The south gate had been a pile of rubble since the first winter. Idrin had seen it on the first morning he rode up the Lessary Road, from the ridge above the causeway: two squat towers with their roofs gone, a gap between them where the gate-arch had fallen in, and a heap of broken stone spilling down the slope toward the marsh like the ruin of a bridge. The Hands had cleared the rubble in the summer. They had stacked the good blocks along the wall-foot and carted the bad ones down to the marsh edge. What they had not done was rebuild the gate. The Chamber had never voted on it. The question had not come up. There was always another wall to raise, another share to count, another bowl of barley to argue about, and the gap had stayed open, as an open mouth stays open when it has forgotten what it meant to say.
“The south gate,” Idrin said, from the Warden’s chair, with the slate under its short leg and the Register open at his elbow, “is the marsh’s way in. It is the only gate the marsh will ever use. It should be rebuilt in stone, to the same height as the north wall, with the same courses and the same arch. I ask the Chamber to cost it.”
“The Chamber will cost it,” said Tallow, and reached for his board.
He had a figure ready. He had been working on it since the Hands had come in, in the small hours, by lamplight, and it sat on the page in a neat column under a heading that read Cost of the south gate, as the Hands would set it. Idrin had not seen the heading before. He suspected Tallow had written it as a joke, and then decided that it was a fact.
“Nine rounds of labour,” said Tallow. “That is the full rebuild, from the footings to the arch-keystone. Each round is a day of the whole Hold’s strength: the carriers, the masons, the lifting-gangs, and the Watch on the wall while the lifting goes on. Nine days, with the Hands at full shares. And forty sacks of grain for the labourers’ bread, at the Kitchen’s rate, which Pell has set herself and has said she will not reduce.”
“Nine rounds,” said Idrin. He looked at the figure. He had expected more, and then he was ashamed of having expected it, and then he felt a small cold jolt of something close to alarm. Nine days was not a long time for a gate. It was a long time for a Hold that had counted every stone in its own wall and was not sure what the numbers meant.
“The Warden will say that the rebuild is the Warden’s right,” said Gaunt, from the bench, before Idrin had opened his mouth. “I object to that. The Warden has the right to propose. He does not have the right to propose a pile of nonsense and then ask the Hands to do the carrying.”
“It is not a pile of nonsense,” said Idrin.
“It is a pile of nonsense in the shape of a gate,” said Gaunt, “and I have had to look at it every morning since the summer, and I am sick of its face.”
“Read the Charter,” said Idrin, to Tallow. “Find the clause on the Warden’s rights in works.”
Tallow found it. He read it with his usual care. “The Warden shall propose the works of the Hold, and the Chamber shall cost them, and the Hands shall do what they have voted to do.” He looked up. “The clause does not say the Hands must vote for what the Warden proposes, Warden. It says the Hands shall do what they have voted. It is the same clause, read with the verbs in a different order.”
“Then we will vote,” said Idrin, a little stiffly.
“The Hold cannot feed a gate,” said Pell, from the Kitchen door. She had her arms folded over her apron and the envoy’s list still in its pocket, and her face had the expression she wore when someone was about to take the last of the butter. “Nine days of labour at full share. Forty sacks of bread. We have three hundred and eighty sacks in the granary, boy, and the envoy’s feast is due in six days. You want me to feed a gate and an envoy and a dog with three hundred and eighty sacks? The gate can eat stones. I cannot make bread out of the Chamber’s good opinions.”
“The gate will not eat anything,” said Korrin, from his chair by the door. He had not turned his head from the stair. “The gate will stand. The south gate is the one the marsh will come to next. It is the only way in that the Crown’s Hunt-wardens will try, when they come up the causeway in grey, and it is the one place on the Hold’s wall where the stone is still a heap. You can feed a heap. You cannot feed a hole.”
“The cost is paid in bones,” said Sella.
She had not looked up from her ledger. She had the pen between her teeth and her finger on a column of figures, and she took the pen out now and spoke as though she were reading a diagnosis to a patient who had not asked for one. “Nine rounds of lifting is a broken wrist or two, a bad back for Harrow, a shoulder for Korrin, which he will not admit, and a rib for Gaunt, which he will. I have counted the injuries that are likely. The number is nine. It is the same as the rounds. That is either a coincidence or a joke, and I do not find either one comforting. I will set them. I will write them down.”
“You will set them and then complain about them,” said Gaunt.
“I will set them and then complain about them,” agreed Sella. “It is the order I always give things.”
Pim sat on the bench beside Gaunt, swinging his legs. He had been listening with his chin on his knees and his eyes going from one speaker to the next, and now he raised his hand, like a boy at a lesson, and waited until the Chamber noticed him.
