Chapter 3: 3 | Provisional Appointment

The appointment came on Friday, at the hour. She had stayed over meaning to leave. The fell wanted a dry morning and Friday had brought one, and she was at the inn settling the account when the clerk arrived on the bell's note, carrying paper. Nobody said she was expected at the chapter house. The paper said it, in the order's crisp black: APPOINTMENT, PROVISIONAL, and under it her name, spelled right the first time, which was its own small landmark in the history of her file. At the chapter house the door opened with the note, and the corridor took her down its trough of worn flags, past the review room, to a smaller room where a desk had been made ready. On the desk sat a warrant card, a duties schedule, a field kit of the order's own issue, and a chair. The warrant card was cut from the heavy stock, like everything the order printed, and it carried her name and three titles, stacked, no one of which explained the others: PROVISIONAL CORRECTION AUTHORITY. TEMPORARY OFFICE OF REALIGNMENT. PROBATIONARY FUNCTIONARY OF SEQUENCE. "Which do I use?" she asked. The clerk wrote, and passed the slip across: Whichever is least alarming. The duties schedule was one line. Readings, as required. The wage was a county day rate, ordinary to the copper, payable each seventh day at the hour, and it would be paid at the hour, every seventh day, to the minute, for the whole of her employment, which after two years of the state's arithmetic felt less like money than like weather arriving when the almanac said it would. She asked after the oath of office, there being always an oath of office. The clerk wrote: There is no oath. Attendance is sufficient. She went through the…