Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  :When do you trust someone?: Kantor asked, seemingly out of the blue.

  :Excuse me?:

  :When do you trust someone? Is it by age, or maturity? What is the magic number? When do Trainees start to think like adults?:

  He understood what Kantor was saying, of course, and his head agreed with it. Mical had been there on the worst day the team had experienced. He’d watched them for two moons at least. And he’d evidently learned some sobering lessons in the glassworks.

  He’d shown every sign of acting in a measured and mature fashion this afternoon. So when did Alberich stop doubting and start trusting?

  :When my gut decides to go along with my head, I suppose,: he replied glumly. :And my gut is going to be screaming, “but he’s only a child!” for a little while longer at least.:

  He might have said something more, but at just that moment, a bell rang out, cutting across the winter night.

  And for one, horrible moment, he thought it was the Death Bell, and his thoughts fastened on Harrow—

  But no, it wasn’t. It was the Great Bell at the Palace—not the Collegium Bell, that sounded the candlemarks and the meals, but the huge, deep-toned Bell that sounded only for major occasions. So what—

  A moment later, his question was answered.

  :It’s time! It’s Selenay!: said Kantor, and given the gravid condition of the Queen, that was all Kantor needed to say.

  Selenay had gone into labor. By dawn, Valdemar would have an Heir-Presumptive.

  And from that moment on, the Queen would be standing between Prince Karathanelan and his ambitions.

  Alberich shivered. It had begun.

  21

  “I’m sorry, Weaponsmaster,” Mical sighed. He pushed the papers away from him, and reluctantly, Alberich took them and folded them up, tightly. “All I get from them is—” he screwed up his face, “—the writer was in a hurry, really annoyed with something, and wanted to get this over with. I think he was that actor fellow—the one we all thought was so—interesting.” He paused again, then smiled wanly. “And about the only thing that I can tell you besides that is that he thought the person he was writing to was very, very thick.”

  Alberich sighed. It had been a long shot, of course. He’d hoped that somehow the secret instructions from Norris to the Prince would have some link to the unknown patron. But—no luck, it seemed. Whoever the patron was, Norris had not been thinking of him when he’d been writing the Prince’s “scripts.”

  “My thanks, regardless, Mical,” he said. He saw Mical glancing with longing at the door, and he found a bit of sympathy for the boy. It was the first fine day in—well, since autumn. And Mical, no longer under punishment-duty, was probably afire to be out in it. “Go along—”

  He hadn’t so much as gotten the words out when Mical was out the door like a shot.

  “Frustrating,” said Myste redundantly. “We’ve got one end of the path—Norris to Karath. We have the other, Devlin to Norris. But we still don’t have the so-called ’patron’ who links it all into a neat circle.”

  “Nor will we,” Alberich said with grim certainty. “I believe it was the same person who was paying for unrest against the Queen earlier. I even believe it was the same person who was selling information out of the Council during the Wars. And I have my suspicions who that person is. Unfortunately, I do not have a shred of proof. He is too clever at covering his tracks and hiding his identity. He is probably in disguise most of the time when he deals with underlings.”

  This “certainty” was not true Foresight, but it came with the scent of Foresight on it. He would have liked to confide his suspicions to someone who had some other Gift that might be used to spy upon this person, but unfortunately, the suspicion was so wild that he knew that even the Heralds would have stared at him with incredulity.

  Yes, even Talamir. Even Myste.

  Even, perhaps, most of the Companions.

  :But not me,: said Kantor, with equal certainty. :So you and I will watch and wait and bide our time—quietly. We’ll catch him eventually.:

  “So all we can do is keep a guard on Selenay?” Myste asked mournfully.

  “It seems so,” he replied. She sighed.

  :I wish I could tell her,: he said to his Companion.

  :You can when it’s over,: Kantor replied. :You’re used to keeping secrets.:

  And that, alas, was only too true.

  It was just too bad that Selenay had not realized that little fact before all of this had begun, and had confided in him rather than—well—whoever she had, who had been so poor at keeping them.

  ***

  Selenay tried to concentrate on the reports in front of her, but her eyes kept drifting to the window, and her thoughts drifting off into nothingness. It was only two moons since the baby’s birth. Two moons. Spring was just beginning outside those windows, and she was stuck inside. And when she managed to wrench her eyes and her thoughts back to the job at hand, an angry wail from the next room cut across her concentration and she winced, and shoved down the surge of angry irritation that made her want to go into the nursery and put a pillow over baby Elspeth’s face—

  And immediately, she felt sick with guilt.

  —horrible thought. She was a horrible mother. How could she think such things about the baby? She should have been all moony-eyed and willing to bear with anything. She should be longing to hold Elspeth, to cradle her for hours and hours, she should be spending every waking moment hovering over the cradle, gazing down at the little mite with adoration.

  Instead, she had thoughts of wanting to smother the poor thing. She was unfit to be a mother. She should never have had a child. . . .

