The seeding committee of the Coldmark met on the third of the first month in the long room off the assay office, which is not a meeting room but the room where the returns are collated, because the guild has never had a building for its arguments and has had to make them in the places where the work is. There were four of them and a copy-clerk. The four were the whole of the authority. Halla Rimewright, forty-seven, assay clerk, twenty-two years at the desk, who held the pen. Sura Vane, sixty-one, pension clerk, one of the nine minor officers, who had made the fund solvent and had not told anybody how. Bram Ostmark, thirty-four, wright and seam-holder for the Ostmark ground, third generation, who had come because the Ostmark void was the finest cut on the hill and everything that happened to a grade column happened to him first. And Ilva Sorne, twenty-nine, frost-plate smith of the Iron Row, who had been made a member of the committee in the ninth month on the motion of a senior smith who wanted the plate business argued about by somebody who worked the plates.

Coen Halloway was seventeen and was in his second winter in the assay office, and he copied the minutes, and the minutes were not minutes. The minutes were a column of figures, because a committee of the Coldmark does not record what was said; it records what was decided, and what is decided is always a number, and if a number cannot be written then the thing was not decided. The room was at minus nine. The lamp over the table made a gold circle about two feet across, and everyone at that table put a hand into it, one at a time, to turn a page. “Four things,” said Halla Rimewright, and she was reading off her own hand, which she never did, and which she had never in twenty-two years had cause to do. “One. The harvest is failing. Two. The fund is solvent. Three. Number Eleven has not come up in three seasons and is sown this year or surrendered. Four. The Book says the coming season is the best in living memory.” “Forty-one point two,” said Ilva Sorne.

“Forty-one point two,” said Halla Rimewright. “The forecast for this season is computed on the founding assay, as every forecast in this guild is computed, and it says the terrace stands five thousand four hundred and thirty-eight point four on the first of the ninth month, which is the largest standing in one hundred and eleven years, and which is the reason this committee is four people in a cold room in the first month instead of eleven people in a warm one at Michaelmas.” “That is what the Book says,” said Bram Ostmark. “That is what the Book says. It is not what the bench says. I have four of my own people going up and down that bench with a gauge, and they will not tell me a story, which I am grateful for, and they will not tell me the number either, which I am not.” Sura Vane turned a page with the hand that was not burnt. “The third of the first month,” she said. “The fund is solvent as of the thirty-first of the twelfth, on the strength of the founding schedule and the market, and it is solvent because twelve old men were paid in one go at Michaelmas, and if this committee takes a yard off that terrace the fund has nothing behind it but the goodwill of nine minor officers, and I would like that minuted.” “It is minuted,” said Halla. “Go on.”

They went down to the ground on the fifth of the first month, because the first business of a seeding committee is to look at the ground, and the ground does not argue. Barrow Nine is the seed ground: four flat acres of ridged grey earth at the foot of the terraces, drilled in rows the width of a furrow, and it is the only place in the Coldmark where a person can stand on cold that has not been assigned to anybody. The drill ridges had gone hard as boards. A frozen furrow on that ground sounds like a plank walked on with a hammer, and the smell coming off it is a dry mineral cold with no snow in it anywhere, and it gets into the nose and the back of the throat and stays there all day. The sowing had been the ninth month before. The share is iron and it is heated, a forge-fire burning in a box dragged behind the team all day, and it is drawn hot because a cold share will not break three feet of worked granite ground in a day and a hot one will, and the three feet is a measurement and the gauge is a mark on the handle.

“Two hundred and ninety pounds to the acre on the lower bench,” said Bram Ostmark. “That is the rate. It has been two hundred and ninety to the acre since my father held the seam.” “And the standing?” “Six hundred and eighty-six yards, at the ratio, on four acres.” He was not looking at anybody. “I went over the north drill on the first and put my boot into a furrow, and the cold came up through the leather, and it was not the cold of a furrow that has got what it ought to have got. It is the cold of a field that has come up thin. You cannot argue with a boot, and there is no grade in this guild for a field that has come up thin, because thin is not a grade. Thin is a shortage, and a shortage is not a grade, and I have been telling this committee for three seasons that this is a shortage, and the committee has been telling me that the Book does not record a shortage. It records an assay.” “What does the assay say?”

