Lore · the sheet
A square grid, because a ledger is square. The Provinces, their waters, and the ground older than the map.
The Great Sheet
The Chancery learned, the expensive way, that a Patent is only as good as the description of the ground, and drew the Great Sheet: a square grid, because a ledger is square and a square can be taxed and the clerks had only the one habit. Each cell is a Province, and a signed sheet is law; where the sheet and the ground disagree, the ground is expected to apologise. Every charter begins on the Heart March, the one sheet the Chancery signed itself with its own tent still pitched on it, and unseals the Provinces around it ring by ring as holders answer on their neighbours, so that a charter grows the way a town grows: outward, unevenly, and faster near the water.
A Province keeps its name on every charter; what the name describes changes with the map, and the name does not mind. On a pangaea the inlets narrow to mudflats, on an archipelago each name belongs to a cluster of islands with a quarrel between them, and on a fractal sheet a name applies to whichever pieces of land the cell holds, however they are scattered. A name changes nothing: no yield, no spawn, no rule. The surveyors would like it known that they said so at the time.
The sheet opens outward from the Heart March: the eight Home Provinces about it, then the sixteen of the third ring, then the eleven of the edge, each unsealed with a clerk's flourish nobody is present to see. On a larger sheet the cells beyond are the Verge, ground the Survey drew but no clerk signed, in a very good hand that stops mid-word.
The Provinces
hill and moor, cold
The cold edge of the sheet, where the ink froze.
The border irregulars were raised here by oath, a company at a time, in weather that made the oath short. Cairns mark where a band took a Charter of Passage and where one did not. The March's wall-posts were never relieved and are still lit by travellers' habit, because a traveller who has walked the Cold March knows what an unlit post means.
rolling hill, sheep-walks · the hold of the Balance Keeper
Hills that keep still, and sheep that keep secrets.
A windless crest, the Keeper's Crest, sits above the fells, where the air stands still so as not to blow a lamp out; the Beacon College quieted what lived there each autumn until the rites lapsed. Shepherds still carry a lamp up at dusk and say it is for the sheep, and the sheep have never contradicted them.
mountain pass
The first wall-post, and the first argument.
The Legion's first wall-post holds the pass, and the Beacon College keeps the Quieting-Book here in a chest with two locks. A warden and a prior share one wall under two orders and one kettle, and have done since before either of them was born.
high crag, quarries · the hold of the Iron Bull
Cut stone, and a pass no beast will load.
The siege-train's stone came from here, dressed by masons who sang while they worked and stopped when the foremen came. The Bull's Pass crosses the crags: pack-animals will not carry a load through it, and the Compact's caravans take the long way, adding two days and a great deal of grumbling.
mountain cirque · the hold of the Cloud-Bearer
Rain on one side of the wall, and a chair facing it.
A cirque where rain falls on one slope and never the other, as if the sky had taken a side; the surveyors' station is a ring of low walls with a charcoal plan on one of them that nobody finishes. The Surveyor-General's journal names it the honest rain, and the folk call it showing off.
hill, the north-east corner
The last signed sheet in the north-east.
One of the four sheets of the edge: the Chancery signed the corner and left the rest, the way a tired clerk signs a letter and forgets the date. A beacon-frame stands on the headland, and kestrels nest in the signal-posts and are not relieved either.
hill ridge, barrow-fields
A ridge with doors in it, and nobody home.
A ruined wall-town of the old war lies in the ridge, its gaps the truce-wall's, rebuilt four times and never once finished. The seers of the hill peoples kept the old rings here and still come at the turn of the year with lanterns. Barrow-mounds with stone doorways are the camps' look, and the doors are never quite shut.
wooded dale
The Loom-House is a field house now, and the loom still turns.
The colleges re-founded their technical house here among the trees, and it keeps the rite of the Seer's Tower, which most seers fail and all of them attempt. The colleges say the Loom-House holds their minute-books, in a dry room, under a roof that does not leak, which is more than the Lit hall can say.
mountain and moor, a border march · the hold of the Crimson Ram
A House's frontier, with the banner re-dyed.
A Great House holds the High Marches under a Patent the Rolls show, which the House mentions at every opportunity. The Reed rises here in a cold spring under a stone, and the Muster-House keeps a seat and an unshorn ram. A ring of trampled earth lies on a high meadow, kept clear by a steward who does not explain.
upland, shepherd hills · the hold of the Star-Archer
A high place with arrows in the grass.
