The Chamber sat that morning with the dead still in the outer ward. The Hold had not yet had time to lay them in the Mason’s Yard, and so the wind that came through the Great Hall’s open shutters brought with it, faint and steady, the smell of smoke and wet timber and the iron tang of blood that the Watch had not finished scrubbing. Harrow could smell it from his bench by the south window. He counted the shutters, to keep his mind on something, and there were nine, and one of them had a crack in its hinge that he would fix after the meeting.
Tallow read the Line Limit aloud before anyone spoke. He read it in the plain Ink’s voice, slowly, so that the clauses could be heard one at a time over the wind.
“The body may hold seven fronts at once. An eighth front forces one awake Hand into held sleep for as long as the front holds. A held Hand cannot vote, speak, or be used in a scene. Every war is a logistics problem first.” He looked up. “That last clause is not a rule. It is a maxim, and the Chamber has been asked to take it as one, which I have never before seen a Chamber do.”
