The Gatehouse private room had one window, a slit of old glass set high in the north wall, and the light that came through it in the late afternoon fell across the table in a thin grey bar that made every paper on it look like a debt. Idrin had grown used to the room. He had come to it in the first winter as a prince with a lease to read and no idea what to do with a lease once he had read it. He had sat at this table with Tallow and Ysra and a cup of cold Kitchen tea, and had learned, slowly, that a room in the Hold was not a room in a palace. It was a room where somebody had to say yes.
Mott was sitting across from him with the paper in her gloved hand.
It was a clean sheet, Lessaran in its form and Coldharbour in its paper, folded once. It was a release of shares. It said, in a factor’s careful clauses, that every share Pell Ansard had ever owed to Mott & Lark, for every tithe, wage and kitchen debt back to the first winter of the Hold, was forgiven and wiped from the house’s paper, on the condition that the cook give her Knot to the house. Idrin read it through twice. He did not hurry. He had learned from Tallow that a sheet that looked generous on its first reading had usually been written to be read…
