The Sallow was wide at the crossing and very deep in the middle, and the ferry moved across it as a slow thought moves across a room, with long pauses and a great deal of care. The poler did not talk. He stood at the stern with his pole set against the river’s bed and his eyes on the rope, which ran from the bow to the far block in a taut grey line and sang faintly in the cold air. Ossane sat on the canopy’s bench with her case on her knees and her face turned to the water. The clerk sat at the bench’s far end with his satchel open and a pen in his hand, not writing.
Idrin stood by the bow rail. He could feel the river through the planks. It came up through his boots as a steady, unhurried pull, the way the weft pulled at the bottom of a body that was asleep, and he found, to his surprise, that he was counting the pull. One. Two. Three. It was a habit he had got from the Hold, and it had got into him so thoroughly that he could not now stand on water without measuring it.
