Idrin went to the Gatehouse to sign, because the Register was kept there, and a Charter was not a Charter until it had been entered in the Register’s own hand.
He had not been inside the Gatehouse in the morning since the spring. It was a small square room at the foot of the gate-tower, with a low ceiling and two narrow windows, and it smelled of cold stone and old paper and the faint sharp tang of the Ink. The Register lay on a sloping desk under the far window, a great flat book bound in grey hide and chained to its stand by a brass ring, and beside it, on the gatehouse board, the first line of the Hold’s law was still legible in faded capitals, though the Ink had begun to fade and the letters now looked as if they had been written in mist.
CITIZEN ONE: THE MANTLE, RESIDENT, NON-DEPARTING.
Tallow had set out the Ink. It stood in a small brass pot at the end of the desk, colourless, so clear that it looked like water in a glass, and it did not need to be warmed or stirred. The clerk had laid a clean quill beside it, and a fresh sheet of the Chamber’s paper, and the copy of the Charter that had been signed by nine Hands. He stood at the far end of the desk with his hands folded in front of him, very straight, and he did not glance at the…
