Sect Year 5 · fifth month · night of day 1 · the forty-ninth life: Orrel Lane, his fifty-second year
Pascoe came back up the stair with his ledger under one arm and his hat in his hand. Garrow knew the clerk’s careful feet on the treads before the door moved. Pascoe stopped in the doorway and did not come in. He had taken his hat off, which he hadn’t done on any of the other visits, and rain from its brim had darkened the shoulders of his grey coat.
“It’s held at the flood still, Mister Corrie,” he said.
“Still.” Garrow looked at him across the blanket. “You’ve said that since the lamp was lit. You said it in the night and you’re saying it now. The boy’s been to the ford and back, and the road’s under the river, Pascoe. You told me yourself the ford was up and the witness would have to wait for it. Well, he’s waiting.”
“The witness has been held at the flood. On the shelf side. The Lantern’s men won’t cross water they can’t see the bottom of.”
“Then the water’s up.” Garrow stopped to breathe, and he did it slowly, the way he had learned to breathe on the pass with the cold coming in at his collar. “A witness can’t come up a road that’s under the river. You can’t put a man on it.”
