The bell was the first thing Tobin noticed, because the bell was what would hurt him if he missed the count.
It hung from a bracket on the lodging wall, a black iron bell the size of a cooking pot. Someone had rubbed the lip of it smooth. Hoff had said that no one rang it for anything but the count.
Tobin named it to himself while he waited, the way he named everything in a yard: iron, bracket, rope, the nail that held the rope. He did not look at the people. People were not the count.
The yard was hot. The stones were warm through his boots, and the shade under the lodging eave was a hand’s width too narrow for everyone. Calen stood at the line in the dirt.
Hoff stood by the gate with his heavy boots set apart and a stamp in one hand, the kind the clerks used on the board’s paper.
Hesper sat on the lodging step with her left hand open on her knee.
“I will bleed for the Mark,” she said.
“It is a cut,” Calen said. “Not a bleeding.”
