Idrin asked Tallow to record the Mantle’s words as a refusal, and Tallow said that a refusal was not an instrument, and the argument went on for the whole of the afternoon.
It went on in the Gatehouse, at the clerk’s table, with the lamp lit and the window grey and the rain at last beginning to fall on the leads outside. It went on through a cup of Pell’s tea that neither of them drank, and a plate of bread that Tallow ate, absently, a crust at a time, while he read the minutes back in the Ink’s flat voice to see whether they had changed in the night. They had not. They never did. That was the trouble with minutes. They kept what had been said, and they did not care whether the saying had been right.
“It was a refusal, Clerk,” said Idrin. He had his right hand flat on the table and his left in his lap, and his voice was tired and steady. “It was plain. It was spoken in the Hall, before the Chamber, in the Turn. The body said it would not remain by the assent of others. That is a refusal in any tongue the Hold has ever spoken. I should like it entered as one.”
