Harrow had not spoken in the Chamber since the morning after the Undercroft. The Chamber had learned to wait for the stone-voice when it came, the way the Hold waited for rain in the spring, without quite trusting it. So when he rose from his chair in the Great Hall that evening, with the lamps lit along the walls and the Order’s novices sitting cold and silent in the gallery above, the whole ring turned to look at him, and he felt the weight of their eyes like a course of stone being laid on his shoulders.
He did not count the chairs. He had meant to. He had walked into the Hall with the number in his mouth, nine and then eight and then nine again, and somewhere between the door and the table the number had gone out of him like a bird from the rafters, and he had stopped trying to get it back.
“The Order wants to shelve the men who built the wall I am standing under,” he said.
His voice was rough. It came out slowly, a stone at a time, because that was the only way he knew how to speak in front of a room.
