Harrow came to the Mason’s Yard at dawn, as he had come every morning for three years, and for the first time since the first wall was raised he could not count the stones.
He stood at the yard’s gate with the frost on his shoulders and the cord in his fist, and he looked at the pile of dressed blocks that the Lowgate men had left for him the evening before. There were fourteen of them. He knew there were fourteen because he had told the men to leave fourteen, and the men had counted them back to him in the lantern-light and nodded, and he had gone home to bed with the number in his head like a pebble in a boot. Now he looked at the pile and the number would not come. It sat in his mouth and would not leave. He tried again. “One,” he said, and then he stopped, because the next word had gone out of his head like a bird that had been in the rafters and had decided, all at once, to fly.
He had not known a number could do that. He had counted all his life. He had counted the stones of the first wall and the courses of the north face and the brick-ends of the Keystone’s pit, and he had counted them aloud, always, so that the Hold could hear the number and know it was true. He had counted in the marsh and in the Chancery’s…
