Chapter 16: Edwyn Addresses the Small Council

The Small Council met on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a schedule established by King Arion's father and maintained thereafter by the inertia common to all arrangements that no one has found sufficient reason to change. The council chamber occupied the eastern wing of the Redkeep's second floor, a room of considerable dimensions and considerable draughts, its walls hung with maps of Westering's provinces and one large tapestry depicting the first king's coronation in a style that flattered both the king and the weaver at some expense to anatomical accuracy.

Lord Edwyn Stark arrived twelve minutes before the appointed hour, as he always did, carrying his leather document case, his prepared agenda, and the folded memorandum that had kept him awake for the better portion of the preceding three nights. He set these items on the table before his chair with the methodical arrangement of a man who finds order, if not comfort, in the alignment of things. Then he sat, and folded his hands, and waited.

Lord Pemwick arrived next, at four minutes to the hour, and settled into his customary chair at the table's middle with the satisfied grunt of a man whose joints make every seated moment a minor achievement. Lord Pemwick administered the realm's internal revenues and had done so for eleven years with the steady, unremarkable competence of a man who genuinely enjoyed the company of numbers. He nodded to Edwyn, remarked that the morning was cold for the season, and produced his own sheaf of documents from a case very like Edwyn's, which observation Edwyn found, under the circumstances, unexpectedly melancholy.