Chapter 8: The Cheering That Swallowed Everything

The procession entered Ardenmoor's capital on the fourteenth day of the month of Turning, under a sky that had been asked to be blue and had obliged.

Elwin rode third in the column, behind Caedric and the standard-bearer, and in front of Sorra, who had found some reason to position herself at the rear of the ceremonial arrangement and had not been moved. The street from the east gate to the Citadel steps was perhaps a mile. It took two hours. The crowd made it longer by pressing so close that the horses could only move at a pace that had to be called something other than walking — a kind of continuous negotiation between animal and human mass. People threw dried flowers, which was traditional, and some threw bread, which was not, but which communicated something the flowers did not quite cover. Children were held up on shoulders. Old men stood in doorways with expressions that had not yet chosen between weeping and something more complicated.

Elwin held the smile.