Idrin asked Tallow to show him which of his decrees were now permanent, and Tallow took the Register down from its shelf in the Gatehouse with both hands, as he had done every morning since the Crown, and set it on the clerk’s table between them, and opened it at the first leaf of the Regent’s own entries. He had been dreading the question for a week. He found, when it came, that he had been looking forward to answering it, in the way that a Clerk looks forward to the one column in the ledger that will finally add up.
“It is a long book,” Tallow said. “I shall take it in order, Highness, with the pedantry that is my best and most irritating gift, and I shall give the range where the range is honest. Shall I begin at the Warden’s Charter or at the Regent’s?”
“At the Charter of Forms.”
“Then we begin at the Charter of Forms.” Tallow turned the leaf. It was the Ink’s hand, the colourless hand, with the square black letters of the Register’s own entries standing up from the page like the marks on a gravestone. “Entry 0287. The first of your Regent’s lines. Made in the Warden’s name and then in the Regent’s, on the day you could not say your name. It is before the Crown, Highness. It is therefore supersedable. The Chamber could undo it tomorrow, if it had a stronger instrument and the Assent to make one. It…
