The clock had already begun spending her. She felt it before the town was out of sight, the particular arithmetic of a fixed sum on a moving road: every mile bought with hours, every hour signed for in her father's margin column, in advance, in a hand steadier than hers. She caught herself converting the count into distances, the way she converted everything into distances, and made herself stop, and did it again within the mile. By noon of the first full day she had learned the important things about traveling with Lord Daniels. He did not complain, which was suspicious. No person with a body and a saddle had ever made a full day over cracked road and bad drainage without expressing one opinion about his knees, his horse, his breakfast, or the state of divine mercy. A chain crew without complaint was not a chain crew. It was a burial detail. Daniels rode through everything as though comfort were a private matter one did not inflict on the public. And he was not quiet. She had mistaken him for quiet because his words came so evenly and with so little waste that the mind counted them as silence. He spoke often. He merely spoke in reports. "The road here tilts." "Yes," Genna said. "The ditch is no longer on the low side." "No." "That seems disadvantageous." "It is." "The horse has noticed." "I had suspected as much." "The horse would like it known that the adjustment is beneath him." "That," Genna said, "is the first normal thing anyone has said today." She learned, too, the grammar of him. "Do you know this road?" bought her "Yes," and five silent miles. "Tell me what you know of this road" bought the fords, the post turn, the two bad culverts,…