"Give me the next," Elidath said.

In the beginning he had conscientiously tried to read, or at least to skim, every document before affixing his signature. Then he had settled for reading the little summary, eight or ten lines long, that each document bore clipped to its cover. But he had given up even that, long ago, Did Valentine read them all? he wondered. Impossible. Even if he read only the summaries, he would spend all his days and nights at it, with no time left to eat or sleep, let alone to carry out the real responsibilities of his office. By now Elidath signed most without even glancing at them. For all he knew or cared, he might be signing a proclamation forbidding the eating of sausages on Winterday, or one that made rainfall illegal in Stoienzar Province, or even a decree confiscating all his own lands and turning them over to the retirement fund for administrative secretaries. He signed anyway. A king—or a king's understudy—must have faith in the competence of his staff, or the job becomes not merely overwhelming but downright unthinkable.

He signed. Elidath of Morvole, High Counsellor and —

"Next!"

He still felt a little guilty not reading them anymore. But did the Coronal really need to know that a treaty had been reached between the cities of Muldemar and Tidias, concerning the joint management of certain vineyards the title to which had been in dispute since the seventh year of the Pontifex Thimin and the Coronal Lord Kinniken? No. No. Sign and move on to other things, Elidath thought, and let Muldemar and Tidias rejoice in their new amity without troubling the king about it.

Elidath of Morvole —

As he reached for the next and began to search for the place to sign, a secretary said, "Sir, the lords Mirigant and Divvis are here."

"Have them come in," he replied without looking up.

Elidath of Morvole, High Counsellor and Regent —

The lords Mirigant and Divvis, counsellors of the inner circle, cousin and nephew respectively of Lord Valentine, met him every afternoon about this time, so that he could go running with them through the streets of the Castle, and thereby purge his taut-nerved body of some of the tension that this regency was engendering in him. He had scarcely any other opportunity for exercise these days: the daily jaunt with them was an invaluable safety valve for him.

He managed to sign two more documents during the time that they were entering the huge room, so splendidly paneled with strips of bannikop and semotan and other rare woods, and making their way toward him with a clatter of booted feet against the elaborately inlaid floor. He picked up a third, telling himself that it would be the last one he'd do this day. It was merely a single sheet, and somehow Elidath found himself idly scanning it as he signed: a patent of nobility, no less, raising some fortunate commoner to the rank of Initiate Knight of Castle Mount, in recognition of his high merit and greatly valued services and this and that—