Velvet dressed the Great Hall for the Oath with her own hands, because there was nobody else in the Hold who would have done it properly.
She began at the candle-clock, with the lamps. She took them down from their iron brackets one at a time and wiped the glass with a square of Lessaran linen she had kept in the receiving-hall coffer since the autumn, and she trimmed every wick to the same height with a pair of silver scissors that had come from Sallowmere in the trunk with the Regent’s coat. Then she hung the lamps back up in a line, equal distances apart, so that the light would fall evenly on the long table and the nine seats and the open space before the chair of state, and no seat in the Hall would be left in shadow for the swearing.
Then she dealt with the chair.
It was a heavy, carved thing of old Foundation oak, with a high back and arms worn smooth by two centuries of hands. It had stood at the head of the table since the Hold’s first Chamber, and it had never once been moved. Velvet moved it now. She took hold of one arm and pulled it, slowly and with considerable effort, round on its feet until it stood at an angle to the table rather than square to it. It did not face the Chamber. It faced the door, and the lodgers’ place at the back, and the grey…
