The Quill's Breaking Point. The Quill, #4

The man who holds the Quill walks out in another man's rags, into the place where his own power cuts to the bone. Velmar runs on paper: whoever is missing from the Code does not exist. The unpapered are born, work and drown without leaving a line, and no one answers for them. Temm, who climbed from the bottom to the very top, leaves the cold throne and goes down to learn why power does not satisfy.
The petition-writer Mara Verl spends a third week on nine words that could change the Code. Darr Vorn leads his band to take the pen by force. And old Orm Kes, forty years the bearer of the Great Seal, cannot bring his hand down to sign. The frost holds the river past its time, but the water is already moving. All four will meet at the same gate - and someone will pay for one single line with everything he has.
Book four of The Quill.