A horse went by under the window.
Not a courier. Not a patrol. A workhorse with the slow heavy step a workhorse took when it was being led by the bridle at a walk past a wall, and the small clop of its shoes on the courtyard stones came up to the chamber window in the way the small clop of horses had come up to the chamber window every morning Aldric had ever slept in this room, which was every morning he had been in residence for seven years.
He was awake.
He had been awake since before the horse. He had been awake since the small grey before dawn, which was when he had been awake every morning for seven years. He had opened his eyes the way he opened them every morning — clean, alert, the day's work already in his head — and lain still.
He lay still.
It was the lying still that was new.
The sun came in through the upper crack at the top of the shutter and made the long pale stripe across the wooden floor that the sun made in this room in September. The stripe moved a finger's width while he watched it. The first sunrise-bell from the south wall rang once, the customary single ring, and the watch on the wall began the slow turn that they always made at the bell, and one of the boys in the kitchen below dropped a copper pot on a stone floor and was scolded by someone Aldric did not, at this distance, recognise.
He still did not move.
Beside him, Tauriel was awake.
He knew she was awake because she had been awake for some time, in the way she was awake — silently, without altering her breathing, with her eyes half-open against the wall. She had not turned her head. She had not, yet, looked at him.
The pale stripe on the floor moved another finger's width.
The second sunrise-bell rang.
He had never, in his life as a lord, been in bed for the second sunrise-bell. The second bell was the bell of the second watch and the morning council, and by the second bell he was — every morning, for seven years — at his desk, with his coat on, with the first paper of the day on the table.
He did not get up.
He did not, in the time between the second bell and the next slow movement of the pale stripe on the floor, move at all.
Tauriel turned her head.
Half a quarter-turn. Just enough that her eye found his.
She looked at him.
He looked at her.
There was a small thing in her face that he had seen, in the year past, in a half-dozen quiet moments — on the parapet that night, on the rug in the study the night of the binding, on the balcony when she had named Mírelen once and put it away again. The small thing had no name in any language he had so far in his life acquired. He did not give it a name now.
She did not speak.
He did not speak.
After a long beat she set her hand, palm down, on the linen between them. She did not reach for him. She set her hand near.
He set his own hand on top of hers.
The third sunrise-bell rang.
The third bell, by the rotation of the keep, was the bell for the cooks. The smell of bread came up the stair half a moment after, the small steady morning smell of bread cooked in the keep oven, and somewhere along the inner wall a sparrow began the small ragged morning song the sparrows of this courtyard had been singing every September since the founding.
He turned his head and looked at the rafters.
The rafters had a single small crack in the third beam from the door, which had been there since the second year of the founding and which he had been meaning, for five years, to have looked at and never had. It was not a structural crack. It was a thing the wood had done in drying. He looked at the crack a long while. He had not looked at it in two years.
Tauriel was watching him watch the rafter.
She said, very quietly, the only thing she said in the whole of the morning before the steward's knock came at the outer door at the hour and a half after sunrise.
She said: "You do not have to do anything."
He turned his head.
He looked at her.
"All right."
He set his shoulder against hers and did not, for the half-hour that remained before the steward, do anything.
When the knock came, finally, it was a careful knock — the steward had been told. It was the smallest knock the steward could make and still be sure of being heard. Aldric did not, at first, answer it. He waited a beat. He waited a second beat. He answered on the third.
"Yes."
"My lord. The morning council is gathered at the hour set. They have been told to remain seated until you come down. There is no business that has been brought up requiring your attention. I am only knocking to mark that the hour has come."
"Tell them I will be down in a quarter-hour."
"My lord."
The steward went away from the door.
Aldric did not, for some further minutes, move.
Then he sat up. He set his bare feet on the wooden floor. He sat on the edge of the bed a moment with his hands on his knees in the way he had been told, when he had been very small in his other life, to sit on the edge of a bed for a moment after waking — count to twenty before you stand up, your blood needs to catch up — and he counted to twenty without thinking about it because the habit had outlasted everything else from that life.
Tauriel watched him count.
At twenty he stood.
He turned and looked back at her. She had not moved. She was still on her side, with one hand on the linen where his shoulder had been.
He said: "Stay."
"For how long."
"For as long as you would like. There is no business this morning. The council will sit and Halbarad will keep them, and the day will keep until I am at the desk in an hour."
"All right."
"Tauriel."
"Aldric."
"Thank you."
She did not answer.
She closed her eyes for a moment — not asleep, the deliberate close — and opened them again, and looked at him, and the small thing he had not given a name to was in her face again, and he did not give it a name this time either.
He went to find his clothes.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
Read more chapters for free in the public library:
unwrittenrealm.com
⚜ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚜
By order of the Crown.
The royal vault holds chapters the public throne room has yet to receive. Those who pledge fealty on Patreon may read ahead of the realm:
Noble — $7 — Twelve chapters ahead.
Royal — $11 — Nineteen chapters ahead.
Emperor — $17 — Twenty-six chapters ahead.
New chapters added weekly. Full schedule posted in the war room.
patreon.com/Kingdom1Building
Long live the Kingdom.