The Chamber sat on the question of the Crown at the candle-clock, in the Great Hall, with the lamps trimmed high and the stone floor swept, and Idrin came down the dais steps to the Mouth’s table on his own feet, because he had decided that a question put by a man who had to be helped to his chair would be heard as a plea and not as a question.
It took him a long time. The steps were worn in the middle from two hundred years of Hands going up and down them, and his left foot would not always come down where he told it to, and every step was a small private negotiation between his will and the nerves under the Seal. He reached the foot of the table at last, and turned, and found that the Hall had gone quiet around him as a room goes quiet when everyone in it has decided not to look at a man who is trying very hard to be dignified.
He sat in the high chair. He put his right hand on the wood, flat, where he could see it.
“Clerk,” he said. “Read the question.”
Tallow stood at the desk with the minute-book open and his spectacles pushed up crookedly on his forehead, and he did not read from the book. He had the question by heart. “Shall the decrees of the Regent from this day stand as permanent?” he said, in the flat voice he used…
