The Great Hall had been built for a Chamber that numbered forty, and it still looked wrong with only nine chairs filled. The chairs were iron-backed and set in a ring around the Mouth’s table, and between them the old stone floor showed in long pale stretches, as if the Hall had been waiting all winter for more people to come and sit in the gaps. Tallow sat at the clerk’s desk with the minute-book open and a dry pen, and he counted the chairs as the Hands came in, because it was his habit and because it was the only way to be sure the room had not changed while he was looking elsewhere.
Eight Hands sat down. Velvet’s chair stood empty, its gilt back catching the candle-clock’s light.
“The Chamber is called to a proposal,” said the Regent from the high chair, in plain sentences, with his left hand resting in his lap as though it belonged to someone else. “It is an Edict. Clerk, read it.”
Gaunt objected before the first word was out. “I object to the word proposal. It is a word for a wagon that has not yet been loaded.”
“You have not heard it, Gaunt.”
