The Charter of Remaining was read in three sittings, as a Split must be, and Tallow read it.
He read it himself, standing at the Clerk’s desk in the Great Hall with the minute-book open and the lamps trimmed high, because the rule was that the Clerk read every instrument in full and the Regent did not. He read the preamble, which was the plain sentence the Regent had written and then been unable to strike: The Hold and its March are set down in the Register for as long as this Charter stands. He read the Tithe, which was the Forms of the assenting Hands lent for the Charter’s term, and none spent. He read the Seal, which was none, because a Split adds no Seal and this was a Split. He read the Memory, which was two.
Then he read the clause, and he read it slowly, in the Ink’s flat voice, with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead and his eyes on the page, as a man reads his own sentence aloud at his own trial.
“Citizens are those who remain by assent.”
The Hall was quiet. The first sitting had been held in the morning and the second at noon, and the Hands had sat through both of them with the stiff patience of people who knew how the thing would end and did not yet want to hear it said. They sat in their iron-backed chairs now, around the Mouth’s table, with the Regent…
