Gaunt came to the gatehouse on the morning of the third day before midwinter to object to the Chamber’s silence, because somebody had to, and because the silence had been going on for four days and the Forge had not once been consulted.
He had the sentence ready. He had been carrying it since the Undercroft, as a smith carries a hot bar from the fire to the anvil with a rag around it, impatient and careful and slightly ashamed of how much he wanted to throw it. It was a good sentence. It began with the words I have been asked to hold my tongue for three days, and I will not, and it ended with the phrase this Hold has never before been run by a clerk’s quiet, and between the two was the whole of his grievance against the last four days in one neat piece of iron.
He pushed open the gatehouse door with his good shoulder. The Register table was in its place under the window. Tallow was at it, bent over the Chamber’s minutes, and he looked up when Gaunt came in and then went back to his pen with the air of a man who did not expect the next sentence to be any better than the last.
