Exile's Valor v(-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  :Our own damned fault,: Kantor agreed. :We, the Companions, should have known. We know Caryo better than anyone but Selenay—and she was exactly the right Companion for a girl who was bound and determined not to think too hard about anything that wasn’t involved in being the Heir and a Herald. If Sendar was still alive—:

  :If Sendar was alive, he’d have sent the boy packing, after making him look ridiculous and unpalatable in Selenay’s eyes first. That’s the only way to handle such things.: Alberich was at least on surer ground there; as an officer, he’d had to break up many an ill-timed romance.

  :But with Selenay alone, we didn’t think about how Caryo should change, and you Heralds didn’t think that Selenay would find herself looking for something outside of her duties.:

  :We were fools,: Alberich said flatly. :She was clearly drowning in duty and we thought a festival or two would be enough.:

  :Blind-sided. And there is only one way to deal with it, and that is to go along with it, just as Talamir said last night. Yes, even if it turns out that this Rethwellan princeling is a rounder and a cad who has been studying how to seduce our Queen.:

  The very thought made him angry, made him want to get hold of the blackguard and beat him with the flat of his sword—but Kantor was right. And Talamir was right. Hadn’t he just been watching plays all this winter and spring that proved that very point? The best way to get a young woman set on a particular young man, and vice versa, was to oppose the match. The only way to separate her from someone who was not good for her was to be reserved on the subject of the young man, while being supportive of her. Then, when things began to go wrong, and only then, did you make it clear that you were “on her side.” The only difference between a cliche and a truism was the skill and intricacy with which the latter was presented. And, unfortunately, Norris was a much better actor than the tawdry plays he presented for the common folk would have suggested. If he was, indeed, coaching the Prince—

  :Have you talked with Caryo about this?: he asked his Companion, as he rolled over on his back and stared up at the ceiling.

  :Not yet. Right now she’s very hurt that Selenay didn’t even hint of this to her. And, frankly, angry with herself for not seeing it. And she should be:.

  Well, he wasn’t going to be the one to say anything, but Kantor was right. In retrospect, Selenay had virtually handed everyone a map to her feelings with that masque, and all anyone had thought, if they’d thought at all, was how clever she was to have devised something that would entertain and honor all at the same time. Kantor was right; in this case, Caryo had been as thick as two short planks. And so had they.

  :Least said, soonest mended,: the Companion said philosophically. :I am keeping my thoughts to myself until Caryo is ready to talk to the rest of us. But I think that where Selenay is concerned, our voices must be raised in a song with but a single refrain—:

  :Which is, “All we want is your happiness,” I think,: he replied. :It’s true enough.: At least the feeling behind that phrase would be absolutely genuine. All any of them did want was Selenay’s happiness. They just wanted it without the Prince’s presence involved.

  :Meanwhile, I don’t think you should give up chasing Norris,: Kantor continued. :Now, I think that young Devlin was probably his contact in the Court to pass him information about Selenay herself. So I don’t think you should take your eyes off Devlin either.:

  He smiled grimly up at the ceiling. :Ah, now, nor do I. In the first place, Norris might not have been tutoring the Prince. In the second place, if that was indeed what was toward, we may someday need the evidence. Because what I overheard makes me think that once there’s a wedding, the Prince will slip. Selenay might excuse him a time or two, but she won’t put up with it forever. And then we can prove to her how she was manipulated.: Then, because he was honest, he had to add, :If she was. He might really be in love with her; he might be everything he seems. But my gut says he isn’t.:

  He felt Kantor’s satisfaction. :You’re better at this business than you were.:

  He sighed. :I could wish that there was no reason to be. The Weaponsmaster is all I ever cared to be.:

  :We play the game we’re put into, Chosen,: said Kantor, which seemed to be about the only possible answer.

  ***

  After that, however, it seemed as if a whirlwind had suddenly engulfed them, and the whirlwind’s name was Selenay.

  Alberich never had a chance to voice any opinion at all, because it was never asked of him. Selenay simply seemed to assume that because she was enchanted by the Prince, everyone else was, too. She had never before had anything that she wanted, really and truly wanted so much as Prince Karath—except, perhaps, for her father to be alive again. But the latter was impossible and the Prince was entirely within her reach. She was lonely, she was in love, and at the moment, there was no more potent combination. She could not imagine living without him, and she was taking steps so that she wouldn’t have to.

  Alberich was not present at the Council meeting that day after the masquerade where she announced—not asked, not even for advice—announced, arbitrarily and making it clear that she would brook no opposition, that she and the Prince were going to wed. And that it would be within the month. He was told about it later that evening by Elcarth.

  Elcarth, Kyril, Jadus, and Talamir were all in Alberich’s quarters, which made it a bit crowded once Myste, Keren, and Ylsa joined the group. Elcarth was looking more than a bit dazed, Kyril a little grim, and Talamir very—quiet and contained. Inhumanly so, actually. It made the hair on the back of Alberich’s neck rise.

  But they all had other considerations at the moment.

