The Chancery’s schedule wanted an answer in writing, and the courier who had brought it waited at the quarry gate with his horse’s reins looped round his wrist and a leather satchel across his chest. He was a young man with a Lessaran accent and very clean boots, and he had been told, he said, to wait for the witness’s answer and to bring it back before the lamps were lit on the Lessary Road. He had already been waiting two hours. He was getting cold, and he had started to take the quarry’s dust personally.
“I cannot write,” said Piers.
He said it through the grille at the Form’s throat, to the courier’s back, from the top of the new wall. The courier turned round and looked up. He had expected a man. He saw a grey copy of a mason, nine feet tall with its arms held out a little from its sides, its face blank as a plate, and at its throat a small brass grille the size of a child’s hand. He looked for a moment as if he would be sick, and then, because he was a professional, he shut his mouth and took out a stylus.
