Tessaly Mott rode from Thornwick to the river gate with two copies of the same paper folded inside her coat, one against her ribs and one over her heart. She had learned long ago that a clause carried in one pocket could be lost, and a clause carried in two could only be argued. The first copy was the Charter of Lending, the Hold’s own, in its colourless Ink, with its seal and its one clear term. The second was her house’s private contract with the lord of Thornwick, which said until returned in a clerk’s hand she had hired herself, and which had cost her a year’s wool-margin to draft.
She rehearsed the argument for the whole length of the Lessary Road.
It was not a difficult argument. A Charter was a document, and a document was a broker’s business. The Hold had no standing to overrule a commercial term in Coldharbour, where the Concord of Free Ports had written its law in ink that did not fade. Until returned meant what it said. The Hold had lent a Form, the lord had paid for it in silver, and no clause in the Hold’s book could make the silver go back into the chest because a Chamber had grown tired of waiting. She had never lost a contract by reading the clause to its end. She did not intend to begin with a Charter written by a prince who was, by the Hold’s own law, only a lodger in…
