Valdemar 06 - [Exile 02] - Exile’s Valor (19 page)

If ever his young nobleman was going to appear, it would be here. But not, Alberich thought, among those nearest to the Queen.

And in fact, the evening was half over before he caught a glimpse of the young man. It was only a glimpse, too—too quick to be certain, much less pass the sight along to Kantor. But Alberich was good at remembering details, and the young man was wearing a hat that was reasonably identifiable. Alberich kept his eye on that hat, watching as it swam through the crowd, as it swayed and bent in a dance, as it huddled with several more hats off to one side—

And, for one horrible moment, he thought it was going to duck out of the entrance.

But it hesitated, then bowed to an elegant plume. It joined with the plume—escorting it?—and the pair moved along the side of the dancing-floor until, at last, they moved out onto it.

As luck would have it, it was a round-dance, and eventually the figures brought the hat, and its owner, into Alberich's line-of-sight.

He felt Kantor absorb the young man's image through his own eyes; felt Kantor “absent” himself for a moment.

Then Kantor “returned.”

:Devlin Gereton, third son of Lord Stevel Gereton,:
Kantor reported.
:Talamir will tell you what he knows about the young man, and his family, later. It isn't much; it's an old family, but not particularly prosperous, and they haven't done much to draw attention to themselves or distinguish themselves. There's only one thing; there's no reason why this young man should be so interested in common plays or actors. His eldest brother's a sound amateur poet, and the only thing that Devlin is known br is that he has a good ear for poetry and letters and is considered a budding expert in drama.:

Well. Wasn't that interesting.

Wasn't that very interesting indeed. . . .

S
ELENAY woke just before dawn; if she had had any dreams, she couldn't remember them.

Yesterday everything had gone perfectly. With one exception. One glaring, aching exception.

Her father hadn't been there.

A weight of crushing depression settled over her.

She opened her eyes and lay quietly in her bed as thin, gray light crept in through the cracks in her curtains. She closed her eyes again, and hot tears spilled from beneath her lids and down her temples to soak into her hair.

Her throat closed, and a cold, hard lump formed in it. Selenay tried to fight back the sobs, but one escaped anyway, and she turned over quickly and muffled her sobbing in her pillows. She didn't want to wake her attendants, or alert the servants on the other side of the door. She didn't want anyone to know she was crying.

They wouldn't understand. They would think that she should be thrilled, not choked with tears. After all, her Festival had been a triumph, and people would talk about it for years. The Court had loved it. The common folk had adored it. Even the Seneschal and Keeper of the Treasury had been happy, for she had been very frugal, extracting the maximum benefit from every coin she'd spent, either overseeing the preparations herself, or sending people with stern demeanor and sharp eyes to do so for her. The Feast for the common folk had been a wild success, going on long into the night as folk brought or bought food of their own to extend that supplied by the Crown.

As for the entertainments for her Court, their Feast and dancing had been as much of a success, and for once, she'd had nothing but perfect dancing partners. Alberich had been right; having Heralds and Bards (and even a few Healers) alternate with her young nobles had made all the difference. Her gown—the first time she'd been out of mourning—had made her look beautiful; she hadn't needed dubious compliments to tell her so, for her mirror and the frank gazes of the Bards and Heralds had made that clear enough.

But Sendar hadn't been there, and it might just as well have been a total failure because of that. She'd tried to lose herself in the preparations, then to immerse herself in the happiness of other people, and she'd actually forgotten for a little—just a little. She'd smiled and even laughed, and when she'd come back here to her rooms, she'd been so tired she'd fallen straight asleep.

But she'd known, the moment that she awakened, that one day, one week, hadn't changed anything, hadn't filled the emptiness, hadn't given her back the part of herself that was gone.

Her father would have loved this. He'd have reveled in her triumph. He would have had so many ideas for the Festival, so many more than she had—

The brief respite she'd had was just that—a moment of forgetfulness, nothing more. And now, with nothing but day after day of gray sameness stretching ahead of her, she missed him so much she thought she was going to break beneath the weight of grief.

So she sobbed into her pillow, inconsolable. How
could
anyone console her for this? She and her father should have had years and years together; she should have had him to cast stern eyes over would-be suitors, to advise her how to deal with the Council, to scold her for working too hard and send her to read a book or ride. And if she ever married—he should have been there to see it, to see his grandchildren, to spoil them as he'd often threatened to do. All of that was gone, taken from her before it ever had a chance to happen.

She didn't want anyone to hear her crying; they wouldn't understand. They'd tell her stupid things—that it had been long enough, that she needed to “pull herself together,” that it was “time to move on.”

How could they know? How many of
them
had a beloved father cut down in front of their eyes? How many of
them
were facing what she faced, the rest of her life without the man who had been father
and
mother to her, and friend, and counselor? None of them understood. None of them could. None of them wanted to. What they wanted, was for her to be something else, some biddable creature they called “Selenay” that had no feelings but the shallowest, and no thoughts of her own.
Her
feelings were an inconvenient obstacle to that.

Or worse than telling her to “get over this,” they'd spew some kind of platitude about how he was surely watching her from somewhere and was proud of her, but would be unhappy that she was still mourning for him. How could they know? How could anyone know?

It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. Sendar had been
good;
he'd given up so much, he'd always done so much for others—it wasn't
fair!
She'd always thought that when you did good, good came to you. What kind of a cruel god would do this to her, and to him?

For that matter, she wasn't entirely certain that there
were
any gods out there, not after this. And if there weren't any gods, then that meant that when you
died,
you just died, and her father wasn't “out there,” looking after her. He was just gone, and all those platitudes were nothing but empty lies. . . .

