She counted the pots because she could not stop counting them.
There were ninety-six. She had known that from the wall-stair the evening before, when she had watched the lamps come on one by one, and she had known it again at dawn, when the smoke had lifted off the water for a moment and she had seen the whole ring laid out across the marsh like a row of lit candles on a table nobody had yet cleared. Now she was walking among them, and the count went on in her head whether she wanted it to or not. Iron stand. Coals heaped in the bowl. Wet peat banked round the foot, sending up a thin grey breath that was sweet at the top and bitter underneath. A Hunt-Warden on a stool. A bow across his knees. A face turned toward the Hold, and then, as she came abreast of him, turned away.
She did not meet their eyes. She had decided that on the bank. A witness was a witness, and a witness who looked at the men who were holding her in a line would begin to feel like a prisoner, and she had been a prisoner once already, in the Quiet Wing, and had no intention of being one again on a causeway.
