Exile's Valor v(-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  The scrape of a stool signaled someone’s departure, and it turned out to be the stranger. He eased his way past Alberich, being exceptionally careful not to jar him. Alberich ignored him entirely, though he would very much have liked to get a good look at him. The best Alberich could manage was a quick glance at the man’s profile. It looked faintly familiar, in the way that someone looked if seen once or twice. It could be anybody Alberich had seen around here. Alberich filed the face in the back of his mind.

  Now Norris was alone—but not for long.

  There was a bit of a commotion at the door, the sound of high, shrill voices, and a flash of bright color. Alberich heard Norris chuckle under his breath, and buried his nose even further in the book.

  But Norris was the one who got up, and sauntered over to the trio of women who were clearly what Alberich’s mother had been mistaken for.

  Now, Alberich knew he was no expert when it came to women’s dress, especially not here in Valdemar, but there were some commonalities among the ladies of negotiable virtue everywhere, and this lot showed every one of the sartorial signs. There were flounces and ribbons and curls and painted cheeks and lips, all done to excess. Colors were bright (including hair color, for all three sported hair of colors not normally found in nature), there was a great deal of cleavage, a great deal of bare arm and shoulder, and even a scandalous amount of leg showing. Jewelry was positioned the way a general arranged his best troops, with the intent of directing the enemy’s sight to a particular object.

  “Well, my lovelies,” Norris said genially, as they clustered around him like gaudy butterflies around a tall flower. “What brings you here?”

  By this time, Norris had the attention of everyone in the room, and very well knew it. He was playing for the crowd, and the crowd sensed it was going to get a free show—short, maybe, but nonetheless, free.

  “You,” said the boldest, flirting acid-yellow hair at him. “We’ve a bet on that you can’t take all three of us at once.”

  The entire room howled with laughter, in which Norris joined, throwing back his head and roaring. “In that case,” he shouted, and Alberich at last looked up with an affronted expression on his face, “You’re doomed to lose, my bawd!”

  “In that case,” cried the second of the trio, with hair the same blue-black as a raven’s wing, boldly twining herself around him, “we win!”

  In the barrage of laughter that followed that sally, Norris seized the bold one, picked her up in his arms, and trailing the other two, went straight up the stairs to his room.

  Now it was entirely possible that all that had been a ruse to cover Norris’ exit through a window, but Alberich didn’t think so. For one thing, that new corner room would be cursed difficult to get out of without being seen. For another, Norris had looked as surprised as anyone else with the whores’ replies. So there it was. He might as well go home, since not even Norris could—Well, it would take him the rest of the night, if he was going to make good on his boast and not lose the bet. And that was one sort of bet that a man like Norris could not bear to lose.

  He shut his book and went over to “his” room. He took off his tunic and turned it inside-out; now it was brown moleskin. He stuffed the hat in the satchel of books and papers. Now he looked like a well-off working man, probably enjoying a night out. He saturated a rag with sendal oil and used it to take off his “wrinkles,” then doused his head in the basin to wash his hair clean of the streaks of gray he had painted in. He rumpled up the bed, making sure it looked slept in, and left other signs of recent occupation. And when he was certain that no one was watching, he went out the window. The room was already paid for. No one would raise a hue and cry, finding it empty in the morning. He had told them that he expected to be away by first light. They’d simply assume he had been as good as his word.

  Still, he did have one thing; that rather sordid business about the unknown young woman. There might be something in that worth investigating later.

  I suppose I can get some sort of list of wealthy young women who have full rights to their fortunes somewhere, he reflected. And whichever one posts the banns in the next moon or so would probably be the one I’m looking for.

  He was so involved in his own thoughts that he actually wasn’t even thinking about his Companion—until Kantor himself startled him.

  :Great good gods!: exclaimed Kantor in his mind, surprising him so much that he stumbled over his own two feet. He recovered without falling, but he was thoroughly irritated when he answered back.

  :What?: he snapped.

  :The masquerade!: Kantor exclaimed. :Selenay—at the masquerade—she just picked Karathanelan in front of everyone at the masquerade!:

  :Picked him for what?: Alberich began with even more irritation, and then, of course, it dawned on him. Kantor would hardly be this shocked over the young Queen choosing a dancing partner. :She chose the Prince of Rethwellan as her Consort? But—: Now he was bewildered a little, by all that he did not know about Valdemar. :Can she do that? Just pick someone like that?:

  :She can, and she has,: was Kantor’s reply. :We had better get back up the hill and quickly. Every Herald in Haven is going to want to say something about this.:

  Since Alberich was already moving as fast as he could without being obvious, he saved his breath for running. Which he did when he got into the alleys where no one was there to see him. It seemed to take forever before he was safely in his little room at the back of the Bell’s stables, though he knew rationally that he’d made good time.

