The words of the world

Hallow

An old anchor that still answers. A return-anchor that has not died. The Assize's hallows were civic gardens with paid attendants, audited against the roll every season, and the handful still standing are why a few old cities can catch their dead without planting anything. The word survives on new work: a guild's Heartwood is a hallow to a priest, the tree to the sapper who means to bring it down, and our tree to the village that dates its letters by it.

Common speech: the tree..

Before the Circuit

What the first survey found already standing. The Closing of the Circuit begins the count, not the world. The first ridden survey found gardens, wayframes, markstones, graves and archives where it arrived, and joined them to one measure. The Taladan put the Danatal, their compact of shared landings, before all of it. The Kessith say their Sightline was passing signal before the Assize and has not missed a night. Ask a household for a year older than the calendar and you get a sequence: this wall was mended before that garden gave its first cutting. A pre-Circuit deed is copied in two columns, the local date beside the Circuit one.

The Bittern

The salt water at the middle of everything. The inland salt lake at the heart of Kilmoryn. A bittern is a wading bird and the bitter liquor left when salt is drawn off, and the water is honestly both. It covers a country and none of it can be drunk, so the shore is worked in seasons: brine pans, shade frames struck before the weather turns, fresh-water stations watched harder than the salt. Gathur descent-companies walk their flocks down each year on Dushar water bought on the cistern-year, and their grandchildren will still be working it off.

Broken arch

A door whose far side stopped answering. A wayframe with a dead counterpart. Most were never smashed. They were simply left standing when the far city came off the roll, and their thresholds are unworn because nobody will risk them. A few are worse than idle: where two contradictory measures still hold, an arch can accept a traveler and deliver a part of one. The Pilgrims wall those up. The Undersworn dig them out again, because a place held between two measures is where their answer comes.

Caught

You woke up. Somewhere. Someone paid for it. To die and be taken by a Heartwood. “They caught me at Boulde” is a whole sentence: it says where your binding was, whose attendants opened the roots, and who now knows you died. It costs, and it is public. The tree spends stock, the register spends a countermark, a Warden enters the name, and a city that agrees to catch strangers is telling its neighbours whose soldiers it is willing to hand back.

The Circuit Reckoning

Twelve months, three Shut Days, and no year zero. Year one begins with the Closing of the Circuit; no document is dated year zero. An ordinary civil year has twelve numbered months of thirty days, then three Shut Days outside every month. The present is 1472 C. Courts, caravans, garrisons, and market towns still use the Assize's calendar because a dated obligation must survive the road between them. Vigil temples count Years of Return instead, while households may reckon from their Heartwood or a remembered flood.

The Circuit register

Seven things a copy must say before it travels. The Great Assize never imposed an alphabet. It fixed what a traveling copy had to say: date, place, measure, parties, witnesses, custody and purpose, in whatever hand the maker used. A careful copyist sets the source marks beside the translated reading, so a receiving court can take the narrow fact both agree on and refuse everything around it. This body reached Boulde. This measure was shown at Nulgatharb. These words were heard at Haundrashala. What any of it changes at home is argued at home.

Cold and quit

Past the guttering. Nothing to ride for. Final. The ember is dispersed and no rite, relic, record or price recovers it. Courts use the phrase to close an estate and the Mercies use it to stop a family paying attendants to keep trying. Everyone else uses it once. The Black Vigil refuses it outright and calls it a clerk's verdict passed on somebody else's kin, which is why their houses will sit with a body long after a Warden has signed it off.

Concordance

Two things made kin, and the bill for it. The craft of preparing an exact relation between two things so that one answers the other. Four parts must hold, called the Four Holds: source, reference, path, bearer. Lose one and the working fails in a specific, diagnosable way rather than a mysterious one. Nothing is created. The heat came from somewhere, the healed tissue was spent from somebody, and the frost rimming a battle-mage's vessel is the receipt. Colleges teach that a concord is made, never found. The Vigil says holy force is answered, not prepared. Neither side can prove it.

Common speech: kinning; a practitioner is a kinwright. “He kinned the lock to my hand.”. In the street: hookwork, the leash. Soldiers say rimehand. Healers are leeches, and the insult is accurate..

