Ysra climbed the wall stair for the fourth time that night and counted the steps aloud. Forty-one from the yard to the wall-walk. She had counted forty-one on each of the other climbs, and she said the number again at the top, because a stair that changed its count in the dark was a stair that wanted watching.
The gate stood shut below her. It had stood shut for three nights. Brannoc had answered the watch from the gatehouse every day since the morning he woke in the gate, with a little delay and no argument, the way bells answer ropes. Now the watch called down to him and the gate said nothing. The wind came off the Caul and leaned on the leaf as if it wanted to see what the leaf would do.
The spate had come through at the turn of the season. The Sallow had risen for two days and dropped nothing on the Hold but mud and noise, but the wind that came with the flood had found the windlass chain on the gatehouse. Fourteen links were gone, snapped at the wheel where the chain turned. The counterweight had dropped a finger’s width, and the leaf sat out of true on its pin. From the wall-walk Ysra could see the gap, a dark line between the leaf and its post, like a missing tooth in a smile.
