Quests

The Deed is due this season. It always is. First: let the Records Hall see your face. Talk to Inkwell upstairs.

Inkwell has you on file now. Do not be alarmed. Everyone is on file.

To renew the Deed, the Deed Office needs a witness in every region. Start close: touch the Homestead shrine.

Witnessed. The Marches know your name now.

The Clerks' way: the city stands, the names are collateral, nothing changes. Bring me a Soulstone to seal it. Witnesses: you.

Renewed. The city exhales. Somewhere a name is filed, safe and owed.

Two hounds nose about the lanes after dark. I am not afraid. I have simply moved my bed to the cellar. Deal with them, and I will sign anything Quill likes.

Two fewer. I signed. In pencil. Pencil counts here.

A ledger needs three cursed silver to balance. I will not explain why. The Exchange never explains.

Balanced. To the gem, and one gem over, which we report.

Something in the Undercroft keeps writing clauses on the walls. Go down and thin it out: four of the dead, please.

Four. The walls are quiet. The ink is drying.

Before you choose anything, see the one free place in Endsville. Ride the Bell Lift to the Roost. Touch its shrine.

You stood above the line. Nothing up there owed anyone. Remember how it felt.

Ride the Rope Lift to the top deck and touch the Canopy shrine. Everyone forgets to look up. Do not be everyone.

You looked up. The tree noticed. Trees like that.

The Undercroft landing on the Long Drop. Ride down, touch the shrine at the Filing stop, ride back. Mind the gap.

You went down and came back. Most people only do one of those.

Something with wings eats the beans and leaves the dignity. Punch three of them. Gently, they are fragile.

Three fewer. The beans are suspicious of the quiet.

Four twig bundles for the ovens. The Marches share, and so will you.

Four. The ovens hum. They do that when fed.

Three grave minnows from the river, for the tea. Do not ask. Mr. Latch asked and now he drinks it.

Lovely. It will taste of nothing, which is the point.

The mill eats gravel when the grain runs short. Five gravel chips. Do not look at the stones while they grind.

Five. The mill burped. It is content.

A parcel for the Tollgate, unaddressed. Touch the Tollgate shrine and it is delivered. Do not open it.

Delivered. It was a small humming thing. It hums elsewhere now.

The turnips moved out of the Root Cellars. Find out why. Touch the shrine down there.

You went down. The roots noticed. The turnips are grateful.

Five pieces of rusty iron scrap, for the gate hinges. The gate has opinions about hinges.

Hinged. The gate sighed and stopped creaking at you.

Six twig bundles for the oven. It has never been cold and I will not start now.

Six. The window glows. It will glow at you if you pass.

Three rat haunches for the kitchen. Do not flinch. The stew is worth it and the stew is proud.

Three. The tavern smells like a hug with an edge.

Walk the road to Soot End and touch its shrine. The Watch likes to know the road is still a road.

Still a road. Good. Roads have a habit of becoming rumours out here.

My predecessor is still at his post in the Drowned Vaults. Touch the shrine down there so he knows somebody came.

He knows. He is waiting for you now. That is a kindness, mostly.

Three ghost carp to teach the net how to hold. It never learns. It tries.

Three. The net held. For a moment. It was proud.

The bell under Soot End is ringing again. Touch the shrine in the Bell Cellars. Whatever you do, do not let it finish.

You went down while it rang. It stopped when you arrived. It is waiting to see what you do.

The hounds are herding people toward something. Punch four of them and see what they were herding you away from.

Four. Behind them: nothing. Which is worse, somehow.

No train has run in years and I still need the timetable. Touch the Gibbet Hill shrine: the hill can see where the rails went.

Gibbet Hill says the rails go east, into the smoke. That is the timetable, more or less.

Three cursed silver. The seam weeps them. I collect the tears. I am not well.

Three. The seam wept and I wept and it evened out.

Touch the shrine at the Whisper Gate. The wood does not admit strangers. It will admit a person with a shrine.

It knows you now. It pretends not to.

Five hounds, the big-toothed kind. The Lodge stands the order every season and I am tired of eating the same sandwich.

Five. The Lodge is quieter. The sandwich remains.

