The clerk was already on his stool when Calen came out into the yard.
He sat beside the trough, where the mud was thinnest, with a wooden board across his knees and a book open on the board. He wore a dry grey coat buttoned to the throat, and his collar was clean.
He had not stepped off the flags once. Calen could see the line of the stool’s legs in the mud, neat and straight, and no marks around them.
“Ferris Teel,” the clerk said, without looking up. “Begin when the bell goes. I do not start late, and I do not stop early.”
“Yes.”
Teel wrote something. He did not look at Calen’s face, or at the blade in Dace’s hand, or at the gate. He looked at the book, and his pen moved in small, careful strokes.
The rain had stopped in the night. The sky over the ridge was pale and clean, and the air was cold enough to hurt the teeth. The yard was black with wet, and the chalk line Calen had drawn on Day thirty-two had washed into a faint grey smudge.
Hoff stood by the guardroom door with his arms folded.
