Chapter 3 The List

Trenn Balcombe made her list on the back of a check-walk sheet, in the ink of the foundry, because paper at home was a thing they did not buy in the last quarter of the year and the sheet had one useful column left on it. The list had a heading that said *what Mother can still do this month*, and under the heading there were nine lines, and each line had a number, and the numbers were not Hours, and Trenn knew that, and that was the part of it that made the list a list and not a ledger. One was a held breath across the bridge. Two was a single pull of three hundred stones. Three was a read of a house of forty clerks. Four was the long street at full pace without slowing. Five was a lift of a child from the floor. Six was a stair climbed in one step at a time without the hands. Seven was a night's watch. Eight was a hand held across a fire. Nine was a name remembered correctly. Trenn wrote it the first week of the seventh month and she revised it the second week and she revised it again the third week, and by the fourth week it was a thing she knew and did not read, which was the aim of the list, which was that her mother should be able to read it too and find nothing had been lost. There had been a loss already. It was the seventh item, the night's watch, and it had gone in the second week, and Avelin had noticed it on the same night, which was the first thing to happen in Avelin's life that her daughter had not noticed before her. Avelin had gone to the window at the fourth hour and looked out at the street and stood there, and Trenn, who was awake because she slept in the room below and heard everything the house did, heard her stand there and heard her breathe, and Trenn understood that her mother had gone out to keep a watch that there was nothing to watch and had stood there eleven minutes and had not thought about doing it until the eleventh minute was almost finished. "Mother," Trenn had said, from the stair. "I was getting the bread." "The bread is at Nyall's. It is at the seventh hour." "I am early." "I know. I have been up since the second." "Then we are both early." They stood in the door of the stair and looked at each other, and neither of them said the thing, because neither of them could say it yet, and because to say it would have been to make it true in a way that a list did not make it true. A list was a kind of mercy. A list let you count and keep counting and still be a person. That afternoon Avelin went to the Yard again, and this time she was not asked. She was waiting, which was not in the book of the House, and the clerk Wrenno came out to her with a card in her hand and did not look surprised, and Mabry came out behind her with a ruler and did not look surprised either. "You are here for the measure," Mabry said. "I am here for the ruling." "The ruling is in the rolls. I have no copy." "I did not ask you for a copy. I asked you for the measure." Mabry looked at him as if he had said something in a foreign tongue. "Then you have it," Mabry said. "Come in." He cut her band that afternoon. He cut it with the small file and he cut it in the daylight from the tube, and he cut it in front of her because there was no reason not to, and she held her arm out on the bench between them and did not move, and the metal dust fell on the wood of the bench in a line that was a shade lighter than the bench itself. "Twelve hundred and sixty-eight," Mabry said. "That is ninety-eight Hours less than Monday." "That is ninety-eight Hours less than Monday." "I paid no Hours on Tuesday." "Then the metal is right and the ledger is wrong." "And your card says I spent them." "My card says the metal spent them. The ledger says the House paid for them. Those are different sentences and I am showing you both of them." He swept the dust off the bench. "You refused the foundry on Tuesday. That refused a payment of eleven hundred and ninety Hours. It also cost you nothing on the ledger." "And it cost me ninety-eight." "It cost you ninety-eight." "Then I will refuse again." "You cannot refuse and spend less at the same time. You refused the foundry and you spent nothing on the ledger, and then you spent ninety-eight on the metal, which means that something else spent, and the something else is the part of you that stays standing when you refuse a payment you have already been given." He set the ruler down. "You are paying with the refusing. That is the second measure, and it is the only measure that is honest, because it is the only one that will not let you lie to yourself about it." Avelin took her arm back off the bench. "Nine and a half months," she said. "Eight and a half now." "And you have written it on a card." "I have written it on a card, and I will write it on another card next month, and the next card will be worse, and I will show you that too, because the House would not show it and I am the only one in Draymoor who is allowed to, and that is not a kindness, that is a job." "Then do the job for one more month." "I will do it for as long as the metal lasts." "Then I will go home." "You can go home. There is no rule against going home." She went home, and Trenn was at the table with the list turned face down, because the list had been revised in the morning and there were eight lines now and the ninth was a line of nothing at all, and Avelin sat down at the table and turned the list over and read her daughter's ink. "Eight," Avelin said. "Eight." "I counted nine." "Seven now. The watch went, and the stair went. I watched you do the stair yesterday. You took the hands." "I did not." "You took the rail. Twice." Avelin looked at the list. She looked at the line she had written for the stair, which said *a stair climbed in one step at a time without the hands*, and she thought about the rail, and she understood that she had taken it in the second week and that she had not told anyone, and that her daughter had seen it before she had felt it, and that was the part of being a daughter that Avelin had never been able to buy. "Move the stair to eight," Avelin said. "It is already at eight." "Then why is there a ninth line with nothing on it?" Trenn looked up. She had her reading spectacles in her hand, and she was holding them by the arms, and she was not putting them on. "Because I have to know," Trenn said, "how many there were before." ---