  In a remarkably short period of time, Alberich was back in his gray leathers, and they were cantering through the streets, heading for the Collegium.

  :What happened, exactly?: Alberich asked, moving easily with Kantor’s gait, and keeping a sharp eye out for unwary pedestrians.

  Kantor told him.

  :Didn’t Caryo guess what was going to happen?: he demanded. :Why didn’t she warn the rest of us? We could have gone to more pains to investigate him!:

  :I don’t know,: Kantor said, mirroring Alberich’s irritation. :Maybe she thought it would all blow over. This shocked everyone; no one guessed Selenay would do this. I suppose she didn’t even confide in her own Companion.:

  He kept his thoughts on that subject to himself. All right, granted he wasn’t the most competent when it came to matters of the heart and particularly of romance, but there were some things that were obvious. He hadn’t set eyes on this Prince himself, but he’d heard from plenty of people that the boy was absurdly good-looking. When you took a young woman like Selenay, who surely cherished her own dreams of romance even though she knew very well she was unlikely to fulfill them—and you presented her with a handsome young man of the proper birth and with all of the advantages that a foreign minister could ask for—well, what did you expect to happen? The only reason that he, Alberich, had been blind-sided was because the young man himself had given no outward signs—that Alberich knew of—that he was interested in a marriage alliance with Selenay and Valdemar.

  Clearly both he and Selenay had played these cards very close to the chest, if even Caryo had thought it would all blow over.

  :So what does anyone know about this prince?: he demanded.

  The way cleared; they were in among the manors of the highborn now. And the highborn were all still at the masquerade, so the way was clear. Kantor broke into a gallop.

  :I don’t know anything more than you do,: Kantor replied. :But you’ll shortly find out.:

  Alberich cut his questions short. But behind his silence, they were piling up, like stones before an avalanche.

  ***

  “—and that is all any of us know,” Myste concluded. Since she was the Chronicler, she had elected to be the one to collect all of the information there was about the Prince, and all of the information there was concerning the Prince and concerning the reaction this unique declaration was going to have on the Council.

  Myste sat down on a bale of hay. They were meeting in the st
ables—the Companions’ stables. The building had the advantage of being big enough to hold all of them, and away from prying eyes and eavesdropping ears.

  No one seemed particularly ready to break the silence that followed Myste’s words. Finally, someone coughed.

  “And Caryo doesn’t like him, but can’t say why. . . .” said the Herald who taught some of the law classes. “I am reluctant to place too much weight on this. Not even all of the Companions get along all the time; there are Companions that dislike anyone who isn’t a Herald, including their Chosen’s own relatives. I would even hate to speculate.”

  “It could just be his natural arrogance that gets her back up,” Talamir suggested. “The boy is arrogant. It’s to be expected, in someone with that much rank and privilege, who is also that confoundedly good-looking.”

  “It could be jealousy,” said someone else, in what sounded like the voice of experience. “Just as Peled said. We’re not perfect, and neither are they. I know the first time I flirted with an outsider, my Jandal got as jealous as anything.”

  Someone sighed. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to reason with her about it—”

  “Not if you don’t want her to call for a priest and wed the boy on the spot,” Keren said flatly. “For those of you who don’t happen to have experience with first love—”

  “Infatuation, Keren, surely!” exclaimed someone else.

  “First love, first infatuation, it doesn’t matter because it’s a strong emotion either way,” Keren snapped back. “She’s young, she just lost her father, and we can guess that he’s been playing all the parts she needs right now in a single package—part comforter, part protector, part lover. And, may I add, her Council has been putting pressure on her to make some kind of marriage. With all of that going on, not only won’t she hear anything bad about the boy, she’ll turn on the one who tries to criticize him. I’ve seen that, time and time again, in my village. The fastest way to get a girl to marry someone is to tell her you don’t want her to.”

  She nodded with an air of finality. Alberich saw her looking at him, and just shrugged. If anyone thought he had any insights on what would work with Selenay, they were going to be sadly disappointed.

  “So what are we going to do?” asked someone in a small voice that sounded very bewildered in the darkness.

  Now Talamir cleared his throat—and rose to the occasion.

  “We will support her, and her choice,” he said firmly. “No matter how hasty or ill-thought we believe it to be. Think! The worst, the very worst, he can do is to make her unhappy—at which point, since Valdemar law supports divorcement, he may well find himself packed back to Rethwellan with his tail between his legs!”

  There were some chuckles at that. Weak, but laughter, nonetheless. And at least in Alberich’s case, a sigh of profound relief. This was the old Talamir, seeing the larger picture and finding the cleanest path through what could turn out to be a quagmire.