The Archers' Rise, where by custom a bow is unstrung and an arrow laid pointing out, with a small bow to the hill. Arrows stand in the turf like a crop nobody sowed; every one points away from the Heart March, and nobody who has tried to turn one round has stayed to see the morning.
old forest
A forest that signed, in its own fashion.
The Unbound of Yewhold took a Charter of Passage and are the nearest to neighbours the forest has, which is near enough to borrow salt and far enough to keep the dogs in. Antlered totems mark the paths, and old songs are sung at the edge by people who claim not to know the words.
plain, horse-country
Horse country, where the wind has somewhere to be.
The steppe auxiliaries' home; their muster-ground is a ring of bare earth that the grass has learned not to cross. A Compact horse-fair runs every season on the Orrel road, with prices that go up when the wind does. A tent is never taken down; it is relieved, like a post, with the same ceremony and better food.
heath and hill
Standing stones, in rings, older than the reason for them.
A cluster of lintel rings, the standing-stone circles the Ways later reused, set by no people any scroll records and dusted by no one. Heralds' marks on every lintel are older than the hand that hung the gates, and the heath keeps a cold wind for anyone who stays to read them.
river fords, low hills · the hold of the Twin Dancers
The oldest ford in the March, and the muddiest.
A House holds the Fords whose name sits in a margin of the Rolls, in a later hand, in a different ink, and nobody has ever asked the House about it to its face. The Dell rises in Loomdale and runs west without hurry. The ford's footprints are found in pairs at dawn, and the ferryman charges both.
plain, river-meadow, the First Province · every charter begins here
The first signed ground, and the grass still grows in a square.
Every charter begins here, read aloud at the First Stone on a rise where the Chancery's tent stood, and the Plumb Office is a small locked hall beside it with a key that fits nothing else. The Door-House, Concordis's oath-hall, stands where the Great Road crosses the Reed, with two doors and one threshold. No House holds it, which annoys all of them equally. The last key lies on the First Stone, and nobody has picked it up.
open downs, a long ridge
Downs and the Cord, and the wind along both.
The Cording College keeps a seat on the Great Road where the Cord crosses the downs, with heavy-horse stables along it and a knotted cord over the door that is never quite long enough. Paired shrine-walls of the oldest age run along the ridge as long low banks, a Lit shrine and a Dark one facing each other across a line the sheep cross freely.
plain, granaries · the hold of the Maiden of Harvest
The granary of the March, and the smell of it in autumn.
The Compact's grain-leagues keep their strongroom-granaries here, counted to the sack by factors with ink on one hand and chaff on the other. A fallow field that is always exactly square lies at the plain's edge, left alone out of respect and a little nervousness, with a milestone at one corner that is replaced each year.
lake and shore
The Orrel runs out here, and the horses run in.
A broad shallow lake, the end of the Orrel, where the steppe auxiliaries water their horses and the horses have opinions about the reeds. A Legion post on the jetty is held by relief, and the relief arrives by boat, late. Reed-boats trade salt and gossip in equal measure.
sea-coast, rock pools · the hold of the Tide Crab
A lamp on every headland, and a coal in one of the pools.
The coast levies were raised from fishing villages here, by men who could row before they could walk. Each headland has a lamp-post the Quay College keeps, and the rock pools below are known for pools that never empty, and for one that is warm at midwinter for a week, which the lamp-keepers do not discuss.
lake and fen · the hold of the the Glass-Pool echo
Still water over glass, and a crack you can see from the bank.
A deep, still lake with a glass-clear bed, under which the old scar of the Weave is said to run, and does, if you look on a calm morning and would rather not. A glassmakers' boat-house keeps the college's sand and a rope for the one who goes down each spring.
sea-coast and the Reed delta
Where the Reed meets the Sound, and the heavens were first counted.
The Reed Quay, once the observatory-port where reed-scribes with cold fingers counted thirteen heavens, is the Compact's harbour, with the Assay-Hall and the Quay College and a great deal of shouting about weights. A House holds the coast and the view. The truce table of the oldest age is a low stone slab at the head of the steps, and the ferrymen eat their lunch on it.
fen, canals, watch-offices
A flat country with long sight-lines and short tempers.
A House holds the Reach through the old watch-offices, where a lamp unlit is noticed from three towers away. Canals link lamp-towers in straight lines the fen resents, and a glass seat keeps a furnace at the Reach's north end that has not been cold in living memory.
hills and white salt flats · the hold of the Sunburn Lion
A salt flat and a very long table, and an empty chair.
