Tamsin moved the motion because nobody else was going to.
She had been awake for three days with a bell she could not see. It was not a sound she heard with her ears. It was a pressure under her breastbone, a little drawn-out ache like the ache of a note held too long in a tin whistle, and it came whenever the Hold was quiet, and it came most strongly in the evenings, when the goats were fed and settled and there was nothing to do but listen to the Hall settle around them. She had told no one about it except Brannoc, who had nodded as though it were ordinary, and Sella, who had written it down.
So she stood up at the candle-clock, when Tallow had finished reading the minute of Brannoc’s words, and she said that she wished to move a motion.
She said it softly. She faced the goats’ side of the table, where the benches were empty except for the wind from the door, and she said it there first, so that the words would have somewhere to fall. Nobody heard. The benches creaked. Gaunt had begun to shift his weight on the far bench, and Korrin had his arms folded. Tamsin waited, with her thin voice caught at the bottom of her throat, and then she turned round and said the whole motion again, to the table itself, so that it would be on the wood where the Hands could see it.
