The Chamber voted at the candle-clock, because Tallow said that a vote taken by daylight could be argued about by people who had been out in it.
Idrin sat at the head of the table with the Charter flat in front of him and his hands on either side of it, not touching. He had learned in the first winter that a prince who touches a paper before a vote is a prince who has already decided, and the Hold did not forgive that. So he kept his hands still and watched the candle burn down the first finger’s width, and he listened to the Hall, which was full of the small sounds that a room makes when nine people have stopped talking at once: the drip from the high window, the bellows across the yard, a goat somewhere below the court calling for its kid and being answered.
Tallow stood at the minute-book with his pen lifted. He called the roll by trade. That was how the Hold had always voted, because a Hand’s trade was the only name it could be sure of, and because a clerk who called a roll by name would sooner or later be asked to explain why one name was longer than another.
