Valdemar 06 - [Exile 02] - Exile’s Valor (47 page)

“The Palace doesn't have dungeons,” Myste said without thinking.

“I know that, and you do, but the Prince apparently does not.” Alberich shrugged. “That is not relevant. The point is, he has already sent his three ‘friends' packing. He tried to disgrace me. Keren has been warned, and is going to try to stay out of his sight.” He grimaced. “Poor Selenay.”

“Why ‘poor Selenay'?” Myste asked, surprised.

“Caryo is
her
Companion,” he reminded her. “I do not think that he will harm her physically, but there are other ways he can make her unhappy.” Many other ways, actually. He wondered how Caryo had broken the news to Selenay, for surely she would not have waited for the Prince to tell his version of the tale first.

She shrugged. “I suspect that after he hears the news, he won't be inclined to take any of his pique out on her. If he wants a validation for his masculinity, he'll surely have it.”

“The news?” He looked at her blankly. “What news?”

“She's going to have a baby, of course.” Myste
tsk
ed. “Men. I suppose you think it isn't important.”

But her words made his blood run cold, as he remembered that overheard conversation with Norris. “On the contrary,” he said. “It is very important. If what we suspect about the Prince is, in fact, true—”

Myste lost her sarcastic smugness, and went a little pale. “I'd forgotten about that. Once the baby's born, if he can't be King—”

“—there is nothing in the laws of Valdemar that say that a Regent must be a Herald,” Alberich finished grimly for her. “And even now you would find it difficult to persuade most of the members of the Council that he should not be Regent for his own child should something happen to Selenay.”

Selenay had thought she was prepared for an unpleasant time with her husband—insofar as it was possible to be prepared, after getting a shock like that from Caryo. Bless her heart, Caryo had
not
said, “I told you so,” she had only given the bald facts of the matter, and all she said in her own defense was,
:I was afraid if he managed to catch one of the youngsters, someone would have gotten seriously injured before it was over. And I admit, I wanted to put him in his place. I didn't exactly kick him, though, Selenay. There's nothing broken but his pride.:

She could scarcely countenance, not only that he had tried to force a Companion to his will, but that he had done so in the mistaken belief that he would then be a Herald and could be crowned King and co-Ruler. It was as if every lesson in Valdemaran law that he had been given had soared over his head. Hadn't he even bothered to listen a little?

Apparently, it was only to what he wanted to hear.

When Caryo first told her, she was so furious she could not even see, and had to sit down as her knees went weak. Rage and an empty stomach do not combine well.

She raged inwardly at him, nevertheless. How
dared
he lay violent hands on a Companion? How
dared
he think that such a despicable act would actually gain him the Crown? If he had come to her at that moment, she might have snatched up some old sword hanging on the wall and beaten him with the flat of it.

But as a little time passed, she regained control over her temper. Though she was still going to give him a lashing, it would be with her tongue and not a whip or a sword blade. And she had the first phrase ready on the tip of her tongue when he finally appeared.

She had thought that after such a monumental act of stupidity, Karath would have come to her contrite and looking for forgiveness. In fact, she could not imagine any other scenario.

Instead, he burst in through the door, slammed it behind him, and proceeded to shout at her, quite as if she were somehow to blame for all this, and as if this business of not being made King was somehow her fault, something she had concocted to keep him from his rightful place, and as if the debacle with Caryo had been something that she had planned to humiliate him.

And that made her furious all over again.

His ranting was like a spark in dry grass; she pounced on the first available pause for breath, and
then
she made her riposte.

“If you think I'm going to take your side in this, you are very much mistaken, Karath.
I
told you—and if I told you once about how things are here, I told you a dozen times!” Selenay shouted at the angry face of her husband. “The
Council
told you! Your own
Ambassador
told you! For the gods' sake, Karath, it was
in the marriage contract
that you signed! In
both
languages! Just how
stupid
are you to have missed it that many times?”

She knew the moment that the words left her mouth that they were the wrong thing to say, but she couldn't help it. Just how stupid
was
he? Or did he live in some fantasy world where because he wanted something, it would simply be given to him?

Well, maybe that was the way things had been back in Rethwellan, but that wasn't the way it was in Valdemar.

“Stupid enough to have wedded
you!
” he shouted back, “Such a fine bargain I have made for myself! I have wedded no power, no responsibility, and no rank but that which I was born with! And for this, I have what? A wife with neither the face nor the form to stand out in a crowd—with common tastes and common, petty morals, a little girl who thinks more of her horse than of her husband! For this bargain, I take a cold, naive, ignorant
virgin
who grasps her little power as a miser does gold, who does not even know how to properly pleasure a man!” And before she could retort, he stormed out, and before the astonished eyes of her Guards, who had no doubt heard it all, he slammed the door behind him, leaving her feeling as if he had dealt her a blow.

