Administrator Of A Broken World

The news reached Hearthroot on the fourth of Frostmere, and Kess was the one who read it out, because she was holding the book when the rider came in and nobody wanted to take it off her.

She was ten now, and had been since the eleventh of Ravenmark, and there had been a cake with too much honey in it because Vezra had done it on purpose.

The rider was one of Corvane’s and he did not stay. He handed the packet to Hanne, Hanne handed it to Edrin, and Edrin looked at it for about four seconds. Then he went and found Kess in the sick-house with the second book open on her knees.

"It’s about him," Edrin said. "And it’s for the roll, so it’s yours to enter. And I’d like you to read it before you write it, out loud, twice, the way we do."

"Is it bad?"

"Yes."

"Then I’d like Hanne here," said Kess, "because she’s better at not crying than me and it helps to look at her."

***

They did it in the long room with about sixty people in it, because word had gone round the valley in under an hour and there was no version of this where they did it privately.

Kess read it the first time straight through and did not stop anywhere. She had practised that.

*Mataon Gaael. Registered subject of the Deuna Central Roll. Second reason — injury unmade good. Assessed two thousand two hundred silver. Maintenance line open. Fourth reason applies.*

Nobody said anything. Sixty people in a long room, and the only sound was a bench creaking somewhere near the back.

Then she read it the second time, slower, the way Hanne had taught her, and got to the end and put her finger on the line and looked up.

"I don’t know what the fourth reason is," she said.

Vorrin Ashe, from the back, said, "I do."

He came up the room and stood where the light was, and said it the way a man says a thing he has said before, to people who did not want to hear it that time either.

"Any child born to him while the classification stands inherits it."

The room made a noise, and it was not a loud one, and it went on longer than a loud one would have.

Kess did not look up from the book. She had gone still in the way she went still doing arithmetic, and Edrin had learned not to interrupt that.

"He knew that," she said.

"He’d have been told."

"No. I mean he knew it before he went." Her voice was perfectly ordinary. "He read us the clause at the wall in Pyrelon. He said there was a chance he’d come back as somebody’s property and we should all sit with that for a night before we voted, and Anser said he was being dramatic."

Anser, from the third bench, said, "I did say that."

"Yes," said Kess.

Hanne let it run for about twenty minutes, because she had learned that a room has to say the useless things out loud before it will say the useful ones.

Somebody wanted to send money. Somebody else pointed out that they had none and that sending it into Deuna would put it on the line. Tovan wanted to go, and got as far as the door, and Maelor put a hand on the frame without saying anything and Tovan sat down.

Rell said, "Can we buy him back?"

Vorrin answered that one, and it was the worst answer of the afternoon.

"Yes. That’s a real thing and it can be done and I’ve drawn the papers for it twice." He waited for the noise to stop. "A third party may satisfy a maintenance line. It costs two thousand two hundred silver, which this valley does not have and will not have in my lifetime. And it does not touch the fourth reason. Nothing touches the fourth reason but the centre."

"So there’s nothing."

"There is nothing that helps him," said Vorrin. "I want to be precise, because I have spent twenty years watching people be comforted by imprecision. There is nothing any of us can do from this valley that improves his position by one copper."

Hanne stood up then.

"Say the rest of it," she said. "You’ve got a second half. You always have."

"The second half is that it isn’t our position to improve." Vorrin looked at the book on Kess’s knees. "He didn’t go to Deuna to get something back for himself. He went because forty-four of the people in this room are on a schedule in a drawer. And if we spend the next year being sorry for him, we will have done the one thing he specifically asked us not to."

They came to the entry at about four o’clock.

Kess had the second book open at the current page and the ink ready. She had not written anything for two hours, and that was unlike her.

"He’s a citizen," she said. "He’s still entry forty-five."

"He is," said Hanne.

"But that isn’t what he is any more. Not to them. And the book’s meant to be true."

"Then make it true."

Kess thought about that for a while.

Then she turned to the back of the book, past the register, past the page for kindnesses, to the first clean leaf after it, and she began a new column and wrote a heading at the top of it in her own hand.