“The assay says forty-one point two,” said Bram Ostmark, “and a field that has come up at two hundred and ninety to the acre does not stand forty-one point two, and neither does a plate that holds it, and if this committee wants a number for the season then I will give it one: eleven hundred and forty yards down on the season’s forecast by the first of the ninth, on the lower bench alone, and the upper benches worse, because the upper benches were sown at two hundred and seventy because the seed was short, and I have the weigh-beam tickets for both and I did not copy them out of kindness.” “Two hundred and ninety and two hundred and seventy,” said Halla Rimewright. “That is a difference.” “That is a difference,” said Bram Ostmark, “and it has been a difference for three seasons, and every season the return is made out at forty-one point two, and every season the return is forty-one point two out of nothing, and the frostgate takes it and the hill gives it and the difference goes somewhere that is not in this book.” “Where does it go?” “Up the hill,” said Bram Ostmark, “and out. And I have never once found out by what route, and I have stopped asking, because the answer is in the columns and I am a man with a share, not a man with a pen.”

Number Eleven is on the Sorne line, and it is a walled rectangle in the middle of a sown field, about the size of a small house, knee-high split granite laid without mortar, with a gate in it. Nothing in it has ever come up. Not a blade and not a thistle, and the soil is smooth in a way that soil is only smooth when nothing has ever opened it. Snow drifts against the low wall and does not go off it any earlier than it goes off the field, and the wrights do not drive past the gate; they go round by the ditch, and the ditch path is worn to the mud, and the path across to the gate has grass on it. The committee stood at the gate on the sixth of the first month, all four of them, and none of them went in. “It has a name over the plate,” said Ilva Sorne. “It has a stone over the plate,” said Sura Vane. “The stone is blank. That is the first thing. There is no name cut in the lintel and there never has been, and I have known it since the twelfth month when I copied the first hundred leaves, and I have said so twice since and been told both times that it is a family matter and not a guild matter.”

“It is a family matter,” said Halla Rimewright. “It is the Sorne ground. It is your mother’s four, and she gave it back to the guild in the winter you turned fifteen and the guild paid for it, and the payment was fair, and the ground has been in the schedule ever since with a name against it and nothing behind the name.” “The name is against it in the schedule. The name is not cut in the stone. Those are two different offices.” “Then cut it in the stone,” said Bram Ostmark. Ilva Sorne put her two burnt hands flat on the gate. “I have said for three seasons that this plot wants opening,” she said. “I have said it to the committee and to my mother’s people and to the men who sow round it, and every one of you has agreed with me, and the plot has not been opened, because saying a thing out loud is not the same as a man’s name being cut over the plate, and there is a difference between the two that I have not been able to make anybody understand in three years of saying it.” “What is the difference?”

“That a name in a schedule is a claim,” said Ilva Sorne, “and a name in a lintel is a charge. A claim can be argued with. A charge cannot. Every void is a name against a charge, and a yard of cold charged, stored and sold without a name against it is orphan cold, and orphan cold bleeds out of the hill inside a season. There is nothing in that stone. There has never been anything in that stone. Whatever the Book has been saying about Number Eleven for three seasons, it is not cold. It is a number in a column, and a number in a column does not keep anything. That is the whole of what has happened here, and I have been shouting it at a guild that has been looking at its feet.” Bram Ostmark, who had been saying the plot wanted opening for three seasons, and who had been saying it because his own ground is sown against the two yards either side of it and a field that does not come up takes the season’s attention out of the field that does, looked at the blank lintel for a while. “Three seasons of a row coming up thin either side of a plot that has never come up at all,” he said. “I had taken it for a wound. I am not certain it is not a hole.”

