The Reckoning of Forms had taken fourteen nights, and on the fourteenth Harrow went down into the store for the last time with his lamp, his chalk and his count-cord at his hip, and he began at the first rack and counted every copy aloud.
He counted them the way he had been taught to count the stones of a new course, one at a time, touching each one with the flat of his hand so that he would not be able to say afterwards that he had skipped it. The Build copies came first. There were two in the store now, the Mason’s spare and the one he himself had worn on the walls until the thaw, when the Regent had asked him to leave his own Form on its rack for a season so that the Hold could see what a Mason’s hands looked like when they were empty. He had done it. He had not liked it. He touched the empty place where his own Form had hung, and felt the cold of the padded wood come up through his palm, and said, “Build, one, and one spare,” and wrote it on the stone in chalk.
Then Feed, which was the Kitchen’s spare, with its cloth folded over its face. Then Watch, which was Brannoc’s, lean and narrow and waiting by its door. Then the Mourn copy in her box, which had been cast from a dead man’s face with nothing living to hold her steady, and…
