A cart came up the causeway in the late light, pulled by a grey mule that stopped at every step to look back at the wheel and see whether the wheel had followed. Idrin knew the boy before he knew the mule. He knew the boy by the way he sat on the box, very upright, with the reins held loose in his hands as though the mule were the one who decided where they were going and the boy was only there to be polite about it.
He had been at the gatehouse arch since the bell. He had told himself that he was there to see the Lessaran wardens, who had been moving their carts back and forth along the Lantern road all afternoon, and that Ysra had asked him to watch the causeway’s far end because the north wall was too high to see a cart’s wheels. Both things were true. Neither was why he had come down.
The mule stopped again, halfway up the last of the causeway, and looked back. The boy did not hurry it. He sat on the box and waited, and when the mule turned its head forward again and began to walk, the boy said something short and kind to it that Idrin could not hear.
