Harrow chalked the first stroke on the arch before the clapper had finished its note. That was not how a Mason ought to do things, and he knew it, and he did it anyway.
The chalk was a stub of white from the lime-pit behind the Mason’s Yard. It smelled faintly of wet lime and was too soft for good work, which was why nobody else had wanted it. He held it between his thumb and two fingers, the way he held a plumb-line, and he drew the stroke on the inside of the arch, where the Mason’s Yard could see it from the south wall. One stroke, straight, the length of his finger. He stepped back and looked at it. It was true. It was the first stroke of a count that had no end on it, and he would not write an end on it, because a Mason does not promise a wall he has not yet built.
“One,” he said, to the stone.
He did not tie a knot for it. The count-cord hung from his belt where it always hung, a length of old twine with its knots set in the order the Hold had counted itself: the courses of the wall, the steps of the Undercroft, the Hands as they woke, one knot for each. A gate that stood still was not a thing the cord had been made to hold. He put his thumb on the last knot and felt it, smooth and hard…