  “You ladies wouldn’t have known her father when he was at his most stubborn,” Elcarth said, rubbing his hands over his temples. “When there was something he knew he wanted done, and he wasn’t going to take ’no’ for an answer. He was a force of nature, and there was no point in getting in his way, any more than there is in standing in the path of an avalanche and expecting it to stop because you want it to. It was like seeing her father all over again, with the addition that she was positively fixated on getting her way in this, as if it not only would be, it had to be, or the world would end.”

  “She simply rode right over the top of any opposition,” Kyril seconded. “Not that there was very much, not when Orthallen and Gartheser threw in on her side. But still—I’ve never seen her like this, she became a petty tyrant, in fact. It was as if anyone who said anything contrary to her just didn’t exist—”

  “She was afraid,” Talamir said, into the silence. “Fear can make anyone a tyrant.”

  The men looked at him blankly; Alberich was among them. He couldn’t imagine how Talamir had come to that conclusion; there was no logic in it.

  But Keren and Myste exchanged an eloquent glance, and after Keren nodded, Myste spoke up.

  “She was afraid that if she didn’t force this through, now, she would lose him, you mean,” Myste said. It was a statement, not a question. “And if she loses him, it will break her, and she knows it.”

  “I think so.” Talamir passed a hand over one eye, and looked, for a moment, impossibly frail.

  “How can it break her?” Elcarth asked, aghast. “Great good gods, she’s been through much worse than having a love affair end!”

  “She does not precisely confide in me, so I can only judge by what I see and sense, based on what I know. I have never been in love myself,” he added, somewhat wistfully, “So all I can do is guess. But as for why it will break her—it is precisely because she has been through so much in this last year. I believe that she sees Prince Karath as—as a sort of lifeline.”

  “I think—maybe—it’s because he’s an outsider,” Myste put in. “I mean, she thinks she can’t unburden herself to the rest of us, because we’re a part of that burden. And anyway, he’s made himself indispensable now. If she loses him, it will be that proverbial last pebble that starts the avalanche. Maybe he’s only a pebble, but sometimes
that’s all it takes.”

  “Think about it, think back to how you felt with your first loves, not what you know now. The first time a youngster falls in love, there’s no way to tell the difference between love and infatuation from the inside,” Ylsa added sadly. “So as far as Selenay and this situation are concerned, right now, the difference is negligible.”

  “You mean, we treat it as love even though it might be—is probably—infatuation.” Kyril looked pained. “But—”

  “Remember what I told you about supporting her,” Talamir warned.

  “But if she goes on like this, overruling everything before anyone even has a chance to object—” began Elcarth. But both Talamir and Alberich were shaking their heads. Talamir gestured to Alberich.

  “I think she will not, for there is no fear there for her,” Alberich said. “Such things do not rouse her passion or her fear, for they do not affect her love.”

  “Precisely.” Talamir nodded. “Why should she be afraid about a matter of budget, or of setting a law? None of this is going to going to wrench her love out of her arms. We should be far more concerned that she stops caring about these things, frankly.”

  “Actually,” Jadus spoke up, making everyone turn to look at him, “I think the best thing we could do is get this wedding over and done with. If it could be done tomorrow, I’d say to do it.”

  “Because—” Alberich said slowly, feeling his way toward the words, “—if mere infatuation it is, the sooner reality comes, the better. So—let the Prince but think he has her, then revert to whatever his true self is, he will.”

  Just as that stranger with Norris said. He is not bright enough to make up his own speeches. When he has her, his control over himself will lapse.

  “Something like that,” Jadus agreed. “And when she has him, she won’t fear she’ll lose him anymore, so whether it’s love or infatuation, she’ll start thinking again instead of reacting with her emotions.”

  “That’s what I meant by treating infatuation the same as if it was love,” said Ylsa. “Even if we are certain it’s infatuation, she’s certain it’s love, and that he shares it, and if you don’t give the emotion the same respect as if it is love, she’ll stop listening to you.”

  “Oh, gods,” Elcarth groaned. “It’s hard.”

  “Because we all assume we know better than she does, we’re so much older and wiser,” said Myste dryly. “Believe me, that’s exactly what she’s most afraid of. She doesn’t want to hear about our experience, she doesn’t want to think that this intense emotional storm that is making her feel so good for the first time in months is based on anything less than truth. And hellfires, for all we know, she could be in the right. The Prince may be the best thing for her. He may be in love with her, and she with him. He’s only a second son; there is no way that he is going to be able to aspire to anything but chair-warming at home; at least here, while he may not be a King, he’ll be more than a hanger-on. Even if he isn’t in love with her, he may see her as his escape from mediocrity, and he may treat her with all the respect and tenderness we could ask because of it. But until we have evidence to the contrary, and she’s ready to look at that evidence, then—”

  “—then?” prompted Alberich.

  Myste sighed. “Then I believe we need to be planning a wedding.”

  ***

  The “we” turned out to be entirely rhetorical. With the opposition melted to nothing, and perhaps fearing tacit disapproval, if not of the marriage itself, at least of the haste with which she was insisting it be conducted, Selenay turned to the Court rather than the Heralds for her wedding plans.

