The first riders came in at the eighth hour of the morning, and the last ones at the second hour after the noon meal, and by sundown of the same day Northwatch had under its roofs more representatives of more peoples than it had ever held at once.
Aldric stood at the high window of the keep when the last party came in. The high window faced the southern gate. He had been told an hour ago that Dírhael's Ranger detachment was on the south road. He had watched the road for ten minutes without seeing it. He had gone back to the table and read three more pages of the customs return and gone to the window a second time, and the small slow line of horsemen had been a quarter-mile out and visible at last.
Eight riders.
Dírhael at the head, on the long-legged bay he had ridden since the second year of the Razorpeak coalition. Three of the men behind him were Rangers Aldric knew by face. The other four were strangers, which meant Dírhael had brought reinforcements for the standing escort and intended them to be seen, which was the gesture Aldric had hoped for.
He turned from the window.
He went down.
Lindir was already in the chamber off the great hall.
He had come in two days ago — the first of the witnesses to arrive, on purpose, because the Eldar of Imladris arrived in advance of mortal company and not in the same hour with it. He had taken the same chamber he had taken on his first visit. He had walked twice through the upper orchard. He had spoken briefly with Tauriel in the upper room. He had spoken at greater length with Halbarad in the corridor outside the council chamber, which Aldric had registered without remarking, because Halbarad and Lindir were carrying, between them, what they were carrying.
Halbarad had been bedridden for four days of the last fourteen.
He was not bedridden today.
He had risen at sun-up, dressed himself in the long Ranger coat he had not worn since the autumn, and walked, with the small holly staff and with one of the keep's stewards walking unobtrusively at his left elbow in case the stair gave him trouble, down to the chamber where the witnesses would be gathered through the day.
He had taken a chair by the wall.
He was in it now.
He was thinner than he had been in March. The bones of his cheeks stood out more sharply, and the silver hair was a fingerwidth wispier where it had been thick a season ago, and the cough that he had been swallowing all of last autumn had stopped being a thing he had to swallow because it had stopped coming up. The thing it had been coming up about had — settled, the way things settled at the end. His eyes were as sharp as they had ever been. They followed Aldric across the chamber the way they had followed Aldric across a great many chambers and a great many fields, with the patient unsmiling alertness of a man who had been calculating his lord's mind for seven years and had no intention of stopping in his last months.
Aldric crossed to him.
"Halbarad."
"My lord."
"You are too pale."
"I am as pale as I am, my lord."
"You should be in the chair by the fire."
"The chair by the fire is for visitors. I am not a visitor."
"You are tonight."
"I am not tonight, my lord. I am the kin-witness. Kin-witnesses do not sit by the fire. They sit where they can see the door."
Aldric did not press. He had learned, over the months, that pressing Halbarad on the matter of where he should sit was an argument neither of them wanted to win. He took the stool opposite the old man and sat on it for a moment.
"Has he been in?"
"Lindir was in this morning. Nálin came in an hour ago and has gone with the steward to be settled in the dwarven quarter. Dírhael's man came in ahead with the news of the road; Dírhael himself you have just watched ride through the gate."
"And the regions."
"The southern Greenway sent four — Cathan, Mirren, and the two younger elders. The eastern villages sent six, including the new Brackridge elder, who came on foot because he refused the horse the steward sent. The dwarven quarter is providing two of its own, beside Nálin's people. The Bree-line villages sent eight, including the two from the western circuit who had not signed the safe-passage compact and now have. The northern hamlets sent ten."
"Thirty."
"Thirty, my lord. Plus Lindir for Imladris, plus Nálin and his second for the Blue Mountains, plus Dírhael with eight Rangers. Plus the council, plus the senior officers, plus my own household, plus the household of the keep."
"And from Mirkwood."
Halbarad did not say anything for a small moment.
He set the holly staff slightly more upright between his knees.
"No representative from the Greenwood, my lord. The Ranger courier who came back from the eastern circuit yesterday afternoon said there had been no party on the road. No outrider. No banner. No message."
"None at all."
"None at all."
Aldric let that sit a beat.
"Did Lindir know."
"Lindir has not asked. I do not think he will ask. He came in last night and went out to the orchard for an hour and came back, and he has not, in any words I have heard, named the absence."
"That is the courtesy."
"That is the courtesy."
Aldric stood up.
"I will go and find her."
"My lord."
"Halbarad."
"My lord."
"You will stand at the door with me when she comes down."
"I will stand at the door with you when she comes down. I am only sitting now."
"All right."
He went out.
[UPPER ROOM]
Tauriel was at the window.
She had been at the window when he came in. She had been at the window — he could tell by the small cool ring of the stone where her wrists had rested on the sill — for some time.
She did not turn.
He closed the door behind him.
He went and stood beside her at the window. From the window one could see the southern gate at an angle, and most of the inner yard, and part of the eastern road as it bent away. Dírhael's party was crossing the inner yard. The Ranger captain dismounted, took the reins of his own horse, and handed them to one of the boys himself. He was an older man now, Dírhael — older than he had been on the morning of Razorpeak — and the small white had crept into his beard in a way it had not been the last time Aldric had seen him.
