"My lord — there is a man at the south gate."
The gate-watch's note came up at the second bell of the morning.
Aldric had been at the long bench under the window of the upper chamber when the chamber steward brought the small folded paper in; he had been sitting beside Tauriel, who had been back at the keep for nine days and who had — by the small careful private way she had been waiting in the last three of those nine days — set up at the long bench at the seventh bell with her own small leather case of paper and her own pen, in the small careful inward preparation of a woman who had decided that the day was the day she would speak.
She had not yet spoken.
She had been at the long bench for two and a half hours. She had set out the paper. She had not — by Aldric's small reading at her left — touched the pen since the eighth bell. She had set her hand against the line of her jaw in the small slow careful inward gesture of a woman who was, by her own count of the morning, perhaps a quarter-hour from the small full setting-out she had been preparing for nine days.
He had not, at the long bench, asked.
He had been at the long bench beside her, in the small careful steady patient way he had been at the long bench beside her at every other small inward setting-out in fifteen years.
The chamber steward came in with the small folded paper.
The steward stopped at three paces from the long bench. He inclined his head to Tauriel first, in the small flat keep form he used for the Lady at the door of the upper chamber; he inclined his head to Aldric second.
"My lord. From the south gate. The captain of the watch."
Aldric took the paper.
He unfolded it.
He read it.
He set it down.
He looked at Tauriel.
He said, in the small low voice he reserved for the inner-channel exchanges between them: "There is a man at the south gate with a sealed offer from Isengard."
She did not, for a beat, react.
She inclined her head.
She set the pen down on the small leather case.
"Go."
"Tauriel —"
"Go, Aldric. The morning is — what it was for nine days, it can be at the end of this morning when the man at the south gate is at the wherever he is to be at by the end of the morning. The morning's small careful inward setting-out will wait. The man at the south gate will not."
A pause.
"Tauriel."
"Aldric — go."
He stood.
He set his hand against the back of hers on the small leather case for the count of perhaps three breaths, and he let it go.
He went down.
The man was at the inner court of the south gate.
He was perhaps fifty by Aldric's first reading at the long step down. He was tall. He was clean-shaven, which was a thing very few men in the realm were at that age. He wore a long dark coat of the cut Aldric had seen at Bree in the formal year-mark trade-sessions — fine wool, with the small careful brown braid down the inner seam that the better Bree tailors had set as their mark for the past decade. He was wearing dark riding boots that had been cleaned, by his own hand, in the small careful way a man cleaned boots that had been at three days of road, before he had ridden up to the gate. He had two saddle-bags. He had no weapon on his belt.
He had, in his right hand, a small sealed leather case.
The seal on the case was white.
It was on the front face, in the small careful pressed wax that Aldric had seen, by the small flat private acknowledgment, twice in his life in this country — once on the small folded letter Radaman the scholar of Orthanc had brought up the road many years ago and had handed across the long table in the records hall in the small careful courteous way of a scholar handing across a courtesy, and once, in a different form, on the small inner cloth-wrap of the cloak case in the inner chamber that had not been opened in public form.
The seal was a small worked hand, palm-out.
The hand was white wax against the small dark leather of the case.
Aldric crossed the inner court.
He did not, at first, speak.
He stopped at three paces from the messenger.
The messenger inclined his head — not the deep bow of a man at a foreign court, not the half-bow of a man at a court he had no standing at, but the small careful inclination of a man who had been told, by the person who had sent him, that the bow was to be a courtesy and not a submission.
"My lord of the northern realm."
"Speak your name."
"Saramund son of Saraman. I come — my lord — from the long valley to the south of the Misty Mountains. I bear, on the seal of my principal, a sealed offer for your hand. I am instructed to present the offer in your hand, to wait for your reading, to take your response — in whatever form your hand sets it — back to the long valley. I am not — my lord — instructed to negotiate. I am instructed to deliver. I have, by the small standing form of those who carry such offers in such times, no further instruction in the matter."
"You are professional."
"I am, my lord. I have been at this work for the past fourteen years. I was — my lord, if it bears on your reading — at the year-mark trade-sessions of Bree two summers ago in the same capacity, on a different matter, for a different principal. I do not — by the small inner ethic of the work — disclose my principals to one another. I disclose, at any given meeting, only the principal whose hand has set my hand at the meeting. The hand at this meeting is the hand on the seal of the case."
"Saruman."
"By name — yes. My principal is Curunír, the Hand of Orthanc, the White."
