The morning after Elfhelm's reluctant involvement in the ordering of several large tapestry panels, several hundred miles away, Ivriniel sat down to breakfast. She raised a cup of the delicately scented Haradric tea she had given to Faramir the week before, a present from her latest travels, and took a sip. Then daintily nibbled on a sweet pastry.
"You have hired a cook from Dol Amroth, have you not?"
Faramir nodded. "Recommended by Uncle Imrahil's own cook."
"How lovely finally to have breakfast in your delightful parlour," she added.
Left hanging unsaid was the follow-up: "Rather than 'pretend to have breakfast' as a pretext for Éowyn to be seen leaving your palace in the morning, with the appearance of being chaperoned." Faramir gave her a sharp look. Éowyn flushed slightly. Without thinking, he reached for her hand, and she gripped it, giving him the sort of side-long look that would melt mithril. Ivriniel watched with amusement.
"So, how was your trip to Harad?" Faramir asked.
"Most fruitful. King Nadim, ruler of the coastal kingdom of Madruk, was most hospitable. And his queen is a very sanguine, well-read, intelligent woman. His second and third wives and concubines seem, unusually, to live in quite a harmonious fashion, no doubt due to the queen's influence. And the Zenana offers excellent views over the bay. I was able to indulge my passion for sketching."
"I did not realise you had a talent for drawing," said Éowyn.
"I don't," said Ivriniel, with a chuckle.
"Well, let's see these sketch books," Faramir said briskly.
Ivriniel dug into her battered canvas satchel and produced a bound notebook of rag paper. She opened it to the first page. Éowyn stifled a giggle. The drawing was truly terrible. It looked like a three-year old's drawing of a boat under sail, all mismatched sails (the best you could get from the sketch was the number and shape), the seagulls looking like Tengwar letters turned upside down, and the sea represented by artlessly penned squiggling lines. Ivriniel noticed her reaction.
"Quite so, my dear. My governess used to despair of me. It was most amusing to watch the Queen of Madruk try to come up with something positive to say about the sketches the mad Gondorian woman was drawing. Especially since I seasoned the otherwise stodgy dish with every cliché I had ever heard uttered in the more pretentious salons of Minas Tirith: 'searching for my medium', 'still trying to find the right balance between the figurative and the abstract', 'my tonal palette', 'the importance of clean lines.' I have met many lady amateurs in my long life to date – I know how they talk about their passions. And in any case, I like to cultivate my image as a harmless but batty old lady. It helps distract attention." She gave a cheerful smile, then turned to Faramir.
"So this is the new carrack with which they intend to replace their caravels. As you can see (even through my dreadful drawing) square rigged on the foremast and main mast, lateen rigged on the mizzen," she explained.
"And the technical details?" the Steward asked.
"Behold my somewhat overly detailed waves. Each crest corresponds to what I think is approximately a man's height, judged from watching the sailors go up and down the rigging. Top line of squiggles is are the sails on the foremast, height by breadth, starting with the larger sail and moving up the mast, middle line of squiggles for the sails on the main mast, and bottom line those on the mizzen. I shall sit down with one of Imrahil's shipwrights later and get him to draw up proper technical sketches, to scale, from this information."
"And performance?"
Ivriniel flipped the page. The next drawing showed two ships racing across the bay, followed by seagulls. "Heartbeats to go from one buoy to the next. Large seagulls are ten heartbeats, smaller seagulls for individual ones. As you can see, the new carrack is about a third as fast again as the original caravel."
"Weren't they suspicious of you taking your pulse while watching their warships?" Éowyn asked.
"I told them my angina was playing up and the master physician of the houses of healing had told me to check the variations in my heart beat if I had an attack."
She turned the page again. The next drawing showed two ships sailing round a rock in the distance, their turns indicated by curving wakes, again, extremely crudely executed. "This is more guess work, I couldn't triangulate on landmarks on the shore because of where they were conducting the sea trials. But I think the carrack is less manoeuvrable than the caravel – it's the only weakness I could spot. There's plenty more information, but I think a full report can wait until we have convened a meeting with King Elessar, my brother and my nephew Elphir."
"Overall, what is your sense?"
"That this new ship design rather tips the balance of power towards Madruk. I think Imrahil's carracks may still have a slight edge, but not by much – Nadim's are not far behind, and his shipyards are running at capacity."
"Should we be worried?"
