Senna's Record

aka the potter's crystal, the date of closure

Senna the potter's own record, struck in the correction gallery — her name, her Counting-Floor pledge rendered as an Imperial debt, and a date of closure. Reads true enough to be unbearable; taking the crystal silences it.

You went down to break it, and now it is in your hand, singing her. HOLDING: Senna, potter, wheel inherited, market rows. OBLIGATION: kiln-pledge to the Counting-Floor, principal engineered to outlive the debtor, interest rendered faithfully. STATUS: current. The engine, which has no ledger for the Lean Years and no word for a debt built never to be paid, has done with her pledge what it does with every open obligation on its floor: assumed it will be closed, and set the date of its closing. DATE OF CLOSURE — a day, close, closer than a potter one bad season from losing her wheel would want to read beside her own name. It is not a curse and it is not a threat. It is a sum, worked by a thing that only knows one way an unpayable debt ever closes. Senna read this and could not sleep. You could pry the crystal from the rack and let the note go quiet, and never know whether that unmade the sum or only stopped anyone hearing it struck. The engine will not miss one record. It has four centuries of them, and it is very sure.

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