The lodgers’ ledger was bound in grey calf and had been rebound twice since the spring, because its first binding had been chewed by a Lowgate goat that had got into the Gatehouse during the Turn. Tallow kept it on a slant-board by the window, where the north light fell across the page without making it glare. He had a particular fondness for it. It was the only book in the Hold that did not pretend to be the Register.
Tessaly Mott sat across the slant-board from him in the Gatehouse’s one good chair, with her cloak folded over the back and her hands resting on her knees. She had come up the stair at the candle-clock, exactly on time, and had asked for the lodger’s line in the voice of a woman asking for a receipt, and Tallow had been pleased by her for the length of a sentence.
“A lodger is a line,” he said, dipping his pen. “Not a title. A line costs nothing to enter, and it costs nothing to keep. A visit costs days.”
“I had understood a visit costs a fee,” said Mott.
“The fee is a line too. It is written in the book at the foot of the page, where the Chamber can find it when it wants to be angry.”
