Manadhlaer sighed, not for the first time that day, or that hour. She dipped her quill and made another attempt:
It has been widely known since the Elder Days that the sap of an unopened poppy...
Instantly she stopped and put a line through her words. "If it has been widely known," she said aloud, "why write it at all?" One of her delicate silken slippers, as light as an Elfling's first breath, had already gone. She kicked the other against the far wall of her office and began again.
In this monograph, I shall discuss the several legitimate uses of the sap from an unopened poppy, and the signs of illegitimate
Again she frowned and scratched this out. Why announce the topic, as the Lady Ambassador might do for a foreign dignitary? Why not just -- discuss? She sighed again, dipped again, began yet once more:
At small doses, it is a friend to the wounded. At large doses, it can cause deep slumber, or poison a small or weak patient unto the Halls of Mandos. When not used for pain, it is the author of moral insanity!
At this from her own quill, Manadhlaer absolutely despaired. She was beginning to sound like the author of some awful, tawdry romance-saga she had read within the last yén or so, who had described the heroine's apparently reddish hair as like to "burnished copper." On the instant, she had known the mysterious author had never been near a forge, and she could not stop picturing the heroine with hair that clanked loudly and smelled like blood. She scratched out her third attempt and, with surprising viciousness, flung her quill.
Daegond snarled, barely lifting his head from his special cushion to do so. He was tired from a long day of sniffing the new Hammer recruit for the slightest trace of disloyalty. In the doorway, Sarmëtecil froze.
"O-Ought... Ought I return with your tea later, Lady?"
"No, Sarmë, bring it, please. I am sorry for my outburst. It was neither becoming of me, nor caused by you."
Sarmëtecil lingered, puffing a strand of hair out of her face while continuing to balance the tray of hot tea and its implements. Disarray made her cross, and the feeling made her sympathize. At a second beckoning from Manadhlaer, Sarmë tiptoed past the resting hound and finally set the tray on the desk.
"That looks like Eilanneth's teapot." This was no especially clever guess: the inordinately floral pattern, gaudy even by teapot standards, was beloved of her maternal friend.
"It is exactly that, Lady." Sarmë fixed her erring hair, which was clear light yellow in precisely the way that white gold wasn't. "She would not take no for an answer, and said that we must take special care of all the healers at this time."
This made some sense. Norliriel was just back from the ruins of a once-proud city she had loved, and Elvealin... Manadhlaer's sigh this time was as seemingly bottomless as Lord Ulmo's domain. "It is Elvealin I worry about," she admitted.
"Is she at home, Lady?"
"In truth, I do not know. I know that Fëamíril must have had a hard time breaking the news to his wife, and daughter, and nephew. In a few days, the blighter of Elvealin's radiant joy, about whom much is still unknown, will be walked down from the tower of Hammer Hall, and the little Mortal murderess brought up from its basement. Only then shall we know who was really behind all of that."
Sarmë blinked. "Hammer Hall has a tower?"
"I have no idea." Manadhlaer picked up a new quill, seemingly for the sake of waving it dismissively. "I only go in there to look at Elloen's portrait of Themodir. Poor Elloen! Otherwise I stay out. It smells of rust, ale, and armpits."
Sarmë kept her reservations about this description to herself. "Surely not everyone needs to be present for that? If the accusations about the ellon are true, Gilinnen, for example, might be spared his presence. And the girl..."
"On the contrary. I believe everyone ought to be present who can. We must know, for our knowledge will be the hinge of the fate of both." Manadhlaer looked at her attempted writing and shook her head. "Tell this to all who come, wishing to learn the healer's art: not with the milk of a thousand poppies can some pains be lessened."
