Idrin came into the Kitchen at midafternoon, when the bread had been taken out and the pans were on the hooks and the copper pot was simmering quietly on the back of the stove, and he asked Pell, in the plain voice, whether the Courier had a copy of her cook.
He said it because the Courier had said so through the Hearth’s grey rail, in the Lessaran passive, in a clause that Tallow had minuted without a single change. It is proposed that the Kitchen be entered by its cook, who is a copy of herself, and that the copy be surrendered to the Crown’s clerk at the Crown’s charge. He had heard it in the Hall with his hand on the table and a feeling in his stomach like cold iron, and he had not said anything. Now he had come down the back stair with the clause in his head, because he wanted to hear what the cook would do with it.
Pell was at the bread shelf with her back to him. It was the only way she could speak to a Warden without swearing, and she had been turned that way, in his experience, for as long as he had known her.
