[TAURIEL]
She had been at the petition wing for an hour and had not, in the hour, read a single petition.
She was at the table in her usual chair. She had the morning's stack at her left elbow in the order the second steward had laid it out at the seventh bell, with the small folded note on the top — eight petitions, three regional, five settlement, none urgent — and she had her pen at her right hand and the inkwell open and the small private tablet of her own ruling-record on her lap. She had been at the table since the eighth bell. She had not, in the time, opened the first petition. She had not, in the time, picked up her pen.
She had been looking at the small folded note for the better part of the hour without reading it.
Celwyn, at her own desk across the room, had not, by any movement, made anything of it.
The senior steward had been at her desk since the seventh bell, in the same small dry way she had been at her desk every morning for the last six years. She had been working through the year's deeds file at the small slow pace she set for the long-shelf items. She had not, in the hour, looked across the room at Tauriel; she had not, in the hour, made the small steady careful clearing-of-the-throat she made when she was about to ask a question; she had not, in the hour, done any of the small things Tauriel had been registering, peripherally, that the senior steward did when she was waiting for the Lady to come out of a small inward place she was in.
She had, however, made the chamber a small inward-friendly place.
She had set the inner door closed.
She had told the steward at the corridor, at the eighth bell, that the wing was not to be interrupted until the Lady asked.
She had set out, at the side of Tauriel's table at some point in the third quarter of the hour, the small kettle of the winter herbal Arethil had been sending up for Tauriel since the autumn, with two cups — one for herself and one she had not, on setting out, named.
Tauriel registered the second cup.
She did not, for some minutes, reach for it.
She reached for it at the end of the hour.
She poured.
She poured for herself first, then for Celwyn at her own desk.
Celwyn, at her desk, inclined her head a fraction without looking up.
She accepted the second cup at her elbow.
She did not, on accepting it, say anything.
Tauriel did not, for some minutes, drink.
She set the cup on the table beside the unopened petitions.
She said, in the small low voice she reserved for the inner-channel exchanges of the wing: "Celwyn."
"My Lady."
"There is a thing — that has been at me — for some time now. I will not, today, work the petitions. I will not, today, sign the deeds. I will be in the practice yard at the second bell. I will not — Celwyn — be available until the fourth. If there is a matter that cannot wait until the fourth, send for me. The matters that can wait until the fourth — let them wait."
Celwyn set her pen down.
She turned in her chair, the small partial turn she used when she was about to speak to Tauriel as a person and not as the Lady at the long table.
She said: "My Lady. The eight petitions on your desk — I will take them, with your permission, into my own hand for the morning. I will not sign anything you would not. I will sign two of the small settlement matters. I will hold the three regional, by their nature, for your hand at the fourth. The five settlement — three of them you would sign in eight minutes; two of them you would set aside for a longer reading. I will sign the three. I will set the two on the shelf for tomorrow."
A pause.
"That is — yes. Thank you, Celwyn."
"My Lady."
"And — Celwyn."
"My Lady."
"I will, this afternoon, ask the lord for a thing. I will be travelling. I will be away for some weeks. I will need — when the thing has been spoken between us — your hand at certain matters of the wing that will need to be held in my absence. The matters that need the Lady's hand in form — for those, I will set out the form in the day before I go. The matters that need the Lady's hand in fact — those I will, by formal designation in the form of the charter, transfer to you for the period. I have not yet — Celwyn — set out the period to the lord. But I will."
The senior steward did not, for a beat, react.
She inclined her head.
She did not, on inclining, ask any of the small careful questions a senior steward of six years' standing might have asked. She did not ask where the Lady was travelling. She did not ask for how many weeks. She did not ask whether the children would travel with her. She did not — by the small flat private grace of a woman who had been working at Tauriel's side for six years — ask any of the things her own work would, in the next half-day, need her to know.
She said: "My Lady. When you have set the date, send me the small note. I will, by the small note's hour, set the matters in their places."
"Thank you, Celwyn."
"My Lady."
Tauriel rose.
She did not, on rising, take the unopened petitions with her. She left them on the table for Celwyn's hand. She picked up her pen and set it back in its small leather case. She closed the inkwell. She did not, on closing it, look at Celwyn again; she did not need to. She left the wing.
She did not, in the corridor, go up to the upper rooms.
She went to the practice yard.
She was at the yard by the second bell.
She had not, by her own count of the last six months, been at the yard at the second bell for the bow-work of an empty hour; she had been at the yard at the seventh and the eighth, when the new archer classes were in session and when her hand was required as the instructor; she had not, at the second bell of any morning since the autumn, taken the bow out for her own work without a class around it.
She took the bow out now.
She did not bring an attendant.
