She closed and locked the case, then sighed. “I suppose I’ll be expected to make a speech.”

“Yes.” He did not elaborate on that; he felt horribly sorry for her, but it was her duty, and she knew it. But there was another aspect to this journey of grief that he didn’t think she had considered. Not only the army mourned its King, but the country. “It is wondered, Majesty, if pausing you will be at each village?” They’d left it to him to ask that delicate question, that and any others that might come up. He was acting Queen’s Own, after all; delicate questions, it seemed, were a part of the job.

“At each village?” she asked, looking blank.

“A speech to make?” he elaborated.

She frowned, and looked as if she had suddenly developed a headache. “Oh, gods. I don’t want to… but people are going to want to pay their respects, aren’t they? But each time we stop, it’s just going to make this whole thing drag out longer, and—” The frown turned into a look of despair, and he sensed that if he told her she should make all those stops, she’d do it, but it might break her.

He racked his brain for an answer, and finally thought he had a compromise. “Majesty—perhaps not a stop, and not a speech. But—spectacle. Something for memory and showing honor. A Herald sent ahead to warn each place that we come, then… drop pace to a slow walk? With—ah—muffled drums? Lowered banners? Through each place’s center, though a detour we make? No speech, but—” he sought for the word, desperately, “—on your part, to be the icon of grief? You need speak not, only mourn, publicly—”

She looked as if he had taken a huge burden off of her shoulders. “The very thing—would you go see to it for me, get it all organized?”

She must be near the breaking point, or she wouldn’t delegate that to me. “At once, Majesty,” he promised. “Please—be eating would you? Little have you had since morning.”

That got a thin ghost of a smile from her. “Except for the accent, you sound like Talamir. Or my old nurse. All right, Nanny Alberich, I’ll go get something to eat, and I promise I’ll get some sleep, too. Maybe I’ll have Crathach give me something to make me sleep, and go to bed early.”

“That, most wise would be,” he said. “And eat you must. Too thin, you are. How are you to get a husband, so thin you are?”

She stared at him for a moment in utter silence as he kept his face completely expressionless. Then, weakly, she began to laugh.

He allowed himself a smile.