Lune woke in the Survey House before the toll-house bell and measured the light.
It came in across the floor from the east window in a long, pale tongue, and it touched the first stake of the causeway’s line at the bottom of the ridge, and Lune counted the paces from the window’s edge to the stake. Fourteen. Then, because the stake was not the post, Lune counted from the stake to the first post on the causeway’s edge, and that was seventy-one more. The light had not yet reached the second post. It would reach it in a quarter-hour, when the sun had cleared the marsh’s mist, and Lune would be able to say how far the post stood from the house, which was a question nobody else on the ridge had thought to ask.
The rod lay across the bench where Lune had left it. It was ash, iron-bound at both ends, marked in paces down one edge and in leagues down the other. Lune took it up and held it against the window, and the light ran along it like water along a gutter.
Outside, the causeway had been empty all night. Lune had heard the Lessaran wardens march out of the toll-house in the dark, a great deal of boot-leather on wet stone, and then a silence, which was the sort of silence a body makes when it has been told to go away and has decided to obey. By the time Lune went down to…
