A Judgment was not a Charter. Idrin had read the difference in Tallow’s minute-book three times since the Articles were read, and he had come to understand it only slowly, as a man learns the weight of a tool by lifting it. A Charter bound a district. An Edict bound a body to a labour. A Writ named a site. A Judgment was a thing that a Regent could do alone, in a small room, with one pen, and it was the only instrument the Crown had left that did not require every awake Hand to say yes out loud. It took one memory. It needed the voices present. It added no Seal and cost no Tithe. It was, Tallow had said, the most dangerous instrument in the Register, because it was the only one that could be made in an ordinary hour by a tired man.
He had the minute-book open on the study table, and the lamp turned up, and his left hand lying on the wood beside the pen with the Seal stretched across its back. The cold had come back into the arm in the night, a little, and he had let it stay. He had decided that a Judgment was not a thing to draft with a warm hand.