*What was done to citizens of this town by others.*

And under it, entry one.

*Mataon Gaael, citizen, entry forty-five. Classified by the office of record of Deuna on the fourteenth of Sylphenia, 334, and registered as a subject on the thirteenth of Ravenmark. Two thousand two hundred silver. The fourth reason applies. He is still entry forty-five and he is still a citizen and nothing they did changes that, and this is written here so that it is written somewhere.*

She read it out twice. Then she signed it and dated it and passed the pen to Hanne, and Hanne signed it, and it went round the room until the light went and Vezra brought candles, and by the end there were a hundred and forty-one names under it.

Anser signed it twice by accident and refused to have one crossed out.

***

Souk came back on the eighteenth with mud to the thigh and a face that nobody in the doorway wanted to ask about.

She had been in the hedge above Dunnock Mill for twenty-six days. She had watched the cottage through two frosts and a thaw, and she had not been the only one watching it, and that was the first thing she said and she said it in the doorway with her coat still on.

"There’s a boy."

"A boy."

"Twelve, thirteen. Comes up the lane about every ninth day, walks past the third cottage without looking at it, goes to the mill, buys nothing, and goes home." She sat down heavily. "I clocked him on the eleventh day and I’ve had him four times since and he’s never once broken the pattern and he’s never once looked at the door."

Edrin said, "Then how do you know he’s watching it?"

"Because I’d have done it exactly the same way at his age, and I’d have thought I was being clever about it."

"Did you take him?"

"No." She got her boots off. "I followed him. Two hours west, to a farm at a place called Grey Sallow, and there’s a woman there of about fifty-five who does not farm."

"How do you know she doesn’t farm?"

"Because I lay in a ditch and watched her for a day and a half and she did not do one single thing that a farmer does." Souk rubbed her face. "She writes. All day. At a table by a window, with the shutter half up."

Nobody spoke for a moment.

"And the rent," Souk said. "That’s the other thing. The third cottage at Dunnock Mill is rented, quarterly, and it’s been rented for nineteen years, and Oram Deel doesn’t own it and doesn’t know who does. But somebody takes that money, and somebody writes it in a book, and I’ve got the name of the land agent at Ashvale."

Hanne said, "Then why do you look like that?"

Souk was quiet for a while.

"Because I asked the boy’s name at the mill," she said. "Just casually, in the way you do. And the miller’s wife said he’s a good lad and he’s been coming up since he was six, and he brings a letter twice a year, and she said the family name."

"And?"

"Marn."

[Hearthroot — 4-18 Frostmere, 334 A.Z. — Days 197-211]

[News of the classification received 4 Frostmere. Read aloud twice, in the long room, before sixty-odd citizens.]

[A third party may satisfy a maintenance line. Cost: the full assessed sum. Does NOT touch the fourth reason.]

[Nothing done from Hearthroot improves the subject’s position by one copper.]

[SECOND BOOK — new column opened at the back: *What was done to citizens of this town by others.*]

[Entry one: Mataon Gaael, citizen, entry forty-five. Signed by 141 hands.]

[Souk, returned 18 Frostmere after 26 days: a boy of ~12-13 on a nine-day pattern · a woman of ~55 at Grey Sallow who writes all day and does not farm · the third cottage is RENTED, quarterly, nineteen years, through a land agent at Ashvale.]

[The boy’s family name is MARN.]

Kess did not go to bed that night.

Hanne found her at eleven with the second book open and a candle down to the stub, on the new page, reading entry one over and over.

"You can’t do anything about it by looking at it."

"I know." Kess did not move. "I keep getting to the same place. He put a hundred and eighty-eight of us in a book so that nobody could say we weren’t there. And then he went and stood in a room and let them put him in one."

"Yes."

"And the only difference between the two books is which one you’d rather be in."

Hanne sat down on the end of the bench.

"That’s the first grown-up thing you’ve said," she said, "and I’d rather you’d said it at forty."