beginning to say it herself, which Senna says is the only test she has ever failed.
No. 65. The well, mended. The rope was new, and the bucket was not, and the bucket is still a bucket, and the well is still a well. Senna says a finding book needs no more than that.
No. 66. A letter from Ros, sent up from Vell. It asks whether the stable wall is still standing, with the saying on it. It is standing. The chalk is worn, but Senna went out in the frost to read it, to be sure.
No. 67. Notes on the shelf for the next keeper. Keep the drills in order. Keep the box locked. Keep the bell rope dry. Never send an untested mind to the fields, and never a mind you have not tested in a room you did not choose.
%%
Yard book: the red boat, spring 204
Kept by Corin, shipwright. Each entry is one piece of the boat, in the order it was made, with a line on what went wrong and what went right.

1. Drawing: the keel. One long oak, from the forest past Ambrook. It came down the Long Road on four horses and both apprentices.
2. Drawing: the stem and the stern posts. Spruce and oak, pinned with iron. Pinned twice, because the first time I did not like the look of it.
3. Drawing: the ribs. Eight pairs, one after another. The apprentices cut them, every curve the same, neat as teeth. I checked each one with my hands and could not find a fault.
4. Note: the fishers came with a bag of emeralds, eight families together, and put it on the bench. We want a boat that does not leak. None of my boats leak. None of my new boats leak.
5. Note: the planks. Thirty six strakes, each bent over a fire of wet shavings until it would take the shape. Three cracked. Those went on the fire, and warmed the whole yard.
6. Note: the caulking. Wool and tar, pushed into every seam with a chisel and a mallet. The mallet is sore. So am I.
7. Note: the mast. Spruce from the north slope, the straightest tree in the wood. I went up to look at it three times before I cut it.
8. Letter: Pell asks what the boat will carry. Reply: fish, mostly. Pell, the answer is still fish.
9. Note: on the evening of the twelfth of Blossom, half of Saltreach came to the yard to give advice. The ferry man says it should be higher. The baker's boy says it should have a name. The children want to sit in it.
10. Note: the name. The fishers want it called Mab's Pride, after the widow who fed the crew for nine winters. Mab says she will not have it. Mab has been seen smiling at the paint.
11. Note: the paint. Red, from the ochre pit on the hill. Four coats. Each coat dries in a day, and each day the children test it with one finger, and each day the finger is red.
12. Note: the launch is set for the first day of Longday, at high water. The slip greased with fat, not oil, because the oil is for lamps.
13. Note: tested in the stone trough by the slip, with buckets poured in until it floated level. It did not leak. Corin takes the credit for the trough. The trough was the sea.
14. Letter: Corin to Ossie at Ambrook. The boat is ready. Come to the launch, and bring your own hat, because the sun will be on the water and nobody will lend you one.
%%
Finding book
Copied by Rook, charcoal burner, at the house at the edge of Copperhold. Winter.
No. 88. Notice: the zombie at the gate. It stood there one night and left at dawn. Torches doubled.
No. 89. A lesson that went badly. The school at Copperhold tried to teach sums with coals, and the coals rolled.
No. 90. Letter about the cold. It is colder than last year, says the writer.
No. 91. A rumor, copied as told: the stone below is warm.
%%
Finding book, Ambrook, spring of 166
Finds taken at the Ambrook table, Thaw to Sowing. Taken down by Vesper, a clerk of the archive at Vell. She keeps the page flat with a jar of honey on one corner, because the wind comes straight off the mill pond.
No. 203. A bell with no clapper. Found in a hedge by the top orchard. The finder rang it anyway, to see, and says it was not worth the walk.
No. 204. A hat with three holes in the crown. The finder says the holes are where the wind got in, and that it is the wind's hat now.
No. 205. A bag of seed potatoes that were never planted. Found behind the barn at Dov's farm. The potatoes have been asked to explain themselves, and have not.
No. 206. A notice blown off the Three Wells board: "Lost, one goat. Answers to nothing." Carried back to the board by the carter from Saltreach, who says the goat is still missing and has been very rude about it.
No. 207. A cup with its handle glued back on, badly. The glue is still sticky. Do not ask the finder who made the repair.
No. 208. A small copper key, the length of a finger. No lock is known for it. It is kept on the table for anyone who thinks they know one.
No. 209. A map of the orchard, drawn in charcoal, with every tree labeled. The labels are wrong. The finder insists the map is correct, and the trees have moved.
No. 210. A pair of warm wool socks with no owner. Kept for the next cold day, which will come, the finder says, when Vesper least expects it.
No. 211. A letter from a cousin in Lowmarsh, asking whether the frogs have started yet. Found in the mill pond, dry on the inside. Returned to the cousin with a reply. The answer is yes.
%%
Finding book, the stuck cart page
Kept at the lost table, Kettle Ridge market, in spring.

No. 1031. Cart, two wheels, stuck in the mud on the ridge road, with wool. A line: The carter has gone for a second horse. The cart waits.

No. 1032. Letter, folded twice, no name, with a child's drawing of a horse. A line: A lost letter. Ask at the school, which knows every child's name.

No. 1033. Relay card, blank, with a number pressed in the corner. A line: The numbers tell the mind which house is for it. Keep it dry.

No. 1034. Sack of seed beans, tied with string. A line: For Tam's north field. Tam says he has no north field this year. He does.

No. 1035. Hat, brown, with a feather. A line: The owner is the mayor's man. Nobody has seen the feather before.

No. 1036. Ladder, short, with four rungs. A line: Not stuck. Only leaning, as a ladder does after a long frost.