The argument about what a grade is began on the ninth of the first month in the long room, at four in the afternoon, with the lamp on its swing-arm and an hour of tin-coloured sun already gone off the ridge, and it went on for four weeks. Coen Halloway copied every figure that came out of it into a fair sheet under a heading he had to invent, which is the only heading this Book has never needed: THE MEANING OF A GRADE. “The Book has two columns,” said Halla Rimewright. “Degrees and grade. Degrees are measured, and there is no argument about a degree; you put a gauge on a plate and the needle settles and that is the number, and nobody has ever been able to lie about it in a way that could be proved. Grade is different. A grade is not a quantity. First, second, third, outturn. Four words, and they do not measure anything at all. A grade is a statement about who gets the first of it. It is a queue, and I have been the person who writes the queue down for twenty-two years, and I have never once asked what the queue is for.”

“It is a price,” said Bram Ostmark. “That is what a queue is for. A first-grade yard is worth more than an outturn yard, and the difference is the price, and if you take the price out you have taken the yard’s name off it, and I have four generations of Ostmark in the schedule and I am not going to explain to them that the word first no longer means that their plate is the finest on the hill. My ground stands forty-four point one. I have assayed it myself, twice, this season, with a gauge and not with a hope. Forty-four point one. It is the only void on this hill that holds more than the founding assay, and the founding assay is the number the whole Book is measured against, and if that is a fiction, then my plate is the only real one in the Coldmark, and I would like somebody to write that down.” “Your plate holds forty-four point one,” said Ilva Sorne, “and it held forty-four point one last season, and the season before, and it has been sealed in the thaw every one of those seasons, and a plate sealed in a thaw bleeds while it is being sealed, and you have a fur-seam across your right eyebrow that you got the first time you did it and you cannot tell me where you learned it, and I am not asking you as a smith. I am asking you because I have read the Ostmark charge sheet for three seasons, and it says thirty-eight point nine, and your plate says thirty-eight point nine, and the Book says forty-one point two, and there are three numbers in the world and two of them are on the same side of this argument.” Bram Ostmark laid his scarred palms flat on the table, the scoring of salt-frost across them white as a rope burn. “Thirty-eight point nine,” he said. “Thirty-eight point nine.”

“Then that is what my ground stands, and I have been told forty-one point two for three seasons and I have not once said otherwise, because I am a man with a share and not a man with a pen, and I have said that in this room twice today, and it is the reason I do not get the plate vote.” He did not look at anybody. “Thirty-eight point nine. Put that in the minutes. It is the first time in three years that a number has come out of my mouth in this guild which is worse than the number in the book, and I would like it struck out of the record of what I said and left in the record of what is.” “A grade is what the iron will bear,” said Ilva Sorne. “That is my whole position and I am not going to dress it up. Not first, not second, not outturn. Every plate on this hill is black iron, and every plate has a limit, and the limit is not the same on every plate, and it is not a matter of opinion. Forty-one point two in a plate of this iron is a plate running at the top of what it can hold without weeping, and I have known for four years that the plates on the Sorne Row are weeping at the cold face, and the office writes it off as loss, and the loss goes against the name nearest the plate, and the name nearest the plate is not a smith. A grade is metallurgy. Everything else in this column is a story about the future, told to the people in the room by the people in the room.”

“A grade is a debt,” said Sura Vane, to the visible surprise of Coen Halloway, who had been copying. “That is the only one of the four I can prove. Every grade on this terrace is a promise somebody made to somebody. The founding standing is one thousand and ten yards, apportioned to eleven names, and the guild sold one thousand and ten yards in the founding season and stood eight hundred and eighty, and there are a hundred and thirty yards in the first hundred leaves that were sold before they were grown, and I have never been able to put the hundred and thirty anywhere, and every pension in this Coldmark is computed off a number that is a hundred and thirty too generous. That is a debt. It was owed before I was born and it will be owing when the last wright on the Retirees Bench is dead. Whatever a grade is, it is that, and this committee has never once been told, because the Book has no column for a debt. It has two columns, and one of them is a queue.” They looked at each other across the lamp. Halla Rimewright took out her pen, uncapped it, and said, “Four positions. All four of them are true. That is the difficulty, and it has been the difficulty for two hundred years, and we have got on quite well by agreeing most of the time.”

