A1As Long as It TookChapter I · The RoadEverything they own has gone down a hill in the dark. One of them has nothing to say and the other one will not fill the silence.1·01Watching the Road Through My LegChapter I · The RoadEleven miles and she is happy the whole way. A made road, a river beside it, carts, other human beings, and a woman walking who has learned it twice.B1The Road SouthChapter I · The RoadA good road under them, carts going both ways, nobody looking at them twice, and one of them is happy the whole way and never entirely forgives herself for it.B2Nobody Said a WordChapter I · The RoadThree men come in without speaking and work without speaking, and the silence is the part she goes back to.2·01Straight in and TalkingChapter I · The RoadFour hundred miles of this, in stages, over six years.
A2Don't Let Me Sleep FirstChapter II · Every DayThe ground has frozen and there are two more nights like this in them at most, and one of them says so out loud because they promised each other they would.1·02Dont Let Me Sleep FirstChapter II · Every DayThe shape from the hut, used outdoors on frozen ground. Don't let me sleep first. — I never do.B3A Question About Their FeetChapter II · Every DayNot where they are from, not whose they are, not what happened — whether their feet are sound, because she would rather deal with it in a doorway than in a bed.2·02Thirteen BedsChapter II · Every DayThe only door on this world that has ever opened for them , and they got it by having nothing whatsoever.2·04The Birch WoodChapter II · Every DayRender the after, not the event. A road through birches and two people with nothing.
1·03Not Far NowChapter III · PaidThe single most important image in the Earth books and nothing happens in it. It is flat road logistics on a wet afternoon. Nobody in the frame knows it is anything.B4That's a CrossingChapter III · PaidAfter six years of villages, a town with a bridge and a gate and carts on three roads, and the first time since the mountain that one of them sounds like herself.B5And Who Told You ThatChapter III · PaidA woman nobody was going to hire tells a carter his road will be under water in three days, and he looks at her the way a man in a yard looks at a woman in a yard.2·26Bridge Over DravaChapter III · PaidAnd they really do look it. Four times on two worlds.2·26SistersChapter III · PaidAnd they really do look it. Four times on two worlds.
A3One ChairChapter IV · TimeThe first evening in ninety-eight years with nothing in it, and neither of them knows how to do nothing.A4She Took the WhileChapter IV · TimeVal decided at four o'clock in the afternoon, bought bread, had a conversation about a hinge, and carried it up the stairs under an ordinary face.1·04She Sat Down on the FloorChapter IV · TimeNeither of them knows how to do nothing and it takes most of a winter to get any good at it. Kyra registers the floor and does not say it.
A5In a Lane, in the DarkChapter V · For SomethingShe has just said the most accurate and most expensive thing she has ever said, and then she does not let it lie there.1·05In Order from the TopChapter V · For SomethingNo contact. Eight years, and the moment Val stops being able to call it structural.B6What Are You ForChapter V · For SomethingThree men from the eastern road talk about two women three feet away at full volume, the way men talk in front of a horse, and arrive at an explanation.
A6Under the TableChapter VI · The TableA room full of people, a bowl of gray soup, and one small warm point of contact that does the whole job.1·06You Have Costed the CandlesChapter VI · The TableShe proposed it the way she would have proposed a protocol. Kyra said yes before she had finished the sentence, and laughed about it for a week, and never once missed one.A7Eight DaysChapter VI · The TableShe has been carrying a thing alone for eight days, and the eight days are the part she did wrong, and she says that first.1·07The End of a Long TableChapter VI · The TableThe thing the book is named for, in the one form it can safely take in public. Two of them at the end of a table with eleven other people at the other end of it.B7Twenty-Seven YearsChapter VI · The TableA child of four is uninterested in them, and then she is nineteen in a dress she made herself, and then she is thirty-one with a dead mother, and nothing about the two women in the window has changed at all.2·07Which Day to Move a HullChapter VI · The TableThirty-five years of telling a man with barges which day to move a hull.2·08Her Work Came to HerChapter VI · The TableA door at an odd hour and a woman already putting her boots on.
B8Under Six ThousandChapter VII · The PortShe chooses it for the worst reason available, says so out loud on the first afternoon, and counts the town while she says it.2·11Thirty SailChapter VII · The PortThey chose it for the worst reason available, which was that there was money in it, and she said so out loud on the first afternoon.2·12One Square That Everything CrossesChapter VII · The PortThe sum of the whole book, stated on the first afternoon.
A8Both Hands Over HersChapter VIII · A GuessA column of the human dead on a sheet of quay paper, and two names at the bottom of it that are alive.B9A Candle Through HornChapter VIII · A GuessEleven feet of very bad Dutch glass, four clear nights, and the discovery that home is four times bigger and not one inch closer.2·09A Column in Her Own HandChapter VIII · A GuessKnowing a thing and having it in a column in your own hand are different , and she has been avoiding the column for forty years.2·10A Hundred and Eighty OneChapter VIII · A GuessThe first time anybody works out what has happened to them. She sits in front of it for a long time.
1·08Before Anything HappensChapter IX · JakobNothing kept, working exactly as designed, ninety-eight years on. Then go away and stop telling me about it.2·13He Knew What Was in Half the JarsChapter IX · JakobHe knows what is actually in half the jars he sells and lies about the other half on purpose and knows she knows.2·14Four Times a Year and Then Every MonthChapter IX · JakobRender him at thirty-two and healthy. The point of this image is that it exists so the later one can land.
