Exile's Valor

to meet a person’s eyes, by dropping far too many hints when he was satisfied with himself. At that point, both Talamir and Alberich had gone to work, and no secret was secure when those two were ferreting it out.

Though it occurred to her that Talamir had probably not done nearly as much work as Alberich. Talamir’s sympathy was probably at least in part with the Council. Well, give credit where it was due; he had told her in the first place.

“My marriage?” she asked, in feigned innocence. “I wasn’t aware I had been betrothed, much less that there was a marriage in view. Certainly King Sendar never said anything of the sort to me.”

“Ah, well, Your Majesty, that’s the whole point,” Gartheser managed. “You haven’t one, you see. Betrothed, that is.”

She took her time and looked carefully around the horseshoe-shaped table again, making sure to look each one of her Councilors steadily in the eyes. The silence was deafening. No one moved. “Indeed.”

“And you—that is, we thought—that is—” Gartheser couldn’t look her in the eyes anymore. He dropped his gaze and stared at his hands, and stumbled to a halt.

“We have some candidates in mind, Selenay,” Lord Orthallen took up the thread smoothly. Orthallen looked the part of the senior statesman; he had retained a fine figure, and the silver streaking in his dark blond hair in no way detracted from his handsome appearance. Women younger than Selenay threw themselves at him on a regular basis, though she had never heard so much as a whisper to indicate that he was unfaithful to his wife. “You really must marry as soon as may be, of course. A young woman cannot rule alone.”

“Indeed,” she said levelly, hiding her rage with immense care. She wanted to scream at them, then burst into tears, and nothing could be more fatal at this moment.

But the others took that lack of objection on her part as the signal that she was going to be properly malleable, and took heart from it. Only Elcarth and Talamir understood that Selenay had her own plans. Elcarth winced a little at her tone; Talamir’s lips quirked, just a trifle.

“The first, and indeed, the most eligible candidate is my nephew Rannulf,” Gartheser said brightly, “who —”

“Is not eligible at all, I’m afraid,” she interrupted smoothly, with feigned regret. “He’s related to me within the second degree, on his mother’s side, through the Lycaelis bloodline. You know well that no King or Queen of Valdemar can wed a subject who is within the third degree of blood-relationship. That is the law, my Lord, and nothing you nor I can do will change that.” She raised her eyebrows at them. “The reason is a very good one, of course. I shall be indelicate here, for there is no delicate way to say this. As my father told me often, the monarchs of Valdemar cannot afford the kinds of—difficulties—that can arise when a bloodline becomes too inbred.”

And with you and yours marrying cousins and cross-cousins with the gay abandon of people blind to consequences, that’s the reason half of your so-called “candidates” are dough-faced mouth-breathers who couldn’t count to ten without taking their shoes off, she thought viciously.

:Harsh. With justification, but harsh,: Caryo observed sardonically.

Gartheser blinked, his mouth still open, and stared at her. Finally he shut it. “Ah,” he said at last. “Oh—are you quite sure of that?”

She opened Myste’s report to the relevant page. “Rannulf’s mother is Lady Elena of Penderkeep. Lady Elena’s mother was my father’s cousin through his mother. That is within the second degree.”

“Oh—” Gartheser said weakly.

“Then there is my nephew, Kris—” said Orthallen quickly.

“Related to me within the third degree on both sides of his family, as his mother was a cousin-by-marriage of my father, and his father was a cousin-by-blood to my father,” she said briskly, already prepared for that one. “Besides being so young that there is no question of consummation for at least eight years.” She smiled dulcetly at Orthallen. “Which does rather negate the entire reason for marrying with such remarkable speed in the first place, before my year of mourning is over. Doesn’t it?”

To her great pleasure, Orthallen was left so stunned by her riposte that his handsome face wore an uncharacteristic blank look. Not that she wanted to humiliate him—she was really awfully fond of him, after all—but it gave her no end of satisfaction to make him understand, in no uncertain terms, that just because she was fond of him, she was not going to allow him to manipulate her into something she did not want to do.

And blessings upon Myste; she suspected that not even Orthallen knew about the nearness of her blood relation to his nephew. He proved it in the next moment by saying, cautiously, “I assume you have the particulars of these degrees?”

She went to the second page of Myste’s notes and gave him the genealogical details, chapter and verse, in a no-nonsense, matter-of-fact tone of voice.

“Ah,” he said. And wisely said nothing more.