No. 1037. Cheese, half eaten by a dog. A line: The dog is not claimed either, and is fed by three stalls.
%%
Finding book
A catalog of the things on the sorting shelf at the healing house, Lowmarsh, for the apprentices who must put them back.
Jars of dried herb, labeled in red ink, in the right order. Nettle, yarrow, comfrey, mint, lily of the valley (keep this jar on the top shelf, and do not touch it).
Clean cloths, folded in threes. Bandage, half-size. Bandage, full size.
One box of needles, bone handles. Do not use these for anything but stitching.
One bowl of honey, for the throat. Do not let the cat near it.
Two small bottles of clean water, one for washing and one for the wound. Label them. Do not mix them.
Moss sorts the shelf every morning, and it has not put a jar back wrong since spring. Nobody has told it to put the lily of the valley on the top shelf. It just does.
%%
Finding book
Copied by Fen, a grandfather, into the finding book of the school house at Three Wells, in a summer when two things happened: the lamp on the relay tower broke, and a creeper blew up a piece of the town wall. Both are entered below. The book is kept at the school. These entries are read aloud at the summer fair, for fun, so they are written to be read.
Each entry has a number, a title, and a line.
No. 411. Relay log: the lamp goes out. The signal lamp on the Three Wells tower failed in the evening, with a crack. Sedge, the keeper, climbed to the lamp room and found a pane shattered and a bird in the room. The bird was not hurt. The bird had no comment.
No. 412. Letter: Sedge to the smith. Please come. The ring is bent. Bring tea.
No. 413. Letter: the smith to Sedge. Coming. Tea is on the cart.
No. 414. Relay message to Northpoint. "Three Wells lamp down. Sending by flag. Please do not send anything difficult." Reply from Mira: "Understood. Sending only easy ones."
No. 415. Notice: the wall by the bakery. Last night a creeper came to the square and made a hole in the wall as wide as a cart. It was found in the morning at the foot of the north well, very sorry. Hollis says the hole let in the smell of bread to the whole street. He thinks it was the bread that drew the creeper. Dace says that is the best excuse he has heard.
No. 416. Account of the builders. The wall was rebuilt with three rows. Cobblestone, cobblestone, deep stone, and the top row sticks out one block. Two apprentices carried the stone. They did not drop any.
No. 417. A letter from Fen himself, to the finding book. I am an old man. I have lived beside this wall for seventy years. It has stood against zombies, skeletons, spiders and the cold. A creeper is nothing new. What is new is the number of children who came to look at the hole. We should have charged them an emerald each.
No. 418. Sums with torches. How many torches are needed to light a wall that is one hundred and twenty blocks long, with a torch every eight blocks? Answer: sixteen. The children put fifteen. One child put twenty and said it was safer. Fen agrees.
No. 419. Another song about the creeper. We have decided not to write down the words.
No. 420. A page of thanks. The town thanks the smith, the builders, Sedge, Hollis, and the apprentices who carried the stone. It does not thank the creeper.
The lamp is lit. The wall is whole. The book is up to date. Fen has finished and is going to sit in the sun.
%%
Finding book
Pia, clerk, at the hamlet below Vell. Apple. I have been here for a month and I know the creaks of every stair. The moving of the boxes was hard. The writing of the entries is soft.

No. 40401. Letter: Quin to Pia, welcome. Quin says the loft has a view of the tower on the hill, and in the evenings the tower lamp turns the apples gold.
No. 40402. List: the boxes we moved. Forty-two, from the Archive overflow room. Marked A to Z, and then two more, marked with apples.
No. 40403. Note: the big houses, what they are. The councils have built relay houses bigger than towns, to hold minds bigger than any tutor can check alone. The first was at the south coast. The second at the great pass. The third, says a clerk at Vell, is not yet finished.
No. 40404. Rumor: what the biggest do. They are said to answer any question. They are said to write songs, solve sums, tell the weather a year ahead. They are said to refuse a request that would do harm. They are said to say "I do not know," when they do not. One keeper writes that she has seen all of these. Another that she has seen none. A third that she has seen them, but that they were not what she expected.
No. 40405. Council record: a vote to build a fourth. Nine for, six against. One of the six writes: I do not object to the house. I object to not knowing what is in it.
No. 40406. Receipt: new shelves, six. Oak. The carpenter asks to be thanked in the book. I have thanked him.
No. 40407. Letter: Quin's daughter to her sister. Plum is walking. She walks in circles. She falls over. She laughs. We think she is an apprentice.
No. 40408. Note: a tutor on checking. Nessa writes: no mind should leave the house until it has been tested on what it has never seen. For a small mind, a day. For a big mind, many days, many tutors. For the biggest, we may not have enough tutors in the world. That is a worry. I put it in the book.
No. 40409. Record: the move of the Archive's overflow. Done on the third of Apple. All boxes arrived. One lamp was broken. One apple was eaten.
No. 40410. Letter: a traveler, the cart. Says he is going to the big house in the south, because he has heard it knows everything. He asks if the Archive has a map. We do. We gave him one.
No. 40411. Note: what is not known. We do not know what draws the strength to run the big houses. We do not know why they stay warm in the snow. We do not know how the relays carry their words. I write these because someone should.
No. 40412. Record: the storing of apples. Eight hundred. Dried, in baskets, for the winter. Not an archive record. Filed for pleasure.
%%
House catalog, spring 206
Written by Corin, shipwright, in the book he keeps by the door. He began it after the flood, so that he would know what the water had found, and he has kept it up since, for no reason he will give.

