The Lessaran toll-men had been on the Lantern Ford causeway since the fair closed, and they carried a different kind of slate now. Ysra had seen the change on the second morning. The old slates had been ordinary toll-boards, black and scratched, with the Crown’s tally-marks cut into their frames by a man who had cut a great many of them and never looked at them. The new ones were smaller and newer, with brass corners, and each had a Chancery seal burned into the frame, a crown above a long-stemmed flower, the same seal that had been pressed into the Census Writ’s green wax at the Hold’s own gate.
She counted them from the Hold’s watch-post by the water, where a stone shelf jutted out over the Lamentine’s channel and the Watch had kept a lantern and a glass since the spring. The post was a small place. It had room for one Watch-woman, one lantern, a stool, a glass, and a slate on a nail. Ysra had kept it by herself for two nights, because the Watch-captain had said she was the only one who did not sleep through the grey hour, and because she had asked for it.
