Exile's Valor

kissed it, and she flushed with pleasure. He spoke very good Valdemaran, with scarcely a trace of accent.

“Then, welcome, Prince Karathanelan,” she said, tugging his hand. He took the hint and rose gracefully. “How could I be less than gracious enough to welcome you when confronted with such a gallant gentleman?”

She was trying to be queenly and dignified, but she felt her flush turning into a blush. He gave her a sidelong glance and smiled. “You are as gracious as you are beautiful, Queen Selenay,” the Prince replied. “Will you permit me to conduct you back to your ladies?”

“With pleasure,” she said. And now it was the Rethwellan Ambassador’s turn to smile.

The Prince offered his arm; she took it. The first play of the game was over, and it had been very pleasant. Selenay could hardly wait to see what the next move would be.

***

One of the most difficult things Alberich had ever done was to put that cipher out of his mind and concentrate on the rest of his duties. And yet, there was nothing he could do about the message except to guard the original. He’d sealed the panel of its hiding place shut to make certain that it wouldn’t be tampered with, and short of locking it in a strongbox and burying the strongbox under the floor of his room, he couldn’t make it any safer. So at this point, there was nothing he could do about it. No man could be an expert at all things, and it was a bit late in his life to begin studying ciphers.

Instead, he went on with his own double life. He taught his students, and drilled those Heralds and Guards who came to him for extra tutoring and practice by day. And when his work for the day was over, and everyone assumed he was resting in his own quarters, he went out into the city by night in one of his assumed personae.

There was one distinct improvement in his clandestine tasks, however, and that was that the City Guard and constabulary were back up to full strength. He no longer needed to ferret out ordinary criminals; they had their own agents for that again. In fact, he knew one or two City Guards who did such things by sight, and they knew him. If he spotted them in one of his haunts of a night, he would move on to a different spot, knowing that they were probably on the trail of something or someone, and the very best thing he could do would be to get out of their way. There was, after all, no point in spoiling someone else’s hunt, and too many hunters in one spot sometimes made the “game” shy of being around.

And he suspected that they did the same, on seeing him.

At any rate, with the Tedrel Wars over and Karse busy with its own internal problems, the market for information on Valdemar’s strengths and weaknesses had dried up somewhat. He also suspected that the market for information of interest to Valdemar was not what it had been. For now, anyway, there just was not as much trafficking in that sort of thing going on. Now the highest prices were being paid for more mundane information—usually having to do with who was in possession of what valuable goods, and how strongly a treasure was guarded, and so on. The most interesting trafficking he saw now was the manufacture of new identities, and he had the strong suspicion that the people who were buying these identities had once called themselves “Tedrels.” How they managed to get as far north as Haven he could not imagine; even he hadn’t done it without having a Companion. The journeys must have been terrifying. He was not, however, concerned. Selenay was in no danger from them; there were no Tedrel leaders for her to be taken to as hostage or as forced-bride, and he doubted that any of the men purchasing new lives for themselves wasted a moment of thought on her.

Well, as long as they stayed on the right side of the law, he’d be hanged if he turned any of them in, or the people who were helping them (for a price) either. And if they broke the law, well, he might be the one to catch them, but it was up to the Guard and constabulary to deal with it.

Information trafficking was mostly going the other way now, and even those prices were deflated. He could almost feel sorry—almost—for the fellows whose sole stock in trade was in intelligence.

On the other hand, this made two of his personae very popular fellows with those selling information about Valdemar’s neighbors, since both those personae were still buying. Though for information about Karse, he was relying on Geri and the informal network that the Sunpriests who had escaped to or been born in Valdemar had built over the years.

As a consequence, he had known well in advance of today that one of the younger Princes of Rethwellan was arriving “secretly” with the intention of paying court to the Queen. He had told Talamir, and neither of them had seen any reason to spoil the surprise by informing Selenay. “Let her have a little romance,” Talamir had opined, and his opinion was seconded by Herald Kyril. “She is sensible enough to know that whatever courting or romantic attention he pays her is only an illusion, and that he is here purely for the purpose of making an advantageous alliance. She will bear in mind, I am sure, that he would pay her the same compliments if she was stooped and squint-eyed. This will amuse her, and she has had little enough pure amusement since the Ice Festival.”

Illusion or not, romance was not in Alberich’s area of expertise, nor were the doings of princes. He would leave that to Talamir, and had said as much. His personal opinion was that the arrival of this princeling was a damned good thing for Talamir. Between the discovery of the ciphered papers and the advent of the Rethwellan Prince, Talamir was looking more centered than he had since the Coronation.

Alberich had filed that observation away for further thought, but there was one conclusion to be made from it that was obvious—Talamir needed real things to do, too, things he could get his metaphorical teeth into, things that focused him on what was going on around him. Alberich made up his mind to find more such tasks.

Now, following that actor fellow—that was something he could do.