The Chamber voted the Charter of Names at the candle-clock, in the Great Hall, with the lamps lit along the walls and the Order’s nine novices sitting cold and silent in the gallery above, their hoods drawn close and their hands folded in their sleeves. Korrin had counted them coming in. He had not meant to. A Hard Hand counted the men who came through a door, as a granary crew counted the sacks, and he had been counting since the morning he signed the Bond, and he had not yet learned to stop.
Nine. And nine chairs. And the Chamber’s ring had not changed since the Undercroft, except that the bone-keeper’s chair at the table’s edge had a boy in it now, and the boy’s small hands were folded on the wood in front of him, and his coat hung open over his chest, and he was watching the Regent with an expression of perfect seriousness, the way a carrier watches a load he has been told is his to carry.
Idrin read the Charter aloud. He did it from his own chair, with the sheet on the table in front of him and his good hand flat beside it, and he did not stand. His voice was level and plain. He read the three clauses in the order he had written them, and when he came to the last, which said that the refusers would be named on the page beside the names, his voice did not change…
