“I’ve already told you, and done so repeatedly. By putting the Council meetings and any other business that is not directly concerned with the war into the hands of your Seneschal,” Talamir told him, with a little heat, because he had been advising this very move for months now. “That is what he is there for. You can’t be two places at once, and if we don’t win this thing, there won’t be a Valdemar for you to reign over! Your Seneschal is competent, unflappable, and far better at obfuscation than you are. If it’s something he can’t do, he is supremely good at stalling things until you have the leisure to deal with it, and what is more, he knows to a nicety what he can and cannot do. Delegate, Sendar! How many times do I have to repeat that?”

Sendar shook his head. “I don’t—” he began, then shrugged. “I will. But—”

“And don’t tell me that you don’t like it,” Talamir snapped, deciding to show his King and friend the edge of his anger. After all, Sendar wasn’t the only person in the Kingdom who was doing things he didn’t “like.”

“I won’t,” Sendar replied, in a way that told Talamir that this was exactly what he had been going to say. “What else do you want me to put on my plate?”

“A speech. You’re going to have to tell the people—of Haven, at least—what’s coming. And I’ve never been the speechmaker that you are.” That was certainly something that needed doing that only Sendar could handle. “I can’t write it, and I certainly can’t deliver it.”

“A speech.” Sendar sighed. “Yes, that will have to be me. Selenay, I advise you that when you take the throne, find someone else to write the speeches for you.”

“I think not,” she replied, so somberly that both Talamir and her father shot a look at her. “Speeches aren’t just something that we deliver, as if we were mere actors. They have to come from our hearts, father, and there has to be truth in them. If they don’t resonate from inside us, and they don’t have truth behind them, how can we ever expect people to believe in us and what we say?”

They both focused on her at once. It wasn’t so much with astonishment as—unanticipated pleasure. She sounded like an adult. She was an adult. And she sounded like someone who had learned all the right lessons from her father.