Exile's Valor

Though once the weather turned and spring was well and truly in bloom, he began to wonder where the man got his energy, and whether he could manage to follow him without dropping over.

It wasn’t only that Norris was performing every evening with the full company at the inn and rehearsing new productions every afternoon—

That is, when he wasn’t performing with a reduced company at special private performances of an afternoon—

No, it was that once those evening performances were over, he scarcely had time to wipe the paint from his face and change out of his costume before he was off somewhere. Most of the time it was with a female. Alberich couldn’t call them “ladies,” though some of them had that title, even if they acted more like cats in heat. When he wasn’t with a female, he went roistering off with a gang of male friends, drinking and carousing through several taverns—and usually then ended up in a woman’s bed in some bawdy house anyway.

It was astonishing. Because then, no matter how late he’d been out, there he was again, looking alert and fresh and ready to go, no later than noon, to rehearse with the company.

“I know not how he does it,” Alberich said, as he accompanied Myste, in his guise as “her friend from the Army, the carter,” back to the Companion’s Bell where she was ostensibly staying. They had just watched Norris drink enough to make Alberich’s head reel, then take three whores up to his room. Only one thing was certain; he wouldn’t be going anywhere tonight. Thank the Sunlord. Alberich didn’t think he could have made another late night of it himself.

“Nor does anyone else,” Myste admitted. “Especially not his head for drink! That man can drink any three under the table, and I am not exaggerating, because I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And the next day, you’d never know he’d taken a drop.”

Alberich licked his lips thoughtfully. “A useful talent, for an agent.”

“Damn right it is.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, and adjusted her lenses. “What’s more—and this is a woman’s intuitive observation, so take it with whatever grains of salt you choose—I don’t see that he has anything that you could exploit as a weakness. Not even for women.”

Alberich gave her a dubious glance. “Pardon?”

“He uses them,” she elaborated, “but he has no use for them. I think, they’re like food for him—he satisfies his appetite, and he does have a hearty appetite, but once he’s through, he pays no more attention to them than he would to the shepherd’s pie he just finished eating. He pushes away the leftovers, and wants them cleared away. I’ve watched him with his women, remember. Quite a lot more than he thinks I have, actually. I have yet to see him show any emotional attachment to anyone, woman or man. He acts as if he does, says all the right things, and it is superb acting, yes— actually quite a bit better and far more subtle than anything he does on stage. But so far as I can tell, there’s nothing genuine behind the words and the gestures.”

“Well,” Alberich said thoughtfully. “Well, well, well. I think it is good that I have never tried to come too near to him, or I might have been swiftly found out. But that makes me concerned for you—”

She nodded. “It makes me concerned for me, too, believe me, and the only things I have in my favor are that he thinks I’m besotted and under his thumb, that I’m not ornamental to look at so he spends as little time as he can get away with doing so, and that he does not think that women in general are particularly intelligent. I expect,” she added thoughtfully, “that he regards me rather in the line of a trained dog. Quite clever at performing the tricks I’ve been taught, and utterly devoted to my masters, but not really capable of thinking for myself.”

“Which would make, I think, other women his lap dogs,” Alberich pointed out, continuing the analogy. “Good for ornament, and sensually pleasant, but otherwise utterly useless.”

She laughed aloud at that. “Oh, I wish some of his light’o’loves could hear you say that of them! How he manages to keep them from tearing him to bits in jealousy is beyond me.”

“Perhaps they are in truth as utterly besotted as he thinks you to be,” Alberich observed. “Or else, he has the gift of golden speech.”

“Both, I think.” She shook her head. “You know, as often as I see it, I’m still amazed at how self-deluded a lot of women are. A man says one thing, and does something else, and they believe the words and not the actions.”

“That behavior is not restricted to women,” Alberich pointed out. “Are his fellow actors not equally deceived in thinking him a grand fellow?”

“Hmm. That’s true enough.” They were nearly at the Bell, but neither of them made the turn that would take them into the alley and the back way. “Alberich, I don’t believe we’re alone.”

“So you have noticed.” Someone had been following them for some time. Alberich had been certain of it about a third of the way back.