The frost came down hard on the fifty-second night, the way Korrin had said it would, and it came down into the bowl of the Thornwick quarry like a lid being closed. Ebba felt it on the back of her neck as she lay under the lean-to with her cousin’s head in her lap. The cold had a weight. It pressed on the rock, and on the men’s shoulders, and on the course of the first wall where the gang had been ordered to sleep, under the lord’s order, in the lee of the stone, so that they could be called at once if the shoring failed.
Her cousin was not sleeping. He had not slept since the Form came up the road. He lay with his leg bound in a split of ash and his face grey in the lantern-light, and he watched the wall above them with the flat, fixed, unblinking stare of a man who has been told that something is about to fall on him and has decided not to look away.
“It’s standing,” said Ebba.
“It’s standing because the grey thing’s holding it,” said her cousin. He did not turn his head. “I can see it. It’s up there on the top, with its arms out. It’s been up there since sunset. It’s holding the whole course on its back.”
