The Petition must be answered, and a Warden with no Charter could do only one thing about it. He could defer it.
Idrin said so plainly to the Chamber, at the third sitting on the Petition, and the Chamber, which had been asking him for a plain answer since the broken gate, was so surprised that for a moment nobody moved to speak. Harrow lifted his head from the rafters. Korrin, at the end of his bench, unfolded his arms. Gaunt, who had been sitting silent since the Forge, looked up at the prince as though a stone had spoken from a wall.
“I will defer it,” said Idrin. “The Petition is deferred until a Charter of Hands is made. There is no Charter now, and I will not make one in the middle of a cough and a Lessaran treaty and a child’s name that nobody has been given. So the answer is not yes, and it is not no. It is later. And the place where I am putting it is this table, and no other.”
“A Writ has a site,” said Tallow, quietly, from the minutes. “The Writ must name one place. It cannot be deferred in the wall and the gate and the Hall all at once.”