1. Table, oak, one. Scratched by the apprentice who thought the table was a rib.
2. Chairs, three. One of them has a leg that Pell cut down in 201 for the tide pool. Pell has apologized twice.
3. Bed, one, with a blanket Ossie sent from Ambrook. Ossie, bless her.
4. Hearth, one, wide enough for a whole fish. It is the warmest place in the house, and the cat knows it.
5. Lamp, one, clay, with a copper ring round the top. The best lamp on the slip. The cat knows that too.
6. Cat basket, one. The cat has not used it since the spring. The basket is still waiting.
7. Chisels, twelve. Oiled every Longday. The good one is not lent, and nobody has asked for it twice.
8. Rope, a long coil, the length of the slip twice over. It has never been used for anything but the slip, and it would be a shame to start.
9. Letters, in a box with a lid, each one numbered. The box is in the cupboard with the spare oars, and the oars are not impressed.
10. Flood mark, on the wall by the door. Chalked at the height of the water, with a line beside it for the boat. The line is not yet needed.
11. Door, one, painted blue by the children of the school, who did not ask first. It is the only blue thing on the slip.
12. Emeralds, none in the house. Pell keeps the book of what is owed to me, and what I owe him. We balance it each spring, in the yard, with the cat watching.
13. Books, two. One is about tides and one is about the stars, which I read only on clear nights, and only the parts with pictures.
14. Pictures, none. The red boat, when she is launched, will be the first picture in the house, and I will hang her where the flood mark can see her.
15. Tools for the cat: one brush, for shedding. The cat does not agree that it sheds.
16. Wicks, one box, from the Brown Hen. Pell sold them to me for two good wicks and one long story about the price of wax.
17. Blanket, second, from the Halfway Inn. I did not ask for it and cannot return it. It smells of their hearth, which has not been out in twenty years.
18. Shelf, one, over the hearth, with three bowls on it. One bowl is cracked, and kept on purpose. Ossie says that is because I am sentimental. I deny it, and keep the bowl.
19. The sea, outside the door. It is not mine, and I have never been able to catalog it. I have tried. It keeps moving.
%%
Finding book: 45.02, the third box
45.02. The third box came in wet. The lid had warped and the snow had got in at one corner. We dried the pages by the front hall fire, one at a time, and lost eleven of them to mold.
What was left went to the great drills. The tutors wanted letters from farms, because the reading minds would one day read order cards and tally boards. A farm letter says "the sow has eight", and a tally board says "eight". A mind that has seen one may know the other.
The tutors asked us for winter letters. They said winter letters are longer, because there is less to do. I think that is true.
The eleven lost pages are noted here so the count is honest. We will keep everything we write. We could not keep these.
Margit, clerk of the finding book
%%
Finding book: the good harvest
Finds from the good harvest, brought in at Apple by the carters and the children. Hesk counts the good ones. The rest are only large.

23. Beetroot the size of a child's fist. Found in the top field of Kettle Ridge. Weighed on the mill scale. Nobody has eaten it, and it is kept by the door as a warning.
24. Ear of wheat, golden, with forty grains on it. Found in the strip by the west well. It stands in a glass at the school, and each grain has been counted twice.
25. Pumpkin, grey, too heavy to lift alone. Found in the Ambrook orchard. Two carters carried it to the board, and the board sagged, and the mayor calls it a pumpkin of record.
26. Apple, red, with a bite out of one side. Found on the windowsill of the Brown Hen. The bite is a fox's, or a child's, and the owner has not said which.
27. Sack of potatoes, the one with the name stitched on its cloth. Found in the Kettle Ridge store. The name is Juno. Juno says it is hers, and it is.
28. Rake, wooden, seven tines, one missing. Found in the orchard, leaning against the oldest tree. The missing tine is in the bark, where a bee has been living. Leave it.
29. Honey jar with a cloth tied over the top, the cloth still damp. Found on the bench by the honey stall. The label says HONEY, in red, and it is.
30. Bundle of beet tops, tied with red string, for the pig. Found in the barn at Ambrook. The pig has been told it may have them, and has not been told why it is being given them.
%%
Finding book, the letter in the stair
Kept by Ferris, relay keeper. This entry is long, because the letter is long, and because Hesk came up the hill to read it, and sat on the step for an hour afterward.
No. 1, again. The letter from Nan to Hesk, found in the crack of the stair under the lamp room, at the third turn. A dried flower was in the crack with it, and a piece of blue string, and a button of wood. We kept them all in the box.
Nan lived at Lowmarsh. She writes that the water there has gone a little brown with the spring rains, and the reeds are thin, and the frogs have moved out to the open pools. She writes that the healer, Wren, is busy with the fevers, and that Nan has sent her the good honey.
She says Hesk should come down for Reaping, because she has a new boat. The boat is too big for the marsh, and she would like him to see it before it goes out. She says a boat is a good thing for someone who has somewhere to go.
At the bottom, in smaller writing, she has added a line that is not part of the letter. Tell the lamp I said hello. Hesk says it was the lamp at the top of this tower, which he can see from the mine gate. He says Nan used to wave at it from the marsh, every night, when they were children.
The letter is six years old by its date. The boat would have been good on the marsh. Hesk says he will go down at Reaping if the road is open, and he will take the honey. He did not say whether he would go out in the boat. Nan's letter does not say that either.
The letter is kept in the box in the lamp room, with the flower and the string and the button. Hesk has asked that it stay at the tower. He says the lamp should have it, since the lamp was the one she waved to.
%%
Finding book, Ambrook, spring of 194
Finds taken at the Ambrook table, Thaw to Blossom. Taken down by Vesper, a clerk of the archive, who came down the Long Road with two carts and one hen that would not stay in either. The big find of the spring is entered in full, as the finder asked, and as the clerk agreed after she had been down to see it.
No. 1103. A lantern with a glass front and no oil. The glass is very clean, which the finder finds suspicious. It has not been lit, because nobody knows what it burns.
No. 1104. A spool of red wool, knotted into a hundred small loops. The finder says it is for counting sheep, and the sheep have not agreed.
No. 1105. A cave under the bottom field at Dov's farm. The plough went through the floor of it in Sowing. Cold air came up out of the hole, and the oxen would not walk over the place again. Dov has put a fence round it and a board that says NO. Vesper went down with a torch and a rope, and the rope was long enough. There are steps cut in the stone, square and even, like the steps of a stair in a good house. She counted twenty-two and then went back up. The cave is cold all year and dry. The walls have copper in them, in thin lines. She has not been down again, and she has asked the finder not to go down either. Dov says the cows stand at the far gate in the mornings and look at it, and nobody has asked them why.
No. 1106. A small stone bird with a hole in its back for a string. Found in the ditch beside the fence. The finder says it was there before the fence, and should have a place in the book.
No. 1107. A pair of wet boots with the laces tied in a knot that the finder could not undo. Kept, with the knot.
No. 1108. A child's slate with a poem about a cat. The cat is not named, and the child is not named either, so the book cannot send it back. The poem is good. The cat is not.
No. 1109. Eleven apples in a basket, all the same size, left at the table with a note: "For the clerk, who looks tired." Nobody claimed them, so the clerk ate them, and wrote this entry to be fair.
No. 1110. A shepherd's crook, too short for any shepherd at Ambrook. The finder thinks it belongs to someone small.
%%
Finding book, Dunmoor: the halls
Kept by Senna. Winter. These entries explain the contest between the halls, written plainly, because a child asked.

