She grimaced, but nodded. “I hope you two know where I’m supposed to be?” she asked the other two.

“That’s why we’re here,” Ylsa told her. “They sent us to fetch you.”

Selenay gestured broadly with one hand. “Well, lead on, since you know where we’re going.”

The procession—for procession it would be, even when it wasn’t going through a village—had already begun to form up on the road. Keren and Ylsa went straight to the front of it, where the rest of Selenay’s guards were waiting. The funeral wagon would not be immediately behind her, but would be the first of the string of wagons.

Bard Lellian, in charge of the ceremonial part of the journey, came up and introduced himself.

“Majesty, I have devised something I hope will meet with your approval,” he told Selenay, ignoring the rest of them in a way that told Alberich that his single-minded focus was due to anxiety, not an intention to slight them. “It will not be the ordeal that stopping for speeches would have been. You will merely have to drop back and take your place on foot behind the coffin when we reach any sort of town, along with the rest of the notables who have been deemed of high enough rank to follow you afoot. That is all; simply follow afoot, and—do whatever you feel impelled to do.”

Selenay’s relief at the simplicity of the arrangements was obvious.

“Then, when you have dropped back, the riders here at the front will all divide to either side of the road, let the wagon and the walkers pass, and fall in behind the last of the walkers, except for two Bards with muffled drums,” the Bard finished. “Those will ride in front of the wagon.” He peered anxiously at her; he was not a young man, but he didn’t seem to know Selenay very well. “I hope that meets with your approval?”

:He’s a specialist in this sort of thing,: Kantor confided. :Funeral dirges, memorial ballads, funerary rituals—rather a melancholy profession, I would think, but apparently it suits him. This is the first time he’s had anything to do with the Royals, though, and he’s nervous.:

“I think it is very fine,” she told him, and he smiled with relief. “You must have worked terribly hard to come up with something this—appropriate—at such short notice.”

Now he blushed with pleasure, and murmured a disclaimer. She raised her head to assess the state of preparations even as he thanked her.

:We seem to be ready to move out,: Kantor told his Chosen.

“Would you sound a call for silence, please?” Selenay asked the Bard, who snatched up the trumpet at his saddle bow, and played a four-note flourish.

Silence fell immediately, and Selenay rode Caryo up onto the bank beside the road so that everyone could see her.