The water fell a little before dawn, the way the marsh let things fall, all at once and then not at all, and Wren felt it go down under the granary’s back step like a breath let out of a body that had been holding it too long.
She had not slept. She had not wanted to. She had sat on the back step all night with the lantern at her feet and the key on its cord against her breastbone and her hands in her lap, and she had counted the water every time the figure on the wall changed. The figure had changed nine times since dusk. The last change had come after the Smith was carried up the bank. He had been put down on a blanket by the granary door with his arm across his chest, grey-faced and sweating, and he had not spoken again since the sluice, except once, to say the bar was a good bar. Corran had sat beside him all night with a wet cloth. Wren had gone to the wheel every hour and put her hands on the spokes and felt the leaf hold, and then she had come back to the step and sat down again.
