The Undercroft stair has nine steps, and Tallow had counted them every time he had gone down it since the first winter, because a stair you have counted is a stair you can get back up in the dark. He went down the ninth step with a lamp in one hand, a slate under his arm, and a ruler in the pocket of his coat, because a name that is not in the Register must be in the Keystone or nowhere at all, and he had come to see which.
The Keystone sat in its niche beneath the Hold, a squat black block the width of a wagon wheel, with its first face cut in the old foundation letters. Let no one be paid twice. The Lessaran masons had never been able to read those letters, and the Hold’s own builders had carved them before the Lessaran bridge was even a plan on a chancellor’s desk. Tallow set the lamp on the floor and held it close to the north face, where the tallies were.
He had counted them once before, long ago, in the first winter, when he had been a clerk with a fresh book and too much patience. He had given up at a thousand and written many in the margin. Now he counted them properly, with the ruler laid flat along each row and the slate on his knee, and he did not let the ruler slip.
