CHAPTER 755: THE CONSORT’S DISAPPEARANCE (END)

Back in the small chamber, the air carried that steady mix of warm wax, dust, and the clean bite of ink. Satchels came and went like tides. Leather straps clicked. Seals cracked with small dry sounds. Aelthrin stood where he always stood to read ugly news—half-turned to the window for light, feet set as if he might have to hold the room up by himself.

He had a red-ribbon packet balanced in one palm. His thumb slid under the bottom seal, neat and sure. He read without moving his lips. When he spoke, he kept his voice level, the way you tell a fever the number on the cup.

"Technomancer League has declared war on an Arcane Order faction," he said. The words dropped one by one, no decoration. "By pact, we are entangled. Serewyn requests joint command intelligence—necrotech incidents rising—but asks for our methodology, not troops. Three other Order polities request arbiters or supply corridors." His eyes lifted to Elowen’s. "This demands our full attention."

The map-table showed pins like small teeth—granaries, clinics, gatehouses, relay posts. Elowen’s gaze touched them in turn. The part of her that wanted to stop and listen for a private thread stayed where she put it, behind her ribs, hands folded. Not now. Not him and this and all. Choose.

"Yes," she said. "We will answer as a sober state."

Aelthrin let the ribbon lie in a folder, lining the edges up by habit. He set three sheets at her elbow in a row—one with names, one with routes, one with numbers that meant hours of bread. "If we refuse all calls, they will read it as weakness," he said quietly. "If we send troops, we will borrow against our winter."

"Arbiters," Elowen said. "Corridors for food and medicine only. No metals. No powders. We share notes, not secrets. Draft it. The tone should be steady. Neither proud nor eager."

He nodded. His pencil moved with that patient speed he kept for drafts that might end wars. He did not chew the end; he never had. You could hear the whisper of graphite if the room went still enough.

A runner pushed in with a second bundle, breath held tight to his ribs. Messages from the docks, from the north road, from the lower market reporting no gatherings. Aelthrin sorted with his fingers and with the small lines above his nose—the quick ones for gossip, the slower ones for grain. He set three notes aside for Elowen and kept the rest for his own seal.

Elowen watched the pace of the room. It had learned to be quiet for her. That helped. "Make space," she said, and lifted her palm.

They left the map-table and stepped through the curtain to the narrow alcove. The stone there felt cool to the skin. It made you lower your voice without being told. It was where they talked when they didn’t want the hall to learn new words.

Only Aelthrin came. Lira came. Serelith came, a little pale, ink on the edge of her sleeve where she had leaned into her work. Cerys came last, boots dusted from the lanes, jaw set like a promise.

"We conceal it," Elowen said. Her voice was clean, not soft. "Narrow truth. The prince-consort is on assignment. Rodion is under maintenance. Witness-sap boxes catch panic. Lira—kindness gossip to drown any spark. Cerys—stillness captains in the markets. Choose the ones who can stop a room with a look."

Aelthrin’s chin dipped once. He understood the price and the reason. Lira’s mouth thinned into the line she wore when she planned to make a house behave without anyone noticing the effort. Serelith’s hands flexed, then stilled; she wanted to argue with events, not with the queen. Cerys said nothing at all, which was her way of saying yes.

Lie well only when the truth will serve later, Elowen thought. She kept that sentence inside. Making it a lesson would waste breath.

They went back to the table. The door let in another tide of satchels, and the wax smell grew stronger. Aelthrin broke another seal with that clerk’s thumb-angle he had learned when his hair was darker and his pay was less. He read a shorter note—boats, not war—and passed it to the left without interrupting the larger work.

"The League press offices have already set out proclamations," he said. "They are counting themselves clever. We will ignore their cleverness." A faint dry wit lived in the last word. Only Elowen and Lira heard it.

"Draft the corridors," Elowen said again. "Post the freeze on grain by evening, before the rumors hit the ovens."

He wrote, then slid a slate toward her for seal. Her hand did not shake when she pressed the iron. She did not check her handwriting to see if the letters looked like someone else’s. She did not let herself do that.

A girl from the kitchens came to the door, realized where she had arrived, bobbed a nervous curtsy, and held up a folded paper with both hands. Lira took it before anyone else moved. She read the three sentences, closed it, and looked to Elowen. "It’s about kettles," she said simply. "Handled."

"Good," Elowen said. "Keep the kettles where they keep peace."

