Bardo Kell sat in the Gatehouse with a mug of Pell’s cider in both hands and bargained as though the Gatehouse were a marsh inn and the table his own. He leaned back on the bench until its legs creaked, he propped his boots on the rung of the chair beside him, and he used the mug to point at things, which Tallow found more unsettling than any argument he had yet encountered in the Chamber.
Tallow had come down to the Gatehouse early that morning, as he did every morning, to look at the board. The first line of the Register still hung there under its layers of old wax and dust, in the colourless Ink that never dented the wood and never faded. Citizen One: the Mantle, resident, non-departing. He had read it every day since he woke, and every day he had found the same disquieting thing. The hand was very like his own. He had never been able to decide whether that was a compliment to the hand or an insult to himself.
“I’ll have a custom,” Bardo said. “Not an instrument. I know you lot. You’ll have a Charter drawn up with a seal on it the size of a dinner plate, and every time I buy a sack of stone you’ll need a Hand to stand up and say a clause. I don’t want a clause. I want a habit. A handful of salt, in a store that’s mine for a season, and no…
