The Watch-wall at night was the one place in the Hold where Ysra could think without being interrupted by the sound of her own feet. She walked it from the Gatehouse corner to the east tower and back, a hundred and twelve paces each way, and she counted every one. The count was steady. It did not change from night to night, and she had come to rely on that, as a carpenter relies on a plumb-line that has never once been pulled off true.
Tonight she had a question in her mouth, and it would not go down.
She had carried it since the Chancery’s crate was opened. She had carried it past the Regent’s window, and the Chamber’s door, and the Mason’s yard, where the Form had stood with its folded hands and its face turned toward the road. She had carried it up and down the Undercroft stair. It had got heavier with every step.
At the east tower she stopped, and looked out over the wall at the marsh, and at the Lessary Road beyond it, where the lights of a single farmhouse burned in the dark like a coin left out in the rain. Then she turned back, and found Tallow at the top of the Gatehouse stair with his minute-book under his arm and his lamp held low, as if he had been waiting there for her to come round.
