The Chamber sat at the candle-clock on the thirty-eighth day, and Tallow sat at the clerk’s table with the minutes open and the Ink ready in its stand. He had written the date. He had written the motion, in the lending clerk’s dry phrasing, and below it he had written the Charter’s count: nine seats, nine voices required, a single no to make the motion Split. He looked at the count for some time before the Mouth passed. It was a short line. It did not seem like a thing that could be carried by nine people in a single afternoon.
Idrin stood at the lectern below the Chamber’s rail. He wore his travel-worn coat, buttoned, and his hands were clasped behind his back, and his face was very pale in the candle-light. He had come into the Hall that morning without a Royal Form on his lips, which Tallow had not seen before, and which had made the Hands look at one another with some unease, as if the prince had been taken ill.
“I move,” said Idrin, and stopped.
Tallow saw the old grammar rise in him. It was there in the set of the shoulders, and the lift of the chin, and the small tightening at the corner of the mouth that came before every Royal sentence. Tallow had seen him make it on the first day in the Gatehouse, and on the day of the Oath, and on the day of a thousand small decisions in…
