Chapter 7 The Bench That Remains

Mabry had eleven days, and he spent the first three of them in the Yard on his own bench with the loupe in his eye and the file on his knee and the cards in the drawer, and on the fourth day Avelin came to the Yard at the third hour and he let her in without asking and he put the loupe away before she had sat down. "Eleven days," Mabry said. "Eleven days." "You have come for the measure." "I have come for the eleven days." "The measure is at the end of the month. That is the day I am sent." "I know." "Then you have come early." "Yes." "Then I will give you the early part, because there is nothing else in the Yard for a warden who is not taking a payment, and because I have a card to make and I would rather make it now and have it made." He laid the card on the bench. It was the card he had made last month, with the line he had drawn on it, and the line had been drawn with a ruler, and the blank half was still blank, and he had written on the second half in his own hand, in ink that was not the House's ink. "Eleven hundred and seventy-four," Mabry said. "That is what the House will write." "Yes." "Twelve hundred and sixty-eight." He ran his finger along the line. "That is what the metal says." "Yes." "Ninety-four Hours in a month." "Eight hundred and sixty-eight in a year." "Eight months and a half." "Yes." He sat back. He took the loupe out of his eye and put it on the bench, and his eyes were very bright in the grey light of the tube, and they were the eyes of a man who has been doing this for a long time and had decided at some point that it was not a kindness. "I have been at the Yard for twenty-nine years," Mabry said. "I know." "I have been measuring Overdrawn for nineteen of them. There have been thirty-one of you. I have measured all of them." "Then you know the numbers." "I know the numbers." "Then tell me what they do." "They spend. That is what they do. They spend, and the standing does not move, and then the metal catches up, and then the standing moves, and then the metal catches up again, and the standing moves again, and the person who is being measured knows the standing because it is on their arm, and the person who is being measured does not know the metal because the metal does not say anything, and I am the only one in Draymoor who has ever said anything about the metal for nineteen years, and that is why I am being sent." "Because of the card." "Because of the card. Because I write on the second half." Avelin put her arm out on the bench between them, the way she had done last month, and the brass came out of the cuff, and the morning light from the tube fell on it, and the metal was the colour of the metal, and the cut at the edge of the number was the fresh groove. "Measure me now," she said. "I will measure you at the end of the month." "Measure me now." Mabry looked at her for a long time, and he did not look surprised, and he did not move his face, and he reached for the file, and he did not pick it up, and he set his hand back on the bench, and the bench was a bench of wood and the wood was old and the wood had been sanded in the sixth year and the sanding was wearing through at the edge. "There is a rule," Mabry said. "The rule is that the measure is at the end of the month. The rule is not in a book. The rule is in me, and if I break the rule the man who comes after me will not have a rule, and the man who comes after me will not write on the second half, and your number will be in the rolls and not on a card, and you will not know it until the exhaustion." "Then break the rule." "I have kept the rule for nineteen years and thirty-one people, and I will keep it for the twelfth month, and at the end of the month I will measure you, and I will write the number, and I will write the date, and I will show it to you, and then I will be sent, and you will have the card, and the card will be yours, and no one else in Draymoor will have it, and that is everything I have to give you." Avelin took the card back. She put it in her coat, next to the other card, and she stood up from the bench, and the bench creaked under her the way it creaked under everyone, and the creak was a sound that had been in the Yard for twenty-nine years. "Ninety-four Hours in a month," she said. "Ninety-four Hours in a month." "And the standing will not move." "The standing will not move until I write it." "Then you are the only person in Draymoor who can move my standing." "I am the only person in Draymoor who will put it in words." There was a difference between those two sentences, and Mabry knew it, and Avelin knew it, and neither of them said it, because to say it would have been to make it a rule, and rules were the thing the Yard was made of, and the Yard was sending him out of it in six days. "The foundry," Avelin said. "The foundry has no master." "The foundry has a roll that is closed." "The foundry has a roll that is closed, and a man who let two people go, and a check-walk that walks a book with no one to read it, and a hundred and forty clerks who are sitting in a room and not being read, and the book is failing, and the book will keep failing, and the failure will be recorded in the rolls, and the rolls will keep the record." "Under whose name." "That is the question the foundry asked, and the House did not answer, and the man on your step recorded the refusal of the answer." Avelin walked to the door of the Yard and she stood in the door, and the long street was behind her, and the Yard was in front of her, and the bench was in the middle of the room with the ruler on it and the file on it and the cards in the drawer with the lock on the drawer, and the lock was the House's lock, and the House had a key, and the key was in the rolls. "I will come in six days," she said. "You will come in six days." "Then you will measure me." "I will measure you at the end of the month." "You will measure me in six days, or you will not measure me at all, because the man who comes after you will not write on the second half, and my number will be in the rolls, and I will not know it until the exhaustion, and the exhaustion will be on a calendar, and the calendar will be the House's, and the House will not show me the calendar." Mabry looked at her. He looked at her for a long time, and he did not move his face, and he did not say anything, and the light in the tube went on, and the Yard went on, and the bench was in the middle of the room, and the ruler was on the bench, and the file was on the knee of a man who was going to be sent from the Yard in six days. "Come on the fourteenth," Mabry said. "Not the fourteenth of the month. The fourteenth of next month. That is when the man comes after me, and I will be here on the fourteenth of next month, and I will measure you, and I will write the number, and I will write the date, and I will show it to you, and I will be sent at the end of the day, and you will have the card." "Then I will come on the fourteenth." "You will come on the fourteenth." She walked out of the Yard and down the long street and up to Vail Street, and the sun was high and the Yard bell struck the fourth hour, and the bell was one bell, and the cart was going up to the Yard, and the Yard was open, and the foundry was closed, and two men had no place, and the roll was closed, and the card was in her coat, and the card read 1174 on one side and 1268 on the other, and the difference between the two numbers was the length of her life, and the length of her life was eight months and a half, and the eight months and a half were on a calendar that no one would write for her except herself. She went in the door of the house and she buttoned her cuff and she put the card in the drawer under the table, and Trenn was at the table with the list turned face down, and Nyall was at the door with the bread, and the bread was warm, and the step was dry, and the window had the cloth on it, and the cloth held, and the day went on. ---