Mercedes Lackey - Exile's Honor

Not even Selenay was proof against their sheer exuberance at being here , a place that they seemed to consider an earthly paradise, and before long she had "adopted" a half dozen (or they adopted her), making them her pages and promising that they would be allowed to join her Royal Household in that capacity once they all reached Haven. Nor was she the only one; every wagon going north seemed to hold a handful of children going to a new home. Fighters, teamsters, Heralds—servants and highborn—everyone who could take in two, three, or four children did so.

"I never would have believed it, no matter who had told me, if anyone had claimed that bringing these children here was the best thing we could have done," Selenay told him on the third afternoon of the return, watching a child dash away with a message to be given to the next dispatch rider going out of the camp. Her eyes were still shadowed with sorrow, but her lips curved in a faint, fond smile. "I thought that it was something that had to be done, but truth to tell, I was dreading the mess they'd make for us."

They'd taken down the black felt linings for the tents, and the painted canvas glowed with afternoon light. That, too, was a mixed blessing. More light raised the spirit a little—but the black felt had gone for use as shrouds....

"And I," he agreed. "Most unnaturally helpful, they seem."

She had to smile at that, just a little. " You don't see them at their worst. They're still children, they still fight, and get into things they shouldn't and have tantrums. But for all of that, I'm afraid that in years to come, they're going to be held up as the good examples that every naughty child in Valdemar should behave like."

"Or perhaps, as children being, a year from now and they will no better nor worse than others become," Alberich suggested.

She flicked a fly away with the feather end of her quill. "Perhaps." She put pen to paper, and signed another order. "Who knows? I'm no ForeSeer."

"And I—See not that far, when I See at all," he admitted ruefully. If I had been, could I have changed any of this? Or was it all too big for any one man to change?

"Speaking of the children, I've given some thought to what to do with them, the ones that haven't managed to get themselves adopted already, that is," she said, looking up at him. "And I wanted to ask you what you think."

"Keeping them to their own—ah—'families,' you are?" he asked, a little anxiously, because he had seen, just as Laika had told him, how they sorted themselves out into their own little "families," and stayed together. It had been the smallest of those groups of two, three, or four children that were the ones that found homes first.

"Of course," she replied. "It doesn't take an Empath to realize we shouldn't tear apart what few bonds they have! But that's where the problem lies, you see; there aren't too many families or even childless couples prepared to take in six or a dozen children at once, much less ones that don't even speak our language. So my first thought was to—well—send them to school." She folded both hands over the papers on her little desk and looked anxiously at him to see what his reply would be.

He nodded; that made perfect sense. "Like—the Academy?" he hazarded.

She nodded. "Or the Collegia. Oh, obviously, they can't actually go to the Collegia, we haven't nearly enough room for them, but something like the Collegia. And there are a lot of Valdemaran orphans to deal with, too—though those are having to go to the Houses of Healing, I'm afraid; they need Mind-Healers right now, not schooling...."

Her face darkened for a moment, but she took a deep breath and went on. "So I've written to all of the major temples, the ones with both day- and boarding-schools, and asked if they would take in some of the 'families' for a year, teach them Valdemaran and some basic reading and writing, until I've got these orphan collegia built." She waited for his response. He pondered what she had told him. " Your project, this is?"

She nodded. "If I have to," she said, with some of the same mulish stubbornness of her father, "I'll pay for it out of my own household budget—"

He raised an eyebrow. "Doubt do I, with the current mood of the Council, you will have to."

And now she had the good grace to blush. "Then better to push it through now than wait," she said, raising her chin. "Given that the booty from the Tedrels has furnished the means to restore all the damage they did down here, there isn't a great deal for the Council to complain about."

That was certainly true. Laika had been correct about that, as well.

"So build housing for these children—but homes ?" he prompted.

"I'm going to look for childless couples, and ask them to serve as surrogate parents," she said, warming to her subject. "More than one couple, of course, for each house! It will probably take a year to get that all sorted out, find couples that like each other enough to share that kind of responsibility, get the houses built. But then we can keep them all together, we can probably even put Valdemaran children in with them—"

"That," he interjected, "a most good idea is. Help each other, they can. And good it would be, for Valdemaran children to know, Tedrel children are no different than they."

She sighed deeply. "I was hoping you would say that. Then it's settled; I'll put it up to the Council, first thing. Maybe they won't think it's as important as some of their other business, but I do."

So the "prophecy" is going to come true after all, that the children of the Tedrels were going to have real homes, though they would share "mothers and fathers." Once again, he wondered about that mysterious child called Kantis; since arriving back in camp, he'd been too busy to look any further for him.

And by now, he could begone.

"Well, this will be the last one of these that I sign here," Selenay said, signing the last of the papers waiting for her signature and seal, and putting it in the pile of completed work. She closed her eyes for a moment, and it cost him to see how worn and tired she looked. "I won't miss this place."

"Nor I." He could not wait to be gone, truth to tell. If this had been Karse, rather than Valdemar, the aftermath would have been left for the locals to clean up. But it wasn't. So now there was a neat cemetery with rows of wooden markers out there where the churned-up ground had been—and a pit full of ashes where everything that wasn't Valdemaran had been disposed of. There had been too many burials for single ceremonies; each day at sunset had ended with a mass ceremony at which the names of the interred fallen for that day had been read. He had come to hate sunset, as each sunset brought fresh pain or the renewal of old, as names of those he hadn't known were gone, and those he had known were dead, were read out. He woke each morning, it seemed, with the scent of death in his nostrils, and went to sleep at night with a heart too heavy for tears.

Only Sendar and a few of the highborn were going north to find burial. It was too bad, but there were not many who could afford the expense to bring their loved ones home—and the horror of transporting that many bodies, stacked in the beds of wagons like so much cargo—and in the heat of summer—did not bear thinking about. There wasn't a teamster in the country who could be induced to use his wagon and team for that. But that was always the case in war....

The highborn had already been taken north in their expensive, sealed coffins, by the family retainers, in 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.