How this chapter fills
Keep playing. The book hands you the next page when you have earned the right to be bored by it.
All entries
Assignment
legendaryI have been posted to the near side of the Veil and instructed to catalogue it. The instruction says "it". I asked which part. The reply, which took eleven days, says "it".
Scope
legendaryPreliminary count of things requiring an entry: four hundred and thirty-one varieties of weapon and armour before I have left the armoury. I have written to request a second clerk. I have written to request a first clerk.
On the Naming of Things
legendaryA difficulty. The same sword arrives under nine different names depending on who found it. I have ruled that the Codex records the PATTERN and not the instance. This ruling was not popular with the smiths, who feel their sword should get its own page, and it is going to keep not being popular.
The Stair
legendaryWent down as far as the second gallery. There is a spider there who keeps records of her own, in thread, of everyone who came down and did not come up. Professionally I recognise the impulse. I did not say so.
Two Answers
legendaryThe Wardens hold that the Veil is a wall. The Seekers hold that it is a door. Both delegations have now visited my office to explain that the Codex must reflect the correct position. I have entered both positions, side by side, on the same page. Both delegations left unhappy, which I take as the entry being right.
Regarding the Cheese
legendaryA thing calling itself Grand Fromage has been terrorising the eastern road. I am required to catalogue it. I have catalogued it. I want it on record that I catalogued it in full, with measurements, and that at no point did anybody explain the cheese to me.
The Rift
legendaryApproved for travel by Rift, which is not a place but a distance made briefly walkable. It charges rent by the minute. On my first crossing something that was unmistakably a boot went past me at speed. I have opened a file. The file is empty and I expect it to stay that way.
A Note on the Riverside
legendaryI have taken up fishing. This is not in my remit. The Codex requires thirty-five species catalogued and I have decided the only honest way to do that is to catch them, which is a defensible position I intend to keep using for as long as it holds.
Unrequested
legendarySomething has moved into the archive. It is small, it guards the door at night, and it has never been asked to. I have not entered it in the ledger of assets, because it is not an asset and I would rather not have to explain that to anyone.
The Anomaly
legendaryI returned to an entry I wrote four years ago and found it still exact — every measurement, every marking. This is not remarkable. What is remarkable is the thing itself, which has not changed either, while three uncatalogued specimens beside it have drifted so far I had to start their pages again.
Second Anomaly
legendaryI have tested this properly. Twelve specimens: six entered, six left blank. After a season, the six entered are unchanged. Of the six blank, two have altered, one has moved, and one is no longer anywhere. I am aware of how the conclusion sounds. I have checked my arithmetic twice and my premises once, which is the wrong order and I know it.
Requisition
legendaryApplied for eleven additional cases of ink, on grounds of urgency. Denied, on grounds that the previous eleven were sufficient. I have replied explaining that the world is coming apart in the places nobody has written down. I have been advised to use the correct form.
Thinning
legendarySurveyed the border districts. The Veil is thin exactly where the Codex is empty and thick where it is full, and the correlation is not close, it is exact. I no longer believe I was assigned to make a record. I believe I was assigned to hold something shut and nobody wanted to say so in writing.
Faster
legendaryTwo hundred entries this season. My handwriting has suffered and I have stopped apologising for it in the margins. A page that is legible and finished beats a page that is beautiful and half done. I wish somebody had told me that at the start instead of the other thing.
Xal'Thor
legendaryHe found the seam and put both hands into it, to see. I want to be clear that I understand him completely. The difference between us is a form: he did not fill one in, and I have filled in nine thousand, and that is the whole of it.
The Tenth Floor
legendaryI went down. It was necessary — the last floor has never been catalogued and the thin places were spreading from directly above it. I took the small guard from the archive door. It came back with me. Most of me came back with me.
Shorter
legendaryThe later entries are shorter. This is not carelessness. There is a quantity of world and a quantity of hand and only one of those is running out, so the entries get what they need and not a word past it.
The Index
legendarySpent the winter numbering every page, including the empty ones. A blank page with a number is a job. A blank page without one is a hole. Whoever comes next should find jobs.
Handover
legendaryI am leaving the book where it will be found. I have not finished it. Nobody finishes it — that was the mistake in the original instruction, and I have written a note correcting it, on the correct form, which will be processed in eleven days by somebody who will not read it.
To Whoever Has It Now
legendaryYou will notice the world getting steadier around you as this fills. That is not a reward for tidiness; it is the actual work, and you are doing it. Do not try to finish. Try to leave it fuller than you found it, and number the blanks. — P. Quell, Archivist Second Class
Second Hand
legendaryFound the book in a dry room with a note on the correct form. I have read all of it. Quell was wrong about one thing: he wrote that nobody finishes it, as though that were a defeat. It is a job description.
On Quell’s Arithmetic
legendaryI repeated the twelve-specimen test with sixty. The result held. I am recording that I hoped it would not.
The Guard
legendaryThe small thing from the archive door is still here, three keepers later, which is longer than any of us have managed and considerably longer than it should have. Nobody has entered it in the ledger. I am continuing the tradition.
Third Hand
legendaryI am not an archivist. I am a fisherman who could read, which turned out to be the qualification. Mord left instructions in eleven parts. Part one says the ink budget is a lost cause and to stop writing about it.
Method
legendaryA fish will not be caught by wanting it. You put the line where the fish is and then you wait, for a long time, doing nothing that looks like progress. It has been pointed out to me that this is also the job.
The Thin Room
legendaryWent to see the worst of the thin places, in the west, where two hundred pages are missing. You can stand in it. You come out having forgotten one thing, and you never find out which. I have started keeping a list of what I know, so that next time I can check.
Fourth Hand
legendaryThe name on this page has been rubbed out, either by the keeper or by the room. Whoever it was got through eleven hundred entries in four years and left no other mark on the book at all. That is either the most professional conduct in the record or the saddest, and there is no form for asking which.
Current Keeper
legendaryThis page is blank apart from its number, which is correct procedure. It is filled in by whoever holds the book, at the end, in their own hand. Nobody had ever reached the end. The page was numbered anyway — Quell was very clear about that, and on this one point every keeper since has agreed with him.