Article Thirteen was the Naming clause, and Tallow read it to the Chamber in full, from the first word to the last, while the afternoon light lay across the table in a pale and steady bar.
A Hand may become a citizen by Naming.
He read the procedure after it, which the Chamber had drafted over three sittings and argued about in the minute for most of a week. A Hand must name itself before the Chamber, in its own trade and its own voice. It must surrender its Private Drawer to the Hearth, permanently, with the Knot spoken on the page. It must take a living Form in place of its weft Form, lent by the Chamber for the term of its citizenship and no longer. And the Mantle must assent, in its own voice, by Writ or by tie-break, until the Hold had a better answer for the question of who the Mantle was.
The room was quiet when he finished. He could hear the Mason’s hammer in the yard and the Watch’s bell at the gatehouse, and under them the faint steady breath of the Hall’s old stones, which had been breathing in and out for two hundred years and had never once been asked to say what they thought.
