Ysra counted faces in the morning. She had begun doing it without deciding to, the way she had begun counting the stairs in her sleep, and she had stopped trying to stop.
Nine Hands. Nine faces. She checked each one against the face she remembered from the day before, in the order the seats were set round the table, from the mason’s end to the goats’ side and round again. It took her no time at all. She had done it so often now that the faces came up in her mind like the pages of a book she knew by heart, and she could see at once where a line had moved or a mouth had softened, the way she could see a loose tread on a stair in the dark.
Harrow’s face was unchanged. It was broad and grey-eyed and set in its habitual frown of concentration, as though it were counting something very large a long way off. Ysra had been afraid for it, the night before, when the Lantern Hall had gone quiet around them. But the mason’s face had come out of the dream exactly as it went in, and she was glad of it, and she did not say so.
