The Lord Marshal received Aldrath's two-sentence dispatch on the fourth day after the valley engagement and read it at the head of the council table, aloud, to a council that had been meeting continuously for three days as the dispatches from the eastern province accumulated faster than the individual council members' reading schedules could absorb them.
"The military path is closed. Authorize the diplomatic solution."
He read the two sentences once, set the dispatch down, and sat.
The council was quiet. This was the silence that distinguished rooms from each other, the silence that each room produced when the thing that the room had been assembled to address had been stated in its clearest possible terms and the people in the room were adjusting to the clarity.
