The second page was dry on the fifth morning, and Idrin could tell it was dry before Tallow touched it. The sheet had lost its brown tide. It lay on its frame before the brazier with its foot pale and crisp, the old Ink standing up off the paper where the damp had once sat on it, and the lines of the second column, which he had not read until the Keeper showed him, ran beside the Foundation’s own letters like two people walking the same road in different coats.
He had not slept. He had lain on his bed in the Great Hall’s east room with his left arm across his chest and the Seal’s ache going down it like a slow cold river, and he had listened to the Hold go about its night, the Kitchen’s ovens, the Watch’s footsteps on the north wall, the bell of the Mason’s yard tapping once every hour as Harrow counted something nobody else could hear. At the fourth bell he had got up and dressed one-handed. It had taken him a long time to tie his cravat. He had decided, while he was tying it, that the Crown’s manners would have to survive the Crown’s own clause, and that he would at least be dressed for it.
