The herald’s party went out under the arch at midday, and Brannoc was the one who had to shut it.
He had been waiting for that since before the sun was up. He had stood at the windlass since the new light, with his white hand on the crank and his good hand on the bar, and he had felt the gate sit in its pins all morning like a cow lying down in a field, heavy and patient, waiting to be told it could get up. He knew every groove in the iron. He knew the pin that stuck on the left side when the frost was in the wood, and he knew the leaf that swung clean when the wind came off the Sallow. He knew the wind was coming off the Sallow now, because he could hear it going through the gaps in the arch like water through a sluice.
Water and bells. That was what he was: water and bells and a gate. The Hold had built him out of the iron in its drains and out of a bell that had since been eaten, and sometimes at night he dreamed of a stair going down into black water one step at a time. He counted the steps in his sleep. He never once got to the bottom.
