Ysra was at the culvert before the sun, because a count is only honest when it is made before anyone has had time to arrange the things being counted. She brought six of the Watch, two lanterns with their shutters cracked to a finger’s width, and the tape for the stair-counts. She had found that the tape was good for course-heights as well, provided she laid it flat and did not let it sag.
Korrin came up the road behind her with his spear and no cloak. He had not slept. She knew it because she had heard him sharpening the Lash on the gate-step in the dark, and the stone had carried the sound up to the Watch-wall like a dropped spoon.
“The cord has moved,” she said.
“It has moved a course. I walked it yesterday. I did not need you to count it.”
“I counted it anyway.” She crouched at the verge and laid the tape along the new pegs. The distance between them was the Hold’s course-height exactly. It was the stone-line of the east curtain’s footing, which Harrow had marked in red chalk on the first morning of the thaw and which the rain had not yet washed away. Someone had measured the wall from outside. They had done it carefully, using the wall’s own mark, and then they had put the measure in the ground a little further out than the wall stood. It was a tidy piece of work, and tidy work was…