Tauriel watched the dismount.
After a beat she said: "Halbarad told you."
"He told me."
"I asked him to."
"I know."
"I did not — could not — say it first. I could not bring it to you and lay it down. I asked Halbarad to bring it instead. It was the only way it was going to be brought."
"I know."
"Aldric."
"Tauriel."
He set his hand on the sill next to hers. He did not, just yet, take her hand. The room was not the room for hand-taking. He set his hand near, and let it sit.
"Will you say it now."
"Will I say it now."
"Yes."
A long pause.
"He sent no one."
"He sent no one."
"He did not have to send a refusal. The not-sending is the refusal. The not-sending is also the not-quite-refusal, because to send a refusal is to recognise an event that he does not wish to recognise. By not sending he avoids both the recognition and the formal denial."
"Yes."
"It is the Greenwood way."
"It is."
She did not, then, look at him. She kept her eyes on the yard.
"He is what he is," she said. "And this is still real."
"Tauriel."
"Aldric, do not — make this a thing tonight. I have laid it down already. I have laid it down twice, in fact: once when Halbarad came up to tell me what the eastern circuit had reported, and again this morning when I rose. I am not laying it down a third time. I have said the thing I will say about it. He is what he is. This is still real."
He nodded.
He did, then, take her hand.
She let him take it.
"Lindir has not asked."
"Lindir will not ask. Lindir will write back to Imladris and the absence will be recorded by Imladris in the way Imladris records absences. By the time my king hears that the absence was noticed, the absence will be a fact that has gone two ways into a record, and that will be the end of what is said of it."
"Will he write."
"I do not know. I do not — I do not expect a letter. If a letter comes it will come in a year, or in five, and it will not be addressed to me. It will be addressed to you. He has not been able to address a letter to me for a thousand years."
She paused.
"That is the count of the years."
"Yes."
"I have been keeping it without keeping it."
"Yes."
She turned her hand under his and laced her fingers through, the way she had on the parapet, the way she had on the rug in the study after the binding. The familiarity of the gesture was, more than the words, the thing that settled the room.
In the yard below, Dírhael handed his cloak to a steward and looked up at the keep — not at this window, but at the high one further along — and said something to the steward that Aldric could not hear. The steward inclined his head and turned to lead Dírhael toward the great hall.
Tauriel watched until the captain went out of sight under the wall.
Then she said: "Halbarad."
"Halbarad is downstairs."
"How does he look today."
"He looks like Halbarad."
"Aldric."
"He looks thinner. He looks like Halbarad three months from now. He is standing because he has decided to stand. He has put himself in the chair by the wall. He will be at the door tonight when you come down, because he told me he would be at the door tonight when you come down."
"Then I will come down."
"You will come down."
She withdrew her hand. She rested her wrist on the sill, where it had been when he had come in.
"Aldric."
"Tauriel."
"Twenty days."
"Twenty days."
"It is — close enough to count."
"It is."
He looked at her.
"All right?"
"All right." A long breath. "All right. Send for Lindir. He has been waiting since this morning to greet me properly and I have been at this window letting him wait. Tell him I will come down to the chamber within the hour."
"Within the hour."
"Within the hour."
He went out.
At the door he paused, with his hand on the latch, in the way Gorlim had once paused on his own door, and looked back.
She had not moved from the window.
She had laid her open hand on the sill, palm up, the way she had laid it on her knee in the study after the binding when she had put his hand on top of hers.
He went down to find Lindir.
In the chamber off the great hall, Halbarad was in the chair by the wall, the holly staff between his knees, his eyes on the door.
Dírhael was on the steps, coming up.
The bell at the southern gate, very faintly, rang twice — visitor, not threat — and then the small low under-tone the watch used for one rider, on foot, escorted in by a runner. Aldric registered the sound. He did not, for the moment, send for the report. The chamber was filling. The chair by the wall was occupied. The captain of the Rangers was at the door. The witnesses had gathered.
A boy came through the side door with a folded note in his hand.
"My lord."
"What."
"The watch at the southern gate, my lord. The rider who has come in on foot. He carries no banner. He says only that he comes from the Greenwood, and that he is to speak with you and the Lady Tauriel alone."
Aldric took the note.
He did not, at first, open it.
He looked across the chamber at Halbarad.
Halbarad looked back.
The old man set the holly staff a fraction more upright between his knees, and his eyes — the pale grey, still sharp — registered the message and the silence around it, and he gave Aldric the small inclination of the head that meant I have heard, I am ready, do as you will.
Aldric opened the note.
He read it once.
He folded it again.
"Send him up to the upper room," he said. "Send Lindir up afterwards, by ten minutes. Tell the chamber I have been delayed by a quarter-hour."
The boy went out.
Aldric crossed the chamber to Halbarad. He set his hand briefly on the back of the chair by the wall — not on the old man, on the chair — and the old man inclined his head a fraction further, and Aldric went up the stairs two at a time, the way he had not gone up stairs in a year.
The witnesses were gathered.
The road from the Greenwood had not, after all, been empty.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
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