The re-assay began on the second of the second month and it took the whole month. Every void on the terrace was read at the cold face of its plate by two men with two gauges, and Coen Halloway went up and down eleven benches with the fair sheets and a brass weight and a hand lamp, and on the eighth of the second month he had read out every figure on the hill, and on the ninth of the second month Halla Rimewright had four sheets in front of her and the Book open inside its rail. “The Book says five thousand four hundred and thirty-eight point four,” she said. “The hill says three thousand nine hundred and sixty-two point six.” “That is a difference of one thousand four hundred and seventy-five point eight.”

“That is a difference of one thousand four hundred and seventy-five point eight,” said Halla Rimewright, “and there is no error in it, and there is no theft in it, and there is no man on this hill who could be blamed for it, because the figure in the Book is the founding assay applied to a hundred and thirty-two plates, and the founding assay is the assay of one plate, cut by hand, in the founding season, by four men, one of whom was a boy holding a lamp, and it has been written on every line of the return ever since as though it were a floor, and the hill has never once touched it.” “It is a memory,” said Ilva Sorne. “It is a memory of the best year anybody can remember, written down in a book of figures, and then it became the standard, and then the standard became a floor, and then a hundred and thirty-two plates were recorded as holding a charge that not one of them can hold. It is not a lie. A lie would be easier. It is a number that was true once and was then used as an instrument.”

“And when a plate is recorded at forty-one point two and is sealed to thirty-three point six,” said Bram Ostmark, “the record is seven point six too generous, and that record is the season’s stock, and the season’s stock is what the guild sells. So the guild has been selling a stock it does not have, at the price of a stock it does not have, and the hill has been making it up out of the draw, one slow yard at a time, and the draw is the whole terrace, and the terrace is now three years into a hole.” “And the plates,” said Ilva Sorne. “Look at the plates, Halla, because nobody else in this room is going to.” They went out to the Iron Row and looked at the plates off the Sorne Row that had come up, laid out on the trestles to be re-cut, and Ilva Sorne took off her wool square and put her bare forearm on the cold face of one of them and held it there while the others watched, which is a thing smiths do and clerks do not, and which costs the arm a good deal of feeling for an hour.

“Look at the cold face,” she said. “That is rust. That is rust coming out of the iron from the inside, at the place where it is coldest, and rust at the cold face is not rust. It is a plate that has been held above what it can hold and has been crying for four years. When a plate weeps, the charge goes into the hill. Not all of it. Some. The rest sits there looking fine on the days when nobody has put a gauge on it. That is not a crack. That is a plate.” “Run at the wrong number for four years,” said Halla Rimewright. “Run at the wrong number since it was cut,” said Ilva Sorne. “The iron was poured to hold thirty-three point six. Somebody in the founding wrote forty-one point two on the schedule, and every plate on this hill was cast to the number in the schedule, and the number in the schedule was the one plate on the hill that could hold it, and there has only ever been one of those, and he is sitting at this table, and his plate is full of a number that is not his own.” She looked at Bram Ostmark. “Thirty-eight point nine, Bram.” “Thirty-eight point nine,” said Bram Ostmark.

The arithmetic of what to do about it took another week, and it is short, because there is one question and there are four answers and three of them are wrong. The guild must sell cold, because selling it is the only way it can be moved, and because a void cannot be carried, and because the whole of the guild’s income and the whole of the fund and the whole of the twelve old wrights’ pensions come out of the gate on the second market of every month. The terrace will now stand three thousand nine hundred and sixty-two point six. The Book says five thousand four hundred and thirty-eight point four. You cannot make cold. There is no lesser way, no cheaper way, no cleverer way; there has never been a lesser way, and the only question a rimewright has ever had is how much was sown and where and whose. The guild cannot buy the difference in. It cannot sow more, because the season is over and the drill ridges are boards. It cannot charge more, because the gate does not set prices, the buyers do, and a buyer will not pay more for a yard assayed at thirty-three point six than he has ever paid for a yard claimed at forty-one point two. Which leaves the grade column.

