Tallow drafted the Harvest Ballot’s clause himself, at the gatehouse table, in the Ink, with the lamp turned low and the Edict of Labour open at one elbow and the Crown’s ration decree open at the other. He did it because no one else in the Hold could write a clause that a Lessaran would be unable to read as a compliment, and because the drafting of clauses was the one labour in the body that he had never once been asked to share.
He wrote it four times. The first draft was too long. The second was too clever, and he struck it through in one clean line and wrote beside it, in the margin, this is the Crown’s own voice, and the Crown will like it. The third was correct, and he did not like it, because it was the kind of sentence the Crown had always been able to read aloud with a straight face. The fourth was the one the Chamber would hear.
He read it aloud at the candle-clock, in the Great Hall, standing at the foot of the long table with the minute-book open on his forearm and the Hands in their places around him. The room was hot. The windows were propped open to the midsummer evening, and the smell of the marsh came in on the breeze, sweet and heavy, with a faint undertone of the granary’s grey.
