Article Seven is the Dwellings article, and Harrow was sent to count them, because he was the only Hand who had ever counted a wall without being asked to count a person.
He went out in the morning with a slate under one arm and a stone in each coat pocket, and a stub of chalk behind his ear, and a line of text in his head that he had been turning over since the drafting table. A Dwelling is a house with a door that can be counted. He had said it aloud to the Chamber, and the Chamber had nodded at it as it nodded at most of his sayings, politely and without much understanding. He had not yet decided whether it was true.
Velvet caught him at the Mason’s Yard gate. She was carrying a basket of linen and had her shawl over her shoulders against the early damp, and she stopped in the gateway with the basket on her hip and looked at the slate under his arm with an expression he could not quite read.
“What is a Dwelling, Mason?” she said.
She did not say it in the courtly voice. She said it quite plainly, as though she had been wondering for a long time and had not wanted to ask anybody who might turn the question into a compliment. Harrow stopped. He considered the question for the length of a breath, the way he considered any question that came at him from the…
