Lune walked the Lessary Road from Lantern Ford to the gate in the grey hour after the riders had gone, counting the boundary stones aloud for the Chamber’s record, and every stone she passed was a figure she would have to defend before the Chamber by the candle-clock.
She had a chain over one shoulder and a survey-rod in her left hand, its brass ends worn bright by her own palm, and a notebook under her coat that she had sewn shut at the spine so that the pages would not blow away. She walked the way she always walked, which was faster than anyone else in the Hold and faster than was comfortable, with her eyes on the ground at each step and her lips moving with each pace she took. Her boots were good. Her coat was the Survey House’s own, grey wool with the numbers of the first league stitched into its collar in red thread, and she had not once since the Survey was made had it cleaned, because it was the only garment she owned that could be measured against itself.
The herald’s escort had left a trail across the causeway. Lune measured it. The hoof-marks were deep in the soft mud at the ford’s edge and shallow on the frozen stone of the causeway itself, and the column’s line of march was plain to anyone who knew how to read a road, and she had always known how. She stood at the ford’s near…
