"A Song for Arbonne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

CHAPTER 6

Lisseut, if asked in the midst of that swirling, suddenly horrific night, or even after, with time and a quiet place to think things through, would not have been able to say why she slipped free of Bertran de Talair's telltale blue cloak, ignored Alain's urgent cry behind her and followed the man named Blaise away from the torchlit pier and into the warren of dark, twisting lanes that led away from the river.

It might have been something about the way he had left the dock, the headlong ferocity, brushing past the Arimondan as if the man did not exist. Or something perhaps in the stricken expression she saw in his face as he went blindly past them all and plunged into the crowd. She had heard the word poison ripple back like a snake from where Valery lay. They were taking him to the largest temple of Rian. Men were hastily readying a sail canvas, slinging it between poles. They would move him on that. The crowd would make way in silence until they passed, bearing death, then it would be loud again, wilder than before, with flamboyant murder suddenly added to the intoxicating mixture of Carnival—something else by which to remember the night.

The troubadours and joglars would go to the temple, she knew, to wait and watch in a vigil outside the walls, many for Bertran's sake and some for Valery's. Lisseut had been part of death-watches before. She didn't want to join one tonight.

She followed the coran from Gorhaut.

She had to force her way against the press of the crowd. People were hurrying towards the river, drawn by rumours of some excitement or disaster, the coinage of festival time. Twisting past bodies, Lisseut smelled wine and cooked meats, roasted nuts, sweet perfumes, human sweat. She knew a brief, flurrying panic when she was trapped for a moment in a cluster of drunken merchant seamen from Gotzland, but she twisted free of the nearest of them and hurried on, looking for the man she was following.

His height made it easier. Even in the thronged laneways she could make him out ahead of her, moving against the crowd, his hair a bright red when he passed under the torches set in the walls of the dilapidated old warehouses. This was not the choicest part of Tavernel. Blaise of Gorhaut plunged onwards, taking turnings seemingly at random, moving more quickly as the crowds thinned out away from the water. Lisseut found she was almost running in order to keep him in sight.

Incongruous in one dim, crooked laneway, she saw a woman, gowned magnificently in green silk, furred and bejewelled, with an elaborate fox mask, reach out for Blaise; he didn't even break stride to acknowledge her presence. Lisseut, hurrying along behind him, was made suddenly aware of her own damp, straggling hair and ruined shirt. Trivialities, she told herself sternly; a white-feathered arrow had been launched tonight with poison on its head, and it had been meant—it took no brilliance of insight to know—for the duke of Talair and not the cousin who had quietly taken his place in that small boat on the river.

Blaise of Gorhaut stopped abruptly at a crossing of lanes and looked around him for the first time. Lisseut quickly ducked into a recessed doorway. She almost fell over a man and a woman leaning back against the wall in the darkness beside the door, locked in an embrace. The lower part of the woman's gown was pushed up about her waist.

"Oh, good," the woman drawled sensuously, glancing languorously at Lisseut, a ripple of amusement in her voice. Her mask had slipped back from her eyes and hair, dangling loosely down her back. The man laughed softly, mouth at her throat. Both of them reached out in the same instant, slender fingers and strong ones, to draw Lisseut into their embrace. "Good," the woman said again, a whisper, half-closing her eyes. There was a scent of wildflowers about her.

"Um, not really," Lisseut said awkwardly, stirred against her will. She spun free of both of them.

"Then farewell love, ah, farewell ever, love." The woman sang the old refrain with an unexpected plaintiveness marred by a giggle at the end as the man whispered something in her ear.

Back in the street, in the wavering, uneasy shadows between wall torches, Lisseut quickly donned the woman's mask. It was a cat, most of the women chose cat masks tonight. Ahead, she saw Blaise throw out a hand to stop a trio of apprentices. He asked a question. Laughing, they answered and pointed; one of them offered a flask. Lisseut saw Blaise hesitate and then accept. He squeezed a jet of dark wine down his throat. For some reason, watching, that made her uneasy.

