The stool was the Forge’s, and it was not going down any stair in the Hold for the sake of a Hollowed woman, and Gaunt said so before anybody had asked him to carry it.
He said it in the receiving-hall, to the Chamberlain, who was standing by the window with her hands folded and the grey light falling on her face as though someone had arranged it there for a portrait. He said it in a voice that made the tapestries shiver on their rails. He had been told by Tallow, half an hour before, that the Chamber’s last parley in the cistern was set for the afternoon, and that the Hollowed commander had asked for a guest’s chair, and that the Chamberlain had proposed the Forge’s stool. He had come up from the Smithy at a run with his bad hand held against his chest, and he had found the stool exactly where he had left it, in the corner, under the wet ring the herald’s hood had left on the seat.
“It is not for sale,” said Gaunt. “It is not for carrying. It has never once been sat on by a Hollowed, and I do not propose to let the first one do it on my account.”
