Sella came to the Mason’s Yard with the bone-ledger under one arm, because she had decided that a Form which did not drift was a bone she had not yet examined, and she was not in the habit of leaving bones unexamined.
She found the Mason’s copy at the foot of the stone-lift with its grey hands folded on the sling. It was not working. It was resting, as a stone rests in the moment between being set and being struck, and its face was turned toward the gatehouse. It was a broad, plain face, with a square jaw and a short nose and no particular expression. It had been cast from the Mason’s own face in the Undercroft, and it had taken on, over the winter, the look of a man who had been asked to wait by a door and had decided to wait with dignity.
Sella set the ledger on the cradle’s beam and opened it at the page she wanted.
“Stand still,” she said to the Form.
“I am standing still,” said Piers Hadley, from inside it. “It is the only thing I have been allowed to do for a fortnight, Miss Sella. I am very good at it now.”
