“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 patron 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.: