Velvet received the Regent in the receiving-hall at the candle-clock, with the lamps lit, the coffer locked and her gloves laid on its lid in a neat pair, as if she had already taken them off for good and was too well bred to say so.
She had dressed for the occasion, which meant she had dressed for herself. The grey Chamberlain’s silk, with the narrow black braid at the cuff. Her hair pinned flat and high, because the Record’s Form wore its hair that way, and she had decided years ago that a Hand should look like the trade it kept. She had been up since the bread. She had watched the sky over the east wall go from iron to pearl and then to the thin wet blue of a spring that could not make up its mind, and she had been grateful to the sky, because it was the only thing in the Hold that had not asked her to decide anything.
The Form stood in its glass beside the door. She went to it now, as she did every morning, and looked. Tall and spare, with long hands folded at the waist and a face cast from the Record original by a man who had loved ledgers and could not bear to see a figure drawn carelessly. She was pleased with the face. She had been pleased with it for a very long time. Tallow had once called it her family’s copy, with a clerk’s little…
