Korrin finished reading it inside the granary, sitting on a sack with the lamp by his knee, because the yard was full of men eating bread and he did not want his face seen while he did it.
The granary was cold and dim, with the grain stacked to the rafters on the north side and a single slit of grey winter light coming through the high window above the door. The Hard Hands’ blankets were piled on the floor by the east wall where the men had slept the last two nights, and the place smelled of wet wool and dust and the sweet, sour breath of the sacks. He had lit the lamp to see the ink. He did not like the lamp. It made the grain look like a hill with a fire underneath, and he had never trusted a thing that changed its shape in the light.
He had carried the box in from the yard under his arm and set it on the sack beside him, and he took the form out again now, with the lamp steady and his face turned from the door.
It was already written. He had known that it would be, from the weight of the box and the rustle he had heard through the wood, but he had not known what it would say, and the knowledge made his hands go slow. The paper was the same stiff Chancery stock as the nine forms in the Great Hall. The…
