Exile's Valor

had actually read the book, rather than making something up to try and worm your way into my favor. And what is more, the man may be sound enough on other biographies, but his treatise on Hestalion is little more than a repetition of scurrilous rumor!”

Norris threw up his hands and laughed. “Caught! Well, I most sincerely apologize again. I have restored your drink, and I hope I haven’t foxed your book, so are we quits?”

“The book appears to be intact,” Alberich said icily, “I believe I am also intact. And I beg the pleasure of your absence.”

“Yes, sir!” Norris laughed, and went back to his place while Alberich ostensibly and ostentatiously reburied himself in his book.

“So, there, you see,” Norris said under the sound of the conversations all around them. “Nothing but a bookworm. We could burn down the place around him, and he wouldn’t notice.”

“Good enough. The game’s in play tonight,” the stranger said. “We think it will play out well.”

“Good news,” Norris said with satisfaction. “And my reward?”

“You’ll get it when the bond is sealed,” the stranger replied. “Even if all goes well, there will be opposition. We may need you before then. And don’t forget, we’ll also need you after, for a time, anyway.”

“No, you won’t,” Norris growled, sounding irritated now. “The boy’s a natural seducer. And the girl’s untried. And I absolutely the finest instructor in the arts of seduction that was ever born. You say he’s showing his hand tonight. If he doesn’t have her well enchanted before the week is out, and wedded within the moon, I’ll eat my hat without salt.”

“All well and good, but he’ll still need pretty speeches, and he’s not bright enough to make them up on his own,” the stranger said, irritation in his own voice. “Until there’s an heir in the offing, we’re not safely home.”

“And I don’t get my theater.” Norris sighed, as if much put upon. “All right, then, I’ll stay available. But he’d better not drag this on too long. It doesn’t take that long to get a girl with child, and after that, keeping her bound will be up to him. I’ve never seen a woman born yet that didn’t make every excuse in the world for the father of her child.”

“After that, we’ll have what we need,” the voice purred. The tone made the hair on Alberich’s head stand up. There was something very sinister about it, that made Alberich wonder uneasily just what it was that the voice and his cohorts needed.

And he felt very sorry for the girl in question.

But it seemed that, whatever was going on here and now, it had little or nothing to do with the security of Valdemar. Evidently Norris had been coaching some unscrupulous young man in how to seduce a young woman into marriage. He could almost picture her in his mind as he carefully turned another page in his book, some young, lonely, plain thing, but wealthy—for surely only great wealth could be the cause for such a scheme.

Would there be any way to warn her, assuming he could find out who she was?

Probably not. Even coming from a Herald, she probably wouldn’t believe anything that anyone told her against her beloved. Not if she was as infatuated as Norris thought. And he was a practiced seducer, after all.

But he didn’t fool Myste, a little voice in the back of his mind reminded him.

Yes, well, Myste had been fooled at least once in her past, when she was younger. You had to have experience in something before you could recognize danger when you saw it, and since the stranger called the unknown young woman a “girl,” she probably wasn’t old enough to have experience in much of anything. Poor thing.

He turned a page of his book, groped for his drink without looking at it, and took a sip. Well. Norris was very generous; this was much better beer than the stuff Alberich had ordered the first time around.

The scrape of a stool signaled someone’s departure, and it turned out to be the stranger. He eased his way past Alberich, being exceptionally careful not to jar him. Alberich ignored him entirely, though he would very much have liked to get a good look at him. The best Alberich could manage was a quick glance at the man’s profile. It looked faintly familiar, in the way that someone looked if seen once or twice. It could be anybody Alberich had seen around here. Alberich filed the face in the back of his mind.

Now Norris was alone—but not for long.

There was a bit of a commotion at the door, the sound of high, shrill voices, and a flash of bright color. Alberich heard Norris chuckle under his breath, and buried his nose even further in the book.

But Norris was the one who got up, and sauntered over to the trio of women who were clearly what Alberich’s mother had been mistaken for.