The ordinary work of the realm came back between them like sand filling a trench. They moved through the reports from the great duchies with the fluid, heavy speed that only comes when a ruler has slept his eight hours and isn't carrying the grey, greasy fatigue of a long siege in his joints.
Duke Konstantin's riders had cleared the stone-slides from the third province three days ahead of the estimate, and the winter rye was already in the ground along the lower flats.
Duchess Maren had sent her mark from the second province; the high wooden bridge had been completely rebuilt with white oak from the royal forests, and she was only asking for twenty additional wagons of limestone to finish the repair on the eastern curtain wall before the frost broke.
Soren read every line, scrawled his heavy name across thirty separate decrees, and passed them back to Aldric's sand-box without a single moment of hesitation.
