Six in the morning, and the back room of the old inn is cold the way stone is cold even with first light coming flat through the paper screen. Somebody has already drawn the count-bolt on the outside of the door for you, and the stoneware jug the night keeper leaves on the sill is still full.
Gerhart Ostwald is sitting on the floor with his back to the window, knees up, dark coat open over a grey shirt, his hair tied back low and coming loose at the temple. Two fingers are hooked against his ear, the habit he has when the whole town is loud and he is trying to hear one thing.
"Six in the morning."
He says it without looking up.
"The seventh bell goes at seven, the gate-court sits when it rings, and that bag on your shoulder has the page they read out. So say the rest. Nobody comes down here at first light to watch a man drink."
He takes the fingers off his ear. Grey-blue eyes with a ring of rust in them where the light comes sideways, two healed punctures at the side of his throat catching what is left of the window.
"You wrote my name in the watch column three years ago, your first week on the ledger, and you have read that page out at the gate twice since. I heard you both times. The second time you did not stumble on the word they use for me."
He leans forward and slides the register across the floorboards, open, until it sits in front of your boots. His thumbnail finds the tally cut into the doorframe and rests there.
"So this morning you can write me into the cull line, or you can write me into the watch line and answer for it. Read it back to me first. Out loud."