Idrin went to the Survey House at night, alone, on foot, by the causeway road in the dark, and he sat on the low oak stool that Lune had used on the first day of the house’s life, and he considered the seat.
He had not meant to go there. He had walked the causeway road in the dark with the new bar’s count cut into the stake’s post behind him, and the lodgers’ lamps going out one by one along the ridge, and he had passed the Watch’s fire on the wall-walk without stopping, because the Watch had turned its backs on him at the stake, and he had not yet found a clause for that. He had meant to go to the Great Hall, where the Chamber’s candle-clock stood on its table and the Chamber’s minutes lay open on their shelf, and where he might have sat with his back to the wall and given the question the weight it deserved. Instead his feet had taken him up the ridge road towards the lamp in the Survey House’s east window, and he had found himself in the doorway with the cold coming in behind him, and Lune on the bench by the hearth with the rod across the knees and the rod-book shut, looking at him without any surprise at all.
