Coll Ithred came back to Ardenmoor on the twenty-seventh of Sylphenia, on the same horse and in a worse coat, and this time he did not ask for ten minutes.
Barni saw him first and did not get up. Orvek came out of the tally hut, looked at him for a moment, and went back in.
"You've eleven weeks of dust on you," he said, from the saddle. "Is there anywhere in this village that sells anything?"
"There's a shop that sells four things."
"Which four?"
"Candles, thread, salt, and whatever Wenna Stoat has decided you need."
"That'll do."
***
He would not say it in the shop and he would not say it in the long house, and in the end they sat on the wall by the trough. That was where Mataon had opened fourteen sheets four months ago, and he had not told anybody that either.
Ithred took a paper out of his coat and held it without giving it over. He turned it over twice while he decided how to start.
"I've done the thing," he said. "And before you read it I want to say two sentences, because after you read it you'll be doing arithmetic and I'll have lost you."
"Go on."
"First. It doesn't work." He said it flatly. "It's not a prescribed form, it can't be, and I knew that on the second of Pyrelon and I did it anyway."
"And second?"
"Second is that my grandfather cleared four hundred silver in nineteen years and got a clerk's note, and I have been telling that story as though it were a triumph since I could talk." Ithred looked at the flats. "I'd like there to be a piece of paper in the world with his name on it. That's the whole of the reason and it's not a good one."
He handed it across. Mataon took it with both hands, because his fingers were still bad from the face.
It was a certificate of discharge.
Blank, printed, with a house seal at the foot and a line for a name and a line for a sum and a line for a date.
Mataon had seen it once before, on a wall in the sun, in this man's hand, being used as the last card in a very good argument.
Underneath it was a second sheet, and the second sheet was the actual thing.
*House Ithred hereby releases the form of its certificate of discharge to any office of record in Deuna, without charge, without condition, and without any claim of ownership in it now or afterwards.*
*The plates are at Marrow Hill. Any office may take an impression. We will pay the carriage.*
*Filed with the central roll, 2 Pyrelon 336.*
Mataon read it three times.
"You gave it away."
"I gave away a form. It cost me the plates and about nine silver in carriage that nobody has claimed yet." Ithred was watching the road. "Three hundred and eleven lines and not one of them discharged in three generations, and the story I grew up on turns out to be a note from a clerk, and I have spent eleven weeks trying to work out what a man does about that."
"And this is what he does."
"This is what he could reach."
Mataon put both sheets on the wall and weighted them with a stone. The wind came round the shoulder of the cut at about that hour, and he had lost a page to it in Frostmere and had not forgiven himself.
"You said it doesn't work."
"It doesn't. Prescription's a central function. A form from a private house isn't *the prescribed form* and never will be, and any officer in the country would be right to say so." Ithred shrugged. "So it's a gesture. I'm aware. You can say it."
"No."
"Say what, then."
Mataon looked at the two sheets for a long time.
"Until the second of Pyrelon," he said, "if a subject in this country asked where the certificate of discharge was, the honest answer was *nobody ever made one.*"
"Yes."
"That's what's on the roll. In my own matter. Thirty-one words." He put his finger on the second sheet. "As of the second of Pyrelon the honest answer is different. It's *one exists, it is free, the plates are at Marrow Hill, and it is not the prescribed form.*"
Ithred turned round on the wall.
"That's the same answer."
"It is not remotely the same answer." Mataon's voice had gone quiet in the way it did. "The first one ends the conversation. There is nothing to ask afterwards. The second one has a question inside it that somebody has to answer eventually, and the question is *why not.*"
Barni got up off the flagstone and came over. He had not moved for the whole conversation until then.
"Say it in one sentence," he said.
"He hasn't made a certificate. He's made it impossible to say the centre couldn't have."
Ithred sat with that for a while. He picked something off his sleeve that was not there.
"I didn't do it for that."
