Valdemar 06 - [Exile 02] - Exile’s Valor (49 page)

“Idiot?” the Prince hissed. “I think not—”

“Exactly,” Norris interrupted. “You
don't
think. If you did, you would realize that you are expendable, fellow-my-lad.”

The Prince started, and looked at Norris as if he thought the actor had run mad.

Norris wagged a finger at him. “Turnabout is fair play. Sauce for the goose will serve for the gander. If your bride has done her dynastic duty by getting with child so quickly,
you
have done your work at stud, and she doesn't
need
you anymore. Didn't that ever occur to you over the past few days, while you've been doing your best to make her hate you?”

Alberich couldn't see the Prince's face, but he sounded smug. “She cannot be rid of me. I would not agree to the dissolution of the marriage.”

“Which just shows how much of a fool you are,” Norris countered flatly. “Certainly, a marriage can't be dissolved without the consent of both parties—
if you were an ordinary couple.
But you aren't, you are in a foreign land, and the law can be whatever she gets the Council to agree to. And if you should be so indiscreet as to do something treasonable, she wouldn't even have to dissolve the marriage. She could simply arrange for the Council to make her a widow.” Norris examined his nails critically. “They hang traitors to the Crown in Valdemar, you know.”

“She—couldn't!” the Prince gasped, as if it hadn't occurred to him.

“She could,” Norris replied matter-of-factly. “And you're skirting perilous close to it, let me tell you; if your lovely bride had chosen, your little folly in the matter of a mount would have had you facing a High Court already. In fact, the only reasons you haven't been charged with treason already are because our patron is protecting you, and because our patron is fairly certain that your wife is still weeping over your misbehaving and hasn't yet gone from tears to anger. Which is why our patron brought me here. Because you mean nothing to me, I owe you nothing, you can do nothing to me, and I can and will tell you what no one else around you would dare.” He leaned forward and shoved his index finger at the Prince. “Now, you listen to this; you'd better believe it, and you'd better act on it. Our patron's patience is not inexhaustible, and he won't continue to support and protect you while you run about like a tom-cat. You're wasting those very expensive lessons of mine; you can be replaced, and you
will
be, once your wife decides that she's going to stop crying herself to sleep in an empty bed and start doing something about the situation. You might survive the experience, but I'd bet not; our patron has enemies of his own, and they'd be perfectly happy to bring you down and replace you with one of their own choices. And he won't go down to save
your
worthless hide.”

Alberich “snored” gently, and wondered just who the “mutual patron” was. More than that, what did this mysterious entity expect to get out of his patronage of Karathanelan? If he could “protect” the Prince, surely he could get whatever he wanted for himself.

The Prince was silent for a long moment. “I don't like this. How do I know that this is true?” he said at last.

“I don't care what you think about it,” Norris replied impatiently. “And I don't have to prove anything to you. I already have what I wanted out of the bargain, and I don't particularly care whether or not you believe me.
You
are wasting
my
time, not the other way around. Time to wake up and deal with the mess you've made, lad, before you find yourself neck-deep and no way to get out.”

Norris' very indifference seemed to work as a powerful argument with the Prince. “What do I do?” he asked at last, grudgingly.

Norris snorted. “Do I have to draw you a map?” But when the Prince looked at him blankly, he sighed. “Apparently I do. All right then, the first thing you do is go apologize to your wife for whatever you said to her and everything you've done since you quarreled with her. Groveling to her, if need be, until you get her forgiveness.”

“I will never—” the Prince began hotly.

“You will if you want to keep your head on your neck,” Norris hissed. “And once you've groveled enough, you tell her that now that you've come to your senses and have looked back on your unspeakable conduct these past several days, you realized tonight how unsatisfactory all these other women you've been bedding are, compared to her.”

The Prince sniggered. Norris shrugged. “Of course that's ridiculous, but that's what she wants to hear, and believe me, it is the
only
thing you could say that will make her forgive you for sleeping with anyone else. Then you will have to go
right
back to your first lesson with her, and woo her all over again. Only it will be a little easier this time, because she knows what you can do in bed, and you won't be handicapped by having to hold back with her to save her virtue. Remember what I taught you, and everything our patron managed to find out.
Use
that. Make her feel that you are the only person in the whole world who could possibly understand her. I wrote you the scripts; drag them out again.”

The Prince seemed to think it over, and finally said, grudgingly. “If this is what our patron wants. . . .”

“Hang our patron. This is the only thing that will keep you out of a dungeon cell,” Norris said bluntly, as Alberich mentally cursed. If only he could have counted on the Prince's arrogance to push things and keep pushing them, until Selenay was ready to be rid of him!

Well, it looked as if that was a vain hope.

“Very well.” The Prince got up, but did not offer his hand to Norris. “You and our patron have been right in the past. I must assume that you are right, now. Fare you well.”

“Right,” Norris replied, waving him away indolently. “Just see that you remember what I've told you, the next time you're tempted to assert yourself.”

Alberich continued to “doze” until the Prince was inside the door to one of the private parlors, and Norris was surrounded again by his bevy of beauties. Then, with a “start,” he “woke,” surveyed the room indulgently, then levered himself up out of his chair to totter away.

Part of him wanted to string up Norris as soon as the Prince had been dealt with. But part of him, which had been listening to the conversation with keen interest, had a better idea.

