The grey came up over the stable roof a little after the bell. It was cold enough that Calen could see his breath in the lodging yard, and the stones had a skin of frost on them that the sun had not yet found.
Nell was already at the post.
She had come out before anyone else, with the cord looped over her left arm and her right hand free. She had not waited to be called. Calen had found her there on his way out of the kitchen, standing three paces from the grey wood with her heels together, counting her own breath in a whisper.
“Morning, Sir,” she said.
“Morning.”
“May I?”
“Yes.”
It was the last lesson of the three. Calen had known that since the first knot on Day seventy-five, and he had not told her. She had counted it herself, in the way she counted everything, in the back of her head where he could not see it.
