The second sitting was held in the evening, and the Chamber was smaller, because the Hands had been up all day on the ford road and the Caul cord and the iron, and the body was tired as a wall is tired after a long frost. Ysra counted them in at the door. Harrow, Tallow, Pell, Sella, Gaunt, Korrin, Mourner by the wall. Seven. The Regent had not yet come down from the Gatehouse. She stood aside to let the Mason pass, and counted the Mason’s shoulders as he went by, and found them the same width as yesterday, which was a comfort she did not quite trust.
The Seal tally was on the slate in her lap. She had kept it since the first night she stood on the east parapet with the Regent ten paces ahead of her, and it had grown more crowded every week. Two marks at the top, for the Seals that had come with Edicts. A long pale line down the middle, which was the Seal’s track across the Regent’s chest, drawn in the Watch’s square hand with a dot at every course. And at the bottom, under the dots, the word that she had written that morning in the clinic and had not been able to rub out.