"Yes and no. I don't think Nadim's target is us; rather, he is worried about Umbar. But his growing strength may provoke Umbar. And a war along that coastline is bound to be destabilising."
"It was the rise of Harondar, and the fear this inspired in the Umbarians, that made war inevitable," quoted Faramir.
"Mardil's History of the Southern Wars. Precisely. History has a rather depressing tendency to repeat itself. And the worry with small, contained, regional conflicts is that they rarely stay small, contained and regional. Anyway, as I said, we can have a full discussion when we meet with the king. So, tell me what has been going on domestically."
"Well," said Faramir, drawing the syllable out in a long exhale, "I was wondering if you could do me a favour."
"My dear boy, will it involve posing as a batty old lady while trying to unearth wrongdoing?" Ivriniel's voice sounded quite entranced at the prospect.
Faramir chuckled. "Éowyn's journey through Anorien – she discovered that quite a few of the estates are not treating their tenant farmers and tied labourers as they should."
"Unpleasant, but not really the Steward's business," said Ivriniel, steepling her fingers. "One for the law courts in Anorien I should think."
"Ah, but in addition there's something funny going on with tax returns. Nowhere near enough revenue. And they didn't supply nearly as many troops for the march to the Black Gates as one would have thought, given how many manors there are listed as paying taxes."
"Or not paying taxes."
"Precisely. So I wondered if you could go and have a look. It seems to be the most northerly region, round Sarn Esgar, that is the problem."
"Ah, interesting. Do you have a map."
"I thought you'd never ask," said Faramir with a chuckle, and produced a rolled length of vellum which he spread across the table. "Lord Carandol's manor, Lord Gwaethron's. This smaller estate is Lord Beldir's – I gather he is Carandol's heir now the latter's only son is dead." Faramir's index finger drifted across the velum, reeling off estates and names of minor noble houses as he went.
Éowyn leant over the map. "You know, I think Elfhelm would be interested in this." She pointed to the other side of the Mering stream. "There's been cross-border raids here for a while now. The Marshalls of the Mark have largely let it slide because we had bigger things – far bigger things – to worry about over the last few years."
Faramir smiled. "Funny, the people in Sarn Esgar and its surroundings, from the reports I've had, blame cross-border raids on marauders from the Riddermark."
"Do you trust me as an impartial judge?" Ivriniel asked.
"I think Dol Amroth can adjudicate," Faramir said.
"Yes," Éowyn agreed, "Especially since Lothíriel is marrying my brother."
"So what exactly is my brief to be?"
"I think," said Faramir, "That we need a sense of the actual wealth of the estates as opposed to the wealth indicated by their tax returns – size of herds, number of fields under cultivation, the sort of silver they display at dinner. Who is allied to whom, who is at the throat of whom, whose offspring are married to who else's offspring, that sort of thing. And of course numbers of men at arms, plus the number of men on each estate that can be pressed into service. And if you could do a little snooping round the banking houses in Sarn Esgar to see who is in hock and who has ample savings, that would also be interesting. And rumours of local officials who will take bribes, magistrates who turn a blind eye to their friends' doings, that sort of thing."
"Hmm, cover story? Oh, I know. I shall temporarily borrow the identity of my friend the dowager duchess of Lossarnach. My granddaughter is nearing marriageable age, and I am looking for eligible bachelors, so many young men having fallen in the war. Nothing like taking the lid off a particularly tempting honey pot and wafting the scent in the direction of greedy men. What will you do when you receive my report?"
"The king has been saying for some time that he feels things are running sufficiently smoothly in Minas Tirith that he thinks he can spare me to look into some of the… less settled parts of his realm. I was thinking of starting in Pelargir…"
"An ongoing problem," said Ivriniel. "Has been for years."
"But I think I may send Úron there, and go to have a closer look at Anorien myself."
"And what about me?" asked Eowyn. "Surely there must be some constructive task I can undertake."
"Come with me," said Faramir, beaming from ear to ear. The look of delight on Éowyn's face mirrored his expression. "After all, they could be Rohirric wrong-doers, in which case your language skills might come in useful."
~o~O~o~
AN: "Mardil's" quotation is stolen from Thucydides: "It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this instilled in Sparta, that made war inevitable."
Sorry for the long naval digression, but I do love Ivriniel so. And I'm thinking of a spin-off for Úron in Pelargir as well.