Forty-odd benches creaked as everyone stood for his exit, and inside half a minute, the room had broken into clusters around the long table, food trays riding in on a stream of servants from the kitchen door.
Harold caught Adeline's eye and tipped his head at the side door. She mouthed one hour, stepped in front of him, and turned to announce it to the hall. By the time the announcement finished, she was at his elbow with the ledger, and the two of them were through the side door and into the back hallway before anyone could corner him.
The back stair ran three flights and a turn. Adeline went up ahead of him with the ledger pressed against her hip and her free hand on the rail, her dress a deep slate that took the light from the narrow windows as she climbed. Harold kept his eyes on the next step.
"How is he today?" he said, somewhere around the second landing.
"The matron worked through the night on the Long Walk statue, and he couldn't sleep with all the celebrating going on outside. He watched her finish. He has questions about it all." A small pause. "He also has a separate question, which is whether the falconer might let him keep one of the smaller hawks at the keep instead of the mews."
"And what does the falconer say?"
"The falconer says it is up to the boy's mother."
"And what does the boy's mother say?"
"The boy's mother says it is up to the count."
"That's tidy of you," Harold said, chuckling.
"Mm."
The office door stood open at the top of the stair, and Max's voice rolled out through it before they reached the threshold — bright, every bit of seven-year-old volume, with no consideration whatsoever for the keep underneath him.
"COUNT HAROLD!"
"Max," Harold said warmly as he walked in.
Max was planted at the small chess table by the south window with a black bishop in one hand and a heel of bread in the other, mouth working through both at once. Hardwicke sat across from him with a book, and the patient look of a tutor fifteen minutes into a chapter he'd already read twice that morning.
"Hardwicke."
"My lord."
"Go eat. I've got him."
"Thank you, my lord."
Hardwicke gathered his book and was through the door at a pace that resembled flight.
A second table was set against the wall with a tea tray on it. Adeline poured for herself and took a pear from the dish, settled into the chair by the window with the ledger flat across her thighs, kicked her shoes off, and tucked her feet up under her. The afternoon caught her hair where she'd pinned it, and Harold noticed the curve of her neck above the high collar of the slate dress before he turned back to the chessboard.
He took the bread, took the cheese, took the chair across from Max, and looked down at the position.
"You moved while I was gone," he accused.
"I moved both sides," Max said around the bread. "I was being fair."
"You set yourself up with an extra knight."
"Tutor Hardwicke was teaching me about handicaps in golf. I should have a handicap."
"Adeline."
"Yes, Harold."
"Your son is cheating at chess."
"He gets that from his father. He was quite a rogue."
She said it lightly, eyes on her tea. Harold lifted the second knight — a triceratops in carved stone, Max's favorite piece — off the board and set it on the small table at his elbow. Max grinned through the bread, and Harold answered with the opposite pawn.
"Alright, Adeline. Tell me what you saw."
She looked at the ceiling for a moment, sorted the question, and answered. Her ledger was dense with her quick neat hand, the heel of her palm smudged grey with ink.
"Tribune Cess gave a good report. She didn't bring up the path books you gained, though, and after what was revealed today about the guardian path she has to be aching for them. Colonel Hale would have raised it. The knight tier-two policy will limit her recruits, but she knew the policy was coming — so that's a piece she's holding back for a private conversation." She turned a page. "The Sir Fitch’s horse policy will hurt us. Our towns and villages need those animals to keep up with how fast we're expanding, and Sir Fitch would give us what we ask for tomorrow if you said "please." Lady Maren is the one pressing for payment and promises, and she isn't wrong either. Their land has to support itself somehow."
Harold moved a bishop one square diagonally. Max moved his queen. Harold raised an eyebrow at Max and moved his own knight to threaten it, and Max retracted the queen at speed.
"Did Sir Henri have a hard time in the trial?"
Harold looked up. "Why do you ask?"
Adeline looked at him over the rim of her teacup. "Because he's much more subdued right now. You know how he is. Council meetings are what he lives for — it's his comfort zone, and he didn't try to assert his opinion at all. If he's holding back, it's because he has another play, or something changed for him in the trial."
Harold moved his knight, winked at Max, and turned back to her.
"Henri was shown who our enemies are in a way that's hard to ignore, and he's still reconciling. It's good for him — I'm sending him to the scout course with Garrick, and he'd have a hard time there if he didn't take it seriously."
He paused, then went on. "Though the Grail Quest may interfere with that plan."
Adeline took a sip of tea, set the cup down on the windowsill with a quiet sound, and turned a page in the ledger.
"What about the lords downstairs?" Harold said, after the longer pause had held. "Right now. What are they doing?"
"Politicking."
"That's what I'd guess."
"Caldwell's working a deal for the minerals we'll be getting from the dwarves." A smile crossed her face. "Did you know his wife is pregnant?"
He looked up startled. "What? He’s almost 50."
