The Blood Mirror Never Lies novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: The Hollow Gets Its Roofs
The ledger was read aloud that night, in the great hall, by candlelight.
Nobody asked for a chair.
The Hollow stood in a body at the foot of the throne, nineteen of them, scrubbed and nervous, and behind them stood the whole Court.
The old councillor opened the book at the first page and cleared his throat.
He read out a man's full name.
"Unwritten forty years ago. House on the south lane taken. Sold to the Council for six gold."
A man in the front row put his hand over his mouth.
"That's me," he said, in a cracked voice. "That's my name. I've not heard it said out loud in forty years."
The old councillor looked up.
"Come and take your deed, sir."
The man walked forward.
Cassian stood by the table where the deeds were stacked, and he put the paper in the man's hand himself.
"Your roof is yours," he said. "It was never the Council's to sell."
The man looked at the paper.
Then he began to cry, quietly, and a woman behind him took his arm.
It went on like that.
Name after name, and each one came forward with a face I would remember for the rest of my life.
A woman who had been a weaver. A boy who had been put out at fifteen for a debt his father owed. Two sisters who had been Unwritten for the same crime and had not known the other lived.
Cassian gave out every deed with his own hands and said the same thing to each one.
"This was never the Council's to sell."
I stood by the Mirror with my arm in its sling, and I watched him say it nineteen times.
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