The Exotic Enchanter Read Free Page A

name?"
    "Lady Florimel, Your Highness."
    "So is she named."
    "What—?" Chalmers' voice did break.
    "Can she—they—be ransomed or rescued?" Shea asked, noting that many far from friendly looks were now aimed their way.
    "Perhaps," the prince said. "What is she to you?"
    "She is Sir Reed's wife, Your Highness."
    Shea didn't notice any warming of the atmosphere, but Igor suddenly gave a bark of laughter.
    "So that is why you said so little! 'Reports to your superiors.' Pig swill! You're trying to find her! But how did you—what happened?"
    "She was stolen by a powerful enemy, Your Highness."
    "He must have been. You don't look it, but I'm thinking you are bogatyri yourselves." He grinned. "Perhaps you really have seen hippogriffs and the rest of it.
    "Regardless, we now have a common foe. We must rescue your wife and Yuri's family before they go to the Krasni Podok slave market." He filled his cup with an unsteady but practiced hand and rose on still more unsteady legs.
    "By Our Lord who saved us, His Mother who bore Him, the Saints who followed Him, the honor of Seversk, and my own honor as its prince, I swear that I will do all that may be needed, yea unto holding my own life as naught, until the Lady Florimel is rescued from her captivity among the Polovtsi."
    Then he fell forward on the table and began to snore.
    Chalmers looked stricken, but the other Rus at the table, after hearing the snores, paid no heed to the fallen prince. Shea took a close look and a strong sniff. "Just drunk," he reassured his colleague.
    Euphrosinia Yaroslavna's handsome face looked thoughtfully at Reed Chalmers' hopeful one. "You should know," she said, "that by both the laws and customs of the Rus, no man may be held to anything he promises while drunk."
    Shea thought that spoke well for the good sense of the Rus, but wasn't about to say so. "What says the law?" he asked, covering for Chalmers.
    " 'If two men, both being drunk, come to an agreement, and after, when they have both slept their drunkenness off, one of them is not satisfied with the agreement, it shall be void.' " Her fluent quotation gave Shea some notion of how often it was cited. "By custom, no vow, contract, or promise is valid unless all parties are sober."
    "There is reason to go after them," Chalmers said, his voice showing that he'd bounced back, for the moment. "Folk of the Rus were captured too."
    The princess shrugged her elegant shoulders. She couldn't hold a candle to Belphebe were that lady present, Shea decided, but she definitely held the eye on her own. "There are boyars of princely houses in the tents of the Polovtsi at this moment. Yuri was a muzh , yes, but a border lord."
    She looked directly at them; her words might give pain, but she didn't turn away from her victims. "Done is done. For now, it is more important to prevent further raids. The Polovtsi should not have been able to strike this close to Seversk."
    In an academic setting, Dr. Shea might have appreciated her realpolitik . She showed more logic than most political commentators in the twentieth-century U.S. But thinking of Belphebe had triggered a gut reaction: if she were in a mess, politics could take a bath until she was out of it. And Reed Chalmers would back him up.
    Ergo, since Florimel is in a mess, politics can take that same bath, and I will back Reed. QED.
    Time for my realpolitik, Your Highness.
    Shea's gut had also generated an inspiration. He looked in the kindling box (the prince's table was close to the stove). Good, it held unpeeled willow branches as well as birchbark. Now to unruffle the princess' feathers . . .
    "If I may, Your Highness, I would like to return His Highness' hospitality by giving him a healing draught. He needs to be able to ride tomorrow, no matter where he goes."
    "I will watch you prepare it, and you will drink it yourself before you give him any of it."
    Shea had no problem with that, although he wished the samovar wasn't still a few centuries in the future.