He took the lane forking right, where they had pointed. She followed, passing the apprentices with quick sidelong steps, prepared to run; it was too dark here, not enough people. She reached the fork and looked along the lane to the right. It was even quieter there, running up and away from the river and the market square. The houses became steadily more impressive, more evidently prosperous, the roadway better lit than before with lanterns burning in ornate sconces on outside walls—one of the surest signs of wealth. Two girls, evidently servants, called cheerfully down to her from where they leaned out over a carved stone balustrade. Lisseut kept moving. Blaise, walking swiftly with his long strides, had already turned a corner up ahead. She began to run.

By the time she reached that next crossing of streets and turned right again as he had done, Lisseut realized where they were, even before she saw, in the square at the top of the street, the off-centred tower loom grimly above the largest red-stoned building.

This was the merchants' quarter, where the banking houses and mercantile operations of several countries had their headquarters in Tavernel, Arbonne's deep-harboured gateway to the world. That tower at the top of the road was a deliberate, intimidating echo of the great tower of Mignano, largest of the Portezzan city-states, and the massively formidable palaces on either side of the street leading to the square sheltered the Arbonne contingents of the lucid, careful merchants of those wealthy cities.

The noises of Carnival were distant now. Lisseut slipped into an archway, peering out carefully as Blaise of Gorhaut went past one massive doorway and then another. She saw him stop finally, gazing up at the coat of arms above a pair of iron doors. There were lights on in that house, on the upper levels where the sleeping quarters would be. There was no one else in the street.

Blaise stood motionless for what seemed to her a long time, as if deliberating something difficult, then he looked carefully around him and slipped down a narrow alley that ran between that house and the one north of it. Lisseut gave him a moment, then stepped out from her archway and followed. At the entrance to the alley she had to hold her breath for a moment, almost choking in the midden smell that came from it. Kneeling for concealment, her eyes keen in the darkness, she saw the coran from Gorhaut hoist himself smoothly to scale the rough stone wall running behind the house where he had stopped. There were more lights glowing softly from beyond that wall. She saw him silhouetted for a second against them before he let himself down on the other side.

It was time to go back to the river. She now knew where he had gone. She could find out who owned this house in the morning, report the incident to whoever seemed appropriate. Duke Bertran was the obvious person, or perhaps the countess's seneschal in Tavernel. Perhaps even Ariane de Carenzu, who had bound the men of Talair and Miraval to keep the peace this night. Morning would tell her what to do; she could consult with friends, with Remy, Aurelian. It was time to go back.

Discarding her mask, gritting her teeth, Lisseut went down the fetid alley, past the point where the Gorhautian had scaled the wall and, further along, she found an overturned wooden crate. There were always crates in alleyways. Rats scattered in several directions as she stepped carefully up onto it. From there it was just possible to lift herself to the top of the wide wall. She lay flat on the stone, motionless for a long time. Then, when she was sure she'd not been seen or heard, she cautiously lifted her head and looked down.

It was an intricate, formal garden, carefully tended. A plane tree grew just inside the wall and its branches offered some concealment for her, which mattered, for Riannon, the blue moon of the goddess, rode free just then of what seemed the last of the cloud cover for a time. Above, through the screen of leaves, Lisseut could see the stars, brilliant in the summer sky. A bird was singing in the branches of the tree.

Below her, on a close-cropped grassy expanse, Blaise of Gorhaut stood quietly beside a small, round pool into which a sculpted fountain was splashing water. There were flowers planted around the border of the fountain and more of them laid out in patterns through the ordered space of the garden. Lisseut smelled oranges and lemons, and there was lavender near the southern wall. Behind her rats scrambled in the dank alley.

On a small patio near the house a stone table had been laid with meats and cheeses and wine. There were tall white candles burning.

A man slouched in a chair by that table, hands laced behind his head, long legs extended, his features obscured by shadow. Blaise was looking at him. He had not spoken or moved since she'd arrived at her place of concealment on the wall. His back was to her. He seemed carved of stone himself. Lisseut's heart was beating rapidly.

"I will confess that I wondered," said the man by the table lazily, speaking Portezzan with elegant, aristocratic precision. "I wondered if you were in a clever vein tonight and would come. But see, I did give you the benefit of the doubt—there is food and wine for two, Blaise. I'm glad you're here. It has been a long time. Do come and dine with me. It is a Carnival night in Arbonne, after all."

