Ossane had been asked to state her claim three times in the course of the Crown’s business, and she had never once been asked to state it in a room that had already decided to hear her out. It was an unsettling feeling. She had spent her life among rooms that were looking for a reason to refuse her, and this room was looking for nothing at all. It was looking at her, patiently, with the faces of the Hall’s own people, and waiting for her to begin.
She stood at the Chamber’s table in the Lessaran grey, with the Writ of Property in one hand and her book in the other. The guest’s chair was empty behind her. She had not sat in it since the morning, because she had felt, on the cushion, the faint shift of the floor under her, and she had not wanted to ask it whether it was going to carry her a second time.
“The Crown of Lessary,” she said, “states its claim.”
Her voice carried. It was a courtroom voice, trained in the Chancery’s great hall at Sallowmere, where the echoes came back from the vaulted roof in a way that made every word sound like a verdict. In the Hold’s Great Hall the echo did not come back at all. The words simply went out across the boards and seemed to be taken up by them, as water is taken up by a cloth.
