The receiving-hall door had not been knocked upon since the Turn, and when it was knocked upon at dawn Velvet woke in her chair as though somebody had struck a silver bell inside her chest.
She did not rise at once. A Chamberlain never rose at once. She sat with her long white hands folded in her lap, and her back straight, and her eyes on the door, and she took three slow breaths to let the cold of the Yielding drain out of her limbs. The receiving-hall was grey with the early light. The carpet was grey. The tapestries along the walls were grey with the dust that had settled on them during her quiet, and the dust had made their gold threads look like old wire. Someone had left a cup of water on the side table. It had a skin on it.
Then the knock came again, three knocks, patient and courteous, the knock of a herald who had been told to wait and had waited.
“Enter,” said Velvet.
Her voice was perfectly steady. She was pleased by that, in the part of her that was always pleased by a well-turned phrase. She had been silent for a very long time. She had been Yielded at the Turn, in the Great Hall, by her own Assent, and the Assent had cost her nothing but a bow and one plain sentence that she had been ashamed of for three nights. She had been sure, in the quiet, that…
