The reed stall stood at the end of the outer ward, where the Lowgate lane met the palisade, and it had been Wren’s since the spring the Hold first let her sell at the Fair. It was a low frame of ash poles lashed with marsh-cord, with a roof of woven reed that she had cut herself from the lee of the Sallow bank and dried on the Lowgate wall. The reed was dark gold in the cold and smelled, when the damp came up off the river, like the back of a boat. Nobody bought much from the stall in the frost. Wren sat behind it anyway, on a block of wood with a folded blanket under her, and read.
She had the lodgers’ petition in her lap. Osk had given her a copy, folded small, with his own barrel-maker’s capitals on it and a hundred and twelve little ticks beside the names of the people who had raised their hands for it. He had given it to her without a word, and then, because she was the only lodger the Hall had ever written down by name, he had said, “You should read it first. Before the Chamber. It is about the marsh, too, in its way.”
