The Chaincrown’s clerk came to the gatehouse door in the last hour of the candle-clock, with the Regent’s Writ-form in his hand, unsigned, and his face as polite as it had been in the Hall.
Pell stood in the doorway with her arms folded across her apron and watched him come. She had not been asked to stand there. She had simply got up from the Kitchen bench when she heard the clerk’s step on the Lowgate road, and walked up the gatehouse stair with her flour-dusted hands in fists, and planted herself in the doorway the way she planted herself in front of an oven when a Lowgate boy came in with a dirty pan. The clerk stopped at the threshold, and looked at her, and then past her, into the gatehouse, where the prince was.
“Mistress Pell,” said the clerk. “I am here on the Chaincrown’s business, with the Regent’s Writ.”
“Then you can say it to him,” said Pell. “I’m only the door.”
Idrin stood up from the table.
He did it slowly. Pell saw it, and so did the clerk. The Regent put his good hand flat on the wood and pushed himself upright, and his bad arm came up against his chest in its sling, and she saw the Seal’s pale crown show above his collar where the cravat had come loose. He looked pale and drawn and very tired, and he stood very straight, the way he had stood at the arch on the…
