Bram Tollick (Human, the keeper's son, Casimor watch-post)

The season's first calm came the way it always came, as a morning that did not know what to do with itself, and with it, round the lee side of Casimor where nothing lands on Krilzat, a boat.

Bram saw it from the wall. A boat in the first calm meant the court, because nobody else had a reason, and the court meant a letter, and a letter meant his father reading it at the gate with his lips not moving and then saying one sentence about it, which was the whole of what the watch did with the court. He went down to the gate to be there for the sentence.

The letter was the usual size. What came up the path with the runner who carried it was not usual: a case the length of a forearm, grey, sealed, with no mark on it the Kingdom made, carried the way you carry a thing you have been told not to drop and not told why.

"From the strangers," said the runner, meaning the delegation, which was what Ostrel called them. "The court let it come. The letter says."

His father read the letter at the gate with his lips not moving, and then read it again, which he did not do, and then said the sentence.

"The keeper decides."

That was all of it, and Bram waited, and there was more, which there never was.

"They asked for one thing," his father said. "The strangers. The court says it is the first thing they have asked for in three years and the court has let it come as far as this gate and no further unless the keeper says. It goes where the keeper puts it. It goes nowhere the keeper does not. It is theirs and it listens, the court says, and keeps what it hears, and does nothing else, and they are not coming for it, and the court does not know when they will." He looked at the case the way he looked at the keep, which was not often and not for long. "The keeper decides. I am the keeper. I have never decided anything about the Castle in my life and I am not going to start with a thing I cannot see inside."

He gave it to Bram.

"You keep the door," his father said. "Decide."