Counter-anchor

An anchor planted against somebody else's. A hostile anchor set to contest a rival's hold on a place. The Anchor Wars were fifteen years of them, and the Cutting is what the network did when it tried to honor every one at once. A warstone is a counter-anchor with a legal timer bolted on: it must stand where it can be seen, it must announce what it contests, and it must take time nobody can hide. That delay is not courtesy. It is the interlock, written after the fact and in blood.

Common speech: the stone; the bad stone..

Creation traditions

Stories of beginnings become present claims. Kilmoryn has no accepted account of its making, and the cults are not answering the same question. The Wake at V'eld says an addressed dark came first and names no maker. Old Faith teachers call creation unfinished work, still running in every graft. Avasulen keepers date the habitable world from the day water and flesh accepted limits and returned what they borrowed. Narzin potters begin in bitter, undivided water and score every ritual vessel so it can break honestly. Each story has been read into court as title to land, and the Vhalder benches that hear such suits ask for a deed.

The Cutting

Somebody cut. That is the whole argument. In 1051 C. one connected system received two lawfully sealed, incompatible orders in the same season and complied with both. Cities came off the roll, wayframes delivered part of a traveler, and people caught between two measures stopped being able to finish dying. The peripheries and most common speech call it the Cutting because the word takes a subject. Which name you use tells a room your politics before the sentence ends.

Common speech: the Emberwinter, in ballads and in the field.. In the street: the Judgment, in eastern temples: a claim that it was deserved..

The Great Assize

One measure, one calendar, one way home. Formally the Assize of Measures and Return: the ridden circuit that bound distant cities to shared weights, shared records and shared anchors, so that a debt sworn at Rezg was enforceable at Zindush and a man could die abroad and wake at home. It worked for six centuries, for the enrolled. In 1051 C. it received two lawful and incompatible orders and obeyed both. Kilmoryn still dates its years by its calendar, because no successor has ever agreed on another.

Common speech: the Chain. Every city a link.. In the street: the Collar. “Your grandfathers wore the Collar and called it a Chain.”.

The guttering

Ride now. Argue about it on the way. The interval in which return still works, and it is not one number. A clean death beside a working tree is recoverable when the same wound two valleys out is not, so every company fighting far from its own Heartwood is gambling on it. “He's still in the guttering” is an order to move, not a comfort. The chroniclers borrowed the word for the age after the Cutting, 1051 to 1263 C., when famine and dead anchors meant nothing would finish either.

Kilmoryn

The world beneath every border. The name of the whole world, written where a name has to travel: on the cartouche of a Taladan sea chart, in the first line of a Vigil letter, in the oath a Vhalder notary reads over a contract meant to cross three borders. Ask at Menergalo which tongue said it first and the reading rooms will sell you three answers at three prices. Twenty-three states divide the ground, and not one stamps the world's name on its coin, because a coin claims what it names.

Language and belonging

Who taught you to talk, and where. A Dushar Dwarf who keeps a cistern ledger and the Gnome who drafts her water contracts share a first tongue. She and the Gathur crews at the Unzandush vessel yards compare seams and firing marks by eye, because they do not. Speech follows households, roads, kiln yards, marriages and garrisons, and crosses every border those cross. A Culdar teamster and a Rezg factor can shout a weight or a danger across a pen all day and still lose each other in a joke. Vhalder courts pay an interpreter rather than trust an accent.

Markstone

The rock that says what a pound weighs here. A calibrated measure-stone. Grain, cloth, coin, siege timber and the tolerance of a receiving frame were all cut against the local markstone, and the whole authority of the Assize was the promise that every markstone agreed with every other. The Weightsmen of the True Weight still keep and recut them. They are also the most compromised institution in Kilmoryn, because they blessed the measures that failed.

The ember

The part of a death that has not finished. For a short while after the body stops, its last unbroken change is still running. That is the ember, and it cools. A Heartwood catches it along a relation prepared in life, and the roots and the stores do the rest. A signed binding is the clean case; a chapter roll or a civic home roll may answer too, which is what Wardens argue over at every audit. Distance, a wrecked anchor, a rival call, or roots the attendants have closed all shorten the time. Once it disperses there is nothing left to catch, so a company riding for a tree does not stop to argue.

