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The Night the Tower Asked
In Amberthwaite, magic is not cast.
- ~51 min (estimated)
- 11408 words
- 37 scenes
- 6 branch points
- 4 endings
27 recorded plays (one per visitor per day)
Cover art · art review pending · listing metadata: listing.json · counts: authored
About
It is filed. Every working in the town begins as a request on a form, carries a named witness, and carries a repayment line, and the Archive Tower of Amberthwaite grants it the way a clerk grants a leave of absence: read the paper, decide whether it feels like paying, stamp it or put it in the tray. A request the tower does not grant is a complete answer, and the tower counts a complete answer a kindness. Ilse Brenn is twenty, a second-year, and her file has been open for four years. The tower closes every file on graduation, and an open file accrues. Hers has accrued sixteen marks against a working nobody has told her she is running, and the notice on the first-floor board says she is due to attend at the ninth floor on the fourth of Frostwane, from the eleventh hour to the fourth hour, in person. The tower has nine floors and eight flights of stair. The ninth is a working floor, opened
Content notice8 topics · tap to review
- A minor's signature taken in an emergency and relied on for four years
- Institutional coercion by procedure rather than by force
- A witness who cannot afford to withdraw consent
- A job that cannot be declined and cannot be left
- Public naming of private financial obligation
- Hunger written as money, fees and wages
- Loss of irreplaceable records, described without injury
- Chosen adult company, non-sexual, bounded, easy to decline
Cast
- I Ilse Brenn Second-year on a nine-mark scholarship and the filer of file 9-4471; viewpoint character no portrait yet
- C Corven Ash Second-year, third desk from the window, the fastest form-writer in the year, and a witness of four hundred and one attestations this term no portrait yet
- M Master Halloway Registrar of the Archive Tower of Amberthwaite for thirty years, and the hand that approved the amendment and every one of its forty-one repeats no portrait yet
- B Bex Ollert Third-year on the repayments desk, the witness who read the repayment line aloud in the Kelling Frost year, and the hand that has posted the accruals for four years no portrait yet