  :That’s not a child,: Caryo said testily. :It’s a stomach with a warhorn attached to one end, and a mechanism that produces more excrement than a full-grown cow attached to the other.:

  Selenay was glad that there wasn’t anyone in the room to see her as she choked on a laugh. There was some truth to that, though Selenay herself seldom had to attend to the latter. Still. The former—

  Elspeth’s wails scaled up a notch. Selenay’s own nurse, old Melidy, was in charge of the nursery, but she seemed to have her hands full with Elspeth, who had an awfully robust set of lungs for something so small, and the need to demand attention constantly.

  Do all babies cry so much?

  At least baby Elspeth’s demands were reasonable; milk, comfort, a clean napkin. Unlike her father. . . .

  Selenay’s irritation increased, as did her headache.

  He’d been pouting again this morning. He didn’t even have to say anything anymore, just pout and look aggrieved and put-upon. His pouts didn’t seem quite so attractive anymore either, and his bereft-orphan pose was beginning to look a great deal more like a pose than like her own, real grief. She knew what true mourning looked like, from the inside, and—well, all his protestations to the contrary, it had begun to look to her as if his father’s death and brother’s estrangement were things he really didn’t feel deeply about.

  If at all.

  Oh, come now! said her conscience. You can’t blame him for wanting to be a King, now that his brother is King of Rethwellan. And he’s been thoroughly agreeable since Elspeth was born. Didn’t he say he had sent for his old nurse for her, so that old Melidy wouldn’t have to do all the looking-after by herself? And with two Chief Nursery Attendants on the job, there shouldn’t be any more of this howling while you’re trying to get some work done.

  Agreeable he might be, but she couldn’t help the feeling that it was all on the surface. He certainly wasn’t about whenever something needed doing. When they retired for the evening and she wanted to tell him about the annoyances of the day, just to get them off her chest, he would launch off into some hunting story or other, ignoring her hints that another topic—any other topic—would be welcome. And what had happened to Karath the lover? All very well to speak tenderly of wanting to give her plenty of time to recover from Elspeth’s birth, but just how long d
id he think she needed?

  Besides, it wouldn’t hurt her to be held and comforted, now and again. She could do with more of the commiseration about the burdens of the Crown that he used to give her, and less complaining that he wanted the crown himself.

  He’s the father of your child, she reminded herself. Though as Elspeth’s wails turned into distinctly angry howls, that was seeming less and less of a good thing.

  Finally, just when she thought that her head was going to split, she heard the sound of feet running into the nursery and the howls cut off—and lest she worry that someone else had put a pillow over the baby’s face, she heard suckling and cooing noises. The wet nurse had been found, it seemed. Her Highness was now satisfied.

  If only His Highness could be satisfied so easily.

  She sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose to try and ease the pain in her head. Demands for attention, demands for service, wanting everything now, this moment, totally self-centered. . . .

  Perfectly reasonable in an infant.

  Not so attractive in her father. And unfortunately, at this late date he was unlikely to grow out of it. Things seemed dreadfully clear, all of a sudden—when she wasn’t looking into those beautiful eyes, and listening to that honey-sweet voice whispering in her ear. When she had been sleeping alone for far too long. When she realized that the demands were never, ever going to stop, and she began to understand Caryo’s antipathy to him—and wonder which Karath was the real one.

  What was I thinking? she thought with despair. What have I done?

  She dropped her head into her hands, and for a moment, gave way to the despair.

  She who had been afraid of being trapped had trapped herself. She was trapped within the hard shell of the Crown, trapped with an infant she had not really planned for, trapped with a husband who was—

  Face it, Selenay—who is beginning to look like someone who put on a show for you.

  She wanted, suddenly, to get away, away from the Palace, away from the Crown. Not forever, just for a few candlemarks, where she could be just Selenay, not the Queen, not a mother, just herself. She needed to be able to think clearly, and she couldn’t even think at all with the baby fussing in the next room. Something had changed between her and Karath; she needed to figure out what it was, and somehow get things back to the way they had been before that terrible quarrel.

  If she could. She had to think about that, too. She had to be able to step back from the whole situation and try to look at it objectively, as if this was Selenay sitting in judgment in the City Courts.

  If only she could go somewhere that held no memories of the Prince, where she could be herself entirely again, the Selenay she used to be.

  I’ll do it. To the seven hells with these reports. They can wait a few candlemarks more. She pushed away from her desk and stood up. :Caryo? Would you be amenable to a ride to the Home Farms? Just the two of us?:

  ***

  This was the best day for practice that they had gotten in a long time. Spring rains hadn’t yet begun, the ground was good and dry, and although the air was chill, it was not cold enough to be uncomfortable even if you weren’t moving.

  Alberich watched his teams as they writhed in a knot of flying sticks and flailing bodies; the view was excellent from the sidelines, and he allowed himself a moment of grim satisfaction. They were good. And they were ready. He had believed in them, and they had repaid that belief in full.

  Even young Mical, that most unlikely of prodigals.

  The boy had flung himself into his self-appointed niche with the controlled energy of a tightly-wound spring, and a concentration Alberich suspected he never would have had if he had not spent those moons in the glassworks. You dared not lose your concentration around hot glass, for if you did, the best you could expect was the total ruin of all your work. And the worst—the worst could cost a limb, or a life, or worse than just your life, if you were a glassblower. He didn’t know if the Collegium Healers could do anything about scorched lungs before the patient died of the injury. He did know that it was one of the nastier and more painful ways to die.

