It parted without being told, branch tier by branch tier, and let the accused collaborator and her foreign champion walk the full length of the nation's hall together, and the whispers that had followed her for a season did not so much stop as find themselves unemployed.
She wept exactly once, in the middle of the walk, when she passed the loyalist tiers and saw four hundred silver arms come up in salute. She got away with it. Every elf in the canopy pretended with perfect discipline to be studying the architecture.
The queen's voice, restored to its full four thousand year register, filled the hall without effort.
"Faelor, son of the queen, prince of the realm."
