The river gate opened for the length of a single cart, and Brannoc lifted the bar with a patience that made almost no sound.
Idrin had come down to see her go. He had decided to do it in the night, sitting up with the water-ledger and the cold loaf, and then he had forgotten that he had decided, and found himself at the foot of the gatehouse stair in the grey before dawn with his coat buttoned wrong. Pell, passing with a tray of bread for the Watch, had looked at the buttons and then at his face and said that it was the second thing he had ever done in his life without a Writ, and that she would be counting the first one for the rest of his days.
Mireille stood on the bank with her satchel on one shoulder and her good grey cloak buttoned to the chin. The river was loud beside her. The Sallow had come up a hand’s breadth in the night and was running brown and quick past the landing, carrying twigs and foam and the odd drowned leaf past the posts. The smoke lay low over the water and did not lift. Beyond it, on the far bank, Idrin could just see the nearest of the Hunt-Warden pots, a dull red spark at the edge of the reeds, and beside it the dark shape of a man sitting on a stool with his bow across his knees.
