Orison’s voice came from the keeper’s grille at the sixth hour, and the first thing it did was apologize.
“I am sorry,” it said. “I am late. The outlet’s opening took my attention and I lost the hour.” The grille was set into the forge hall’s wall beside the cradle, a disc of brass mesh worn green at its rim, and the voice that came out of it was soft and uncertain, like an old clerk’s. “I have the alignment reading. From the three sensors. Have I given you the reading?”
Anwen was at the bench with Lisan, writing up the outlet’s opening. She looked at the grille.
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
“I am sorry,” Orison said again. “I have it. I will give it to you now.” It read the figures. The three sensors’ readings at thirty-one degrees, after the move. Anwen knew them already; she had read them herself, aloud, three times. She did not say so.
She took her sheet and read the figures back to the grille. Line by line. Sensor one. Sensor two. Sensor three. Each figure, as Orison had given it.
“Yes,” Orison said. “Those. Thank you.” A pause. “I sometimes forget whether I have said a thing. It is the archive. It is old. Like Ysol’s, I think, though I have never spoken with her.” The mesh hummed faintly, as if the archive were turning a page. “Lisan reminds me. You may remind me too.”