The Emberwinter

The year the wicks would not go out. The folk and ballad name for the Cutting and the year after it, when nothing would finish: doors, wounds, harvests, the dead. It is the name that carries the two peoples the year made. Some chanceries still write a Shade down among the retained dead, and the Shades answer that they are what did not finish dying and that the Emberwinter is holding them still. The Kept are older than the Emberwinter. It scattered their households and turned renewal from a private arrangement into a supply problem.

The Mourn

Bodies return west without their names. The outer ocean touches every shore of Kilmoryn without making them one place. What it takes it gives back on the western coasts, bodies and not names: the effects stripped, the face a week old, and a Taladan lantern-house keeper entering what she can in the unknown-dead book. “Gone to the Mourn” means missing, not dead, and an Avasulen household leaves the departure cup upright as long as that holds. Elsewhere the same water carries grain, graft stock under wet canvas, crews and ordinary homecomings. Ask a pilot why the dead come west and he gives you a bearing to the next landing.

The Narrowing

Triage, says the chancery that ordered it. The successor chanceries' name for 1051 C., lifted from the emergency order's own phrase: narrowing the lattice to save it. To say the Narrowing is to say the maintenance authorities chose which nodes to lose and chose correctly. The nodes they chose were the disputed, the indebted, the recently settled and the disobedient, which is to say the peoples now called the unenrolled. Every clerk who writes the word is defending an ancestor.

The Overmarch

The sky over a holding, measured and claimed. Kessith station houses measure a holding's air from wall-height out to bell-range, because flyers make the sky a road, a warning line and a way in. A court sells a crossing, a landing, a watch, or an hour's approach, each of them apart from the roof beneath. Rookari and Nephilim pay loft-tolls in one city and meet forbidden air in the next, and no toll-keeper has ever accepted the argument that someone who is merely not falling is not flying. At Hlurthasenor the Open Bell Houses hold the guide height and ring flyers clear of the hot lift.

Port and landing

A harbor is work before it is a wall. Saltval is a port because people keep landing there: the catch dries under deep eaves, roof gutters fill screened cisterns, nets are mended in the loft, and what comes ashore is stored, weighed and sent on. A landing is anywhere a load crosses between water and ground. A quay is a built edge somebody paid for. A harbor is water and shore used for shelter, loading or repair. What decides whether it is worth anything stands behind it: fresh water, dry store, repair hands, food, and a road inland a loaded cart can climb.

Quarrelstone

One stone, two honest answers, one lawsuit. A markstone carrying two contradictory measures, usually because rival chanceries recut the same rock after the Cutting and neither would concede. It is a border dispute you can put your hand on, and there are hundreds. Vhalder arbiters make a living off them. So do the Undersworn, for the opposite reason: a site held between two measures is the only kind where the Buried One is said to answer.

The Quick

What a body does while it is still doing it. The self-maintaining work of a living person, and a legal category before it is a mystery. A court sorts a person into quick, retained or dispersed before it decides a tax, an inheritance, a custody or a charge, and no two courts hang the same consequence on the same word. Blood, hair, a portrait, a name on a register: each of them points at a person, and the person is the thing pointed at, which is why no kinwright has ever built one back out of paperwork. A Warden's certificate opens by naming who stood at the root and who watched them stand there.

Common speech: the wick. A long wick is a man who is hard to kill.. In the street: tallow, for what other people's lives are to somebody buying them..

Translation and witness

A faithful copy can preserve disagreement. At Haundrashala the readers recite all four marriage sheets aloud, so nobody can later claim an unheard clause was accepted. A translator carries a name, an offer, a warning or an oath, and can narrow it, soften it, or split one claim into three, so a careful house writes down who rendered it, who heard it, and whether the speaker was given a readback. Vhalder notaries keep both incompatible readings on the page instead of choosing one. What the words meant to the man who made his mark is argued afterward, with the reader standing as witness.

