Exile's Honor

to it that she got plenty to drink, plenty of clean handkerchiefs, and the occasional arm about her shoulders. The Healer concocted soothing eyewashes to rinse her sore eyes and face with whenever they stopped. She ate with growing appetite, which was no bad thing, and was so emotionally exhausted by the time they camped for the night that she slept soundly and without waking. Her little pages saw to it that she had everything she needed, faithful as hounds. And each day that passed saw a little easing of the tension within her that had kept her so near to the breaking point.

It was not that she ceased to care, or became numb, as the days passed. It was more as if the worst of her grief was a finite thing, a barrel that had only seemed bottomless until she began allowing it to flow freely.

By the time they reached Haven, and the procession made its slow and solemn way through the city to the Palace, that pinched and overstrained look had left her. She wore her sorrow and her loss like a cloak, with grave dignity, rather than being bowed down beneath their intolerable burden.

She needed that release, for as the journey reached its end, she was about to undertake her final ordeal; the entrance to Haven marked the day of Sendar's official funeral. Haven had been waiting too long to put it off for even one more day—and that wasn't a bad thing. The funeral, though it would be exhausting for all concerned, especially Selenay, would put closure to everything.

They all camped overnight just outside the walls at the Royal and Home Farms, and servants from the Palace brought them all formal mourning garments, Formal Whites, Greens, and Scarlets. The line for the bathing facilities and even to use the horse troughs and pumps for a bath, was a long one, and Alberich (as did many others) elected to bathe in the river instead; the faint, weedy fragrance of the river water was no match for the strong horse soap they used on themselves as well as their mounts. When they arrived at the gate of the city in the early morning, they looked as if they had all come straight from the Palace itself, and the wagons carrying tents, belongings, and a small mountain of dirty clothing had already gone up the hill, leaving only one single wagon, the one that had carried Sendar to his final rest.

The Court joined them at the first gate; the Lord Marshal, the Seneschal, and the heads of Bardic, Healers' and Heralds' Circles all walked with her behind the coffin, while the rest joined the riders. The coffin itself was transferred by a hand-picked group of the Guard, with great solemnity and ceremony, to a more ornate carriage used solely for state funerals before Sendar made his last journey through the streets of his capitol.

And Talamir joined them as well; Alberich was glad enough to relinquish his place at the young Queen's side and join the rest of her bodyguards.

But Talamir did not so much ride to meet Selenay as appear. It was a very strange moment for Alberich, when the official greetings were over and suddenly, in a pause and a pocket of silence that seemed created for him, there was Talamir.

And Talamir was changed, vastly changed.

It was more than just the twenty years that had been added, overnight, to his appearance. It was more than just that his hair had gone silver-white, like the mane of a Companion. After all, Alberich had found gray roots to the hair at his temples this very morning, when he had stolen a moment at an unoccupied mirror. It was much, much more than that. There was an otherworldly stillness about the Queen's Own, a distant look in his eyes as if he was always listening to something no one else could hear, and a faint translucency about him, as if his flesh was not quite solid enough to contain all of the light of his spirit. And a sadness that had nothing to do with the all-too-mortal grief he displayed so openly for his King.

It made Alberich shiver a little, and he sensed he wasn't the only one—but not everyone seemed to notice the change. Selenay didn't, for one. But perhaps she was too young, too involved with her own grief, or both—

Alberich was just glad to acknowledge Talamir's thanks, and drop back farther into the procession, selfishly grateful to Talamir for having recovered quickly enough to take his proper place back; it hadn't been a position he had been comfortable with. He hated being in the public eye, on show. Now, in the Formal Whites that the young Queen had asked him to don for the funeral, he was just one Herald among many.

Besides, now we're into Haven, we come into Court protocols and precedence, all the pomp and ceremony that I know nothing about. The arrival of the state funeral coach had been the first sign that he was rapidly getting out of his depth of experience.

He and the other Heralds—and the Royal Guards that were left—rode alongside the walkers, between them and the crowds of onlookers and mourners. Here, as out in the country, the streets were carpeted with flowers and the green herbs of mourning, rue and rosemary, but there were far, far too many people here to allow folk to pile more flowers on the carriage; it would have been covered within a single block. That was all right; they seemed content enough to strew their blossoms in the path of the carriage and the procession.

The muffled drums, augmented now by more mounted and walking musicians, made a dull throbbing through the too-quiet streets. That was the strangest part of all, the quiet in the city. Alberich was used to the noise of Haven, but today, the silence was broken only by the sound of people sobbing, and even that was muffled, as if the mourners did not want to spoil the solemnity of the occasion by being too vocal.

They stopped three times in the course of the morning, at three of Sendar's favorite temples, for memorial services that were mercifully brief—just long enough that the walkers could rest before carrying on. Similar services were being held all over the city, and would be all day, and well into the night, but these comprised the official funeral for the citizens of Haven.

And it took most of the day to get from the city gates to the Palace Gates. They took one break at noon, at one of the huge Guildhouse Squares; Selenay and her entourage retired to the Needleworkers' Guildhouse for rest and a meal, while Sendar's coffin lay in state in the enormous Guildhall of the Wool-merchants' Guildhouse, and