A House keeps its hall above the White Pan, where at noon a table-shape of pale stone appears in the glare and is a little longer each season, which the steward measures and does not say. The Footing, Muralis's seat, stands on the hill above with its first stone carved where the damp finds it. A place is always set at the House's board for one who is not named, with the second-best plate.
wetland
Reeds, slow water, and a causeway that gave up.
Reed-cutters work a patchwork of channels that only they can read; a Compact reed-league keeps the only road and charges for the privilege. An old causeway runs into the fen and stops, as if the builder had looked up and thought better of it.
sea-cliffs and steps · the hold of the Goat-King
Cliffs with steps cut in them, and one path nobody cut.
A coast of cliff-stairs descending to landing-coves, each guarded by a stair-fort and a first stone with a small goat on it. A cliff path no one made climbs the headland, bending where the cliff says bend; the hill-folk say a goat made it, and add, after a moment, a very old one.
low sea-coast, rendering-sheds
A coast that smells of work, and is proud of it.
Fishing fleets and rendering-sheds under Quay College lamps, and the smell of tallow a day's ride inland when the wind is wrong. A Compact salt-league lands cargo here and counts it twice. Trade is brisk and unromantic, and the ballads about it are short.
a sea-inlet
The Sound narrows here, and the old quay remembers hulls.
The inlet that runs from the Mouth of the Sound up to the Reed Quay, deep enough for anything and sheltered enough for most. The great quay of the empire's height runs down its northern flank, long enough to lose a cart on, and war-hull berths are cut into the rock with the ribs of the last hulls still in them.
sea-coast and stair-docks
Where the big hulls were laid down, and left.
The Quay College's slips for the heavy hull classes, cut when the empire thought it would always need them. The Stair is a flight of dock-steps cut into the shore, each tread a berth, each berth a name. Of the great hulls, only ribs remain, and gulls, and a shipwright's chalk marks that the rain has not quite taken.
scrub and hill, burnt ground
The ground remembers a fall, and keeps the glass to prove it.
The folk call it Starfall Reach: the plain where the beasts of the First Fall are said to have landed in a single night that smelled of struck flint. The ground is dark and glassy in patches that cut boots, cairns stand where the old tellers put each beast, and the echoes' holds are said to cluster near it, which keeps the rents low.
salt marsh and shore
Salt, reed and rumour, in that order of reliability.
A scatter of salt-works and smugglers' piers, with a lantern on each that is lit for different reasons. The Compact keeps a tolled quay and a very short road. The Brinewick wardens say they are a Legion post; the Legion says they are a very long lease; the smugglers say nothing and pay both.
islets and sea-stacks
The last lamps in the west, and one that is always dark.
A string of lamp-posts on islets kept by the Quay College, by keepers who row out in all weathers and are relieved in most; ships steer by them. One lamp is always dark, by rule or by habit nobody remembers, and everyone steers by the dark one too, and arrives.
flooded plain, tidal flats
Fields the sea took back, with the walls still arguing.
Meadows reclaimed by the Master of Works' sea-walls and lost again in the years of the Mute Seal, when nobody was paid to mend them; the wall-lines show under shallow water at low tide like the plan of a house. A sunken wall-town lies a fathom down, and the fishers say the bell in it rings on the turn of the tide, and the fishers say a great many things.
open sea-mouth · the hold of the Ancient Marine
A silent harbour mouth, until the weights are hung.
A deep, silent harbour mouth where nothing echoes and the gulls will not land; the Quay College hangs a matched pair of weights from the harbour chain each year, one for each side of a debt, after a morning's argument about which is which. Then the water finds its voice, and the ships come in behind the gulls.
sandbanks, wreck-fields
Shoals with a long memory and a bad reputation.
Banks that wrecked the heavy hulls of the empire's height, one after another, as if the sea had been keeping a list; a beacon-hulk marks the channel and is itself a wreck that has made its peace. Camps of the sea kind, wrecks with lanterns, are traditionally reported here, and traditionally not investigated.
salt flat and low dune
The salt runs to the edge, and so does the sheet.
The southern edge of the sheet, where the Verge begins on a larger map and the clerk's hand stops mid-word. Salt-carters keep a track along the shore and a song about it that has one verse and is sung for a day.
the south-east corner, a landing-stage
The last signed landing, and the first unsigned step.
The Survey's last signed sheet in the south-east; a landing-stage and a lamp-post stand where the signed sheet ends, and the lamp is lit for whoever is coming the other way. Past it, on a larger sheet, begins the Verge, which the Survey drew and nobody signed and everybody wonders about.
Seas and rivers
Older ground