  “The best that he can do is to make her happy, and if he does that, even if we still do not care for him, who are we to object?” Talamir went on, the shadows cast by the lantern beside him making him look as ancient as a Grove oak. “Remember, unless he is Chosen by a Companion and becomes a Herald, he will never be more than the Queen’s Consort, who will have only as much power, or as little, as she grants him—and all of it behind the throne.” Talamir looked around, managing to meet the eyes of every Herald there. “So let us determine to put a good face on things,” he continued. “Offer her our congratulations, singly, and as a group. Support her choice. Make sure that she knows that we are there, as we always have been, for Herald Selenay as well as the Queen.”

  And that seemed to be about all that anyone could offer.

  Alberich went back to the salle, feeling very uneasy. He hoped that would be enough.

  He was afraid that it wouldn’t be.

  But the game had been played out before any of them even knew it was in play at all. Now they could only ride along with it, and wait.

  16

  The game was played. . . .

  Something about that phrase nagged Alberich as he fell into an uneasy sleep, but it wasn’t until he woke the next morning that he realized where he had heard it last.

  And it was only after the recollection jolted him that he realized that there might be a connection between where he had heard it first, and Selenay.

  He had the flash of memory as he moved into wakefulness, and it brought him alert all at once, his mind moving from a standing start into a full gallop.

  The game is about to play—It had been that stranger talking to Norris last night. He could hear the voice clearly in his mind. It had been a well-educated voice, and if there was one thing that it was hard for the well-educated to do, it was to counterfeit being a member of a lower class than their own.

  The similarity of phrases was what had given him that shock to the system. What if the girl they had been talking about, the one Alberich had assumed was simply wealthy and plain, had actually been Selenay? And that the young man being tutored in seduction had been the Prince of Rethwellan?

  It fit. It certainly fit. Untried, sheltered, accustomed to flattery but not to the kind of practiced seducer Norris was, she would be easy prey for a man of Norris’ experience—or one coached by him.

  And Selenay, alone in all of the Court, was the only young woman who would have been sheltered from such men. There was the irony; if she had spent any time among her peers, she would have seen attractive young men use their looks in such an unattractive way—and young women do the same.

  Or—perhaps not. She had been the Heir, and even in the Court, that might have protected her.

  Odd as it might seem, the cads in Court circles saved their wiles for two sorts of women—the lower-class girls that they seduced and abandoned, and the unattractive, wealthy ones they seduced and wedded and abandoned on their estates in the country, while they came back to Court to enjoy themselves unencumbered by the inconvenient wife. They wouldn’t have dared to use those ploys on Selenay.

  Still, she had been sheltered in another way. From the time she had been Chosen, she had been at the Collegium, and not the Court. She never saw the intrigues among her peers, because she was among another set of “peers” for whom intrigue was simply out of the question. Even when the occasion had called for it, she hadn’t spend much time socially in Court circles, she spent her social time among Heralds. Or at least, she had until she’d become Queen.

  But there should have been one creature above all who would have—or should have—realized what was happening before this. And even if she hadn’t been able to stop it, she should have been able to warn the rest of them!

  :Kantor,: he called.

  :I follow you,: his Companion replied. :I hope you don’t mind; you jarred me awake and I just followed your thought.:

  Once he would have been angry; not now. Now, in fact, he was grateful. Kantor had become the perfect partner, in a way; the shield-brother, the man you could depend on to fall in at your side and match you, move for move.

  :That’s the way it’s supposed to work.:

  Well, he could see that. Clearly, it didn’t always.

  :You’re thinking Selenay and Caryo.: There was a moment of hesitation. :You can’t understand why Caryo didn’t nip this in the bud, especially since she doesn’t much like Prince Karath. And why she didn’t realize how far things had gotten.:

  :Exactly,: Alberich replied.

  :You and I are—exceedingly compatible now. We are about the same age, with similar experience. Selenay and Caryo—aren’t. I mean, they’re compatible, but their experiences are vastly different.:

  Alberich blinked in surprise. That hadn’t occurred to him as a possibility.

  :Think of Caryo as a maiden aunt, or a virginal, scholarly sister who is much, much older than Selenay. She’s—well, to be honest, she’s rather sexless. Kindhearted and stalwart, protective absolutely, ready to comfort when Selenay is hurt
or angry, but as thick as two short planks when it comes to romance and especially sex.:

  Oh. . . . This was beginning to make him feel a little ill.

  :Caryo is the sort of person whose shoulder you cry on when your father dies, the wise and clever person you could ask for help with political and administrative problems. Not the person you go to when you’re mooncalfing over a boy. And as for sexual attraction—you’d be horribly embarrassed even to hint that you had such a thing to her, because she would be horribly embarrassed if you brought it up.:

  Now, suddenly, it all made sense. Terrible sense.

  At least, insofar as he understood young women, and insofar as Caryo being in the dark about all this right along with everyone else. :Dear God. . . : he replied, aghast. :We’ve all been blindsided.: