Article Four was the rule that no citizen may judge a citizen, and the Chamber had been arguing over it for an hour as though it were the verdict on the breach.
Tallow sat at the end of the long table with the minute-book open at the article and his pen resting on the margin, and he listened to the argument rise and fall around him in the Great Hall’s afternoon light, the way he listened to the candle-clock. It did not change its pace much. It went round and round the same few clauses, like water in a millrace, and every so often a voice would come up out of the current and say something that the others had not yet thought of, and then the whole race would turn a little and carry on.
Korrin wanted a judgment on Ysra. He said so at once, in two imperatives, and then he added a third, which was that the Hold must have one. A breach was a breach. A drawer opened without a Knot was a thing the Watch had done, in the Watch’s own house, and the Watch had never once been told what that cost. He said the Lash had been told what it cost every time he broke a chain. He said it was only fair that the Watch should be told too.
