Harrow counted the benches while the division began, because counting was what his hands did when his mind was not yet made up.
Thirty-two benches in the Great Hall. Sixteen on the left of the long table and sixteen on the right, each one a single plank of oak on two blocks of stone, each one scarred along its front edge where the Hands had pushed their chairs back a thousand times. Nine seats on the benches, though the benches were built for more. Thirty-two benches and nine seats and one Warden at the head, with his scarred hand on the table and his face turned toward the minute-book. Harrow found that he was counting the empty benches as well as the full ones, and that the empty ones were worse.
He had not decided. He had said nothing about the motion yet, because a mason did not say a thing until the courses under it were laid. He had listened to Tamsin’s soft voice and to Tallow’s dry reading. He had listened to Korrin’s four fingers and Gaunt’s objections and Pell’s barley. And he had counted the stones of the Hall’s east wall three times while the Hands argued, and each time the count had come out the same, and each time there had been a hollow ring at the place where the sixth course met the seventh, and he had not yet been able to decide whether the ring meant the wall was failing or only that it…
