Sitting jointly: for the province, Mr Tersey, commissioner. For the diocesan chapter, the Dean and two. For the house of Nekros, the Keeper of the eastern register. Four days are allowed. Order of business, ninth of June
He went out on the third flagstone, the same as always, and she had made him say the thing in the street first because she was not going to have him say it on a step in front of a doorkeeper.
“Say it in the road.”
Su’inn.
“You said it in a lane at Halverside and it was worth having, and I want the road version, and I want it now while there is a cart going past and nobody is listening.”
There was a pause.
I have been in eleven bodies and I have never once had anybody go into a room on my behalf, said Azaelis. There has not been an occasion. I have always been in the room, or I have not gone, and those were the only two arrangements I knew about. A cart went past. I am not able to help you and I am not able to hear you and I will not know one word of it until you come out, and if it goes badly I will find out by being in a cell.
“That is not the thing.”
No. Another pause. The thing is that I would like you to know that I am aware you are doing it, and that I have spent two years being extremely careful never to ask you for anything, and that I did ask you once, in a kitchen, and you were right to refuse me.
“Azaelis.”
Go in, he said.
She went in, and on the third flagstone he went out like a lamp, and she was one person, and she walked into the chapter room of the diocesan house at the eastern seat entirely alone.
There were nine people in the room and four of them mattered.
Tersey was the province, and he was about fifty and had a folder and the look of a man who had been given a thing nobody else wanted and had decided to do it properly out of spite.
The Dean she knew. He had read out Bircher’s finding two years ago in the voice of a man who had lost an argument, and he had two others with him, and one of them was the young one with the good voice who had said that is exactly what you would say.
And on the far side, alone at his own small table, was the Keeper of the eastern register of the house of Nekros, who was a woman of about sixty with a completely still face and a stack of ledgers a foot high, and who did not look up when Su’inn came in and did not look up when she sat down and did not look up for the first forty minutes.
Vasse was at the back with his satchel. Sarl was two rows behind him, in a good coat, looking as though he had been sick. Enner was at the end of a row with his hands on his knees.
Nobody sat next to anybody.
“Practitioner,” said Tersey. “You are not summoned and you are not charged and you are not sworn, and I want to begin by saying that plainly and having it written down, because there has been a great deal of correspondence about it and I would like it to stop. You are here at your own choice. You may leave at any hour.”
“I know.”
“Then.” He opened the folder. “The first question this sitting has to reach is what you are.”
Su’inn sat with her hands in her lap.
“I do not know,” she said.
The room did a thing.
She had been told it would. She had been told by an old man in a chair with a blanket on his legs, and she had thought about it for two days on a road and had not entirely believed him, and she sat in a chapter room at the eastern seat and watched nine people arrive at the same place at the same moment and find nothing there.
“I beg your pardon,” said Tersey.
“I do not know what I am,” said Su’inn. “I have had two years and two months and I have thought about very little else and I have not got an answer, and I am not going to pretend to you that I have one, because you will find the edges of it by Thursday and then you will spend Friday on my character instead of on the question.”
Tersey looked at her for a long moment.
Then he wrote something down, and she saw him write it, and it was short.
They went at it from three directions for most of the morning and none of the three worked.
The Dean’s people wanted her to be a person, because a person is a thing a chapter can be gentle to. The young one asked her twice, in different words, whether she felt herself to be the same woman who had lived in Kettle Ward, and both times she said she had no way to compare, and the second time she added that she did not think anybody did.
Tersey wanted her to be a status. He had fourteen pages of provincial practice and he went through most of them, and at about the fortieth minute he said, half to himself, that there was a form of words for a person under a stay of sentence and a form of words for a certified vessel and that the difficulty was that both of them were correct.
And the Keeper of the eastern register said nothing at all until noon.
Then she said, without looking up:
“The continuation is lodged.”
The room went quiet.
“Keeper.”
“It is lodged, it is witnessed, it is entered in the register of this house, and it has not been discharged.” She turned a page in the top ledger with one finger. “I have listened to four hours and I have heard a great deal about what this woman is. The house of Nekros has no position on what this woman is. The house of Nekros has an entry. The entry says that a continuation was performed at the third bell on a Tuesday in April, lawfully, upon a certified vessel, and that entry is correct, and no finding of this sitting can make it incorrect, and I am here to say so once and then to sit down.”
“And the woman,” said the Dean.
“Is not in the register,” said the Keeper.
She turned another page.
“I am aware of how that sounds,” she said. “I have been aware of it since June of last year and I have had a great deal of correspondence about it from a qualified man in a certified house who thinks I ought to feel something. I do not keep a register of feelings. If this sitting wishes to make an entry about the woman, it may make one, and I will copy it into my book and it will be there in two hundred years, and I would recommend that it be short.”
She is the only honest one in the room, Su’inn thought, and was surprised at herself, and then was not.
The day book went on the table at four o’clock.
She had been carrying it all morning in a tin box under her chair and she had been waiting for Tersey to run out of practice, and he ran out of practice at about ten to four and said, in the tone of a man closing a day:
“We will come tomorrow to the transfer house record, which I understand exists in a reconstruction only.”
“It does not,” said Su’inn.
She put the box on the table and took the oilcloth off it and put the day book of the transfer house of the eastern seat, original, torn about four inches at the top of the third page, in the middle of the table in front of three authorities.
Sarl made a noise at the back of the room.
“That is my book,” he said.
“Factor.”
“That is my book, that is the original, I have had it listed outstanding for two years, I have written fifteen letters about that book.” He was on his feet. “Where has it been?”
“Under a stone in a vestry at Cadder Fen,” said Su’inn.
“Under a.”
“It was given to me on the third of May by the priest who took it out of your house, who is sixty-six and dying and who has been keeping it because he said he would give it to the province the day the province told him what it meant to do with what is written in it.” She sat back down. “You are going to sit for three more days. I would say that is near enough.”
Nobody said anything for about four seconds.
Then the Dean said, “Commissioner, that book is the property of a certified house and it should be returned to the factor.”
“That book is evidence in a provincial matter,” said Tersey, “and it should be lodged with the province.”
“That book,” said the Keeper of the eastern register, without looking up, “contains an entry of continuation made in the presence of a Keeper’s witness, and the register of this house is the register of this house, and I will have a fair copy of the third page before anybody removes it from this table.”
And Su’inn sat in her chair with her hands in her lap and watched three authorities look at one book.
It took about fifteen seconds.
She could see it arrive in each of them at a slightly different speed, and she watched Tersey get there first, because he was the only one whose whole professional life was made of exactly this, and she watched him put his hand flat on the folder and stop.
“Ah,” said Tersey.
“Yes,” said Su’inn.
“There is no answer to that.”
“No.”
He looked at her down the length of the table.
“You knew that when you put it there.”
“A priest with a bad heart knew it,” said Su’inn, “and he told me on the third of May, and I have carried it for five weeks and I have not slept much.”
Tersey sat back in his chair.
“Practitioner,” he said, “I have been doing this for twenty-six years and I am going to say something I should not. That book is going to sit on this table for three days and none of us are going to be able to pick it up. And you are the same problem in a coat.”