The Friday gathering was nothing like the audit.
The audit had been two chairs and a pot of tea, one man asking and one answering.
Every window had its lamp lit, the black door stood open, and the grey-coated attendant from the audit took coats again.
The folding doors had been pulled back so the sitting room ran into a wider gallery.
There were perhaps thirty people inside when Alistair arrived.
He knew about a third of them by reputation, from the names Due had drilled into him before Verissan, and two by face from the Upholder education eight years ago.
None had any reason to know a man called Tobian Marrow.
So he moved through the room the way Tobian Marrow would have.
He took a glass of wine and did not drink it, drifted past talk of a council vote, and traded small nothings with an old Caelmari gentleman about the weather and the slow spring.
Crane was at the back of the gallery, speaking with two older men Alistair did not know.
