Tallow laid the Bond forms out on the Register’s table in the gatehouse, one beside another, and read each of them to its foot, as a clerk should.
He had nine. He had counted them three times, and he had found the nine grey ribbons and the nine Chancery seals and the nine names in the fair copy-hand, Harrow, Tallow, Pell, Ysra, Korrin, Gaunt, Sella, Tamsin, Mourner, each name written beside its trade in brackets, the Mason, the Clerk, the Cook, the Watch, the Lash, the Forge, the Bonesetter, the Herder, the Grave-tender. Each form was a single sheet of stiff Chancery paper folded in three. The first fold held the preamble, which was long and courteous and said nothing that a clerk could not have said in fewer words. The second fold held the clause on labour. The third fold, the one at the foot, was tucked under the grey seal and turned face-down on the table, so that the seal lay on the paper’s back and the clause lay on its front, and to read the foot a reader had to break the seal, or tear the fold, or ask the Chancery’s clerk to lift it.
He had not torn a Chancery fold in his life. He did not intend to start on the eve of a sitting.
