Administrator Of A Broken World

He costed it out on the tenth and it took him two evenings, and when he had it he wrote the figure at the bottom and looked at it for a long time without any expression at all.

Fair copies of the extract, eleven entries, in a clerk's hand that would be accepted: thirty-one silver.

Attestation by the keeper before an officer, with the officer's travel: nineteen.

Carriage to the central roll, at the rate for sealed matter: eight and four.

The roll fee: twenty-two.

Service copies, four of them, because a thing served on one office is a thing one office can lose: fourteen and two.

**Ninety-four silver and six.**

He had eleven coppers in a tin and a wage that went to the line before it reached his hand, and he had known all of that before he started adding, and he had added it anyway.

"Say the other number," said Barni.

"Four years."

"Say it properly."

"If I do it the slow way — one entry at a time, out of what the ganger pays me over and above the line, with the keeper attesting for free and me walking the copies myself — four years." Mataon put the pencil down. "Nara Wray is thirty-nine. The girl at Bell is fourteen. In four years she's eighteen and she's still not been told, and somebody may have got to her by then with a better offer than the truth."

*Then it is four years,* Orvek wrote.

"Yes."

*I did not say that to be agreed with.*

"I know. I'm agreeing with it anyway, and I'd like it noted that I did it without making a speech."

***

Wenna Stoat had it out of him in about ninety seconds on the twelfth, in the shop, by the direct method of asking twice.

Then she shut the shop, which she had done four times in thirty years, and two of those were funerals.

Nine households came. It was the tally hut because the chapel was cold and the long house was Orvek's, and they sat on the benches meant for the quarry rolls and the ganger stood at the back because he would not sit in front of Wenna Stoat.

She read the list out. All five items and the figure at the bottom.

Then she said, "Right," and looked at Mataon, and Mataon stood up and said no.

That took a while.

"It isn't pride." Mataon stayed on his feet until the room went quiet. "I've had a year of taking things off people and I stopped being proud about it round the time I stopped being any use."

He waited until the ganger had finished not believing him.

"It's that a subject who borrows has a creditor. And a creditor's a thing anybody with money can buy off you. Any house in this country with money could go to whoever holds ninety-four silver of mine and take it off them at a profit, and then they'd hold me, and the document would have a price on it, and everything in it would be worth exactly what the man who owned me decided."

The ganger said, "So we give it you."

"Giving it me is worse. It counts as maintenance and it goes on the line as a receipt, and then in eleven years somebody adds it up and I owe you all of it with interest and none of you meant that."

Somebody at the back said something about lawyers that got a laugh.

"He's right, though," said Nara Wray, from the door. "I've read the paper in my box. He's right and it's disgusting and he's right."

It went quiet in the way rooms do when the obvious plan has died.

Wenna Stoat put both hands on the bench in front of her. She let the room finish. Then she took her time about standing up.

"Then we won't give it him."

"Wenna—"

"Sit down, you've had your turn." She did not raise her voice. "Who keeps the book?"

Nara Wray straightened up off the door frame.

"Mine."

"Who's buried in it?"

"Ours."

"And who lives in the nine houses?" Wenna Stoat looked round the hut once. "Not his. He's been here eight months and he's in the long house on the ganger's word and he hasn't got a stick in this valley."

Nobody said anything to that, and she let it sit for a moment before she went on.

"So we're not lending him anything and we're not giving him anything. **We're filing our own document.** Eleven people out of this parish have died and the office that's supposed to be told wasn't, and I'd like to know why, and I don't need his permission to ask and he can't stop me."

Mataon sat down slowly.

"That's not my document."

"No. It's better and you know it's better and you've gone that colour because you didn't get there first."

He put his hand over his mouth for a moment.

"It's better because they can't answer it the way they'd have answered me." His voice had gone quiet in the way it did. "A subject asking about his own line is a man with an interest. Nine householders reporting eleven deaths nobody asked them about is a parish doing its duty late, and there's no answer to that except the true one."

He looked at the paper on the bench and then at the room.

"And my name isn't on it anywhere."

"Your name isn't on it anywhere," Wenna Stoat agreed. "That's the one part of this I'd have paid for on its own."

***

The subscription paper went round the hut that evening and was full in about forty minutes.

She wrote it out herself, in the ledger hand, with a column for the sum and a column for the mark. At the top she put *this is not a loan and no repayment is offered or will be accepted.*

Then she made every person in the hut read that line out loud before signing. It took an hour. It was the whole of why she had written it.