He stood then, leaning across the table into the light as he reached for the wine. By the shining of the two moons and the candles and the glowing, graceful lanterns swinging from tripods among the trees, Lisseut saw that he was slender and bright-haired and young and smiling, that his loose silk tunic was night-black with wide, full sleeves, and his leggings were black and white, like Arsenault the Swordsman in the puppet shows she remembered from childhood—and like the arrows she saw lying in plain sight in their quiver by the table.

"You still use syvaren, I see," said Blaise of Gorhaut calmly. He didn't move any nearer to the table. He spoke Portezzan as well.

The fair-haired man made a face as he poured from a long-necked decanter. "An ugly thing, isn't it?" he said with distaste. "And amazingly expensive these days, you have no idea. But useful, useful at times. Be fair, Blaise, it was a very long shot in a breeze and uncertain light. I didn't plan anything in advance, obviously, it was sheerest good fortune I happened to be in the tavern when that river challenge was made. And then I had to count on Duke Bertran being skillful enough to make it as far as the rope. Which I did, and which he was, Corannos shelter his soul. Come now, you might have congratulated me by now on hitting him from so far. The right shoulder, I take it?" He turned, smiling, a glass of wine in each hand, one extended towards the other man.

Blaise hesitated, and Lisseut, all her senses alert, knew with certainty that he was wrestling with whether to tell the assassin of his error.

"It was a long shot," was all he said. "I don't like poison though, you know that. They don't use it in Arbonne. Had you not done so they might have thought the killing was by one of Urté de Miraval's men. It wasn't, I take it?"

The question was ignored. "Had I not done so there wouldn't have been a killing. Only a duke with a wounded shoulder and a quadrupled guard, and I'd be out a rather spectacular fee."

"How spectacular?"

"You don't want to know. You'll be jealous. Come, Blaise, take your wine, I feel silly standing with my hand out like an almsman. Are you angry with me?"

Slowly, Blaise of Gorhaut walked forward over the grass and took the offered goblet. The Portezzan laughed and returned to his seat. Blaise remained standing beside the table.

"In the tavern," he said slowly, "you would have seen that I was with the duke, one of his men."

"Of course I did, and I must say it surprised me. I'd heard a rumour at the Aulensburg tourney—you were missed in Gotzland, by the way, you were talked about—that you were in Arbonne this spring, but I doubted it, I really didn't know you liked singing so much."

"I don't, believe me. But it isn't important. I'm employed by the duke of Talair, and you saw as much in the tavern. Didn't that mean anything to you?"

"A few things, yes, but you won't like them and you won't want to hear them from me. You are angry with me, obviously. Really, Blaise, what was I supposed to do, abandon a contract and payment because you happened to be on the scene trading insults with an Arimondan catamite? I gather you killed his brother."

"How much money were you paid?" Blaise asked again, ignoring that last. "Tell me."

The fair, handsome head was in shadow again. There was a silence. "Two hundred and fifty thousand," the Portezzan said quietly.

Lisseut suppressed a gasp. She saw Blaise stiffen in disbelief.

"No one has that much money for an assassination," he said harshly.

The other man laughed, cheerfully. "Someone does, someone did. Deposited in advance with our Gotzland branch, in trust for me on conditions. When word comes of the musical duke of Talair's so sad demise the conditions are removed. Gotzland," he said musingly, "is a usefully discreet place sometimes, though I suppose it does help to have a family bank."

The man still seemed amused, eerily so, as if there was some private jest he was savouring at Blaise's expense. Lisseut was still reeling inwardly, unable to even comprehend the size of the sum he had named.

"Payment in Portezzan coinage?"

Laughter again, on the edge of hilarity now, the sound startling in the quiet formality of the garden. A slow sip of wine. "Ah, well now, you are fishing for information, my dear. You were never good at that, were you Blaise? You don't like poison, you don't like deceptions. You aren't at all happy with me. I've clearly gone to the bad since we parted. You haven't even asked for news of Lucianna."

"Who paid you, Rudel?"

The question was blunt, hard as a hammer. Blaise's wine glass was set down on the table, untouched; Lisseut saw that it shook a little. The other man—who had a name now—would have seen that too.

