The Great Hall had nine seats and at that hour only one of them was occupied, because Velvet had decided the rest of the chairs were in the wrong order and had been moving them for half an hour.
“There,” she said, to no one in particular, and stepped back from the table with her hands clasped at her waist. “The Hold’s chairs are a sentence, Regent. They ought to be read from the head of the table to the foot, and not from the door. Now they can be read by anyone who comes in.”
Idrin looked at the chairs. They were arranged in a long shallow curve, each one turned very slightly toward the head of the table, where he sat. They looked like a court that had been asked to stand up and had decided, at the last moment, to be polite about it.
“They are beautifully placed,” he said. “Thank you, Velvet.”
“Your Regency’s taste is the light of this hall,” said Velvet, and she sat down at the Chamberlain’s rail with the air of a woman who had been given an accolade, and turned her face to the door.
The door opened at the second hour after noon, and Tessaly Mott came in on foot, with her cloak buttoned to the chin and a folder of paper under her arm. She stopped inside the threshold and looked at the room the way Idrin had seen clerks look at a ledger they had been told was…
