The legal clerk had a folded copy of the original compact.
Aldric registered this at the door.
The legal clerk — a younger dwarf, by his beard, perhaps a hundred and seventy years old, with the short clean beard of a court-trained scribe and a long satchel of bound papers across his shoulder — had taken the place to Nálin's right at the long table in the trade hall. He had set the folded copy of the original compact in front of him at the moment he sat down. He had not, in setting it, looked at the assembled. The setting had been the small flat gesture of a clerk who had been instructed to put the document where it could be seen.
Aldric did not, on entering, look at the document.
He crossed the floor.
The trade hall was larger than the council chamber. It had been built two years ago, on the long open ground at the eastern end of the keep complex, to host the gatherings that the council chamber had outgrown. The long table at the centre seated twenty. Today it seated fifteen — the dwarven delegation of three, the three eastern village elders who had arrived uninvited that morning, the second steward, two clerks, the head of the Northwatch trade council, two members of Tauriel's bench (the trade-court bench that had been established the previous winter and which Tauriel had been chairing in her petition-wing's quieter days), and the three council members who had been told to be present.
Tauriel was not at the head of the table.
She was at the long side, on the chair to Aldric's right at the head, in her usual seat. She had Cael with her. He was, by Aldric's quick reading, asleep — but he was in a small carved wooden cradle she had set on the floor beside her chair, the cradle Halbarad had had a carpenter make for them in the second month after the birth, and the cradle had a low rocker that Tauriel was, at intervals of a half-minute, touching with the side of her foot to keep the small rocking going.
Aldric took the head seat.
He looked around the table.
He looked at Nálin.
"Nálin."
"My lord."
"You have come with a petition."
"I have, my lord. The petition is set out under the seal of my house. I will summarise it for the hall before reading the formal text, if that is the courtesy of this room."
"It is."
Nálin nodded.
He drew a breath.
"My lord. The compact between our peoples, signed nine years ago, deferred the matter of mining rights on two named ridgelines to a survey commission to be convened in the third year. The third year was reached. The survey commission was convened. The preliminary report was rendered. The final report was filed two seasons ago. The final report's recommendation was that mining could proceed on the southern flank of one of the ridgelines under specific compensatory terms. My lord, by the formal hand of this realm — under the council seal — accepted the final report. He returned it to my house under the additional clause that the families of the lower slope would be paid before the first stone was broken. That clause has been agreed by my house in writing. The first stone has not been broken."
"That is so."
"My lord, my legal clerk has, in his review of the compact's text in preparation for the breaking of the first stone, identified a clause that, by his reading, authorises survey-work on the ridge — beyond the work of the survey commission itself — without further formal negotiation. The clause in question is in the seventh paragraph of the original compact. It reads — the realm grants such access as is necessary for the commission's work, and for the consequent preparatory work, to begin at such time as the commission has rendered its final report. My clerk reads consequent preparatory work as encompassing the initial survey of the southern flank's mining-sites. My house has been told that the eastern village elders disagree with this reading. I have come — my lord — to set the disagreement in the open and to invite the realm's interpretation."
The legal clerk did not, at his right, look up.
The eastern village elders, opposite, did not, in their seats, move.
Aldric absorbed this.
He did not, for the small first beat, react.
He had read the original compact at the council's third reading nine years ago. He had drafted, with the council clerk, the long marginal annotations that the council had filed beside it. He had not, in those nine years, read the seventh paragraph of the compact since the second year of the original compact's life. He could not, sitting at the head of the table, remember the exact wording of the consequent preparatory work clause. He could remember, in the small flat way of a man who had been there at the drafting, that the clause had been negotiated by Tauriel.
Tauriel had been the one who had set the words.
He looked at her.
She did not, at his right, look at him.
She had been listening with the small careful attention she had been giving to formal proceedings since the petition wing year. She had her hands folded in her lap. The cradle by her foot rocked.
She said, without lifting her eyes from the table: "My lord, may I take the chair."
"You may."
She rose. She moved, carefully, to the side of the table. The second steward — who had been sitting to Aldric's left and who had been told a quarter-hour ago that this proceeding might pass to the Lady's hand mid-session — slid the head-seat back from the table by a fraction; Aldric stood, walked around behind it, and took the seat Tauriel had vacated. Tauriel took the head-seat. She set Cael's cradle to her right foot, where her foot could continue the rocking. She looked, then, for the first time in the proceeding, at Nálin.
"Nálin son of Náldar."
"Lady."
"You read consequent preparatory work as encompassing initial site-survey of the southern flank."
"I do, Lady."
"Read me the sentence in full from the seventh paragraph."
Nálin did not have the original compact in front of him. The legal clerk did. The legal clerk read it, in a steady scribe-trained voice, from his folded copy. The sentence read in the Common as Nálin had summarised, with one small additional clause Nálin had not in his summary mentioned — with the prior notice of the realm's council and with such modifications as the council may, in writing, set.