Damn them. Damn them all, and their needs, and their platitudes, and their plans. They would never,
could
never, understand. She'd lost her best friend as well as her father; she had been cheated out of
years
of things that they all took for granted.

How could she possibly ever “get over” that? There would be a great, gaping wound in her for the rest of her life that would never be properly filled!

Except with tears, the tears that never seemed to heal anything inside her.

She had tried, these past moons at least, to do things that would keep her moving, keep her busy, keep her too concentrated on things outside herself to think. For a while, the sheer desperation of having to learn how to rule, of having to outwit her Council when they tried discreetly to shunt her aside or maneuver her into something she didn't want to do had filled that need to keep moving. She would work and plan and learn until she fell asleep, exhausted, and wake early to work again—and that had helped, at least, to keep things at bay. Keep moving, keep busy, keep her mind full, keep it all at a distance. Then, just as the urgency of all that began to ease, there'd been the preparations for the Festival to fill the silences, to force her to work, think, and not remember.

But now—now she had awakened this morning, knowing there was nothing, nothing between her and that vast, aching void that used to be filled with her father's presence.

And anyone who found her crying like this would just never understand. They'd wonder why, after yesterday, she could be unhappy. Even if she tried to explain, they'd stare at her without understanding, then tell her that it was time she moved on, that it was time to leave her grief behind her. As if she could!

:Of course you won't,:
Caryo said, very, very quietly.
:And you shouldn't. That would be wrong. How can you leave it behind you when it's a part of you?:

The feeling that Caryo had somehow put comforting arms around her only made her sob harder. But Caryo didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with that.

:They keep telling me stupid things like “Time will heal it—”:
she said, around the sobs that shook her entire body.

There was an ache in Caryo's mind-voice that matched the aching of her heart.
:Time doesn't. All that Time does is make it more distant, put more space between you and what happened. It doesn't heal anything. I don't know how or what does the healing, but it isn't Time.:

:Oh, Caryo, I miss him so much!:
she cried.

Somehow, that was exactly the right thing for Selenay to hear; it let loose another torrent of weeping, but this time, it seemed as if she was weeping herself out, until at last she lay there, curled in her bed, her nose stuffed and her eyes sore, her pillow soggy—

She sniffed hard and obeyed without thinking, and closed her aching eyes. She was exhausted now, limp with crying, and if the ache in her heart didn't hurt any less, at least she was too tired to cry any more.

:If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world,:
Caryo sighed.
:The best thing that I can tell you is that there is nothing that could have happened that would have allowed you to follow him. And there was not one scrap, one hint of knowledge or even ForeSight that any of us had that would have let us guess what he was going to do, or enabled us to prevent it. If there was ever a moment in history where a man took his own fate in his own two hands, that was it.:

:Then I wish I could go back—:
But there was no use in pursuing that line of thought. She couldn't. No one, not even in the tales of before the Founding, had ever said anything about being able to go back into the past and change things.

:I don't want to get up, Caryo.:
And she didn't. She didn't want to move. She didn't want to leave her bed. Ever. The weight of depression pressed down on her and filled her with lethargy. She wanted to close her eyes, and fall into oblivion, and never come out again. She didn't exactly want to die—but if only there was a way to
not live
—

And Caryo didn't say any of the stupid things that other people might, about how she “had” to live for Valdemar, or how she was being hysterical, or overreacting.
:If you don't get up, I'll miss our morning ride,:
she said instead, wistfully, as if she was deliberately misunderstanding the “I don't want to get up” as merely meaning “this morning,” and not “forever.” Maybe she was.

But—the thought of the morning ride, another of those times when she could forget, for a little, as Caryo moved into a gallop, and she could lean over that warm, white neck and let the movement and the rush of air and the rhythm all lull her into a kind of trance, that same state of
not being
that she was just longing for—that broke through the lethargy. It was hard to tell why, but it did; it made her decide that she
had
to get up, to keep moving, to try for another candlemark, another day. And as she forced her legs out from under the covers, it occurred to her that as long as she just kept moving, even if she didn't find any peace or escape in movement, she might at least find a little more distraction.

Distraction. She had to distract anyone from knowing she'd been crying, or they'd want to know why, and then there would be all that stupid nonsense that she didn't want to hear.

She slipped out of bed and went to the table where a basin and pitcher waited; she splashed some of the cold water into the basin, and bathed her face until she thought that most of the signs of her tears were gone. Her eyes were probably still red, but with luck, no one would remark on it. After all, with all of the snow glare out there yesterday, probably they'd think it was that. If anyone said anything, she'd claim it was snow glare. And maybe she could claim a headache, too, and cut the Council session short.

She blew her nose, and went back to her bed, and crawled back into it, feeling as exhausted as if she hadn't slept at all.

:Just close your eyes,:
Caryo advised.
:They'll expect you to sleep late after last night. You realty did look lovely, you know. All of the young Heralds, at least, were saying so. I can't speak for the Bards; they don't have Companions to gossip about them, but the Heralds were very taken with how you looked.:

:They were?:
That was—if not comforting, at least it was satisfying. Nice to know that she did look as good as she had thought.

Well, that penetrated the lethargic depression, a bit.
:Alberich? Surely not.:
And anyway, it was probably only that he disliked Orthallen. Well, apparently the feeling was mutual, and there wasn't anything she could do about that. When two men decided to take a dislike to one another, there really wasn't anything to be done about it. It was like trying to get a pair of dominant dogs to be friends; no matter what you did, each of them was going to be certain that
he
should be head of the pack, and all you could do was to try and keep them separate as much as possible. Orthallen was one of the few people who
didn't
say anything stupid about her father. He didn't even say that she ought to be over her grief by now, and that made him one of the few people she felt comfortable being around, even if he did tend to treat her as “little Selenay” instead of the Queen.