:I think we should hire him when this is over,:
he said, knowing that Kantor had been following everything that had transpired.

:You
what?
:
Kantor asked, incredulously. Kantor had no need to ask who “he” was.

:I think we should hire him as our agent,:
Alberich amended.
:Mind, I wouldn't tell him just who is hiring him, but he could be damned useful to us.:

:But he said himself he could be bought!:
Kantor protested—then stopped.
:And he said that once he was bought, he stayed bought. Didn't he.:

:That was exactly what he said,:
Alberich replied.
:I think he could be a valuable agent. More valuable alive and working for us, than in prison. If we could even find something to charge him with. Which I doubt.:

:Emotionally, I don't like it,:
Kantor replied unhappily.
:But logically—you're right. He's an amoral beast, but better he's been bought by us. At least then we can control him.:

:As much as such a one is ever controlled,:
Alberich finished. And sighed.
:And this assumes that his patron—whoever that is—loses interest in him. If he's the sort who stays bought, we'll never get him otherwise.:

:Good,:
Kantor said firmly.
:I'd rather we didn't. I'd rather we could have him thrown in jail.:

:Which we can't, because he hasn't done anything wrong,:
Alberich pointed out.
:All he's done that we know of is to give the Prince lessons on how to woo and win the Queen. Which is hardly illegal. And we can't even prove that he did that much, really, not to satisfy a law court. But oh, how I wish he hadn't been here tonight!:

:I know exactly what you mean,:
Kantor said glumly.

Karathanelan might have been an arrogant, self-centered beast, but apparently he was bright enough to know when he was getting good advice.

He was also phenomenally lucky.

Because the next day, the
very
next day, word came from Rethwellan that his father, the King, was dead.

Now, that might not have been thought of as luck, except that word also came from Rethwellan that the King had
already
been buried, that Karath's presence was not required at home, and that, in fact, his brother the new King, Faramentha, suggested strongly that he should remain in Valdemar at the side of his new bride and do his mourning in private.

Even while the Rethwellan Embassy was being swathed in black, Karath hurried to the Palace, and in full view of everyone as Selenay herself was hearing the news, and flung himself weeping at her feet.

Selenay canceled the rest of her audiences that day, and took him with her back to her chambers. Alberich could not know, of course,
what
the Prince told her, aside from the “script” that Norris had provided for him, but he could guess. What would appeal to Selenay more, than to have her beloved husband suddenly bereft of his own father?

Certainly he went about after that in heavy mourning, and certainly Selenay was as unshakably attentive to him as he was to her. To Alberich's disgust, he was more firmly in Selenay's good graces than he had been before, always by her side, and playing the devoted husband. Selenay spent a disturbing amount of time gazing at him or into his eyes with every sign of being firmly under his spell.

And in public, at least, he was as devoted as she could ever have wished.

In public, he was also playing the tragic figure of the mourning son and rejected brother. When a new Ambassador came from Rethwellan to replace the old one, he showed a very chilly face to the man, who was, in his turn, no better than icily polite.

Which meant nothing to Alberich, until Talamir enlightened him, one late summer evening.

“Oh, do
think
about this for a moment,” Talamir told him, with unusual impatience. “The Prince was not told of his father's death until Faramentha was firmly on the throne. And he was not recalled. What does that tell you?”

“Ah.” Alberich shook his head. “I was thinking too much of our own side of this, and not beyond our Borders. Faramentha does not trust his brother. And the Prince holds Faramentha in enmity.”

“So—?”

“So—whether or not the old King was privy to Karathanelan's plans, the new one is not, probably.”

Talamir nodded. “And unless I miss my guess,” he added shrewdly, “the Prince's grief is not all sham. Not that he is brokenhearted over being rejected by his brother, nor mourning terribly for his father—”

“If he is,” Alberich was moved to point out, “The ladies of the Horn have not noticed.”

“Precisely. But if there is one thing the Prince cares about, it's his own well-being. And with his father dead and his brother, who despises him, on the throne?”

“He has nowhere to go if he fails here—” Alberich felt cold. “I do not like this.”

“Neither,” Talamir said delicately, “do I.”

But there was not much either of them could do about it. Karath had too many good cards in his hand, and Selenay's own condition was aiding him; by summer's end, as the first leaves began to turn, Selenay was deep in work, and when she wasn't working, she was generally asleep, or at least, resting. Her pregnancy was hard on her, not so much that it was difficult, but that she was finding it exhausting, according to Crathach, who made no secret that he disapproved of her getting with child so quickly. This left ample opportunity for the Prince to comport himself as if he was a bachelor.

But he went about it so discreetly that most of the Court had no idea.

Unfortunately, one of the things that was wearing Selenay out was that he still had not given up the notion of being crowned. Even though he was not fighting with her about it, using less aggressive means to get his point across, roughly once a fortnight, he would find some other reason to bring the tired old plaint back up, or some new scheme to get around the law. This, Alberich heard from Talamir, usually when Alberich came up to the Collegium to report on whatever new information he might have gathered on his prowls in Haven. The city was quiet of late, as the season passed from summer into autumn; even the criminal element was up to no more than the usual trouble. There seemed nothing that required Alberich's intervention. Stalking Devlin to try and find the identity of the “patron” was proving to be fruitless; where Devlin went, none of Alberich's personae was welcome. As for Norris, the actor was so busy with his new theater that even
he
was beginning to look a little frayed about the edges.