The Gatehouse counting-room kept its breach records in a press with four shelves and a door that stuck in damp weather. Ysra had to lift the door with her hip and turn the key at the same time, and then pull the drawer out of the press’s bottom shelf, which took a count of three because the runners had warped. She had counted those runners herself in the summer of the Petition. She had counted the drawer too, and the sheets inside it, and the number of times she had been told to stop counting.
The breach record was a thin ledger bound in brown calf. On its first page, in her own square hand, was a single entry dated to the week the Chamber had first heard the Petition of Hands. It said Pell Ansard, Kitchen Hand, her Private Drawer, opened without Knot, by the Watch, for the Hold’s inspection. Breach.
Ysra had written the word breach herself. She remembered the weight of the pen. She had pressed so hard that the nib had caught in the paper at the end of the word and left a small ragged hole, which she had never mended. She put her finger on the hole now and felt it, cold and faintly rough, and she did not read the entry. She knew what it said. She had written it, and then been told by the Chamber that it was the Watch’s breach and not the Hold’s, and that a breach was a…
