Chapter 66

I scratched the second long line on the wall in the morning. The light first came down the shaft with frost in it, in the last week of October. Not for the pages this time. For the stairs. A year since I had counted a hundred and twelve of them going down.

The first year I had counted from the pages; from now on, the stairs. The pages had been done to me. The stairs I had walked down myself, with my back to him, before the guards could turn me.

So: year two. I sat on the bench and looked at the line. Then I reached under the plank, into the frost-crack behind the columns of days, and made sure the strip of paper was still there.

***

I had been watching since March.

I learned the deep cells the way I had learned Gareth’s books: slowly, with nobody noticing. Two night men, a week each, and one of them heavy, whose breathing in the guardroom went long and slow by one in the morning and stayed that way until four. The outer gate at the turn of the stair, fo