"Of course," she replied. "It doesn't take an Empath to realize we shouldn't tear apart what few bonds they have! But that's where the problem lies, you see; there aren't too many families or even childless couples prepared to take in six or a dozen children at once, much less ones that don't even speak our language. So my first thought was to—well—send them to school." She folded both hands over the papers on her little desk and looked anxiously at him to see what his reply would be.
He nodded; that made perfect sense. "Like—the Academy?" he hazarded.
She nodded. "Or the Collegia. Oh, obviously, they can't actually go to the Collegia, we haven't nearly enough room for them, but something like the Collegia. And there are a lot of Valdemaran orphans to deal with, too—though those are having to go to the Houses of Healing, I'm afraid; they need Mind-Healers right now, not schooling...."
Her face darkened for a moment, but she took a deep breath and went on. "So I've written to all of the major temples, the ones with both day- and boarding-schools, and asked if they would take in some of the 'families' for a year, teach them Valdemaran and some basic reading and writing, until I've got these orphan collegia built." She waited for his response. He pondered what she had told him. "Your project, this is?"
She nodded. "If I have to," she said, with some of the same mulish stubbornness of her father, "I'll pay for it out of my own household budget—"
He raised an eyebrow. "Doubt do I, with the current mood of the Council, you will have to."
And now she had the good grace to blush. "Then better to push it through now than wait," she said, raising her chin. "Given that the booty from the Tedrels has furnished the means to restore all the damage they did down here, there isn't a great deal for the Council to complain about."
That was certainly true. Laika had been correct about that, as well.
"So build housing for these children—but homes?" he prompted.
"I'm going to look for childless couples, and ask them to serve as surrogate parents," she said, warming to her subject. "More than one couple, of course, for each house! It will probably take a year to get that all sorted out, find couples that like each other enough to share that kind of responsibility, get the houses built. But then we can keep them all together, we can probably even put Valdemaran children in with them—"
"That," he interjected, "a most good idea is. Help each other, they can. And good it would be, for Valdemaran children to know, Tedrel children are no different than they."
She sighed deeply. "I was hoping you would say that. Then it's settled; I'll put it up to the Council, first thing. Maybe they won't think it's as important as some of their other business, but I do."
So the "prophecy" is going to come true after all, that the children of the Tedrels were going to have real homes, though they would share "mothers and fathers." Once again, he wondered about that mysterious child called Kantis; since arriving back in camp, he'd been too busy to look any further for him.
And by now, he could begone.
"Well, this will be the last one of these that I sign here," Selenay said, signing the last of the papers waiting for her signature and seal, and putting it in the pile of completed work. She closed her eyes for a moment, and it cost him to see how worn and tired she looked. "I won't miss this place."
"Nor I." He could not wait to be gone, truth to tell. If this had been Karse, rather than Valdemar, the aftermath would have been left for the locals to clean up. But it wasn't. So now there was a neat cemetery with rows of wooden markers out there where the churned-up ground had been—and a pit full of ashes where everything that wasn't Valdemaran had been disposed of. There had been too many burials for single ceremonies; each day at sunset had ended with a mass ceremony at which the names of the interred fallen for that day had been read. He had come to hate sunset, as each sunset brought fresh pain or the renewal of old, as names of those he hadn't known were gone, and those he had known were dead, were read out. He woke each morning, it seemed, with the scent of death in his nostrils, and went to sleep at night with a heart too heavy for tears.
Only Sendar and a few of the highborn were going north to find burial. It was too bad, but there were not many who could afford the expense to bring their loved ones home—and the horror of transporting that many bodies, stacked in the beds of wagons like so much cargo—and in the heat of summer—did not bear thinking about. There wasn't a teamster in the country who could be induced to use his wagon and team for that. But that was always the case in war....
The highborn had already been taken north in their expensive, sealed coffins, by the family retainers, in black-felt-draped wagons bedecked with family crests. Only the King was left, to make his final journey in the company of his daughter and those who had known him best.
It would be an honor guard, and it was an honor to be included in it. And here was the one factor that leavened, just a little, the sadness of the journey for Alberich. No one, not one person, had objected to his presence at Selenay's side. Talamir had already been sent north with the wounded, and there was no Queen's Own to ride with her. But she wouldn't need the Queen's Own on the journey, only bodyguards. The Council had gone on ahead, and now that the most urgent needs had been answered, all decisions were being held until Selenay reached Haven. So when it came down to it, Selenay only needed her bodyguards, not Alberich.
Yet no one said a word when she posted the final list of who was to accompany her, and chief on the list was "Herald Alberich, acting Queen's Own."
"Are we on schedule?" she asked, packing up her writing case with greater care than the simple task warranted.
"Ahead, a little," he told her. "In readiness, all will be, for leaving at dawn."
She closed and locked the case, then sighed. "I suppose I'll be expected to make a speech."
"Yes." He did not elaborate on that; he felt horribly sorry for her, but it was her duty, and she knew it. But there was another aspect to this journey of grief that he didn't think she ad considered. Not only the army mourned its King, but the country. "It is wondered, Majesty, if pausing you will be at each village?" They'd left it to him to ask that delicate question, that and any others that might come up. He was acting Queen's Own, after all; delicate questions, it seemed, were a art of the job.
"At each village?" she asked, looking blank.
"A speech to make?" he elaborated.
She frowned, and looked as if she had suddenly developed headache. "Oh, gods. I don't want to... but people are going to want to pay their respects, aren't they? But each time we stop, it's just going to make this whole thing drag out longer, and—" The frown turned into a look of despair, and he sensed that if he told her she should make all those stops, she'd do it, but it might break her.