The Charter lay on the Gatehouse table under the lamp, nine yes-marks down its margin in the Ink, and Idrin sat in front of it with a clean sheet of paper and a pen he had not yet dipped. The Gatehouse was quiet. It was the hour after the Turn and before the candle-clock’s last bell, when the clerks had gone home and the Register board stood in its shadowed corner with its one ruled line of colourless Ink, and the only sound in the room was the small dry tick of the lamp’s wick settling in its oil.
He had been sitting there for an hour. He had read the Charter three times, and then he had read Piers’s name in the lodgers’ ledger, where Tallow had written it that morning in the Ink, and then he had read his own name, which was the first name on the Chamber’s list of the Regent’s assents. He had signed it himself, very neatly, the way he had signed every instrument since the day he had woken in the Hold with a Writ in one hand. His name looked small on the page. He had not noticed it looking small before.
