Ysra counted the fires on the Caul road before she went to bed, because she had always counted them, and because she had come to the conclusion that a count was a thing a person could give up only when the thing counted had gone.
There were thirty-nine at midnight. She wrote the number in her book with the time beside it, in the small upright hand she kept for counts that would have to be defended, and then she sat on the north wall’s step with the book on her knee and the lamp at her elbow and watched them. They burned low and steady along the road’s far edge, in no order a Lessaran marshal would have drawn. Between them grey figures moved, not with the purpose of a camp, but with the slow, unhurried attention of people who are packing for a long walk and are not yet sure which of their belongings will fit.
She had not slept well since the rite began. She did not expect to sleep now. But the wall was quiet, and the Caul was quiet, and for the first time in a long season the silence on the north side of the Hold did not feel like a held breath.