She had told the keep women, at the door of the upper room when she had come up at the ninth bell to set the children with Arethil for the morning, that she would be at the yard alone until the fourth bell and that no one was to come down for any matter that the senior steward had not, by the small inner-channel note, already deemed worth the interruption. The keep women had inclined their heads. Lúthien — twenty months old now, by the small steady careful count Arethil kept, walking and naming and at the small early stage of the long inward gestures she would carry for centuries — had been in the small carry-shawl against Arethil's shoulder for the half-hour before, and had not, on Tauriel's leaving, registered the leaving as more than the morning's standard pattern. Cael, in the south alcove with the carved horse, had registered it; he had looked up at her at the door for one long careful beat and had inclined his small head once. He had not asked. He had been told, in the spring as the question had begun to settle in his mother in the small way he could read at his particular height of attention, that there were mornings she went to the yard alone. He did not, today, ask why.
She walked the yard in the small slow careful Elven pace.
She set the rack open. She took down the small dark working bow she had been carrying since the binding — the one she had brought up the south road with her from the Greenwood seven hundred years before this country, the one Halbarad had named in the second week of the founding the small dark bow and which the keep women had been calling the same thing for fifteen years — and she set it across her left forearm. She set the long quiver at her hip. She took the second small quiver — the one with the practice arrows she had been turning at her own rest hours over the last month — across her back.
She walked to the head of the long line.
She set herself at the proper distance from the long straw target at the long-shot mark.
She drew.
She released.
The arrow landed at the long-shot mark, by the small steady careful reading at distance, two finger-widths off the centre. Two finger-widths was — by the standard practice of her own hand at this bow — the small soft drift of an arm that had not done its long work in three weeks. The drift was not on her account. The drift was on the arm. The arm would, by the small careful work of the next hour, return to its own line.
She drew the second.
She released.
The second arrow landed one finger-width off centre.
She drew the third.
She released.
The third landed at the centre. She did not, on the landing, register the centre.
She did not register the centre because the question she had been carrying in the wing through the long hour without picking up her pen was, on the long line of the third release, not at any distance from her at the small clean physical work the bow had been giving her since she had set the second arrow. The bow had not, in the second arrow's release, given her any distance from the question. The question had been on her hand on the bow at the second draw. The question had been on her arm at the long line of the second release. The question had been at the third arrow's centre.
The question was the question.
She drew the fourth.
She released.
The fourth landed two finger-widths off.
She drew the fifth.
She released.
The fifth landed at the centre.
She drew the sixth. The seventh. The eighth. She did not, in the small steady careful work of the bow at the long-shot mark, count her arrows; she counted them when she reached, with her right hand at the small quiver across her back, the small unfilled space that meant the quiver was empty. She had — by the small private inventory of her hand — released, by the count of the small unfilled spaces, twenty-eight.
She did not, on registering the empty quiver, refill.
She walked the line.
She walked it slowly. The long straw target at the long-shot mark had the small dense cluster at the centre that was the standard pattern of her own hand at this bow at the standard hour. The cluster was — by her standard reading of her own work — sound. The arrows on the long target were at the long target. The arrows had landed.
The bow had not, in the twenty-eight releases, answered the question.
She had not, at any time in the twenty-eight, believed it would. She had set herself at the yard not for the answer but for the work the body did when the mind had been at a thing for too long; she had set herself at the yard for the small clean physical work that, in the long account of seven hundred years of an Elven body, was the closest thing to the small inward quiet she had to spend.
The body had done its work.
The mind was where it had been at the eighth bell.
She set the bow down at the long bench at the end of the line. She set the long quiver beside it. She set the small empty practice quiver beside that. She stood at the bench for some minutes with her hands at her sides.
She thought about Lúthien.
She thought about the small face in the linen the morning the daughter had come into the world; she thought about the small lift at the ear; she thought about the deeper grey of the open eye; she thought about Iseldir at the river under Mírelen before the long-running orcs had come down; she thought about the small far long thing every child of a Sindar line carried in her whose other line was Mannish — the small far long fact that the daughter would, at some point in her years, be set the choice. The choice was the choice. There was no work of any parent, in any country, that could lift it.
She thought, then, about the choice that was not the daughter's.
She thought about Aldric in the south alcove with Cael two evenings ago, on the long fur, with Cael at his father's knee at the small carved horse. She thought about the small grey in Aldric's hair at the temple that had not been there at the binding and was now, by her own steady reading at the close range of fifteen years of marriage, half a finger's width wider every winter. She thought about Arethil's careful phrasing at a corridor on a morning some years ago — considerably more years, my lord, under the care of an Elven house. She thought about the considerably. She thought about it in the small flat way of a woman who could count, in the small private register of an Elven count, the considerably against the long count of her own years. The considerably came out — at the upper bound — at perhaps another forty. At the lower bound, at perhaps twenty-five. The considerably was, at the upper bound, the count from now until Cael was forty-five. The considerably was, at the lower bound, the count from now until Cael was thirty.
After the considerably, there would be the centuries.
