The crate had been packed by someone who expected to be thanked for it.
Idrin could see that from the gatehouse table before Brannoc had finished prising the lid. The straw had been laid in rows, each one tucked under the last like the pages of a book, and the rows were so even that the packer must have counted them. A writing-case lay in the middle of the straw, closed, with brass corners and a clasp shaped like a crown with its points filed down. Beside it was a stoppered bottle of ink, tall and narrow, with a label on it in the pale Chancery script. A single leaf of paper lay folded across the case. The wax on the fold was red, and the seal in the wax was the Chancellor’s, and it had not been broken.
“Don’t touch the wax,” said Tallow, from the door. He had come in behind Brannoc with the board under his arm, because the board went wherever the Register went, and because he had not yet learned how to be in a room with Chancery paper without standing in its light. “It’s a courtesy. A courtesy is only a courtesy if it is opened in front of the one it is meant for.”
