Valdemar 06 - [Exile 02] - Exile’s Valor

by Mercedes Lackey

  “The first, and indeed, the most eligible candidate is my nephew Rannulf,” Gartheser said brightly, “who—”

  “Is not eligible at all, I’m afraid,” she interrupted smoothly, with feigned regret. “He’s related to me within the second degree, on his mother’s side, through the Lycaelis bloodline. You know well that no King or Queen of Valdemar can wed a subject who is within the third degree of blood-relationship. That is the law, my Lord, and nothing you nor I can do will change that.” She raised her eyebrows at them. “The reason is a very good one, of course. I shall be indelicate here, for there is no delicate way to say this. As my father told me often, the monarchs of Valdemar cannot afford the kinds of—difficulties—that can arise when a bloodline becomes too inbred.”

  And with you and yours marrying cousins and cross-cousins with the gay abandon of people blind to consequences, that’s the reason half of your so-called “candidates” are dough faced mouth-breathers who couldn’t count to ten without taking their shoes off, she thought viciously.

  :Harsh. With justification, but harsh,: Caryo observed sardonically.

  Gartheser blinked, his mouth still open, and stared at her. Finally he shut it. “Ah,” he said at last. “Oh—are you quite sure of that?”

  She opened Myste’s report to the relevant page. “Rannulf’s mother is Lady Elena of Penderkeep. Lady Elena’s mother was my father’s cousin through his mother. That is within the second degree.”

  “Oh—” Gartheser said weakly.

  “Then there is my nephew, Kris—” said Orthallen quickly.

  “Related to me within the third degree on both sides of his family, as his mother was a cousin-by-marriage of my father, and his father was a cousin-by-blood to my father,” she said briskly, already prepared for that one. “Besides being so young that there is no question of consummation for at least eight years.” She smiled dulcetly at Orthallen. “Which does rather negate the entire reason for marrying with such remarkable speed in the first place, before my year of mourning is over. Doesn’t it?”

  To her great pleasure, Orthallen was left so stunned by her riposte that his handsome face wore an uncharacteristic blank look. Not that she wanted to humiliate him—she was really awfully fond of him, after all—but it gave her no end of satisfaction to make him understand, in no uncertain terms, that just because she was fond of him, she was not going to allow him to manipulate her into something she did not want to do.

  And blessings upon Myste; she suspected that not even Orthallen knew about the nearness of her blood relation to his nephew. He proved it in the next moment by saying, cautiously, “I assume you have the particulars of these degrees?”

  She went to the second page of Myste’s notes and gave him the genealogical details, chapter and verse, in a no-nonsense, matter-of-fact tone of voice.

  “Ah,” he said. And wisely said nothing more.

  So it went. Every single candidate that any of them brought up, she cut off at the metaphorical knees. Including the ones that she had not given Myste to research; that was why Myste was shut up in the library. She would leaf through her thick sheaf of papers to give Myste the chance to trace pedigrees, then pretend to read what Myste Sent to her.

  At last they ran out of names—or at least, of names that they could all agree on. Now the daggers were out, and the looks being traded across the tabletop were wary. Any new candidates would be men and boys that had already been rejected, because one or another of the Councilors objected to them for reasons of his or her own. She could sit back and let them play against each other, which was the better position to be in.

  At least, that was true among the highborn Councilors; the Guildmasters were a different story entirely. None of them—and no candidate outside of the nobility—would be related to her, which eliminated that argument.

  However, she thought she could count on the highborn Councilors to fight tooth and nail against any common-born man being put up as a potential Prince Consort. There was an advantage to snobbery.

  Mind, if she did happen to fall in love with a commoner, she wasn’t going to let snobbery stop her—

  That would open up a whole new set of problems which she wasn’t going to think about right now. The current set was more than enough to deal with.

  It’s too bad Alberich isn’t there now, she thought, letting her anger begin to die. This is the part he’d really enjoy—watching them cut the legs out from under each other.

