Chapter 75: Consideration
The second petition went out over the roll’s name on the first morning of Pyrelon, and Mataon was not permitted to sign it.
Anser wrote the fair copy at the long table with the window open. The ink was drying too fast by the stove.
Hanne and a cooper called Rell were the drawn pair for the month. They read it twice each, out loud. Hanne had decided that was going to be the practice now and nobody had the energy to argue with her about it.
"Founder of record," Hanne said.
"None," Anser said.
"Charter line one, as adopted."
He read it back. Nobody in this valley is property, and nobody in this valley is owed anything for writing that down.
"Claim submitted by."
"The Hearthroot roll, by its rotating pair, this first of Pyrelon, three thirty-four."
Hanne signed. Rell signed slowly. He had learned his letters at forty-one and still treated each one as a separate decision, and nobody in the room ever hurried him.
Mataon stood by the door with his hands behind his back and watched two people he had not chosen commit the town to something on his behalf.
The feeling was not what he had expected. It was not pride and it was not loss.
It was closer to the way a floor feels when you stop testing it.
***
The answer came back on the ninth.
That was the first thing wrong with it. A filing to Deuna and back should take eighteen days at the very best, and Souk said so before anyone else had finished reading the seal.
"Nine days. There and back."
"Which means it never went to Deuna," Edrin said.
"It went somewhere three days out and somewhere three days back, and somebody in the middle had the authority to answer." Souk had the sheet flat under two fingers, the way she held anything she did not yet trust. "Our friend with the light hand is not just filing from here. They’re deciding from here."
Mataon took the sheet from her. He read it, and then read it again, and the second time he sat down on the edge of the table.
It was not a contest.
[Petition for closure — Deuna Central Roll, Office of Foreign Instruments]
[Grounds reviewed. Independence of the recognising authority: accepted.]
[Founder of record: none. Charter re-adopted by citizens jointly. Claim submitted by the roll.]
[The objection of 1 Sylphenia is withdrawn.]
[Status: ACCEPTED FOR CONSIDERATION]
"They accepted it," Tovan said.
"They accepted it," Mataon agreed.
"Then why do you look like that?"
Edrin had got to the last line before any of them, and he did not answer either, and the room turned to look at him, and he put the sheet down and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.
"Read the condition," he said.
[Condition of consideration: the subject shall appear before the originating office in person, within ninety days, to be examined.]
[Failure to appear: petition lapses. No further petition on these grounds.]
[Deuna Central Roll requires no travelling papers for a subject entering the jurisdiction that holds his record.]
Nobody said anything for a while.
Vezra, who had come in for something else entirely and had stayed, was the one who said it out loud, because she had not been in the room for the last four months of this and could still hear how it sounded.
"They want him to go there."
"They want him to go there," Mataon said.
"To the place that owns him."
"To the place that says it owns him. Which for the purposes of what happens to a man at a port is the same place." He heard his own voice do the flat thing and let it. "And they’ve been generous about it. No travelling papers required. He can walk in. That’s not a courtesy. It’s a joke, and it’s a good one, and somebody wrote it deliberately."
"It’s the light hand," Souk said.
"It’s the light hand."
Kess had the second book against her chest with both arms around it. That was how she held it when she was upset and did not want anybody to know.
"Can we say no?"
"We can say no."
"And then?"
"And then the petition lapses, and no one can file on these grounds again. Not us, not Corvane, not the Marches. Ever." Edrin said it without softening it, because that was his job. "They’ve written a door and made it exactly one man wide."
***
They sent for Orvek. Nobody discussed it while they waited, and Mataon noticed, and understood.
There was a version of this room where seven people decided what a man was going to do with his own body and then presented it to him warmly. He had seen that room in his other life. He had sat in it and been very reasonable in it.
The precedent held. Nobody’s protection is spent without the person it protects, and this was worse than a protection.
So they waited. Isbet brought bread and put it where people would take it without deciding to. Anser copied the condition out four times so nobody could argue later about the wording.
Barni lay under the table with his chin on his paws and did not make a single joke. That frightened Kess more than the paper did.
Orvek came in with mud to the knee and a mallet still in his hand. They had caught him on the north drain. He put his boots on the mat, because Isbet had views about the floor.
He read it standing up. It took him a while. He got to the last line, went back to the top, and read the whole thing through a second time. Orvek did not do that.
Then he set the mallet down on the bench, very carefully, the way you put down a thing you might otherwise throw.
He took the slate off his belt.
The room waited.
He drew the person mark. Then the chain. Then he drew the small square with the line under it. That one meant paper. He set it between the other two and tapped it once.
"That’s not an answer," Mataon said. "That’s the problem. I know the problem."
Orvek looked up at him with an expression Mataon had not seen on him before.
Then he wiped the slate with his sleeve and wrote four things in a row, quickly, the way a man writes when he has already decided and is only working out how to say it.
Person. Gate. Person. Gate.
He tapped the second gate twice.
"Both ways," Kess said. "He’s saying both ways. He goes in and he comes out."
Orvek nodded once.
"You don’t know that," Mataon said. "Nobody in this room can promise you that. I can’t promise you that. Corvane can’t. The charter doesn’t reach Deuna and neither do I."
Orvek held up one finger.
Then he drew, under the two gates, a line, and under the line the roll — the long rectangle he used for the book — and he pointed at Kess, and then at the rectangle, and then back at himself.
Kess made a small sound.
"He’s saying his name’s in it," she said. "He’s saying if he doesn’t come out, his name’s still in it."
Mataon went out into the lane afterwards because he needed the cold.
The thaw had turned to a hard frost overnight and the mud had set into ruts you could break an ankle in, and somebody had already been out scattering grit, because that was the kind of thing this town did now without being told.
"You are going to do something stupid," Almina said.
"I’m going to do something legal."
"Those have not been reliably different for some months."
"No." He watched his breath go. "He’ll do it because his name is in the book. That’s the whole of it. He’ll walk into the office that wrote him down as property because a nine-year-old wrote him down as a citizen, and he thinks that’s a fair trade, and the terrible thing is that he might be right."
"He is right."
"That isn’t a comfort."
"It was not offered as one." A pause, and her voice did not soften, because it never did. "You built a thing that makes a man brave. That is not the same as a thing that keeps him safe, and you have known that since the boots. Do not discover it again now, in the lane, where it is cold and there is nobody to hear you be surprised."
He stood there a while longer. Down the lane somebody was breaking ice off a water butt with the flat of a spade, four strokes and a pause, four strokes and a pause.
[Petition — status: ACCEPTED FOR CONSIDERATION]
[Condition: subject to appear, in person, within 90 days]
[Objection of 1 Sylphenia: withdrawn]
[Reserved Mana: 7 — First Exception, open, day 112]
[Marches central roll: quarterly return, 1 Ravenmark — 31 days]
Two clocks now, and they did not agree with each other, and the shorter one belonged to him.
Barni came out and sat on the step, and neither of them said anything for a good minute.
"You’ve gone quiet," Mataon said.
"I’m thinking about doors."
"That’s not like you."
"No," Barni said. "It isn’t."