The centuries would be hers.
The centuries would not, in any account of any country, be his.
She set her hand against the long bench, in the small flat inward gesture she made when she was committing.
She said, to the empty yard — in the small low voice she had used in the petition wing — "I do not know how to carry this."
The yard did not answer.
She had not, in any of the months past, expected it to.
She picked up the bow.
She walked back to the rack.
Aldric was at the door of the practice yard at the third bell.
She registered him before she turned. He had come down — by her reading of the small steady careful step she had been reading at fifteen years — at the half hour past the second bell, at the moment Celwyn had, in the small inner-channel courtesy of the senior steward, sent a small folded note up to him at the inner chamber. The note would have said only that the Lady was at the yard. The note would not have said more.
He had come down at the third bell.
He had not, on coming down, come into the yard.
He had stopped at the door.
He had stood at the door, in the small flat patient way she had been reading on him at doors for fifteen years.
She turned.
She looked at him across the yard.
He inclined his head a fraction.
She crossed the yard.
She stopped two paces from him at the door.
She said, in the small low voice she reserved for him in the public-adjacent corridors: "I need to speak with Elrond."
He did not, at first, answer.
He had been preparing — she could read it in the small steady set of his shoulder under the line of his coat — for the sentence to be other than the sentence she had just said. He had been preparing — she could read it — for the sentence to be a sentence about the children, or about the morning's petitions, or about the small slow steady careful drift she had been doing in the wing for some weeks. He had not been preparing for Elrond.
He absorbed the sentence.
He took it.
He inclined his head once.
He said: "When."
"As soon as I can be on the road. A week to set my things. The children — Aldric — the children come with me."
A pause.
He registered the second sentence.
"Both."
"Both. Lúthien, who is the matter at the centre of this. Cael, who is — at his age, by my reading — too young to be left for the weeks. He will come. Arethil will come. We will take the small escort and the two Rangers Dírhael has been holding for the long-distance road. We will be at Imladris by the third week."
"How long there."
"Long enough to ask. Long enough for the answer, if Elrond has one. If he has no answer — long enough for me to sit at the hall with him and with Arwen, and to understand that there is no answer of the kind I have been asking for. Three weeks. Six if the matter takes six. I have not — Aldric — I have not yet asked him for the visit. I will write the letter this afternoon. I will send it ahead by the fast courier. He will, by the time we are at the High Pass, be expecting us."
He looked at her.
He did not, for some minutes, say anything.
She read him. She read him in the small careful steady way she had been reading him at fifteen years. She read, in the small set of his hand at his side, that he had been carrying the small flat fact of her question for as long as she had been carrying it, in the small slow careful way of a husband who had been beside her in the long autumn after Lúthien's birth and had not, by any of his own questions, asked the question because the question had not, in any of the months, been his to ask.
She read, in the small set of his shoulder, that the asking-to-go had been the small careful relief he had been waiting for her to give him.
She read, in the small careful breath he drew at the second minute, that he was not going to come with her.
"Aldric."
"Tauriel."
"You will hold the keep."
"I will hold the keep."
"And the council."
"And the council."
"And the long matter on Maira's desk."
"And the long matter on Maira's desk. Tauriel — yes. I will hold the keep. The keep is in Celwyn's hand by the form of the charter, and in Maira's by the small slow careful operational hand, and in Gorlim's by the small steady steward of the captain marshal's chair. I will be the lord at the head of the table. The lord at the head of the table can hold for six weeks. He has held for two before."
"He has held for two before. He has not held for six."
"He will hold for six."
"All right."
A long pause.
She set her hand against the side of his face.
She did not, on setting it, take it off for some seconds. He did not, on the setting, move. He had his hand at his side. He set his hand, after some seconds, over hers at the side of his face. The set was the set he had been giving her for fifteen years, when she had set her hand against the side of his face at a door and had not, by any of the small things between them, expected him to move.
After a long beat she said: "I do not know how to carry this."
"I know."
"You cannot — Aldric — I am not asking you to carry it. You have your own. I have known this since the second year of the marriage. I am not — I am not asking you to take this from me. I am — I am asking you to know that I am going to the only place in this country where the person I am asking it of will be the person who, by the long count of his own years, has answered it twice. He answered it for himself. He answered it for his daughter. He will not — Elrond will not — answer it for me. But he will sit with me at the hall and not look at me with the small careful avoidance the country has been looking at me with for some months. He will look at me directly. The looking is — Aldric — the looking is what I need. It is not the answer. It is the looking."
"I know."
"Then I will go."
"Then you will go."
She drew the slow breath she had been drawing for some weeks now without setting any words to it, and she let it go.
She inclined her head against his hand at the side of her face.
She turned. She went out of the door of the yard. She did not, in the corridor, look back. He stood at the door of the yard for some minutes after her step had gone down the corridor, and then he too went out.
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