Ysra counted the lights along the Lantern Ford road before the first bell, and the count was twenty-one, which was seven more than Lune’s last figure.
She did not believe the number at once. She wrote it in her book with the hour beside it, in the small upright hand she kept for counts that might have to be defended later, and then she counted again, from the same place on the north wall, with her palm flat on the cold coping and her eyes narrowed against the grey. The lights were low and steady and spread along the causeway’s edge in two uneven rows. Some were lanterns hung from poles. Some were fires built in iron cressets at the roadside, which the Chancery had used on the marsh road for as long as Ysra had been able to count anything. Twenty-one. The second count agreed with the first. The second count was always the one she trusted least, because it was the one she had wanted to come out the same.
She wrote the number again beneath the first. Then she wrote the time, and under the time she drew a short line, to show that the figure had been checked against the Watch’s own clock and not against her own sense of what was reasonable.
