Tallow rode back to the ford with the Chamber’s answer on the third day, and the answer had been drafted by the Regent himself, after a night’s sleep, in plain words.
Tallow had expected something else. He had expected a Royal Form, with its long opening and its clause about improper raising, and he had prepared himself for an argument about the spacing of its seals. Instead he found, on the first page of the Regent’s careful draft, three sentences that a child could have read aloud, and a fourth that Idrin had struck through twice and then left standing, which was a thing Tallow had come to recognise as the prince’s way of saying that a point had been argued and lost.
The Hold will build a roof at Lantern Ford, on the marsh’s ground inside reach. The Hold will name the roof a Dwelling for the Survey, under the Survey Writ. The Crown may count it as a Lessaran structure, since it stands on Lessaran marsh.
The fourth sentence had been struck and restored. It said: The Hold will not ask the Crown to count it. The Hold will count itself.
“He wants the last line gone,” Tallow had said, that morning, in the Chamber’s study. “I can see it in the way he has crossed it out.”
