A proper audit required a level stool, a dry slab of Welsh slate, and a piece of grey chalk trimmed to a chisel point with a penknife so downstrokes did not smudge when mist rolled in through the portcullis teeth.
Prit had the slate and grey chalk. The level stool was a more delicate problem, because the third cobblestone inside the lower gatehouse arch had sunk half an inch during autumn rains, and every time Prit leaned forward to cross a t, the back left leg gave a small, undignified clack against mortar.
He solved it by folding a dry birch leaf four times and wedging it under the short leg with the tip of his claw.
“Nineteen,” Sella Rusk said, holding a torn strip of brown wrapping-paper to the lantern. Her leather cloak smelled of river willow and Hobb’s barley smoke. “Private Toban Reed, Fourth Regiment, Second Pike. Left thumb lanced for splinter infection. Gives his word that when the Hall of Witness opens, he will leave his pike in the trench and walk down with empty hands.”
Prit drew his grey audit chalk across the slate. His phalanges made a crisp, dry scritch-scritch that satisfied him to his heel-bones.
