The Lessaran cordon shut the causeway to every cart and every foot that carried grain, and the Watch of the Hold watched the gates close one after another along the Lantern Ford road, like a row of teeth clicking shut on an empty mouth.
Korrin heard the first gate go from the wall-walk above the lower gate. It was a sound he knew: the heavy iron bar dropping into its brackets on the far side of the Lowgate green, then the bolt, then the tallying chain running out through its block as the wardens drew it tight. The lodgers in the green heard it too. They looked up from their carts and their baskets, and then they looked at the wall, and one of them, an old woman with a shawl over her head, put a hand flat on her chest as though she had been struck.
“Next,” said Korrin, to the Watchman beside him on the walk.
“Next gate is the toll-house cart-road,” said the Watchman. “Then the stake’s inside post.”
“Then go and count it,” said Korrin. “Take six. Take the bar. Go now.”
He took the six himself.
He went down the outer stair two at a time, with his shoulders hunched and his hands loose at his belt, and he took the Watch’s mallet from the rack at the foot, and he did not glance back at the Watchmen trailing after him. He knew how they were counting. He had taught them himself, in the marsh…
