"No," he said aloud. "I put them on for Sendar, but I do not think I will wear Whites again. Not unless there is a pressing reason."
Myste pursed her lips, but looked curiously satisfied, as if she thought she had been particularly clever. "I thought you might say that. So I stopped by your tent, and brought these."
She pulled a basket out from under his cot—and there were his form of the Heraldic uniform; the dark gray leathers he had worn up until they had left Haven.
"Are you certain you are not an Empath?" he asked.
"No, I'm a Herald with work to do, and now that you've been informed that Her Majesty wants you, I need to go do it." She softened her words with a slight smile, then suddenly reached out and took his hand.
"But I won't always have work to do," she said, giving it a slight squeeze. "And I find you excellent company because I don't have to pretend or mince words around you."
Then she picked up a crutch from beside her stool, stood up, and hobbled off.
He stared after her with bemusement.
:You really don't know what to do with a woman who isn't either untouchable or a whore, do you?: said that familiar, faintly mocking voice in his mind.
:Well, why don't you teach me?: he shot back, stung, and reached for his familiar gray leathers.
:I might. But you'll have to ask me nicely.:
His ears burned.
Changing swiftly, he headed out of the tent, intending to pause only long enough to tell one of the Healers that he would not be needing that cot beside Jadus anymore.
But the first Healer he ran into was a very familiar face, and one he had not expected to see tending to the wounded.
"Crathach!" he exclaimed, and seized the man's arms, grasping him by the elbows with both hands. "But—Talamir—"
"Come see for yourself," the Healer said, taking him by the elbow. Crathach led him out of the ranks of the Healers' tents, and into the ring of command tents. Alberich could not help but notice some gaps, where tents had been—and felt a stab in his heart.
But one tent still stood. Crathach led him to it. As with many tents used by Heralds, it was fully large enough for a Companion to fit inside, for Heralds sometimes preferred to know that their partners were as comfortable as they were. Inside, Talamir lay quietly in his cot, and lying beside him on a worn, rag rug was a Companion.
For one moment, Alberich's heart stopped. There was only one Companion that had that special look, that faint aura of otherworldliness—
Taver?
He stopped himself from blurting it just in time. The Companion lifted his noble head, and looked into his eyes.
:Not Taver, Weaponsmaster. I am Rolan.:
"Your pardon," Alberich murmured, a little unnerved.
The Queen's Own's new Companion nodded his acceptance of the apology. :It was a natural thought, and no harm was done. I am pleased to see you. We will probably be seeing a great deal of each other in the future, but if you will forgive me, I have my charge to tend for now.: The Companion turned his gaze back toward the quiet figure on the cot.
Talamir no longer looked like a corpse, but he had aged, and aged greatly, in—what? Less than two days? He had looked no older than Sendar, middle-aged at worst, before the battle; now he looked old, thin and worn-out with long struggle, his face etched with lines of pain. And he looked fragile. Alberich felt his heart wring with pity, and wondered if, perhaps, it would have been better for him if he'd been allowed to die.
But that was not his decision to make—
Vkandis be thanked.
Crathach tugged at his sleeve, and they left the tent to the Companion and his charge. "He did what I could not," Crathach said. "How he got here in so little time—well, I can't guess. But he did what I couldn't. I could only hold him just out of reach of death's gate; Rolan dragged him back to life, then full awareness, and made him stay."
"He has awakened, then?" Alberich asked, still in a murmur, with a glance back at the tent.
"Several times. He's quite sane, now, and he doesn't seem to want to die, but he's fragile, Alberich, very fragile. I've told the Queen that he's not to do much for a while, and she agrees." Crathach tilted his head to one side, and gave him a penetrating look.
"Hmph." Alberich traded him look for look. "Then, until you say, so shall I sit upon him, if need be."
"I knew I could count on you." Crathach slapped him on the back. "Now, I think the Queen wants you."
"So I believe, and I shall my leave take of you." He hoped Crathach would say something that might give him a clue to the Queen's mood.
