The drinks session between the second and third formal blocks was the assembly Alistair had described at breakfast.
The formal blocks were the record. This was the session — two hours in the east anteroom while the chamberlain's staff reset the main hall, the assembly's real work running in the conversations that produced outcomes the formal blocks would ratify. Vane had understood this in the abstract. He understood it differently standing inside it.
He stood with Valerica near the anteroom's east wall, which was not the correct wall for their rank configuration but was the wall she had moved to without consulting him, which meant it was the wall she wanted. From here the whole room was visible.
"The man in grey coming from the left," Valerica said, not looking at him. "He has been trying to get adjacent to the northern trade table for three years. He won't make it this year either."
