The north wall of the Cradle was cut with tally-marks from the floor to the height of a standing clerk, and Tallow walked its length with the lamp in one hand and the Forge’s rule in the other, because a count that was not measured was only an estimate, and he had been trained by the Chamber never to offer an estimate where a measure was to be had.
He had borrowed the rule from Sella. She had given it to him without comment at the top of the pit stair, when he had asked for it, and she had watched him take it with the particular expression she wore when she was giving up a piece of equipment she valued and did not expect to see again. It was a good rule. It had brass tips at both ends and a scale of fine divisions cut into a strip of pale wood, and it was the Forge’s own, which meant it had been checked against the Forge’s standard weight and found exact. Gaunt had objected to lending it out. Tallow had heard him do so through the wall of the Mend-room, at length, and had found the objection very reassuring, because it had sounded so entirely like Gaunt.
