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 be gone.

“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.”