The Undercroft was colder than the Hold above it, and Sella liked it that way. The cold kept the bones honest. Heat made them sweat, and sweating bones lied about their age and their breaks, and a bonesetter who could not trust the rack was no more use to the Hands than a cook who could not trust the salt.
She had her lamp on the shelf by the bone-ledger, and her ledger open at its tenth page, and her sleeves pushed up to the elbow because she had been measuring a thigh-bone against a lantern wick and had not wanted to stop. The thigh-bone belonged to a Foundation builder who had been carried out of the north quarry with his leg in three pieces and had never, so far as the ledger knew, been put back together. Sella had put him back together on paper a hundred years ago. She was putting him back together again now, in a more careful hand, because the Hands had asked her to be sure.
“Ysra,” she said, without looking up. “You are early, which means you have been counting the stair for an hour and got bored of it.”
“Eleven,” said Ysra from the doorway, and came in with her lamp held low.
