Korrin stood at the Roll-room door at the candle-clock’s end and did not go in. He had been told the door was open. He had been told the clerk would be at the desk with the Roll laid out in front of him, the back leaves turned up for the morning’s sitting. He had been told, by Tobin, who had told him in the yard with his hands behind his back and his face very serious, that the clerk had been awake since the bell and had not once looked up from the book.
That was why Korrin did not go in. He had a rule about clerks who had not looked up. A man who did not look up was a man who was writing something he had not yet decided to show you.
He stood in the passage with his back to the cold stone and his arms folded, and he listened. The Roll-room was quiet. A pen scratched. A jar was set down on wood. Then the scratching stopped, and the clerk’s voice came through the door, dry and tired and not very loud.
“You may come in, Captain. The Hard Hands are not required in here.”
