Theodosius Valkorion's Arc

Chapter 4 of 22

The letter with the hawk still sat on the map table when the herald came at dawn. A delegation had passed the outer gates in the night. Six riders under a foreign banner. They wanted an audience before noon and used the word treaty three times. Theodosius read the herald's note twice. He knew the banner. His mother had signed something with these people twenty years ago, grain in exchange for their silence about the western passes. He had never seen the paper. He did not know what she had promised or what she had refused. Heinrich came in without knocking. He set a thin folder on the map. "Their old treaty. What we could find." "How much is missing?" "The second half." Theodosius opened the folder. The first pages listed grain shipments, tolls, a marriage clause that had never been used. The back half was gone. Whatever his mother had signed after the tolls was not in this room. "If I honor a treaty I haven't read, I bind the empire to terms I don't know," he said. "If I refuse it, they ride home and call it insult." "Yes." "How many men can they field in a month?" "Twelve thousand. We have four ready." He closed the folder. He walked to the window. A legionary stood in the courtyard below, white armor, the black star visor turned up toward the tower. The banner over the gate moved once in the wind, the pale blue star and white lotus he had made himself. He went down to the hall in the sword and the plain circlet. He did not wear the crown. The six envoys stood in a line. Their spokesman held out a folded parchment sealed in green wax. "Your mother's hand," the man said. "We ask only what she gave." Theodosius did not take the parchment. "Read it aloud. All of it." The man's jaw moved. "That is not customary." "It is today." The envoy read. Grain. Tolls. The marriage clause. Then a line about the western passes, held open for their riders in any season, with no toll and no inspection. Theodosius let him finish. "I recognize the grain and the tolls," he said. "I do not recognize the passes. That clause is struck. Send word to your king. He will have my answer sealed by the week's end." The spokesman lowered the parchment. "He will call this a breach." "He will call it what he wants. He will not ride through my mountains uncounted." They left before midday. Heinrich stood by the empty doors. "You bought us the harvest," he said. "Maybe the winter." "And after?" "They'll come. Not this month. Not next. But they'll come, and they'll come through the passes you just closed." Theodosius looked at the folder on the table. He had held off a war today and set the shape of the next one. He needed to know which of his own lords would open those passes from the inside before the foreign riders reached them.