Exile's Valor

disappointed.

“So what are we going to do?” asked someone in a small voice that sounded very bewildered in the darkness.

Now Talamir cleared his throat—and rose to the occasion.

“We will support her, and her choice,” he said firmly. “No matter how hasty or ill-thought we believe it to be. Think! The worst, the very worst, he can do is to make her unhappy—at which point, since Valdemar law supports divorcement, he may well find himself packed back to Rethwellan with his tail between his legs!”

There were some chuckles at that. Weak, but laughter, nonetheless. And at least in Alberich’s case, a sigh of profound relief. This was the old Talamir, seeing the larger picture and finding the cleanest path through what could turn out to be a quagmire.

“The best that he can do is to make her happy, and if he does that, even if we still do not care for him, who are we to object?” Talamir went on, the shadows cast by the lantern beside him making him look as ancient as a Grove oak. “Remember, unless he is Chosen by a Companion and becomes a Herald, he will never be more than the Queen’s Consort, who will have only as much power, or as little, as she grants him— and all of it behind the throne.” Talamir looked around, managing to meet the eyes of every Herald there. “So let us determine to put a good face on things,” he continued. “Offer her our congratulations, singly, and as a group. Support her choice. Make sure that she knows that we are there, as we always have been, for Herald Selenay as well as the Queen.”

And that seemed to be about all that anyone could offer.

Alberich went back to the salle, feeling very uneasy. He hoped that would be enough.

He was afraid that it wouldn’t be.

But the game had been played out before any of them even knew it was in play at all. Now they could only ride along with it, and wait.

16

The game was played. . . .

Something about that phrase nagged Alberich as he fell into an uneasy sleep, but it wasn’t until he woke the next morning that he realized where he had heard it last.

And it was only after the recollection jolted him that he realized that there might be a connection between where he had heard it first, and Selenay.

He had the flash of memory as he moved into wakefulness, and it brought him alert all at once, his mind moving from a standing start into a full gallop.

The game is about to play—It had been that stranger talking to Norris last night. He could hear the voice clearly in his mind. It had been a well-educated voice, and if there was one thing that it was hard for the well-educated to do, it was to counterfeit being a member of a lower class than their own.

The similarity of phrases was what had given him that shock to the system. What if the girl they had been talking about, the one Alberich had assumed was simply wealthy and plain, had actually been Selenay? And that the young man being tutored in seduction had been the Prince of Rethwellan?

It fit. It certainly fit. Untried, sheltered, accustomed to flattery but not to the kind of practiced seducer Norris was, she would be easy prey for a man of Norris’ experience—or one coached by him.

And Selenay, alone in all of the Court, was the only young woman who would have been sheltered from such men. There was the irony; if she had spent any time among her peers, she would have seen attractive young men use their looks in such an unattractive way—and young women do the same.

Or—perhaps not. She had been the Heir, and even in the Court, that might have protected her.

Odd as it might seem, the cads in Court circles saved their wiles for two sorts of women—the lower-class girls that they seduced and abandoned, and the unattractive, wealthy ones they seduced and wedded and abandoned on their estates in the country, while they came back to Court to enjoy themselves unencumbered by the inconvenient wife. They wouldn’t have dared to use those ploys on Selenay.

Still, she had been sheltered in another way. From the time she had been Chosen, she had been at the Collegium, and not the Court. She never saw the intrigues among her peers, because she was among another set of