On the third sitting of the Writ, the Hall asked Mourner to testify, and Mourner stood up from the bench by the north pillar and said that she would do so by singing.
Nobody in the Hall objected. Gaunt started to, out of habit, and then thought better of it, since he had objected to every testimony so far and had found, to his irritation, that every testimony was better than his objection. Korrin folded his arms. Velvet put her hand to her collarbone and looked ready to weep before anyone had given her a reason. Tallow wrote by singing in the minutes, with a margin of nought, since there was no clause that said a Hand could not testify in a tune, and the Hold had never once been asked whether it could.
The Dovereach clerk at the back door set his slate on his knee and did not write on it. He looked up.
Mourner did not hurry. She stood with her hands loose at her sides, in the grey coat she had worn for three winters, and her face, which was Ansel Brume’s face, a little too thin about the jaw, held still. Mourner had kept it still by naming things all morning. She had named the lamp-oil, the chair, the Chamber’s bench, the table’s scorch-mark from the old fire, the long-dead cook whose name was painted over the kitchen door in letters the damp had started to lift. Each name had steadied the face a little…
