第5章 The Foundry Fails

The foundry's check-walk failed on the ninth day of the eighth month, and it failed in the way Ostre had said it would, which was quietly, and in the way Avelin had refused it, which was completely. Trenn came home at the seventh hour with ink on her wrists and her lunch box closed tight and she set the lunch box on the table and she sat down and she did not eat it, and Avelin came in from the stair at the same moment and she saw the lunch box and she saw the ink and she saw the face of her daughter and she knew, without asking, that the foundry was closed for the day and that the closure was not a fault of the metal and that it was a fault of the book. "Tell me," Avelin said. "It is done." "Who did it?" "No one. That is the part. No one did it. The book failed, and the book did not fail at a clerk's hand, and there is no clerk to name." "Then who is blamed." "Everyone. That is the part they call a failure of the walk." Avelin sat down at the table with her daughter across from her and the last of the day's light coming through the cloth Nyall had put on the window. "Nine hundred and twelve men and women," Trenn said. "They will not be paid for the week. Some of them will be let go. Two of them will be let go and kept on and told they will be paid next month, and next month they will be let go again, because that is what the House does with a failure it will not name." "Go on." "The foundry has asked the House for a master to take the read. The warden of the rolls refused them. He has exhausted his standing for the year. He is at four hundred and nine. And so the foundry has asked the House for the next one on the roll." "Which is me." "Which is you." "Tell them no." "I told them no." "Then why are you sitting here with ink on your wrists." "Because Ostre came to my desk at half past six and he told me that the foundry has asked the House to open a second measure for me, a measure of what the metal is spending and not the ledger, and he told me that the House has ruled that the second measure of a master who is a ward of the Hourhouse is to be kept by the House and not by the man at the bench, and he told me that Merric Mabry is to be sent from the Yard at the end of the month." Avelin looked at her daughter for a long time. "He told you that on my behalf." "He told me that you asked him to come to my desk." "I did not ask." "Then why did he come." Avelin did not answer that question, because the answer to it was the thing she had done on Tuesday when she had refused the ledger, and it was the thing that had moved her standing by ninety-eight Hours and it was the thing that had put the foundry in motion and it was the second measure working exactly the way Mabry had said it worked, which meant that she had already refused and spent, and the spending had gone to the metal, and the metal had gone to the bench, and the bench had gone to the clerk, and the clerk had gone to her daughter's desk. "He is afraid of you," Trenn said. "He is afraid of a ruling." "He is afraid of me because I will refuse too." "If you refuse, the foundry fails again, and two more men go home." "Then I will not refuse." "Do not." "I am telling you that I will not refuse. I am telling you that I will take the read of the foundry ledger and I will have the read of a hundred and forty clerks in a night and I will know where they sat and when they were ill, and I will give it back to them in the morning and they will never know, and you will have your check-walk, and two men will keep their places, and my mother will have a hundred and forty clerks inside her head for the length of one night." "That is eleven hundred and ninety Hours." "It is not eleven hundred and ninety Hours on your arm." "That is the point." "No. That is not the point." Trenn leaned forward and put both hands flat on the table and she put her reading spectacles on and she looked at her mother through them. "The point is that you will spend them anyway. The metal will take them. Mabry will measure them next month. And you will sit at this table and tell me that you did not spend them because the House did not write them down. And that is a lie I have heard once already." "Then ask me for the ledger." "I have asked." "Then the answer is no." "You have given me no." "I have given you no. You gave me a no first, which is the first no in nineteen years that I did not arrange, and I am giving it back to you now and I want you to know that the no is mine and I am not moving it and I will not move it and I will sit at this table for the rest of my eight and a half months and I will hold the ladder and I will eat the apples and I will read the list and I will not read the ledger of the Draymoor Foundry." Trenn took her spectacles off. She folded them into her coat. She picked up the lunch box and she opened it and she ate the bread and the salt, and she did not say anything, and Avelin sat across from her and ate nothing, because she had eaten with Nyall at the ninth hour, and the foundry was closed for the day, and two men were going home, and the second measure had done its work without her asking, and she was going to sit there and let it do the work. At the eleventh hour Ostre came to Vail Street himself, which was not in any book, and he stood on the step with his coat folded under one arm and he did not knock. "Warden Cindermill." "I am here." "I am here with a ruling of the warden of the rolls. I am here to ask you to take the read. I am here with the paper." She came to the door and stood in the door with the last of the dark behind her and the light of the street in front of her and the brass on her arm that read 1174 on a card and 1268 on the metal and 1174 on the House's book. "I have refused," she said. "You have refused twice." "I have refused." "Then I am telling you that the foundry has failed, and that the failure is on your roll, and that the roll will be closed on the fourteenth of the eighth month, and that the two men who were let go will not be let back, and that the House will not record any of it under your name." "I have refused." "Then I will take it." He put the paper on the step and he let it fall, and it landed on the wood with a sound like a small book being closed, and he turned and he walked down the long street, and he did not look back, and the paper stayed on the step, and Avelin stood in the door with her daughter's lamp going out behind her, and she looked at the paper, and she understood that the foundry would fail and that two men would go home and that no one would write it down. She let the paper stay where it was. She went in and she closed the door and she sat at the table with her daughter, and neither of them ate, and the lamp went out, and the second measure went on, and the metal did not move, and the metal would catch up next month, and Mabry would be sent from the Yard at the end of the month, and someone else would come with the ruler, and the card would be made, and the card would be worse. "There is a paper on the step," Trenn said. "I know." "We are not signing it." "We are not signing it." "Then they will close the roll." "They will close the roll." "Then I will lose my check-walk." "You will lose your check-walk." "And the two men will lose their places." "The two men will lose their places." Trenn put her hand on her mother's hand, and she held it, and the hand was steady, and the hand was hers, and Avelin held it too, and the holding cost nothing on the ledger, and it cost something on the metal, and the metal did not say so, and the metal would say so next month, and the month was not next month yet. ---