"Don't be stupid and tiresome," the Portezzan said. "When have you ever revealed who hired you? When has anyone you respected done so? You of all men know I've never done this for the money in any case." A sudden, sweeping gesture encompassed the house and the garden. "I was born to this and all it represents in the six countries, and I'll die with it unless I'm more stupid than I plan to be, because my father happens to like me." He paused. "Drink your wine, Blaise, and sit down like a civilized person so we can talk about where we're going next."

"We aren't very civilized in Gorhaut," said Blaise. "Remember?" There was a new note in his voice.

The man in the chair cleared his throat but did not speak. Blaise did not move from where he stood.

"I see it now, though," he said softly. Lisseut could barely hear him. "You've had too much wine too quickly, haven't you? You didn't mean to say all of that did you, Rudel?" He spoke Portezzan extremely well, much better than Lisseut did herself.

"How do you know? Perhaps I did," the other man replied, an edge to his tone now. "Lucianna always said that good wine at night made her—"

Blaise shook his head. "No. No, we aren't talking about Lucianna, Rudel." He drew a breath and, surprisingly, reclaimed his own goblet and drank. He set it down again, carefully. "You told me too much. I understand now why you find all of this so diverting. You were paid in Gorhaut coinage. You were hired for that insane amount of money to assassinate the duke of Talair in the name of Ademar, king of Gorhaut. But on the orders and doubtless the instigation of Galbert, High Elder of Corannos in Gorhaut."

In shadow the other man slowly nodded his head. "Your father," he said.

"My father."

Lisseut watched as Blaise turned away from the table and the lights on the patio and walked back towards the fountain. He stood gazing down at the rippling waters of the artificial pool. It was difficult to see his face.

"I didn't know you were with Talair when I accepted the contract, Blaise. Obviously." The Portezzan's voice was more urgent now, the amusement gone. "They wanted him killed for some songs he wrote."

"I know. I heard one of them." Blaise didn't look up from the pool. "There's a message in this. My father likes sending messages. No one is safe, he's saying. No one should think about crossing him." He turned with a harsh gesture. "You're meant to tell the fee, you know. If you don't, believe me they will. It'll get out. That's a message in itself. How far he'll go if he has to. The resources they can command. You've been used, Rudel."

The other man shrugged, unruffled. "We are always used. It is my profession, it's yours. People hire us to serve their needs. But if you're right, if they really intend to make sure everyone knows who paid for this and how much, then you had better think seriously about coming away with me."

"Why?"

"Think about it. In your clever vein, Blaise. What happens to you here when your own secret's broached? When people learn who you are—and that your father killed the duke of Talair while you were supposed to be guarding him. I have some idea why you came away to Arbonne in the first place—and now, we don't have to talk about it—but you can't stay here now."

Blaise crossed his arms over his chest. "I could deal with that problem. I could turn you in. Tonight. I am employed by the duke of Talair, I'd be doing my duty."

Lisseut couldn't see his face clearly, but from the voice that emerged from shadow she knew the man named Rudel was amused again.

"The late, lamented, poetical duke of Talair. He wrote one song too many, alas. Really, Blaise. Your father ordered the killing, your old comrade-in-arms performed it? Stop being stupid. You are going to be blamed for this. I'm sorry if what I've done makes things briefly awkward for you, but the only thing to do now is figure out where we'd like to go and leave. Have you heard, by the way? Lucianna is married again. Shall we visit the newly weds?"

There was another silence. "Where?" Blaise asked quietly. Lisseut had a sense that the question came against his will.

"Andoria. To Borsiard, the count, a fortnight ago. My father was there. I wasn't invited, I'm afraid. Neither, evidently, were you, though I would have thought you'd have heard."

"I hadn't."

"Then we must visit them and complain. If he hasn't been cuckolded yet you can take care of that. I'll create a distraction of some kind."

"How? By poisoning someone?"

The man named Rudel stood up slowly. In the light now, his features could be seen to have gone still; no trace of amusement remained. He set down his cup of wine. "Blaise, when we parted a year since I was under the impression we were friends. I am not certain what has happened, but I don't have the same impression at the moment. If you are only angry for tonight, tell me, and explain why. If you are more than that, I would appreciate knowing as much, so I can act accordingly."