A pause.
"Bring him in."
The gate-watch brought him in.
They brought him to the inner secure chamber Aldric used for the small careful meetings that were not, by the form of the council, council matters. Maira was at the corner of the chamber by the time Aldric and the messenger arrived; she had been told, by the chamber steward's parallel note at the second bell, that there was a messenger at the gate with a sealed offer. She had her small bound notebook open at her elbow. She had Lieutenant Eyrian at the door, at the proper distance.
She did not, at first, address the messenger.
She inclined her head to Aldric.
"My lord."
"Captain. Sit."
She sat.
The messenger inclined his head, the same small careful inclination, to Maira. He did not, in the inclining, register Eyrian at the door. Eyrian did not, by any movement, register him.
The messenger held out the case.
Aldric took it.
He set it on the small inner table. He did not, at first, break the seal. He set his hand against the small dark leather of the case for the count of perhaps three breaths. He looked at the messenger.
He said: "How did you ride."
"By the long west road, my lord. Tharbad to the south crossing of the Greyflood, then the long bend through the Swanfleet to the south margin of the Bree-land, then up the Greenway."
"You came up the Greenway."
"By the small inner courtesy of the trade-charter, my lord. I was given the courtesy at the Bree weighing-house — by name, by my principal's name — on the standing form. I was told the courtesy by Hardbristle the Younger himself, at the door of the weighing-house, in the small careful courteous way Hardbristle the Younger sets courtesies to messengers of foreign principals. I was given a small note. I have it in my coat. I am — my lord — happy to set the note on the table if the captain at her notebook wishes to read it."
"Set the note on the table."
He set it.
Maira inclined her head a quarter-fraction at the small folded paper. She did not, at first, pick it up.
Aldric turned back to the case.
He broke the seal.
The offer was set out, in the small clean hand of a scribe of the Tower of Orthanc, on three sheets of fine paper. Aldric read all three. He read them once at the standard speed of the council session and once more at the slower speed of the inner-channel review. He set them down.
The offer was, by the standard reading: formal acknowledgment by Curunír of the Orthanc tower of the realm of Northwatch's territory in its current bounds; the grain Saruman's southern holdings could supply at a rate of three thousand bushels per annum; weapons — long iron of the dwarven-trade rate, eight hundred standard footmen's armaments per annum — to be delivered through a southern courier-port the offer named at the third sheet. The offer's only condition was the realm's formal neutrality, by signed instrument, in any future realignment of power between the great hands of the southern country.
The phrase realignment of power was, by Aldric's reading, the phrase a hand at the Tower of Orthanc used when it could not, by the small careful form of its own grammar, write war.
He folded the three sheets.
He set them back in the case.
He did not, for a long beat, look at the messenger.
He turned to Maira.
He said, in the small low voice he reserved for the inner-channel: "Captain. There is one further matter on the desk before I respond. Bring me a sheet."
She brought the sheet.
He took the pen at the corner of the table.
He wrote.
He wrote in his own hand, in the small careful steady line of a lord of fifteen years who had been writing small careful steady lines on small careful steady sheets at the inner table for fifteen years. He wrote one line. He read it through once. He folded the sheet. He sealed it with the council seal.
He set the sealed sheet on the small inner table.
He turned to the messenger.
"Saramund son of Saraman."
"My lord."
"You will carry this back to your principal. You will set it in his hand by the form you came with from his hand. You will not — by my instruction — open it on the road. The seal will hold from this hand to his. You will be at the southern courier-port your principal named at the third sheet of his offer in fourteen days. You will pass under the realm's safe-conduct for the duration of your road; the safe-conduct will be on the small paper my captain will write for you at the gate. You will not, by any of the small careful forms of the work you are at, be detained at any point of the road south. You will not, by the same form, be welcome on any return."
"My lord."
"Captain."
"My lord."
"The messenger will, by the small careful courtesy of the realm to a messenger who has been at the work fourteen years, be at the south gate for one hour before he rides out. In the hour, you will — by the form of the small inner debrief that the realm conducts on all messengers entering its courts — set him at the small table at the side of the gate. You will ask him the small careful questions you ask such messengers. He will not — by the small inner ethic of his work — answer the questions about his principals. He will answer the small careful steady questions about his road. He has come up the long west road via Tharbad, the south crossing of the Greyflood, the Swanfleet, the south margin of the Bree-land, the Greenway. He will, in your debrief, set out the small careful details of those roads at the dates he was at them. He will not, by the small careful steady form, refuse the small careful steady setting-out. He will be at the south gate one hour, and then he will be on the road back, with the seal on the sheet, by the form he came in."
