Exile's Honor

Silence descended like a warhammer.

He cleared his throat awkwardly. 'You summoned me, Majesty.'

'I did. Come here, Herald Alberich.' Queens did not say 'if you please.' Queens issued orders, and their subjects obeyed. As did he. He made his way between two ranks of officials and highborn who parted to let him pass, thanking his luck that the tent was not all that large, for to have to pass a gauntlet of only a double-handful of watchers was bad enough. She was sitting in her father's chair, at his table, and she watched him with a measuring gaze as he approached.

'Don't kneel,' she said sharply, as he started to bend. 'And look at me.' She tilted her head to one side and looked him up and down. 'You've gone back to your shadow-Grays, I see. Good; if you've no objection, except when we need you in Whites for—ah—formal occasions, I should like you to keep to them. It will serve very well to make it clear that while you are taking Talamir's place for some little while, you are not the Queen's Own.'

He blinked. Surely he had not heard that correctly. 'Majesty?' he faltered. 'I am—what?'

'Crathach tells me that Talamir will not be fit for duty for a while. Until he is, I wish you to take his place, here, at my side.' She smiled wanly. 'At least until you resume your duties at the Collegium, that is. Crathach thinks Talamir will be ready by the time we reach Haven. I should like Keren to go back to what she does best in my bodyguard; meanwhile I need someone here beside me in the capacity of adviser as well as guard, someone with a level head who knows when his Queen needs to be dragged out of her saddle and sat upon.'

'Yes, Majesty,' he managed, and changed places with Keren, who looked only too happy to relinquish her position.

She resumed the business that he had interrupted, which seemed to concern those enemy fighters who had thrown down their weapons and scattered. Some of them, it was thought, had come north rather than south, and were trying to hide themselves in Valdemar.

There were several arguments ongoing as to the best way to hunt them down; brutal, savage plans, most of them. Apparently it was not enough that the entire command structure had been wiped out. There were plenty who wanted every single person who had so much as carried a bucket for the Tedrels hunted out and strung up on the nearest branch high enough to haul them off the ground, and the corpses left to hang there until they rotted away.

Selenay listened impassively until the various angry speeches had been made, then looked at Alberich.

'Well?' she asked. 'Have you any suggestions?'

He supposed that, by all rights, he should have been just as full of righteous anger, but he wasn't. He was just—tired. Tired of death, sick of the stench of it in his nostrils. He didn't want any more deaths, not if he could help it.

'Real Tedrels—if any live—dare not the Border to cross,' he said slowly. 'And I think the Sunpriests a most— unpleasant—fate will accord them, should they foolish enough be, in Karse for to stay, for heretics by the measurement of the Sunpriests the Tedrels most surely are. Say I would, that their welcome will not be warm, except, of course, that it rather too warm will be.'

It took a moment for the others to realize what he had said, and more to figure out what he had meant. The Fires, of course; there wasn't a chance that any real Tedrels would be spared the Fires. Someone in the back snickered, although he had not meant it as a joke.

'As for the rest—' he shrugged. 'The worst of mercenaries, and the most foolish of fortune hunters they are. Perhaps some are here, in Valdemar. The first—will swiftly run afoul of constables and Guards, or even of farm folk, and in trouble they soon will be, and have them you will. Now, how to tell are we which are those that fought here, and which mere outlanders? Arrest all, who with an accent speak?' He raised his eyebrow. 'Then, without acting Queen's Own you will be—'

She blinked, but nodded, and some of the muttering stopped. He had to say this much for most of the people she had about her now, they weren't stupid.

'What is Valdemar if not just?' he asked rhetorically. 'Leave some Guards, perhaps, to deal with them as found they are, but I think you need not hunt them. Live off the land, they cannot; when their swords they cannot hire out, leave they shall, or break the law, and so you have them, as lawbreakers, which can be proved. The second, either a lesson will have learned, or will not, and thus also—' He spread his hands.

'So you're saying we shouldn't track them down?' Lord Orthallen asked smoothly, as if the question was of no matter to him. 'Just leave them as a menace to the countryside?'

'I say find them you will, without hunting. Hide, they cannot, and with nothing more than what on their bodies they have, little have they to live on, and only one trade they know.'

'But what if they try and pass themselves off as laborers?' someone asked angrily.