The coat had come out of the Sallowmere trunk the autumn he arrived in the Hold, and it had been travel-stained ever since. It was a Lessaran dress coat, dark blue, cut close at the waist and high at the collar, the kind a junior prince wore to state dinners and to funerals, and it had been made for a body that had eaten well at court and slept in a feather bed. It had since been slept in on stone, sat on in saddles, soaked through at the Lantern Ford causeway and dried by a fire in the Gatehouse store. The lining was torn at the left elbow. There was a brown scorch at the hem where a lamp had fallen. Idrin had never once considered replacing it.
Velvet considered nothing else.
“Highness will forgive me,” she said, from the stool beside the receiving-hall’s window, “but a Regent cannot wear a coat that looks as if it has been fought over by two Lessaran dogs.”
“It has been fought over by two Lessaran dogs,” said Idrin. “It is the only coat I have.”
“Then it must be made to lie.” Velvet rose and crossed the room with the coat over her arm, and she held it up to the light like a jeweller considering a stone with an unfortunate inclusion. “Look at the shoulder. The dark patch. It is the colour of a Chancery seal, and it makes you look as though you had been stamped with an accusation.”
