“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.