The motion was on the Chamber board when Tallow came in from the gate yard, written overnight in the Ink. Nobody had seen the hand that wrote it, and nobody needed to. The Ink wrote where the Ink was told to write, and it had been told to write on the board the night before the first sitting of the new year. Tallow stood in the doorway with snow melting off his shoulders and read the first line twice.
We were counted in Tallowmere. We would like to be counted there again.
He put his slate down on the nearest bench. It was a habit he had picked up from the Chamber’s older rules, that a clerk did not write a motion until he had heard it spoken, and the motion had not been spoken. It had only been written, and the Hall was filling up behind him with the sound of boots and bread and Gaunt’s voice complaining about the draught from the door.
“Read it,” Korrin said. He had come in last, as he always did, and he stood with his back against the cold pillar, his fists closed around nothing.
“It is a motion,” Tallow said. “It has been written, not spoken. The body has not spoken it. I will read it as it stands, because a clerk reads what is on the board and not what he wishes were there.” He cleared his throat and read the rest aloud, in the plain voice he used for…
