The Chamber met on the breach, and found that it had no law for one.
Tallow had searched for it the night before, in the Hearth and in the back leaves and in the old Writs that had been struck, and he had come up with nothing that fitted. There were the Hearth’s habits, which were not law but custom, passed down in the Ink from the first winter. There were the Watch’s oaths, which were the Watch’s own and bound nobody else. There were the Kitchen’s rules of the house, which were the cook’s and bound her lodgers and nobody in the Chamber. And there were the Articles, which had not been written yet. The Hold had no Article for a Hand who opened another Hand’s drawer without a Knot, because nobody had imagined a Hand would need one. Tallow had sat up with the candle-clock until it burned to its last ring, reading the back leaves for a clause, and he had found only the clean blank space where the clause ought to have been.
So he read the only standing rule he could find, which was the Hearth’s, and he read it aloud, exactly as it was written.
