The records room was the smallest room in the Keep, and Ysra had chosen it for that reason.
“Fewer places for a sound to go,” she had said, on the first morning of the first lesson. Now she sat at the end of the long table with her hands folded, a cup of cold tea at her elbow and the Keep’s supply tallies stacked in front of her. She did not touch them. She did not need to.
“How do you keep them?” Calen had asked her on the first morning.
“I put each number in a room,” Ysra had said. “Then I walk the rooms in order. If the door is shut, I know which room I skipped.”
She had not smiled.
“It is not a gift. It is only a method, and I have been using it since I was small enough to be sent to the market with a list.”
Calen had spent the morning in the yard, watching the carters load, and he had come up with the tally sheet still smelling of the stable. He did not sit. He had found that he could not keep a lesson in his head if he was sitting down to give it.