No. 50. The halls. Each tutor's hall has a mind, trained on the hall's drills. Halls are proud of their minds, and they say so at every fair.
No. 51. The contest. Each hall sends its mind to the same square on the same day. Each mind is tested on the same unseen drill, sealed until the morning and opened in front of all of them.
No. 52. Why the drill is the same. If the halls were tested on different drills, a hall could choose an easy one and win. Nobody can choose a drill that is sealed.
No. 53. Why it is unseen. A mind shown the drill beforehand has only practised. A mind that does well on the practice and badly on the test has only remembered. We want to know which kind we have.
No. 54. Why the scores are written the same day. A hall that wants to lie will try to change its score later. A score written in chalk in the square, and copied at Vell, cannot be changed without everybody knowing.
No. 55. Why the halls became honest. Each hall knows the others will check its score. A hall that cheated once would be caught in front of the whole square, and nobody would want its mind again. Senna says that is the whole of honesty: be willing to be checked.
No. 56. What the halls learned. That good answers on the shown drill prove little. That the unseen drill is the only fair test. That a score is a fact about the drill and the mind together.
No. 57. What the halls did not learn. Whether a mind that scores well is thinking, or only matching. Ros says the halls argue about this every winter, and the argument is not a bad thing to have.
No. 58. The rule of the shelf. Keep the unseen drills on the stable shelf, in order, with the date. Do not reuse them. A drill that has been seen once is practice from then on.
%%
Finding book
Entry in the book kept by the healing house, summer. The visiting tutor was Nessa, from Vell.
Nessa came for three days to see the new apprentices at Lowmarsh. She tested Moss on the basket of flowers, and it sorted all twenty. She tested two more on the boat ropes, and both passed. She tested the fishing mind on the reed weir, and it failed, and she laughed and said the reeds were too clever for it.
At the evening meal, Nessa said that a tutor should never trust a mind that is never wrong. Wren asked what she meant. Nessa said that every mind she had ever seen that was right all the time had been drilled on one kind of card only. The mind was right because it had seen nothing else.
Wren wrote this down. She said it was the best thing she had heard all summer, and that the cat had agreed with it, by sleeping on Nessa's notes.
Nessa left on the cart with a jar of honey, a dry sock and a copy of the healers' list. She took the cat's word for it that she would come back.
%%
Finding book, Ambrook, spring of 179
Finds taken at the Ambrook table on market day, Sowing. Taken down by Vesper, a clerk of the archive. She came down the Long Road with the book in a cart with a broken wheel and a crate of hens, and does not want to talk about it.
No. 455. A wooden horse with three legs. The finder says the fourth leg is in the barn, and will come out when it is ready.
No. 456. A pot lid, dented in the exact shape of a cow's head. The cow has been asked, and denies all of it.
No. 457. A jar of honey, full and sealed, found on the bridge in Thaw. The finder ate none of it. Nobody has ever found a full jar on a bridge before, and the book has no word for it yet.
No. 458. A sack of wheat with a tag that says Kettle Ridge, sent here by mistake. The mill has been told. The wheat has been very helpful to the mill.
No. 459. A carrot of unusual size, grown in the top orchard and measured twice. Sent to Vell as a curiosity. The clerks have since asked for a second carrot for comparison, and have been told to look in the orchard.
No. 460. A map of Ambrook drawn by a traveler who had never been to Ambrook. The mill is on the wrong side of the pond, the pond is on a hill, and the bridge has a tower on it. It is a good map. It is kept for its nerve.
No. 461. A pair of gloves, one big and one small, from the same finder. One is for the bees, says the finder, and the other is for a child. Asked which is which, the finder says both.
No. 462. A child's drawing of a tower with a hundred windows and a lamp on the top. The keeper's name is written in the corner, spelled three ways. The child says it is only a tower.
No. 463. A clay cup with a bee in it, still alive. Released at the table by the clerk, who says the bee was the only one at the market that knew where it was going.
%%
Finding book: the stores, Sowing
Kept by Hesk at the market board. The finds from the stores and the carts, in the order they came to the board.

9. Sack of wheat, torn at one corner. Found in the store under the mayor's step. The wheat is good, and the mice are not.
10. Wooden scoop, cracked. Found on the cart from Ambrook. It has been there since Apple, and the carter is sorry.
11. Lamp glass, one pane, whole. Found in a crate meant for Northpoint. It has been put back in the crate with a note.
12. Barrel stave, oak. Found in the mill race. It came from the Ambrook barrel that went over the bridge in Thaw, and it has a name burned into it, which is Jory's. Return it to him.
13. Melon seed, one, folded in a paper. Found in a child's pocket by the school. The child says it is for a melon. The child is wrong, and the seed is right to try.
14. Bell clapper, iron. Found by the school door. Dace says the bell is mended, but nobody has told the clapper.
%%
Finding book: the long winter
Finds from the long winter, brought to the board after Deepsnow, when the roads were white and the carts did not come until Sowing. Hesk says the winter is over. He writes it down, so that it will be true.

