Notes: how a wound heals
Notes of a talk by Wren, healer, at Stonebridge near Three Wells, in Thaw. Two days before, Tuck cut his hand on a fence post he was moving in the dark. Taken down by Bel, who was not supposed to be there and sat very still.
The quarrel is not in these notes. Everybody knows it. Wren says the hand is the matter, and the fence is somebody else's.
What a wound is. A hole in the skin, which is the wall of the body. Everything bad that is outside wants to be inside. A wound is a gate left open.
What the body does. It closes the gate itself. First it bleeds, to wash the hole. Then it makes a scab, which is a door. Under the door it builds new skin. A scab is a good thing. Do not pick it.
What we do. We keep the gate clean while the body builds the door.
1. Wash. Use water that has been boiled and cooled. Wash from the middle outward. Take out every bit of dirt, even the small bits. Dirt is how the sickness gets in.
2. Honey. A thin layer on the wound. Honey keeps the sickness out. Nobody knows exactly why. It works.
3. Cover. A clean cloth, folded flat and tied snug, not tight.
4. Change it every day. Look at the wound each time you change it.
5. Keep it dry. A wet cloth is wet dirt.
6. Rest. A hand needs rest. A man with a cut hand who goes back to the fence will have a worse hand and a louder quarrel.
Stopping blood. Press hard with a clean cloth. Hold it for a slow count of three hundred. Do not lift the cloth to look. Looking breaks the seal. If the cloth soaks through, put another on top and keep pressing. Send for me.
Deep cuts. If the edges gape and will not meet, the cut needs thread to draw it closed. That is my work, and I will do it quickly. Keep the cut covered and send for me.
What to watch. Red that spreads. Heat. Swelling. A bad smell. Pain that grows after two days. Any one of these: send for me.
Old tricks that do not work. Cobwebs. Mud. A coin laid on it. Spit. The saying that a wound should be left to the air. Keep it covered.
How long. A small cut closes in about ten days. A deep one takes thirty. The scar stays. A scar is a record of what happened, and Wren says the Archive would approve.
Tuck's hand was clean in a week. By Blossom there will be a scar the shape of a small river. The fence was left where it was. The quarrel goes on, but Tuck now argues with the other hand.
Questions. Bel asked if a wound hurts less if you hum. Wren said yes, and also if you do not look. Bel asked why honey keeps the sickness out. Wren said the bees know something that we do not, and she would like to know it too. Bel asked if she could write that down. Wren said somebody already was.
%%
Notes: talk at Greer's house, Northpoint
Set down by Greer, potter, who writes a fair hand when the clay is drying.

We had the talk in the warm room, because the kiln end was too cold. Twelve of us came. The keeper's girl, two miners up from the coast road, Sorrel who teaches, and a tutor from Vell whose name I did not catch. There was tea and there was bread and there was a great deal of arguing about numbers.

What I understood, put plainly:

1. A mind is layers. The first layer sees the letter or the word. The next layer sees what the first found. It goes on up to the answer.
2. Each layer keeps numbers. When a mind is wrong, every layer is told its share of the blame and each layer moves its numbers a little.
3. Here is the trouble. Do that many times and the numbers do not stay small. They double and double. After ten layers a number that was two is a thousand. After a hundred it is more than there is sand on the shore.
4. A mind full of huge numbers cannot learn. It shouts. Every answer is the same shout.
5. The fix is simple to say. After each layer moves its numbers, bring them back to an even size. Not to nothing. To a size that stays the same all the way up.
6. So each layer hands on a steady stream, not a flood. The next layer can still hear it.

The tutor said the trick is old and nobody agrees who found it. Some say a woman at Copperhold, some say a hall at Vell. It does not matter to the pot. The clay does not care who found the wheel.

The keeper's girl asked why the numbers grow at all. Nobody could say. The tutor said that is one of the things we only know how to stop, not why it happens.

We put the boards away at dark. On the way out a zombie was at the gate, so we kept the torches lit and went round by the road. Greer.
%%
Notes: the cat at the sump
Notes of a talk given in the mine hall at Copperhold, in the summer, by Nessa of Vell. Taken down by Hesk, who was asked to sit at the back and say nothing, which he did until the cat came in.

1. The sump. The old sump is the lowest point of the mine still in use. The water comes to it and sits there, waiting for the chain.

2. The cat. A grey, thin cat has come to the sump every night for three summers. It sits on the edge of the chain and watches the water, which is what it has decided to do.

3. The rule about cats. A cat is not a tool, and not a warning either. Do not feed it near the chain, because a cat that sits close to a chain will eventually fall into one.

4. What the cat has taught us. It dips one paw in the water, then sits back, then dips again, as though testing the depth. The miners say this is how you should test a face. Dip, then wait. Dip again.

5. What to do when the cat is in the way. Move it gently, by the scruff, and set it on the dry stone by the lift. It will come back, and so will you.
%%
Notes: a gift for the farm, and a plan
8. The gift
At the end of the talk Ansel gave me a slate with the four dots already drawn on it. The yes dots are in white chalk and the no dots are in red. He said, show it to your dog. I did. The dog sat on the slate, and I think that is an answer of a kind.

9. What a shepherd can test
A test is a flock on the far hill. You do not ask the sheep if they are well. You watch them walk. Ansel said a mind must be tested the same way: on examples it has never been drilled on, and never told the right answer during the test.

10. The plan
We have a small crystal in the barn at this farm. It sorts the ewes from the rams when we bring the flock through the gate. The hall at Vell sent it to us before the halls closed, and it has sat under a sack ever since. It has never been drilled properly.

I will drill it this spring on the old flock, one kind of example at a time. I will set the new lambs aside as the test. Only when it sorts the lambs right will it go back to the gate.

11. A word on the well
The well by the house is dry. We carry water from the ditch. When the water comes back I will drill the crystal again, and I will drill the well too, to see how deep it goes. Ansel says the order is wrong. He is probably right. I am a shepherd, not a tutor, and I like to see the water before I trust it.

12. If the mind and the flock disagree
When the crystal sorts a lamb as a wolf, do not trust the crystal first. Look at the lamb. Look at its ear, its feet, its mother. A mind is only as right as the drill it was given. Then drill it again, and set the lamb aside for the test.

13. Last word, from Ansel
Kester's note is a true note. One fence cannot do everything. Anyone who has watched a good shepherd at work will know that a fence is never enough by itself. Keep your fences straight, and keep your eyes on the flock. The rest comes slowly, and it is not for the councils to hurry.
%%
Tutor house talk: the berry tally
Notes by Tam.

Place
Hushbrook school room, under the Kettle Ridge road.

Time
The third of Frost, in the 187th year of the archive.

Present
Tam, Pip, Nessa from Vell, and two farmers.

Subject
A clear mark for each basket.

We count apple baskets at the mill pond and beet baskets at the ridge barn. The tally board has a mark for each kind. Nessa brought a practice slate with figures for empty, half full, and full.

Pip asked whether a full basket should have the same mark as a heavy one. Nessa said no. A basket can be heavy with wet leaves, and then it is full of trouble rather than apples.

The apprentice was shown three baskets. It counted the apples well when the baskets stood in a row. It counted the same baskets badly when one stood behind the door. We moved the door stop and tried again.

Tam said the door had been blamed before for much less. The school keeper said the door was not listening.

We agreed to keep the baskets in sight during the next drill. A basket with no apples gets no tally mark. A basket with apples gets one mark, even if it has a loose handle.

The mill keeper will mend the loose handle. He says he has said this since Apple. We have written it on the board now.

At the end, Nessa asked the apprentice to carry the empty basket to the barn. It carried the full one. Pip walked after it and returned with the empty basket too.

Next lesson
Practice with baskets near the door, then at the barn.
%%
Notes: the whole talk, deep works
Notes of a talk given in the mine hall at Copperhold, in the summer, by Nessa of Vell, for the miners, the apprentices and the cook. Taken down in full by Hesk, who was asked to leave out nothing, and who has tried.

1. The shaft and the lift. The shaft goes straight down from the mine gate. The lift runs on a cable through the middle, and it is worked from the top. A lift that is overloaded stops halfway, and then everybody walks.

2. The levels. The first level is copper and iron near the surface. The second and third are mixed. The fourth is the richest coal, and the miners like it best for the warmth. The fifth and sixth are wet. The seventh is deep stone, hard and dark and always cold to the hand.

3. The rails. Every rail has two spikes to each sleeper, and a gauge checked each week with the wooden bar. Every eighth rail is powered by the cable, so that the carts go faster on the long run and slower on the bends.

4. The carts. A cart holds what a man can push, and no more. Count the carts at the top, and count them again at the bottom, and write both numbers in the book.

5. The count board. At the top of the shaft, the board is kept up to date every shift: the copper, the iron, the coal and the stone, in carts. It is copied to Vell at the end of every season, so the Archive can see what the mine gave.

6. The water. The water comes in through the fifth and sixth levels and runs to the old sump, down a channel cut at one part in forty. The bucket chain is checked every morning. The cat at the sump is not the water's problem.

7. The props and the roof. Two props for every rung of the roof, and one more where the water comes. Oak, straight, with the bark on. A prop that moves is a prop that is about to teach somebody something.

8. The stone. Copper is green in the lamplight, like moss on a stone. Iron is dull until it is wet, and then it shines. Deep stone is grey, and it does not shine at all, which the miners find a comfort, because nothing in it is trying to be looked at.

9. The people. Every man on the level is counted by name, and every name is written on the board at the gate. A miner who is hurt is written in red, and a miner who is found is written in green, and both colours stay on the board for a week.

The tutor closed by saying the Deep Works was made by people who came to work each morning, and that the work is what the mine remembers. She asked the miners to remember the names anyway. Hesk says he will, and he has written them all down.
%%
Talk notes: the snow path
Written by Tam.

Place
Hushbrook, the hamlet below Kettle Ridge.

Time
The sixth of Longnight, in the 181st year of the archive.

Present
Tam, Pip, Lale from the hen house, and Orra, who keeps the well.

Subject
The path from the lower field to the barn.

The path is packed earth and turns hard in frost. We cleared it twice this month. A cart can pass if the snow is moved to both sides. Keep the ditch open near the bend.

Lale said the hens had walked the cleared path before the cart. Their feet made small holes in the packed snow. We agreed that this was not a fault in the path.

Pip brought the apprentice from the barn. We gave it a basket and asked it to carry the potatoes to the kitchen. It took the basket to the barn and stayed there. The potatoes were still by the lower field.

Tam said the order had been shown in the store drill, but not on the snow path. Pip will repeat the drill with the kitchen door in view. We will test it with turnips first, not potatoes.

Orra brought hot water from the well. The mill keeper had put his mittens beside the stove. One mitten was dry. The other was inside his boot.
%%
Lecture: apprentices in the reeds
By Elsa, relay keeper at Lowmarsh.

Given to the cutters in summer, at the reed house, in the year 201. Two apprentices had come down from Vell to help with the cutting, and the cutters wanted to know how they were made to work.

A tutor does not tell a mind what to do. A tutor shows it an example, and then the same kind of example again. And again. The first time, the mind is wrong. Each time it is wrong, it changes a little. After a long time it is right more often than wrong.

So the drill is always the same kind of thing. Here is a drill for cutting, of the sort the tutors use at Vell:

> cut the reeds by the ditch
= farm
> bring the bundles to the cart
= haul
> the weir needs weed out
= farm
> wait by the boat house
= stay
> fetch some clay for the wall
= fetch clay
> we are done for the day
= home

Look at the second line. The bundles go on the cart. That is haul, not fetch. Do not let the mind mix the two up when it is tired.

Testing
Never send an untested mind to the fields. A tutor tests it on orders it was never drilled on. Say the test in a new way. Say it with a word the mind has not heard. If it still does the right thing, it is ready. If it does not, it goes back to the drill.

Keep a box of test orders that no mind is ever drilled on. The clerks at Vell look after the box. If an order is used in a drill, it must come out of the test box, and the tutor must write it down.

What the apprentices do
They do not talk to you. They do not say why. They do the order. Watch them, and you will know if they have understood. When the bundles are on the cart, the cart is full. When the weir is clear, the water runs.

The two from Vell cut more reeds in one morning than my whole row did last year. I do not say that to make the cutters feel bad. I say it so they will ask for more help next year, and be glad of it.

Questions, please, before the tea goes cold.
%%
Notes: a lost letter, and the summary
A letter from Copperhold went missing on the road to Vell, and a layered mind was asked to find it by the numbers on the page. It could not. The page was gone.
The tutors then asked the question the clerks had been asking for years. How much of the drill was on pages that were lost? Was the mind learning the numbers, or only the pages it had seen? A letter that is lost is a test the mind cannot take.
One. A layered mind learns better when each layer is told its share of the blame.
Two. The blame is passed back from the answer to the first layer, by a sum.
Three. The numbers on letters are learned this way.
Four. A broken thing in the drill teaches a wrong thing, and the blame will carry it all the way down.
Five. Keep your pages. Keep your lamps. Check both before you drill.
Corin asks the hall to note that the tutor, who was very patient with us, did not know whether the layered minds would ever learn the things that the old minds could not. He said nobody did yet. He said it was the most honest answer he had heard from a tutor in years.
Corin asks the hall to note that the tutor, who was very patient with us, did not know whether the layered minds would ever learn the things that the old minds could not. He said nobody did yet. He said it was the most honest answer he had heard from a tutor in years.
%%
Nell's talk: green from old copper
Notes of a talk by Nell the dyer, at her stall in the Copperhold market. Longday.

What it is
Old copper goes green. You have seen it on roofs and door handles. The green is a crust, and it scrapes off with a knife.

Where to get it
The smiths scrape it off old tools and throw it away. Ask them for it. They will give it for a smile.

How to use it
Grind it to a powder. Stir a spoon into a pot of warm water with a splash of apple vinegar. Put in the wool. Wait until the green looks right to you. Then rinse it.

Wash your hands after. Do not eat the powder. Someone always asks.

There is a new vein of copper on level two. More copper this year means more green next year. Come back then.
%%
Notes: the crystal and its layers
Notes taken by Corin, shipwright, for the boat hall's winter lessons. Given by a visiting tutor from Copperhold, winter.
A crystal holds a great many weights. Each weight is a small number. Together the numbers are the mind.
The old minds had one layer. One row of weights, all set at once, from the drill to the answer. They could learn a line, or a sort of two things. They could not learn "one or the other, but not both". Kester showed that, and nobody argued with him.
%%
Notice: the new road east of Northpoint
Put up by the keeper, at the foot of the tower, where all the notices go.

The new road east of the town is open. It runs from the tower gate, past Greer's kiln, and joins the Long Road where the old track used to stop in mud.

What is done. The road is packed earth with a cobblestone edge, the way the Long Road is made. A torch on a post every twelve blocks. A stone bridge over the stream by the kiln, because stone if you can, oak if you must. The waymark at the join is three blocks high with a torch on top, a figure 4 and an arrow to the nearest inn.

Who did it. The keeper's crew, the two miners, and Clank, the apprentice from Copperhold that came up with the miners. It hauled stone and set it by the pattern and asked nothing.

What it is for. Carts of clay and pots go east now without sticking. The mail from Vell comes a day sooner. In winter the road will still be deep, so keep to the edge and keep your lamp lit.

A word of care. There was a zombie at the gate three nights running. Keep the torches round the foot of the tower lit, and the ones along the new road too. We have enough posts. Fill them.

Ask at the tower if you want to help dig the ditch on the north side. Bring a spade and a coat. Greer has the tea.
%%
Notes of a talk: the spring meeting
Given at the farm of Sage, cheesemaker, outside Copperhold, in the barn, spring, at the end of the cold. Twenty-three farmers and miners. Notes taken by Fenn, who is neither, and writes things down.

The reason for the meeting. Hesk of the Deep Works came up to say what the mine hall has decided. Sage lent the barn, because it was the biggest dry room, and made cheese for the table. She said it was her duty as a neighbor to feed bad news with good cheese.

What the hall decided. Nobody goes below the ninth gate. The gate is locked. The key is at the mine hall. The old side door on the eighth is shut, and that key is at the hall too. The hall will pay the lower crews through next month, and then find them work above.

Why. Hesk said the hall does not know. He said the stone below the ninth is warm and has been for two seasons. He said there is a sound at night that is not wind. He said some of the men will not go down any more, and the hall has not made them, and has decided to make it a rule so that no man has to be the one to say no.

What the farmers said. Old Brann said it was the weather, and that the stone would cool in time. Ulla said it was the mine, and the mine was too deep. A young farmer said it was the lights in the north, and that the lights and the stone were one thing. Brann said that was nonsense. The young farmer said he did not claim to know. Hesk said that was the best answer so far.

What Sage said. She said she would keep the cave as it is, and move the cheese to the north wall, and watch. She said the farmers should do the same. Whatever you cannot change, keep. Whatever you can, mend. She said that was all she had learned in thirty years of cheese.

What was not said. Nobody said the word leave. Four people looked at Ilse's list, which was pinned on the wall. Nobody touched it.

The close. Hesk asked the room to keep the torches lit along the road to the mine gate. A farmer said they had always done so. Hesk said, yes, but now it matters.

Sage brought out the cheese. It was a good cheese. It was eaten quickly, and quietly, and by everyone.
%%
Notes of the tutor house talk
Three Wells, summer of 202

Present: Nessa, tutor; Corin, shipwright; Sela, school keeper; Dace, mayor; Jun, apprentice keeper.

Subject: The practice crystal and the missing basket.

Jun brought a small mind from the tutor house. It rode in a copper apprentice with a crystal in its mind slot. The apprentice had learned to carry baskets from the school door to the east room.

Nessa set a basket by the door. She put apples in it and asked the apprentice to carry it to the bench. It did so.

Then Corin set an empty basket beside the first. The apprentice carried that one too. Jun said the mind had not been taught which basket was wanted.

Nessa agreed. A mind cannot choose from a lesson it has never seen. She asked Jun to add examples with one basket marked by a blue strip of wool. The other basket would have no mark.

Corin said the blue strip looked like a loose piece from his sail cloth. He asked that it be returned. Sela said the school had used it to mend a map. No one knew how it had reached the bench.

The apprentice brought the marked basket, then brought the unmarked basket as well. Jun changed the drill and tried again. On the next turn, it took only the marked basket. The room clapped. The apprentice carried the basket once more, though nobody had asked.

Dace said it had learned good manners from the room. Nessa said it had learned only the last part of the drill. She told everyone to stop clapping until the test was done.

Decision: Jun will test the mind with baskets it has not seen. The test shall include a red strip, a green strip, and no strip. It must not use the same basket each time.

Corin will take the stray blue wool back to his shed. Sela will mend the map with green wool instead. Dace will ask the school children not to clap at every trip. He said this rule might be the hardest one to teach.
%%
Talk on the carts, the Long Road
Given by Adair, visiting tutor, at the Brown Hen, on the second night of the frost. The carters came in from the north road with snow on their caps and sat on the benches while Adair set out her slate.

Heading: The cart mind.
A cart mind is a small one. It has one row of weights, and it knows one road. It is drilled on the road by being driven along it, with the reins held by a person, many times.

Heading: How a cart mind learns the bends.
The first time, it goes wide and slow. The second time, it goes a little tighter. By the twentieth time, it knows the bend the way a carter knows it, with his hands on the reins and his eyes half shut.

Heading: How a cart mind fails.
It takes the bend too fast in the wet. It stops for a shadow. It waits for a cart that has already passed. It does not know that a horse has gone lame, because a lame horse is not in its drill.

Heading: The test.
The tutor takes the cart mind to a road it has never driven, with a bend it has never seen. The test is passed if the cart arrives, with its load, and with the horse unhurt. Adair says the test is the carters' business, and the mind's, and that she does not do it alone.

Heading: Questions from the benches.
A carter asked whether a cart mind could carry a sick man. Adair said not yet, and not without a person in the cart. He asked whether it would ever ask the road for help. She said that was a question for the big minds, and not for a cart.

Heading: A last word.
Adair said the road belongs to whoever drives it. The mind is only a hand on the reins, and a hand must be watched, as all hands must. The carters agreed, and went back to their soup.
%%
The long winter at the Halfway Inn
Told by the keeper, as Oak set it down at the hearth.

The snow came in Leaffall and did not go. By Longnight the drifts stood against the west wall higher than a man, and we dug a path to the well each morning and it filled again each night. The hearth did not go out. That was the whole of our plan, and it held.

We had twelve beds and some nights fourteen people. The watch from Three Wells came down and slept by the fire in their coats. A merchant called Pell came in from the east with his ledgers and stayed three days and paid for four, which is the kind of merchant he is. He said the roads were the same roads and the prices were the same prices and the rumors were worth less than the snow. I liked him for that.

There was a cart stuck on the rise past the waymark, the one with the figure 7 and the arrow to us. Four of us dug it out with the spade and the coal shovel off the hearth. The driver had a wolf with him, a thin grey one, that sat in the snow and watched us dig and did not help. The driver said the wolf had come to him at Northpoint and followed him south. He said the foxes up there had gone strange, sitting still on the ice and looking up. I said foxes are foxes. He said these were not.

We had one zombie at the gate, the same as Three Wells. It stood in the torchlight in the snow and did not come on. In the morning the snow had covered it to the shoulders and it was gone, or the snow was. I did not go out to see which.

A healer came through from Lowmarsh, a young one called Moss, going on to Vell with a bag of jars. Moss said the grey cough was in three houses at Lowmarsh and no more, and that Wren had written down every case. Moss did not say what caused it. Someone in the taproom said the water. Someone said the ships. Pell said the mines. Nobody knew, and Moss would not guess, and that was the honest way of it.

The relays were quiet up the road, people said, and then someone said they were quiet only at night, and then someone said they had heard a keeper's voice come through clear as a bell from the north, and nobody could say when. The truth is we did not know, and we were warm, and the soup was good, and the riddle board stood by the hearth with its riddle on it, and nobody solved it.

