Idrin had issued the ration decree in the Crown’s name a week before the blight came into the north store, and he had written it himself, in the Ink, at the study table, with the minute-book open beside him and the cold in his left arm making the pen slip. He had written it in the plainest words he could find. The Hold would eat by the sack. Each house would draw its share at the gate. The children of Lowgate and the garrison would draw first, and the Hands would draw last, at the Turn, and the Regent would draw nothing until every child had been served.
He had not thought, when he wrote it, how it would look at a table.
The Chamber ate its midday meal in the Great Hall, at the long table where the minutes were kept, because the Hands liked to be near the candle-clock and to hear it drip. The meal had always been bread and cheese and a jug of the Kitchen’s small beer, and at the Turn there had been a bowl of broth for each Hand, with a spoon, and a piece of salt pork for those who had worked on the stone. Now the bread was barley, and it was thin. The cheese was the Goat Pens’ last, and was given out in slivers. The beer had gone off, and the Kitchen had replaced it with a warm drink made from boiled barley-husk, which tasted, Gaunt said, like the…
