Idrin sat at the gatehouse table with the Edict’s copy in front of him and the Writ-form for the Mound beside it, its clean white sheet lying ready for a Regent’s hand, and he watched the Seal spread.
It had begun at the chest. He had felt it first in the autumn, a pale tightness under the collarbone, like the first cold of a winter that had not yet decided to come. Then it had come across his left shoulder and down the arm in a slow crown-shaped stain that the Hold’s physicians had called a bruise and Sella had called, in her dry voice, a bill for services rendered. It was no bruise. The mark had a shape that was too precise for a bruise. It was a crown with a bar beneath, pale as the inside of a shell, and it had come down his arm an inch each week since the Chancery’s letter first reached the arch, and now it had reached the wrist.
The arm was heavier than the right. He could feel the weight of it lying on the table, a dead thing that was still his. The grip that Seal six had taken from him had gone to the elbow, a numbness like cold water poured into a glove, and the Seal seven that had taken his sleep had left a dull ache under the skin that did not ease when he lay down. He had not slept properly since the reading. He had…