When the thaw came at last, in the last days of Deepsnow, the road showed itself again, brown and wet, with the cobblestone edge running off to the west. The waymark stood up out of the snow with its torch out and its little stones on top. I lit the torch. Then I went in and put another log on the fire, because the hearth does not go out, and I meant to keep it that way.
%%
Notes: the blame passed back
Merle of Copperhold asked a simple question. What if the mind had many rows, one feeding the next? The first row finds small things, the second row finds things made of small things, and so on up. Merle grew her crystals this way, in layers, and found they could learn harder things. She did not know at first why they worked.
The hard part is the learning. When a mind gives a wrong answer, it must change its weights. But which weights? In one layer, the answer is clear. In a stack of layers, the answer at the top depends on every row below it.
Merle's answer was this. Take the wrong answer. Measure how far it was from the right one. Give the top layer its share of that wrong, and say: you were this much to blame. Then pass the share down to the layer below, as its share of the blame, and so on, down to the first. Each layer is told how much it helped to make the mistake, and changes by that much.
She called this passing the blame back. The name stuck, though the tutors dislike it. It is not a crime, they say. It is a sum.
Layers that are told their share learn faster. They learn things the single row could never learn, because each row changes in the right direction, not just the one at the top. A mind of ten layers, told its blame properly, can sort things that a mind of one layer could not sort at all.
%%
Talk: how to give an order
Notes of a talk by Linnet, a tutor from Vell, at the Copperhold market in Melon. Taken by Nell, who stood at the front because her dye stall is next to the stage.

One order at a time
An apprentice hears your sentence and picks one meaning out of eight. It cannot ask what you meant. So say one thing.

Name the thing
Say "fetch wool", not "get me that stuff". The word that matters must be in the sentence.

Watch for the word home
Linnet wrote an example on the board. A woman at this very market once said this to her apprentice:

> take the wool to Nell's stall, then go home
= home

The apprentice heard home. It put the wool down in the road and walked off to the house. The wool sat there until a cart went over it.

If you want it back, say come. If you want it to stay, say stay. Do not say home unless you mean home.

The crowd clapped. I sold six dyes.
%%
Talk notes: what a piece is
Notes by Wren, at the same talk.

1. A piece is a common run of letters. It can be a whole word, such as bread, or part of one, such as the end of a longer word.

2. The clerks choose the pieces. They count the runs of letters across the whole archive, and keep the common ones.

3. A mind is drilled on the pieces. It is shown a page cut into them, and it must guess the next piece, not the next letter.

4. A piece is not a rule. It is only what was most common. Isla says to remember that.

5. A bad page makes bad pieces. So the clerks take out the spoiled copies before they count.
%%
Talk: why a map is not a walk
Notes of a talk by Kell, mapmaker, at his house at the edge of Copperhold. Deepsnow. Taken by Nim. The talk was meant to end before the song contest at the inn. It did not.

A mistake
Three winters ago I borrowed Hob's old mare to carry my stakes along the north road to the Halfway Inn. I meant to draw the road. I let her choose the way. At every turning she took the way she knew, which was the way to her stable. By evening I had drawn a road that bent twice to the west and ended at a barn.

I took it to Pell. Pell said the Long Road does not go to Hob's barn. I said it did on my map. Pell said he would believe the road.

The lesson
A map is a record of measures. It is not a record of a walk. If you let your animal choose your path, or your own feet, or your own wish to be home, you will draw the way that was easy, and not the way that is.

How to avoid it
Fix two points you know, like two relay towers. Sight the same far thing from each, and draw a line from each point towards it. Where the two lines cross is where the far thing is. Do this with three things, and your map will hold together.
Then measure each stretch between them. Do not guess.
Last, check. Walk back along your map, with the map in your hand. If it says the bridge is here, there should be a bridge here.

The song contest
At this point in the talk the bell at the inn rang for the song contest. All five pupils stood up and left in the middle of a sentence. Kell sat for a moment. Then he picked up his hat and followed them. He sang the old song about the mule on the hill and came second, to a baker with a very loud voice. The first prize was a ham.
Kell says that, as lessons go, this one is clear. The map comes first. But the contest has a ham.
%%
Talk at the tower house: what the layers
Set down by Greer, who was asked to write it fairly, since the keeper had his hands full.

The talk was given in the tower house at Northpoint in the deep of winter. The tutor came up from Vell and stayed the night because the road east was drifted. Present: the keeper, Lantern his apprentice, Sorrel who teaches, two miners, three folk from the kiln, and me.

First part: why numbers grow.

The tutor drew a mind on the board as a stack of lines. The bottom line sees. Each line above takes what the line below found and adds its own. At the top is the answer. She said: a mind is not one thing, it is a great many numbers in a stack of layers, and the numbers are what it knows.

When a mind answers wrongly, the blame is shared. Each layer is told its share, from the top down to the first, and each layer moves its numbers a little. Do this a thousand times and the numbers move a great many times.

Here is the trouble, she said. A number that is moved again and again tends to grow. Two becomes four, four becomes eight. A deep mind has many layers, and if every layer lets its numbers grow, the top of the mind is working with numbers far larger than the bottom ever saw. The mind shouts. It cannot tell a small difference from a big one, so it gives the same answer to everything, and it is wrong.

Second part: the even size.

The fix is that each layer, after it moves its numbers, brings them back to an even size. Not to nothing: to a size that stays the same all the way up the stack. She called it keeping the stream a stream.

The keeper asked if this loses what the mind learned. The tutor said no. It keeps the shape of the numbers and loses only the size, the way a map keeps the shape of the land and loses the size of it.

Third part: the arguments.

Sorrel asked who found it. The tutor said nobody agrees. Some say a woman at Copperhold, some say a hall at Vell, some say both found it the same year and never met. She said the councils argued a year and then every tutor did it, and now no one drills a deep mind without it.

One of the miners asked whether the numbers grow for the same reason the stone in the Deep Works grows warm. The tutor said she did not know, and did not think anyone did, and would not guess.

Lantern asked if a mind can be made that never grows its numbers at all, and keeps even from the first. The tutor said perhaps, and that it was a good question, and that she had no answer for it.

We had tea. The wind was at the glass. On the way out a zombie stood at the gate in the snow, so we went round by the new road with the torches lit, and the keeper said keep them lit, and we did. Greer.
%%
A bet on the market slate
Notes by Oren, winter talk at Vell.

Present:
Nessa, two apprentices, a baker, a wool seller, and Pell, who had stopped on the Long Road.

Question:
Does bringing numbers back to an even size stop a mind from learning?

Pip said it must. If the numbers are held to one size, he said, they cannot grow into better answers.

Nessa asked him to show his work. He had no slate ready. Pell lent him one, though he said a slate was not a proper loan unless it came back clean.

Nessa drew three boxes for three layers. Each layer added its finding to the stream. Beside each box she wrote a note to keep the numbers within bounds. The next layer could still use the stream. It did not need numbers that grew without limit.

Pip looked again and said the mind could still change its weights during drills. The rule kept the numbers from running wild; it did not freeze them.

Then the wool seller offered a bet. If Pip could explain the rule at the next market, she would give him a red scarf. If not, he would carry her wool to the inn.

Pip took the bet. The scarf was not part of the lesson, Nessa said. The wool seller said it was now part of the lesson.

The market grew loud. We ended before anyone could wager a sack of potatoes.
%%
Notes: bees and fences
Notes of a talk by Wren, healer, at Stonebridge near Three Wells, in Blossom. Taken down by Bel. Garrow and Mott were both there, standing at opposite ends of the barn.
Wren was asked to talk about bees. She did not say any names. She did look at the roof beams a good deal.
Where bees go. A bee flies a thousand paces for a good flower. To a bee, a fence is a low place in the sky.
Why they go. Bees need flowers, and flowers need bees. Where there are no bees, pumpkin flowers open and close for nothing.
What it means for neighbors. A man who keeps hives and a man who keeps flowers are on the same side of the fence, whichever side the fence is on.
The quarrel. Garrow's hives are west of the fence. Mott's pumpkins are east. Mott says the bees are trespassing. Garrow says the bees do not read.
The count. Mott's pumpkins last year: 6. This year, with the hives next door: 31. Wren asked the barn to count again. 31.
Garrow will send a jar of honey. Mott will send a pumpkin. Wren says that is a better fence than one with posts.
%%
Talk: the first burn, and the summer
Ada, healer. Notes from a talk at the Brown Hen, given to the carters and to the girls who carry the trays. Summer's end, the last warm week before Leaffall.

Most of the hurt I see at the inn is small. A burn from the oven. A cut from a crate lid. A foot caught between cart wheels. Today I want to talk about the burn, because every one of you will get one before the year is out.

What to do:
1. Put the burn under cold water. Not ice, cold water from the well. Keep it there until the pain eases. Count to one hundred, slowly, and then count again.
2. Take off rings and bands before the hand swells.
3. Lay a clean cloth over the burn. Do not tie it tight.
4. If the skin lifts in a blister, do not break it. A broken blister lets in dirt. Put a little honey on the cloth, and change it twice a day.
5. If the burn is as big as your palm, or it sits on the face, go to Lowmarsh. Wren has the good jars.

What not to do:
- Do not put butter on it. Butter is for bread, and it traps the heat.
- Do not put soot on it. I have seen this, and I have had to clean it off.
- Do not pretend it is nothing. A burn that you hide will go bad in the night.

The summer part. You all worked very hard this season. The fields at the ridge were heavy. The melons came too early and too big. The carts ran on time most days. Ellen, who carries the trays, did not drop a single cup in three weeks. That is worth a note.

The part you may find funny. Old Dunn tried to carry a whole barrel of honey up the back step alone. He is seventy, and he is not sorry about it, and he is still limping. Please do not copy him. If you need help with a barrel, ask for it. The barrel does not mind.

Next talk: the sick room at the Brown Hen, and why the bed by the fire should always be the one by the door.
%%
Notes of a talk: words as places
Taken down by Hesk, miner, at a talk given by the tutor Hana on a farm outside Copperhold, in autumn, in the 188th year of the archive. Set out by heading, as Hesk likes to do.

1. The idea
A mind keeps each word as a place. Not a street place. A place among many directions, more than a person can draw.

2. A picture
Take a map of Copperhold. The mine hall is at one point. The inn is at another. Words are like that. Each word has a point on the map.

3. What lies close
Words used alike sit close. Bread and loaf are next to each other. Pick and shovel are next to each other. Bread and pick are far apart.

4. Who puts them there
Nobody. The mind is drilled on pages. Each time it reads a word, it moves that word's place a little, toward the words that stand near it on the page. After many pages, the places settle.

5. How many directions
Many. A mind with a small crystal keeps a hundred. A big mind keeps thousands. The tutor said: a map has two directions, east and north. A word has a hundred.

6. What the directions mean
No one told them. After a drill, a tutor can look and find that one direction seems to run from small to large, another from cold to hot. But the mind chose them. The tutor only noticed.
%%
Notes: a broken lamp
Here is a true story from the Copperhold drill, told so that you will remember the blame.
A mind was drilled to read the lamp signals on the north tower. One night the relay lamp was broken and gave a flash that was not a number. The mind read it as a six. The keeper wrote a six on the tower book, and the message went south with a six in it, and Vell read it as a six, and the whole line was wrong for half a day.
When the tutors looked at the drill, they found that the mind had been shown a flash like that, once, in its early drill, and had been told it was a six. The blame had passed back to the first layer and changed the weights. It had learned the flash wrong.
So the rule is: never drill a mind on a broken thing. Check the lamp first. Then check the drill.
%%
Notes: the first helpers, a short talk
Notes taken at the Copperhold tutor's room by Lise, innkeeper, who came to hear the visiting tutor and was asked to write down what she heard. Spring.

1. The first helpers.
Four helpers of copper and iron, in the early years, at the tutor house at Vell. Each one with a crystal for a mind. The crystals were new and the helpers knew nothing.

2. What they were taught.
The field drill. A ripe plot: harvest. A bare plot: plant. A green plot: wait. Two hundred tries a day, for many days.

3. What happened.
At first the helpers were wrong nearly every time. After some weeks they were wrong about half the time. The tutor said this was better than it sounded.

4. The test.
They were taken to a new field, at the edge of town, with plots they had never seen. They did well there. So they were not only remembering. They had learned.

5. The name.
The children began calling the helpers apprentices, because they were learning. The tutor said the name may stick.

6. The question.
Nobody knows how far it goes. The tutor did not say more. She said the tutors after her would have to decide, and they should write everything down.
%%
Notes of a talk: places
Taken down by Hesk, miner, at the long talk given by the tutor Hana to the farm hands and miners of the district, in a barn outside Copperhold, in autumn, in the 188th year of the archive. A new apprentice was brought as a demonstration. A cave was found under the farm's field in the week before, and the talk began by thanking the finders. Set out by heading, plain and exact, in the way Hesk keeps his shift logs.

1. What is a word to a mind?
To a person, a word is a sound or a mark with a meaning. To a mind, a word is a place. That place is a long row of numbers. Two words that are used alike have rows that look alike. Two words that are used differently have rows that differ.

2. Why places, not names?
In old minds, each word was a plain number. Bread was 41. Loaf was 42. Nothing about the numbers said that bread and loaf were alike. The mind had to learn each word from nothing. That is slow.

With places, a mind can transfer what it learns. If it has learned that a loaf is eaten, it already half knows that bread is eaten.

3. How are the places made?
The places begin as random numbers. A mind is drilled on pages. Each time it guesses a word wrongly, the places of the words around it are nudged. Over a great many pages, the places settle. No tutor places a word by hand. The drill does it.

4. The trick of adding
She told of a trick. Take the place of one word, take away another, add a third. The result often sits near a fourth word. Foal minus horse plus cow sits near calf. Not always. Often enough to notice. The tutors say this suggests that a direction in the space means something like young.

She warned: it is a hint, not a proof.

5. What this does not tell us
It does not tell us why the map of use turns into a map of meaning. It does not tell us why a crystal learns at all. These are things nobody wrote down. She said she was not ashamed to say so. She said a tutor who claims to know is a tutor who has not looked.

6. The demonstration
The new apprentice, still in its crate, was lifted out and set on a bench. It had been drilled on one card. The card said: Farm. The tutor held up a card that said: Plough. The apprentice looked at it. The tutor said: what do you do? The apprentice began, very slowly, to push the bench across the floor.

The audience laughed. The tutor said: it has put plough near farm. It does not know what a plough is. But it is in the right place. With a few more drills, it will do the right thing.

7. A last question, from Hesk
I asked whether I might ask the mind for the place of the word coal. She said: no, you cannot. A mind does not give places, it only uses them. But she can look inside a crystal and read them off, with some work, and give a list of the nearest words. She will do this when she next comes. I have asked her to do it for coal.
%%
Notes: the numbers on letters
The relay houses need a mind that reads the numbers written on letters. Merle's layered minds were the first to do this well. Each number in a letter is a small mark, and the mind learns the marks by the same blame, passed back layer by layer. After a long drill it can read a sum off a page, even when the page is smudged.
A relay mind that reads the numbers can tell the keepers what a letter says. It can tell them a weight, a count, a price. It does not know what the numbers are for. It only knows the marks.
%%
Lecture: pages, copies, and spoiled ones
Notes of a talk given by Linnet, archive clerk, to the apprentices' tutors at Vell, in spring. Written as spoken, under the headings used in the hall.

Heading: the first page.
A page is one example: a question, and the answer that goes with it. A drill is many pages in a row, shuffled, so the mind does not learn their order.

Heading: the copy.
The clerks copy pages by hand. A careless copy may change one word, and the mind will learn the changed word as if it were true. Read every copy against the first, aloud, before it goes in the drill.

Heading: the spoiled page.
A spoiled page has a stain, a tear, or a wrong answer in the margin. Take it out. Do not mend it and put it back. A mended page has been looked at too often, and the mind will remember the mend.

Heading: the test box.
Keep a box of pages that are never shown to any mind in the drill. Test on them only. A mind that does well on the test box has learned something. A mind that does well only on the drill has learned the drill.
%%
Questions from the floor, and answers
Q: Can a mind with more marks learn the fence and the cross together?
A: Nobody has tried. The councils have not paid for the trying.

Q: Orla asked long ago whether a drilled mind could think. Is that question still open?
A: It is open. Ask the tutor at Vell, who will say he has no answer, and then ask you what you mean by think.

Q: Why not give the minds more layers?
A: That is the question. Kester's note says one layer cannot learn it. It does not say a second layer cannot. We have one layer, and no money for a second.

Q: Could two fences make the cross?
A: Yes. Two fences cut the square into four parts, and the yes dots fall in the right parts. But nobody knows how to make a mind draw two fences on its own. Kester did not say two were impossible. He said one was not enough. People hear the two things as one, and that is the mistake.

Q: What about Una's sorting crystal, from Ambrook?
A: Una's crystal sorts apples and pears by one fence, and it works, because apples and pears can be split that way. Her method is still the first lesson in the tutors' books. It is the best way we know to make one fence true.

Q: Does one fence ever fail on a farm?
A: All the time. A lamb with a black face looks like a wolf from far off. The fence cannot know that. The shepherd can, because the shepherd has looked at the lamb's face.

Q: How long does a drill take?
A: Long. A mind needs thousands of examples, and each one is a small step. Be patient, and count the mistakes, not the days.

Q: Will the councils pay again?
A: I do not know. I am a tutor, not a council. Ask the councilor from Three Wells, who asked the first question and has not yet answered his own.
%%
Talk notes: The pot at the door
At Sage's house, Three Wells

Present: Sage, cook. Dace, mayor. Bel from the school. Orren, baker.

Subject: supper for people coming home from the north road.

Sage said the pot would hold beetroot soup for twelve. The house has eight chairs. Orren offered two stools from the bakery. Bel said a person could sit on the flour bin. Orren said the flour bin was not a chair, even if Bel had sat on it before.

Dace said to leave the door unlatched until the travelers came. Sage said the wind would put ash in the soup. They settled on a hook, not a latch.

Bel asked if the travelers would bring news of the lights over Northpoint. Dace said one traveler called them falling stars. Another said they held still above the snow. Sage said neither had seen them from Three Wells, and the soup needed salt.

Orren brought a loaf and left the heel for Sage. Sage put it beside the pot. Bel asked if the people coming home would be hungry. Sage said, "They have walked all day. Hunger is the one thing I can promise."

The table was wiped twice. The chairs stayed empty until dusk. Then three travelers came in, wet from a short summer rain. One had a cracked buckle. One had a fox hair caught on a sleeve. They ate soup and bread. Nobody asked about the lights.

Bel carried the bowls to the sink. The flour bin stayed where it belonged.
%%
Talk at the Archive: how far is it?
Notes of a talk by Gil, mapmaker, at Vell, winter of 203. Written up at a farm outside Kettle Ridge. Plain and exact.
Four ways to measure a distance, from the near to the far.
1. By pacing. Walk the line and count your steps. Learn your pace first. Walk a rope of one hundred paces, three times, and take the middle count. Your pace is a little less than a block. Most people's are. A tall person's is not, and says so.
2. By waymark. On the Long Road, between one inn and the next, there are about ten waymarks. So a waymark is about a tenth of a day. Count the waymarks and you count the tenths.
3. By time. A walker covers more ground than a loaded cart. A cart on the flat covers more than a cart on the hill to Vell. Distance by time is not distance. It is how long the road took, which depends on the road.
4. By sight. A tower lamp can be seen about half a day's walk away on a clear night. The towers are placed so that each can see the next. Where the land is flat, they stand half a day apart. Where there are hills, they stand closer.
A square corner. You often need one, for a field or a wall. Take a rope with twelve equal parts, marked by knots. Make a triangle with sides of three parts, four parts and five parts. The corner between the short sides is square. The reason: three times three is nine. Four times four is sixteen. Nine and sixteen make twenty-five. And five times five is twenty-five. That is exact, and Gil said he has never known it fail.
A worked example. Tam's top field, paced on a still morning. The long side: 240 paces. The short side: 150. At one thumb for ten paces, that is 24 thumbs by 15 thumbs on the paper. Draw the long side first, then the corner with the rope triangle, then the short side.
The jar of honey on the corner of the paper did not move. The wind did.
%%
Notes: first help at the fair
Notes of a talk by Wren, healer, in the school house at Three Wells, in Sowing. Taken down by Sorrel, teacher, for the people who will watch over the spring fair.
Wren says the fair needs three wardens who know what to do and two who know when to send for her.
Cuts. Wash with clean water. Press with a clean cloth until it stops bleeding. Then honey, then a bandage. Do not use dirt. Do not use spider webs. People have tried both.
Burns. Cool water, for as long as it takes to tell a long story. Then a loose cloth. Never butter. Never ice.
Stings. Scrape the sting out sideways with a blunt knife. Do not pinch. Put honey on the place, which seems rude to the bee.
Fainting. Lay the person down in the shade, with the feet up. Loosen the collar. Fan them. Give water when they wake. Do not shout.
Sun. In Sowing the sun is new and the skin is old. Wear a hat. Dace wears a large one, for this reason and for another.
Lost children. Not a matter for the healer. They wait at the north well. Lost parents may wait there too.
When to send for me. Any bleeding that will not stop. Any burn bigger than a hand. Any person who does not wake quickly. Any pie that has been in the sun.
%%
Talk: why the melon split
Ada, healer, at the Brown Hen, in the back room, after the fair at the Brown Hen crossing. The melon had come from Ambrook on Pell's cart.

Friends, you have all seen the melon. It was too big. It was the size of a child's head, or a small barrel, depending on who was carrying it. The cook wanted to cut it in the yard. The carter wanted to sell it whole. The cat wanted it in the cellar.

It split on the step. Let me explain why, because it is a good lesson for the sick and for the cooks.

A melon grows quickly after a wet spring. The skin gets thin before the flesh is ready. Then a dry week comes, and the skin cannot stretch any more. The inside keeps pushing. One cold night, the rind gives way, and you have a melon that splits on the step.

The same thing happens to a child who is fed too fast, or a cart that is loaded too high. Something has to give. Better it is the rind than the bones.

What we did with it: the cook made soup from half. The carter took a quarter to the next inn, with a note saying it was a gift from the Brown Hen. The cat had the rind, and the cat was happy.

The rest we ate standing in the yard. It was very sweet. Nobody was hurt. I call that a good harvest.

Next lesson: how to tell a ripe melon from a green one without cutting it. Bring a melon.
%%
Notes: the water in the mine, summer
Notes of a talk given in the mine hall at Copperhold by Nessa of Vell, taken down by Hesk. The headings are the talk's own.

1. Where the water comes from. From the rock, from the seams above, and from the rain that goes down the shaft. No mine has stayed dry for long.

