The candle-clock in the Great Hall was the oldest thing in the Hold that still kept time honestly. It had been brought up from the Foundation’s first kitchen in a cart drawn by two oxen, and it had a brass hand that moved with a small sound like a bird landing, and every Register wake-record in the Hold had been read beside it since the first winter. Idrin had heard it counted a thousand times. He had never before stood beside it with his arm in a sling and the Seal aching under his shirt, waiting for a clerk to say a clause out loud.
He stood at the head of the hall, near the Mantle’s old chair, where the Regent had always stood to hear the Register read. The lamps were lit along the walls. The Chamber had come up from the Undercroft to sit in the Great Hall for the first time since the reading, and the nine chairs had been set in their ring with the Hands in them, and Sella’s chair at the table’s edge still had its folded cloth. Ysra was at the door, counting. Pell was at the back, by the Kitchen passage, with her hands in her apron. Mireille sat near the lamps with the Census on her knee and the struck page laid flat on the cover. Wren stood where she always stood, at the ring’s edge, with her hands at her sides.