Aelthrin stacked copies for messengers. His hands made small squares from larger sheets without thinking. He had done this so long that paper obeyed him out of respect.

"Your Majesty," he said after a moment, "the nobles will be restless. If we say nothing, they will say too much."

"Give them one line," Elowen said. "Thank you for your concern. All is in hand. If any of them need to see effort, they may pour tea at the witness-sap desks and practice being useful."

Aelthrin almost smiled. "We will see who volunteers."

He sent another runner with two folded notes tucked into a wooden sleeve against the rain. The runner touched his forehead with two fingers and left without a scuff.

Serelith stood a little away from the table, eyes unfocused for a breath at a time, as if she were listening at a thin wall. "I still can’t fix on him," she said, not as complaint, only as fact. "I feel a touch, then it slides. I’ll keep at it. If it sharpens, I’ll send a word."

"Do," Elowen said. She did not ask how long. Time behaves better when you don’t look at it too often.

Cerys shifted her weight, dust falling from the cuff of one glove. "The lanes are quiet," she said. "Too quiet. I’ve sent simple orders through the wardens. If anyone tries to stir a chant, steady hands will quiet it."

"Choose the old women you wanted," Elowen said. "Give them stools and blankets. Don’t give them titles."

Cerys’s mouth twitched. "They don’t like titles."

"Neither do I," Elowen said, and returned to the pages in front of her.

Day 1 threaded itself because that is what days do when you give them work. Elowen signed non-aggression corridors so small places could bring in harvest without guessing which banner might take offense. She sent two neutral arbiters out of the city with written authority and a bag each of bread and dried apples. She wrote back to an ally who had used words that were too hot for paper. Her reply was calm water. It made the heat less proud.

Cerys went down to the docks with her second and a third who could stare a man out of boasting. They found the start of a rumor in the corner of a guildhouse where the air always smelled of ropes and spilled ale. Cerys set a witness-sap bowl on the table and asked the rumor to repeat itself. It clouded and died in its own breath. She left the bowl there until the room remembered to be dull. Outside, she spoke with the yard-warden and gave plain instructions: no chanting or hand‑clapping in the yard for the next few days. The men nearby nodded and kept their hands to themselves.

Serelith burned three candles down to their stubs. She tried three kinds of look and two kinds of patience. Each time she thought the trace would show, it slipped. She did not break anything. She folded a cloth very straight and placed it over a mirror she wasn’t using so her hands would have done something.

Lira made the corridors look like any other evening. She moved kettles to different corners to interrupt favorite spots for talk. She asked the laundry to hang linens in a different order, because new sights make new words and sometimes they are ordinary instead of sharp. She told the scullery girls it was a good night to complain about onions. They did, with skill that almost made her smile.

Day 2 put envoys in the outer hall. The man from Serewyn carried fog in the seams of his cloak as if it had followed him by choice. He asked for a pattern library—a gentle way to say "teach us how you’ve kept your dead quiet." Elowen gave him procedures and cautions. She kept the deeper methods to herself. He bowed as if procedures were gold. Perhaps they were.

Aelthrin drafted a joint note to three Arcane Order capitals. It was the kind of letter that held hands with reason. It promised arbiters without promising more. It offered corridors for food and medicine with a list of what counted as food and medicine. No one would pretend not to understand.

At the witness-sap desks, the lines moved. One or two small panics tried to grow. The bowls took those words and turned them into water again. Lira’s people brought a dull scandal about a playwright to the right ears and let it be the largest thing a certain corner of the palace had room for. It was petty, which made it useful.

If I stop moving, I will feel, Elowen thought once in the afternoon, the sentence arriving like a bird that had flown the wrong window. She put her palm flat on a cool patch of wall and took one soft breath with her eyes closed. Then she opened them and signed for more flour to be moved from the south store to the north.

Day 3 made the city quiet in a way you could taste if you stood very still. Stalls opened and closed without songs. Minstrels played off-beat because someone had paid them to be rude to rhythm. Drums stayed wrapped. Aelthrin came with numbers that made shapes she didn’t like—how many would go hungry if war called men from fields. She signed a grain-price freeze. The seal took clean. The ink dried without smudges.

Serelith slept with her cheek on a fold of her sleeve for an hour on a chair. She woke with a picture in her head of small points of light that moved like the steadier kind of stars. She did not tell anyone. It was hers for now.

Then the banners came.