The notice came up the Caul road on the morning the Chamber met to count the iron, which Idrin thought afterward was a sort of courtesy, the kind a great power shows when it has already decided the outcome and wishes to be seen as orderly about it.
A Corvanne factor delivered it at the Caul foot. He did not come farther. He gave the paper to a boy on a grey pony, a child of about twelve with a Corvanne cap pulled down over his ears, and he told the boy to ride it up the road to the Hold’s gate and not to stop for the bells. The boy did as he was told. He came up the approach at a canter, with the pony’s hooves striking sparks off the old paving, and he reined in at the gate with his face red and his cap askew, and he held the paper up to the watch as though it were a sword.
The seal on it was the Iron Court’s. It was a black mark pressed into grey wax, a bar of iron laid across a crown, and the crown had been struck through with a single neat stroke. Idrin saw the seal before he saw the words. He saw it again when the paper was laid on the Chamber table at the candle-clock, and he sat looking at it, with nine seats watching him, and the faint scent of cold metal in the air, which he had…