Maira inclined her head.
"My lord."
The messenger inclined his head.
"My lord."
Aldric handed the sealed sheet across the small inner table.
The messenger took it.
He set it inside the long inner pocket of his coat with the small careful steady gesture of a man who had been carrying sealed sheets at the inner pocket of his coat for fourteen years.
He stood up.
He inclined his head a third time — the same small careful inclination — and walked out of the chamber under Eyrian's quiet escort.
Aldric stayed at the small inner table for some minutes after the door closed.
Maira had stayed at the corner.
She had not, on the messenger's leaving, immediately reached for the small folded note he had set on the table — the small Hardbristle the Younger courtesy-note he had volunteered.
She reached for it now.
She read it.
She set it back on the table.
"My lord — the note is what it says it is. Hardbristle the Younger has, by the form of the trade-charter's standing courtesy, set the safe-conduct of any foreign messenger through the Greenway under the realm's own safe-conduct so long as the messenger has no weapons and is travelling under sealed instruction. The form is the standing one. I will, by tomorrow's courier, send a private note to Hardbristle the Younger noting that we are aware that Saramund son of Saraman travelled under the form, that we have no quarrel with the form, and that we would — by the small inner-channel ask — like to be informed, by the small private channel and not by the public form, when the next such messenger comes through."
"Send it."
"My lord."
"Captain — the road."
"My lord. He has come up the way he said. Tharbad to the south crossing to the Swanfleet to the south margin to the Greenway. By the standard form of such roads, the road takes seventeen days at the pace of a single rider. He has, by his own admission at the gate before he came in, been at it for fourteen. That is — my lord — three days short of the standard count. Three days is the count of a man who has, somewhere on the road, taken a faster small route or who has been stopping at a point Eyrian and I do not, by the standing reading of the map, have on the road. I will, in the debrief, ask him the small careful steady question of where he has slept on the road. He will, by his ethic, not lie. He will not, by his ethic, set out the small detail in any form that names anyone he has slept beside. But he will, by the small careful steady form, set the date and the village of each sleep. The dates will allow Eyrian and me to count the small fast small section between two of the villages and to find the point at which the section is fast. The point will, by my prior reading, be at the Greyflood's south crossing or at the Swanfleet's small interior. We will, by the debrief, narrow it. It is two route details we did not have at this morning's seventh bell. By the second bell of the afternoon we will have them on the inner map."
"Good."
A pause.
"Captain — the line on the sealed sheet."
"My lord — I read it as you wrote it."
"Speak it."
She inclined her head.
She said, in the small low voice: "The realm of Northwatch holds no neutrality in the matter you describe."
"That is the line."
"My lord — by the small careful inner reading, the line is — the line. It is not, my lord, by the small form of the council's diplomatic record, the line we would have written six years ago. It is — by the small careful inner reading — the line we have written today. I am — my lord, by the small private reading of a captain at the small inner table — content that the line is the line."
She did not, on saying it, smile.
She inclined her head once.
She went out to conduct the debrief at the south gate.
Aldric stayed at the small inner table for a long count of breaths after she had gone.
He looked at the empty leather case on the small inner table.
He folded the white-hand seal that had broken at his hand, in the small careful way of a man who had been folding things for fifteen years, and he set it inside the inner pocket of his coat beside Halbarad's chalk pocket.
He went back up the stair.
Tauriel was still at the long bench under the window.
She had not, in the hours past, picked up the pen.
She turned at the sound of the door.
She said, in the small low voice she had been using all morning: "The man is out."
"He is at the gate. Maira is at the small careful debrief. He will be on the road by the third bell. He will be at the southern courier-port in fourteen days. He will set the sealed sheet at his principal's hand. We will not see him again."
"What did you write."
"One line."
She inclined her head.
She did not ask for the line. He did not, then, set it.
She set her hand against the line of his jaw, in the small slow careful gesture she had been making at corridors and at chambers for fifteen years.
She said: "The morning is — Aldric — gone."
"It is."
"I will speak to you tomorrow."
"Tomorrow."
"At the second bell."
"At the second bell."
She set the pen back in the small leather case at the small careful set she had set it in at the eighth bell of the morning, and she stood, and she went out to the lower rooms to look at the children.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
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