The clerk had left a copy of the licence on the stake. Korrin brought it back at noon, folded small and pinned under the faded rag with a Lessaran pin, and he laid it on the gatehouse table without a word and stood back from it with his arms folded, as though it might go off.
Tallow unfolded it.
It was a fair copy, in the Chancery’s neat cramped hand, on the same cream stock as the Judge’s notice that had come up the road two days before. It had been written out by someone who did not expect to be checked. There were no blots. The seal had been reproduced in red ink at the foot of the sheet, a crown above a flower, with the Chancery’s little wreath around it, and beneath the seal somebody had written, in a fine italic hand, Copy, for the Watch at the stake, under the Assembly’s leave.
“Read it,” said Korrin.
“I am reading it,” said Tallow.
He copied it.
He did it in the Ink, at the gatehouse table, word for word, line by line, in his own small plain capitals, because copying was the only way he had ever been able to understand a clause, and because the Chamber would want the Hold’s own version of it in the minute-book and not the Crown’s. It took him the better part of an hour. He did not hurry. He could feel Korrin watching him from the gatehouse door, and Harrow from…
