Idrin wrote the Writ of Standing in four lines, struck two of them through, and then sat with the pen lifted above the page while the Great Hall waited for the end of a sentence he had not yet found.
Velvet had the best view of the table from her chair beside the north pillar, and she watched him reach for the old grammar first. She saw the stiff, handsome phrases of the Royal Forms come up in his mouth, the ones his tutor had beaten into him with a ruler and a clock. She saw him look at them. Then she saw him set each one back down, slowly, as a careful servant puts back a dish he has been told is too fine for the kitchen.
“Read it,” he said to Tallow.
Tallow read it. He used the Ink’s plain voice, which the Hold had agreed on for anything that mattered, and he gave the Writ its words without a figure. The prince had asked him to leave the ranges out this once, and Tallow had obeyed, with visible pain, as a man steps over a crack in a floor he has counted for years.
“The Hands of the Hold are asked,” he read, “whether the body that keeps this Hall stands before the law as a person. The question is put to the Great Hall and to no other site. The answer is given by testimony and by no other means. The Writ takes one memory of…
