7.

Outside the chamber

The public reference rooms and deep Archive, Requiem City — month 2, AGH 200

Josephine had an hour before she was due below. She took her question to the reference desk while there was still no one waiting behind her.

“The first opening to Talon's Reach,” she said. “I'd like to check the year.”

The worker moved a pile of returned volumes away from the index.

“First opening, or the beginning of the regular crossings?”

“The opening.”

He found the entry, checked its reference and went to a shelf Jo had passed on her way in. She took out her pen. The work would have been quicker if she had asked for the index yesterday, but yesterday she had still been thinking about Merrit finally getting upstairs.

The volume opened close to its beginning. The worker put a finger beside the entry.

Year 1.

Jo read down the page. The repair, the return, the contact that followed: they had their places in the maintained account. She copied the volume's title and the entry heading as well as the year. Anyone using her note could find the same page without needing her at their elbow.

“Does it have anything from the houses?” she asked.

“Which ones?”

“After the people came back. Someone called Merrit Cade was looking after a shared house. I wondered if there was an account from them.”

The worker checked the names at the back of the volume. Jo watched his finger move. What had it felt like when the door closed and nobody called upstairs? A foolish thing to expect from an index. Still, she wanted to ask.

“Not in this one,” he said. “It follows the crossing. Have you an address?”

“No.”

He waited to see whether she had another name or a different question.

“The year was what I needed,” she said. “Thank you.”

She finished the reference and gave him the volume. Someone had come in carrying a folded notice; he turned to ask what they were looking for.

*   *   *

Below, Jo put the source note beside the account. She had left enough time for the descent, but she waited to catch her breath before she began copying.

“What are you writing?” the mind asked.

“I checked the first crossing. Year one.”

“I gave you that.”

“Yes.”

“You could have asked me again.”

Jo looked up from the shelf. “I wanted to check the record.”

The turquoise gathered more closely in one part of the wall.

“Did it tell you about the cups?”

“No. I asked about the house, but there was nothing under Merrit's name in that volume.”

“I see.”

She did not think it did, quite. She had expected it to be interested in the little success upstairs, and now she was defending it.

“The date helped,” she said. “I can place the account. And I know where to find the record again.”

The light shifted. On the shelf, the source note lay over the corner of Merrit's supper with Ada. Jo moved it so that she could see both pages.

She found the first afternoon on her own page. Merrit had loosened their waistcoat and gone to sleep with the kitchen still audible below. There was no waking in the account to measure it by.

“How long did they sleep?” she asked.

The mind did not answer immediately.

“Merrit. That first afternoon.”

“I don't have how long.”

“Then I'll leave it where it is.”

“They slept.”

“Yes.”

Jo finished the factual reference on its own line. Beneath the household account she named the telling as its source; the length of the sleep remained unrecorded.

The mind was quiet while she blotted the new writing.

“There was ginger in the tea,” it said.

Jo turned to the last page. “I kept the ginger.”

She set the reference note beside the book, within reach of the next clean leaf.