The ganger put in sixteen and argued for eleven minutes that the roll fee had been costed wrong. He was wrong. He was wrong at length, with a stub of chalk, on the back of a tally board, and when it was shown to him he said "well, then" and put in another two.

Isbet Renn put in twenty-one and would not say where it came from and nobody asked.

The two women from the well put in nine between them and made a small performance of splitting it exactly, and were still doing the arithmetic out loud when Wenna Stoat took the paper off them and wrote it down as nine.

Nara Wray put in nothing and gave four days of her own hand for the fair copies, and the meeting valued that at thirty-one, and she said it was worth twenty-four, and she was overruled by everybody in the room including the ganger.

Tobin Wray put in four coppers.

Wenna Stoat took them. She did not make a speech about it and she did not refuse them and she did not give them back afterwards. She wrote *four coppers* in the column, and *T. Wray* in the mark column, and moved on to the next person, and the boy went out into the lane and sat on the wall for about half an hour on his own.

Barni went and sat with him and did not say anything, because there were nine adults thirty feet away.

The total came to ninety-six and one.

Wenna Stoat gave the extra one and seven back in the order it had come in, smallest first, and would not be argued out of it, and the argument about that took longer than the argument about the roll fee.

[Ardenmoor — 10-20 Sylphenia, 337 A.Z. — Days 478-488]

[THE COST, itemised: fair copies 31 · attestation with officer's travel 19 · carriage at sealed rate 8s4 · roll fee 22 · four service copies 14s2. **Total 94 silver 6.**]

[Mataon has eleven coppers and a wage that goes to the line before it reaches his hand. The slow version — one entry at a time out of over-wage — is four years. He accepted four years before anyone offered him anything.]

[HE REFUSED THE LOAN: a subject who borrows has a creditor, and a creditor can be bought. He refused the gift: a gift to a subject is a maintenance payment, enters the line as a receipt, and returns with interest.]

[WENNA STOAT'S SOLUTION — the village does not fund him. **The village files its own document.** The book is the keeper's, the dead are the parish's, the nine houses are theirs. Eleven people died and the office that should have been told was not.]

[Why it is stronger: a subject asking about his own line is a man with an interest. Nine householders reporting eleven unreported deaths is a parish doing its duty late, and the only answer to that is the true one.]

[MATAON'S NAME APPEARS NOWHERE ON IT.]

[Subscription full in forty minutes. Header, read aloud by every signatory before signing: *this is not a loan and no repayment is offered or will be accepted.*]

[Ganger 16, then 2 more after losing an argument about the roll fee. Isbet Renn 21, unexplained. Nara Wray four days of copying, valued by the room at 31 over her objection. Tobin Wray four coppers, taken, entered, not remarked upon.]

[Total raised 96s1. The surplus of 1s7 returned smallest first.]

[Feat recognised — identifying a document that was never his]

[PER +1 → 50]

[Level 42 — held]

[STR 23 · AGI 19 · END 33 · INT 47 · PER 50 · WIL 55]

[Reserved Mana: 7 — First Exception, open, day 334]

He walked up past the chapel afterwards because he could not go inside yet, and Barni came with him, and neither of them said anything until the lights were below them.

"Ask it," said Barni.

"Who are we fighting?"

"That's not a question, that's you setting up."

"It is a question and I've had it for two days." Mataon sat down on the bank. "There's no one. There's no man in this for me to beat. There's a clause, and a dead office, and a woman who walks thirty-four doors, and a clerk who writes the same four words three hundred and seventy-one times a quarter. I keep waiting for somebody to come out of it with a face on and there isn't anybody."

"Would you rather there were?"

"Yes." He said it straight away and then heard himself. "Yes, and that's the worst thing I've admitted out loud this year, and you can have it for free."

Orvek was still up when they came in, and had been writing, and turned the board round without being asked.

*Nine houses raised ninety-six silver in forty minutes for a matter that will not benefit one of them, on a Sylphenia evening, with the shop shut.*

"I know."

*You do not know. You have spent a year proving that the country runs on documents and that nothing else in it can be relied upon, and tonight nine people who owe you nothing went into a tin for a dead man's name and a girl at Bell they have never met.*

*That is not in any of your files and there is no clause for it, and it is the second time this year I have watched you win by not being the cleverest person in the room.*

"When was the first?"

*You were unconscious. Ask the dog.*