Wren had no vote. She had never once had one, and she had stopped expecting one somewhere in the marsh, in the second winter, when the Lessaran tax-men came to the reed-houses with their lists and she had watched them count her mother’s sacks without once asking who had sown the barley. A vote was a thing you were given by people who had decided you were already in the room. Wren had been standing at the edge of the rooms all her life, and she had got used to the cold draught along the floor.
So when Tallow came round the end of the bench at the fourth hour, with the pen in his hand and the Roll’s margin open under the lamp, and held the pen out to her, she did not take it at once.
Teodor Quill stood at her elbow with the lamp held up in both hands, because the margin was in shadow and the Chamber had nobody else who was not already holding something. He had asked for the task, politely, and nobody had been able to say he could not have it. The lamp did not shake.
“The witness,” said Tallow. “The Charter says the Mantle’s Writ must be entered in the Roll’s margin by the hand of somebody who can be counted. The Chamber has named you. I should have asked you first, and I did not, and I am asking now.”
