The Great Hall was lit for the Turn at the candle-clock on the forty-second day, and the nine seats of the Chamber were turned toward the lectern below the rail. Piers stood at the lectern. He had not been asked to stand there, and he had not been told he could sit. He had walked the length of the Hall from the lodgers’ door with his left hand held at his side and his right hand tucked inside his coat, and he had come to the lectern without looking at the Hands, and then he had looked at them all, one by one, the way he would have looked at a bale of wool on a Coldharbour quay before he put a price on it.
The Hands looked back. Gaunt, with his crooked hand flat on his knee. Harrow, with the count-cord looped round his wrist. Pell, in her apron, with flour on her arms and her round face set. Ysra on the stair’s arch, with her tally-cord held in her fist. Korrin at the door. Sella with her black book shut on her lap. Velvet at the rail’s end, perfectly composed. Tallow at the clerk’s table, pen in hand. And at the half-ring’s far end, where the grave-tender sat silent with her hands folded, the figure of Mourner, who had sung her yes three days before and had not sung again since.
