Ysra counted the pulls, because the pulls were the only thing in the flooded stairwell that was counting back.
She sat on the top step of the water-stair with her bare feet in the lake and her palm pressed to the wall where the rope ran down into the dark. The stone was cold under her hand, and the rope was colder, and every pull the sprig made came up through it and into the bones of her wrist, a slow tightening, a pause, and then a slackening that was almost gentle. It was like feeling a line taken up by a fish that did not want to be landed. It was like feeling a child tug at a sleeve to be noticed. She had no word for it that the Watch had ever needed, so she counted it instead.
“One,” she said.
Far below, out of sight under the surface, the sprig pulled once more, and the rope went taut against her palm and quivered. Then, from the top of the tower above her, from the bell-chamber where Brannoc had gone up the inner stair and had not yet come down, there came the note. It was long and low and it rolled out across the flat lake in a swell she could feel through the water. The stone under her hand hummed with it. The sound went on and on, falling and falling, until it went into the lake’s grey distance and was gone.
