Exile's Valor

“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.

“He’s come up with another one today,” Talamir said, lowering himself wearily down into a chair by the hearth. He looked ancient tonight, and very transparent; Alberich wondered what he had been doing to wear himself so thin.

He wants to be gone, came the unbidden thought. He’s faced with things he can’t do anything about, and he just wants to be gone—from problems, from life. And he wants it with all of his heart.

He might want it—but he wasn’t pursuing it, at least. Duty held him here at Selenay’s side, however poorly suited he thought himself to the task.

At that moment, Alberich pitied the Queen’s Own.

“This time, what?” Alberich asked, knowing that the “he” could only be the Prince, and that the “another one” was yet another ploy to pressure Selenay into somehow getting him a crown.

“That she’s shaming him in front of his family—or so he says,” Talamir said wearily. “According to him, that she hasn’t made him King means that she thinks he is unworthy of a crown, and now he says that this is why his own brother has rejected him and kept him from his father’s side when the King was dying.”

“Ah. So now he attempts guilt?” Alberich replied.

“I would guess,” said Talamir, and shook his head. “At least she came to me with this, looking for reassurance. And I planted another seed.”

“Perhaps you can use the papers soon?” Alberich hazarded. They finally had a translation of them; it took long enough to break the code. When they had, as Alberich had suspected, they proved to be instructions on what to do and say to Selenay to win her, with some very intimate details. Some were things that Alberich blinked at; things that one would have thought were the sort of confession that Selenay would not have given to anyone— girlish daydreams, actually, about the sort of man she was looking for, and the loneliness of being who she was, the despair that she would never have the kind of marriage her father had enjoyed.

Where had all of that come from? Even Talamir had been surprised at the bitterness and anguish of some of it.

But maybe Selenay had been pouring her woes into the ears of one of her servants. Alberich would have thought they were trustworthy, and probably they were, but he supposed there was no reason why they shouldn’t tell others what Selenay had told them.

Some of what had been written were intimate glimpses into Selenay personally, and what to say to her to play to her sympathies, but others—well, Alberich had found himself blushing at the step-by-step instructions for seduction; they did not merely border on the pornographic, they were pornographic. And Alberich was no longer surprised that Norris was so popular with the ladies, nor that Selenay was so deeply infatuated with the Prince. How could she not be, if the Prince was following these instructions, meant to make Selenay believe that here, past all her hopes, was not only her soulmate but a lover who could guarantee the satisfaction of a female partner, closely and with all his attention? Part of him wanted to burn the wretched papers, but they were useful, very useful. If ever Selenay’s attachment began to fade, at the right moment, showing her these things could turn her fading infatuation to distaste. Only she could know how closely the Prince followed his “scripts”—but the more closely he had, the more obvious it would be that he was following a script, and that there never had been any real feeling behind his act.

“Not until after the child is born,” Talamir sighed. “Crathach says that he doesn’t want any more stress on her right now; between matters of state and the Prince’s continuous pressure, she’s got more than enough on her. He’s playing the ’bereft orphan’ very convincingly, and of all of the acts he could contrive, that’s the one that will make her excuse him nearly anything.”