Ardenmoor was nine houses, a chapel with no bell, a quarry that had stopped being profitable eleven years ago, and a shop.
They came in on the tenth of Pyrelon in the late afternoon with the cart, and the driver put them down by the water trough and said the first three words of the journey. They were "quarry’s up there."
Mataon did not go up there. He put his pack against the trough and looked at the village for a while.
Orvek sat down on a stone. Barni went and drank.
He looked at the shop and it took him about four seconds to find it. A receiving house has a board, and this one had been repainted recently and badly.
*ORDINARY POST · PARCELS HELD · BOXES BY THE QUARTER*
The keeper was a woman of about fifty-five called Wenna Stoat, and she had a shop that sold four things and a wall of numbered pigeonholes behind the counter, and she had already decided about him before he opened his mouth.
"You’re the allocation."
"Yes."
"Then the quarry’s up there and the lodging’s the long house behind the chapel and you’re two days early, which nobody ever is." She wiped the counter. "And you’ve come in here first instead of going up, so you want a box or you want somebody else’s."
"I want to ask about a box."
"No."
He put both hands on the counter.
"I haven’t asked yet."
"You’ve come nine hundred miles with a face like that," said Wenna Stoat. "I’ve been in this shop twenty-six years and I have had four men come in with that face and all four of them wanted a name, and I gave none of them one, and two of them shouted, and one of them offered me eleven silver."
"What did you do with the eleven silver?"
"I looked at it for a good while and then I said no."
"Why?"
"Because a receiving house is only worth anything if it holds." She put the cloth down. "The whole of my trade is that a person can pay me by the quarter and know that what comes here stops here. If I give a name for eleven silver, then everybody’s name is worth eleven silver, and I might as well shut."
He sat on the step outside for about half an hour and did not go anywhere.
Barni sat with him. Orvek went and found the long house and came back and said nothing about it.
"You’re not going to argue with her."
"No."
"You could. You’ve got a paper that says you’re allocated here and you’ve got a paper that says the office of record’s service address is on her wall and you’ve got—"
"I know exactly what I’ve got." Mataon watched the road. "And every single piece of it works, and if I use it she stops being a woman who holds and starts being a woman who was made to give, and I’d rather have the first one in this village for the next four months than the second one for an afternoon."
"Then what?"
"Then I’m going to go up to the quarry and work, because I was told to."
He worked eight days.
He went up at first light and came down at dark and slept badly and did it again.
The quarry paid five coppers and had eleven men on it and the ganger was a decent bully of about forty who took two days to work out that Mataon could read and then had him doing the returns in the evenings for nothing.
He did them properly, and asked for his sheet at the end of the first week, and the ganger had to send to Sarrow for the form because nobody at Ardenmoor had ever asked for one.
On the ninth morning he went back to the shop and bought a candle. He did not mention the box.
On the eleventh he bought thread. Orvek waited outside both times and did not ask about either.
On the fourteenth Wenna Stoat said, "You’ve stopped."
"Stopped what?"
"Coming in here to not ask me." She put the thread on the counter. "Fourteen days. I counted. Four men in twenty-six years and every one of them had a go at me inside the hour, and you’ve bought a candle and some thread and asked me about the chapel roof."
"The chapel roof is genuinely interesting."
"The chapel roof is a disgrace and you know it." She looked at him for a while. "Go on then. Ask me the thing you were going to ask, and I’ll tell you now that the answer’s still no, but you’ve been civil for a fortnight and I’d rather hear it than have it sit in my shop."
Mataon took his hands off the counter and put them at his sides. He had been thinking about that for two days.
"I don’t want the name," he said. "I want to know whether the book is up to date."
Wenna Stoat stopped.
"That’s not what any of them asked."
"No."
"Say it again."
"You keep a collection book. Every receiving house does. Who took what, and when, and a mark for it." He kept his voice completely ordinary. "I don’t want to see it, I don’t want a name out of it, and I don’t want you to break a single thing you’ve held for twenty-six years. I want to know one fact. Is box twelve current."
***
She thought about it for a long time and he let her.
Neither of them said anything. Outside, somebody drove four sheep past the window and shouted at one of them.
"Twenty-two years," she said at last.
"That’s the box?"
"That’s how long it’s been paid. Twenty-two years, a year in advance, every year, in coin, without being asked and without ever being late." Her hands were flat on the counter. "Except once."
"Once."
"In three twenty-five it came eleven days late, with a letter apologising. It’s the only letter I’ve had from that box in twenty-two years, and I’ve thought about it more than I’d like to admit."
Mataon did not move. He kept his hands where they were and did not look at the pigeonholes.
"You’ve told me a great deal more than I asked for."
"I’ve told you nothing that has a name in it, and I’ve checked that twice while I was saying it." Wenna Stoat picked the thread back up and put it in his hand. "And I’ll tell you why, and then you’re going to go up to the quarry.
"Four men came in here wanting a name. You came in wanting to know if a book was current. That’s a different sort of man and I’ve been thirty years learning to tell the difference and I have never once been wrong about it."
"That isn’t a reason."
"No, it isn’t." She turned to the pigeonholes. "The reason is that whoever has that box has been coming into my shop for twenty-two years, and I’ve never once had a conversation with him. I’ve started to think that’s a strange way for a person to live. I’ve been carrying it a while, and today somebody asked me a question I could answer."
[Ardenmoor — 10-24 Pyrelon, 335 A.Z. — Days 267-281]
[Ardenmoor: nine houses, a chapel, a failing quarry, one receiving house. Keeper: Wenna Stoat, twenty-six years.]
[Quarry: five coppers a day. Sheet requested week one — Sarrow had to send the form. Nobody at Ardenmoor had ever asked.]
[BOX TWELVE — the service address of the office of record. Paid twenty-two years, a year in advance, in coin, never late.]
[ONE EXCEPTION: in 325 the payment came eleven days late, with a letter of apology. The only letter ever sent from that box.]
[325 is the year Trethe Marn died and was buried at Coldwell.]
[Feat recognised — asking the smaller question for the fourteenth time in a row]
[PER +1 → 45]
[Level 38 — held]
[STR 22 · AGI 19 · END 32 · INT 43 · PER 45 · WIL 49]
[Reserved Mana: 7 — First Exception, open, day 240]
***
He got back to the long house that night and sat on the end of the bed with the thread still in his hand.
"Say it," said Barni, from the floor.
"Twenty-two years."
"Yes."
"The office has held four hundred and six people for nineteen years. The box has been paid for twenty-two." Mataon put the thread down. "Which means he had the box for three years before there was an office."
Barni got up off the floor and came and put his front paws on the bed.
"Three years of a paid box and nothing coming to it."
"Or three years of something coming to it that we don’t know about." He lay back on the bed and looked at the roof. "Either way he took a shelf in an empty village three years before he took a seal, and a man does not do that by accident, and he does not do it because somebody handed him a job."
Orvek, from the next bed, wrote on the slate and turned it to catch the lamp.
*He planned it.*
"He planned it," Mataon agreed. "Nineteen years of instruments and twenty-two years of a shelf. Somebody sat down before any of this and worked out where the post would go."
*Then he is not a clerk who drifted.*
"No."
*And he is not a man who takes any hand that comes.*
Mataon lay very still for a moment. Then he sat up and put his feet on the floor.
"No," he said. "That’s the bit I’ve had wrong since Coldwell. He’s not lonely and waiting. He’s early."
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