The fair had a patronage lane, which was a stretch of the causeway’s northern edge where the Assembly’s district lords hung their banners on poles and sold favours to one another by the yard. Gaunt had heard about it from Korrin, who had heard about it from a Watch-boy, who had been sent to fetch a flagon of ale for a lord’s steward and had been asked, while he waited, to witness a contract for a cart of salt. Gaunt had not believed the boy. He walked the lane on the sixth morning to prove the boy wrong, and he went alone, because he did not want anyone with him who might be embarrassed by what he was going to say.
He objected to the first banner he came to. It was a sky-blue cloth with a silver heron on it, pinned to a pole that had been cut from green wood and was already warping in the damp. The booth under it sold lamp-oil by the cup, and the oil was cheap and thin and smelled of rancid fish, and Gaunt said so, loudly, to the steward behind the trestle, who went on with his ledger.
He objected to the second banner, which was a rough brown wool with a black stag, and which belonged to a Thornwick factor who sold cloth by the bolt and would not, the factor said, sell a bolt to a man who came to objection. Gaunt bought a bolt anyway, to prove a…
