Ysra could not go down any further without losing the way back, and she knew it, and so did everyone else on the square. She came up the stair one step at a time with the water falling off her in sheets, her boots still round her neck and her lips blue at the edges, and when she reached the top she did not sit down. She stood at the water’s edge with her hand pressed to her forearm and looked at the tower as if it had insulted her. Sella had seen that look before, on the wall, when a sentry had lost count of the stairs in the dark and been forced to start over.
“It is a rope,” Ysra said. “I cannot pull it from here. I cannot pull it from the stair. The stair ends at sixty-one and I am not a sprig.”
“No,” Sella agreed. “You are a Watch. That is worse for the water.”
Ysra gave her a look that was almost a smile. Then she turned her arm over and bared the forearm, and Sella saw the small dark mark under the skin where the body had begun, very quietly, to draw a shape out of itself.