A9Where It Had BeenChapter X · The Only TwoThe marks have gone off both of them. She has known for a year and has been doing it anyway.1·09Do it AnywayChapter X · The Only TwoIntimacy by the house rule: hands, faces, hair, and nothing explicit. The mark is gone and there is nothing on her skin to render, which is the entire point of the scene.A10The Only TwoChapter X · The Only TwoShe stops holding anything back, and the other one feels the difference in about four seconds.2·27A Hundred and Forty Years of the Only FactChapter X · The Only TwoAn image of nothing. By this book there is nothing there on either of them.
1·10Two Minutes Behind HerChapter XI · CarefulNo contact. Kyra knows about the shutter and the two minutes and does not know about the other eleven things.A11Two FingersChapter XI · CarefulTwo hundred people on a quay, a boy just pulled out of the water, and the only touch that survives being watched.1·11Two FingersChapter XI · CarefulThe gesture the next five books are built on, invented in public on the worst morning of a year. Both of them facing the same way as everybody else.
1·12You Always Do itChapter XII · The Other WordsNo contact. A hard clear night, a long glass on a bag of sand, the gulf black, and a woman who has been speaking her own language out loud for ninety years without knowing.1·13Weve Had Five Its SixChapter XII · The Other WordsThe wind comes off the gulf. You know why. — I want it said.2·28Jupiters FourChapter XII · The Other WordsShe is a hundred and seventy-odd years old and re-deriving the Galilean moons with a glass she argued a Venetian into making.
1·14Two Valleys ShortChapter XIII · Vaelith SorinNo contact. Forty-one years, and they are hearing themselves described by a girl with a jug.B11Smoke on the HillChapter XIII · Vaelith SorinNinety-two years later there is a thread of smoke going up out of the trees in exactly the place, and the man making it is the great-grandson of a boy she pulled out of a river.B12The StoneChapter XIII · Vaelith SorinHe refused her real name so that he could never be made to say it, and ninety-two years later she stands over his stone and says the whole of it out loud.2·29High ValleysChapter XIII · Vaelith SorinForty-one years later, from a distance, with money for once and no reason to go up.
1·15I Could Not Have Saved That ChildChapter XIV · The ComplaintEleven weeks of a fever, four hours of sleep a night, and a night and a day on the floor of a room at the top of a lane.B10I'm Fifty-Seven, ChiaraChapter XIV · The ComplaintHe asks her how old she is, and she gives him the answer she has given for twenty-five years, and he says that is what she said when he met her.2·15He Was Fifty Seven and Looked itChapter XIV · The ComplaintTwenty-five years apart from the frame before it, and only one person in it has changed. This pairing is the whole case against them.2·16A Woman at the Top EndChapter XIV · The ComplaintNobody is shown. An empty room at dawn with somebody still sitting on the floor of it.2·17Eleven WeeksChapter XIV · The ComplaintAn object-and-posture image: a stair, boots on, a bag still over a shoulder.
B13Palms DownChapter XV · The TableThe light has never once answered pain and it has never answered fear, and it comes up in a room with eleven men in it because the woman on the floor lifted her head and looked at her.2·18Eleven DaysChapter XV · The TableRender it as a committee room, which is what it is. A table, a judge who was a merchant, two who say almost nothing, and a man paid by the day standing at the back.2·19The Clerk with the Good HandChapter XV · The TableThe most dangerous object in the book is a pen moving steadily.2·20Which of You DecidesChapter XV · The TableWhich of you decides. Which of you speaks for the house. When she is not with you, where is she.
1·16She Did Not AskChapter XVI · The StreetNo contact until the last beat of it, and the whole image is a woman not looking up a lane.2·23A Stranger on Market DayChapter XVI · The StreetThat was how they found out who it had been, and it took about a second and a half.2·25The WoodpileChapter XVI · The StreetAnything she said, he could repeat. It was not mercy and it had nothing to do with forgiveness and she was not, standing there, capable of either.B14The DoorwayChapter XVI · The StreetShe has their coats, and bread, and the notebook, and eleven sheets out of a house the court went through twice, and she has thought about what she wants to say and it is not much.2·21ComeChapter XVI · The StreetThey never learned his name. Four hundred years of trying to construct him out of four minutes and a lamp.2·22She Was Standing upChapter XVI · The StreetA second, and no more. The damage is in how she is standing and nowhere else.2·25Fifteen Yards ShortChapter XVI · The StreetAnything she said, he could repeat. It was not mercy and it had nothing to do with forgiveness and she was not, standing there, capable of either.
A12Give Me a MomentChapter XVII · The ShipShe has held for a fortnight, and she has just put her hands on the actual body of it and found out what was done, one joint at a time.1·17NowChapter XVII · The ShipNo contact yet, and the violence is entirely off-camera. Render the jar, the strip of cloth, the lamp set where she wants it, and a woman looking at another woman for a long moment without touching her.1·18Give Me a MomentChapter XVII · The ShipWithout any noise at all. She had held in a room with eleven men, in two days she does not intend to describe, in a passage, in a lane, on a boat, up a stair, and for three days in this room.1·19She Cried QuietlyChapter XVII · The ShipThe worst image in the book and it is completely silent. Val does not tell her it is all right.1·20A Palms Width ApartChapter XVII · The ShipNo contact, and the closing image of the book. There are men on that deck and there will be men on every deck and in every street and at every table from this day forward, and both of them have learned exactly what a thing seen becomes in a clerk's good hand.B15A Palm's WidthChapter XVII · The ShipFour feet of Dutch ship between them and the mate eleven paces away, because there are men on this deck and there will be men on every deck from now on.2·30The Coast Was GoneChapter XVII · The ShipThe closing frame of the book. A Dutch ship, four feet of deck, and a hundred years behind them.
THE TABLEStudies & Variants
Alternates, studies and loose plates.
2·23Marjeta Was at Bottom of Lane2·24Theres a Boat at Third HourThe Table
