Alberich raised an eyebrow. 'To escape labor it was, that most turned to sell- swording. Wish them joy of it, I do—and find may they, only the hardhearted as masters.'
'Please,' said Selenay in an exasperated tone of voice, 'Do think this through! Do any of you want to keep this army together, spending the treasury dry to feed them and keep them in wages, just to frighten the locals by riding over their fields and interrogating anyone who looks the least bit out of place? And how do you propose to tell one of these Tedrels from—oh, say a hillman out of Rethwellan looking for work? Or a poor brute of a Karsite who's taken advantage of this to cross into Valdemar for sanctuary? Or are you actually proposing, as Alberich said, to string up every man with a foreign accent from the nearest tree?'
'I repeat, begin with me, you would have to,' Alberich pointed out gently.
There were some embarrassed coughs.
'I won't even begin to point out how my father would have responded to such an idea,' she continued, looking at all of them and making a point of staring each in the eyes until he either dropped his gaze or met hers with agreement. 'It is so totally foreign to everything Valdemar has always stood for! I agree with Alberich; if anyone has crossed to our side of the Border, the likeliest thing is that they'll try to get over to Rethwellan and be of no concern to us. If any stay, they will either settle and fit in, or not and break the law, and we can deal with them on that basis.'
'Well, Majesty—' Lord Orthallen began.
But he was interrupted.
'Dammit, I will see Her Majesty!' snapped a querulous, aged, female voice that he knew and had not expected to hear. And a moment later, the owner of that voice, someone he knew—as well as he knew himself—
—pushed her way in past everyone.
He should know Herald Laika, though he'd last seen her just before she left to infiltrate the Tedrels in her guise of an old washerwoman. After all, he'd helped form half of the 'memories' that now made her what she was.
:And given that fact, you shouldn't be surprised that she's as stubborn as a mule and as intractable as a goat,: Kantor put in, as she bullied her way right past the Lord Marshal, made a pretense at a courtly curtsy, then stood glaring at Selenay with her hands on her hips.
Selenay stared at her blankly and without recognition; well, she wouldn't recognize Laika, though she might know the name, for as far as Alberich knew, neither she nor Caryo would have seen Laika before.
'Herald Laika, Majesty,' Alberich said carefully. 'One of our four Herald-agents, behind Tedrel lines, she was. Within the camp; infiltrated, was she, as a washerwoman. And very valuable.'
'Damn right,' the old woman grunted. 'And that's why I'm here. I want to know what the hell you're going to do about the children?'
Selenay blinked. 'I beg your pardon, Herald Laika, but we do already have people—Healers and others—out trying to find the children whose parents were killed by the Tedrel cav—'
'Not those children!' Laika exclaimed. 'Not the children of Valdemar! I'm talking about the Tedrel children! What are you going to do about the Tedrel children?'
18
'What Tedrel children?' Selenay asked, blankly.
Alberich was going to explain, but Laika saved him the effort. 'This wasn't just a mercenary company, this was a nation,' she said, with the irritation of a teacher whose student hasn't studied her subject sufficiently. 'Granted, they'd made a vow never to wed or have families until they had a land of their own again, but that sure as hellfires didn't stop them from breeding.'
Selenay's eyes widened, and her mouth made a silent, 'oh' shape.
'What's more, they used to pick up every stray boy-chick they could get their hands on and throw him in with the rest!' Laika continued. 'Not to mention the ones they kidnapped, not a few of 'em from our own people. They didn't have much use for girls until they were of breeding age, but boys—oh, my, yes! That's why they were taking such pains to keep our littles alive, so they could turn them into Tedrels. Now you've got a camp full of orphans and other youngsters over there that the Karsites are not going to want. You've killed off their fathers and protectors, if they even have mothers, their mothers are probably halfway to Rethwellan by now and might not have waited about for them, and what are you going to do about it?'
