The Charter of the Survey came before the Chamber as one clause. Lune had drafted it at the gatehouse table in a single sitting, with the rod-book open at her elbow and a ruler laid along the top of the page, and Tallow had checked it three times, once for the words, once for the grammar, and once because he could not believe a clause could be so short and still bear the weight of a Hold.
It read: The Hold is the walked March within three leagues of the Keystone.
Tallow copied it into the minute-book in the Ink, and then he sat for a moment looking at what he had written. It was the first definition of the Hold that the Hold had ever made for itself. Every other description of Ormhold in two hundred years had been written in Lessaran paper, by a clerk who had never once come up the Lessary Road on foot.
The Great Hall had been swept for the Charter. The benches had been pulled round so that every seat faced the long table, and the Regent’s chair stood at its head, with the candles lit on either side of it and the Register’s own box open on the table beside the minute-book. The box was empty. It was only ever filled when an instrument took effect.