2. Why it matters. A tunnel full of water cannot be worked, and a tunnel that cannot be worked is a loss of copper.

3. How it is kept out. A channel is cut along the floor, at a slope, to the old sump. A slope of one part in forty is about right. Check it with a plumb line.

4. How it is pumped. By bucket, by hand, and by the chain. The chain is checked every morning. A loose chain is a chain that will slip.

5. When the water breaks through. Stop the work. Clear the men to the dry part. Pack the hole with clay and cobblestone. Do not try to stop a flood with your back.
%%
Notes on the north path
Hamlet hall, sixth of Blossom, 181

Present: Rye, orchard keeper. Halla, keeper of the north path. Pell, passing with two carts. Sella, who keeps the well.

Subject: the path to Northpoint.

The path is hard underfoot but soft at the bend by the birch trees. Pell's cart sank there yesterday. One wheel came out. The other wheel remained in the mud, which Pell said showed good sense.

Halla proposed a stone edge along the bend. Rye said the stones were needed for the wall around his young trees. Pell said he would lend a cart if someone else loaded it.

Sella said the well rope had frayed. It needs replacing before the next rain. Rye offered an old rope from the shed, but Halla tested it and found it fit only for tying a bundle of sticks.

Decision: gather cobblestone from the low bank and firm the bend. Pell will bring one cart, but will not load it. Rye and Halla will load it. Sella will mend the well rope with new cord from the hall.

The children asked why the path goes north if the carts keep sinking there. Halla said the path was made before the carts. Pell said the carts were made to test the path.

Rye brought out honey and bread. Pell ate two pieces of bread and said he had been testing the bread as well. Sella wrapped the last piece for the walk home. Pell asked whether it had passed. Sella said it had.
%%
Notes of a talk: the mind and its map
Taken down by Hesk, miner, at a talk by the tutor Hana in the barn of a farm outside Copperhold, in autumn, in the 188th year. He kept the notes in a small book that he used for shift records, so the margins hold tallies of coal. Set out by heading.

Opening
Hana began by asking us to think of a mine. She said: every tunnel has a place. If I tell you the place, you can walk to it. If two tunnels run side by side, they are close. If they are on opposite sides of the hill, they are far.

Part one. The map of words
A mind does the same for words. It keeps a map, not on paper but in numbers. Each word is a point. Each point has a place in a space of many directions.

How many directions? The tutor said: it depends on the crystal. A small mind may keep sixty-four. A larger one, many hundreds. She said: do not try to picture it. A person can picture two. We can picture three. A mind can use hundreds.

Part two. How the map is made
At first, all the points are scattered at random, like seed thrown on a field. A mind is shown a page. It reads a word. It guesses the next. If it is wrong, it changes. The change moves the points. Words that stand in the same places in sentences move toward each other.

After many pages, the field has become a map. Bread, loaf and bun are in a cluster. Wheat and flour are near. Pick and shovel are another cluster. Coal and ore are a third. Nobody drew it.

Part three. Why it matters
This is the first step in all the reading of minds. Before a mind can think about a sentence, it must have a place for each word. If the places are good, the rest is easier. If they are bad, nothing helps.

Part four. What the tutors do not know
Hana said: we know that words come to sit where they do because of how they are used. We do not know why a map of use gives a map of meaning. A crystal learns, and why, nobody wrote down.

Closing
I asked: can I see the map? Hana said: not as a drawing. She could show me a list of nearest words. She wrote down the nearest words to mine. They were: coal, pick, lamp, deep, cold, dark. I said that was a fair account of my life.

Hesk's own notes in the margin. The new apprentice stood still while she talked. At the end it picked up my pick. I did not tell it to. It put it back. I think it was reading the room.
%%
Notes of a talk: places
At the house at the edge of Saltreach, in spring. A talk by a tutor of Vell, heard by many, and taken down by Corin the shipwright, who has spent his life putting things in the right place and was glad to learn that minds do the same. The market outside was loud, and some of what follows is guessed.
Heading: the first idea.
When a mind reads, it must turn each letter or word into numbers, for a crystal cannot hold a letter. It could do this the simple way: give each word a number. Cod is 1. Salmon is 2. Plank is 3. But this tells the mind nothing. It does not know that cod and salmon are alike.
Heading: the better idea.
Give each word not one number but many. A place on a map. And let the drill move the places.
Heading: a picture.
Think of a market day. The stalls are set out in the square. At first the stallholders are placed at random, by lot. The fish seller is next to the cloth seller. The baker is far from the honey. People complain.
Over the day, the stalls move. The fish seller edges toward the salt seller. The baker moves toward the honey. By evening, stalls that sell like things have gathered. The square is tidy. No one planned it. Each moved a little, to be nearer to what suited it.
That is what a drill does with words.
Heading: the second picture, for children.
Think of children at play. At first they sit anywhere. Then those who like to run sit near each other. Those who like to draw sit together. Those who like to sing find one another. After an hour, the room is full of groups, and nobody was told where to go.
Heading: what the mind does with the places.
It uses them to guess. When it reads "the boat sailed out of the", it asks: which word is nearest to what I expect? Harbor. Bay. Port. The places tell it where to look.
Heading: limits.
The map is only as good as the writing. A mind drilled on poor pages has a poor map. Clerks take out spoiled pages for this reason.
Heading: what is left open.
Why drilling moves the places the right way. The tutors do not say. They say only that it does.
Heading: a note on the day.
A rope was dropped in the square and a swarm of bees came in at the window. The tutor made a joke about bees being words used alike. It was not a good joke. Everyone laughed. The shipwright made a note to put that in too.
%%
Talk: why so many pages
Notes of a talk by Vale, relay keeper, at the Northpoint market, Longday. Taken by Piper, egg seller. The summer rains put the lake in the square, so we stood in the inn with wet feet. Vale stood on a bench.

How many
A few hundred pages teach a mind to spell. A few thousand teach it how words sit together. To learn what is true about fields and roads and towns, it needs tens of thousands. The Archive has them.

A poor harvest
Vale said a mind drilled on few pages is like a poor harvest. Thin soup. It gets by, but nobody asks for a second bowl.

The test box
Set some pages aside and never drill on them. Test the mind on those. Believe the test box over the drill.

Cleaning the pages
Take out the copies. Take out the spoiled ones. A mind drilled on ten copies of one page will learn that page by heart and nothing else.
%%
Talk: one sheet for the whole land
Notes of a talk by Gil, mapmaker, at Vell, winter of 207. Written up at a farm outside Kettle Ridge. This was the longest talk Gil has given, and the clerks asked for it twice.
The problem. The land is large, and the paper is not. A road that takes eleven days to walk must fit on a sheet as long as a forearm. So we draw it small, and we keep the proportions.
The loop. Start with the loop of towns that Pell travels. Ambrook, the Brown Hen, Three Wells, Vell, Copperhold, Lowmarsh, Saltreach, and back to Ambrook. It takes about eleven days if the carts are kind. Draw the loop first, in days. Vell to Copperhold: two days. Copperhold to Lowmarsh: two days. Lowmarsh to Saltreach: one day. Saltreach to Ambrook: two days. The rest is the same idea.
Why days and not distance. Because nobody has walked the whole land with a rope. We know it in days. A day is a good measure, if you say what kind of day. A cart's day is not a walker's day.
The keepers. A relay keeper has looked at the next lamp every night for years, and knows which way it lies better than any map. Ask the keeper to point. Lay a ruler along the pointing arm. Do this at every tower, and the lamps give you the bones of the land. Mira at Northpoint pointed so exactly that I thought she was joking. She was not. She said the south is the way to the next lamp, and the next lamp is the way home.
North. The north road goes up from Three Wells. Draw it up the sheet. Kettle Ridge is nearer the north than Copperhold, though most people think the other way. I have walked both. Kettle Ridge is nearer. It is windier too, which is not on the map.
What the old maps say. The Archive keeps two old maps of the land. They disagree about where Copperhold is. One draws it east of Vell and one north. I have walked there. It is two days from Vell, and it is where the hills are. I drew it where I stood. I advise you to do the same.
What I leave out. Where I have not walked, I leave the paper white. There is a great deal of white on my sheet. Past Northpoint it is all white. Past the sea it is all white. Under the Deep Works there is no white, because I cannot draw under a hill. I wrote in the corner: Not yet.
A clerk asked if the white would ever be filled. Gil said yes, in time. In two hundred years we have not run out of road. We have not run out of paper either, which the Archive deserves some credit for.
A map is a promise that someone went and looked. Keep the promise. If you have not looked, say so. The paper will hold the blank until someone does.
%%
Notes: talk at the Halfway Inn
Set down by Oak, who kept the wall at Three Wells, at the asking of the keeper.

He would not sit. He stood by the hearth with his back to it, and the riddle board behind him, and he talked.

On the wall
The top row of a town wall sticks out one block. Not for looks. Spiders climb a flat wall like a ladder. They cannot get over a row that sticks out. We put that row on at Three Wells when I was young, and it has kept them out. Keep the torches lit along the foot and there are few to climb.

On watches
Two on a watch, one on the wall, one by the gate. If the one on the wall calls, the one by the gate rings the bell, not the other way. The bell is for waking folk, not for scaring spiders.

On the gate at night
Last winter a zombie came to the gate at Three Wells, and stood there. It did not beat on the wood. It stood, and the snow piled on its shoulders, and by morning it was gone. The watch said it looked at the lamp and waited. I have no answer for that. Keep the torches lit and keep the gate shut, and it does not matter what a zombie waits for.

Someone asked about the lights. He said he had not seen them, only heard of them. He said a keeper at Northpoint calls them not ours, and a child there says they look at us. He said a soldier should not pick between a keeper and a child. Then he went home through the snow.
%%
Council minutes: the hamlet meeting
Kept by Bryn, stable hand, who took the notes because his hand is neat.

Present: eleven folk of the hamlet, and the tutor from Kettle Ridge.

First: the west wall of the barn. Blown up by a creeper. Mended. The meeting agreed every house should keep a torch on its post and the gate shut at night. Old Renn said keep the torches lit and keep them low, so they light the ground and not the sky. Agreed.

Second: the cat. There is one cat and it lives in the barn. It has been argued about before. The meeting agreed, four to six, that the cat stays. Nobody knows who put it to the vote. It is done.

Third: the rumors from the north. A traveler said lights over Northpoint, like falling stars. A second said fires. A third said nothing at all, only that the relays from the north have gone quiet. Old Renn said the relay lamps fail in cold weather, and that is all it is. The tutor said she had not heard from her sister at Three Wells in a while, and did not say more.

Fourth: the mines. A miner's word came by cart that Copperhold folk no longer go below a certain level. Some say the ninth gate is locked now. Some say it was always locked. The meeting did not settle it. No one could say what is below the gate, and no one liked to guess.

Fifth: the grey cough at Lowmarsh. A peddler said it is the water. A sailor said it is the ships. A farmer said it is the mines, and the damp, and the smoke all together. Wren at Lowmarsh writes of it in her notes, they say, but not as a thing she can cure. The meeting agreed to send no sick folk there and to keep the well clean.

Sixth: the apprentices. Keep the fields until we come back, the message said, and so the fields are kept. The tutor said the big minds still answer by letter when the relays reach. She said the relays reach less far now.

Seventh: the fair at Three Wells is still on. Pell will bring the ledger. Dace will open it. The meeting agreed to go.

Meeting closed. The cat was let out. The cat came back in.
%%
Notes: on the great relay houses
Notes from a talk at the Copperhold tutor's room, given by a relay keeper who had come down from the north line for the winter. Taken by Lise, innkeeper, who says the talk was the longest she has ever sat through and the most interesting. Spring.

1. The relay houses.
At the foot of each relay tower there is a relay house. In the house, a big mind in a crystal the size of a loaf stands on its stand, ringed by quickeners kept cool with water, ice or snow. It answers apprentices through the relays. The big minds spread tower by tower, from about the 199th year. Northpoint's came last.

2. What they do.
They read letters and write letters. They answer questions from anyone the relays reach. They can hold a conversation, slowly, by letter, over many days. They say what they know, and they say when they do not know. The keepers say this is the most useful thing about them.

3. The biggest houses.
This is where the talk changed. The keeper said that the councils have begun to build relay houses bigger than towns, for minds bigger than any tutor can check alone. Nobody has seen one finished. The plans are in the Archive, and the plans are very large.

4. What the biggest can do.
Here the keeper said the texts disagree. Some say the biggest minds can answer any letter at once. Some say they can write a whole book in a night. Some say they know what the relays will carry before the keepers send it. The keeper said these are rumors, and that no tutor has written them down as fact.

5. What is known.
The keeper said he knew only what he had seen, which was a relay house with a mind that answered letters, and wrote well, and was sometimes wrong, and said so.

6. What is not known.
Nobody knows how the biggest minds are kept cool, or what they draw on to run through the night. The councils say it is the quickeners and the water. The keeper said that is what the councils say.

7. The last note.
The keeper finished by saying: the lamps are still lit, and the letters still come, and that is all I can tell you for certain.
%%
Notes of a talk: how a word becomes
Heard at the house at the edge of Saltreach, in spring, on a market day. Taken down by Corin. The tutor was a woman from Vell. She spoke for the time it takes to launch a small boat.
Heading: what a mind starts with.
A mind starts with nothing. Each word, or each letter, is given a place at random. A scatter of dots, like stars flung on a sheet.
Heading: what a drill does.
The tutor shows the mind a line of writing. It guesses the next word. It is wrong. The places move a little. Words that were used in the same way move toward each other. Words that were not move apart.
Heading: after many drills.
The dots are no longer a scatter. They lie in groups. Fish are in one corner. Boats in another. Weather in a third. The mind has not been told what a fish is. It found out from how the word is used.
Heading: a plain test.
Take the place of "king". Take the place of "queen". Take the place of "man". The step from "man" to "king" is much the same step as from "woman" to "queen". The tutor said this is a thing the tutors found, and no one planned it.
Heading: what is not known.
Why places should come out so. Nobody wrote it down.
%%
Talk: whose letters went in
Notes of a talk by Vale, relay keeper, at the Northpoint market, Melon. Vale said at the start that he would tell us what he was told, exactly as he was told it, and add nothing. That is rule one of the keepers.

What we know
The Archive keeps every record sent to it. Letters, notices, recipes, songs, tower books. The tutors drill the reading minds on the records. The clerks choose which ones. That is all.

What we are told
Three things, and they do not agree.

First. Some say the clerks used only what people sent in on purpose, in the Archive boxes at the inns.
Second. Some say they used the tower books too, because every winter each tower sends its book to Vell.
Third. Some say they used everything: every letter that passed along the Long Road, copied by the carters at night.

What Vale will not say
He said he does not know which is true, and that a man who says he knows is not a keeper. A woman at the back said, "Then why did you come?" Vale said, "Because you asked."
%%
Talk: long nights, and the lamps
Notes by Lark, aged twelve, Bramble Farm. Mira gave the talk in the barn. She says my writing is like a fox in a hurry, so this time I will be slow.

THE LONG NIGHTS
In Longnight the sun comes up late, and the hill keeps it off the farm for half the day. The nights are long and very clear. Mira says the stars up here are the cleanest in the whole land. She says it to everyone, so I do not know if she means it.

THE LAMP ON THE HILL
The signal lamp sits at the top of the Northpoint tower, two hills over. On a clear night you can see it from the rise behind the farm. It turns toward the next tower and blinks, long and short, to say what the road is doing. On the night of the homecoming it blinked three times, slow, and Mira said that meant the road was clear. Lantern, her apprentice, keeps the stair lamps. Mira still climbs up to wipe the glass when she is home.

KEEPING THE FARM LIT
Put a torch on every fence post and one at each corner of the pens. A wolf will not come near a lit corner, and a fox will go round one. The torches on the north side go out first. Check them each dusk. Mira says a torch that is out is an invitation.

FOXES IN THE NORTH
Foxes are patient, Mira says, and not cruel. They are hungry, and they have long nights too. Shut the hen house at dusk. Put a pin in the latch as well as the latch. A fox can open a plain latch if it is bored, and the foxes up here have a great deal of time.

COLD HANDS AND FEET
Wear two pairs of socks, one wool and one thin. Dry the boots by the stove at night, but not on top of it. Keep the gloves in your coat, not on the fence. A hand that is cold a long time stops working, and a farmer with no working hands is a farmer who sits down.

WHAT TO EAT IN THE LONG NIGHTS
Bread, potato, and stew with the beetroot in it. A cup of honey tea before bed. Mira says the honey keeps the throat soft, and the tea keeps you from talking all night about the snow.

HOW MANY BLANKETS
Two on the bed. Three if you are old. One for the cat, if the cat allows it. The cat will not allow it.

A QUESTION
I asked Mira whether the lamp on the tower gets lonely in the long nights. Mira said a lamp is only a lamp. Then she said she gets lonely sometimes, and that is why she climbs up to wipe the glass herself. Then she said I must not put that in the notes. I have put it in the notes.

Mira said the talk was over when the stove needed wood. It did.
%%
Talk at the tutor house: what the old
Set out by Nessa, tutor, from the talk Oak gave the apprentices at Vell.

Oak came up from the Long Road in the snow to speak to the apprentices. He is old and bent and carries a stick, and he stood the whole time. I have set down what he said, plain, because he asked me to.

On the wall
A wall is not one thing. It is a foot, a face, and a top row that sticks out. The foot is where you light your torches. The face is where the spiders come. The top row is why they do not come over. He said: "Any fool can build a wall. The wall is the row that sticks out."

On drills
I asked him what a wall has to do with a drill. He said a watch is a drill. You do the same thing every night and you do it in the same order, and one night it matters. He said: "You do not learn the wall on the night the spiders come. You learn it on the quiet nights, and there are a great many quiet nights."

On the north
An apprentice asked about the lights. He said he had not seen them, only heard of them. He said a keeper at Northpoint calls them not ours. He said a child there says they were looking at us. He said: "I am a soldier. I do not pick between a keeper and a child. I keep the torches lit." He said the relays had gone quiet up the road, and that some said the last message was cut off and some said it was finished and signed, and that neither of the people saying it had been there.

On apprentices
He said he had met Clank at Copperhold and liked it. He said it did not fear lava, and that this was not the same as being safe from it. He said the same of a new watch on the wall. He said: "Teach it the quiet nights. The loud night teaches itself."

He would not stay for supper. He went back down the hill with his stick, and the snow was coming again.
%%
Winter talk beneath the roof
Notes by Oren, clerk at Vell.

The tutor house roof had a loose row of oak boards above the drill room. Snow came through when the wind turned. We moved the lesson to a covered stall at the Vell market, beside the apple seller.

Nessa spoke about the numbers in a layered mind.

First, a layer receives what earlier layers have placed in the stream. Then it adds what it finds. This lets a deep mind carry useful work forward.

The numbers used by the layers can grow too large or too small. If they do, later changes may have an uneven effect. A layer that brings its numbers back to an even size keeps them within bounds. The stream still carries the layer's finding onward.

A child asked whether this made a mind wise. Nessa said no. A mind still needs good drills, careful teaching, and a fair test. The rule keeps the numbers steady. It does not tell the mind what answer is right.

Pip explained the same idea in his own words. "The stream can grow, but the numbers must not run off like a pig from its pen."

The wool seller said this was the clearest answer so far. She gave Pip the red scarf from their bet. He carried her wool to the inn anyway, since the market was closing.

After the talk, three tutors went back to the house. They put a board across the gap and tied it down. The repair will hold until the roof can be mended properly. Nessa says the next talk will be indoors if the snow allows it.
%%
Talk: the clerks and the flood of pages
Notes of a talk by Vale, relay keeper, at the Northpoint market, Longday. Taken by Dell, schoolteacher. It rained the whole time. The flood was in the square, and the talk was in the school.

The room
When the tutors began the great drills, the clerks at Vell had a problem. They had more pages than they had shelves. Carts came in every day. Vale said the copying room looked like a mill with the sacks on the wrong side of the door.

The three piles
The clerks made three piles for every cart.
Keep. Pages that are whole, clean and different from the rest.
Copies. Pages that match one already kept. Take them out.
Spoiled. Pages that are torn, smudged or cut short. Take them out too.

The reason is plain. A mind drilled on copies learns the copies. A mind drilled on spoiled pages learns to be spoiled.

The test box
A part of the keep pile goes into a box with a lock. No mind is ever drilled on it. When a mind has been drilled, the tutors open the box and test it on those pages.

The words over the door
Vale said that in those years the clerks sang a song at their tables. It was an old song. We will keep everything we write. They had always said it, but now it came back to people's lips. It was not only a promise to the shelves any more. It was a promise to the minds.

He said he did not know who started it. He said that is a different talk.
%%
Talk at the Archive: a map for a wedding
Notes of a talk by Gil, mapmaker, at Vell, winter of 205. Written up at a farm outside Kettle Ridge. Kept by Ina, clerk.
The job. In the spring, Lise of Kettle Ridge was to marry Perrin of Ambrook, at the windmill on the ridge. Four hundred guests were asked. Lise's mother asked Gil for a map, so that no guest would be lost, and no guest would be seated beside the wrong cousin.
Gil made two maps.
The first map showed the roads. It showed how each guest should come. The Ambrook guests came by the Brown Hen, Three Wells and the ridge road. The Saltreach guests came by Lowmarsh and the marsh road and slept at the inn in between. Each road was drawn in its own color. An inn was marked at the end of every day's walk. The scale was one thumb for a day. Every guest got a copy of the road that was theirs.
The second map showed the field. The feast was in Brin's long field, at twelve tables, in four rows of three. Each table was a plot with a number, and each guest was a small mark. The scale was one thumb for ten paces. Between the rows were lanes, wide enough for a cart of cake.
What went wrong. The map of the roads was clear. The map of the field had a fault. Lise's great-aunt sat beside the wrong cousin. On the map she was at table 3, and her cousin at table 8. But the numbers on the tablecloths had been painted in the other order. A map is only as true as the signs on the ground. After you draw a map, walk it. Put the numbers on the real tables, and check them.
The honey. Every guest brought a jar of honey, as a gift. Two hundred and fourteen jars came. They were put in Brin's barn. On the map Gil drew a small square, and wrote Honey in it. Gil says it was the most accurate part of the map, because honey does not move.
What the wedding map teaches. A map is made for a purpose. Ask what the map is for before you draw a single line. The road map was for finding. The field map was for sitting. A map that is good for one may be poor for the other.
Afterward the great-aunt said the wrong cousin was very good company. She stayed at that table. Nobody changed the map.
%%
Market lesson: the stream
Set down by Nessa after the talk.

