Ysra counted breathing the way other people listened to rain. It was a habit from the wall, where a watch that could not hear its neighbours’ breath could not tell whether they were asleep, drunk or dead, and she had carried the habit down the stairs with her into every room the Hold had ever given her. In the Undercroft, with the Chamber gathered in its ring for the first hearing of the drying page, she could count eight breaths and a ninth that was slower than the rest. The ninth belonged to Mourner, who was the one thing in the room that never seemed to want to be heard.
The brazier ticked at the bench’s end. The lamps stood on their hooks along the wall, and the Keystone’s warmth lay across the flags like a rug that had been laid by someone who knew the house. Harrow sat with his hands on his knees, his cord coiled in his lap. Tallow was at the Register table with the counterpart propped on a frame before the brazier, its foot still dark with damp, its first page clean. Gaunt sat with his splinted arm across his chest and his face the colour of a tallow candle. Korrin was on his feet by the wall. Idrin sat in his chair by the stone, his left arm in its sling, and Mireille was at the bench with the Census open on her knee.