She was left staring at the door he slammed behind him, torn between wanting to throw herself to the ground, weeping, and wanting to strangle him.

The latter won out, but not by much, and as she paced back and forth across her sitting room, there were tears streaking her cheeks as well as anger making her clench her jaw until it ached.

Her heart ached, too; ached bitterly, for every insult he had thrown at her felt like a blow.

She managed to get some control over herself in order to put herself into the hands of her maids; tonight she took extra care with her appearance, for surely he who was so conscious of the trappings of status would not absent himself from dinner where he sat at her right hand. Common, was she? She would show him. She would make him mad to take her in his arms again, and she would, by the gods, make him
beg
for the privilege. And apologize, not only to her, but to Caryo.

But the chair at her right remained empty all evening.

She put on a good face, of course, replying lightly to Talamit's query that he was probably passing the time with the friends who had come up from Rethwellan, to whom she had given titles and property. “They are probably celebrating, now that it is official,” she said, with a false lightness. “And after all, Talamir, you can hardly expect a young man to hover over his wife every moment of the day! At some point every young man
I
have ever known, be he never so devoted, has longed for the company of his old friends!” Her laugh sounded hollow to her own ears, but Talamir made no sign that he had noticed her unhappiness. “Just because we are wedded, this does not mean that we are joined at the hip!”

“No, of course not,” Talamir agreed, and nothing more was said on the subject in her hearing.

But as the dinner wore on, she was able to think less and less clearly. By the time the sweetmeats were served,
she
would almost have been ready to ask forgiveness of
him
if it would put things back the way they had been yesterday. She kept listening, dreading that she would hear something about the debacle in Companion's Field, but evidently no one was going to talk about it where she could overhear.

Maybe that was why he wasn't here! He didn't want to have to answer any questions about what he'd done; he didn't want to have to explain himself. . . .

She felt a great surge of relief, then, and was able to talk normally, able to think of something besides wondering where he was. She was still angry at him, especially for the cruel things he had said to her, but she was ready to forgive him, so long as he asked for forgiveness.

Except that he did not appear in their quarters after dinner. Tonight she had retired to her suite as soon as dinner was over, letting her Court amuse itself for a change.

And he did not appear as the hour grew later and later; she filled the time with attending to her private correspondence, something she had neglected badly over the past fortnight or two. But her heart was not in it, and time after time, she had to throw out a letter that was ruined by tears falling on it.

He had not come when her maids arrived to help her prepare for bed, and he still had not arrived when they blew out the candles, leaving her alone in the dark in that great bed.

And when she realized that he wasn't
going
to come, the anger ran out of her.

What was wrong? How could he not understand, at least by now, how she was powerless in the face of the law? How could he not realize by now the enormity of the insult he had given Caryo? Of course he had been angry, but how could he have flung those horrible insults at her? She thought he had
understood
her, as no one had ever understood her before. Hadn't they shared all those long conversations about how miserable it was to be a child of royal birth? Hadn't he commiserated with her about it as no one else had ever done before? Hadn't he told her how he had dreamed of finding someone he could care for as well as merely marry for the sake of an alliance, and had given it up as an idle dream until he met her? How many times had he sworn that to her? How many times had he shared his dreams with her, and how many times had she discovered to her joy that they were the same as hers?

What had gone wrong? How could he have changed so? What had she done to make him turn away from her?

She had no answers for any of this, and she waited, fruitlessly, in her cold, lonely bed, until at last she cried herself to sleep.

Alberich contemplated the glass image of the SunLord—defined at the moment by the lines of leading rather than the colors of the glass—and tried to think of all of the possible paths that the Prince might take after this afternoon.

The most obvious, of course, was the most direct; wait until the baby was born, and engineer an “accident” that would kill or incapacitate Selenay. There was no law in Valdemar that the Regent had to be a Herald; as Regent, it was even possible that he would have the same power as the Monarch, just without the title.

But that was only one of a number of courses he could take—

:Chosen, the Royal Guard Kimel is coming down the path,:
Kantor warned, breaking into his train of thought.
:I can't imagine he'd be coming to see anyone but you at this time of night.:

Forewarned, Alberich got up to meet the young man as soon as he entered the salle, greeting him at the door. But it wasn't until he got to Alberich's private quarters that the Herald could see his expression, and it was both grim and troubled.

“Master Alberich,” the young man said, when he'd taken the proffered seat and been offered, and refused, any refreshment. “I overheard a conversation this evening that—that I do not much like.”

“Did you?” Alberich replied noncommittally.

The Guard nodded. “It was during the hour of dinner for the Court. I was on duty when I heard two voices raised in argument on the other side of the wall where I was standing—I happened to be in the gardens, and there was an open window right above my head.”