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 MindHealers right now, not schooling…”