Lune had walked the Hold’s boundary every morning for four years, and in all that time nobody from the Crown had ever asked to come with her. That was why, when the Crown’s envoy appeared at the wall-foot road at the first grey of the morning, in a plain brown coat with her boots already dusty and a book under her arm, Lune stopped with the survey rod on her shoulder and simply looked at her for a while.
“You are early,” said Lune.
“You are earlier,” said Ossane Tiller. “I was told you started at the wall-foot. I have come to see whether the Crown’s chart agrees with the wall.”
“The chart does not agree with the wall,” said Lune. “It has never agreed with the wall. It agrees with the Chancery’s clerk, who never came out here to look at either of them. Come along. You will be wet to the knee before the first stretch is done.”
They walked. The road ran along the foot of the Hold’s north wall, between the old Foundation stones and a strip of rough grass that the goats had been allowed to keep trimmed, and it was wet with the night’s dew. Lune went first, with the rod in her hands and her coat buttoned to the throat. She did not talk. She counted. Every twelve paces she stopped, planted the rod’s foot in the turf, read the brass figure off its face, and said the distance aloud in leagues and…