  Although no such disaster had occurred at the glassworks while the two Trainees had been serving their time there, Mical had probably been witness to several minor accidents, and certainly had been told all of the horror stories. It was amazing to see the level of steadiness and concentration he had attained—

  It was nevertheless true that steadiness and concentration couldn’t make up for a difference of three years of age and growth. The boy was not the most skilled of the skirmishers. Although in the normal Hurlee games Mical was a star player, in these practices he was merely at the level of all the others. Still, given that they were three years older than he, and had several moons of learning and practice that he hadn’t had, that was absolutely astonishing.

  Part of it, Alberich was sure, was a natural ability in combat, or exercises that were combatlike. Alberich had taught a few youngsters who possessed that near-magical combination of reflexes, strength, coordination, cleverness, and the instinct for combat; Mical was definitely one of that number. Take, for instance, the way that he and Eloran worked together, moving through the pack, smooth as an otter in a fast-flowing stream. Never a wasted moment, often managing to anticipate the next blow and thwart it by the simple expedient of not being there when it fell—

  —the next blow—

  Flash of blue.

  Alberich clung to his pommel as the Foresight Vision slammed him between the eyes,

  Selenay—

  But it wasn’t a long one.

  It didn’t need to be, actually. He had spent the last several moons anticipating exactly what it showed him; all it needed to give him was the where and the when.

  Where—

  Outside the city walls, on the Home Farms. He recognized that spot, along the riverbank, beyond the point where he and Selenay had fished for eels. It was secluded there, quiet, and out of sight of any of the farmworkers.

  When-

  Soon—

  Too soon. Moments at most. Terror rose in him.

  :Not for us!: Kantor said fiercely, before he could even begin to panic, as the players suddenly froze in place, their Companions relaying to them what Alberich and Kantor already knew. “Weapons!” cried Harrow. “No time!” shouted someone else, and suddenly they were all in motion, Alberich and Kantor in the lead, flying across the grass, leaping obstacles, scattering Trainees and courtiers out of their way, and out of the main Palace Gate before Alberich even had time to think about what they were doing.

  They knew! How did they know?

  No—no they didn’t know—or hadn’t known consciously before this moment. But the peak of readiness they had attained was such that at this point they had been ready for anything.

  :Warn Caryo!: he told Kantor urgently—and needlessly, of course—

  :I—the trap’s sprung. Don’t panic. We can get there in time—: And with grim satisfaction, :They weren’t expecting her to fight.:

  Alberich had his sword, for even in the Hurlee practices he never left the salle without putting it in a saddle sheath. The teams, however, had no weapons. But they did have their modified Hurlee sticks, special sticks sheathed in metal, of a wood so hard they called it “ironwood,” so dense and tough that even without the metal sheath it dulled blades that tried to cut it. And they were all in their fitted armor, which Alberich had insisted they wear as soon as it was available.

  And the Companions were armored.

  In all the time that Alberich had been a Herald, he had not understood what it was like to be in the saddle when Kantor was at full gallop. He had heard about the extraordinary speed of a Companion, but he had never fully experienced it for himself. When Kantor had rescued him from the burning shed and carried him out of Karse, he had been drifting in and out of awareness.

  It was exhilarating and terrifying.

  Already the troop was down in the crowded streets of Haven, and the houses and shops blu
rred past as the hapless bystanders pressed themselves against the walls in an effort to get as far out of the way as possible. Somehow the crowds were parting before them like a school of minnows in front of a pike.

  Thank the Sunlord! Being in the lead as he was, he could see them making way, as if something invisible was shoving them to either side of the street ahead, just in time to avoid being trampled. But if someone didn’t get out of the way in time—

  :They will. You leave that to us.:

  Somewhere behind them, the Palace and Collegia were a-boil; of course, only he and his teams had been instantly ready to respond, but the rest, every man and woman who was in Whites and no few in Grays were scrambling to join the rescue, getting weapons, saddling up—some, like Keren, probably not even bothering with a saddle.

  How did that bastard know? The vision had shown him the Prince and a mob of his hangers-on; how had he known that Selenay would be there, and alone, when even he hadn’t known she’d left the Palace?

  He must have had a small army of watchers on the Palace, waiting for her to leave under exactly the right circumstances, following her to see where she went, sending back the message he had been waiting for. This was not spur-of-the-moment or something conceived in passion. This had been long in the planning, probably from the moment he came into Valdemar.

  Or else someone else had planned it all for him.

  No time to think about that now. He had to try and remember what the vision had shown him—

  Swiftly, as swiftly as Kantor was running, he worked out a rough plan. They’d have to be fools not to expect rescue coming from the Heralds. But they wouldn’t be looking for it so soon.

  Alarm bells were sounding all over the city; if the Prince had thought he was going to be able to carry this off quietly, he was going to get more than one rude surprise. At least the alarms had the effect of clearing the streets entirely; Kantor somehow redoubled his speed, and they shot through the gates going at such a rate that even Alberich was dizzy. And he was not going to think about what would happen if any of them tripped and fell—