Act II, Chapter 11: Mira and the Courtier with Uncertain Loyalties

The execution yard was visible from Mira's window at every hour that carried sufficient light, which was most of them.

She had counted the stones. Forty-seven from the east wall to the drain at the center, which was not precisely a drain but performed drainage as its secondary function. The primary function she had determined by watching, on her fourth day in residence, three servants arrive before dawn with brushes and pails. She did not watch what the brushes removed. She noted the servants' faces, which she could not see clearly at this distance, and their gait, which she memorized, and the particular rotation of their appearances — the tall one every third morning, the two shorter ones together every fifth — and filed this information in the architecture of her mind under the heading things that happen before the court wakes, which was a section that had grown considerably in the weeks since she arrived.

She did not think of the yard as an intended message anymore. She had thought of it that way for perhaps her first two days, which she considered generous. After that, she had reclassified it under settled environmental condition and adjusted her morning routine accordingly: she rose before the light changed, completed her correspondence and observation while the yard was shadow and therefore abstract, and turned to face it fully only when the sun had climbed sufficiently that it became merely stone and geometry rather than symbol.