The room went silent.
Not complete silence. Just the sort of pause you get when people stop what they're doing and look up, but haven't quite decided what happens next.
The guild representative had frozen halfway through a sentence. Two council members were staring at the new arrival. Brenne had turned fully around in her chair. Vassara, over by the hearth, hadn't moved at all. Only her eyes had squinted.
Renner already had his pen out.
I counted.
Him. The four behind him.
Five.
I wrote the number on the board.
"I want to address the chair concern," I said, "because I've put a considerable amount of thought into these chairs. And I think there may be some missing information in the current assessment."
He looked at me.
"They are shoddy," he said with certainty.
"The back height on these chairs," I said, "came from two rounds of testing."
I held up a finger.
