The Bree representative had been speaking for ten minutes.
His name was Hardbristle the Younger. He was the second son of the Hardbristle who had given Aldric his letter of trade-introduction the year before the great winter, and he had come up the road from Bree at the head of a small delegation of three other merchants — a wool-trader from the northern end of Staddle, a Bree-side smith who supplied light iron-work to the northern road, and the long-bearded brewer who held the Bree end of the dwarven-honey trade and who had, by Tauriel's quiet identification last winter, been the unwitting source of one of the operational pieces in the wagoner's monthly summaries.
The brewer had been told by Tauriel, in private last week, that the realm valued his trade and would continue to value it.
The brewer had not been told why.
Hardbristle the Younger was finishing his speech.
He was, Aldric registered, a careful man. He had not, in the ten minutes, argued for anything he was not, by Bree's actual position, entitled to argue for. He had argued — calmly, with two specific maps and one ledger he had brought from his father's office — that the east-west trade of the northern lands ran, by the long-established habit of three generations of merchants, through Bree. That the road bent at Bree. That the customs ran at Bree. That the long-distance carters knew Bree as the stopping-place. That the wagons that were now coming up to Northwatch every season were a thing Bree had not, in three generations of the road, seen — but that Bree's central position, in the long account of the trade, had not moved by even the width of a wagon-wheel.
He set his hands on the table at the end of his speech.
"My lord. The realm of Northwatch is a power. The trade is a thing the realm has built. We are here at this table because the trade is real. But we would not, by any honest reading of the road, agree that the trade has — left Bree. It has grown. It has not relocated. Any charter, my lord, that frames Northwatch as the centre of the northern network would, by Bree's reading of three generations of carting, be — inaccurate, my lord. We would not sign it."
He stopped.
He took a breath.
He inclined his head, a careful Bree-style inclination.
"My lord. That is the position my father instructed me to bring to this table. I have brought it. I will, in the rest of the day's business, hear what the realm proposes, and I will not — my father is most particular — agree to anything that he himself would not, in his hand, sign."
He sat back.
The long table was quiet.
Aldric did not, for a beat, react.
He had registered, in the ten minutes, three things. The first was that Hardbristle the Younger had a clean head for the argument and would carry the argument home if he had to carry it; he was a man who had not been sent up the road to be flexible. The second was that the man was, in the broader long account of trade, right about Bree — the road did bend at Bree, the carters did know it, and three generations of habit did not, by any single charter, move. The third was that Aldric had been told, by Tauriel's last winter's intelligence-work and by the small private exchange with the brewer, that Bree's father — the elder Hardbristle, who had not made the journey himself — was, by Tauriel's reading, sixty-eight years old, in declining health, and a man whose long sentence in the third paragraph of his last courier-letter had been I will not, in my time, see the trade move past us; I would, however, wish to see it set on a longer footing for those who follow.
Aldric had been given the letter to read in the third week of the autumn.
He had set it aside.
He had been waiting, since the third week of the autumn, for Hardbristle the Younger to finish his speech.
The speech was finished.
He drew a breath.
"Hardbristle. Thank you for the directness."
"My lord."
"I would like to set out a proposal. The proposal will sit, for a count of perhaps half an hour, alongside the position you have brought. Then we will, in the second half of the morning, discuss whether the proposal and the position can be brought together, or whether they cannot."
"My lord."
He stood.
He went to the long map that had been set on the wall behind the head of the table. He stood at it for a beat. The map showed the northern lands from the Misty Mountains in the east to the Blue Mountains in the west, and from the Bree-line south to the limits of the Northwatch surveyed regions in the north. There were small marks on it where the trade routes ran. The marks were Tauriel's; she had inked them, last winter, in three colours, by frequency of traffic and by value carried.
He set his hand on Bree.
"The road bends here."
He set his hand on Northwatch.
"The work-house is here."
