Tallow wrote the Line Limit into the minutes at the first candle, before the Chamber had sat and before anyone had asked him to, since it was his duty to record a thing while it was still hot and a clerk who waited for a sitting to be called was a clerk who would remember it wrongly.
He wrote it in the Ink. He wrote the date, which was the thirty-fourth day of the forty, with the clock running shorter every morning. He wrote the front, which was the cistern-postern on the eastern foot, a low door with an unused bar that the Chamber had recorded three days before as a door, unused. He wrote the number of the Hard Hands on the front, which was four, and the name of the Hand who had taken it, which was Korrin, the Lash, gatekeeper of the eighth gate. He wrote the Line Limit’s effect, in the clause’s own words, since he had been told by his own mouth in the Great Hall that he would need them.
A held Hand cannot vote, speak, or be used in a scene.
Then he stopped, with the pen above the page, and read the line back. It was true. It was also very short, and the Chamber would read it in the morning and think it had been written by a man who had not been in the postern’s water. Tallow was not sure he had been in the water either. He had been…