But Crathach didn't seem to have any more idea than he did. "Ever since Rolan arrived, I've been too busy to go near the command tent," he replied and sighed. "And at the moment, my services as a Healer are in far more demand than those as a bodyguard."
Alberich grimaced. "Wish I could, that otherwise it were."
Crathach nodded. "And I. It is good to be able to use one's Gifts, but—" He could only shrug helplessly.
They parted then, but having seen Talamir alive, if not exactly well, Alberich's heart felt a little lighter.
But now it was time to face the Queen. And he was not looking forward to that. For no matter what Myste said, he was not at all sanguine about his reception. Surely Selenay would never want to see his face again, after what he'd done to her. If nothing else, she would never forgive him from keeping her away from her father's side, and who could blame her?
Probably she wanted to see him only so that she could tell him she wanted him to return immediately to Haven and confine himself to the salle from now on....
It was in this mood that he presented himself at the command tent.
The guards—his choice, he saw, with pride—let him past. He tried to slip in unnoticed, but Keren spotted him, and bent down to whisper in Selenay's ear. She looked up sharply.
"Herald Alberich—" she said.
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.
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?"
"Won't the Karsites just take them?" Selenay asked, looking to Alberich.
"Probably—no," he said, reluctantly. "Karse needs no extra mouths that come not with hands that can work. And—they are heretics, and the children of heretics, and what is more, even their own blood, to the Sunpriests' eyes, they are not—or no longer are—Karsite."
He did not elaborate on what that meant, but there was something very unpleasant stirring in the back of his mind; something like a—protovision. An intimation, not of what would be or what was about to be, but what might be.
A vision of the Fires of Cleansing. And the fuel that fed them.
"I don't want to sound utterly callous and hardhearted, Herald, but—not to put too fine a point upon it, what can we do?" the Lord Marshal asked. "They're on Karsite land, in Karsite hands."
She looked at him as if he was an idiot. "And this stopped Vanyel? This stopped Lavan Firestorm?"
The Lord Marshal wasn't about to back down. "That was in another situation entirely," he retort
ed. "And if you're referring to the 'Demonsbane' legend, Vanyel was on Hardorn land, not Karsite."
Alberich cleared his throat. "Ah—Herald Laika—a question. Suppose I must, that you have these children been among. Think you, they can be anything but Tedrel?"
"Most of 'em aren't now," she replied, and shook her head. "Some of 'em, in fact, a lot of 'em, are Karsite orphans—some of 'em are camp followers' children. And, dare I repeat myself, some of 'em are ours, grabbed every time they hit Valdemar in the past three years! But like I said, they don't have much use for girls that aren't breeding age, so they don't pay any attention to 'em, and boys aren't useful until they're thirteen and old enough to take into a Tedrel lodge for training, so they're all right up until then. Basically, they're not Tedrel, they're not Karsite, they're not anything, really. When I was in there, they had a lot of the camp followers that were tending to all of them, and most of those were girls out of Rethwellan, Seejay, and Ruvan, with a couple of Karsites. So that's what they've been raised as."
"Raised as nothing, then," Selenay ventured.
"Pretty much. A pretty weird mix, they all speak a kind of Tedrel-pidgin with words from all over. The girls don't ever get taught pure Tedrel tongue; that's a man's mystery. The kiddies have got some little religious cult they've made up on their own that isn't like anything I've ever heard of. Like I said, they aren't Tedrel, they aren't anything." She sighed. "What they are, is dead needy for adult attention. Even an old hag like me, they swarmed over."
"But babies—without mothers—" someone put in doubtfully.
"Babes in arms—" she shrugged. "That little, the Tedrels don't take. The ones born to the camp followers, well, they may be whores, but they're still mothers; the ones that'll bolt, they'll take the children they can manage to carry and run for Rethwellan. That leaves the orphans, or ones whose mothers don't care, and there's a couple hundred, anyway, of an age we could rescue. No more than a thousand...."
Selenay glanced at Alberich, who was thinking furiously. "Karse—I think might be busy—elsewhere—"
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