"His family is good people, Harold. They've had me over for dinner three times now. Their kids are older than Max, but they all get on." She lifted her tea. "He's a good man under all the haggling."
The late-afternoon light came through the south window in a warm gold, and Adeline's pendant caught it where it lay against her collarbone. He moved his rook.
"I should reward him more," he said.
Adeline glanced at him, then back to her ledger. "Mhmm."
"The other lords?"
"Politicking for their own Grail Quest, or for position in the race to baron. I'd assume the same things you'd guess." She turned a page. "Bethel has gained significant support for her Templar Order project. The term is foreign to me, but the idea is ingenious — what you call Native Lords, guard their knowledge the way a dwarf hoards gold. That, more than anything else, will draw native people to you. She already has Maren's support. Maren is a thinker, and Maren has her claws into Fitch — honest about it, though- and Fitch is a little naive about it and head over heels for her. Lady Aiko has pledged. Sir Arjun has pledged. When she moves to build her fortress, she'll find materials arriving faster than she can use them."
"Hm." Harold ate the last of the cheese, moved a rook into checkmate, and stood. "I'd wanted to build a society without all this politicking, but I suppose it's unavoidable."
Max looked at the board, looked at the rook, and made a noise of profound betrayal.
"We should go back," Harold said.
"Six minutes ahead of schedule," Adeline sang.
Max stood up very seriously and held out his small hand. Harold shook it.
"What about my hawk?" Max pleaded.
"I'll think about it, Max, but those birds do better in the mews — and the keep is too small to house a hawk once it grows."
Adeline passed Max and rested a hand on his shoulder. "Try again later, Max. It can be your own Grail Quest, like the rest of the lords."
Hardwicke came back through the door with a book under his arm and a small nod for Harold.
"Hardwicke. He cheated."
"He always cheats, my lord. The boy never stops chasing an advantage." A grumble under his breath. "Something Machiavelli would have admired."
"After you, Adeline."
She went, and he followed her down.
The hall was at full volume when Adeline pushed the double doors open.
The food trays sat half-emptied across the long table, and the dwarves and the Landing's lords had mixed in along the benches in configurations that hadn't existed before the break. Caswell still had Hargen at his shoulder over a sketch. Margaret had returned to her place. Henri stood at the head of his bench with one hand resting on the wood, listening to something Anil had stopped over to tell him.
Adeline crossed the hall at a quick walk, leaned down at Lady Renna's bench, and spoke quietly into her ear.
Renna's head came up. She looked at Adeline, looked at the doors, and stood off the bench. By the time Harold walked through behind Adeline, Renna was already on her feet at her place, her hands clasped, her voice pitched to carry to the back wall.
"My lords. My counselors. Masters of the Gemheart clan." A controlled pause. "His lordship Count Harold Calder, Lord of the Landing, Potion Lord, Master of the Basin."
The conversation cut and the benches scraped back as the hall came to its feet. A small breath went out of Renna, and a smaller smile sat on her mouth a half-second before she caught it.
Harold walked the length of the hall, reached his chair, and laid one hand flat on the back of it.
"Thank you, Lady Renna."
"My lord."
"Sit, the lot of you. Councilor Bethel."
Benches creaked back and ledgers reopened, while the food trays were drawn an inch back from the working surface by hands that had been waiting just out of sight.
Bethel rose on the cane, her left hand flat against the wood for leverage, and Anselm came off the wall two paces behind her at the same moment. Her hair was pinned back severely and her clothing was reminiscent of a nun's habit from Earth — grey, plain, but well made. She'd been turning this speech over in her head for weeks, and she looked ready to present it.
"My lord. Council." She let the cane thump once. "I'll be brief. Or — I'll try."
Margaret tipped her head a fraction. Bram made a noise into his beard that might have been a laugh.
"The order is moving. I've begun formal recruitment to the Templar mission. The men and women who've come forward aren't soldiers, though some have soldiered. They aren't crafters, though most are crafters by trade. They're people who believe in the work — and when I've asked them why, they've told me they've been looking for something like this since they got to Gravesend and couldn't name what it was."
"Look — I'll put this plain. We are bleeding what we are. Every one of us is forgetting Earth a day at a time. Things our grandmothers knew, songs our kids sang, the way a Sunday afternoon felt with the radio on. You can't catch it. And meanwhile our crafters are learning Gravesend faster than anyone can write it down, our adventurers are seeing things no library on Earth ever held, our paths are revealing themselves day by day — and there is no place that holds any of it. There is no library. There is no shelf. There is no one whose job it is to remember."
She let that sit a beat, then went on, calmer.
"The Templars will hold it. Knowledge of Earth, knowledge of Gravesend, knowledge of every people humanity becomes in this world. Crafters' notes, adventurers' accounts, the paths and their disciplines, songs, recipes, funeral rites. All of it. We will collect, we will preserve, and we will give it freely to any human, citizen or not, who walks up and asks." A pause. "A portion will be held for your elites and for those who have contributed enough to earn the key. We will guard the lock as carefully as we guard what is inside it. The rest is open."
