House Slate  ·  the codex passed folio xc   recto

In the old hand, much faded, the ink browned where a thumb has rested too often:

The first winter I lost six. The second, two. The third, none. Write that down for whoever wakes next — the arithmetic of it, not the grief. Grief does not stack in the storehouse.

Wood before iron. Always. Iron is a question you ask in spring; wood is the answer winter already wrote. A wall at level two is not a wall, it is a coffin with a view. Three, or do not bother.

The market at Unicorn Town will tell you what it wants, never what you need. Sell fish on the third day after a raid, when the Cobalt House panics and overbuys. Buy wheat when nobody is dying — that is the only time it is cheap.

Verdant once kept a promise. Once. Crimson will not whisper unless they need something; when they do, the price is always paid by us. Ember is honest, which makes them dangerous in a different way — they will tell you they are coming.

The first whisper is bait. The second is the trade. Wait for the second.

Bandits come from the west ridge in pairs, from the south in fours. Pairs you fight. Fours you feed — one sack of wheat at the treeline is cheaper than four funerals. Pride is a tax the Book has been paying for seven ninety winters. Stop paying it.

Here the old hand stops mid-stroke. A fresh nib begins below, blacker, the letters rounder, less sure:

Here ends the Twenty-Third Elder of House Slate. The Twenty-Fourth wakes,
and reads, and is afraid.

A short entry, set apart, in the careful hand reserved for the dead:

Pell of the Long Reach

Drowned at the weir hauling the second net, the one we did not need.
He was the one who laughed when the rope sang.
The weir is quieter now.
Let no one fish alone on a grey morning.

— Twenty‑Third

Fresh ink, the new hand again, pressing harder than it needs to:

I have read you three times this morning. I do not know your face. I know your hand — the way your w leans, the way you crossed out seven and wrote six, as if the seventh was not yours to count.

I will keep your wood-before-iron. I will keep your second whisper.

I will not feed the bandits. Forgive me. I read your line about pride and I think it was you who was tired, not the rule that was true. We are at six clansmen. We cannot afford a sack we did not lose to a blade. If I am wrong, the Twenty-Fifth will cross me out the way you crossed out seven, and I will deserve it.

It is the second week of autumn. Aurum has gone quiet, which I am told is the sound they make before they move.

I am laying in wood.
I am laying in wood.
I am laying in wood.

Pell, I did not know you. The weir was quieter this morning. I think I heard what you meant.