He drew his hand, slowly, along the line of the road that ran between them, and then along the lines that branched off it — east to the Misty Mountains foothills, west to the Blue Mountain dwarven trade-points, north to the Northwatch regional centres, south through Tharbad and on to the long road that led to Gondor.
He turned to the table.
"What I am proposing is that the Northern Trade Network be chartered as a thing with two hubs. Not one. Two. Bree is the western hub. Northwatch is the northern hub. The charter — Hardbristle, hear me — does not name Northwatch as the centre of the network. It names Northwatch as a centre, and it names Bree as the other. The charter sets out the responsibilities of each hub. Bree's responsibility, by the western position, is the east-west traffic. The road that bends at Bree continues to bend at Bree; the customs that run at Bree continue to run at Bree; the carters who know Bree continue to know Bree. The charter does not, in any clause, move that."
A pause.
"Northwatch's responsibility, by the northern position, is the long northern lines — the dwarven trade-routes to the Blue Mountains, the upper-Bree-line villages that are too far north of the Bree customs to make sense of running through them, the Ranger supply movements that come from the eastern circuits and which, by their nature, do not pass through the public Bree market. The charter sets that out. It sets out that Northwatch coordinates the long northern movements, that Bree coordinates the east-west, and that the two hubs together — by joint clauses — coordinate the through-traffic that runs across both. The through-traffic, by the count of last year's freight, was about forty percent of the total volume. That forty percent runs joint. The remaining sixty splits between the hubs — about thirty-five percent at Bree, twenty-five at Northwatch, by the survey we have run."
He stopped.
Hardbristle the Younger was watching him.
"My lord. The numbers you have just given —"
"Are from the freight survey Maira's office ran last year, with Tauriel's annotation, with the help of the Bree weighing-house clerk who agreed to share his ledger for the count. The numbers are conservative. The Bree weighing-house's count is the one we are working with. We are not, in this charter, framing the trade by any number Bree would dispute."
The wool-trader from Staddle leaned slightly forward in his chair.
The Bree-side smith had set his hands flat on the table.
The dwarven-honey brewer had not, by any movement, registered anything.
Hardbristle the Younger drew a long breath.
"My lord. The number — thirty-five at Bree, twenty-five at Northwatch — would my father have — would my father read that number as ours."
"He would, by my reading of the letter your father sent at the third week of autumn, read it as the long-footing he was hoping for."
A beat.
The young man looked at his maps.
He turned a page.
He turned a second page. He took the small pencil he had been writing with throughout his own speech, and he made — Aldric registered with the same small inward private observation he had registered Nálin's legal clerk's pen-setting two seasons ago — a small note in the corner of the second map. The note was very small. The young man set the pencil down. He looked up.
"My lord. I would — I would need to set this in front of my father. I would need to send a courier by the next caravan, and I would need to wait for his answer. I would not, here in this hall today, sign a charter on numbers that I have not seen him put a hand to."
"Of course."
"My lord, will you — would the realm wait, on the formal charter signing, until the answer is back from Bree."
"Yes."
"How long."
"As long as it takes. The courier south to Bree is three days. Your father will read it for two. The courier back is three days. Eight days. If your father needs longer, longer."
"Eight days."
"Eight."
Hardbristle the Younger inclined his head. He did not, on inclining, conceal the small thing that had moved across the back of his shoulders. The small thing was relief. The small thing was the relief of a man who had been sent up the road with a position to defend and had been offered, in the language of the man across the table, a settlement his father had not, by the careful boundary of his own pride, been able to set out in any letter.
The Ranger supply officer at the far end of the table — a man named Heledir, who had ridden in two days ago with the second of the Ranger procurement officers and had been sitting at the table since the first hour of the morning without speaking — set his cup down.
He inclined his head to Aldric.
Aldric had been waiting for the cup.
He turned.
"Heledir."
"My lord."
"The procurement protocols."
"My lord."