  Ah well. She hoped the installation of his window had gone well. She was looking forward to seeing it. It would be the only part of her day she was able to look forward to.

  Why would anyone want to be a Queen?

  “Oo wouldn’t want t’be a Queen?” demanded the rather drunken tart sitting at the table next to Alberich’s. “Larking about, doin’ whatever ye please, gettin’ waited on ’and an’ foot—”

  Not from Haven, thought Alberich to himself. Though you have the accent, it isn’t quite good enough, my girl. And you aren’t nearly as drunk as you seem. What’s your game, and who put you up to it, I wonder.

  Now perhaps, at any other time, perhaps in another year or so, she might have gotten away with such an ill-considered remark. But not now. Not when barely six months had passed, and Selenay had been making herself very popular with little gestures like the “Queen’s Bread.” People down here had a lot of trouble keeping their children fed, and one guaranteed free meal a day, at the trifling cost of lessons in rudimentary literacy and numeracy, was a small price to pay. A youngling down here couldn’t earn the price of that breakfast himself in the course of a morning. It was good economics to send your younglings to a temple until noon, then put ’em to work.

  “ ’ere now!” a man just near enough to have overheard the speech stood up, glaring at her. “Our Selenay ain’t like that, ye owd drab, an’ if you was a man, I’d’a thrashed ye fer that!”

  The woman shrank back, and well she should have. He was big and broad, and looked as if he knew very well how to handle that cudgel at his belt. “No offense meant, I’m very sure,” she said, hastily. “I didn’ mean Queen Selenay! I just meant, a Queen, in a gen’ral sort of way.”

  The man glared at her. He was as drunk as the whore pretended to be, and he was at the very least going to say his peace. “Our Selenay ain’t no layabout!” he insisted. “Why, I seen ’er, I even talked to ’er, couple’a nights afore the last battle. Come right to our fires, she did, ’avin’ a word with our officers, seein’ we ’ad good treatment!”

  “Oh, yeah, an’ she talked t’ you, did she, ye old liar!” jeered someone else—

  Ill-advisedly.

  The drunk rounded on the skeptic with a roar, and grabbed the man’s shirt in one hamlike fist. Only the intervention of the “peacekeeper” that the proprietor of the Broken Arms had seen fit to hire prevented mayhem from breaking out. But there was the start of a fight, and under cover of it, the woman slipped out.

  Alberich followed.

  She wasn’t at all difficult to follow, the silly wench. She paid absolutely no attention to what was behind her. The man she accosted just outside, the alleyway next to the tavern was a little more careful, but not enough to spot Alberich. He was a darker shadow in the alley—people always thought that wearing black would make them blend in with shadows, but it didn’t; it made them into man-shaped black blotches in an almost black place. Alberich was wearing several shades of very, very dark brown and gray. Each leg was a slightly different color. So was each arm. And his tunic was blotched. There was nothing about him that was man-shaped, when he stood in shadow.

  “I’m not doin’ that no more!” the woman shrilled at her contact, just as Alberich eased within listening range. “You go do your own dirty work from now on!”

  There was a murmur, too low for Alberich to make out the words.

  “I didn’ get but a word out,” she said sullenly, “an’ up jumps this drunk bear and nearly thrashes me!”

  More murmuring, and the clink
of coins. The woman departed, muttering.

  Alberich followed the man.

  There had been a lot of money exchanged there for such simple services—a lot for this part of town, at any rate. Alberich hoped that his new quarry would try another quarter, one where such a payment would be the norm rather than the exception. And lo! As if his wish had flown straight to the ear of Vkandis, that was precisely what his quarry did.

  It wasn’t a wealthy part of town; working class was more like it, but working class that got work regularly, of the sort that came with weekly pay packets and a little something extra on the holidays. A place, in short, where there were City Guards and constables on patrol regularly.

  A place where Alberich could manage to do something to get them both arrested.

  Which, as soon as a constable hove into view, Alberich did.

