And perhaps three-quarters of a candlemark later, the Prince strolled in, with an escort of young sycophants.
Except that one of them apparently was not as much of a sycophant as the Prince had thought, because before Karathanelan could vanish, as usual, into one of the private parlors, that young man steered him over to Norris’ chair. Devlin and the other young man exchanged a glance; Devlin nodded, and within moments, the newcomer gathered up the Prince’s escort and hustled them into the private parlors.
“Highness,” Devlin said with a bow to the Prince. “Our patron wishes you to have a discussion with my friend.” And at that, he took himself off, going, not into the back like the others, but back out the front door.
Alberich was torn between following—for surely he was going to report to someone!—and staying to listen. But his own internal urging said stay, so stay he did.
And Norris, looking up indolently at the Prince, indicated with a nod that Karathanelan should take a seat beside him. “Run away, my beauties,” the actor said, in an amused tone of voice. “We gentlemen need to discuss things too delicate for your tender ears.”
With giggles and pretty pouts, as the Prince glared his outrage, the ladies did as they were told. “Sit down,” Norris said, and then, when the Prince did not move, repeated, with force, “Sit down. Now.”
“I shall do nothing of the sort!” the Prince said tightly. “I will have you horsewhipped and thrown into the street for your insolence!”
“You won’t if you know what’s good for you,” Norris said, without turning a hair. “I am here at the behest of, and doing a very great favor for, our mutual sponsor, and if you don’t sit down, I am going to walk out of here and tell him why I did so. You can see what will happen to you without his protection then, but I don’t recommend it.”
The Prince sat down.
“That’s better,” Norris said pleasantly.
“What about him?” the Prince growled, nodding at Alberich.
“Nothing to worry about.” Norris dismissed Alberich with a shrug. “He’s older than dirt, half senile, mostly deaf. I tested him—” Norris grinned then. “If he’d been conscious when I tipped little Kassie’s skirts up, he’d have at least twitched.”
Yes, and you aren’t quite as clever as you think, Alberich told him mentally. Because a real agent wouldn’t have reacted even if you’d taken the girl on the spot. He wasn’t sure he would have had the ability to remain “asleep,” but then again—he’d yawned through worse, down in the Broken Arms.
“Now,” Norris continued, losing the grin. “Before we begin, I’ll trouble you to remember that I have no loyalty to you, or to anyone else who has not paid my fee. Once bought, however, I stay bought; this is good business, and it is why our patron brought me here, but remember that I do not give a damn what happens to you. My part of your education should have been over moons ago, and it would have been, if you hadn’t been such an idiot a week ago.”
“Idiot?” the Prince hissed. “I think not—”
“Exactly,” Norris interrupted. “You don’t think. If you did, you would realize that you are expendable, fellow-my-lad.”
The Prince started, and looked at Norris as if he thought the actor had run mad.
Norris wagged a finger at him. “Turnabout is fair play. Sauce for the goose will serve for the gander. If your bride has done her dynastic duty by getting with child so quickly, you have done your work at stud, and she doesn’t need you anymore. Didn’t that ever occur to you over the past few days, while you’ve been doing your best to make her hate you?”
Alberich couldn’t see the Prince’s face, but he sounded smug. “She cannot be rid of me. I would not agree to the dissolution of the marriage.”
“Which just shows how much of a fool you are,” Norris countered flatly. “Certainly, a marriage can’t be dissolved without the consent of both parties—if you were an ordinary couple. But you aren’t, you are in a foreign land, and the law can be whatever she gets the Council to agree to. And if you should be so indiscreet as to do something treasonable, she wouldn’t even have to dissolve the marriage. She could simply arrange for the Council to make her a widow.” Norris examined his nails critically. “They hang traitors to the Crown in Valdemar, you know.”
“She—couldn’t!” the Prince gasped, as if it hadn’t occurred to him.
“She could,” Norris replied matter-of-factly. “And you’re skirting perilous close to it, let me tell you; if your lovely bride had chosen, your little folly in the matter of a mount would have had you facing a High Court already. In fact, the only reasons you haven’t been charged with treason already are because our patron is protecting you, and because our patron is fairly certain that your wife is still weeping over your misbehaving and hasn’t yet gone from tears to anger. Which is why our patron brought me here. Because you mean nothing to me, I owe you nothing, you can do nothing to me, and I can and will tell you what no one else around you would dare.” He leaned forward and shoved his index ringer at the Prince. “Now, you listen to this; you’d better believe it, and you’d better act on it. Our patron’s patience is not inexhaustible, and he won’t continue to support and protect you while you run about like a tomcat. You’re wasting those very expensive lessons of mine; you can be replaced, and you will be, once your wife decides that she’s going to stop crying herself to sleep in an empty bed and start doing something about the situation. You might survive the experience, but I’d bet not; our patron has enemies of his own, and they’d be perfectly happy to bring you down and replace you with one of their own choices. And he won’t go down to save your worthless hide.”
Alberich “snored” gently, and wondered just who the “mutual patron” was. More than that, what did this mysterious entity expect to get out of his patronage of Karathanelan? If he could “protect” the Prince, surely he could get whatever he wanted for himself.
The Prince was silent for a long moment. “I don’t like this. How do I know that this is true?” he said at last.
“I don’t care what you think about it,” Norris replied impatiently. “And I don’t have to prove anything to you. I already have what I wanted out of the bargain, and I don’t particularly care whether or not you believe me. You are wasting my time, not the other way around. Time to wake up and deal with the mess you’ve made, lad, before you find yourself neck-deep and no way to get out.”
Norris’ very indifference seemed to work as a powerful argument with the Prince. “What do I do?” he asked at last, grudgingly.
Norris snorted. “Do I have to draw you a map?” But when the Prince looked at him blankly, he sighed. “Apparently I do. All right then, the first thing you do is go apologize to your wife for whatever you said to her and everything you’ve done since you quarreled with her. Groveling to her, if need be, until you get her forgiveness.”
“I will never—” the Prince began hotly.
“You will if you want to keep your head on your neck,” Norris hissed. “And once you’ve groveled enough, you tell her that now that you’ve come to your senses and have looked back on your unspeakable conduct these past several days, you realized tonight how unsatisfactory all these other women you’ve been bedding are, compared to her.”
The Prince sniggered. Norris shrugged. “Of course that’s ridiculous, but that’s what she wants to hear, and believe me, it is the only thing you could say that will make her forgive you for sleeping with anyone else. Then you will have to go right back to your first lesson with her, and woo her all over again. Only it will be a little easier this time, because she knows what you can do in bed, and you won’t be handicapped by having to hold back with her to save her virtue. Remember what I taught you, and everything our patron managed to find out. Use that. Make her feel that you are the only person in the whole world who could possibly understand her. I wrote you the scripts; drag them out again.”
The Prince seemed to think it over, and finally said, grudgingly. “If this is what our pat
ron wants. . . .”
“Hang our patron. This is the only thing that will keep you out of a dungeon cell,” Norris said bluntly, as Alberich mentally cursed. If only he could have counted on the Prince’s arrogance to push things and keep pushing them, until Selenay was ready to be rid of him!
Well, it looked as if that was a vain hope.
“Very well.” The Prince got up, but did not offer his hand to Norris. “You and our patron have been right in the past. I must assume that you are right, now. Fare you well.”
“Right,” Norris replied, waving him away indolently. “Just see that you remember what I’ve told you, the next time you’re tempted to assert yourself.”
Alberich continued to “doze” until the Prince was inside the door to one of the private parlors, and Norris was surrounded again by his bevy of beauties. Then, with a “start,” he “woke,” surveyed the room indulgently, then levered himself up out of his chair to totter away.
Part of him wanted to string up Norris as soon as the Prince had been dealt with. But part of him, which had been listening to the conversation with keen interest, had a better idea.
:I think we should hire him when this is over,: he said, knowing that Kantor had been following everything that had transpired.
:You what?: Kantor asked, incredulously. Kantor had no need to ask who “he” was.
:I think we should hire him as our agent,: Alberich amended. :Mind, I wouldn’t tell him just who is hiring him, but he could be damned useful to us.:
:But he said himself he could be bought!: Kantor protested—then stopped. :And he said that once he was bought, he stayed bought. Didn’t he.:
:That was exactly what he said,: Alberich replied. :I think he could be a valuable agent. More valuable alive and working for us than in prison. If we could even find something to charge him with. Which I doubt.:
:Emotionally, I don’t like it,: Kantor replied unhappily. :But logically—you’re right. He’s an amoral beast, but better he’s been bought by us. At least then we can control him.:
:As much as such a one is ever controlled,: Alberich finished. And sighed. :And this assumes that his patron—whoever that is—loses interest in him. If he’s the sort who stays bought, we’ll never get him otherwise.:
:Good,: Kantor said firmly. :I’d rather we didn’t. I’d rather we could have him thrown in jail:
:Which we can’t, because he hasn’t done anything wrong,: Alberich pointed out. :All he’s done that we know of is to give the Prince lessons on how to woo and win the Queen. Which is hardly illegal. And we can’t even prove that he did that much, really, not to satisfy a law court. But oh, how I wish he hadn’t been here tonight!:
:I know exactly what you mean,: Kantor said glumly.
***
Karathanelan might have been an arrogant, self-centered beast, but apparently he was bright enough to know when he was getting good advice.
He was also phenomenally lucky.
Because the next day, the very next day, word came from Rethwellan that his father, the King, was dead.
Now, that might not have been thought of as luck, except that word also came from Rethwellan that the King had already been buried, that Karath’s presence was not required at home, and that, in fact, his brother the new King, Faramentha, suggested strongly that he should remain in Valdemar at the side of his new bride and do his mourning in private.
Even while the Rethwellan Embassy was being swathed in black, Karath hurried to the Palace, and in full view of everyone as Selenay herself was hearing the news, and flung himself weeping at her feet.
Selenay canceled the rest of her audiences that day, and took him with her back to her chambers. Alberich could not know, of course, what the Prince told her, aside from the “script” that Norris had provided for him, but he could guess. What would appeal to Selenay more, than to have her beloved husband suddenly bereft of his own father?
Certainly he went about after that in heavy mourning, and certainly Selenay was as unshakably attentive to him as he was to her. To Alberich’s disgust, he was more firmly in Selenay’s good graces than he had been before, always by her side, and playing the devoted husband. Selenay spent a disturbing amount of time gazing at him or into his eyes with every sign of being firmly under his spell.
And in public, at least, he was as devoted as she could ever have wished.
In public, he was also playing the tragic figure of the mourning son and rejected brother. When a new Ambassador came from Rethwellan to replace the old one, he showed a very chilly face to the man, who was, in his turn, no better than icily polite.
Which meant nothing to Alberich, until Talamir enlightened him, one late summer evening.
“Oh, do think about this for a moment,” Talamir told him, with unusual impatience. “The Prince was not told of his father’s death until Faramentha was firmly on the throne. And he was not recalled. What does that tell you?”
“Ah.” Alberich shook his head. “I was thinking too much of our own side of this, and not beyond our Borders. Faramentha does not trust his brother. And the Prince holds Faramentha in enmity.”
“So—?”
“So—whether or not the old King was privy to Karathanelan’s plans, the new one is not, probably.”
Talamir nodded. “And unless I miss my guess,” he added shrewdly, “the Prince’s grief is not all sham. Not that he is brokenhearted over being rejected by his brother, nor mourning terribly for his father—”
“If he is,” Alberich was moved to point out, “The ladies of the Horn have not noticed.”
“Precisely. But if there is one thing the Prince cares about, it’s his own well-being. And with his father dead and his brother, who despises him, on the throne?”
“He has nowhere to go if he fails here—” Alberich felt cold. “I do not like this.”
“Neither,” Talamir said delicately, “do I.”
