Many knew or guessed what had happened to their lord, and even those who recognised the Prince’s daughter had few qualms about repeating the entire morbid tale. Like a pale grey shade, she passed through Rath Dínen, the first to do so since the Steward’s death and his servants’ departure, until she came to the ruins of the House of the Stewards.

Lothíriel slowly picked her way through the long hall. A delicate stone hand, broken off at the wrist, seemed to stretch towards her in supplication; she could not restrain herself from kneeling beside it, trying to discover which sarcophagus it had originally belonged to. Within seconds, she found herself placing the hand next to the blunt stone wrist of a grave-faced child, then ran her fingers over the raised letters. Anairë daughter of Meneldur, 17th Lord of Emyn Arnen—

Foolishly, she patted Anairë’s carved hair and continued on her way, with the occasional, resentful glance at the sun, which shone through the great gaps where once impregnable stone had blocked all light..

Lost without the familiar halls and faces to guide her, she found the bier almost by accident. The stone where so many Stewards had lain themselves to rest, giving back the Gift, was forever altered, cracks running every which way across the formerly glossy surface, though none so deep as to really harm it. For one long moment, she stood still and dazed; then, her eyes hard and blazing against her white face, she began frenziedly pulling the rubble off the bier, appearing every inch the madwoman.

It was only once she had finished her task, bringing her bruised and dirty hands down on the bier, that she noticed the dark flaky material smeared across them. Dust?—no, too dark. It was more like . . . more like . . .

Whatever fevered strength had driven her seemed to vanish then, and Lothíriel sank to her knees. There was no rod, no treacherous palantír, no other remnants of her uncle the Steward. Hot tears fell down her cheeks, and she fought a shudder of revulsion at the thought of wiping them away with her ash-covered hands.

For a time, she was lost in a black quagmire of unhappiness. She had never lost anyone before this year, and Boromir — he was wonderful, of course, but not so close, not so akin, as the others, and he had died honourably, in battle, just as he wished and expected. Denethor would never have wanted this — this utterly debased end, the desecration of all that he had loved and treasured and fought for, his last remains smeared across his niece’s hands. She desperately wanted to be clean again and, catching a sob in her throat, leant her head against the bier, the stone cooling and drying her tears.

‘Lothíriel.’

Tiredly, she lifted her eyes to her cousin’s, unable to summon the strength for anything more. ‘Aunt Ivriniel told me that you had been asking about Father’s death.’ He paused, then added in his most quintessentially Faramir tone, ‘Do you really think it was wise to come here?’

‘No,’ she said dully, ‘of course not, but . . . we cannot always be wise, can we? Sometimes, we must know.’

‘I understand.’ He sat down as easily as if they were at the Dol Amroth shore rather than the fallen house of his forebears. ‘Though I would not have had the courage to come alone.’

Lothíriel straightened, indignation flaring to life with her. ‘You do not lack courage, Faramir, and you are a fool if you think you do. If a braver man ever existed, I have not heard of him.’

A smile tugged at his lips. ‘There are many kinds of courage, Lothíriel. Facing this — ’ he gestured around them — ‘takes something quite different than what is required to fight Úlairi and orcs and mûmakil.’

‘What are you going to do, Faramir?’

‘Salvage what I can and rebuild, of course. It is not so bad as it appears; much of the art of Númenor went into this place.’

‘I thought . . .’ Lothíriel swallowed. ‘I thought it might be just — left, the way it is now. Nobody seems to care much about remembering the Stewards, now that the King has returned.’

His grey eyes hardened, and for a moment the ghost of Denethor flickered across his young, unlined face. ‘For twenty-seven generations and nearly one thousand years, we have served the memory of a king who was, by all accounts, remarkably foolish. As long as I live, it will not be forgotten.’ He gave her a piercing look. ‘Loyalty to the King does not mean disloyalty to the Stewards, Lothíriel.’

‘Uncle Denethor thought it did.’

‘By the end, my father thought many things, and they led him to — despair.’

To thisLothíriel thought, and set her jaw stubbornly. ‘He was the Steward. It was his right to accept or reject Aragl — the Arnorian’s claim.’

‘Yes, it washis right. And now it is mine.’ He sighed with what would have been fatigue in anyone else. ‘Whatever the — peculiarities — of his claim to the throne, he is the rightful lord of the Dúnedain. That matters far more the intricacies of Gondorian law.’

‘If you say so, cousin, then of course he ought to be King. It is only that I wish Gondor could go back to the way she was, before the war. Why must everything change? I do not like change.’

Faramir laughed softly and sprang up. ‘You are a true daughter of Númenor, Lothíriel. Come, we need not stay any longer.’

Lothíriel stumbled to her feet, then held out her hands. ‘Faramir — I didn’t mean to — ’

‘I will have some water fetched,’ he said. ‘As for the rest, it will be removed to a safe place until my father’s sarcophagus can be made.’

She nodded, something like a smile trembling on her lips. ‘He will be properly remembered?’ she asked, her grey eyes anxious. ‘I know that he was not himself at the end, but before that — he gave everything to Gondor, and he deserves . . . honour, for that. And he loved you, he did, he was only trying to spare you something worse.’

‘I know,’ said Faramir calmly. ‘It will not be forgotten.’

As they walked out into the Street, Lothíriel asked, ‘Faramir? How — how did you find out? They told me that you were not to know. Who told you?’

‘Your father, twenty minutes ago.’ He gave the House of the Stewards only one long, lingering look, then turned his back on it and walked away so quickly that Lothíriel had to run to keep up with him.