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It would be wrong to say that everyone knew of the animosity between Lord Orthallen and the Herald Alberich. After all, while a lord on the royal council and the weapons master of the collegium, who also just so happened to be a Karsite born and raised, were hardly anonymous figures, neither of them tended to put themselves the public eye. Add to that Orthallen's courtesy and Alberich's professionalism and, well, it didn't make for common knowledge, particularly.
Among the heralds and the council, though? Among those who knew one of them well or had to work with the both of them together? Narrowed down to that context, yes, everyone knew and more than knew.
For the most part, no one who knew particularly cared. For those who simply had to work with the men they generally counted it as none of their business, especially given that neither man ever allowed it to interfere with their duties. Those with more personal connections, meanwhile, tended to hold those connections to one man only - and also, for the most part shared at least some small amount of distaste for the other.
The exception to that general rule was, of course, Queen Selenay, with the great affection she held for both men - for Alberich, her guard, her brother-in-arms, her once student now advisor; for Orthallen, the uncle of her heart just as he had been her father's brother in all but blood.
And so, given her strong love for the two men, paired with her knowledge that, much though the two tried for her sake, they held no love for each other, it could hardly come as any surprise how concerned she became upon seeing the both of them with similar injuries to their faces.
Orthallen she had seen in passing, only just able to make out the bloodied state of his face. Alberich, on the other hand, she first saw when he entered her study for a meeting.
"Oh Alberich," she sighed. "I saw uncle Orthallen earlier - I know you two don't get on well, even if you try for my sake, but I didn't think you'd fight, not physically."
Alberich gazed at her, face impassive as his reputation would suggest, but amusement thick in his voice. "Two men, you see, with lips bruised and bloodied but hands unmarked, and of fighting, your first thought is?"
Selenay choked on nothing, sure she must have misheard him, or at least misunderstood. "What?"
There was the faintest upwards tick of the corner of Alberich's mouth, and he seemed somehow satisfied. "Know what it more likely signifies you do, then, even if think of it first you did not."
"That's not - Alberich, what?"
"Correct, you are, that get on the two of us do not," he said. "But enjoying another's company, a requirement is not, their company to enjoy."
"Alberich!" Selenay shrieked.
Selenay," Alberich said blandly. "Now, business to discuss we had, believe I?"
Which was true enough, and so any talk of bloodied lips and enjoyment was put aside in favour of duty and responsibility. And Alberich, at least, if perhaps not Selenay, knew full well that it would be not even a day before the entire palace, and likely much of the city too, knew about the latest and most unexpected dalliance within their walls.
Myste, of course, always knew everything to happen in the palace.
"Orthallen," she said, eyebrows raised, when she caught Alberich having lunch in his quarters. "Really."
He ducked his head, feeling his cheeks grow warm. "Speak with you beforehand, I would have, but..."
She waved a hand dismissively. "Oh yes - I can hardly imagine it being like anything other than a damn bursting, and the two of you picking the path that means not explaining actual violence to the queen, which is hardly conducive to stopping to have a conversation with someone who wasn't even there. But that's not what I meant, and you know it."
"Then," Alberich started, lifting his face with a smirk, "Orthallen, yes." He shrugged. "When men, drawn to I have been, older men it always has been - ones with power and authority."
"Well, he certainly is that," Myste said. "Even if not one that I ever would have expected you to sleep with."
Alberich frowned. "Sleep with him I did not. Sleep with him I would not."
Myste frowned back at him, seeming more in confusion than anything else. "Are we being picky about terminology here? Because we can certainly talk about you hate fucking the man, if you prefer, I just figured that it wasn't really your preferred sort of language."
"More accurate that would be, yes, but more crude, also." Alberich's frown deepened, struggling to find the right way to express what he actually meant - a point important enough that he managed to force his grammar into proper Valdemaran word order, something that generally only happened when he was under extreme stress. "I sleep with you, in both senses of the word. I would sleep with others, in either sense. I did not sleep with Orthallen. I will not sleep will Orthallen."
"Oh." Myste's eyes widened with realisation. "You really - I mean, obviously you don't trust him. I don't trust him. But you really think he'd do something? Especially something that obvious?"
Alberich shrugged, relaxing now that his point had been understood. "Do something, he might or might not. But sleep with him I cannot, regardless - a matter of emotions, it is, not of logic."
:Obviously,: Kantor interjected, commenting on the matter for the first time since it had happened. :If it was a matter of logic, it wouldn't have happened at all.:
:Hush, you,: Alberich sent back. :As though the same urges you do not have.:
"You're talking as though it's likely to be an ongoing concern," Myste said, though far less judgementally than Kantor.
"Yes."
Myste raised an eyebrow, but he didn't feel any need to elaborate on that.
"Well," she said eventually, "so long as you're having fun, I suppose. Just don't expect that it's going to change how I get on with the man."
Alberich snorted. "Change how I get on with the man it will not."
"In that case," Myste started, grinning impishly, "let's hear all about hate fucking your older man with authority."
As time went on, Myste and Orthallen's relationship did indeed fail to change, except perhaps to worsen in ways that could hardly be surprising when people with a mutual antipathy found themselves sharing a lover. Which is to say, Selenay found herself desperately missing the very professional dislike that Alberich and Orthallen had shown each other, as Myste felt no need to hide or soften any of her barbs, and Orthallen was far too easily goaded into responding in kind.
Alberich and Orthallen, however -
Orthallen rose from bed, his gaze catching, as it so often did these days, on the Herald currently still caught in the grip of sleep.
He pulled himself away, in favour of correspondence he had been putting off. As he read, he was struck, like a sword, by thought that Alberich would hate him if he knew of this. Alberich would hate him, and he would care that Alberich hated him. Even more infuriating, he could not justify it to himself as he had when similar thoughts had occurred to him in the past.
Selenay, after all, was so very good, just as Sendar had been. Good and pure and self righteous, with no understanding of the harsher realities of the world, politically naive in the worst possible ways.
Alberich, meanwhile, was good, just as all heralds were, and yet - he wasn't just a herald. A once Karsite soldier, yes, which many would point to as some sort of sign of an intrinsically stained soul, but Orthallen was fully aware that political naivety knew no borders. No, what mattered was his role as spy. As a spy on what were now his own people, no less, showing a more pragmatic understanding of the world than Orthallen would once have expected any herald to possess. But Alberich went out, if not every night then certainly a great many of them, immersing himself in the filth of the world, dirtying his hands with blood or worse. And if he knew the sorts of things that Orthallen deemed necessary - or even simply acceptable - then Alberich would hate him.
And Orthallen didn't want Alberich to hate him.
He could feel bitter fury rising up in him, both at the thought of Alberich hating him, and at the fact that he cared so much what a low born ex-Karsite herald who couldn't even wear a proper uniform thought of him.
It was intolerable.
But luckily -
He shoved his papers away, uncaring of whether they creased or tore, and strode back to the bed, kneeling over Alberich. Luckily, he had a willing outlet for the rage consuming him.
He leaned down, and bit his herald's lip until he tasted blood.