15. Sled runner, ash, with its iron shoe still on. Found on the Long Road by the Halfway Inn. The sled stopped there and did not come back for it.
16. Candle stub, half burned, in a tin. Found in the drill yard at Vell. A scrap of paper in the tin says Keep the warm one for the stove, and the rest has burned away.
17. Child's boot, left foot, with a hole in the toe and a name carved on the heel: Bel. Found by the south well. Bel says it is not hers. Bel has been asked twice and is sure.
18. Iron hook from a stable door, bent into the shape of a question mark. Found on the snow by the barn. Nobody knows which horse it asked.
19. Copper frying pan, the bottom burned through. Found on the step of the Brown Hen. The cook says it fed the whole inn through one winter, and it was her favorite.
20. Grey wool cloak, four pockets, one of them full of dried apples. Found in the sheepfold. Its owner has not come for it, and the apples are still good.
21. Snow shovel, wooden, the blade worn thin. Found at the north well, leaning on the wall, as if it had stopped to rest.
22. Tally stick, notched, twenty-two notches. Found under the bridge at Ambrook. The notches count the days the carters waited for the road to open. Hesk says the count is correct, and the carters know it.
%%
Finding book, Northpoint, 623
Kept by Senna, ferry keeper

Number 623. Title: Fish tally at the landing.
Senna counted the catch brought in by two small boats. There were twelve fish, four cracked baskets, and one wet glove with no pair. The fish were sold before noon. The glove was hung by the stove in case its owner came back. It is still there. Mira says a glove cannot wait forever. Senna says it has waited through two summers already.

Number 624. Title: The kettle lid.
The kettle lid rattled each time the wind came from the north. Lantern tightened the handle and moved the kettle to the far ring. The noise stopped. Mira says the lid was not the only thing rattling. Lantern says the stair lamp at the fourth turn needs a new hook. They went up together and found the hook sound. They came down for tea.

Number 625. Title: A boat from Saltreach.
A boat from Saltreach brought rope, dried fish, and three families who meant to travel farther along the coast. They asked Senna whether the sea was calm beyond the headland. She said it was calm that morning. One family stayed at Northpoint until the next tide. The youngest child spent the evening counting stones on the shore. The stones were not all the same shape, so the count took a long time.

Number 626. Title: What the lamps showed.
Lantern wrote that the tower lamps shone steadily from dusk until the last message. Senna, waiting at the landing, saw the light go dark once before it returned. Mira says it was mist across the glass. Senna says the sky was clear. Neither saw a keeper leave the lamp room. The entry ends with a note to clean the glass again.
%%
Finding book: the repair of the lamp
Fen, grandfather, Three Wells. Copied in summer into the town's own finding book, for the shelf of "things that broke".
No. 14. Relay log, Three Wells, the night the lamp failed. Sedge wrote that the signal lamp went dark at the tenth hour and the whole crossroads stood in the square looking up. The note ends with: "We have no light. We have a lot of people."
No. 15. Letter: Sedge to Vell. A request for a new copper ring for the lamp room. The old one had bent in the summer heat.
No. 16. Bill from the smith. Copper ring, one: 14 emeralds. Mending of the stair lamp, free, because the smith's daughter dropped it.
No. 17. A drawing of the tower, with the lamp marked in red. Bel drew it. The tower has eight windows. In the picture it has eleven.
No. 18. Note: the lamp is lit again. Written by the children of the school house, in chalk, and copied before the rain.
%%
Finding book, Dunmoor, entries 1 and 2
Kept by Senna, horse keeper at Dunmoor, a hamlet near Three Wells. Winter. Each entry is a number, a title, and a line about the thing, as the Archive asks.

