The Forge had been given the Charter of Recovery’s iron on paper, and not one ingot of it had reached the ingot-store. Gaunt knew this before the sun was over the north wall, because he had walked the store at first light with a lamp and a bad temper and had counted the racks twice, once for the stock and once for the insult.
Sixty-two ingots on the racks. The tally in Tallow’s book also said sixty-two, which was the one thing in the morning that Gaunt could not find a way to object to, and so he objected to it anyway.
He was objecting to the tally when Tallow came down the stair with the book under one arm and the expression of a man who had been awake since the candle-clock and enjoyed it.
“You are wrong,” Gaunt said.
“I am recording a discrepancy,” said Tallow. “I am not yet in a position to be right or wrong about it. The Charter of Recovery gives the Forge its iron in shares, paid by the Chamber, and the Chamber’s share was sixty ingots, plus two for the bell-post’s rivets, which I entered on the fourth day of the month and which you have not yet acknowledged. In plain words, a Tithe is the part of a debt the Hold pays out of its own stores, and the Forge is the one it is paid to.”