  He nipped back around the corner so as to be able to intercept his quarry coming, apparently, from the opposite direction. It wasn’t hard; he knew this part of Haven better than the back of his hand. There were few yards with high fences and even fewer with dangerous dogs tied up in them. Once he came back around, he saw that the constable was strolling along at a leisurely pace that would take him past his quarry before Alberich reached the man. Good. He didn’t want the constable to actually see what was going on between him and the stranger, only hear it and make some inferences that, as it happened would be entirely unwarranted.

  :You’re enjoying this,: Kantor accused.

  :Hush. I’m busy.:

  The fact was, he was enjoying this. It was the first hint of trouble, real trouble, his sort of trouble, that he’d had in moons.

  As he approached the man, he stared at him—easy enough to do, since there were streetlamps here. Then he contorted his face into an expression of rage and roared.

  “You! You bastard! Thought you could ruin my sister and run away, did you?”

  And then he flung himself at the startled man.

  As he had expected, the man was not startled for long, and he was armed. So what the surprised constable saw when he turned was a man with a knife attacking an unarmed man. Since he couldn’t know which of the two of them the accusation had come from, he assumed—as any good constable would—that the man with the knife was the attacker, not the defender.

  That Alberich was in no danger from a mere knife was something he couldn’t know. So, to his immense credit, he waded in himself, wielding his truncheon and blowing a whistle for dear life to summon help. He was aiming most of his blows for the head of the knife wielder, and Alberich helpfully positioned the target so that, by the time the help arrived, his quarry was out cold and he was able to protest feebly that he didn’t know what the madman was talking about, he’d just jumped for him with a knife, screaming about a sister. . . .

  “We have to stop meeting like this, Herald,” said Captain Lekar of the City Guard, with a feeble attempt at humor. “People are going to start talking.”

  “I fervently hope not,” Alberich replied, rubbing his wrists where the conscientious constables had tied them—being too wise ever to take one potential miscreant’s word over another’s. He warmed his hands on his cup of tea, but did not drink from it. The herbal teas consumed by the night shift of the City Guard were not drinkable, even by the standards of a former Karsite Sunsguard. “If talk they do, my personae will in danger be.”

  “Yes, well, I wish you’d find some other way of catching your lads without getting the both of you thrown in jail,” the Captain replied wearily.

  Since this was only the third time that Alberich had used that particular desperation ploy, he held his peace. “Keep him safe,” was all he said. “Speak with him under Truth Spell I wish to, when he awakens.”

  The Captain did not ask why. The Captain did not want to know why. The Captain was an old friend of Herald Dethor, Alberich’s mentor in this business, and he knew very well that he did not want to know why. And Alberich knew that he knew, and both were content with the situation.

  Now, if this had been Karse—he reflected soberly, as he left the City Jail by an inconspicuous exit, making certain that there was no one to see him leave.

  :If this was Karse, and you were an agent of the Sunpriests, that man would be in extreme pain for a very long time, and at the end of it, he would be dead,: Kantor said.

  :He may still be dead when this is over,: Alberich replied, grimly, making his way toward the stable of the Companion’s Bell. :But if he is, at least it won’t be by my hands.:

  :If he’s lucky, we’ll find out he’s just a troublemaker.: Kantor didn’t sound as if he really believed that would be the case.

  Yes, and if that happened to be true, well, there was no law against speaking out—or having someone else speak out—against the Monarch. Laws like that only made for more trouble; some people always had to have a grievance, and making grumbling illegal was a guaranteed way of ensuring that grumbling turned into resentment, and resentment into anger. If that was the case, he’d be let go, with the vague memory of having proved he didn’t know anything about anyone’s sister to the satisfaction of the City Guard.

  If it was not the case—

  Well, there was one Herald in the Circle who had no trouble with dirtying his hands with difficult jobs. Alberich would find out who had sent this fellow down into the dark parts of Haven to foment discontent. And he would follow that trail back as far as it would go.