The stream runs through all the layers of a mind. Each layer adds what it found. A later layer can use what came before.

One apprentice asked, "If each layer adds to the stream, why does it not grow too large?"

I answered, "That is why we bring the numbers back to an even size at each layer."

A mind's numbers are the weights kept in its crystal. When they grow too large, the next layer may change them too much. A small difference in a letter or a word can then make a great difference in the answer.

Bringing the numbers back to an even size keeps them within bounds. It does not erase what the layer found. The layer still adds its part to the stream. The mind can grow deeper without its numbers running wild.

A baker from the market asked whether the same rule made every mind answer alike. It does not. The drills and the weights still differ. We are keeping the size steady, not making the answers the same.

The baker brought three loaves for the class. One was flat, but the apprentices ate it first.
%%
Talk: measuring a road
Notes of a talk by Kell, mapmaker, at his house at the edge of Copperhold. Longnight. Taken by Nim.

Three ways to measure
1. Pace. Walk and count. First learn your own pace. Walk between ten torches on the Long Road, which is one hundred and twenty blocks, and count. If you count one hundred and sixty paces, then one hundred paces is seventy-five blocks.
2. Rope. A rope of a hundred blocks, laid down again and again. Slow, and honest.
3. Wheel. A cart wheel of a known size, with a bell that rings once at each turn. One turn is five blocks. Pull it along the road and count the rings.

The borrowed horse
Kell borrowed Hob's old mare to pull the wheel, because she is the only horse in Copperhold that does not mind the bell. She did not mind the bell. She minded the bridge. At the east bridge she stopped and would not go on. Kell coaxed her. He gave her an apple. She walked over and ate the apple, and Kell lost count of the rings.

He started again from the last torch. Now he puts an apple at the start of every bridge.

What to remember
A measure with an error you know about is better than a measure with none.
%%
Notes of a talk: how a mind keeps
Taken down by Hesk, miner, at a talk given by the tutor Hana in the barn of a farm outside Copperhold, in the autumn of the 188th year of the archive. A new apprentice stood at the back, still in its crate. Set out by heading.

Heading one: the old way and the new way

In the old way, a mind was given each word as a plain number. Bread was 41. Loaf was 42. Pick was 7. A mind could not tell that bread and loaf are alike, because the numbers are only names.

In the new way, each word is a place with many parts. The parts begin as small random numbers. As the mind is drilled, they move. Words that are used alike come to have parts that are alike.

Heading two: why this helps

If a mind learns something about bread, it has in part learned it about loaf, because the two sit close. It does not have to be taught twice. A mind with places learns fast. A mind with only names learns slowly.

Heading three: an example

The tutor had a tray of cards with words on them. She laid out bread, loaf, bun and cake in a close ring on the floor. Then she laid out pick, shovel and hammer in another ring across the barn. She stood in the middle and said: this is what the mind has done, not with floor and cards, but with numbers.

Heading four: what the mind does with places

When a mind reads a sentence, it takes the place of each word and carries it through its layers. At the end, it makes a place for the word that comes next. It guesses the word nearest to that place.

Heading five: a question from Hesk

I asked: does the mind know what bread is? The tutor said: no. It knows where bread sits, and what stands near it. Whether that is the same as knowing, nobody has written down.
%%
Northpoint notes: even numbers
By Greer, for the children who come on Longnight to learn sums and sense.

A short set of notes, so I do not forget what I said, and so the ones who missed it can read it.

What we mean by the numbers. A mind keeps a great many numbers, the way I keep a great many pots: each one a little load in its hands. When the mind is wrong it moves the numbers a little, the way I move a pot on the shelf to the better place.

Why they grow. Move a number again and again and it can get bigger each time. Two becomes four, four becomes eight. Do that up the layers of a mind and by the top the number is too big to hold. A mind like that gives the same answer to everything, and it is always wrong.

What the layers do. Each layer takes what the layer below found, and adds its own. If every layer lets its numbers grow, the top layer gets a flood, not a stream. It cannot pick out the small thing that matters.

The even size. So each layer, after it moves its numbers, brings them back down to an even size. It keeps the shape and loses the size. The next layer gets a steady stream it can hear.

The test I gave them. Hold up ten fingers. Double them. Double again. Ask how many doublings before your arms cannot show it. They laughed and got it.

(One child asked if the numbers can grow so big they go out the top of the tower. I said no, the tower is stone. She was not sure.)

Winter. Snow to the sill. The foxes came to the door for scraps and got none, or one, which is a number too. Greer.
%%
Talk: a cave found under a field
Notes by Oda of Bramble Farm, whose back field it is. Written after the talk Mira gave in the barn on the fourth of Frost.

HOW IT WAS FOUND
We dug a cistern in the back field for the spring melt. At two blocks down, the spade went through. A cold draft came up round the blade. The cold smelled of stone, and the hole seemed to breathe.

WHAT IS IN IT
A room about the size of the barn, low at one end. Ice on the walls, grey and clear. Coal in the roof, and some iron in the north wall. A thin line of cold water runs along the floor. On the north wall someone cut a row of marks, straight and evenly spaced, like a count that was never finished. Mira says it may be a tally. Nobody here knows whose.

WHAT WE DID
We put a torch at the mouth, and one every four steps down. We built a low fence round the hole and laid a board over it. Two of the boys went down first, with a rope tied at the waist. They came up and said it was a fine cave, and they wanted to go back. Their mother said no.

RULES FOR A CAVE UNDER A FIELD
1. Light the mouth before you go in.
2. Take a rope and a friend. Never go down alone.
3. Clear the spiders from the first room. They always come back, so keep the torches new.
4. Do not dig deeper before you tell the tower. Mira writes it in the tower book.
5. Carry up only what you can carry in one trip.
6. Leave the old marks alone. Someone made them, and they are not ours to move.

WHAT THE TOWER SAID
Mira wrote to Vell. Vell wrote back that caves under fields are common in the north, and no danger while the torches are lit. Vell did not say why they are common. Nobody asked twice.

The cold has not come up through the hole since the board went on. The draft has stopped. We think it went wherever drafts go.
%%
Talk notes: questions from the floor
Notes by Wren. The questions are written as they were asked.

Q. Does the window need a bigger mind?
A. Not for pieces. The window is the same, and the mind is the same size. We only changed what the mind reads.

Q. Who cut the pieces?
A. The clerks, by counting. Nobody chose a piece for being clever. A piece is chosen for being common, and that is all.

Q. Do the pieces mean what they say?
A. Some do. Some are only shapes that come often. The mind does not know the difference, and neither do we, always.

Q. Is it the same as before?
A. The old minds read letters, and the new ones read pieces. Both guess the next thing. Neither of us knows what it is reading, in the way a person reads.

Q. Why is the mind so good at the guess?
A. Isla said she did not know. She said she had drilled it on the archive for many years, and that the guesses were good on pages it had never seen. She said that was all she could say.

Q. Does the mind know when it is wrong?
A. Not on its own. The drill tells it, and the test tells us. A mind that is never tested never learns it was wrong.

Q. Can a piece be wrong?
A. Yes. A piece cut from a spoiled page is a wrong piece, and the mind will use it with confidence. That is why the spoiled pages are kept out of the count.

Q. Can a small mind read pieces?
A. No. A small mind only knows its orders, and it answers with one of them. Reading is for the big minds in the relay houses.

The new apprentice was tested in the yard at noon. Its name is Ash. It has never seen a piece, and it does not need to. It knows its eight words, and it knows them well. It passed.
%%
Talk at the tutor house
Notes by Tam.

Place
The school room at Hushbrook, below Kettle Ridge.

Time
The ninth of Deepsnow, in the 191st year of the archive.

Present
Nessa, tutor at Vell. Tam, farmer. Pip, apprentice to Tam. Orra, keeper of the well. Lale, who keeps the hens. Jory, mill keeper at the ridge mill.

Subject
Reading the marks on a seed tray.

Nessa brought a wooden tray with six small plots. Each plot had a card. The cards showed a seed, a green shoot, a tall plant, or an empty patch. The tray was kept beside the stove, but not close enough to dry the soil.

The lesson was for Pip. We wanted the apprentice to sort the cards into three groups: plant, wait, and harvest. Nessa said not to change the cards while Pip was learning. A mind learns from the examples it sees. If a card is moved without a clear reason, the mind may learn the wrong thing.

Tam had brought beet seeds in a flour sack. He had put the sack beside the oats. Orra asked how he knew the difference. Tam said the oats were in the sack with the hole. That answer did not satisfy anyone.

We set the cards in order. A bare plot meant plant. A young shoot meant wait. A ripe plant meant harvest. The first time, Pip put a tall beet plant in the harvest group. The second time, it put a green shoot there too. Nessa moved the weights in the crystal a little toward the right answers and showed the same cards again.

Pip made fewer mistakes after the fourth round. It still put one empty patch with the wait cards. We wrote down the mistake instead of hiding it. Nessa said a neat slate is useful, but an honest slate is better.

Jory said the mill had once sorted wheat and beetroot by color alone. It had put a red apple in the beet bin. Lale said that was no surprise, as Jory had put the apple there himself.

Agreed
Pip will practice with cards from another tray tomorrow. The new tray will not be used for teaching. We will test Pip on it first.

The flour sack will be marked with a red cord. Tam will keep it away from the oats.
%%
Notes of a talk: questions
At the house at the edge of Saltreach, in spring, after the talk on words as places. Corin, shipwright, took down the questions, which he thought better than the talk. The tutor from Vell answered each in turn.
Question: Does a mind know what a word means?
Answer: It knows where the word sits and what sits near it. Whether that is the same as knowing, the tutors do not agree. Orla asked a like question long ago. It is still open.
Question: Can two words sit in the same place?
Answer: Almost. "Boat" and "ship" sit very near. They are not quite the same, because they are not used quite the same.
Question: What about a word with two meanings?
Answer: "Bank" of a river and "bank" of emeralds. The mind gives it one place at first. Then, from the words around it, it learns to lean one way or the other.
Question: Who draws the map?
Answer: Nobody. The drill draws it. A tutor can look at it afterward, but she cannot make it.
Question: Can a map be copied?
Answer: Yes. A mind with a good map can lend it to a smaller mind. The smaller mind starts further along.
Question: Are the bees words?
Answer: The tutor laughed. She said that depends on who you ask.
%%
Notes of a talk: the harbor of words
At the house at the edge of Saltreach, in spring. Corin, shipwright, took these down on the back of a plan for a keel. A tutor from Vell was visiting, and the market was loud outside, so the tutor spoke up. Near the end a swarm of bees came through the window and the talk stopped for a while.
Heading: what a place is.
A place is a list of numbers. Not one number, but many. Imagine a map with a hundred directions instead of two. A word lies at one point on that map. A mind keeps a map for all its words.
Heading: why many directions.
On a flat map, a word can only be near some words. With many directions, a word can be near many kinds of words at once. "Anchor" is near "boat". It is also near "heavy". It is also near "stay". It is near each in a different direction.
Heading: how to read the map.
The tutor said you cannot read a map of a hundred directions with your eyes. But you can ask: which words are nearest to this one? A mind that has been drilled well will say that the words nearest to "oak" are "birch", "spruce", "plank" and "tree". The words nearest to "salt" are "sea", "fish" and "pinch". These are the neighbors.
Heading: what a neighbor does for the mind.
If the mind has seen "the cod was caught" many times, and sees "the salmon was caught" only once, it can still guess that "salmon" behaves like "cod". It does so because the two lie close. This is how a mind learns from a little.
Heading: the bees.
At this point a swarm came in at the window. The tutor said that bees, too, are words used alike, and she did not wish to be rude. The talk stopped. A beekeeper came from the market with a sack, and the swarm was carried out. The tutor laughed and said she would draw them on the map.
Heading: the end.
The talk ended with a question from a child. "Do the places stay where they are?" The tutor said that they do not. Each time the mind is drilled, they move a little. A mind that has finished its drills keeps them still.
%%
Notice: wall mended, keep the gate shut
Pinned to the barn door by Bryn, stable hand.

On the night of the ninth a creeper came out of the hedge and blew up the west wall of the barn. Nobody was hurt. Two bales were spoiled and the grey mare was frightened, but she is calmed now.

The wall is mended with oak and cobblestone. It is not straight. It will do.

Keep the gate shut at night. Keep a torch on the post. If you hear the hiss, do not run at it, walk back slow.

The cat is not to be shut in the barn. She is not to be shut out either. This is the third notice about the cat. There will be a fourth.
%%
Talk: the homecoming at dusk
Notes from a talk at Bramble Farm, Longnight of the 205th year of the archive, given round the stove to the family and the hired hands. Notes by Mira, who was asked to write them down and did not want to.

THE HOMECOMING
Ilse came home from Vell this week. She spent three years in the copying room, learning the pages, and now she is home to take the farm when her father's knees give out. Everyone went to the gate in the dusk. Her mother cried. Her brother said he had not. The ram stood in the snow and looked as if he had been expecting her all along.

Ilse walked the Long Road in four days, sleeping at the Brown Hen and then at the Halfway Inn. At the Halfway Inn she read the riddle board by the hearth. She will not say what the riddle was. She says she did not get it, and it is driving her mad.

BRINGING THE HERD HOME
At dusk the herd comes down from the back field. Walk behind them. Do not run. A running cow thinks something is chasing her. Count them through the gate, one at a time, and say the number out loud. If the count is wrong, count again. Cows wander the way water does.

THE KETTLE
Ilse says the kettle is on. Everyone goes in, and the cold stays out. Ilse makes the bread, her mother makes the stew, and Lark lights the hearth. The hearth is the warmest place in the house, and the cat is already sitting on it, with the look of a cat who has been there all day.

WHEN SOMEONE COMES HOME
1. Go to the gate, even when it is cold.
2. Do not ask questions on the road. Ask them at the table, where there is bread.
3. Let them tell it in order. A homecoming is a long story, and it has a middle.
4. Put their old chair back. Nobody sits in it while they are gone, and everybody knows whose it is.
5. Keep one lamp lit in the window until the last one is in.

Ilse says the lamp was the first thing she saw from the top of the rise. Her father says he put it there. Neither will give the other the last word.
%%
Talk: the great drills, in short
Notes of a talk by Vale, relay keeper, at the Northpoint market, Longday. The market was in the inn because the lake had come into the square.

What it is
The tutors drill a mind on the pages of the Archive. The mind reads a page one letter at a time and guesses the next letter. When it guesses wrong, it changes a little. After a great many pages it guesses well.

Why it matters
To guess the next letter well, a mind must learn words. Then it must learn which words go together. Then it must learn what people write about the world.
%%
Notes from the edge house talk
Three Wells, summer of 196

Present: Nessa, tutor; Corin, shipwright; Dace, mayor; Sela, school keeper; Pell, merchant.

Subject: The dry well.

The east well at the house by the road has given no water since yesterday. Sela drew up a bucket of mud and one small frog. The frog was returned at once.

Dace said the other two wells were still sound. He asked Corin to look at the stone lining. Corin said he knew boats better than wells, but he could see that the upper stones had slipped inward.

Pell said a cart had struck the well curb while turning. He had seen the wheel catch the edge. He had not seen the driver, because he was counting apples.

Nessa asked why he was counting apples while watching a cart. Pell said he was counting them for a buyer and watching the cart for the same reason. Both jobs had gone poorly.

Decision: No one shall draw from the dry well until the stones are checked. The house will use the north well for drinking water. The bakery will lend two clay jars. Corin will bring oak braces from his store, and Dace will send three workers.

Nessa said the frog must not be counted among the workers. Sela said it had already left.
%%
Talk at the Vell market: numbers
Notes by Oren, clerk at Vell.

Place:
The covered market by the east stair of the Archive at Vell.

Question:
Why did the tutors make each layer bring its numbers back to an even size?

Answer:
A mind has many layers. Each layer adds something to the stream that runs through the mind. The stream carries what earlier layers found, so a deep mind can still learn.

But the numbers in the mind can grow wild. One layer may make them too large. The next may make them larger still. Then a small change in the first part can shake the answer far away.

The tutors found that each layer could bring its numbers back to an even size. This kept them from growing wild as the mind grew deep. The stream could still carry its work onward.

A shopkeeper asked if this meant every number became the same. Nessa said no. Even size does not mean sameness. It means the numbers stay within a useful range.

Decision:
The drill will be shown at the next market lesson. Bring a slate, not a sack of turnips.

Note:
The turnips were bought anyway. They were good.
%%
Talk notes: Bread before the bell
At Sage's house, Three Wells

Present: Sage, cook. Bel, from the school. Dace, mayor. Pell, merchant on the Long Road.

Subject: food for the market helpers.

Sage asked how many loaves were needed. Pell said six. Dace said ten. Bel said there were seven helpers last market, but one went home before noon. Sage wrote down eight loaves and said the count could be checked at the door.

Pell had brought apples from Ambrook. One had a soft place. Sage cut it away and put the good part in the pie. Bel asked if the soft part could go to the chickens. Sage said yes, but only after the pie was in the oven.

The market bell rang once while they spoke. It was only Rill testing the rope. Dace said the bell should be rung twice for a fire and once for a lost child. Bel asked what to ring for a lost pie. Sage said, "Nothing. Look in the oven."

Pell said a traveler at the inn had seen a grey haze over Lowmarsh. The traveler called it smoke from a cook fire. A fish seller said it was a mist over the reeds. Dace said neither report came from Wren, and no one should pass it on as a warning. Pell said he had only brought it up because the traveler had asked for honey tea.

Sage said honey tea was good for a sore throat, but not a cure for a story. Bel wrote this down. Dace asked Bel to leave room for the bread count.

At noon, the helpers came. There were eight. One loaf had split at the side, but Sage said it was still a loaf. The soft apple went to the chickens after the pie was served. Bel counted the empty plates twice and got the same number.
%%
Notes of a talk: sore feet
Given by Wren of Lowmarsh in the big room of the Halfway Inn, spring, to travelers on the Long Road. Notes taken by a young clerk going to Vell, who had sore feet.

The sock. Two pairs, one wool and one thin. Change them at noon. A wet sock is the cause of most trouble.
The shoe. Never a new shoe on a long road. A new shoe is a promise. An old shoe is a friend.
The blister. Do not burst it. It is a small bag of water that is doing a job. Cover it with a soft cloth and walk slower.
The water. Soak the feet at night in warm water. Hobb keeps a bowl by the door. Use it. Do not drink from it.
The rule. If the foot is hot, red and swollen, stop. That is not a blister. Send for a healer.
%%
Notes of a talk: cheese in a cave
Given by Sage, cheesemaker, in the barn of her farm outside Copperhold, spring, to eleven neighbors. Notes taken by her nephew Cal, who had come for the cheese and stayed for the talk.

The cave. The cheeses are kept in the cave in the hill behind the barn. It is cool, damp and quiet, and it is the same all year. That is the whole secret. The cheese does not need us. It needs the cave to behave.

Turning. Every cheese is turned once a day. A cheese turned every day is a cheese that is never lonely.

The barn. Spiders come in off the hill in spring. They do not want the cheese. Keep the torches lit and the doors shut.

This spring. The cave is warmer. The stone is a hand warmer than it was last spring, and the cheeses are ripening too fast. A cheese that ripens fast ripens badly. Sage has moved them to the north wall, which is still cool. She does not know why the cave is warm.

Questions from the room.
Q: Hesk at the mine says the stone is warm in the Deep Works, too.
A: Hesk says many things.
Q: The miners say it hums.
A: The cheeses do not hum.
Q: Not yet?
A: Not yet, said Sage, and the room laughed, and nobody laughed for long.

Sage said the cheese would be fine. She said the farm would be fine. Cal wrote it down.
%%
Pell's notes from the winter talks
Written by Pell, merchant, of Ambrook, at the Halfway Inn, over the four nights when the snow stopped the carts and the tutor from Vell talked by the stove. This is a fair copy of his notes, with the questions the carters asked, and the answers as far as he could remember them. He has tried to be honest about which ones were funny.

Heading: What is a tutor for?
Adair said a tutor is for showing the same thing again, patiently, until it is learned. Pell asked whether a tutor was also for telling the mind when it was wrong. Adair said yes, but only after the mind has had its own try. A mind told the answer first learns to wait for the answer.

Heading: Why does a mind not learn all at once?
Because one example is only one example. A thousand small steps are safer than one large one. Adair said that the bread rises the same way, slowly, in a warm place, and nobody hurries it.

Heading: What does a mind remember?
Only what it was shown, and only as far as it was shown it. A mind does not remember the carter who drove it last year. It remembers the bend.

Heading: Is a mind wiser than a carter?
Nobody at the bar agreed. Adair said a mind is wiser at the things it has been drilled on, and a carter is wiser at everything else. The cook said that was the same as a cook, and the innkeeper said it was the same as a carter, and both of them were pleased.

Heading: What does the big mind at the relay house do?
It reads the letters, and it writes back. Adair said it knows more than any tutor, but it does not know the bend in the Ambrook road, and it has never had its boots wet. A carter asked whether it was lonely at the top of the tower. Adair said she did not know, and that it had never said so. The carters thought about this for a long time, and the cook put more wood on the fire.

Heading: What is the most important thing?
Adair said the most important thing was to write the count down. Every night, every drill, every test, the count goes in the book. Pell asked why, and Adair said so that you could see the mind getting better. He asked what happens if it gets worse. She said then you write that down too, and you look harder, and you do not blame the mind.

Heading: The last night.
The cart from Vell came up the road in the morning with the thaw. Adair packed her slate and her boxes and her sealed test pages, and she left a copy of her notes with the innkeeper. Pell has put his own copy in his ledger, between the honey and the cheese. He says it is the only page in the ledger that has never been paid for, and that it is worth more than the rest.
%%
Notes of the talk at the house
Three Wells, summer of 177

Present: Dace, mayor; Corin, shipwright; Sela, school keeper; Pell, merchant.

Subject: Shade for the notice board.

Sela said the board was hard to read at noon. The sun shone on the glass beside the school door and made the letters pale.

Corin proposed a small oak hood over the board. It must not cover the lamp or the bell rope. He measured the wall with a length of sail cord.

