With great relief, she let them know that this was perfect. And she led her Court into the Great Hall for the concert, then settled into her seat, enthroned among the courtiers, with Ambassador Isadere at her left, thinking that tonight was turning out to be something of a respite after all. And the gods knew she needed one. She wasn’t feeling up to an evening of bright conversation with her foreign guests tonight; she’d been fighting melancholy all day, knowing that it would take next to nothing to make her break out in tears. Now, with not only the ambassador but his entire entourage listening with rapt attention to the musicians, she could lean back in her chair and wait for the evening to be over.

Or so she thought.

“Majesty, are you well?” whispered Lord Orthallen. He leaned over the arm of his chair toward her, his voice pitched so that it would not disturb anyone else, and to his credit, he really did look concerned.

She smiled faintly at him, and nodded. He raised an eyebrow, as if he didn’t entirely believe her, but turned his attention back to the music.

She glanced over at Herald Talamir, who did not appear to have noticed the interchange. But then, it was difficult to tell, these days, what Talamir did and did not see. It was even more difficult to tell what he thought about what he saw.

In fact, he was sitting back in his chair, eyes half-closed, and he looked exactly like a statue—except that there was nothing of the solidity of a statue about him. How he managed this, she could not tell, but these days Talamir didn’t entirely seem to be in the here and now, as it were. His manner was often preoccupied, as if listening to and watching something no one else could hear or see. And to her mind, there was a suggestion of translucency about him, the spirit somehow shining through the flesh. When there was something that really required his attention, he was almost like his old self, but when there wasn’t, he was almost like a ghost made flesh, and not altogether contented with that state.

He made a great many people uneasy, without any of them being able to articulate why. He made Selenay uneasy, as a matter of fact; she could never glance at him—except in the times when he was very much in the here-and-now—without an involuntary shiver.

And yet, there were plenty of people who saw no difference in him at all. People like Orthallen, for instance; they acted in Talamir’s presence now exactly as they had acted in Talamir’s presence before the last battle.

Before he died, and was dragged back to life…