Teodor Quill sat on the bench in Lowgate with Osk’s brown dog across his feet, and counted its breaths against his own, because his tutor had told him that counting was a kindness to animals.
The dog was asleep. Its ribs went up and down under his boots, slow and warm, and Teodor took a breath for each one and held it for a moment and let it go, so that his own breathing would stop being in a hurry. He was not sure the dog could tell the difference. He was fairly sure that his tutor had not known either, and had said it only to make him sit still in the lane for an hour while the Hold’s grown people argued in the Great Hall about things that were none of his business. It had worked. He had sat still for most of an hour. He had counted two hundred and eleven breaths and was going to start again.
He was ten years old. He had been told so at the Kitchen door by Pell, who had said that a boy of ten could carry a loaf and a piece of news in the same arm if he was careful about the crust. He had been told, too, that he was Citizen Three in the Hold’s Register, which was a thing that nobody in the Chamber seemed to agree about. The Lessaran Chancery said he was a subject of Lessary’s Hold, and that his name was on the…