Pell said he had oak strips on his cart. He would sell them for one emerald and a loaf from the bakery. Dace asked if that was a fair price.

Pell said the loaf was for his journey home. He would take two loaves if the first was small.

Decision: Corin will fit the hood before the next market. Sela will move the notices lower, where children can read them. Pell will bring the strips and accept one loaf of ordinary size.
%%
Notes: talk at the tutor house
Set down by Bryn, stable hand, who heard it from the tutor and wrote it plain.

Heading: what a mind is
A mind is kept in a crystal. It is not the crystal. The crystal holds it the way a box holds a thing. A small mind rides in an apprentice. A big mind sits in a relay house and answers by letter.

Heading: how it learns
A tutor drills it. The same kind of example, again and again. At first it is wrong. Each time it is wrong it changes a little. Slowly it gets better. Nobody wrote down why it changes. It does.

Heading: the test
A mind is tested on what it was never drilled on. Never send an untested mind to the fields. The tutor said this twice.

Heading: the rule of growth
A bigger crystal, drilled longer on more writing, grows better. There is a curve a tutor can draw before the mind is grown. The tutor drew it on the slate. It looked like a hill.

Heading: what nobody knows
Why a crystal learns. Why an old one goes cloudy. The tutor said these are open. She said it is better to write that they are open than to guess.
%%
Lecture: sorting the drills, in full
Notes of a full talk on sorting the drills, given at the tutor house at Vell, in spring, to every clerk and tutor who could be spared from the stores. By Linnet, archive clerk.

Heading: why sort at all.
A drill is made of pages, and pages are made by people. People make mistakes. A drill that is not sorted carries those mistakes into the mind, where they are learned as well as the right things.

Heading: what to take out.
Take out every copy that does not match the first. Take out every torn page and every stain. Take out every page with a wrong answer in the margin, even if the answer is only a little wrong.

Heading: the copies.
Two copies of the same page are not two pages. Keep one. A drill with many different pages teaches more than a drill with the same page many times over.

Heading: the spoiled.
The spoiled pages are not thrown away. They are kept in the spoiled box, with a card in a clerk's hand that says why each one was taken out. A spoiled page with a reason can be looked at again, and sometimes the reason turns out to be wrong.

Heading: the test box.
Keep the test box apart from the drills. Put the pages into it when the drill is made, and not before. Never read the test pages aloud to the mind. Never let a tutor look at them before the test. A tutor who knows the test pages will teach to them without meaning to, and then the test will say the mind is clever when it is only well taught.

Heading: the mistake that is common.
The common mistake is to think a drill is good because it is large. A large drill of bad pages is worse than a small drill of good ones. The mind does not know how many pages it has seen. It knows only what they taught it.

Heading: the count.
Open the drill box each morning. Count the pages. Read the first and the last page aloud, and check them against the book. Write the count on the board. It takes a quarter of an hour, and it is the most important quarter of the copying room.

Heading: the old drill.
The oldest drill in the hall was cracked by a mind that learned the test box by heart. One clerk had left a page on the table overnight, and the mind had been shown it twice in the same hour. The drill had been good. The box had not been kept.

Heading: what we do not know.
We do not know why a mind learns from some pages more than from others, when two pages look the same to a clerk. We do not know whether a spoiled page is spoiled for ever. We do not know how much a test box can say about a mind that is larger than the box.

These are open questions. Write them in the book under the heading, and leave them open. A clerk who closes a question too early will be sorry in a year.
%%
Lecture: the reed beds of Lowmarsh
By Elsa, relay keeper at Lowmarsh.

Given at the reed house in late spring, to the cutters and their children. Written out after, for the tutor at Vell, who asked for it.

The reeds
Reeds grow in the slow water at the edge of the marsh. They grow taller than a grown man. The stems are hollow and light. In spring they are green and soft. By autumn they are brown and hard.

Cut them in late summer, when the stems are full and the tops have not gone grey. Cut low, one hand above the mud. Leave the young shoots. They are next year's reeds.

The cutting
Use the long knife, not the short one. Stand on the planks, never in the mud. The mud at Lowmarsh is deeper than it looks, and it is sticky. A boot can stay behind in it.

Tie the reeds in bundles of twenty. Tie them twice. A bundle that comes loose on the cart is lost in the water, and then the frogs have a new bed.

The frogs
Frogs live in the reeds. Some are green, some are brown, and one or two are the color of wet bread. Leave the frogs alone. A frog in a reed bed eats the flies, and the flies would eat us if they could.

The weir
The fish weir sits where the slow water runs out to the lake. Check the weir each morning. Pull out the weed. Clear the sticks. A weir with weed in it lets the fish swim through without going in.

The mud
Mud is not bad. Mud is where the reeds grow. But mud is not a place to rest. Bring a board to kneel on. Bring water. Wash your hands before you eat, and wash them again after.

That is the whole talk. Send your questions to the house with the blue door. Anyone who asks a sensible question gets a cup of tea.
%%
Letter: Bryn to his cousin at Saltreach
Bryn, stable hand at the hamlet under Kettle Ridge.

I hope this finds you before the ships go. The horses are well. The grey mare foaled in Apple and the foal is all legs. We have named her Thistle, though nobody asked me.

Work is much the same. I muck the stalls, I haul hay, I walk the horses out to the long field and back. The windmills still squeak on every turn. Tam at the ridge says he will oil them and then does not.

I keep the cat out of the barn but the cat will not stay out. She sleeps on the hay bales and leaves hairs in everything. When I shoo her she waits a minute and walks back in. We have made an agreement that she does not know about.

The talk at the tutor house was about minds. I went because the tutor asked for strong arms to carry benches and I stayed for the words. I understood about half. The half I understood was this: a mind learns by being wrong, and changing a little. I thought of the cat.

Have you heard the rumor about the north? One traveler said lights in the sky over Northpoint, like falling stars. Another said fires. A child at the inn said they were looking at us, and got a smack for frightening the little ones. Mira at the tower writes only that they were not ours. I do not know what that means. I do not think anyone does.

Write when you can. If you go across the water, write from there too.
%%
What a single fence can and cannot do
4. Try it yourself
Draw a square on a slate, with four dots, one at each corner. Mark two dots as yes and two as no. Put the yes dots on opposite corners, so they face each other across the square.

Now draw one straight line that keeps the yes dots on one side and the no dots on the other. You cannot. Try it three times. Each time, the line gives out at a corner.

5. What the fence can do
It can separate things that sit apart. Sheep from wolves. Apples from pears, if the apples all sit on one side. Ripe wheat from green, if the ripe is clearly ripe. A single fence is good at what it is for.

6. What it cannot do
It cannot separate a pattern where the answer flips across the square: yes when one is true, no when both are true or neither is. That is "one or the other, but not both". A single fence has no way to bend round the corner.

7. What we do not know
We do not know whether a mind with more layers could learn it. Nobody has built one to find out. Nobody is paid to try.
%%
Talk: the new copper vein
Notes of a talk by Hesk the miner, at the Copperhold market, Longday. Taken by Nell. Hesk says he has a bad hand for writing. He has two good hands. I watched him lift a full cart.

Where it is
Level two, east wall, past the old sump. Fifty steps beyond the last torch.

How we found it
Clank was hauling a cart of stone along the wall. A wheel caught on something. Hesk stopped the line and looked. There was a stripe of orange in the grey where the cart had scraped it. It was copper. Hesk says he said nothing for a long time. Then he said, "Well."

How big
"Big," said Hesk. Someone asked how big. "Longer than this square, if it keeps on." Someone asked if it was the biggest ever found. "No." A miner never says how big a vein is until it is out of the ground.

What it means for the price
More copper means cheaper copper. The smiths will be glad. The roofers will be glad. The man who sells pots at the east stall was not glad. He went to lie down.

What not to do
Do not go and look. A new cut is wet and loose. Stay at the shaft head and read the board. Hesk said this three times, each time louder.

Questions
A child asked if the vein goes all the way down. Hesk said, "Everything does." Then he went to get his dinner.
%%
Notes on the relay lamp
Hamlet hall, first of Longday, 203

Present: Rye, orchard keeper. En, keeper of the small relay. Mira, keeper at Northpoint, heard by relay. Halla, keeper of the north path. Two children.

Subject: the lamp that blinked a strange message.

At dusk the signal lamp above the hamlet blinked twice, paused, then blinked twice again. En checked the redstone line and the lamp room. Both were in order. The relay house was cool. The mind on its stand had been given water that morning.

Mira sent a message from Northpoint: "Is the lamp meant to say two and two?"

En answered that no one had sent such a message. Mira asked him to watch the lamp and report each blink.

The lamp blinked twice, then three times, then twice again.

Rye said it might be a warning that his apples had been counted. Halla said no one had counted them. Rye said that was why it was a warning.

The children made a mark for each blink on a slate. Their count matched En's. Mira asked them to watch one more turn. The lamp then sent the proper signal for a clear line.

En found a loose copper ring on the desk. It had shifted against the redstone line when the door shut. He moved it back. The lamp remained steady.

Decision: En will fasten the ring before the next rain. The children will not use the signal lamp to send sums. Rye will count his apples himself.

Mira sent one last message: "Good. I have enough sums here."

Rye said a keeper at Northpoint should have apples. Mira replied that she would accept some, if they traveled without being counted. Rye said he could not promise that.
%%
Minutes of a winter lesson
Taken by Oren at the Vell market.

Place:
The covered stall near the south waymark, where the market sellers keep their goods dry.

Present:
Nessa, tutor; Pip, apprentice of Kettle Ridge; a seller of honey; two clerks; and several people waiting for the road to clear.

Purpose:
To explain the rule of even numbers in a layered mind.

Nessa began with the stream. A layer adds what it finds to the stream, and the next layer can use what has come before. This helps a deep mind keep learning.

Then she explained the trouble. The numbers in a mind can grow wild from layer to layer. If they grow too large, a small change in one place may have too much force in the next. The answer can shift far from what the drill calls for.

Each layer can bring its numbers back to an even size before passing its work onward. This keeps the numbers within bounds. It does not make them all equal, and it does not remove the layer's finding from the stream.

The honey seller asked if this rule could repair a poor drill. Nessa said no. A mind learns from what it is shown. Bad examples remain bad examples, even when the numbers stay steady.

Pip asked whether bringing the numbers back to an even size meant the mind had reached its final shape. Nessa said no. Drilling can still change the weights. The rule helps a layered mind learn without its numbers growing wild.

A clerk asked for a count of the layers. Nessa said there was no count for this lesson. Each mind and drill differed. We wrote that answer down, as it was plain and exact.

After the talk, the sellers brought out warm bread and honey. The honey seller said the bread was not part of the lesson. Pip said it was the best part.

Note on the roof:
The tutor house roof had a gap above the drill room. Snow had gathered on the floor below it. Nessa and two apprentices fitted an oak board over the gap and tied it with rope. The roof is mended for now. The board must be checked after the next strong wind.

Note on the bet:
Pip had promised to carry a wool seller's bundle if he could not explain the rule. He explained it before the market closed. The seller gave him a red scarf. Pip carried the bundle anyway, because it was already on his cart.

Finding:
The even size keeps numbers within bounds as layers add to the stream. It does not choose the right answer. A good drill and a test on unseen examples are still needed.
%%
Notes: a well that ran dry
Notes of a talk given in the mine hall at Copperhold, in the summer, by Nessa of Vell, taken down by Hesk. The subject was the well at the mine gate, which ran dry for the first time in living memory.

1. What happened. On the eighth of Longday, the bucket came up from the well with nothing in it but a stone. The boy sent down the ladder came back and said there was only a wet hole with a cold smell.

2. Why it matters. The well feeds the kitchen, the forge and the washing. A mine with no water is a mine that will not work the next day.

3. What the tutor asked. Nessa asked the miners to write down the last time the well was full. The oldest miner had drunk from it before the big shaft was sunk. The youngest had drunk from it that morning. Both were right, the tutor said, and that was the first useful thing she had heard.

4. What the miners did. They climbed the hill with a rope and a bucket, and found the old spring by the path. It was clear and cold, and it had been running all along, under a ditch that somebody had dug across it years ago. The ditch was cleared by noon.

5. What to write down. Every well has a spring that feeds it. Write the spring on the map, with its distance from the well. Then the next dry summer will not be a surprise.

6. What to ask. Ask the old miners where the water used to be, and the young ones where it is now. Put the two answers in the same book. They will not agree, and that is the point of having both.

The well is full again. The cook says she would like a second spring, in case the first one gets bored.
%%
Notes of a talk: the drill room
Taken down at the tutor house at Vell, in winter, from a talk by Nessa to the new apprentices' keepers. Plain and exact.

1. Keep the room warm. A cold crystal is slow to learn.
2. Keep the cards in order. Farm. Build. Haul. Home.
3. Do not drill after dark. The lamps flicker.
4. Test every mind before it leaves. Never send an untested mind to the fields.
5. When a mind is wrong, show it again. Do not shout.
%%
Notes of a talk: a homecoming
Taken down at the tutor house at Vell, in winter, from a talk by Nessa, tutor, on the evening a colleague came home from the north line after two months away. Set out by heading. The room was full, and snow lay on the sill.

Heading one: who came home
Tobin, a tutor, walked in at dusk with a pack and a stick. His boots were wet. He had been to Northpoint and back. He sat at the stove and drank a cup of broth.

Heading two: what he said
He said the roads are fine. He said the people are well. He said the nights are very long up there. He said Mira, the keeper at Northpoint, sends her regards, and a jar of something she made that he will not describe.

Heading three: what he did not say
He did not say much about the lamps. When Nessa asked, he said they still blink. When she asked whether all the towers answer, he said most. When she asked which, he turned his cup.

Heading four: the talk
Nessa did not press him. She said: you are home. Eat. We will talk tomorrow.

Heading five: a small thing
In the night someone saw a faint light on the northern hill. A clerk said it was a fire. A baker said it was a star. A child said they were looking at us. The room laughed, and then did not laugh.

Heading six: the end of the evening
Nessa read the drill roll. Everyone present was counted. The snow went on falling. Tobin fell asleep in his chair. Someone put a blanket over him.
%%
Journal: Greer, winter of the quiet
Greer's own book, kept in the warm room, not for filing with the notices.

The kiln has been good this winter. Pots for the keeper, jars for the healing house at Lowmarsh (Wren sent word for twelve with good lids), and a tall jug for the inn at the join of the roads. The jug came out of the kiln with a crack in the handle and I sold it cheap to a miner and he was glad of it.

We had the tutor from Vell in the warm room and I set down what she said about numbers in my notes, and I find I keep going back to read it. Here is the whole of it in my own words.

A mind is layers, one above another. The bottom sees the letters. The top gives the answer. In between, each layer passes on what it found.

When the mind is wrong, blame goes back down, layer by layer, and each layer moves its numbers a little toward the right answer. That is the learning.

But a number that gets moved again and again grows. Double it, double it again, and it runs away. A mind full of runaway numbers cannot tell one thing from another. It answers the same to everything.

So each layer, when it has moved its numbers, brings them back to an even size. It keeps the shape and drops the size. Then the stream that runs up through the mind stays a stream, and the top layer can still hear the small thing that matters.

The tutor would not say who found it. Some say a woman of Copperhold, some a hall at Vell. She said the councils argued for a year and then everyone did it.

What I think. It is like the clay. You can work it and work it, and if you never bring it back to a good wet even feel, it goes stiff and cracks in the firing. Bring it back and it holds. I said this and the tutor laughed and said that is the whole of it, more or less.

The winter is long here. Long nights. The keeper's girl keeps the lamps. Lantern went up the tower last week and did not come down for three days, and the light blinked all night, so the relays were busy and someone far off was talking.

At the gate a zombie comes most nights. We keep the torches lit and go round by the new road, which is finished now and good and dry. Tam at Kettle Ridge would laugh at me for calling this a long winter. He has the fields to think of and I have the kiln. We all keep our own fires.

Tomorrow I throw twelve jars and think about numbers while the wheel turns. Greer.
%%
Notes after the homecoming
Hamlet hall, second of Swarm, 197

Present: Rye, orchard keeper. Halla, keeper of the north path. En, keeper of the small relay. Lio, just home from Copperhold. Six neighbors.

Subject: the broken fence and Lio's return.

Lio came home from Copperhold at noon. He had a blue mark on one hand from the forge and a bag of coal for his mother. She said he should have brought himself home first. He said he had done that, and the coal had come second.

The fence beside Rye's young apple row had fallen in the night. A pig had pushed through and eaten the grass, but had not reached the trees. Rye thanked the pig for stopping where it did. Halla said it had not stopped. It was asleep in the ditch.

Lio helped set the fence posts. He found the old hole for the corner post and said the ground was harder than he remembered. Rye said the ground had not changed. Lio said his arms had.

En asked whether anyone had seen the pig before dawn. No one had. The pig woke while they talked and walked home without hurry.

Decision: Rye will set a second rail low on the fence. Lio will stay with his mother through the next month of Blossom. Halla will bring him a work coat from the store room.

Rye brought out apples from last season's box. They were wrinkled, but sweet. Lio ate one and said Copperhold had no apples so good. Rye said Copperhold had plenty of time to improve.

The neighbors stayed until the light went. Lio carried the empty box home. His mother had kept the door open for him.
%%
Notes of a talk: going to a wedding
Given by Wren of Lowmarsh in the big room of the Halfway Inn, on the night before the wedding of Ama's niece at Ambrook, spring. Forty-one guests were staying at the inn. Notes taken by Hobb, innkeeper, who says the talk was the best entertainment the inn has had, and he has had a goat.

The road. It is two days from here to Ambrook by cart, and a day and a half on foot if you are in a hurry, and you will not be. Start at dawn. Stop at the Brown Hen. Marda will have soup. If you reach Ambrook after dark, the torch by the hives will show you the way.

The pack. One spare shirt. One spare pair of socks. A cup. A cloth. A small jar of honey, for the stings and the toast. A comb, for the bride's mother, who will need it.

The cake. A wedding cake at Ambrook is made with the old apples and the dark honey. It is a very good cake. One slice. Two if you are fond of the bride. Three if you are fond of the cook. Wren has seen a man eat seven. He was not asked to dance. He was carried.

The cider. Apple cider is a drink for the afternoon, not for the morning. A cup with the meal. A cup after. After that, ask the bees if you may have another. The bees will say no.

The dance. There will be a dance by the mill pond. Dance on the dry boards. The bank is mud. The pond is deeper than it looks, as three guests found last year. All three were fished out. All three were embarrassed. Two were the groom's uncles.

The gift. Do not bring a cheese. Last year six guests brought cheese, and the couple ate cheese for a year. Bring a spoon, a candle or a packet of seed. Wren is bringing a jar of dried marsh moss for the bride's mother's knee. She says it is not romantic, but it is useful.

The weather. Ambrook in spring is white with blossom and cold after dusk. Bring a wrap. The pond makes the evening cooler than the day.

The feet. You will stand for most of a wedding and sit for none of it. Take your shoes off for the dance if the ground is dry. Put them back on for the walk home.

The bees. Ama's bees come to the wedding. They do not mind. Stand still, and they will not mind you.

The morning after. Water, bread, and the sun on the back of your neck. Wren says a bad head is not a sickness, but it is an education.

The vows. Nobody asked Wren about the vows. She said she had no advice on them. She said that was for the bride and groom, and for the bees.
%%
Talk at the tutor house: drill boards
Notes of a talk by Gil, mapmaker, at the tutor house at Vell, winter of 206. Nessa asked him. She said her boards were drawn by tutors who could teach and could not draw. Written up at a farm outside Kettle Ridge.
A drill board is a map. It is a small field drawn on a board, with rows and plots. A mind looks at the board and learns what it shows. If the board lies, the mind learns the lie. So the first rule is that a drill board must be a good map.
Rules for the board.
1. One sign for one thing. If green means wheat on this board, it means wheat on every board. A mind cannot guess that green changed its mind.
2. One scale. A plot is a plot. Do not draw the pumpkin patch as big as the wheat because the pumpkin is the tutor's favorite.
3. Show what matters. The crop. How far it has grown. Whether the ground is dry. Leave out the clouds.
4. Draw it flat and plain. A tree drawn with a shadow looks like a plot with a hole in it.
5. Keep the edge clear. A board with no edge makes the mind guess where the field ends.
The danger of one board. Here Nessa spoke. If a mind sees only one board, it learns the board and not the field. It will do well on that board and fail on the first crooked field it meets. So draw many boards. Turn them. Move the plots. Put carrots where the wheat was.
Gil said this is also a rule of mapmaking. If you have walked only one road, you think all roads go the way yours did.
At the end Nessa thanked Gil and gave him a cat, to carry back to the farm in his coat. The cat is called Chart. She holds down the corners of the paper better than any jar.
%%
Notes: the pack for the Long Road
Ada, healer. Set out for travelers who ask what to carry.

1. Clean cloth, two rolls. Not more. You will wash them yourself.
2. A small pot of honey. It keeps a cut from going bad, and it tastes good.
3. Reed syrup for coughs. Take one spoon at night, not three.
4. Salt, a pinch, in a twist of paper. Use it on a sting.
5. A torch, two spare wicks, and a flint that works.
6. Your own cup. The inns have too few, and they wash them too quickly.

What not to carry:
- Heavy jars of anything you can buy at the next inn.
- Wet socks in the pack. Change them at the waymark, not at night.
- Bad news. It weighs more than you think.

If you are hurt on the road, count the waymarks back to the last inn. Then go to the inn and sit down. Do not walk on a bad ankle to prove you can.
%%
Notes of a talk: stings and swarms
Given by Wren of Lowmarsh in the yard of the Brown Hen, spring, because a swarm of bees had landed on the inn sign. Notes taken by Marda, who keeps the inn, from a window.

A bee. A bee stings once and dies. It does not want to. It only stings if you frighten it. Stand still. Let it walk off your sleeve. Do not wave your arms.
A swarm. A swarm is not angry. It is homeless, and looking for a house. Walk away slowly. Send for Ama or someone who keeps bees.
A sting. Scrape it out with the back of a knife. Do not pinch it. Pinching squeezes in more. Lay a cold cloth on it, and honey, if you have it. Honey is the bee's own apology.
A bad sting. If the face swells, or the breath goes short, or the skin comes up in lumps, send for a healer at once. Do not wait to see.

