Ysra counted the Forge’s ingot-store at first light, because the Forge was the only place in the Hold where a count could be checked by a single pair of hands and still come out right. The store was a low stone shed against the Forge’s north wall, with a sloping roof of Lamentine slate and a double door of oak banded in iron, and inside it the ingots lay on their racks in tiers of ten, grey and squat and stamped on one face with the Hold’s own three-stroke mark, which Gaunt had cut into the first lot of iron in the spring with a chisel and a bad temper. The mark was crooked. Gaunt liked it crooked. He said a straight mark on iron was a lie told by a lazy smith.
Tallow’s tally lay on the bench by the door, in his small, perfect capitals, with every rack written down in its own column and every tier beside it. Ysra had the tally in one hand and the Watch’s slate in the other, and she went down the racks one by one, touching each ingot with one finger as she counted it, the way she counted sacks and stairs and faces. She did not hurry. A count that was hurried was a count that had to be done again.
