Ysra followed the grey figure’s track through the Hold because somebody had to, and because the Watch had been told at the candle-clock that the Register’s copy was gone, and a Watchwoman who is told a thing has been stolen goes out and counts the thief’s footsteps before she lets herself sleep.
The track was not hard to find. It led up the Undercroft’s inner stair, past the Keystone’s cold face and the grille of the Vault, and out into the Hold’s back passage where the lamps were lit at dawn. From there it went along the Gatehouse’s east wall, very straight, in a line that no Hand in the Hold would have walked, because no Hand walks in a straight line through a building that was not made for straight lines. Ysra followed it with her book open and her pencil moving and her lips counting, and at each turn of the passage she stopped, and looked at the flagstones, and counted the marks.
There were no footprints. There were only faint, dry, pale smears on the stone, where something had passed close to the floor and had left a little of its grain behind, as a hand leaves a smudge on a window. Ysra counted the smudges. There were nine between the Undercroft’s stair and the Gatehouse’s inner door. Each one was the same size, and each was spaced exactly the same distance from the last, and none of them matched the stride of any Hand she had…