A first-grade yard is worth more than an outturn yard, and that difference is the only money the guild makes above the cost of the ground. If the terrace is re-graded — every void recorded at what its plate actually holds, every grade entered from the assay and not from a queue — then the grades on the whole terrace come out as they are, and what they come out as is outturn, all hundred and thirty-two of them, because thirty-three point six is outturn, and so is forty-four point one when you have measured it and found thirty-eight point nine, and so is the founding void, which holds thirty-nine point four in the iron it is standing in. First grade is not a rank on a scale that a man can be low in. First grade is a queue position, and the queue is a claim on the front of it, and there is no version of a season in which a hundred and thirty-two plates measured at their true charges can all be at the front of anything. “So the first cut is suspended,” said Halla Rimewright, on the third of the third month. “For a season,” said Bram Ostmark. “One season. Not for ever.”

“For a season. And the whole terrace sells at outturn to whoever comes to the gate, and the first-grade buyers go without, and the first-grade buyers are not a hundred kitchens. They are eleven families and the guild itself, and the guild buys four hundred and six point eight yards of its own standing cold a season, in eleven instalments, for this room and the assay office and the Retirees Bench and the nine minor officers, and it buys it at first grade. That is the trade the guild is making with itself, at a price it set for itself.” “Four hundred and six point eight,” said Sura Vane, “and the fund has nothing behind it but nine minor officers, and I am one of the nine, and I would like it minuted that the first suspension in the history of this guild falls on the guild.” “Not on the guild,” said Ilva Sorne. “On the plates.” “On the plates,” said Halla Rimewright, “which are the same thing, and which is the whole difficulty with this guild, and which nobody will believe for about a month.”

The vote was taken on the eighth of the third month, by the four of them, and it went four to nothing, and the fourth vote was cast last and took the longest. Bram Ostmark voted for it, and then asked what it cost, in yards, over a season, on his own ground. “Two hundred and eleven point four on the Ostmark void,” said Halla Rimewright. “That is what a first grade on a plate that holds thirty-eight point nine is worth at the gate over a season.” “Then that is what the finest cut on the Coldmark is worth,” said Bram Ostmark, “and I have three generations to say it to, and I would like it in the minutes that I voted for it.” “You voted for it.” “I voted for it,” he said, “and I sealed the plate in the thaw again this year, and nobody has said one word about it, and I am not going to explain where I learned it, and I would like the minutes to say that the finest cut on this hill has been sealed in a thaw by a man who cannot say where he learned it, and that this is the fourth generation of it, and that this is the reason that plate reads thirty-eight point nine and not forty-four point one.”

The room was quiet a while. The flue ticked. Through the doorway four old wrights sat in a line on the Retirees Bench out of the wind and were not asked to move. “Then let it be minuted,” said Halla Rimewright. The Guildhall’s first table went without at the end of the third month. It is a long table in the outer office by the stove with four chairs, and the four of them had eaten at it every working day of the year, and on the last working day of the third month there was nothing hot on it. The bitter drink is the guild’s own. It is brewed from boiled barley and rime-ash, and the rime-ash is what is left in the pot when a yard of standing cold has been drawn down into hot water, and it tastes of a stove, and every wright in the Coldmark drinks four cups of it a day and has done since the founding. With the first cut suspended there was no standing cold of the guild’s own to burn, and what they had instead was hot water. On the fourth of the fourth month Sura Vane, in her good hand, wrote on the card that stood where the drink was served: TODAY THE DRINK IS HOT WATER. BEHIND IT IS THE SEASON’S FIRST CUT. THE FIRST CUT IS OUT ON THE TERRACE AND THE TERRACE IS BEING SOLD TO WHATEVER WALKS UP TO THE GATE. They ate at the Retirees Bench for the rest of the winter, because the Guildhall has no other seating, which was an accident of the build, and which has been the most important room in the Coldmark for thirty years.

