From the preface to the tide tables for the year of the 312th Low Tide, issued by the Reckoners of the Ferry Guild at East Landing. The preface is reprinted in every year's tables, unchanged except for the reckoners' note at the end.
How Seiran counts
Seiran numbers its years by Low Tides: the lowest tide of each year, in early autumn, on which the Ferry Guild rows out the year's lanterns.
A year runs from the morning after one Low Tide to the night of the next, and takes the number of the Low Tide that closes it. These tables are for the year of the 312th Low Tide. A child born in this year is recorded as "born in the 312th Low Tide", and will tell you so for the rest of their life. A person's age is counted in the Low Tides they have seen.
Within the year, the city counts springs. A spring is a spring tide, the high and low that come twice in every moon, and the first spring after Low Tide is the first spring of the new year. Most years have twenty-four springs. One year in every few has twenty-five. Dates are written by year, spring and day, so that the third day of the ninth spring of this year is written 312, ninth spring, third day.
Why the guild keeps the tables
The city's founding records begin with the guild. In the year of the first Low Tide, the seven founders rowed their lanterns out on the lowest night they could find, and their first clerk wrote the night down. The next year she wrote down the next one. The city had other ways of counting then, and has lost all of them, because the guild was the one body in Seiran that needed to know, every year, exactly which night was the lowest, and so was the only one that never stopped counting.
The right to keep the tables, and the right to close the canals on the night they name, were granted to the guild together. They have never been separated.
How the night is named
Through late summer the reckoners of East Landing measure every low water at the Reckoners' Steps beneath the landing, where a line has been cut into the stone for every Low Tide since the 60th. They compare each tide with the tables, and with the moon, and with the weather coming in from the sea. On the morning they are sure, they hang a vermilion ribbon from the eaves of East Landing, and the city knows that tonight is the night.
They are almost always right.
Years that went wrong
| Low Tide | What happened | What the guild did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The founding records begin | Nothing. It was the beginning |
| 47 | The reckoners name the wrong night. The lanterns are rowed out on a tide that is not the year's lowest, and go out at the Markers anyway | Concluded that the Markers matter more than the measure, and kept measuring |
| 147 | The Contested Tide. East Landing and Willow Landing name different nights a day apart, and each landing rows its own lanterns out on its own night. Both sets go out | Ruled at the next assembly that East Landing alone names the night |
| 196 | The moon is eclipsed on Low Tide night. The ferries row out in the dark | Hung extra bow lanterns. Recorded that the eclipse made no difference |
| 230 | The Doubled Year. Two nights in a row are equally low, to the width of the reckoners' line | Rowed half the lanterns out on each night. Some families still say a grandmother "went on the second night" |
| 282 | The Floodyear. The year's lanterns are too many for one night, and are rowed out over four | Counted the four nights as one Low Tide. It is the only year that has needed four |
| 283 | The first Low Tide under the rule of the Markers | Kept it |
The disputed beginning
The archivists of the Harbour Office have argued, on and off for a century, that the guild's count is short.
Their case is this. The guild's ledgers for the 30th to the 38th Low Tides do not survive, and the earliest Harbour Office records, carved on the quay stones, seem to describe nine more years in that stretch than the guild's count allows. If they are right, this year is not the 312th Low Tide but the 321st.
The guild's reply has not changed since it was first given, in the 211th Low Tide: "The guild counts the Low Tides it rowed. If there were others, nobody rowed them."
The city, which has never once dated anything by the Harbour Office, uses the guild's count.
Births, names and the ledgers
Because births are recorded by Low Tide, and lanterns are recorded in the guild's ledgers by Low Tide too, every life in Seiran is written at both ends in the same count. The clerks of East Landing can tell you, for any name in the ledgers, the Low Tide its owner was born in and the Low Tide their lantern went out. They are rarely asked. When they are, they look it up in silence, and write it on a slip of paper, and hand it over folded.
The reckoners' note for this year
The tables predict this year's Low Tide on the twenty-fourth spring. The reckoners will confirm it on the morning, by the usual means.
Visitors are reminded that the canals close at dusk on the night itself and do not reopen until the last ferry is home, however late, and that the guild does not accept "I didn't see the ribbon" as an excuse. The ribbon is vermilion and very large.
The reckoners wish every ferry a quiet ebb.
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