The Throne Calls Three Times
A line of old law nobody likes to bring up: when the Throne calls a man's name, it calls three times. For the first two, a member of his family may answer for him, “He is not here.” The third he has to answer himself.
There is a line of old law in the palace, old enough to be older than the present dynasty, and in the ordinary way no one brings it up. It is not in the codified law; it survives as a single line in the margin of the Household Miscellany, in a hand different from the main text, as though someone had added it later.
The old law says: the Throne calls a man's name, and calls three times. At the first call and the second, a member of his family may answer in his place, may say for him, “He is not here,” and turn the thing aside for that time. But at the third no one can answer for him — the man who was called has to open his own mouth and answer.
Answering in another man's place has rules of its own. The one who answers must stand inside the door and not on the threshold; must answer quickly, since a slow answer does not count; must answer as a member of the called man's family, since an answer from a servant does not count at all. These details are written out more finely than the old law itself, and have been copied for generations, and no one has ever asked why a line of old law that nobody likes to bring up should have so complete a set of instructions for its use.
The marginal notes in the Household Miscellany bearing on this old law come to 4 places in all, in the hands of 3 different men. The earliest is on page 11 of the volume, on paper darker than the main text, added at least several decades after it. Someone has counted the years named in those 4 places: they stand 60 to 90 years apart, and for the gaps in between there is no record of anything.
In the stories, someone once answered the third call. The Throne said nothing further, but after that night the man who had answered was gone. And the one taken away is more often another person in the house — someone who happened to be there that night and whose name had not been called.
The old law records the rule and does not record the reason. In the same way the Mute Wall carves the names and does not carve what the names are for.
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