“I will carry half the stones,” he said. “If the Chamber agrees that carrying counts as a share. I am a carrier. I have counted every stone I have ever carried, and it is not fair that the carrying should be free when the lifting is paid. If carrying is a share, I will carry half the gate. I will carry it up nine steps and down nine steps and I will not complain once, except about the steps.”
“Carrying is a share,” said Tallow, writing it down. “It has been since the first share-day. The Charter says so, under the carrier’s clause. I have one reading.”
“Then I will carry,” said Pim, very satisfied.
Harrow had been counting the figures in Tallow’s column under his breath. His lips had been moving steadily. Now he stopped, and turned from the window, and said, “The rounds are right. Nine. I would have said eleven, but I have been counting the gate for two months in my head, and eleven is my count of the wall, not of the gate. The gate is nine.”
“Thank you, Harrow,” said Idrin.
“You will want the gate,” said Harrow. “I can see that you want it. I do not object to a man who wants a thing in stone. I distrust one who wants it quickly. The gate is not a quick thing.”
Idrin looked round the Hall. The Hands were all looking at him. Some had their arms folded. Some had their hands in their laps, and some had their chins on their fists. Gaunt was glowering. Ysra was at the door, facing the stair, and she had not spoken once, but she was nodding slightly, very slowly, at the figures on Tallow’s page, as if she were counting them with her head. Tamsin, on the floor by the wall, had her shawl around her shoulders and her eyes on the goats’ pens through the high window, and she was humming, very softly, under her breath.
It was clear to Idrin, all at once, that the Hands had already decided. They had decided on the stair, perhaps, or in the granary. They had decided the way the body decided everything, by a sort of pressure that was neither a vote nor a feeling, but something of both. He could have fought it. He had the Charter, and the Seal, and the Warden’s rank. He could have stood up and read the clause again, with the verbs in the Warden’s order, and made the Hands sit and listen to his rights.
He did not. He was tired of being the only one in the room who was allowed to be right.
“The vote is called,” he said.
“The vote is called,” said Tallow. “On the cost. Nine rounds, forty sacks, the carrying counted as a share. All in favour of the Hands’ cost, say aye.”
“Aye!” said Gaunt, loudly, and then, quite quietly, “Aye, damn it.”
“Aye,” said Korrin.
“Aye,” said Pell, from the door, with her arms still folded.
“Aye,” said Harrow, and turned back to the window.
“Aye,” said Sella, and wrote it down.
“No,” said Tamsin, very softly, to the goats. “Not while the goats are against it.”
“Aye,” said Pim, from the bench, and then, to be on the safe side, “twice.”
“Aye,” said Ysra, from the door, with her back to the stair.
Tallow counted. He counted the way he always did, one at a time, with his pen touching the page, and when he came to the end he looked up and said, “Seven for the Hands’ cost. Against, the Warden and Tamsin.” He looked at Tamsin, who had her head bent over the goats. “Pim’s second aye is not counted, as the Charter does not count a voice twice.”
“Seven to two, then,” said Idrin, with a dryness he did not try to hide. “Carried.”
“Seven to two,” said Tallow, “and the goats are not counted, and the Warden is one of the two, which he may take as a compliment or not.”
“Note that the Warden moved first,” said Idrin, a little dryly. “I proposed the gate. I did not propose the cost.”
“That is the most accurate thing you have said all day,” said Tallow, and wrote it down.
Gaunt came across the Hall to the Warden’s chair. He stood over Idrin with his arms folded and an expression of heavy, self-satisfied woe. “This defeat is the Warden’s own fault,” he said. “For proposing a gate that needed nine rounds of labour. Nobody who wants a gate in stone should expect it to come cheap. I told you that in the summer. I resent having been right.”
“You did not tell me,” said Idrin.
“I objected to it,” said Gaunt. “It is the same thing.”
The south gate’s first stone was lifted a week later, on the morning the envoy’s train was still camped at the causeway’s foot. It was a large block, cut from the quarry’s best grey limestone, and it took eight Hands to set it on the lifting-frame. Harrow stood at its foot with his hands behind his back and counted it up the frame, a course at a time, aloud. When it reached the top, and hung there, and the frame creaked and steadied, he came down the ladder and walked round the block twice.
“It is one stone heavier than the marsh’s,” he said.
Idrin looked up. “The marsh’s stone?”
“The marsh’s weight,” said Harrow. “The one we sent down the causeway in the autumn, and the girl counted, and the water took. I have it in my head as the measure of the marsh. This one is heavier than that. By one stone. I did not expect it, and I have been counting all morning, and I cannot tell you why.”
He put his hand flat on the block’s face, very gently, the way a man steadies a horse. Idrin, watching, saw his fingers press once into the stone, as if feeling for a pulse. Then Harrow took his hand away, and went back to the frame, and began again, quietly, to count the next course.