"I know. You did it for a dead man's name on a page and you told me so before you handed it over, and that's the only reason I believe the rest." Mataon folded the sheets carefully. "But I've spent two years learning that the useful thing and the reason are almost never the same thing, and I'd rather you knew what you'd actually made."
"Which is?"
"A permanent, filed, uncontested fact that the thing was easy." He handed them back. "Nine silver in carriage. That's what it cost to prove that two hundred and eleven years of nobody prescribing a form was not a difficulty. It was a decision, or it was an afternoon, and either way somebody is going to have to say which."
Ithred stayed two days, and it surprised everybody, including Ithred.
He looked at the quarry returns and said three things about them. They saved the ganger about four silver a season and he would not take anything for it. He argued with Wenna Stoat about the chapel roof and lost. He ate at her table twice and paid above the going rate the second time, having noticed, and got looked at for it in a way he did not understand until Mataon explained it on the road out.
On the second evening he asked the question he had ridden nine days to ask, and asked it while looking at a wall, because that is how men like him ask things.
"Do you want me to buy your line?"
"No."
"I'm not offering to be kind. It's the same offer as the wall. It's a better rate and you'd have a creditor with a door."
"I know. And the answer's the same as it was on the wall, and it'll be the same in ten years." Mataon leaned back. "But I'd like to say the other half this time, because last time I only said the useful part.
"You'd have been a good creditor. That's not nothing. I've spent a year in a country where the best thing on offer was a better owner, and you were the best version of it I met, and I said no to you before I'd worked out that saying no to you was going to be the hardest one."
Ithred did not say anything for a while.
"That's the first time anybody in this trade has told me I was the best version of it," he said. "And I notice you managed to make it sound like an insult and mean it as the opposite."
"I've been taught by a dog."
"That explains a great deal about the whole of you."
[Ardenmoor — 27-29 Sylphenia, 336 A.Z. — Days 375-377]
[HOUSE ITHRED RELEASES THE FORM of its certificate of discharge to any office of record in Deuna. No charge, no condition, no claim of ownership. Plates at Marrow Hill. Carriage paid by the house.]
[Filed with the central roll, 2 Pyrelon 336.]
[It is NOT the prescribed form and cannot be. Prescription is a central function. Ithred knew this before he did it.]
[His stated reason: three generations, 311 lines, none discharged, and a founder's story that turns out to be a clerk's note. He wanted a piece of paper in the world with his grandfather's name on it.]
[THE ACTUAL EFFECT — the honest answer to *where is the certificate* has changed:]
[Before 2 Pyrelon 336: *nobody ever made one.* Ends the conversation.]
[After: *one exists, it is free, the plates are at Marrow Hill, and it is not the prescribed form.* Contains the question WHY NOT.]
[Cost of proving that two hundred and eleven years of non-prescription was not a difficulty: nine silver in carriage.]
[Offer to buy the line — refused a second time, with the second half said out loud.]
[Level 40 → Level 41]
[Stat points available: +3]
[Basis: reading a gesture for what it made rather than for what it was for]
[INT +1 · PER +1 · WIL +1]
[STR 23 · AGI 19 · END 33 · INT 46 · PER 48 · WIL 53]
[Reserved Mana: 7 — First Exception, open, day 334]
***
Orvek watched the whole two days and wrote nothing at all.
He waited until Ithred was out of sight on the north road. Then he wrote two lines, and would not be drawn on either of them.
*He did not come to give you the form. He has posted that everywhere by now.*
"Then why?"
*Because he has three hundred and eleven people and no idea what to do about them, and he has just found out that the only man in the country who might is a subject in a quarry.*
Mataon stood in the lane and looked up the north road for a while.
"He'll be back."
*He will be back with three hundred and eleven names,* Orvek wrote, *and you will have to decide whether you are a man who audits offices or a man that offices come to, and those are not the same job, and only one of them has ever been done by somebody who was not eventually made into a government.*
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