Gaunt had prepared his speech for four days. He had prepared it at the forge, with the bellows going and the hammer ringing against the anvil, which was the only place he had ever been able to think clearly, and he had prepared it again on the wall-stair at dusk, when the Watch-boys were going down to their suppers and passed him by without a word. He had written none of it down. He had decided that a Forge-man’s argument did not need writing. It needed to be shouted into a room, in the right order, with the hammer on the table and the faces turned toward it, and he had the order in his head as clearly as the pattern of a blade.
He walked into the Great Hall at the candle-clock with the hammer on his shoulder and the iron hook on its cord round his wrist, and he gave the Regent’s chair no glance. He looked at the bench where the Watch-woman sat with her slate, and he set his jaw, and he began.
“I object,” he said, “to the charge.”
“The charge has not yet been read,” said Tallow, from the foot of the table, with the minute-book open and a pen behind each ear.
