Chapter 74

My ledger was the map. I had been keeping it for three years and more without knowing what it was for.

I gave it to Rowan over six nights, on the slate, a section at a time, in letters small enough to get a great deal onto a child’s slate. He read each piece back to me down the shaft, and wiped it, and sent the slate down for the next.

The night changed at the second bell. The day changes at first light. The night man, who made his round of the lower row at the third bell and went back up the twenty-two steps to the guardroom and his pipe, and was asleep in his chair by the brazier before the fourth—I had heard that chair creak back on two legs some eight hundred times. The low door at the head of the twenty-two, on the latch, because who would come up from the lower row? The iron door out of the guardroom onto the main stair, bolted on the guardroom side, with a bolt that shrieked if you drew it straight and said nothing at all if you lifted it a finger’s width first.