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.