The sound of that counting didn’t belong in the cold silt of the Black River.
It belonged on the northern post road between Cloudford and Highwater, on frozen mornings. Just then, the ruts were iron-hard and the grease in the axle boxes was stiff as animal fat. It belonged beside a two-wheeled mail cart tipped in a drainage ditch. There, a tall man in a salt-stained wool coat walked out thirty paces into the sleet to sight the nearest milestone, counting his stride under his breath so his apprentice would learn the measure of an honest furlong.
“...seventy-one... Seventy-two... Seventy-three...”
Len Vey didn’t drop the wooden spool. A courier whose hands opened when a sudden shock struck him didn’t survive his first winter on the Tern Road. But his fingers seized around the ash spindle until the grain bit through his wool glove into the calluses of his palm. His knees locked against the wet dark rock platform. The cold river spray whistling through the gaps in the iron grating seemed to drop ten degrees in an instant. That turned into a freezing needles-and-pins numbness that spread upward from his collarbones into his jaw.
Beneath his linen shirt and canvas vest, the stitches across his left forearm gave a sharp, vicious tug. The horsehair thread, pulled tight against the swollen red margins of the puncture wounds where his double had gouged him forty-eight hours ago, burned like hot wire. His pulse slammed against his ribs in a heavy, uneven gallop.
