She actually brightened at that. “Good. I feel as if there is something I should do, but I can’t think of anything.” She reached up and tucked a strand of hair self-consciously behind her ear. “I don’t think there are many people besides you and father who think I should even be here.”

He regarded her gravely. “Come. Among the troops, we must walk. Speak to them, you shall, this night and every night. Of their homes and families, must you ask; speak you must as your heart tells you, to put heart in them, to put a face—your face—on Valdemar.”

“You mean, make myself some kind of mascot?” she asked, as he gestured to her guardians to take up their weapons and follow. “Create a symbol?”

“Of a sort. Speak of Valdemar, you must; not just of the evil that comes to tear her, not of fear alone, but of hope.” Hope. He hoped she was up to this; Sendar would likely be making his own forays among the troops, but there was a limit to his time. Selenay had more of that available to her, and Selenay was a handsome young girl, golden-blond and fresh-faced, and not unlike the pretty girls the men and women wearing the uniform tabards of the Valdemaran army would see at home. He wanted to put that face on the abstract notion of “my land, Valdemar.” He wanted them to see that their leaders served them, as much as they served their leaders. When they saw their leaders, remote and at a distance, he wanted them to remember the night this one walked and talked with them.

“But what should I say?” she asked, sounding a little desperate, as they left her tent. He motioned to the sentries to stay in place. Mounted on Companions, they were as safe as they would be in a knot of guards. Kantor waited for them; Caryo came out of her lean-to, and Alberich helped Selenay throw her saddle on her.

“Ask, first. Ask of home and family. Ask of their welfare. Then, think, and as your father would, speak.” She had spent all of her life listening to her father’s speeches; it was time she learned to make some of her own. In fact, there was very little she could say that would be wrong. Her mere presence out here with the troops, asking after their well-being and their background, would be enough. She would be showing the concern of their monarch, putting a face and a voice under the crown. And word of that would spread.