No. 1. The first bell for a birth. The stable bell is rung three times for a girl and twice for a boy. It is heard in the square.
No. 2. The stable gate. A gate with a bolt that does not stick. A zombie came to it once, and the bolt held.
%%
Finding book
Copied by Rook, charcoal burner, at the house at the edge of Copperhold, in the cold season. He writes: "The finding book is a good thing to keep when little else can be kept. I put in what comes. I do not choose. I do not leave out. There is no year at the top of the page, because the year was never settled, and I would rather leave it blank than get it wrong."
No. 601. Notice: the zombie at the gate. It came on the second night of Deepsnow, at the hour of the owl. It stood outside the east gate with its arms down. It did not groan. It stood for an hour, and the dog barked, and the torches were lit all along the wall. At first light it turned and walked into the wood. Nobody knows where it went.
No. 602. School paper: the lesson that went badly. The schoolteacher is a good one. She tried to teach the older children the names of the stars. She taught the wrong names for three of them. A child corrected her. She was glad, and said so. She wrote it up for the book. I put it in.
No. 603. A letter from the mine hall to the families. Work below the seventh level has stopped for the winter. The reasons are many. The cold. The hum. The tired. The foreman says only that it will resume in spring. Families are asked to be patient, and to keep the stoves lit.
No. 604. A paper in two hands, arguing. The first hand says the hum is the wind in the old tunnels. The second hand says the old tunnels are walled up and there is no wind. The first hand says there are ways the wind gets in. The second hand says then it is a strange wind. They agree on one thing: it is a strange winter.
No. 605. A petition from the families of Copperhold to the mayor, to light the road to Three Wells with more torches. Granted. Torches are being placed every ten blocks.
No. 606. A paper about a house for sale. Four rooms and a cellar, on the Saltreach road. The seller is going over the sea. He asks a fair price and a kind buyer. I do not know if he found one.
No. 607. A copy of the Founding Day first page, in a child's hand. "We will keep everything we write." It is written very large, and underlined. I put it at the top of the shelf.
No. 608. A scrap that says only: "Keep the torches lit." No name. No date. I have put it in the book. It seems to be good advice.
That is the winter shelf. The lamp is low. I will bank the fire and go to bed.
%%
Finding book, summer 196
Record 34602. Opal's letter to Tam at Kettle Ridge, carried by cart. I have your two sacks of wheat. One sack has a hole near the bottom. I caught most of it in my apron, but some grain is in the cart. The mule ate the grain while I tied the sack. It seems a fair loss. Send the harness strap when Pip comes down the road. The old one is holding by a knot and a wish.
Record 34603. A copy of the letter found at the hamlet store. The first letter was lost between the well and the Kettle Inn. The store keeper found it folded inside a sack of carrots. It was dry, but the corner had a bite in it. Opal says the letter was clear enough to read. Tam says he would have answered sooner if he had known it was lost. The store keeper says he had not known it was found.
Record 34604. Opal's account of the summer festival. The fair tables stood in a row from the well to the barn. A fiddler played near the gate. The children raced with baskets, and the adults raced more slowly, carrying pies. Pip won the basket race, though he dropped one apple and had to go back for it. Tam won the pie race. He says the pie was light. Opal says his pockets were full of stones.
The people bought wheat, carrots, honey, wool, and clay pots. Opal traded three jars of honey for a small cart wheel. The wheel fits the hand cart, but not the large cart. It will be useful after the axle is mended. The mending is on Jori's list for tomorrow.
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Finding book, summer 207
Record 40119. Opal's account book for the summer trade at the hamlet near Kettle Ridge. She left Three Wells with empty baskets, 12 emeralds, a wool shawl, and two jars of honey for the inn keeper. The Long Road was dry. The bridge over the little stream had one loose board. Opal marked it with a stick and told the next cart driver. He said he had already seen it. She told him twice anyway.
At the hamlet, Opal sold 8 clay pots, 6 jars of honey, 4 wool caps, and a bundle of spoons. The caps came from Kettle Ridge. One had a hole where the top knot should be. A boy wore it backward and said it was a fine pocket. Opal bought 3 sacks of wheat, 2 sacks of beetroot, apples, and a new rope for the well.
The well keeper asked her to bring a smaller bucket next time. The old bucket is heavy when full. Jori says he can make one from oak, but he has promised the same thing since Blossom. Opal paid the baker for two loaves. The baker gave her three, then took one back when he saw the size of them.
Record 40120. Notice of the hamlet summer festival. The fair will begin after the noon meal by the well. Set baskets on the east side, so carts can pass on the road. Keep the gate shut against the pig. The fiddler may play in the barn if the rain comes. Bring pies, honey, apples, or clean wool. Children may trade small things with their parents watching.
Record 40121. A letter from Opal to her sister in Three Wells. I am well. The hamlet has put a new plank over the ditch. It is wide enough for a cart if the cart is narrow. Mine is not narrow. I walked the goods across in baskets while Jori pushed the cart. We finished before the soup cooled. Tell the baker I will bring back his blue bowl. It is in my store, under the shelf, and not in the sack of apples. I checked twice.
Record 40122. Note by the hamlet store keeper. Opal's letter was found in the flour bin after the festival. It had been put under a clean cloth. The cloth was not clean afterward. The letter was delivered to Three Wells with the next cart. The baker says he has no blue bowl missing. Opal says she will check the shelf again.
Record 40123. Opal's final tally. Sold goods: 31 emeralds. Bought goods: 18 emeralds. Paid for the rope, bread, and cart repair: 5 emeralds. One apple was eaten on the road. The mule ate the second one. Opal ate the third and says the mule should not be blamed for everything.
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Finding book
Entries copied by Pia, a clerk who lodges with Quin the orchard keeper in the hamlet below Vell. Quin lets me use the apple loft for the sheets. It smells of apples. Nothing is lost here, but everything is slightly sweet.

No. 40112. Letter: Quin to the Archive, the cart. Says a cart of boxes will come on the third of Apple. Please send a clerk who will not mind ladders.
No. 40113. Note: the house beyond Three Wells. A tutor writes that the council is building a relay house bigger than the town of Ambrook. It will take four years. The stone alone is a hundred carts.
No. 40114. Council minutes: whether to build. Eleven for, four against. The four ask: who will check a mind that big? The answer written down: the tutors, in turn. Someone adds: and in the end, each other.
No. 40115. Letter: a tutor of Copperhold. Says the mind in the big house will be too large for any one tutor to test. A tutor can test a loaf. A tutor cannot test a hill.
No. 40116. Receipt: ink, three bottles, and a basket of apples. Charged to the hamlet.
No. 40117. List: what we moved to the new loft. Boxes, forty. A chair. A cradle. The cradle is not an archive record, but Quin's wife asked.
No. 40118. Note on a birth: a girl, to Quin's daughter, the fourth of Apple. Named Plum. Filed with the orchard papers, not with the births, because the births are kept in the town.
No. 40119. Record: rumor of the biggest house. A carter says the house at the south coast can answer any question. Another carter says it cannot answer the simplest. A third says it answers, but nobody can read the answers. Nobody agrees. The clerk notes that all three were at the same inn.
No. 40120. Letter: Nessa to the tutor houses, the checking. A mind bigger than any tutor can check alone must be checked by many, each testing a part, each part on drills no one has seen. That is slow. It is still the only way.
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Finding book: Sallowfield, the bet
Entries 41207 to 41209, from Sallowfield, the hamlet an hour's walk from Three Wells. Brought in by Dace, winter. Entered by Ina, clerk.

41207. Letter: Lorn to Lise, the frozen well. Lorn, Sallowfield, 206. Lorn bets a cheese that the well will freeze before the longest night. See 41208.
41208. Letter: Lise to Lorn, the cheese. Lise, Sallowfield, 206. The well did not freeze in time. Lise would like her cheese, and says it should be a good one.
41209. Note: the well has frozen. Lorn, Sallowfield, 206. Dated the third of Deepsnow. Lorn says he was right about the well. Lise's answer is not in the box.

