Exile's Honor

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.

He racked his brain for an answer, and finally thought he had a compromise. 'Majesty—perhaps not a stop, and not a speech. But—spectacle. Something for memory and showing honor. A Herald sent ahead to warn each place that we come, then... drop pace to a slow walk? With—ah—muffled drums? Lowered banners? Through each place's center, though a detour we make? No speech, but—' he sought for the word, desperately, '—on your part, to be the icon of grief? You need speak not, only mourn, publicly—'

She looked as if he had taken a huge burden off of her shoulders. 'The very thing—would you go see to it for me, get it all organized?'

She must be near the breaking point, or she wouldn't delegate that to me. 'At once, Majesty,' he promised. 'Please—be eating would you? Little have you had since morning.'

That got a thin ghost of a smile from her. 'Except for the accent, you sound like Talamir. Or my old nurse. All right, Nanny Alberich, I'll go get something to eat, and I promise I'll get some sleep, too. Maybe I'll have Crathach give me something to make me sleep, and go to bed early.'

'That, most wise would be,' he said. 'And eat you must. Too thin, you are. How are you to get a husband, so thin you are?'

She stared at him for a moment in utter silence as he kept his face completely expressionless. Then, weakly, she began to laugh.

He allowed himself a smile.

She wiped away a tear, but he could see that some of the lines of grief and worry around her eyes had eased. 'And they say you have no sense of humor,' she said.

'Nor do I. All know this,' he assured her. 'Go now, and something impossible demand of the cooks.'

'Impossible?' That caught her off guard. 'Why?'

'First, that a reason they will have, at last to complain. Cooks must complain; in their nature, it is. Second, that injured their pride has been, that you have asked for nothing. Their pride is in that their masters demand much of them. Third, concerned they have been, that you have asked for nothing. They fear you need them not. Fourth, they worry for you.' He raised an eyebrow. 'But be certain, though impossible, it is something you want. Suspect I do, that they will create it.'

'Ah.' She blinked. 'Do you know everything that is going on around here?'

He shook his head at that. 'Not I. But Kantor I have, as Caryo you have. Our