The Chancery commission came up the Lessary Road on the seventh day after the herald, in a grey dawn with a thin wind off the marsh and frost still white on the verges. Ysra saw it first. She had been on the river-gate wall since the second bell, counting the carts on the road as she had counted them every morning since the summer, and at the bend below the Ruined Bridge she saw a black-lacquered carriage come round the hedge with two horses in front and a lily painted on each door, and behind it a line of three mule-carts piled with paper cases, and at the back of the line, walking with his hands behind him, a man in a plain grey coat.
She counted the carriage wheels, which were eight. She counted the mule-carts, which were three. She counted the paper cases, which were nineteen, and the clerks, who were two, and the footmen, who were four and looked as though they wished they were in Sallowmere. Then she counted the man in the grey coat, because he was the only thing on the road she had not been able to count from a distance, and by the time he reached the river gate she had decided that he was one.
