Ysra went down to the Undercroft because the stair had been wrong all evening, and she could not say how.
It had not been the steps. She had counted them at dusk, going down with Sella’s slate under her arm to check the bone-room’s measurements against her own, and there had been nine from the Hall door to the cellar floor, the same as always. It had not been the rail, which was cold and smooth where the Hands had worn it bright with their palms, nor the lamp-niche, which held a stub of candle that had burned to the same height since the spring. It had been the feel of the place. It had felt occupied. It had felt as though someone had been standing on it a moment before she came, and had stepped away into the dark without bothering to be quiet.
Ysra did not sleep well. She had not slept well since the first winter, when the wall had been rebuilt in a hurry and she had walked the whole circuit every night for a month, counting the stones and the stairs and the doors. She had learned to live with the wakefulness the way one lived with a bad tooth, by keeping the tongue away from it. Tonight the tongue was going to the place every few breaths, and so she took her lamp and went down.
