Korrin wanted the Petition short. He said so four times before the bread was out of the oven, which was the most he had said about anything since the marsh raid.
“Short,” said Korrin. “Four clauses. Each Hand a citizen. By name. Done.”
“Short is how you lose a Petition,” said Harrow, from the end of the table, where he had been counting the cracks in the ceiling plaster for the last quarter of an hour. “A wall built short falls down. You must build it long enough to stand on, Lash, or the first wind takes it.”
“A Petition is not a wall.”
“Then what is it?”
“It is a thing the Crown reads and then puts in a drawer,” said Korrin, and he slapped the table with his palm. “That is all it is. The shorter it is, the less the drawer has to hold.”
Pell had the pen. She was sitting at the head of the Kitchen table with the flour bin on one side and the stove on the other and the dough rising under a cloth at her elbow, and she was reading each argument back to them in the voice of the Crown’s clerk. She did it badly on purpose. Her nose went up and her voice went thin and she pronounced every syllable as if it had a penny stuck to its heel. Harrow laughed. Korrin scowled. Sella, sitting on the bench by the door with her bag at her feet, did not…
