Tallow read the Naming aloud in full the next morning, from the Articles’ original text, because the Chamber had never once heard the whole of the thirteenth article and had been arguing about it for a season without the words.
He had not wanted to read it so early. He had said so the night before, at the candle-clock, with the Survey House’s hearth sending its low orange light across the table and the Writ’s blank still lying in its folder where the Regent had left it. He had said that a clause read before the Mantle had spoken was a clause read to no purpose, and that the Chamber had enough purposes already. Idrin had listened, with his hands folded and his face very quiet, and had said that the surveyor had asked to hear it read in order, and that a Hand who asks for the order of a thing deserves to be given it in order. Tallow had not argued. He had gone to bed and lain awake with the minute-book on the bedside board, and had got up in the grey dawn to find the page.
So they were all there. The Hall was full again, in the way it had become full, and the morning light came through the east window in two long bars across the boards and the table and the minute-book, which lay open at the thirteenth article, in the Articles’ own cramped hand, with its commas and its brackets and its…