But there was not much either of them could do about it. Karath had too many good cards in his hand, and Selenay’s own condition was aiding him; by summer’s end, as the first leaves began to turn, Selenay was deep in work, and when she wasn’t working, she was generally asleep, or at least, resting. Her pregnancy was hard on her, not so much that it was difficult, but that she was finding it exhausting, according to Crathach, who made no secret that he disapproved of her getting with child so quickly. This left ample opportunity for the Prince to comport himself as if he was a bachelor.
But he went about it so discreetly that most of the Court had no idea.
Unfortunately, one of the things that was wearing Selenay out was that he still had not given up the notion of being crowned. Even though he was not fighting with her about it, using less aggressive means to get his point across, roughly once a fortnight, he would find some other reason to bring the tired old plaint back up, or some new scheme to get around the law. This, Alberich heard from Talamir, usually when Alberich came up to the Collegium to report on whatever new information he might have gathered on his prowls in Haven. The city was quiet of late, as the season passed from summer into autumn; even the criminal element was up to no more than the usual trouble. There seemed nothing that required Alberich’s intervention. Stalking Devlin to try and find the identity of the “patron” was proving to be fruitless; where Devlin went, none of Alberich’s personae was welcome. As for Norris, the actor was so busy with his new theater that even he was beginning to look a little frayed about the edges.
“He’s come up with another one today,” Talamir said, lowering himself wearily down into a chair by the hearth. He looked ancient tonight, and very transparent; Alberich wondered what he had been doing to wear himself so thin.
He wants to be gone, came the unbidden thought. He’s faced with things he can’t do anything about, and he just wants to be gone—from problems, from life. And he wants it with all of his heart.
He might want it—but he wasn’t pursuing it, at least. Duty held him here at Selenay’s side, however poorly suited he
thought himself to the task.
At that moment, Alberich pitied the Queen’s Own.
“This time, what?” Alberich asked, knowing that the “he” could only be the Prince, and that the “another one” was yet another ploy to pressure Selenay into somehow getting him a crown.
“That she’s shaming him in front of his family—or so he says,” Talamir said wearily. “According to him, that she hasn’t made him King means that she thinks he is unworthy of a crown, and now he says that this is why his own brother has rejected him and kept him from his father’s side when the King was dying.”
“Ah. So now he attempts guilt?” Alberich replied.
“I would guess,” said Talamir, and shook his head. “At least she came to me with this, looking for reassurance. And I planted another seed.”
“Perhaps you can use the papers soon?” Alberich hazarded. They finally had a translation of them; it took long enough to break the code. When they had, as Alberich had suspected, they proved to be instructions on what to do and say to Selenay to win her, with some very intimate details. Some were things that Alberich blinked at; things that one would have thought were the sort of confession that Selenay would not have given to anyone—girlish daydreams, actually, about the sort of man she was looking for, and the loneliness of being who she was, the despair that she would never have the kind of marriage her father had enjoyed.
Where had all of that come from? Even Talamir had been surprised at the bitterness and anguish of some of it.
But maybe Selenay had been pouring her woes into the ears of one of her servants. Alberich would have thought they were trustworthy, and probably they were, but he supposed there was no reason why they shouldn’t tell others what Selenay had told them.
Some of what had been written were intimate glimpses into Selenay personally, and what to say to her to play to her sympathies, but others—well, Alberich had found himself blushing at the step-by-step instructions for seduction; they did not merely border on the pornographic, they were pornographic. And Alberich was no longer surprised that Norris was so popular with the ladies, nor that Selenay was so deeply infatuated with the Prince. How could she not be, if the Prince was following these instructions, meant to make Selenay believe that here, past all her hopes, was not only her soulmate but a lover who could guarantee the satisfaction of a female partner, closely and with all his attention? Part of him wanted to burn the wretched papers, but they were useful, very useful. If ever Selenay’s attachment began to fade, at the right moment, showing her these things could turn her fading infatuation to distaste. Only she could know how closely the Prince followed his “scripts”—but the more closely he had, the more obvious it would be that he was following a script, and that there never had been any real feeling behind his act.
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