  And the man would still be let go—but this time with the very clear memory of having been questioned under Truth Spell by a Herald. Chances were, he would cut and run, and hope his employers never found him. That would be convenient, because it would take the problem off of his hands.

  And if he didn’t run—his employers would probably take the problem off Alberich’s hands a little faster.

  He collected Kantor and the two of them made their way up to the Collegium—Alberich feeling the effects of the truncheon blows that had connected with him, and Kantor brooding. Alberich didn’t press him as to the subject of his brooding; whatever it was, Kantor would talk about it when the Companion was good and ready and not one moment before.

  And in fact, as Alberich hung up his saddle, Kantor finally spoke. :I hope this doesn’t mean it’s all starting again.:

  Alberich sighed. :My good friend—I hope this doesn’t mean it never finished.:

  2

  “WHY is it always me?” Myste asked, as Alberich made his second trip of the night down into Haven, this time with her in tow. The scholarly Herald pushed her lenses up on her nose and shivered beneath her cloak.

  “Because you have the strongest Truth-sensing ability in the Collegium,” Alberich said. “And because the two of us can speak in Karsite. If our naughty boy doesn’t understand Karsite, he won’t know what we’re talking about, and it will make him nervous, and if he does, you’ll know it, and we’ll have him where we want him.”

  “Bloody hell,” she said with resignation, and pulled the cloak tighter around herself. She hated cold, she hated winter, and she hated being dragged out of her study, and he knew all of that. He also knew that unless someone dragged her out of her study periodically, she would hibernate there for as long as the cold lasted. Which was, so far as he was concerned, just as valid a reason for making her his assistant in this case.

  The city jail was not bad as such places went. It was clean, insofar as you could keep any place clean considering the standards of hygiene of the inhabitants. It smelled of unwashed bodies, with a ghost of urine and vomit, for no matter how many times the cells were cleaned, someone was always fouling them again. It did not smell of blood. If anyone was so badly injured as all that, they went under guard to a separate set of cells that had a Healer in attendance. And it went without saying that no one here—at least, among the jailers—spilled the blood of the prisoners.

  Of course, the conditions were spartan and crowded, and no prison was a good place. But compared with those jails that Alberich had seen in Karse—not to mention
the ones that were rumored to exist. . . .

  Myste grimaced as they rode in at the stable, and grimaced again as they walked in through the front door. Alberich was wearing his Whites—no one looked at a Herald’s face, they only saw his Whites. The prisoner would see the Whites and not even think that the man inside the white uniform might be the madman that had attacked him.

  They were taken to a little room, windowless, lit by a single lantern, that held a single chair. The chair was for the prisoner, whose legs would be tethered to it; Myste and Alberich would be free, so that they could evade any attacks he might try.

  The prisoner was brought in and his legs shackled to the legs of the chair. He was as pale as a snowdrift when he saw who was there to speak with him.

  Slowly, and carefully, Alberich outlined exactly what he had observed, while the man listened, jaw clenched, eyes staring straight ahead. “So,” Alberich finished. “What have you to say for yourself?”

  He half expected the man to flatly deny everything, but after a long, tense silence, he spoke.

  “I cannot tell you what you want to know.”

  A candlemark later, Alberich and Myste left the jail. There was a frown of frustration on Herald Myste’s round face.

  Alberich didn’t blame her. The man certainly had been paying people to try to foment discontent against the Queen—quite a few of them, in fact, but with, by his own admission, limited success. And he had been doing so on the orders, and with the money, of someone else.

  The only problem was, he didn’t know this “someone else.” He had never even seen the man’s face.

  Myste had not even needed to cast the Truth Spell to force the truth out of the man; her own innate Truth-sensing Gift had told her he was telling them everything he knew. He himself had a grudge against the Crown in general, and Selenay in particular, for when she had served her internship in the City Courts of law with Herald Mirilin, she had made a ruling against him. So there was his personal motive—