Korrin came into the stable yard with a lantern, because Ysra had come to fetch him, and because he had been trying for three days to find a reason to go into the envoy’s fourth stall that did not begin with a clause.
He did not need one. He had been given one. Ysra had come up to the Lash’s bench in the Watch-room at the third bell with her count-book open and her hands shaking so badly she had to put the book down on the table to hold it still. She had told him, in the whispered flat voice she used for stairs, about the fifteenth step, and the Lessaran diction, and the warm boards. She had told him about the voice that laughed. He had listened to all of it without speaking, and then he had got up, and taken his axe from the peg, and walked out into the cold without his coat.
The stable was dark except for the lantern in his fist. The two grey mares were stamping in their stalls. They were not eating. Their eyes showed white in the lamp-light, and one of them put its head over the half-door and blew hard through its nose as Korrin went past, as a horse does when it has smelled something that frightens it and does not know whether to run.
