Idrin led the search for the copy, and he found, to his considerable surprise, that he had no authority to do it at all.
He had said as much to Tallow in the Gatehouse’s cold stone passage, an hour after dawn, with the Hands already gathering behind him in the grey light. He had said that he was no longer a Regent and so could not order a Watchman to open a cupboard or a Lowgate boy to lift a sack. He had said that a search was therefore not a Judgment, nor a Writ, nor any kind of instrument the Hold had a word for. It was a request, and he would have to ask the Hold to make it.
“Then ask,” said Tallow.
Idrin asked. He stood at the Gatehouse’s inner door with his hand on the cold iron latch and asked, in his own plain voice, whether any Hand of the Hold would help to look for a book that had been taken out of the Foundation Vault in the night by a shape with no one inside it. He did not raise his voice. He did not use the Royal Form. He asked it as a man asks a question at a table, expecting an answer and prepared to accept a no.