The Book was unchained on the twenty-second of the third month, and it took two clerks and a witness to unchain it, and the Book did not come off the frame, and the amendments were made in the Book on the frame with the chain lying slack on the page, which is the way the founding amendments of a hundred and eleven years ago were made and the way none has been made since. Seven places were amended over the long winter. Coen Halloway copied each of them out fair. The seven are the only sentences in the degrees column in two hundred years, and they are all in the hand of Halla Rimewright, who signed each one and dated each one, and who is the clerk of this office and will be the clerk of this office for as long as the committee will have her. One. Leaf one. Beside the founding assay, in the same hand as the grade and on the same line: 41.20 is the assay of void one in the founding season. It is not a standard. It has been used as a standard. That was an error of the office and it began in this leaf.

Two. The season’s return. The terrace total struck through once and rewritten as assayed, and a new heading set over the degrees column, small, in the same hand, because the old heading had never distinguished a figure somebody measured from a figure somebody wanted: AS ASSAYED. Three. The Sorne Row. Eleven figures struck and rewritten from a gauge sheet made by a copy-clerk on the eleventh of the first month last winter, out of the Book; and the sentence that was written small in the margin of the degrees column on that morning, because there was no column for it and there still is not, printed as a line of the Book, where anybody must come and read it. Four. Number Eleven. Entered in the schedule with a name cut in the lintel, the plate re-cut in a new alloy, and the plot sown on the twenty-ninth of the ninth month at two hundred and ninety pounds to the acre, which is the lower bench rate and no more, because it is a first crop and a first crop is a test and not a harvest. It came up in the second month, at the ratio, and the yield went into the Book at the ratio, and the Book has never before had to enter a yield, because the Book has never before had a plot with nothing in it to enter one against.

Five. The grade column. Under the heading, and under it, and in the same ink as any grade thereafter: a grade may not be entered without a hand and a reason. Six. The founding standing, restated from one thousand and ten to eight hundred and eighty, with the hundred and thirty yards entered where they are, on leaf eleven, in a hand that is not the founding clerk’s, with the note that they were sold in the ninth month of the founding season against a standing of the second month, out of a field sown at two hundred and forty pounds where three hundred and seventy was required; and the deed is signed by the holder of the ground and the Book for one hundred and eleven years was not. And the twelfth name entered in the margin of the schedule, with a date, and no yardage against it, because the guild never entered one and I am not entering one now. S. Vane, pension clerk, the fourth of the fourth month. Seven. The fund. The hardship column, which had been mine and had been kept in a hand that was not the fund’s hand for eleven years, entered into the fund under a heading of its own, and every pension carried at the old rate for one season, so that not one of the twelve old wrights is paid a mark less in the year in which the guild discovers that its founding standing is a hundred and thirty yards too generous.

There was an eighth thing, and it could not be amended, because it had already gone out of the gate. The first market of the season fell on the eighth of the tenth month, which was a month before the re-grade was published, because a season’s sale book is inked in the ninth month off the Book as it then stands, and the Book as it then stood said five thousand four hundred and thirty-eight point four. The first market was invoiced on the old grade. Four hundred and eighty-six point two yards left the terrace on barrows and sledges in sacking, and the buyers took them away, and cold cannot be carried, and a void cannot be carried, and a yard of cold that has left the hill of the Coldmark is not anywhere afterwards. Coen Halloway found the difference on the eleventh of the tenth month in the gate returns, doing a fair copy of the first market for the Book, because the copy clerk is the man who copies the gate returns. Four hundred and eighty-six point two, invoiced. Four hundred and ten point two, assayed. Seventy-six point nought, and there was nowhere to put it. He said the number out loud in the office, the way he said all of them, and Halla Rimewright wrote it on the corner of a sheet and looked at it a while.

