The clerk writes your name as if it were a tool.

Witness: miller’s apprentice. What you proved is on the roll. Mill: smith and mason to attend; soke not to be charged as if the stone were whole until it is. Land, river, loaf, cousin—ink takes the jobs that were shown, not a ballad of the ones that weren’t. A pig is still waiting, slightly offended.

Work-orders are less pretty than swords and twice as sharp in a useful way. Whoever holds the table sands the ink. The manor has heard you in public. That is the point of a hallmoot.

You stand in the hall that is also a court and also, on other days, a place to eat goose. Your legs ache. Flour is still in your eyebrows. Someone says you may be called again if a ditch forgets.

Outside, market trestles wait for morning. You are not a knight. You are on the roll. In Greyfen that is a kind of armor made of paper.

THE END

What you learned: a hallmoot is manor court—ditches, stray beasts, unpaid work, mill-tolls—heard in public and written down. Witnesses and ink do the job songs give to combat.