The Only Date Anyone Will Ever Have for Her

Called before second bell to a room off Guild Row, first labor, primipara, twenty hours already behind her when I arrived — pulse steady, no fever, pains close enough together that I did not ask how much longer, only how much work remained. Breech, confirmed by hand, not by guess; I do not turn a child on a guess. I turned her slowly, between contractions, taking only the room the body offered and no more. Two hours after that: a daughter, small, breathing on the first cry, which is not always given to me to write.

The mother cannot write her own name. The father knows the day of the week and little else; he had counted the moons of her carrying on his fingers and lost the count twice over. Neither has climbed the Archive Steps in their lives, nor had cause to. When I asked the day, for my own note, he said Fifthday, and I believed him — I had crossed the Bazaar that morning and remembered the stalls half-shuttered for Restday’s eve.

I entered it myself, in the Guild’s tally rather than the Register, because the tally was the book in the room and the Register was not. The day. The hour, as near as I could judge it. The child’s condition. No name chosen yet.

I examined a house on Ulev Street eleven days ago where the same absence — no birth year entered for either the husband or the wife — left the Divan nothing to presume between, and an estate divided in half instead of whole. I found no order that night; the Register’s silence, not mine, decided what followed. Tonight I have written one line the Register does not yet have and may take years to ask for. I do not know if it will matter the way a beam matters to an old man on Mulov Street who trusts it over paper. I only know I was in the room, and wrote down what was true while it was still true.