The Hard Hands’ hall had been a granary once, before the Hold had grain enough to need a granary of its own, and it still smelled of old chaff under the lime-wash. Korrin walked into it in the grey hour before the second bell with the Bonded tally folded in his coat and his jaw already set for an argument. He had been coming here every morning for a week. The Chancery’s clerk had not once been out when he arrived, and not once been in when he left, and Korrin had come to suspect that the clerk was paid by the hour to be patient.
The clerk was there today. He sat at a trestle table by the north window, with a pot of ink and a stack of Lessaran paper squared in front of him, and he rose when Korrin came in and bowed exactly as far as courtesy required and no further. He was young, perhaps the age Idrin had been when he left Lessary, and he wore a good grey coat with a silver button at the throat. His hands were very clean.
“Hand Korrin,” he said. “Ossane sends her regards, and her apologies for not coming herself.”