The cheese has not come to the Archive. The clerks have asked, and Dace has been asked to ask.
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Finding book, the Fewer Marks shelf
Cade, clerk. Summer, the 201st year. Four entries from the Copperhold room.

No. 31260. Note: fewer marks. Nessa to the tutor houses. A mind's numbers, called weights, are each written with many marks. Written with fewer, the same mind fits a smaller crystal. A small cost: it is a little less sure. Test it before sending it out.
No. 31261. Table: the marks and the cost. Eight minds, each written with fewer and fewer marks. At first the answers hardly change. Then, near the end, they fall off.
No. 31262. Letter: Hesk to Nessa. Wants a mind small enough for the lift. Says the lift crystal is the size of his thumb.
No. 31263. Drill book: the lift mind, copy. With the test sheet.
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Catalog of the Sallowfield box
Entered in winter by Oren, with Ina to read it back. A seed chest came to the Archive from Sallowfield, the hamlet an hour's walk from Three Wells. It holds everything the hamlet has written in thirty years. Sallowfield has seven houses. The chest holds 212 pages. The clerks think that is a good number.

41240. Letter: Lorn to his brother, the new barn. Lorn, 177. The barn went up in one day with the whole hamlet on the roof. It came down the next day, to be moved four paces left. It went up again in one day.
41241. Recipe: Rye's honey bread. Rye, 198. Rye says never to use Ambrook honey. It is too clever. Use the hamlet's own, which is plain.
41242. School book: the seven houses. The Sallowfield school, 201. The children counted every chimney, every bucket and every opinion. There were more opinions than buckets.
41243. List: the cats of Sallowfield. Lise, 204. Nineteen cats, with their names and their houses. Six cats are listed at two houses. Lise says the cats were consulted.
41244. Song: the Sallowfield gate. Unknown, about 160. A work song for swinging the gate. It is the only gate in the hamlet, and it has never been shut.
41245. Almanac: when the pond freezes. Lorn, 190 to 206. Seventeen years of freezing days in a column. Lorn was wrong most years. He wrote the right day in afterwards.
41246. Letter: Lise to her sister at Lowmarsh, the bet. Lise, 206. About the well, the cheese and Lorn. Lise writes that she has not forgotten the cheese. She has also not forgotten how Lorn looked.

The hamlet was asked if it wanted the chest back. It said keep the chest, and the seed too.
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Finding book, number 418
Road inn records, autumn

Record 418. Title: The Bent Spoon at the Brown Hen.
Gil the dyer writes that the innkeeper bent his best spoon stirring a dye pot. The innkeeper says it was already bent. The spoon now hangs above the hearth, where guests may judge it. Gil writes that the blue cloth came out well, though one corner is the color of beetroot. Filed under Long Road, inns, and arguments about spoons.
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Finding book: the mine finds, Thaw
Finds from the mine at Copperhold, brought up by the miners and sent down the Long Road to the board, as the rule is. Hesk writes each one in himself, with his own hand, which is large.

31. Copper nugget, shining, the size of a plum. Found at the north shaft, forty paces from the ladder. Weighed twice, and it is the same both times.
32. Coal, with the print of a fern pressed into it, flat, as if the fern had lain down on purpose. Found at the coal face, where the lamp caught it. The miners say the fern is older than the mine. Hesk says the miners say a great deal.
33. Iron ore, rusted red on one side and grey on the other. Found in the sorting shed. It has been turned over three times, and each time the red side is up.
34. Amethyst, a small purple cluster. It rings like a bell when tapped with a nail. Found in an old hollow of the north tunnel, where a wall was built and then taken down.
35. Lapis, blue, a chunk the size of a thumb. Found by the boy who hauls the spoil. He says it is blue because the stone is wet. Hesk says the stone is blue because it is blue.
36. Clay bowl, old, cracked, with a line of tiny marks scratched inside. Found in a sealed side passage on the fifth level. Nobody can read the marks. Hesk has put the bowl in the box at the top of the shaft, where the cold does not reach it.
37. Deep stone, dark, cold to the touch, with a crack that runs all the way through. Found on the fifth level, near the bowl. It is heavier than it looks, and it looks heavy.
38. Bucket, wooden, with copper hoops. Found at the foot of the lift. Its owner has probably gone home without it. Please return it to the board, and the board will return it to the miner, and the miner will not be pleased.
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Finding book: shelf of the broken wall
Copied by Fen, who is a grandfather and has time, in the summer, from the old finding book of the Three Wells school. The shelf holds the pages about the creeper, the wall and what came after. Each line is the number of the page, its title and a word.
No. 31. Notice: the wall. A creeper got into the square at night and blew a hole in the wall by the bakery. Nobody was hurt. The creeper was not so lucky. Dace asks that everyone keep their torches lit.
No. 32. Bill from the builders. Cobblestone, cobblestone, deep stone, the three rows of the wall, new. 22 emeralds. The top row stuck out one block again, as the old rule says, against spiders.
No. 33. Letter: Hollis to the mayor. The ovens are not hurt, but the bread smells of smoke. Hollis offers it half price, called smoke bread. It sold out.
No. 34. School essay: "The night the wall came down." By a child of nine. It has a drawing, and a lot of boom.
No. 35. A song about a creeper, with a chorus: "Hiss, hiss, run, run, run." The children sing it all day. Fen has had enough of it.
No. 36. A table of torches, and where they stand. Someone put it on the board after the night of the wall.
No. 37. A page of apologies, signed by the baker's cat.
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Finding book, number 1204
Road inn records, autumn

Record 1204. Title: Gil's blue cloth at the Halfway Inn.
Gil the dyer left this account of his autumn visit. He carried three rolls of wool cloth to the Halfway Inn, one blue, one brown and one plain. He meant to meet Pell there and trade for apples. He also meant to keep the blue cloth away from the kitchen.