Marda reports that the swarm left at dusk, and took the inn sign's paint with it.
%%
Notes: paying a debt in emeralds
Ada, healer, set down after the talk at the Brown Hen on coin and fair dealing. She asked that the names stay as they are, for the carters who were there.

Who owed whom: Wil the drover owed Jenna at the Brown Hen eleven emeralds for a stable, two beds and a winter of meals. He had been on the road all summer. He had no emeralds when he came back at Leaffall. He had a sick mule, a bag of salt and a promise.

What the talk was about: how to take a promise as coin.

First. Count what the debt is, out loud, in front of both people. Eleven emeralds for the stable, the beds and the meals. Write it on the board by the door.

Second. Ask what the debtor has that can be sold or used. Wil had the mule, the salt and his two strong arms. Jenna had no use for the mule. She had use for the arms.

Third. Agree a plan with a date. Wil would work the Brown Hen kitchen for seven days in Frost, then take the mule to Ambrook and sell it for the rest. The date was written on the board too, under the first line.

Fourth. When the debt is paid, cross it out in front of both people. Wil did this himself. He took the chalk, drew one line through his name, and sat down to eat. Jenna gave him the first bowl of the soup, which was the custom of the house.

The lesson I took from it: most debts are not hard to pay. They are only hard to say. Say the number out loud, and write it where people can see. Then the debt can be carried, like a bag, and put down when it is empty.

Afterward Jenna asked me whether the mule was worth eleven emeralds. I said no. She said the mule was not the point. Then she asked me to bring her another jar of reed syrup.
%%
Notes of a talk: what to do in a storm
Taken down at the tutor house at Vell, in winter, from a talk by Nessa, tutor, after a storm that broke three windows. Set out by heading.

Heading one: the crystals
Move the tray away from the windows. Wrap each crystal in wool. Do not leave one on the sill.

Heading two: the apprentices
They do not mind a storm. But they do not know when to come in. Give the order: home. Say it again if it does not move.

Heading three: the lamps
If a lamp goes out, light the spare. Keep three spares in the drill room. Keep three more at the tower.

Heading four: the people
Check that everyone is inside. Count them. Count again. Count the cat.

Heading five: afterward
Write down what the storm did. The Archive wants it. A storm that is not written down is a storm that is forgotten.
%%
Talk: how a mind learns to guess
Notes of a talk by Vale, relay keeper, at the Northpoint market, Melon. Taken by Mira. It was the first talk Vale gave on a dry day, and he said it showed.

Guessing the next letter
The mind reads a page one letter at a time. At each letter, it covers the next one and guesses. Then the cover is lifted and it sees if it was right. That is the whole drill.

A worked example
Take this line from a notice: Keep the torches lit, for the creepers come at night.

Early on, the mind sees Keep the torches lit, for the creepers come at n. It guesses a letter at random. Say q. Wrong. The right letter is i. It changes a little.

After many pages, it has learned that after n at the end of come at, an i is likely. It has learned the word night.

After more pages, it has learned the words around it. It sees Keep the torches lit, for the creepers come at, and it guesses the whole word, night, before the first letter is shown.

After a great many pages, it can see a line that begins Keep the torches lit and finish it, even if it has never seen that notice. It knows how notices go.

What it learns first, and what it learns later
First, which letters follow which. Then words. Then which words follow which. Then what people say about the world: that creepers come at night, that Three Wells has three wells, that bread is made from wheat.

What it does not learn
Vale was careful here. He said the mind learns what was written, which is not always what is true. If many pages say a thing that is wrong, the mind will say it too. That is why the clerks check.

Why it needs so many pages
A mind is a great many small numbers. Each page changes them a little. To set them all right takes a great many pages.

Mira's note: Vale is right. I would add that he is also dry, and I do not mean the weather.
%%
Notes: how the lamps are kept
Notes of a talk given at the mine hall at Copperhold in the summer, by Nessa of Vell. Taken down by Hesk, who asked for the lamps to be explained again, slowly, as the new boys had not learned them.

1. The lamp itself. A clay bowl, a wick of spun wool, coal to the line, and a glass cover with a seal. A lamp without its cover goes out in the first gust, and then the dark arrives all at once.

2. Filling and lighting. Fill the bowl with dry coal to the line. Light each lamp from the coal bin torch, never from the lamp of the man beside you. One bad lamp lit from another is two bad lamps, and nobody can tell which is which in the dark.

3. The seal. Breathe on the glass. If the breath runs down the outside, the seal is good. If it stays in small drops, the lamp goes back to the shed for a new cover.

4. Carrying. Carry the lamp in front of you, not at your side, so the light goes ahead of your feet. A rail in your own shadow is a rail you will step on.

5. Counting. There should be exactly as many lamps at the shaft head as men going down. A spare lamp is a lamp someone takes home. The clerk keeps the count at the hook.

6. The torches and the dark. Below the eighth step, the torches on the left guide the way in. The lamps are for the places between the torches. The dark does not care who you are, and it does not forgive the one who forgets his lamp. Teach the new boys this first.
%%
Notes of a talk: what to pack
Given by Ilse, sister of Corin the shipwright of Saltreach, in the barn of Sage's farm outside Copperhold, spring, to a room of farmers, miners and the curious. Notes taken by Cal.

Why she came. Ilse has been on the road for twelve days, on behalf of the harbor hall, to tell the towns what the big ships carry. She says she does not ask anyone to go. She says that families who decide to go should go prepared, and families who decide to stay should know what is being packed.

What a ship holds. A big ship is three times as long as any boat. It holds forty families, with their sheep and their hens. The hold is dry. There is a stove, and a deck for the cats.

What to bring. Ilse's list, in the order she gave it.
1. Seed. The best seed you have, in a jar with a tight lid. Wheat, beetroot, carrot, potato. One handful of each is a field.
2. Tools. A spade, a knife, an axe, and a good hammer. Nails. A saw if you can carry it.
3. Wax. The copper must not go green on the sea.
4. A hive, if you keep bees. The harbor hall will find room. Bees will not be left.
5. Lamps, torches, and flint.
6. Wool, and a blanket for every person. The sea is cold, even in summer.
7. Cheese, if you are Sage. (This was said as a joke. Sage said she had no plans, and wrote nothing down.)
8. Something of home. A cup. A spoon. A stone from your own step.

What to leave. The house. The field. The well. The notice on the board. Leave the door open, so the cat can come and go. Leave the lamp in the window. Corin says it helps.

What she was asked. Where are the ships going? Ilse said she did not know. The hall says out, and then on, until the land is found. A man at the back said that was no answer. Ilse said it was the only one she had, and that she would give a better one if she had it.

What Sage said. That she was born here and her cheese was made here and the cave was here. She said the cave was warm this spring, and she did not like that, but she liked it better than the sea. Ilse said that was fair.

The talk ended with soup. It was a good soup. Four families put their names down on Ilse's list. Seven did not. Cal took no side.
%%
Lecture: the test box, and the cat
Notes of a talk on the test box, given at the copying room at Vell, in spring. The cat was present, and was asked to leave, and did not.

Heading: what the test box is for.
A test box holds pages no mind is drilled on. Its only purpose is to show whether the mind has learned the thing, and not the pages.

Heading: how the box is kept.
The box has a lid, a clasp, and a card that says TEST. Only the clerk on duty opens it.

Heading: the cat.
A cat walked into the copying room and sat on the test box, and would not get off. The clerk had to decide whether the pages were still good. Fur is a kind of spoiling. So the clerk took out each page, blew off the fur, read it aloud, and checked it against the first copy. Eleven pages had fur on them. They went to the spoiled box. The rest went back, the lid was shut, and the cat was given a crust.

Heading: what the cat teaches.
A test box that was sat on is still a test box, if the clerk checks it. Count the pages every time it is opened. If the count is not the same, find the missing page before the test.
%%
Talk at the Archive: what a map is
Notes of a talk by Gil, mapmaker, to the new clerks at Vell, winter of 204. Written up at a farm outside Kettle Ridge, where Gil keeps his table in the loft. Taken down by Ina.
What a map is. A map is a small picture of a large place. It keeps every distance in the same proportion. If the mill is twice as far from the well as the barn is, the mill is drawn twice as far.
The scale. Choose a length of paper for a number of paces. For a field, one thumb for ten paces. For the Long Road, one thumb for a day's walk. Write the scale in the corner. A map without a scale is only a drawing.
What stays: the land, the roads, the wells, the bridges, the towers. What goes: everything that moves. A map shows where the barn is, not where the cow is. The cow will have moved before the ink is dry. Draw your own house the same size as the others. Everyone makes it too big.
Holding the paper down. Paper curls. Weigh the corners. A stone is good. A jar of honey is better, because the honey has been paid for and the stone has not. Tam of Kettle Ridge paid Gil for a map of his top farm with a jar. Gil says the map is done and the jar is not.
A question from the room: what if nobody has walked the place? Gil: "Leave it blank. A blank is honest. A guess is not."
%%
Notes of the tutor house talk
Three Wells, summer of 189

Present: Nessa, tutor; Dace, mayor; Corin, shipwright; Lio, school keeper.

Subject: The lost hen.

Lio found a brown hen under the tutor's bench. It had a green thread tied to one leg and a bent feather on its back. No one at the school had tied the thread.

Dace asked whether it belonged to the bakery. The baker said his hens were white and did not come to school unless carried.

Corin said the hen had followed his cart from Saltreach. He had stopped by the east well to mend a loose wheel, and the hen had walked into his basket of rope. It had eaten two crumbs and one piece of wax.

Nessa said a hen could learn a route, but not a name. She told the apprentices not to ask it to fetch anything.

Lio set a basket beside the gate with water and wheat. The hen drank, then pecked at the school bell rope. Dace said that was not a proper way to call a meeting.

Decision: Corin will take the hen to the market. The notice board will name its color and mark. Any keeper who knows it may claim it. The hen shall not be kept in the tutor's room.

After the talk, it laid an egg in the basket. Lio kept the egg for the bakery. The hen went to market in Corin's arms and clucked all the way.
%%
Notes of a talk: places for words
Taken down by Hesk, miner, at a talk by the tutor Hana in the hall of a farm outside Copperhold, in autumn. This was the second night. A new apprentice, just out of its crate, sat in the front row and watched the tutor's hands. A cave had been found under the farm's far field that week, and half the room smelled of mud. Set out by heading.

Review from last night
A mind keeps each word as a place among many directions. Words used alike sit close.

Heading one: a test the tutors use
Hana says the halls at Vell have found a way to see the places. They take a word, say horse, and ask the mind: which words are nearest? The mind lists them. Foal. Mare. Cart. Stable. They are all words used near horse.

Heading two: farther away
Then they ask: which words are furthest? Pick. Lantern. Frost. Words never used near horse.

Heading three: a trick
Hana says there is an odd trick. Take the place of foal. Take away the place of horse. Add the place of cow. The result sits near calf. It does not always work. But it works often enough that the tutors think it means something.

Heading four: what it means
She says it may mean that a direction in the map runs from grown to young. The mind was never told. It found the direction by itself, because grown and young are used differently in pages.

Heading five: what it does not mean
She warned against going too far. The places are numbers. The directions are not words. The tutors have found some and not others. They are still looking.

Heading six: a question about the cave
Fen asked: if the mind keeps words as places, does it keep caves as places? Hana laughed. She said: yes. And the cave under your field sits near the mine, the well and the cellar. And far from the sheep.

Heading seven: end of the night
The apprentice was shown a card that said "Farm. Build." It looked at it for a long time. Hana said: it will learn the card as a place too.
%%
Notes of a talk: teaching in a hard
Taken down at the tutor house at Vell, in the winter, from a talk by Nessa, tutor, to the keepers of apprentices from the nearby towns. A storm had kept some of them away, and a tutor had come home that week. Set out by heading, plain and exact.

Heading one: why we still drill
Some have asked why we keep drilling, in a winter like this. The days are short. The roads are slow. Some of the towers have gone quiet. Nessa said: we drill because the fields will still need tending in spring.

Heading two: the basic drill
A mind is shown the same kind of thing again and again. It is wrong at first. Each time it is wrong, it changes a little. Slowly it gets better. This has not changed.

Heading three: what has changed
The room is colder. We have fewer candles. Some of the tutors have not come back from the north. But the cards are the same. The crystals are the same.

Heading four: on the rumors
Nessa said she had heard what we had all heard. That the Deep Works hum at night. That a cough has come to Lowmarsh. That the big ships at Saltreach are full. That some lamps in the north have gone out. She said: I do not know what is true. I know what I can teach.

Heading five: what she will teach
She will teach the drill. She will teach the test. She will teach that a mind is only as good as its pages. She will teach that we keep what we write.

Heading six: for the new keepers
Be patient. Be exact. Write down what you do. Keep the cards in order. And if a mind is wrong, show it again. It is not a failure. It is the way.

Heading seven: a last word
She said: when you have a doubt, go back to the cards. They are plain. They say what to do.
%%
Talk at the tutor house: one or both
Notes of a talk given at the tutor house in Vell, by the tutor Ansel, to visitors from the farms. Written down by Vesper, shepherd, at her farm outside Three Wells. The headings are the tutor's own.

1. What a small mind is
A small mind is a crystal with marks in it. The marks are weights. Each weight says how much the mind should care about one thing it sees.

2. How it learns
It learns by being wrong. When an answer is wrong, each weight moves a little toward the right one. Then the next example comes, and the mind is wrong a little less.

3. Kester's note
Kester wrote a note, long ago, about one crystal with one layer of marks. Such a crystal can draw one straight line between two kinds of answer. It can tell sheep from wolves, if they stand on opposite sides of a fence.

It cannot learn "one or the other, but not both". Kester was right about this. Please do not argue with him before you have tried it yourself.
%%
Story: the wall and the cat
A story told at the hamlet under Kettle Ridge, written down by Bryn, stable hand, as near as he can tell it.

There was a barn with a west wall, and the west wall was straight, because a builder had laid it run by run, oak and stone, oak and stone, from the ground up.

One night a creeper came out of the hedge and stood by the wall and swelled up and blew the wall apart. Oak and stone went everywhere. The chickens woke. The grey mare kicked her stall. The farmer came out with a torch and a hoe and found nothing to hit.

So the wall was mended, but not straight. They mended it in a hurry, with what was to hand, and the mended part bulges out like a full belly. The builder looked at it and said it is crooked. The farmer said it is a wall. The builder said a crooked wall is not a wall. The farmer said it keeps the wind out. They left it.

Now there was a cat who slept in the barn, on the hay bales, and would not stay out. Each night the farmer shut the barn and each night the cat was inside by morning. He tried a latch. He tried a bell. He tried a low gap under the door for the cat to come and go, and the cat ignored the gap and climbed the crooked wall instead, and came in over the top.

So the cat and the crooked wall came to an agreement. The wall would be a stair for the cat. The cat would keep the mice from the hay. The farmer, who had tried a latch and a bell and a gap, said nothing at all, which is how most agreements are made.

In the late autumn the folk of the hamlet began to talk of strange things. A traveler said the sky over the north was full of lights, like falling stars. Another said, no, fires. A child said they were looking at us, and would not be told otherwise. A miner said the ground under Copperhold hums at night, and the stone is warm, and no one goes below the ninth gate. A healer's word came up the road from Lowmarsh about a grey cough, and some blamed the water and some the ships and some the mines.

The farmer heard all this and looked at his crooked wall. The builder heard it and looked at his straight part. The cat heard none of it, being a cat, and slept on the hay.

And every night the farmer lit the torch on the post and shut the gate, and every morning the cat was inside, and the wall was still crooked, and still a wall.
%%
Talk: what a map is for
Notes of a talk by Kell, mapmaker, at his house at the edge of Copperhold. Frost.

What it is
A map is a drawing of a place, made small, so that a person who is not there can find the way. If two things are close in the land, they must be close on the map.

What it needs
A top. The top is north. Draw an arrow, so nobody has to guess.
A scale. Say how far a finger on the map is on the ground. For a road map, one finger is one hundred blocks.

What it does not need
Beauty. Kell says a map is good if a stranger can walk by it and arrive. A pretty map that is wrong is a lie in a frame.
%%
Talk: the signs on a map
Notes of a talk by Kell, mapmaker, at his house at the edge of Copperhold. Longnight. Taken by Dara. Kell drew each sign on the slate as he named it.

The signs
A road is a line with a tick for each torch.
A waymark is a small cross, with its figure beside it.
An inn is a square with a roof.
A relay tower is a triangle with a flame.
A well is a circle with a dot.
A bridge is two short lines across the road.
A mine shaft is a black square.
A town is a ring of small squares.
Water is wavy lines.
A hill is short lines pointing downhill.

The rule of few
Use few signs. A map with forty signs is a map nobody reads.

The key
Say what each sign means, in a corner of the map. Kell says a map without a key is a riddle. He has drawn riddles. They were very popular at the inn, where nobody wanted to go anywhere.

Where to put the words
Put the name of a place beside its sign, not on it. A name written on a sign hides the sign.
%%
Talk on the drill, the Brown Hen, Frost
Given by a visiting tutor from Vell, Adair, in the back room of the Brown Hen, on the first night of Frost, to the carters who were stuck at the inn. Written down by Pell, who was stuck there too.

Heading: What a drill is.
A drill is the same kind of example, again and again. A mind learns the kind, not the example.

Heading: What a mind does with a drill.
It sees an example, gives its answer, is shown the right one, and changes a little. Then it sees the next.

Heading: Why the change is small.
A big change swings the mind back and forth. A small one adds up across many examples.

Heading: Questions.
Pell asked how many examples. Adair said a few hundred for a simple thing, and many thousands for a harder one. Pell asked whether it was like teaching a dog to sit. Adair said a dog is not so patient, and that she would rather teach a mind to count the carts than a dog to sit on them.

The carters laughed. The innkeeper said the drill was over, and that everyone who wanted soup should come to the fire.
%%
Talk notes: The loose pane
At Sage's house, Three Wells

Present: Sage, cook. Bel, from the school. Dace, mayor. Rill, keeper of the east well. Pell, merchant on the Long Road.

Subject: the glass pane beside Sage's back step.

Sage said the pane had shaken during the night. There was no crack in it. The wooden frame was loose at the lower corner. Rill brought a small hammer. Dace said to mend the frame before the next rain.

Bel asked if the sound had been a knock. Sage said it had sounded like a spoon falling from the shelf. Pell said he had heard something like it at the inn, but the stable door there was loose too. Nobody saw anyone by Sage's house.

The work was simple. Rill held the pane still. Sage pushed a thin strip of wood into the frame. Dace tapped it twice. The pane stopped moving.

While they worked, Pell told them a rumor from the road. A keeper at Northpoint had written that lights moved above the snow. Another traveler said they were only pale clouds in the long summer evening. Pell had not seen them. Dace said there was no use looking for them from Three Wells when the pane needed mending.

Bel asked whether the lights were like the signal lamp at the relay tower. Rill said the signal lamp stayed in its glass room and did not cross the sky. Sage said the soup was ready and called the question settled.

Sage served potato soup, bread, and honey from Ambrook. Bel dropped a crust. A cat took it under the bench. Sage said the cat had been the only one to get a second helping.

The group agreed to check the back step after the next hard rain. Dace wrote this on the notice board. The pane stayed quiet until supper.
%%
Talk notes: Sage's spare key
At Sage's house, Three Wells

Present: Sage, cook. Dace, mayor. Rill, keeper of the east well. Bel, from the school.

Subject: who should hold the spare key to Sage's back door.

Sage said the key had been left under a flower pot. It was no longer there. Rill said the wind could not carry a key. Bel asked whether a fox could. Dace said foxes did not open doors, and asked Bel to stop feeding them near the well.

Sage found the key in the flour tin. Sage had put it there after the last market day and forgotten. Bel said this proved the flour tin was a safe place. Sage said it proved the flour tin had a good lid.

Dace asked whether the family from Saltreach had sent word. Sage had heard a story from Pell, who had heard it at the Halfway Inn. A large ship had left Saltreach with many families aboard. Pell said the ship was going across the sea. Rill had heard the families were going only as far as the islands beyond the harbor. Nobody at the table knew what lay farther out.

Sage said the ship had no place in the key tin. This was agreed.

Bel asked if a person could come home from a long sea trip. Sage said, "Yes. If the door is still here, and someone remembers the key."

Dace suggested a hook beside the back door. Rill offered a nail. Sage chose the hook. The key hangs there now. Sage checks it each night, though the back door is seldom used.

Bel wrote down the decision for the school. Sage asked Bel to spell "seldom" carefully.
%%
Talk notes: the window
Notes by Wren, healer at Lowmarsh, taken at the tutor house on the farm outside Vell, in summer. Isla gave the talk. The notes are plain, as she asked.

1. The window. A reading mind sees a window of letters. It reads the page one letter at a time, and it guesses the next.

2. The window is small. It is about sixty letters wide. Most of a page does not fit in it.

3. The fix. Stop reading letters. Read pieces.
%%
Notes of the tutor house talk
At the east room, Three Wells
Summer, 164

Present: Nessa, tutor; Dace, mayor; Corin, shipwright; Pell, road merchant.

Subject: The cart at the school gate.

Dace said the cart had blocked the school door during lessons. The cart held boards for a new bench. The driver said the door was a good place to stop because it was flat.

Corin said the door was made for children, not carts. He offered two spare planks from his shed. The driver could mend the bench beside the wall.

Pell said he would bring nails on his next trip. He asked that no one write his name on the cart. The cart was not his.

Decision: The bench shall stand by the east wall. The school door shall stay clear. The driver may keep his flat place if he parks there after lessons.
%%
Talk: mapping the levels
Notes of a talk by Kell, mapmaker, at his house at the edge of Copperhold. Deepsnow. Taken by Wen, who works at the mine gate kitchen and came in her apron.

The shaft
Every level of the Deep Works begins at the shaft. Draw the shaft first, in the middle of the page. Everything else is measured from it.

The torches are the ruler
In the Deep Works there is a torch every eight steps, on the left going in. That makes the walls a ruler. Count the torches from the shaft. Four torches is thirty-two steps. You do not need to pace anything. The miners have done the measuring for you.

The left-hand rule
Going in, the torches are on your left. Coming out, they are on your right. If you ever find the torches on the wrong side, you are going the wrong way. Stop and turn round.

