The debate ran by the candle-clock, and Tamsin sat through all of it with her hands in her lap and her cup of goat’s milk going cold beside her on the table, because she had brought it up from the stair for herself and then had not been able to drink it.
She had left the Murmur’s cup on the third step that morning. It had been empty when she came back. She had counted the empty cup in her head as she climbed the stair, which was a thing she had never done before, and she had found herself counting the lamps, and the Hands, and the chairs, and then the goats in the pens across the yard, which were eleven, and which were all still asleep in their straw with the old doe’s white ear twitching in the dark. The count had comforted her. It was the first comfort she had felt since the Chancery’s letter arrived at the arch.
Korrin spoke first. He always did. He stood at the wall with his arms folded and his jaw set, and when Idrin nodded to him he did not move from the wall at all.
“The Chancery’s rest is the only peace on offer,” said Korrin. “I’d sooner be asleep than owed. I’ve been owed my whole life, by every granary-warden at Dunmere and every Lessaran who ever wanted a sack moved for him at midnight. I’m tired of it. I vote yes. Let the Dead go down and…
