The commission came back from its bread with flour on its coats and a grudging, polite warmth in its manner that Idrin did not trust for a moment. He sat on his bench again with the Register’s copy at his left elbow and Tallow at his right, and he watched the Chancellor take his seat in the centre chair, which had been carried up the bank by two grooms and set down on firm ground well above the river, and he watched Halse settle his wet gloves on his knee and his hat on the cloth, and smile at the wall.
The Hands were on the parapet. Nine of them. He had not sent for them. They had come down from their stations at the sound of the Chancellor’s voice across the water, and had stood along the wall in a loose row against the evening sky, and nobody on the platform had asked them to move. Idrin did not look up at them. He could feel them there the way one feels a fire at one’s back on a cold night, steady and close, and he knew that if he turned round he would see Pell with her arms folded and Korrin with his fists in his pockets and Harrow with his cord looped twice round his wrist, and he did not want to see their faces yet.
