Idrin counted the copies back at the table, one at a time, the way Harrow counted a wall.
There were nine slips of paper. Each one had been signed at its foot with a clerk’s mark, a small square with a line through its corner, and each had a single word or a single line written under the mark in the hand of the Hand who had returned it. The slips lay in a row on the gatehouse table, under the lamp, and he moved his finger along them slowly, reading each one aloud to himself before he went on to the next, because he had learned that a count which was not said aloud could be made to come out however the counter wanted it to.
Eight yes. He had known it would be eight. He had not known which one would be missing until he came to the last.
Korrin’s yes was short. It was one word, yes, and nothing after it, and the letters were pressed so hard into the paper that the nib had torn at the s. Idrin thought of the Lash’s flat voice in the Chamber and of his arms, which had been ringed with chain-marks in the morning. He did not think Korrin had meant the tear. He thought the Lash had simply found the pen too light for the word.
