Korrin stood the river-gate watch with Ysra for the whole of the afternoon, because the Chamber had said the gate was to have two Hands on it while a foreign factor’s wagons were inside the walls, and because Ysra had said she would not be left alone with a Coldharbour cart and a clause.
“Their granaries,” said Korrin, to the wall, to the marsh, to the thin white fog that came up off the reeds each evening like breath off a sleeping animal. “Open them.”
That was four words. He had been saying the same four for a month, and each time he said them they sounded more reasonable to him and less useful to anyone else.
“It would be the granaries’ fault,” said Ysra, without turning her head, “if they were opened by force.”
“It would be ours. We’d have the bread.”
“We’d have the blame, and a Lessaran court in the seven cities would have a case to read aloud for a hundred years.” She was counting the cart-tracks in the mud below the causeway, one set after another, the way other people might have read a letter. “Pell says we need the grain. Pell is right. You can be right and still leave the granaries shut. That’s what a wall is for.”
