Idrin woke on the gate-step with a Watch-blanket over his shoulders and the taste of the night’s cold in his mouth. For a moment he did not know where he was. The stone under his hip was hard and the light coming through the wicket was thin and grey, and somebody had put a bowl of water on the flags beside his hand, with a cloth folded over the rim, and a loaf wrapped in a second cloth beside that.
He sat up. His neck cracked. The Seal’s mark at his wrist was warm, and his left hand, which had been lying in the blanket’s fold, took a long time to remember how to close.
“You slept,” said Ysra, from the top of the stair. She had her book open on her knee and a pencil behind her ear, and she was looking at him the way she looked at a stair that had not been there yesterday. “For three hours and forty minutes. I counted the breaths. You did not stop breathing once.”
“Thank you,” said Idrin. He meant it more than he could easily say.
“Do not thank me. Eat the bread. The Kitchen sent it up at the first bell with a note that said it was from last week, and I believe it, because it is the first thing that has come out of the Kitchen this season that has not been called from this morning.”
