Ysra counted the wagons first, because wagons were the only things on the Lessary Road that ever arrived all at once.
Eleven. They came off the road below the causeway, where the Lantern Ford toll-house stood cold at the marsh edge, and they climbed the long grey switchback toward the river gate with their wheels grinding in ruts the autumn rain had cut deep. She counted the wheels next. Forty-four, and two spares lashed under the lead cart’s tail. Then she counted the lanterns, which were already lit on that cart in the middle of the afternoon, two small yellow flames burning as though someone at the front did not trust the sun to stay up.
She sat on the river-gate wall with her back to a merlon and a tally-cord across her knees, knotting each figure as it came. She kept her eyes on the cord and only lifted them when she had to. Looking down at the approach was how a watchman lost her place.
The river gate had been rebuilt after the fall at 678, and the new pivot-stone still looked too pale against the old masonry, like a tooth set in the wrong jaw. Harrow had laid it himself with the valley shims and counted every course aloud while he worked, so that the wall would know its own height. Ysra did not trust the gate. A gate ought to have a gate-hand, someone who felt a weight on the oak and knew who was leaning…
