The Bench’s clerk carried the book into the Hold under both arms, as a man carries something he has been told not to drop. At the Great Hall’s door he stopped. Ysra stood on the threshold with her tally-cord looped over one wrist, and she counted him, and then she counted the book. It was one book, bound in green calf, with the Bench’s wheat stamped on the board. She said the number aloud so the Chamber’s runner could write it down.
“One,” said the clerk. “It is only the Register.”
“It is one,” said Ysra. “I did not ask what it was.”
Tallow had been at the Chamber table since the candle-clock was lit. He had laid out the minutes, the sand, the quills and the three flat weights that kept the minutes from curling in a draught. He had set his chair at the clerkly end of the table, where a clerk’s chair belonged, and he had not moved it when Gaunt came in behind the clerk and objected to its height. The height was the Chamber’s own. It had been measured on the first day by the Mason’s rod, to the finger.
“The rod is a Mason’s rod,” said Gaunt. “Masons measure what they like.”