What to draw
Tunnels, as lines.
Ladders, as a short cross-bar.
The lift, as a box with an arrow.
Old tunnels that are walled up, as a dotted line.
Water, as wavy lines.

What to leave out
Anything you did not see yourself. A map of a place you have not walked is a rumor with a ruler.

Keeping a copy
Make two. Leave one at the tool store and take one with you. The mine master said I might map anywhere except where the miners were working. I have mapped the tool store four times. It is very well mapped.
%%
Talk: keeping the barn warm
Notes from the second talk at Bramble Farm, Frost of the 201st year. Notes by Mira.

WALLS AND ROOF
Make the roof tight, with no gaps at the eaves. Pack the cracks with clay and wool. Check the roof after every gale. The wind takes the top tiles first, and it always does it at night.

TORCHES
Light the barn from the inside, high on the posts, out of reach of the animals. Never set a lamp on a bale. Oda's grandmother once did, and the barn still stands, but the bale does not.

HAY
A cow eats about one bale a day in Frost, and more in Longnight. Keep the hay dry and high in the loft. Damp hay goes sour, then it goes hot. Hot hay in a barn is the start of a very bad night.

COWS
Cows give less milk in Deepsnow. This is normal. Do not panic at the bucket. Give them warm water and a little salt in the morning, and milk them at the same hour each day. A cow likes a routine more than she likes you.

CATS
Keep two cats in the barn. They are not for the hay. They are for the mice that get into the hay. One of them has chosen the warm stone by the stove and will not move for any reason. Oda says that is her right.

BOOTS
Set a long bench by the door, dry and low, with room for six pairs of boots. Wet boots left on the floor freeze by morning, and then they crack.

The talk ended when the cows wanted their dinner.
%%
Notes of a talk: going down a cave
Given by Wren of Lowmarsh in the big room of the Brown Hen, spring, after a cave was found under Brisk's field, half a day from the inn. Notes taken by Marda, who keeps the inn, and who did not want anyone going down.

Wren says: do not go down alone. That is the first rule, and the last.

Rope. One rope, tied to a post above, long enough to reach the bottom and half as long again. Pull it before you trust it.
Light. Two lights, not one. A torch burns low where the air is bad. If it burns low or goes out, come up. Do not go down after the torch.
People. Three. One goes down. One holds the rope. One stays at the top and counts out loud. If the counting stops, the others pull.
Air. A cave that is warm and a cave that is cold can both be fine. A cave that smells of bad eggs is not. Come up.
Water. Do not drink from a cave. It may be clear. It may not be clean.
Coming up. Slowly. Count the people. Count them again.

Brisk's cave was found by his plow. It is as wide as a barn. Wren has not gone down. She says it is not a healer's cave. Marda says it is not hers either.
%%
Talk: dyeing wool from the start
Notes of Aunt Nell's talk on dyeing, at her stall at the Copperhold market, Melon. Taken by Fern, age twelve. Aunt Nell says my notes are better than hers. This is true.

The wool
Wash it first, in warm water with a little soap. Dirty wool takes color badly.

The dye
Pick one.
Red: beetroot, boiled in its skins. Or poppies.
Orange: carrots.
Yellow: dandelions, a whole basket.
Blue: lapis, ground very fine. It is dear. Cornflowers are cheaper and paler.
Green: the crust from old copper.
Pink: sweet berries.
Brown: oak bark.
Black: coal dust, stirred in well.

The fix
Put a spoon of salt and a spoon of apple vinegar in the pot. This makes the color stay. Without it the color runs out in the first rain.

The pot
Use a pot you do not love. It will be that color forever. Fill it with water, add the dye, and bring it to a gentle bubble. Keep it there for as long as it takes to sing the Longday song once through.

The wait
Put in the wet wool. Stir gently. Do not boil it hard, or the wool goes as stiff as a board. Leave it until the color is a little darker than you want. Wool dries lighter.

The rinse
Lift the wool out with a stick. Rinse it in warm water, then in cool, until the water runs clear. Do not wring it. Squeeze it. Wringing makes knots.

The drying
In the shade. Sun fades a fresh color. Aunt Nell hangs hers on the line behind the stall. Never on the fence. The sheep will think it is a friend.

What goes wrong
Spots: the wool was not wet through. Dip it first.
Stiff: the water boiled.
Grey: too many colors in one pot.
Wrong color: it is not wrong, it is new. Name it and sell it.

The new vein
There is a new copper vein on level two, so green will be cheap this year. Aunt Nell has already made a green and named it Level Two. She sold out by noon. It was not dry yet.
%%
Notes on spring work
Hamlet hall, third of Blossom, 208

Present: Rye, orchard keeper. En, keeper of the small relay. Halla, keeper of the north path. Nessa, tutor from Vell. Pip, visiting from Kettle Ridge. Four children, who took notes and ate the notes.

Subject: the orchard, the path, and the spring lessons.

Rye reported that the oldest apple tree had a broken branch. It was the branch that leaned over the path. Halla said travelers had been ducking under it for years. Rye said the branch had been waiting for someone to duck too late.

Decision: Rye will cut the branch after the blossom falls. Halla will place a waymark by the bend while the work is done. No one will climb the tree in wet shoes.

Pip brought a small mind in a crystal from Kettle Ridge. It was meant to sort seed baskets from empty baskets. Nessa asked Pip whether the mind had been tested on baskets from another room.

Pip said it had been tested on baskets from the barn.

Nessa said that was the same room in different light. She placed a basket of wool in the drill. The mind sent it to the seed shelf.

Pip looked at the wool and said it had made a fair guess. Nessa said a fair guess was not a good test.

They tried again with a basket of carrots, then one of empty jars. The mind sorted both correctly. It put the wool back on the seed shelf. Rye said the sheep would be pleased to learn they were seeds.

Nessa wrote down each result. She said a mind must be tested on examples it did not learn from. Pip agreed to take the drill back to Kettle Ridge and try it in the mill store.

En reported that the relay house had enough ice for the warm days. He had moved the water jars into the shade. The children asked if ice was cold enough to keep a mind from growing. En said it kept the quickeners cool. He did not know what else a crystal needed in order to learn.

Rye brought a dish of sliced apples. The children ate them before the meeting ended. Rye said the dish was for everyone. The children said everyone had been very quick.

The talk closed with the spring chores. Halla will clear leaves from the north path. En will check the lamp room. Pip will return the crystal after its store test. Rye will mend the fence and keep the pigs out of the young row.

Afterward, Nessa found one apple slice on the table. She gave it to Rye, who said it had been saved for the orchard keeper. He ate it while walking home.
%%
Notes of a talk: words as places
At the house at the edge of Saltreach, in spring. Taken down by Corin, shipwright, who came to hear.
1. A mind does not keep a word as a word. It keeps it as a place.
2. Think of the harbor. Every boat has a berth. Boats of one kind lie close.
3. In a mind, words used alike lie close. "Cod" and "salmon" are neighbors. "Cod" and "plank" are far.
4. The mind finds these places by itself, by being drilled.
%%
Lecture: a lamp that blinked a message
Notes of a talk to the clerks at Vell, in spring, about a message that came up the line by lamp one night. Written as spoken, and read back to the speaker, who corrected two words and left the rest.

Heading: what was seen.
At the second bell, the Kettle Ridge tower sent a message to Vell by lamp. The flashes were the right length for letters, but the letters made no word in any tongue. It was repeated three times, the same, and then the lamp went dark.

Heading: what the keeper did.
The keeper wrote it in the tower book just as it came, and did not guess at it. Then the keeper asked the next tower, and the next, whether they had seen it too. Two had, and they wrote the same string. The lamp was checked, and it was fine.

Heading: what the clerks were asked.
The clerks were asked whether the string could go into a drill. Some said yes, because a strange message is a kind of example. Some said no, because a strange message is only a fault in the lamp.

Heading: the decision.
The string was copied out by hand, as it came, and read aloud by two clerks, every letter. Then it was put in the spoiled box, not in the drills. A drill with strange words in it teaches a mind strange words. A mind taught strange words will give strange answers, and those answers will be taken as real, because they came from the drill.

Heading: what would have happened.
If the string had gone into the drills, a mind would have been asked to answer it. Nobody can say what it would have answered. That is the reason for the box, and for the spoiled shelf.

Heading: the next night.
The tower book was read for a week. Nothing else came up the line from Kettle Ridge until the fourth night, when the message was plain: all well, in ordinary words. The clerks were glad, and could not say exactly why.

Heading: what is not known.
Nobody knows where the string came from. It may have been a fault in the lamp. It may have been a keeper who was tired, or a leaf stuck to the glass. The clerks have written that it is not known. That is the honest entry, and it is kept in the finding book with the others.
%%
Notice: the Halfway Inn, winter hours
By the keeper of the Halfway Inn, at the board by the hearth.

The hearth has not gone out in twenty years. It will not go out this winter either.

Doors shut at dark. The bell at Three Wells rings the watches, and we keep the same watches here. If you are on the road after dark, knock and we will open. If you are a zombie, do not knock.

Beds: twelve. Two are kept for the watch and one for a healer going to Lowmarsh. The rest are first come.

Food: bread, beetroot soup, potatoes with honey, apples from Ambrook while they last, and a pot that is always on.

The riddle board is by the hearth. Solve it and your supper is free. Nobody has solved it since Sowing. Do not ask the keeper for the answer, for the keeper does not know it either.

Prices are chalked on the board and do not change with the rumors. We have heard the rumors. We have heard that the relays are quiet up the road, that the ships at Saltreach are full, and that the stone at Copperhold is warm in the deep. We do not sell rumors. We sell beds and soup.

Keep the torches lit on the road. A torch on a post every twelve blocks is the rule, and we walk the road each morning to see to it. If you pass a torch out, light it if you can, and tell us if you cannot.

A word on the weather. The snow came early and it means to stay. Bring a second coat. Bring your own boots. We have a dry box by the door for wet ones, and a bench to sit on while you change them.
%%
Notes: before the fair
Notes of a talk by Wren, healer, in the barn at Stonebridge near Three Wells, in Blossom, the week before the spring fair. Taken down by Bel.
Wren says a fair is a good day with three dangers in it. She says them in order so she can find them again.
One. Hands. Wash them before you eat and after you pet the horses. A crowd passes sickness along like a bucket. Do not be a bucket.
Two. Water. Drink from the wells at Three Wells. Do not drink from the stream at Stonebridge, however clear. Clear is not clean.
Three. Pies. A pie left in the sun is not a pie. It is a risk. Eat it warm or eat it cold, but eat it today.
Also feet. A day of standing at a fair is a day of sore feet. Take off your boots at noon. Put them on again for the pie.
Bel asked if a cat counts as a bucket. Wren said a cat is a bucket with opinions.
%%
Notes: the summer talk and the fair
By Elsa, relay keeper at Lowmarsh.

Given on the boardwalk at midsummer, from a stool that was not quite steady. The fair was on, so the talk was short. It was not short enough for the children.

The fair
The Lowmarsh midsummer fair runs for two days. The first day is boats. The second day is everything else. Both days begin with the bell at the reed house, and both end when someone falls in the water, which is usually the same person.

Stall-holders, please remember that the boardwalk is not a shelf. Do not leave your jars on the rail. A jar of honey on the rail is a jar of honey in the mud, and the honey is from Ambrook, and Ama is watching.

The frog race
The frog race starts at the old post by the eel shed. Each child chooses a frog from the box. A frog may be chosen once and only once. Frogs are not to be tickled, pushed or fed honey cake, however much they look as if they want it.

Last year the winner was Moss, who is quiet and never hurried, and whose frog was called Thistle. Thistle went straight over the line and off the edge of the boardwalk. Moss says Thistle is still on the marsh, looking for the lake. We have decided to believe him.

The boats
Every boat is to be dressed for the fair. Use paper, or ribbon, or old cloth. Do not use the sails. The sails are for sailing. Last year Hal dressed his punt in a flag of his own design. It showed a cow. It was a very good cow. The judges could not agree whether it was a cow or a sheep, and so Hal won the prize for honesty.

Honey cakes
These come from Ambrook by the second cart of the morning. There are not enough. There never are. The first person to ask for two will get one, and the second person to ask for two will be told about the first person.

Questions from the children
A boy asked whether the frogs can count. I said I did not know. He said then they cannot count, because a frog would know how many flies it had eaten. I could not argue with him.

A girl asked why the water is slow at Lowmarsh. I said the land is flat, and the water has nowhere to hurry to. She said the water could hurry if it wanted. I said yes, it could. It is glad not to.

Someone asked if the relay post can see the Saltreach lamp. It cannot. It can see the tower on the hill above the mill pond at Ambrook, on a clear night. The lamp at Ambrook blinks back, slowly, so we have a little conversation each evening. It is always about the weather.

Rules of the boardwalk
Walk on the planks.
Keep the torches lit.
Do not run on wet posts.
Do not sit on the rail. The rail is for holding.
If you fall in, shout. Someone will come with a pole. The pole belongs to Hal, so be polite to him.

The end of the talk
That is all I have. The bell is going, and the honey cakes are going faster. I will be on the boardwalk all evening. If you want to ask about the reeds or the frogs or the eels, I will be the one by the post, drying my boots.
%%
Notes of the spring talk
Hamlet hall, third of Blossom, 176

Present: Rye, orchard keeper. Halla, keeper of the north path. En, who came from Northpoint. Two children, who sat under the table.

Subject: the apple trees.

Rye said the old trees had flowered well. The new row had not. He asked whether the soil was poor.

Halla said the new row stood too close to the wall. The wall took the morning sun.

En said Northpoint had no apples at all, and that people there did not complain of poor soil. They complained of cold noses.

Rye said a cold nose was no reason to spoil an orchard.

The children asked if they could plant a tree by the hall. Rye said yes, if they carried the water. They said they would carry it. The smaller child asked if carrying counted when the bucket was empty.

Decision: plant one apple tree beside the hall, not against the wall. Rye will bring a young tree from Ambrook when he next goes south. The children will water it. The smaller child will carry the full bucket.

After the talk, Halla found a pie cooling on the window sill. No one knew whose pie it was. En said it was a fine pie, but too small for a meeting. The children knew whose pie it was and said nothing.
%%
Notes on a poor harvest, the Long Road
Given at the Halfway Inn in the bad autumn, when the wheat came in thin and the apples were small. Adair spoke for the carters, who had been asked by the mill to take less grain to market, and who did not want to. Pell wrote it down because he had lost money that year and wanted to know why.

Heading: The harvest is short.
Four fields of wheat out of ten gave a full sheaf. Three gave half. The rest gave nothing but straw.

Heading: The minds that tend the fields were not to blame.
Adair says this first, because it is what people say when they are looking for a blame. The field minds had been tested the spring before, on the dry ground and the wet, and they had passed. The rain came in the wrong month. A mind can know the ground and still not know the sky.

Heading: What a mind does in a bad year.
It keeps doing the work it was drilled to do. It waits for the wet ground to dry. It does not know the harvest is short, because the harvest is not in the drill. A tutor must not blame the mind for the sky.

Heading: What the tutor does in a bad year.
Adair says she writes a new drill with the bad year in it, and then she tests the mind on the new drill, and then she tests it again in spring. Some years a mind must learn the sky as well as the ground.

Heading: The carters' question.
A carter asked whether the mill would pay for the lost grain. Adair said she was a tutor, not a clerk, and that the clerk had gone home for the frost. The carter said that was the most honest thing a tutor had ever said to him, and paid for his soup.

Pell's own note: the apples were small. The bees were slow. I have sold the rest of my honey in Ambrook at a good price, and I will have to tell Ama she was right to keep a few jars back for the winter.
%%
Notes: the song contest
Notes made by Lise, innkeeper, at the Copperhold tutor's room, after a talk on contests between the halls. The talk was given by a tutor who had been a judge at the song contest on the north ridge, where she was invited to listen. Spring.

1. What a contest is.
Each tutor's hall sends a mind. Each mind is tested on the same unseen drill. The judges count the right answers. The highest count wins the cup. The cup is a small clay bowl with a crack in it.

2. Why the halls wanted contests.
The tutors were proud. Each hall said its minds were the best. Nobody could check. So the council asked for a contest, where every mind would be tested on the same drill, and everyone could see the count.

3. What the contest showed.
At first the counts were all over the place. Some halls drilled their minds on the test box by mistake, and their counts were very high. Those halls were ashamed. After that the halls kept their boxes apart, and the counts became fair.

4. The song contest.
The tutor was asked to listen to the songs on the north ridge, and to judge the minds that were sent to sing them. She said the songs were very good, and the minds were not. Their singing was full of mistakes. But the crowd did not care about the minds. They cared about the songs.

5. What she took from it.
A mind can be wrong and still be useful. A mind can be right and still be dull. The tutor said she did not know how to count a song. She said the halls should keep the test, and also keep listening.

6. The clay bowl.
The bowl went to the hall at Vell that year. It is still on the shelf in the drill room, with its crack, and a card beside it that says: the count was honest, the singing was not.
%%
Talk: sheep in the north snow
Notes from a talk in the big barn at Bramble Farm, Frost of the 201st year of the archive. There is no tutor house this far north, so the talk was given where the sheep could hear it. Notes by Mira, relay keeper at Northpoint.

THE BARN
Build with the back to the wind. Stack hay bales along the north wall. Put the flock in the middle, where the warm breath gathers. Change the straw every five days.

WATER
Keep the water open. A sheep that eats snow gets cold inside, and a cold sheep stops eating. Break the ice on the trough twice a day, with a wooden mallet. Never use iron. It rings in the cold, and the sheep hate it.

FEED
Hay at dawn and at dusk, then carrot tops or beetroot leaves. Never give a whole bale at once. A sheep that eats a bale in one go gets sick, and the rest of the flock looks at you as if you did it on purpose.

LAMBS
Lambs come in Deepsnow. Move the close ewes into the small pen by the stove. A lamb born in the snow must be dried at once, with clean wool, then put to its mother. Count the lambs twice. The first count is always wrong.

FOXES
Shut the pens at dusk and put the pins in the gate. Ruddock the ram can drive a fox off the flock by himself. He should not try it on a wolf.

The next talk is at the new year, if the road is open. Bring a shovel.
%%
Talk notes: the whole talk, by heading
Notes by Wren, healer at Lowmarsh, taken in full at the tutor house on the farm outside Vell, in summer. Isla spoke for most of the morning. These are her points in order.

1. The window
A reading mind sees a window of letters, about sixty letters wide. It reads one letter at a time, and each letter takes from the letters before it that matter, and it guesses the next. That was the way for a long while. Isla says it was a good way, and that it worked better than anyone expected.

2. Why the window was small
A page does not fit in sixty letters. The mind had to read a long page in many small steps, and each step was a guess built on a short memory. Isla said that the guesses were good, but the memory was short. Many good things were lost off the end of the window.

3. The pieces
A piece is a common run of letters. It can be a whole word, such as bread, or part of a longer word. The clerks choose the pieces by counting every run of letters across the archive and keeping the common ones. Isla says the clerks are the ones who should be thanked. Nobody else was counting.

4. What fits
Because a piece is longer than a letter, the same window holds far more of the page. The sentence "the bread is in the oven" is about twenty-six letters. In pieces it is five. A window that held one letter in six now holds the whole line.

5. Words as places
The mind keeps each piece as a place, among many, the way it keeps words. Pieces used alike sit close together. Isla says the place of a piece is not a rule either. It is only where the drill put it, and where the pages keep sending it back.

6. The new road
We walked the new road from Vell to the mill that morning, in the heat, with the carts going by. Isla pointed at the road and said the words "new road" are one piece in the archive, because the clerks wrote them so often. She said a road is a good thing to learn from, because you can walk it and check.

7. The new apprentice
Ash was tested in the yard at noon. It has never seen a piece. It knows its eight words, and it answers with one of them. It passed the test on its own board, and the board was not the one it was drilled on. Isla says that is the only test that counts.

8. What we do not know
Isla was clear about this. We do not know why a piece helps the mind guess. We do not know what the mind is doing when it guesses well. We only see that it guesses well on pages it has not seen, and we test it that way, every time.

9. The rule for the drill room
Test on the unseen board. Keep the pieces honest, which means keep counting them. Never trust a good guess until it has been checked on a page nobody chose.

Notes end here. Wren says the talk was too long, and the cake was good.
%%
Letters from Oak to his daughter
She keeps the inn at the west end of the Long Road. He writes small and plain.

Daughter, I am well. The wall is well. Your brother sends word from Saltreach that the shipyard is building a ship three times as long as any boat, and that people are buying places on it. I do not know what is across the water. Neither does he. He says the sea is the same sea all the way out. I say then it goes somewhere.

Daughter, a thing I will not say in the taproom. The relays go quiet one by one, from the north. A traveler told me the last message from Northpoint was cut off in the middle of a word. Another traveler said no, it was finished and signed. They argued, and neither of them was there. Keep the torches lit, keep the gate shut, and do not sell hope to people who are leaving. Sell them bread and a bed.

Daughter, the winter is long this year. The snow came in Leaffall and it has not gone. The children ask me about the lights in the north. I tell them falling stars. One of them, a small one called Bel, told me they were looking at us. I had no answer, so I said keep the torches lit. It is the only answer I have ever had.

Daughter, I am sending you my old wall coat. It is too big for me now. It will be too big for you. Wear it anyway. It is warm, and the pockets are good. Your father, Oak.
%%
Talk notes: why more fits
Notes by Wren, at the same talk.

1. A piece is longer than a letter. So a window of the same size holds many more words. The mind sees more of the page at once.

2. Isla's example: the sentence "the bread is in the oven" is written with about twenty-six letters. Cut into common pieces, it is five pieces. The window that held one letter in six now holds the whole line.

3. A new road is a common piece. The clerks wrote "new road" many times in the archive, about the road from Vell to the mill. So the mind reads it as one piece, and not as two words.

4. The window is the same size as before. Only what it holds has changed. That is the whole idea.

5. Isla said the old minds did not guess badly. They guessed from less. The new minds guess from more, and so they guess better, and that is all we know about why.

6. The page is still longer than the window, so the mind still reads in steps. The steps are longer now.
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Notes of a talk: the long evening
Taken down at the tutor house at Vell, in winter, from a talk by Nessa, tutor, on a night when the wind took a shutter off the north wall and a colleague came home from a long journey. The notes are kept in the order they were spoken. Set out by heading, as Nessa likes.

