Hoff had the yard swept before the first bell. He walked the line of the lodging wall twice, tapping each stone with the end of his stick. He made Liss count the benches out loud until she had counted them three times the same.
Ysra spent the early hours at the lodging step with her papers in a neat stack. She read each one aloud under her breath, and when she came to the end of the stack she read the first one again.
The clerks came through the lodging gate at the second bell, three of them, in grey coats with the Ministry’s bird stitched on each collar. They carried their own table. They set it under the awning on the east side of the yard, where the shade fell in a clean square, and they laid three books on it in a row.
Behind them came the Record Office man.
He was older than the clerks, and thinner, with ink on both cuffs and a grey coat buttoned to the throat. He did not carry a book. He carried a case of pens and a stack of blank sheets bound with grey tape. He did not look at the class at all until he had found the chair with the best view of the yard.
