Pell had been up since the candle-clock, which she considered the only honest government the Hold had ever run. She set the loaves out on the long table in the Great Hall one at a time, the way her mother had taught her, so that a cook could tell by the sound of the board whether the crust was the right colour before she looked. Then she counted the chairs. She always counted the chairs. A kitchen that did not know how many mouths it was feeding was only a kitchen that had not yet been asked.
Seven chairs would be full this morning. She knew it before she counted them, because Ysra had told her at the candle-clock that she would not come down from the north wall until the Lessaran carts were gone from the causeway, and because Tobin had gone to sit on the Undercroft stair with his cup of cold water and his soft cloth, and would come up when he was ready and not before.
Velvet’s chair, by the window with the good cushion, had a napkin on it still. Velvet had folded it into the shape of a swan on the last morning she had sat there, and nobody had unfolded it since. Pell did not mean to touch it. She put a loaf on the cloth beside it instead, which was a thing she had never done for anyone who was asleep.