  Now, Alberich had no more notion of how such things were done than any other sisterless bachelor. A month seemed to him to be a perfectly reasonable length of time to plan even a royal wedding. After all, what did one need? A place, a priest, some new clothing, perhaps, and a feast—surely no more time was needed for that than for the Ice Festival.

  Evidently not. And although he was the most certain man even among the Heralds that this Rethwellan upstart was nothing more than opportunism wrapped in a cloak of glamour, he was relieved to find himself excluded from the planning. Because the entire Court went absolutely mad. . . .

  It was sheer bedlam. Just for a start, apparently every female of rank had to have a new gown. And every female of rank with any male relatives was bound and determined to shovel their males into new clothing as well. So there was a steady stream of seamstresses and tailors, jewelers and fabric merchants, furriers and shoemakers, going to and from the Palace and the manors around the Palace, from dawn to well past dusk, clogging the roads and getting in everyone’s way.

  Then there was the question of where to hold the ceremony, for there were at least four enormous Temples in Haven that demanded the privilege. That debate alone occupied the Council for an entire day, and was only resolved when, in desperation, the Seneschal suggested that the entire ceremony be held outdoors, on the Palace grounds.

  And there was the question of how long the public celebration would be, for an occasion like this warranted feeding the populace at large for a whole day, at least, if not more; there was the problem of food, of course, and since it was now summer, the added problem of spoilage. A week was out of the question, but a day seemed too meager.

  And once that was settled, there were the particulars of the wedding feast and the wedding breakfast here at the Palace, and why the Council should be involved in that, Alberich could not imagine, but evidently they felt they had to decide even the most minute details of the menu.

  The next question that threatened civil war within the Court itself was that of precedence and who would serve as which ladies in attendance. It actually came to hair-pulling in the public gardens on one notable occasion. Myste solved this question when not even the Seneschal could, by tracing forward the pedigrees of everyone who had served as ladies in attendance at Sendar’s wedding.

  “I had the advantage,” she admitted later to Alberich, “having that genealogical research at my fingertips to eliminate all those suitors.” Having Myste settle the question did earn the Herald-Chronicler a few enemies among Selenay’s ladies who discovered themselves placed farther down the chain than they wanted, but earned but the gratitude of everyone else, including the entire Council.

  Although there was no question of who would perform the ceremony (the Lord Patriarch, of course), the question of which ceremony would be held was a pressing one. The Queen had her own personal choice of deities that she worshiped, but this was done privately, not publicly. There was no state religion in Valdemar. In fact, the Valdemaran credo was: “There is no one right way.” And while this made for great tolerance and freedom—it also made for a problem. How to perform what was essentially a religious ceremony without offending any of the myriad religions and their adherents became a matter of hysteria, until Myste in exasperation unearthed a previous wedding that quoted from every major religion in Valdemar, including (to Alberich’s shock) that of the Sunlord. At that point, as far as Selenay was concerned, Herald Myste could do no wrong.

  “And I’ll play on that later, if I have to,” she told Alberich darkly.

  The list of difficult questions, it seemed, only grew longer and longer with each passing day. It had been a very long time since a reigning Queen of Valdemar took a Consort, and many things had changed since that time.

  Alberich held himself lucky to be well out of it. He understood vaguely that Lord Orthallen got himself put in charge of it all with the help of the Seneschal, and that things were being sorted out, and that was all he cared to know about it. He might not care for Lord Orthallen himself, but there was no doubt whatsoever that the man was a superb diplomat and administrator.

  Nevertheless, the whole business was shattering discipline on the Collegium side. The Ice Festival had been bad enough; this was worse. He had to get positively savage with some of the youngsters in his classes, when the excitement over at the Palace started to ooze into the Colleg
ia and some of the Trainees even had the temerity to skip weaponry classes.

  It was all the fault of the Blues, actually. There was absolutely no point in expecting much of anything out of the highborn Blues, though, and he knew it. Half the time, they weren’t even at their classes, having been pulled out for various reasons having to do with The Wedding (he was coming to think of it with capital initials). And the other half of the time, their minds weren’t on anything that anyone was trying to tell them anyway. Some of them weren’t worth the water in a bucket with a hole in it, but others had friends among the Heraldic Trainees, and unfortunately, they were the ones playing the part of the tempters, luring their Trainee friends away with the siren song of “Oh, come on! It won’t hurt to skip just this once!”

  The Blues were a lost cause, and Alberich knew it; even parents would look at poor marks this one time and say to themselves, “Oh, but it was all the excitement of the wedding.”

  As for the Trainees, at least he and the other instructors had ways and means of enforcing their authority. In Alberich’s case, there was the threat of humiliation when a truant came back to class. The shame that the runaways would find themselves repeating a class brought some back into line, the threat of “no Hurlee” or other games got the attention of others. But in the end, what saved them all was that Selenay finally got around to declaring a fortnight holiday for all three Collegia, which at least solved the problem of keeping absent minds on study and would-be truants in their seats.