The Chamber sat at the candle-clock with nine seats full and the faces still drifting, and Idrin had the agenda on the table in front of him, written out in Tallow’s clean hand, because the clerk had said that a Chamber which could not read its own order of business would be a Chamber that did not deserve to be seated.
There were three items. The grain for Lowgate, which had gone down to a hundred and eighty sacks and was not going to go up. The iron for the Forge, which was in the Charter’s bell and in the pins that Harrow still could not lay, and in the six iron chains that had gone into the body by the Caul bridge and were not yet paid for in the minutes. And the Caul embargo, which the Iron Court had not lifted and had made worse, by sending a second notice up the road the day before, sealed in the same black wax.
Idrin looked at the list. He saw that Tallow had put the Caul item last, with a small neat mark beside it that meant to be argued. He thought that the clerk was right. It would be argued, and the argument would take the rest of the morning, and by the time the Chamber came to the Forge’s iron, the grain would have been forgotten.
