Tallow read the Kitchen’s book aloud to the Chamber, because the Chamber had asked for a number and he had never once in his life given a number without a margin attached to it.
“The granary holds two hundred and sixty sacks,” he said. He stood at the end of the long table with the granary book open under the lamp and his finger on the figure, and he spoke in the flat, careful voice he used for minutes, the one that did not rise or fall at the end of a sentence. “That is the ledger’s figure. It is the figure I wrote at the Turn in the spring and have carried in the margin since.”
“And the Kitchen’s figure?” asked Idrin from the head of the casks.
“Two hundred and fifty-one. Pell counted it at dawn with her own slate and a stick of chalk, and she counted it twice, and she wrote the second count in the back of the book in a hand I can only describe as aggrieved.” Tallow turned the page. “The Watch’s count agrees with the Kitchen’s to the sack. Ysra has been down into the storehouse with a lamp and the tally-stick Korrin lent her. Nine sacks short of the ledger, the Watch says, and the Watch is not in the habit of agreeing with the Kitchen about anything.”