Reading and writing

Reading is specific work. A Rezg tally keeper reads weights and prices and cannot read a Wethyrn death roll. A fisher knows the weather marks, puts a mark on a cargo account, and hires a reader for a marriage copy. Most of Kilmoryn takes part by ear: a notice spoken before witnesses, a mark made, a sample passed across the table, a knotted tally. At Khil'sha the market table is free on market mornings, paid out of the stall fees, and the resident decides what answer goes back. An archive specialist who charges by the page can keep a good claim from ever being heard.

The Reaving

The war you walked into. It is not over. In 1466 C. more than a dozen states opened campaigns in one season, and most are still open. The chroniclers named the age before it ended, which is unusual; the chanceries could not agree on a flatter word in time, and reaver went into the ink. You come into it here, and the word is not a figure of speech. The charter bought, the tree planted and the stone set against somebody else's city are the Reaving, and the courts that seal the charters take their cut of it.

Sea claims

Hold the plaza. The winch is another matter. At Dhezgil a conqueror can hold the plaza and the public scale while three guilds keep the cliff winches and the crews refuse an untested chain. “Pass the link, then we lift.” Every harbor divides the same way. The landing is common, the vessel is owned in shares, the cargo is pledged to a creditor, the drowned are in a shore house's custody, and the approach is in one pilot's head. A chain changes hands in an afternoon. The pilot takes longer, and the Talakeden keep an effects bundle sealed until a court says whose it is.

The Shut Days

The ledgers close. The Heartwoods need not. After the Twelfth Month come three days outside the months. Heartwood attendants close and reconcile their binding registers, so no ordinary return receives final Circuit certification until the new-year roll opens. A sound tree may still catch an ember and restore a body during the closure; witnesses must hold the record for later judgment. Cities go quiet, garrisons stand double watch, and the Champions charge most for escort work. The danger is legal isolation as much as death.

Snuffed

Killed past return, and on purpose. A kill no anchor answered. Sometimes the dead had no binding, sometimes the nearest hallow was razed or the attendants refused, and sometimes the killers made sure of it beforehand. Soldiers use the word precisely and lawyers use it carefully, because snuffing a bound man is a different charge from killing him. It is also the whole shape of a siege: taking a wall costs bodies, taking the tree costs the people behind it.

The unenrolled

The peoples the roll was written without. Chancery language for the Culdar, the Skalzen, the Kessith and the Rezgan, who supplied the Assize's quarries, crews and apprenticed children, were enrolled last, and were cut first in 1051 C. They hold three hundred towns, seventy-odd ports and twelve of the twenty-three crowns, the largest polity in Kilmoryn among them. They built the counter-anchors during the Anchor Wars, so every siege fought today is fought with their invention. The Collar is their word for the Chain, and a clerk who hears it knows who is speaking.

In the street: Orkish, Serpents, Arachnid — chancery slander, still printed in successor copies..

Wayframe

Half a door. The other half is elsewhere. A paired transit frame. Neither half does anything alone, which is how the Assize could ruin a member city by quietly letting the far side drift out of calibration instead of breaking anything. A Farportal is a wayframe built small and local on purpose, so one dispute cannot travel. Clerks write wayframe, sappers say the frame, and everyone who has actually stepped through one calls it the throat.

Common speech: the frame; the throat..

Wick-cutter

The foulest word in Kilmoryn. One who goes for the binding, the register or the Heartwood's attendants before going for the body, so that the death will hold. It is a specific accusation rather than an insult about temperament, and most of the twenty-three states prosecute it apart from ordinary homicide. Armies that carry their own dead off a field are half denying enemy necromancers and half denying the charge. Say it to a captain in front of witnesses and you have started something neither of you can stop.

The Twin Writ

Two lawful orders. Both still in the archive. The two sealed documents that reached the maintenance authorities in 1051 C. Both were valid, both were properly witnessed, and they gave contradictory instructions about priority on the return registers. Nothing about them is lost. Copies sit in three archives and any competent clerk can read them, which is the uncomfortable part: four centuries of argument have never settled which one the system was obeying when it did what it did.