Gaunt said it at the top of his voice, and the whole Forge heard it, and the boy at the bellows stopped pumping in alarm. He did not forge masks. A mask was a lie made of iron. It was a face you hung over another face so that nobody saw the drift and everybody believed the lie underneath it, and he had lived for two hundred years among Hands who wore their trades on their skins and never once been ashamed of the wear. He would not make a mask for the captain’s copy. He would not make one for the Chamber, which had asked him twice in a week in its best voice. He would not make one for the Warden, who had asked him a third time, on the bench in the yard, in the plain voice that was far worse than any Form.
“I do not make masks,” he said again, louder, to the bellows boy and the cold fire and the wall. “Write it down, Tallow. Put it in the Ink. Gaunt the Smith objects to the making of a mask, in the first line and in the last, and in every line in between.”
