The Chamber came out to the arch on the seventh day in the grey light before the bell, and Idrin walked at the head of it with the reply folded inside his coat.
It had been written in the Great Hall at the last candle-clock, in Tallow’s plain Ink, and read aloud by Tallow twice to the nine chairs before anyone was willing to seal it. The Hands had argued over every line. Korrin had wanted a sword in the second sentence and had been talked out of it. Gaunt had wanted the word Crown struck from the fourth, and had been talked out of that too, because the Crown was the word the Chancery would be looking for. Pell had wanted the reply to end with bread. Ysra had wanted it to end with a count. Harrow had wanted it to end with nothing at all, on the grounds that a wall did not need a last word. In the end Tallow had put the arguments into a single paragraph, and the paragraph had gone to the Chamber’s vote, and the vote had carried.
Idrin did not like the reply. He had read it four times and could not find a single phrase in it that he would have chosen himself. He thought it was the only honest reply the Hold could have sent.