Four weeping willow logs. They soak up sorrow from a wound. I soak up the rest.

Four. The wound is shy about it. It will mend.

Six bats in the tunnels under the roots. They are not rooks. The rooks are offended by the confusion.

Six. The rooks resumed their opinion of you.

Skeletons climb out of the Chasm at night. Five of them, back where they belong.

Five. They took it personally. Good.

Four iron bars. I fence them to the Foundry. The Foundry fences them to the city. Everybody is fenced.

Four. The economy turned over in its sleep.

Touch the shrine at the Spine Bridge. The giants' names are carved under it. Read them back to the Hold.

You read them. Two sides of one war. Both columns headed 'us'.

Skeletons walk the Bonefields looking for their names. Six of them. Send them to the Deed Office the quick way.

Six. Quill will have paperwork. Quill always has paperwork.

Touch the shrine in the Marrow Pits. The giant buried standing is not finished standing. See for yourself.

You saw. It saw you. Both of you are still standing.

Three brutes wade the deep pools at dusk. Stay on the boards. Then get off the boards and deal with them.

Three. The pools are only violet again.

Four ghost carp from the mire. Do not fish for what is under the lilies. Fish next to it.

Four. Something under the lilies sighed.

Touch the Highwatch shrine. Hold the rope with both hands. Talk with neither.

You made the pass. Most people make it. The rest make the glacier.

Our abbot walked into the Hollow Glacier. Touch the shrine inside and see if he is still praying.

He is. He prayed at you. It was a very cold prayer.

Bring me a hellfire ruby. I need red ink that cannot be erased for the correction of the century.

Corrected. For 'end' read 'begin'. We will see if it takes.

Touch the shrine in the Final Draft. What you see there is [REDACTED]. Come back and do not tell me.

Thank you for not telling me. It was [REDACTED], was it not. I knew it.

Touch the Spire Plaza shrine, then walk on to the edge and look at the blank page. The map grows an inch every time someone does.

An inch. Exactly an inch. Thank you. The map is very grateful.

You have walked a long way with your name on a form. Sit. Hear the other side. Then go and talk to Registrar Quill and tell him you have.

He went pale. Good. Pale people listen.

The Unsigned way: no collateral, no debts, no floor. Bring me a Vein Heart: it takes something that strong to rip paper this old.

Torn. The city falls a little. Then it floats. Nil was right about the floating.

...Or do not. The Unsigned say the hounds belong to nobody, like them. Go and tell Mother Nettle I have decided to be brave instead.

She laughed. Then she lent me a stick. I am braver with a stick.

Brand wants you on the drill. I want you on the ridge, guarding nothing, which is safer. Touch the Smokestack Ridge shrine and tell nobody.

You guarded nothing. Nothing was grateful. Brand was not.

Join us. Not with a signature: with an absence. Touch the Unsigned camp shrine and do not tell the Deed Office.

There. For one day, nobody in Endsville has you on file. Breathe.

The third way. Not renewed, not torn: rewritten, in the margins, by someone who remembers everything. Find all twenty-four fragments.

Rewritten. The new last line reads: 'for as long as somebody remembers why.' It is in your handwriting.

Touch the shrine on the White Cliffs. From there the sea stops being water and starts being paper. You should see it once.

You saw it. Now you cannot stop seeing it. Welcome.

Do not let it read ahead. Go down into the Sunken Chapterhouse and touch the shrine before it finishes the chapter.

You made it in time. The page has not turned. Yet.

Touch the Summit shrine. Then read the Deed's last line, written along the sky. Do not read it aloud.

You read it. You did not say it. The sky was relieved.

Four bone bass for the lamp. The light runs on fish, and on hope, and on fish.

Four. The beam leaned out over the sea and looked pleased.

Touch the shrine at Bell Reef. It rings for the drowned city. Tonight the drowned city is shy.

It rang. The water answered. The water lied about the answering.

Six scraps of iron for the cage. The mine eats iron. The mine is never full.

Six. The cage swallowed it with a sound like a cough.

The Foundry means to dig down to the Underwriter and hand it a bill. Two soulstones for the drill. Then you are Foundry, whether you like it or not.

Two. The drill bit in. Somewhere far below, something read the invoice.