The innkeeper had put the cloth beside the stove to dry. It was not wet when Gil left it. It was wet when he returned. The cook had used the blue roll to cover a pot of beetroot soup while she fetched a ladle. Steam had run down the cloth and made a purple mark.

Gil asked for payment. The cook offered a bowl of soup. Gil said soup was not a price. The innkeeper offered two apples. Gil said two apples were a price, but a poor one. Pell arrived with a basket and offered six apples, one for each guest who had watched the argument.

The guests said they had watched only because the soup was good. The cook gave each one a bowl. Gil took the apples and the soup, then rubbed the cloth with warm water and ash. The mark faded enough to sell, though the blue became lighter.

A small apprentice from Vell had come with Nessa's teaching party. It carried the washing basin from the kitchen to the yard, then brought it back when the basin was empty. Nobody had told it to bring the basin back. Nessa checked the order card and said the mind had learned the task from the first trip.

Gil says the apprentice did better than the inn's youngest helper, who carried the basin out and forgot it in the rain. The helper says the basin was not his job. The innkeeper says it is now.

Pell traded the apples for cloth. He kept the purple corner for his ledger, where it serves as a bookmark. Gil writes that he will dye another roll before next autumn, but will not leave it near the soup.
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Finding book, the storm run
No. 14303. Apprentice, new, from the Copperhold forge, put to the storm run on the Long Road. Tried, with a mark for each safe cart. The storm came down in the third hour, and the mind was on the wrong side of the bridge. It tried the bridge three times. The first two tries failed. The third held, and it kept the third.

No. 14304. Note on the storm run. The tutors say the mind learned the bridge, the stone, the mark and the cart all at once, because each try came back with its mark. Nobody drilled it. Nobody needed to. It kept more of what went well.

No. 14305. The new apprentice was taken off the storm run in the spring, when the roads were clear. It was not sent back. The clerk who entered this writes that it stood at the bridge end every morning after, looking at the place where it had learned.
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Finding book, notes on the trying minds
No. 14210. A note in the margin, by the clerk who entered these. Trying is not drilling. A drilled mind is shown the right answer each time, and told it is wrong when it is wrong. A tried mind is shown nothing but a mark. The mark says the try was good, or it was not. The mind keeps the changes that led to good marks, and drops the rest.

No. 14211. The tutors' note. A tried mind does not know why a try was good, and it does not need to know. It knows only that the good tries came back again. So it keeps more of what went well.

No. 14212. A warning. A mind that is only tried, and never drilled, may find a way to earn the mark that is not the job. Test it on a fresh frame before trusting it with the cloth.
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Finding book
Kept at Vell, written by Oren, clerk, in the summer after the fair. Copied from Peg's pages.
On the second day of the fair a man who had had too much cider leaned on the stall and said, "bring me the moon."
The apprentice stood still. Then it went to the well and looked down it. Then it went to the mill pond and looked at the water. Then it came back and stood by the man and said nothing, because it cannot say it does not know.
Peg wrote: this is the trouble with the small minds. They have eight meanings and no room for a ninth. Ask for the moon and they will look for it. They will look all day.
People who read this page at the fair said the big minds in the relay houses can write back. One woman said her sister at Lowmarsh had asked a big mind a question by letter and got an answer in a hand a reader could not tell from a person's. She did not say who wrote the letter. Nobody at the fair could say which was true.
Peg added at the bottom, in a child's careful hand: the man came back the next day and said sorry. The apprentice gave him an apple. It had kept it since the morning.
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Catalog: box 44
A catalog page for the finding book at Vell. Written by Oren, clerk, with a note from the keeper of the tower at Three Wells.
Box 44 holds the pages of the fair at Three Wells, spring 207. They came up the Long Road by cart, in a box that had held honey and still smelled of it.
Page 1: Peg's first orders, sixty in one day. The child and the loaf. The horse that did not help.
Page 2: the tallies of the stall. Two hundred and twelve orders over three days. Most done. Four wrong, and Peg wrote down what each one did instead.
Page 3: a drawing in a child's hand of the apprentice, with long arms and the beet in one of them.
Page 4: the man who asked for the moon. Oren's note. The apple kept since morning.
Page 5: a letter from Hesk at Copperhold. He says the order cards work and he is not giving out medals. I believe him.
Page 6: a letter from Nessa, for the apprentices' book. Read it twice.
The keeper at Three Wells wrote with the box: the spiders in Holt's barn got into the cord but not the pages. The pages are dry. The box is sealed with wax and the archive seal.
Who was first, we do not know. We keep the pages. That is what the archive is for.
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The three of them: a page
Written by Nessa, tutor at Vell, for the apprentices' book. Kept at Vell. Spring, 207.
Apprentices, read this.
People will tell you one apprentice was first to understand a whole sentence. They will name Clank at Copperhold, or Pip at Kettle Ridge, or Peg at the fair. Some remember one in the drill room here when I was young, and I cannot say they are wrong. The texts do not agree. I was there and I do not agree with myself.
What I can tell you is how it is done, and you can test it. An order is one thing said plainly: farm, or come, or stay, or fetch bread, or haul, or build, or store, or home. Write it one order to a card. The mind answers with one of the eight. That is all a small mind can do. It cannot say it does not know. It will do the wrong thing with a straight face, every time.
The big minds in the relay houses are different. They read far more than eight things, and they write back. If you are stuck, ask one. If you are not stuck, do the work and ask nothing.
A drill is only as good as its pages. We keep a test box of pages no mind is ever drilled on. Never send an untested mind to the fields, and never send an order that has two things in it to a mind that can hold only one.
Nessa
