Mireille sat in the Great Hall’s gallery after the Chamber had gone home, on the cold bench at the rail where the lodgers sat during the Chamber’s sittings. The hall below was empty and smelled of bread and tallow. The long table had been stripped of its grey-ribboned forms, which had been carried down to the gatehouse in a box, and the chairs had been pushed back in their ring, nine of them, each with its own worn mark on the floor where a Hand’s feet had rested for two hundred years of sittings. She counted them. She had been counting things since she could hold a slate, and she had not yet found a way to stop.
Idrin came up the gallery stair at the last candle-clock and sat down beside her without speaking. He had not sat beside her since the Hearing. She knew that, because she had counted it too, and because she had been careful with him ever since, as an auditor is careful with a column that has been added wrongly for years and cannot be corrected without someone being blamed for the error.
“You are counting the chairs,” he said.
“Nine,” said Mireille. “Ossane’s clerks have been counting the gallery’s benches for two days. I have watched them do it. They are very quick and very polite, and they never once get the same figure twice.” She turned her head and looked at him. In the lamplight his face was thin and his eyes…