Tauriel inclined her head.
"With the prior notice of the realm's council and with such modifications as the council may, in writing, set."
"Yes, Lady."
"Nálin — when you came up this season, did you give the realm's council prior notice of survey-work on the southern flank."
"I did not, Lady. The petition I have brought is the notice."
"The petition is — yes, the petition is notice in form. But the notice was due, by the clause, before the survey-work began, and the petition is brought to set the dispute, not to begin the survey. The survey has not begun. The clause does not, on my reading, authorise the survey-work to begin under the petition. The clause requires notice and modifications-by-the-council before the survey begins."
"Yes, Lady."
"So we are — Nálin, we are in agreement that no survey-work has yet begun, and that the petition is the notice, and that the realm's council now has the opportunity to set the modifications."
"Yes, Lady."
"Then the matter before this hall today is not whether the clause authorises preparatory work. The clause authorises preparatory work under the council's modifications. The matter before this hall today is what those modifications will be."
A pause.
Nálin inclined his head.
The legal clerk — Aldric registered, with the small inward private observation of a man who had spent a long apprenticeship at a long table watching opposing legal clerks — set his pen down very carefully on the folded compact. He did not look up. He did not look at his principal. He had been built to set a particular argument and his principal had let the argument be reframed.
Tauriel turned, then, to the eastern village elders.
"The three of you came up this morning without invitation."
"Lady."
"How did you know this petition was being brought."
The three exchanged a look.
The eldest — a woman of perhaps fifty, the head of the upper-east holding, with a long grey braid down her back and the small flat hands of a woman who had carried buckets and children with the same hands for thirty years — answered.
"Lady. My niece is in the kitchen of the trade hall. She heard Nálin's clerk speaking with the steward in the corridor at the eighth bell yesterday. She brought us word at the second hour of the night. We rode in this morning."
"All right."
Tauriel did not, by any movement, react further to that.
She did not register that the steward who had been speaking with Nálin's clerk in the corridor at the eighth bell yesterday had broken a quiet rule of the trade hall; she did not register that the eastern village elders' niece in the kitchen had broken a similar rule; she did not register that the three of them, by riding through the night, had committed themselves to a position on the matter without first hearing the petition. She filed all of those things in the small flat interior register of a chairwoman with seven hundred years of court-practice behind her, and she went on.
"Then I will ask you a question, since you are here. Mining-work on the southern flank of the long ridge — under what terms would your three villages accept it. Not whether you would accept it. I am asking — under what terms."
A long pause.
The eldest answered first.
"Lady — under the terms that no site is opened on the ridge without the consent of the village it overlooks. There are three villages along the long ridge's southern foot. There are, by the survey commission's count, eleven potential sites. Three of the eleven are in sight of our houses. Eight are not. If the eight are opened without consent, our villages will register the matter and live with it. If the three are opened, our villages will not, by any agreement of any council, accept it."
"Site-by-site consent."
"Site-by-site consent, Lady."
Tauriel turned back to Nálin.
"Nálin. Eight of the eleven sites. Site-by-site consent for the three within sight of the villages. The other eight by the survey commission's existing recommendation."
A long pause.
Nálin looked at his clerk. The clerk did not look back. Nálin looked at the eldest of the village elders. The elder did not look back at him either; she was looking at Tauriel.
He drew a breath.
"Lady. Eight is — eight is acceptable."
"Eight is acceptable."
"Eight is, by my house's reading of the survey commission's recommendation, the richer eight. The three within sight of the villages were the marginal three. We were prepared, at the outset, to argue for all eleven; we are not — Lady, I will be honest in this hall — we are not, in the assessment my own surveyors have done since the final report, prepared to spend the working-hours on the marginal three. The eight will pay for themselves in the first two years. The three would pay for themselves in seven. We will take the eight under the framework you have set. With the additional clause — and I will name it, that the matter does not need to be debated further today — that if, in any year hereafter, the village elders of the southern foot wish to revise the consent on one of the three, the matter will return to this hall by their request and not by my house's."
"That clause is acceptable."
The eldest of the eastern village elders inclined her head.
The legal clerk picked his pen back up.
Tauriel turned to the clerk of the council.
"Draft the modification. Read it to the table when it is drafted. The clerk of my house and the clerk of Nálin's house both to mark it before any seal is set."
"Lady."
She did not, on returning the chair, immediately rise. She set her foot, once, against the cradle's rocker. Cael, who had begun to stir during the eldest's intervention, returned to his small steady breathing.
Aldric, at her right, did not move.
He looked at the long table. He looked at the legal clerk. He looked at the eastern village elders, who had relaxed by the small width that a row of village elders relaxed by when they had been told a thing they had needed to be told. He looked at Nálin.
He had not, in the half-hour the chair had passed to Tauriel, spoken once.
He did not need to.
The matter was settled.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
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