The Writ was already written. Idrin had written it at the gatehouse table three nights running, and each night he had sat with it until the candle guttered and then folded it away, because a Writ that has been written is a Writ that wants to be spoken, and he had not yet decided that the wall was worth the price of a voice.
It was a short Writ. The Hold had learned that much from the Chancery, if from nothing else: a Writ that named one site and one thing to be done to it could be read aloud in the time it took to draw a breath, and the Chancery’s clerks always took longer to read theirs than they needed to. This one named the north wall, from the tower to the western corner. It said that no fire set by any crown’s servant should take hold of that stone while the Hold’s voices held the Writ. It did not say what the voices would cost. The Warden knew what they would cost, and he had written the cost in the margin of his own draft in small, neat letters, and then he had crossed it out so that the Chamber would not have to read it.
