The Census ledger was bound in Lessaran grey, with the Chancery’s crown stamped small on its spine and a clerk’s label pasted beneath it that said, in a neat and careless hand, Quiet Census, Second Book, Lamentine and the Marsh Towns. Mireille had been made to carry that label through every room of her service, and she had never once been able to look at it without thinking of the clerk who had pasted it. He had been young. He had sneezed while he worked and wiped his nose on the back of his cuff. She had been the Keeper’s assistant then, and she had brought him the paste.
She set the ledger on the Register table at the gatehouse, under the window, where the midwinter light came in flat and white off the Lessary Road. Idrin sat across from her with his left arm in its sling and his right hand resting on the wood. Tallow was at the far end of the table with the minutes. Ysra stood by the door with her slate, because Ysra stood by every door, and Osk had come in with a cup of hot milk that nobody had asked him for and had set it down at the table’s corner without a word.