Her chin came up.
"Humanity isn't one people here. It never was on Earth, either. We're a hundred peoples with our own arts and our own histories, and most of those are scattered across the basin and the towns beyond it. The Templars aren't asking anyone to give up what makes them what they are. We're asking to hold a copy of it in the same library where everyone else's copy is held — so that when a child in one of our villages, twenty years from now, wants to know who her grandmother used to be, she can come up the cliff road and find out."
The hall was quiet. Bram was whispering to an unknown elder beside him, but stopped when Bethel spoke again.
"That's the first facet." The cane tapped once, and she went on. "The second is simpler. We'll support the Count of the Landing in protecting his lands from threats inside and out. We'll operate outside his direct hand. We aren't the legion and we aren't his guard, but the order will have arms, the order will use them when knowledge or its keepers are threatened, and we'll be near enough that you'll know where to find us when the call comes."
Another tap.
"Third — place." She held out her hand, and Anselm placed a folded map into her palm. "I'm petitioning the council for a grant of land along the eastern arm where the river drops out of the mountains — the slope between the third terrace and the cliff above it. The ground is hilly, defensible, and useless to farming, so I'm not asking the council to give up anything you'd otherwise plow. The cliff gives us stone. The falls give us water and a sound to live with." Her mouth twitched. "And it's beautiful, my lord. I'll not pretend otherwise. I'm also asking for the small valley north of the cliff. The order will need income to support itself."
She extended the map to Adeline, who came up off Harold's elbow without being asked, walked the few steps to Bethel, and accepted the map with both hands. Bethel's eyes followed her back across the floor — appraising, half a degree of amusement behind it — and came to rest on Harold a beat after Adeline did.
Adeline laid the map open in front of him and stepped back two paces.
It was a clean cartographer's draft, an ink wash showing the elevation. The shaded site sat on the great forested slope above the third terrace where the eastern river broke out of the basin's mountains, the cliff at its back, and the falls within sight and sound. It was a site reminiscent of Rivendell.
"Two hundred and fifty have committed so far," Bethel went on. "Most will come up to the site once we have a foundation under us —"
"You have my support," Renna said.
Her voice was small and clear in the room, and Bethel turned a half degree toward her. So did Harold.
"Lady Renna?"
"There are pieces of Earth I would like remembered." Renna's hands were folded carefully on the table in front of her, and she was looking at Bethel, not at any of the lords. "I'm not certain how long I will remember them myself. The Templar order is the right place for them. I'll give what I can, I'll visit when I can, and I'll write to whoever your archivists are. My territory will be open to the work, and I'd host a Templar library there if you'd allow it."
Bethel's mouth softened. "Lady Renna. Thank you."
Renna smiled back and sat.
Bethel let the moment hold a beat, then went on.
"One more matter, and then I sit." Her cane found another angle against the floorboards. "Colonel Hale and I have spoken at length over the past month. He's agreed, when he gets back, to send us instructors from the Imperial Legion on a half-year rotation — men and women who have done enough warring for the season and need to step out of the line. The Templars will give them a place to teach what they know and a place to be still. We'll give them counseling. The world is hard on soldiers, and most of them carry pieces of it home that nobody trained them to set down." Her cane tapped. "We'll help them set it down. The order will be a retreat for the legion." She let her eyes pass down the line of the council. "That's the work I came here to do, my lord."
Harold's eyes stayed on the map a beat longer than they needed to. When he looked up, he looked at Anselm first — at the careful face two paces behind Bethel — and Anselm met his eyes and lowered them a moment later.
He looked at Bethel.
"Councilor."
"My lord."
"You have the order. Two conditions, though, and they are non-negotiable."
"Name them," Bethel murmured. One of the only people capable of meeting his eye.
"First." He laid his hand flat on the map. "When the Imperial Citizen University comes — and it will, and Anil's academy is the first stone of it — the Templars provide teachers, and the order goes on the list of paths open to graduates."
"More than fair."
"Second. Selected Templars hold ranks within the imperial structure, and the order accepts periodic requisitions of its members at my officers' orders. Narrow grounds, as infrequently as the work allows. I'll not endow an order I can't reach when the empire bleeds. We do this together."
"Hmph." The cane tapped the floor hard. "Agreed. On the record of this council. On those terms." She paused, and her chin came up half an inch. "But I want access to your paths for select members."
"Done. I would have done that anyway."
Bethel sat. The cane crossed her lap, her hands folded over it, and a small breath went out of her that she made no attempt to hide.
Harold turned to the bench midway down the table.
"Mark, Evan — you're up."
Two heads came up, Mark lowered the mug he'd been drinking from, and a slow grin spread across his face.