“Seventy-six point nought,” she said. “That is a difference.” “That is a difference,” said Coen Halloway. “It has been sold.” “It has been sold and it is gone, and no column in this Book takes a thing back.” She turned her forefinger over on the table and looked at the split of the nail. “There is a rule, and it is the oldest rule in the office after the naming. A loss is written off as loss, and a loss is attributed to the last person whose name was nearest the plate.” “Who is that?” “The name in the lintel,” said Halla Rimewright. They went up to bench four in flat blue light with no sun in it at all, to the ninth plate and the tenth, and the name in the lintel over the ninth was SORNE, cut deep and filled with soot, and it was the name nearest the plates that had been sold short, and there was a Sorne in the room on the strength of her mother’s four and a payment that had been fair. Ilva Sorne read her own name on the stone for a while. “Seventy-six point nought,” she said. “Then put it against me and let us be finished.” “You are a smith and it is not your hand on the plate.”

“It is my family’s name over the plate, and there are two plates on this row that weep, and I have said so for four years, and the office wrote it off as loss and put it against my name anyway, and I did not argue, because arguing with a ledger is how you end up reading a ledger instead of a plate.” She held out her scarred forearms and did not put them behind her back, which was the thing she did with them. “Put it against SORNE. And then put this in the minutes as well, because it is the last thing I will say in this guild and I would like it in the hand of the man who copies it. I was wrong about the Book for four years, and I was right about it, and both of those were true. A man who can only ever be right about ledgers and never right about plates is not a smith and is not a clerk. He is a person standing in a cold room being useful in the wrong direction.” Coen Halloway copied it out fair, in ink, in the hand he had learned, and the number on the sheet was seventy-six point nought, and it did not agree with the sheet above it, and the sheet above it was the season’s return, amended in seven places, correct in every one of them, and signed by a clerk who had put a sentence in the margin of the degrees column last winter because there was no column for a difference.

The first market of the next season was held on the second market of the month, at the foot of the terraces, on bare granite setts, in rain, with one lamp post and a weigh-beam on a stone pier and a hundred barrows of sacking-wrapped cold standing on the setts. Every disc in the square carried a number nobody in the Coldmark had seen before. The founding assay was not on one of them. There were a hundred and thirty-two numbers and all of them were different, and all of them were between thirty-one point two and forty-four point one, and every buyer in the square had to learn the hill again in a morning, and a good many of them did not, and went home with a barrow they had not wanted, because the man at the stall had said the number out loud and it had sounded like the number that had always been on the disc, and it was not. In the middle of the square a woman with one barrow and a striped sacking cover was holding up a disc on a string. It was the first yard of standing cold that had ever come up on Number Eleven, and it was outturn, and it was the first of it. “Seventy-six point nought,” said a man near her, reading it. “That is the loss on the Sorne Row.” “That is a barrow of cold off the walled plot, at the ratio for two hundred and ninety pounds to the acre, out of the sowing of the twenty-ninth of the ninth month,” said the woman, “and it is thirty-one point six, and you are reading the disc off the wrong barrow, and if you cannot read a disc off a barrow in the rain then you should not be buying cold.” The man looked at the disc again. “Thirty-one point six,” he said. “That is not a number I know.” “No,” said the woman. “That is the point of them.”

Halla Rimewright was at the rail in the outer office at four in the afternoon with the Book open in front of her and the lamp making its gold circle, and Coen Halloway was copying the first market’s return into it fair, and he read the figures over to himself under his breath the way he did in the street. The chain was slack on the page, because the Book had been unchained for the winter and not chained again until the end of the season. There were seven new sentences in the degrees column and one figure struck once, and on the leaf in front of her, on leaf one, the founding assay stood in ink that was two hundred years old and had not been touched, because you cannot amend the thing everything else is measured against until everything else has been measured again, and the whole of the winter’s work had been measuring everything else, and the measuring was not finished, and there was a boy of seventeen in the room who would finish it or would not, and neither of them knew. She put the brass assay disc into the gutter of the page, where it had lain every working day since before his mother was born, and wound the chain twice about the frame, and did not look at the numbers any longer, because they had stopped telling her who was lying, and they never had.