"As proposed at this morning's pre-meeting — the formal charter does not include Ranger supply operations on its public schedule. The Ranger supply protocols are a side-instrument, signed under separate seal between Dírhael's office and this realm's CI function. The supply operations move through the network, but they move under the side-instrument and are not, by name, on the public charter."
"My lord — that is the form we asked for. We are content with it."
"Then we will set the side-instrument in parallel, this week."
"My lord."
"Heledir."
"My lord."
"You came up from the eastern circuit. I have not asked, in the morning, what brought you up. Was there a matter beyond the charter."
A pause.
Heledir looked across the table at the wool-trader from Staddle. He looked at the Bree-side smith. He did not look at Hardbristle the Younger. He inclined his head, the smallest fraction.
"My lord, there is a — separate matter. I will speak it after the table breaks for the noon meal, if it pleases the chair."
"It pleases the chair."
The chair was, today, Aldric's. He had taken it back from Tauriel at the start of the trade hall's morning. He turned to Tauriel now. She was at his right, in her usual seat. Cael was in the cradle by her foot — five months old, awake but quiet, with the small bright Sindar-grey of his open eyes that had developed over the past month and which the keep women had begun to comment on at the carrier-baskets of the market.
He inclined his head to her.
"Lady. The table will break for the noon meal. Recall the table at the third hour. Set Hardbristle the Younger to my office before the recall, so we can dictate the courier-letter to his father together; he will know better than I what wording will reach the elder Hardbristle's ear."
"My lord."
She inclined her head.
He turned to the table.
"The table breaks."
The table broke.
The clerks gathered their papers. Nálin's people had not been at this morning's session — Nálin was at the Brackridge survey site, with his own clerks, this week — but the Northwatch trade council members rose and crossed to confer in small groups along the long wall. Hardbristle the Younger gathered his maps. He paused at his chair-back, looked at Aldric, made the small Bree-style head-inclination one more time, and went out toward the steward who would lead him to the noon meal.
Heledir did not, in the breaking, move from his seat.
He sat with both his hands on the table.
Aldric crossed to him.
He did not, in crossing, signal anyone. He sat down in the chair Hardbristle the Younger had vacated. Tauriel rose and brought the cradle around behind him; she did not, by any movement, ask whether the matter was hers; she simply set the cradle down on the other side of Heledir's chair and took the chair to Heledir's right. The room, beyond them, was loud with the conversations of the breakers.
Aldric leaned forward.
"Speak it."
Heledir drew a long breath.
"My lord. The eastern circuit. In the upper Hoarwell country, on the third week of the autumn."
"Yes."
"My lord — we have a body. A horseman. Black-cloaked. The body is — the body is what is left of one. The horse is gone. The cloak is — the cloak does not, by any of my Rangers' handling, behave as a cloak. I have it in a sealed case in the eastern circuit's hold. I have not, by any decision yet, opened the case in any room where my men sleep. I have come up the road to tell you that the case exists. I have not yet — my lord — I have not yet decided what to do with it."
Tauriel set her hand on Heledir's forearm.
Aldric did not, by any movement, react.
He sat for a long beat with his hand on the table.
He said: "Bring the case up to Northwatch."
"My lord."
"By courier escort. Not by your own hand. The case rides under double seal. The case does not, between the eastern circuit and this keep, leave any man's sight."
"My lord."
"And Heledir."
"My lord."
"You did the right thing in sealing it. You did the right thing in coming up. You have not, in the bringing of this news to my table, done a thing you should not have done."
"My lord."
"Send the courier today."
"My lord."
Heledir rose. He inclined his head. He went out.
Aldric did not, for a long beat, look at Tauriel.
When he did, she was looking at him with the same long-measured look she had given him on the wall the night of the first Weather Hills sighting four years ago, and the look had under it the same thing it had had then, which was the registering of a horizon that had moved a fraction closer.
The trade hall settled into its noon-meal noise.
The charter would be back in eight days.
The case would be on Aldric's desk in three.
⚜ ━━━━ 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.