Velvet asked the Regent to receive her in the receiving-hall after the candle-clock, and he came, and she was ready for him.
She had spent the afternoon at the glass beside the door, as she had spent every afternoon since the Recovery, and she had not been pleased with what she saw there. The Record’s Form had come back into her body without a seam. The grey silk fitted it perfectly. The braid at the cuff lay flat, the hair was pinned high and tight, and the gloves, which she had put on again that morning for the first time since the Edict, were a little loose across the knuckles, which was a thing a Chamberlain could not tolerate in herself and would have been ashamed to mention to a Lessaran envoy. She had looked at the woman in the glass at length. The woman had looked back with the Record’s courteous, unflinching gaze, and Velvet had decided, after some thought, that she would have to be very careful indeed, because she had been awake for eight days and had already begun to enjoy herself.
The Regent came in through the side door at the candle-clock’s last tick. He walked slowly, one hand on the frame, the other held in against his coat. He stopped on the threshold. He looked at her in the chair of state with the lamp burning at her shoulder and the coffer locked at her feet, and his grey face did something complicated and tired…