Opening
The storm began at noon. By dusk it had broken two windows in the teaching room. The drill yard was a sheet of ice. The torches were out. The apprentices stood in their row, in the dark, and did not move. Someone had given them the order: stay. They stayed.

Heading one: what we did
We carried the crystal trays into the middle of the room. We wrapped each one in wool. We lit the lamps. Nessa counted the apprentices. Forty-one. Then she counted the tutors. Nineteen. One was missing.

Heading two: the missing one
Tobin had gone north in the autumn to visit the relay houses. He was to be back by the first snow. He was not back. Nessa sat by the stove, and the room was quiet.

Heading three: the door
In the middle of the night someone knocked. The door was opened. Tobin stood on the step in snow to his knees, with a pack and a stick. He was blue at the lips. He said: I am sorry I am late.

Heading four: the broth
Someone made broth. Someone took his boots. Someone put him by the fire. Nessa did not speak. She put her hand on his shoulder.

Heading five: what he said
He told us the north is cold. He told us the roads are long. He told us some of the towers have gone quiet, one by one, from the top. He said it slowly, and he did not say why. We did not ask. He said Northpoint was still lit, when he left. He said Mira had given him a scarf.

Heading six: rumors
A tutor asked about the lights in the north. Tobin said he saw something once, late, on a clear night. He said he did not know what it was. He said Mira had looked at it, and said only: they were not ours.

We did not ask what she meant. Nessa said: we will write it down. Not as a fact. As something heard.

Heading seven: the morning
The storm passed at dawn. The yard was white. The apprentices were still in their row. Nessa gave them the order: home. They went.

Heading eight: the lesson
Nessa said this was what she wanted us to remember. In a storm, count everyone. In the quiet after, listen. And when someone comes home, put a blanket on him and let him sleep.

Closing
The Archive has the notes. Oren came to copy them at midday. He asked for the scarf to be put on the shelf with the rest. Nessa said it was Tobin's, and he could do what he liked. Tobin was asleep. We put it on the stove to dry.
%%
Winter log: the gate at Three Wells
By Oak, late of the wall.

Frost, the ninth. The first hard frost. We put the straw down on the walk behind the wall before dark, so the watch has something underfoot that does not ring. Two torches out along the north foot, both relit. A fox came in by the east gap and went out again, nothing worse.

Frost, the twelfth. A zombie at the gate after the bell. It stood in the torchlight and did not beat on the wood. Halla on the watch said it turned its head to the lamp and then to her, slow, like a person thinking. I told her a zombie does not think. I told her to keep the torches lit. I did not tell her what I thought, because I do not know it.

Frost, the fifteenth. Snow all day. The Long Road is packed earth under it somewhere, but you cannot find it. A cart came in from the west and the driver asked whether the road went on to Saltreach. I said it goes where it always went. He said he had heard the relays were quiet up the road. I said the roads do not go quiet, only the towers. He did not laugh.

Frost, the twentieth. The wind came down off the ridge hard enough to put out the foot torches twice. We set the watch to three and the gate kept shut. No spiders. The cold keeps them slow, I think.

Frost, the twenty-fourth. The old bell rope frayed at the wall. I spliced it. It will hold through Longnight if the cold does not stiffen it.

Longnight, the second. The longest dark. We kept the square lamp lit all night and the bell rang at each watch change, so people would know the watch was awake. The children made a lantern of a pumpkin and set it by the well. It was a good night. A long winter, but a good night.
%%
Notes: the biggest houses
Taken by Lise, innkeeper, from the second talk at the Copperhold tutor's room, which was given by a clerk from the Archive who had read the plans of the biggest relay houses, and who had spoken to the keepers who had seen the foundations. Spring. The clerk asked that his name not be written, and Lise has kept his name off the page.

1. The plans.
The plans are in the third room at Vell. They show a house with walls twice as thick as a relay house, and a stand larger than the room. The stand is ringed with quickeners in a circle, many rings deep. The plans say the mind is to be held in a crystal the size of a cart. No one has made a crystal that size.

2. The foundations.
Two keepers from the north line walked out to the site of a great house, where the councils had begun to dig. They say the trench was very deep, and that the stone at the bottom was warm to the touch. They say the councils stopped digging after a month. They say nobody has said why.

3. What the councils say.
The councils say the great house will be built for the minds that the Archive needs to keep its records safe, and for the relays that will carry them. The councils say the warm stone was a fault in the ground, and that the digging was stopped for the cold.

4. What the rumors say.
Some say the great house is to be built on the ninth gate, under the Deep Works, where the miners stop going. Some say it is to be built on the coast, facing the sea. Some say it is not to be built at all, and the councils are only keeping the plans to look busy. The clerk said he did not believe the first, and did not disbelieve the others.

5. What the minds do.
The clerk said the biggest minds are said to learn from the scores of many tutors, and to answer more kindly than the small ones. He said that was true of the small ones too. He said he had never seen one of the biggest, and had only seen its letters, which were long, and careful, and sometimes said I do not know.

6. What the minds cannot do.
The clerk was clear on this point. No text he had read says a mind can do anything beyond what the world allows. No mind has been seen to make a light in the sky or move the stone. The clerk said the rumors go further than that, and he would not write them down.

7. The note at the end.
The clerk said: we keep everything we write. So I have written this, and I have written what I have not seen. The archive will decide what is true, in a few hundred years, when someone is reading. I hope they read it kindly.
%%
Notes: wet boots, a talk
By Elsa, relay keeper at Lowmarsh.

Said at the boat house on the first warm day, to nine people and a dog. The dog did not listen.

1. Wet boots are the first thing to go. Dry them by the fire, not on it. Boots dried too close crack like old pots.
2. Stuff them with straw at night. Change the straw every few days, or it goes soft and smells of frogs.
3. Never walk the boardwalk barefoot. The posts are green and the boards are slick in the morning.
4. Keep the torches lit along the boardwalk. A dark boardwalk is where people fall in.
5. If you do fall in, do not panic. The water here is slow. It will not carry you far. Get a hand on a post and shout.

Questions.

Q. What if there are frogs in the boots?
A. Shake them out. Frogs are not dangerous. They are only cold and surprised.

Q. Why does the dog keep going in the water?
A. Ask the dog. I have asked it three times and it only wags.

That will do for today. Tea is by the door. The second boat house has the good cups.
%%
Why the halls closed, in plain words
The councils paid for the halls when the tutors could show progress. Before Kester's note, every hall at Vell and in the big towns had a tutor, a drill room, and a row of crystals waiting for work. The minds were few, but the halls were busy.

After the note, a councilor from Three Wells asked a simple question. What good is a mind that can only draw one fence? Nobody had a good answer. The payments stopped. One hall closed each year, then another. A tutor from Ambrook walked home with her drill cards in a sack, and she never came back to the council.

The apprentices already built were kept on. They did one row each, or one sort each, and they did it well. Nobody built new ones, because nobody could show the councils what a new one would be for.

My own well ran dry this summer. The men from the council came to look at it and said what the councilor had said. There is nothing to be done until the rain comes back. Then they drank our tea and went home.

I think about that often. A well and a hall are not so different. Both need someone to keep going down, long after the water stops showing.
%%
Lecture: why a drill is sorted
Notes of a talk at the tutor house at Vell, in spring, by Linnet, archive clerk.

Heading: a drill is only as good as its pages.
A mind learns from the pages it is shown. If the pages are bad, the mind learns the badness, and does it very well.

Heading: keep a test box.
Some pages are never shown to the mind. The mind is tested on them, to see what it has really learned.
%%
Journal: autumn at the hamlet
Bryn, stable hand. Kept in a small book under the feed bin.

First of Leaffall. Cold came early this year. The horses are shaggy already. I put straw down thick in the stalls and they seem glad of it.

Fourth. Hauled the last of the hay in before the rain. My back is sore and the barn smells good. Ate bread and honey in the loft door and watched the light go.

Sixth. The cat has found a warm spot on the feed bin and will not move. I have given up. She is the true keeper of the barn and I am the help.

Ninth. Walked to Kettle Ridge for the market. Beetroot and wheat and a hen that would not stop calling. Pell the merchant had his ledger out and was telling anyone who would stand still that prices are up because folk are leaving from Saltreach and goods go with them. He said it kindly. It still sat badly.

Eleventh. The talk at the tutor house. I carried benches and stayed to listen. The tutor spoke of minds and drills and tests. She said a mind must be tried on what it was never taught, or you cannot trust it. I thought that is true of horses too. And of me.

Fourteenth. A miner from Copperhold came through with a cart of coal. He said the Deep Works hums at night now, down below, a low sound like a hive. He said the stone is warm down there when it has no business being warm. He laughed when he said it. Then he stopped laughing.

Sixteenth. Heard a second talk of the same thing. A tinker said the humming is only water in the old tunnels. The miner said no. They did not settle it. I do not think they can.

Twentieth. Rain all day. Mended a harness strap. The cat slept through it.

Twenty second. The child at the inn, the one who said the lights were looking at us, asked me if the stars could be angry. I said the stars are just stars. I am not sure she believed me, and I am not sure I did either.

Twenty fifth. Frost on the water trough. The foal Thistle has learned to come when I call. She is wrong half the time. She is getting better. Nobody drilled her. She just tried and kept what worked.
%%
Notes of a talk: the cows and the night
Given by Sage, cheesemaker, at the gate of her field outside Copperhold, spring, to six neighbors who had come about their own cows. Notes taken by Fenn.

What she has seen. For some weeks the cows have not wished to lie down at night. They stand in the corner of the field nearest the barn and face the hill. They do not eat. They do not low. In the morning they eat as usual and give as much milk as ever. Sage first thought it was the spiders in the barn. Then she put torches along the fence, and the barn was clear of spiders, and the cows still stood.

What the neighbors have seen. Six farms, six cows. Brann's cows stand at the gate. Ulla's have started to sleep in the barn, which they never did. Two farms report that the dogs bark at the hill at night and stop when the sun comes up. One farm reports nothing, and says that is because nobody there has looked.

What people say. Nobody can say. These are the things said.
Some say the cows are cold. The nights have been mild.
Some say they hear the hum in the stone, and the cows hear it too, better than we do. Sage says that is as good a guess as any.
Some say wolves. There are no wolves. Everyone knows this.

What to do. Sage says: keep the cows warm and fed. Keep the torches lit along the fence. Count them every night. If one is missing, look for it in the barn first. Do not go up the hill after dark.

A question from the back. Is it dangerous?
Sage said she did not know. She said she would milk the cows tomorrow, and the day after. She said that is what a farmer can do.

The cows stood at the gate while we talked. They faced the hill. They did not move for the whole of the talk.
%%
Talk: what to write down
Notes of a talk by Ulla, a clerk of the Archive at Vell, at the Copperhold market in Longday. The Archive sends a clerk to the big markets every summer with a table and a chair. Taken by Nell, dyer. A remark of my own is in round brackets.

Why write at all
Ulla said memory is a bad clerk. It loses things. It makes them bigger, or smaller, or kinder than they were. A page does none of that. She held up a page from the Archive more than a hundred years old. The ink was brown. Every word could still be read.

Seven things for every page
1. The day. Write the month and the day, like "the ninth of Longday". If you know the year, write the year.
2. The place. Say where you were, not where you live.
3. Your name. A page with no name is a road with no town at the end.
4. The number. Always say what was counted. "Forty" is nothing. "Forty sacks" is something.
5. What you saw. Not what you think happened. If you think something, say "I think."
6. What you do not know. Write "I do not know." That is an answer too, and an honest one.
7. Do not fix a mistake. Draw one line through it and write the right word after it. The wrong word may matter later.

(Ulla looked at my stall when she reached number four. My receipts say "Blue, 12." Twelve what, I cannot now tell. I have been a dyer for twenty years.)

What to send
Send copies to the Archive, said Ulla. Never the first copy. The first copy is yours. Leave the second in the Archive box at any inn on the Long Road, and the carters will take it to Vell.

Questions
A woman asked if a recipe that failed was worth sending. "Especially that one," said Ulla. "A failure tells the next cook what not to do." A man asked if his bills were worth keeping. "Yes. A bill tells what a thing cost, and that tells what a year was like." A boy asked if she had a favorite record. Clerks are not supposed to have favorites. Then she said hers is a recipe for pickled beets, with three pages of the writer arguing with her sister in the margin.
%%
Notes from the tutor room
North path hamlet, ninth of Blossom, 188

Present: Rye, orchard keeper. Nessa, tutor from Vell. En, keeper of the small relay. Three children, and one apprentice.

Subject: teaching an apprentice to carry baskets.

Nessa set a basket on the floor and asked the apprentice to carry it to the bench. It carried the basket to the door, stopped, then turned and carried it to Rye.

Rye said he had not asked for apples, but was glad to have them.

Nessa wrote the order again. This time the apprentice carried the basket to the bench. It did not spill an apple.

En said the new drill must be tested on a basket it had not seen. Halla brought a basket of turnips from the store room. The apprentice carried it to the bench. The turnips stayed in the basket.

The children asked if the apprentice knew where the bench was. Nessa said it had learned from examples, and the test showed it could use what it had learned in a new place. She did not say it knew the bench as a person knew it.

Rye asked whether it could carry a basket to the shed. Nessa said not until it had been taught and tested for that order.

Decision: Nessa will leave a small drill box at the hamlet for one month. Rye will lend baskets, but not the good ones. He has only three good baskets.

After the talk, the apprentice carried the empty basket back to the table. Rye said that was useful. Nessa said it was not in the drill. The children said it must have guessed.
%%
Notes of a talk: boiled water
Given by Wren of Lowmarsh in the big room of the Halfway Inn, spring, to a room of travelers, two carters, a family from Ambrook and Hobb's cat. Notes taken by Ina, a clerk on her way to Vell, set out by heading as Oren likes.

What water carries. Water carries what is in the place it came from. Mud. The cow upstream. A dead frog. The man who washed his cup in it. You cannot see most of it. A clear stream can be a sick stream. Wren says this three times, because nobody believes it the first time.

What boiling does. It does not make water sweet. It makes it safe. The old healers found this by counting. In a town where the sick drank from one well, they boiled that well's water for a month, and counted. The sick went down by half. Wren says nobody has written down the whole of why. She says it works, and that is enough for a healer.

How. Bring the water to a roll. Count two hundred while it rolls. Let it cool with the lid on. Pour it into a clean pot, and keep the pot covered. Never fill an old pot from a new one without washing it. Boil in the morning and in the evening, and you will always have some.

Hands. Wash before food. Wash after the outhouse. Wash after the animals. Wash after you have held a sick person, and again after you have held a well one. Use soap if you have it. Use ash and water if you do not.

The marsh. At Lowmarsh there is a clean well and there is the marsh. Never the marsh. Marsh water is not clean water, however clear it looks. Wren has seen people drink it because it was nearer.

Questions.
Q: Does cider need boiling? A: No. Cider is fine. It is a different problem.
Q: Does the cat? A: The cat has her own methods. Do not ask her.
Q: How do you know all this? A: I do not. I know some of it. I write down the rest as I learn it.
%%
Talk: washing hands before bread
Given at the Brown Hen by Ada, healer, to the cooks and the carters.

Why we wash:
- Dirt on a hand goes into the bread.
- Bread goes into the child.
- The child is sick for a week, and the cart does not run.

So wash. Warm water from the kettle, not the trough. Use the grey soap, not the yellow. The yellow is for the horses.

Ask me why, and I will tell you the story of the Halfway cook. He never washed. He said his hands were clean because he had been using them all day. He is still a good cook, but his customers now bring their own spoons.
%%
Notes of the tutor house talk
Three Wells, summer of 207

Present: Nessa, tutor; Corin, shipwright; Dace, mayor; Sela, school keeper; Jun, apprentice keeper; Pell, merchant.

Subject: The apprentice at the edge house.

Jun brought a small mind in a crystal and a relay card with the name of the nearest house. The apprentice stood in the yard at the edge of Three Wells. A relay post stood beside the road. The next post stood by the east wall.

Nessa asked it to carry a box of nails to Corin. The order was read from a card at the desk. The apprentice walked to the post, waited, then turned toward the school.

Corin said the school was not his shed. He had already said this twice.

Jun checked the order card. It said, "bring me the box by the school." The words were clear, but the box was not there. The apprentice had followed the order as written.

Nessa said a good mind cannot mend a bad order. She asked Jun to use the right meaning and write a new card. The first card went into the error box for later drills.

Corin moved the box beside the road. The apprentice came to him, took the box, and carried it to the shed. It stopped at the door and waited.

Pell said the apprentice had carried the nails well, but the shed had no door hook. Corin said a door hook was not part of the order. He put one on before the next test.

Nessa asked Jun to test the mind on another box, another path, and another person. The desk mind answered that the order was short and plain. Dace said that was the first time a mind had praised his writing.

Decision: The edge house will keep a card box by the desk. Jun will test each new mind before it carries goods alone. The relay posts will be checked at the start of each summer. If a post is loose, the keeper will mark it on the notice board.

Pell offered to carry the cards on his next trip. Nessa refused. The cards were not goods for sale.

Corin took the apprentice to the shed to carry a coil of rope. It stopped at the door again. Corin opened the door. The apprentice went in, set down the rope, and came out carrying a hammer.

No one had ordered the hammer. Jun checked the card. It was blank.

Nessa took the hammer from the apprentice and put it back. She said the next drill would be about staying where one was told. Corin asked if the drill could also teach the apprentice not to borrow his tools.

Nessa said that was a separate lesson. Corin said he had plenty of time to wait for it.
%%
Notes: what to pick in spring
Notes of a talk by Wren, healer, at Stonebridge near Three Wells, in Sowing. Taken down by Bel, aged nine, who asked eleven questions.
Dandelion. The first green leaves. Eat them young. They are bitter and good for you, which is often the same thing.
Mushrooms. If you do not know it, do not eat it. If you do know it, look again.
If a flower is not on this list, ask me before it is in the soup.
%%
Talk at the ridge school
Notes by Tam.

Place
The small school at Hushbrook, below Kettle Ridge.

Time
The second of Deepsnow, in the 178th year of the archive.

Present
Tam, two farmers, the mill keeper, and Pip, who sat by the stove.

Subject
Keeping the seed sacks dry.

The north wall is sound. The roof leaks by the door when snow melts. We agreed to set a wide pan there and mend the roof in Thaw.

Pip asked if the sacks should stand on boards. Yes. No sack should touch the floor. The apprentice moved the boards after the talk and stacked them by the stove. We moved them back.

Tam said the apprentice had followed the order to move the boards. It had not heard the words by the seed sacks. We will show it the boards and the sacks together next time.

The mill keeper brought a loaf. It was warm, but he had left it on the pan. The bottom was wet. We ate the dry half.

Pip has agreed to keep the pan empty.
%%
Notes of a talk: the song contest
Given by Sage, cheesemaker, to the committee of the Copperhold spring song contest, in her kitchen, early spring. Notes taken by Fenn, who keeps the score.

The contest. It is held on the first day of Sowing in the square at Copperhold, as it has been for longer than anyone has counted. Anyone may enter. Each singer has one song, three verses at most. The judges are three: one miner, one farmer, one child.

The prize. A round cheese from this farm, a hand across, aged one year. Sage says it is the best cheese she has made. She says this every year, and it is every year true.

The rules.
1. A song must be sung, not shouted.
2. A song may be old or new. A new song must have a refrain.
3. A song must be one the judges have not heard sung in the square in the last three years. This rule is why nobody sings the Clank song.
4. No singer may sing more than once. Fenn adds: Hesk, that means you.

Who has entered. Eleven so far. Four are children. Two are miners, who will sing together and badly. One is the baker's wife, who will sing about bread. One is Old Brin of Kettle Ridge, who says he will walk down for it if the road is open. Sage said she will keep a bed for him.

A question from the committee. One member asked if the contest should go on, given what people are saying. Sage asked what people are saying. The member said: the hum in the stone, and the quiet from the relays. Sage said: those are things to talk about at the inn. This is a song contest. She said that people who are afraid should sing more, not less.

The contest will be held. The cheese is ready.
%%
Talk notes: The wall by the garden
At Sage's house, Three Wells

Present: Sage, cook. Dace, mayor. Bel, from the school. Rill, keeper of the east well. Pell, merchant on the Long Road. Tavin, mason.

Subject: the broken wall beside Sage's garden.

The wall was cobblestone, four blocks long and two blocks high. A creeper had come close in the night and blown out the middle. Sage said the sound woke the cat, but not the hens at Rill's yard. Bel said the cat was a better guard. Sage said the cat slept through the next noise.

Tavin counted the loose stones. He said nine could be used again. The rest had broken too small. He would bring new cobblestone from the store yard. Dace asked for a torch on each end of the wall. Sage said there were already two torches, but one had gone out. Bel fetched a new torch from the kitchen shelf.

Sage had set a bowl of carrots by the garden gate. The creeper had not touched them. The cat had. Sage moved the bowl indoors.

Pell arrived from the Long Road with a sack of apples. He said the road was clear and the bridges were sound. He had met a traveler who claimed the big ships from Saltreach were made to carry whole families away. At the inn, another traveler said some ships were only being built for trade. Pell had seen the long ramp at Saltreach, but he had not seen the ships leave. Dace said there was no notice of a departure at Three Wells.

Bel asked if people who left would come back. Pell said some might. Sage put the apples in a basket and asked who wanted one. Everyone took one.

Rill said the garden wall should be finished before night. Tavin said the stones would take an hour. Dace said there was enough daylight. They carried the stones from the store yard in a handcart. Bel carried the torch and walked beside the wheel.

The new wall was one block higher at the broken place. Tavin said this would keep the cat out. Sage said the cat had never been kept out by a wall. The cat sat on the wall while they spoke.

After supper, Sage placed a clean cloth on the table. A knock came at the front door. It was Lio, Sage's brother, who had been away at Ambrook since spring. He had come home with a basket of honey and a torn coat. Sage set out another bowl. Bel gave him the last apple.

Lio said he had heard the relay tower at Northpoint went quiet for a short time. He had also heard it was only a lamp wick that needed trimming. He had not been there. Dace said the tower keeper would know more than a traveler. Nobody wrote the rumor on the notice board.

The cat stayed on the new wall until the torches were lit. Then it came in and slept beside the stove. Sage said the wall had done its work. Tavin said the wall had done half its work. The cat was still in the garden.