Both men were breathing harder now. Blaise uncrossed his arms. "You took a contract from my father," he said. "Knowing what you knew, you took a contract from him."

"For two hundred and fifty thousand Gorhaut gold coins. Really, Blaise, I—"

"You have always said you don't do this for the money. You just said it again here. Your father likes you, remember? You're going to inherit, remember?"

"And are you jealous of that? As jealous as you are of any other man who is close to Lucianna?"

"Careful, Rudel. Oh, please be careful."

"What will you do? Fight me? To see which one of us can kill the other? How stupid are you going to be about this, Blaise? I had no idea you were with the duke of Talair. By the time I knew I could not withdraw from a job I'd accepted. You are as much a professional as I am. You know this is true. I took your father's contract because it was by far the largest sum of money ever offered in our time for a killing. I admit it, I was flattered. I liked the challenge. I liked the idea of being known as the man who was worth that much as an assassin. Are you going to try to kill me for that? Or are you really wanting to kill me for introducing you to my cousin, who decided not to change her nature just because you appeared on the scene and wanted her to? I told you exactly what Lucianna and her family were before you ever saw her. Remember? Or do you prefer to just hide within your anger, hide away from everyone you know, down here in Arbonne, and forget such painful things? Be honest with yourself, what is my sin, Blaise?"

Lisseut, flat on the wall, screened by the leaves of the plane tree with a bird now silent in the branches above, heard what she should not have heard and felt her hands beginning to tremble. This was too raw, too profoundly private, and she was sorry now that she had come. She was spying on this garden exactly like one of the evil, envious audrades who spied on the lovers in all the dawnsongs, bent on ruin and malice. The steady, quiet splashing of the fountain was the only sound for a long time. There were usually fountains in the songs, too.

When Blaise next spoke it was, surprisingly, in Arbonnais. "If I am honest with myself and with you, I will say that there are only two people on earth, one man and one woman, it seems I cannot deal with, and you are linked with both of them now, not just the one. It makes things… difficult." He took a deep breath. "I'm not going to leave Arbonne. Among other things, it would seem an admission of a guilt I do not bear. I will wait until morning before I report to the appropriate people who it was who shot that arrow. You should have no trouble being out to sea on one of your father's ships before that. I'll take my chances here."

The other man took a step forward into the full light of the candles on the table and the torches. There was no levity or guile in his face now. "We have been friends a long time and have been through a great deal together. If we are enemies now I will be sorry for it. You might even make me regret taking this contract."

Blaise shrugged. "It was a great deal of money. My father tends to get what he wants. Did you ever ask yourself why, of all possible assassins in the six countries, he hired the one who had been my closest friend?

Rudel's face slowly changed as he thought about this. Lisseut saw it happen in the glow of the light. He shook his head. "Truly? Would that have been it? I never even thought of that." He laughed softly again, but without any amusement now. "With my pride, I simply assumed he'd judged me the best of all of us."

"He was buying a friend I had made for myself in the world away from home, away from him. Be flattered—he decided your price would be very high."

"High enough, though I confess I'm less happy now than I was a moment ago. Tell me one thing, though. I think I do know why you left us all and came away by yourself, but why stay now? What has Arbonne done to buy you and hold you? What was Bertran de Talair that you will cast your lot in this way?"

Blaise shrugged again. "It has done nothing, really. Certainly not to buy me. I don't even like it here, truthfully. Too much goddess for me, as you might have guessed." He shifted a little, from one foot to the other. "But I have a contract of my own, just as you did. I'll wrap that up as honestly as I can, and then see where I end up. I don't think I'm casting any lots, really."

"Then think again, Blaise. Think harder. If your father was sending a message to the world by killing the duke of Talair what shall we take that message to be? What is Gorhaut telling us all? My father says there is a war coming, Blaise. If it comes, I think Arbonne is doomed."

"It is possible," said Blaise of Gorhaut, as Lisseut felt the colour leaving her face. "As I say, I will see where I am in a little while."

"There is nothing I can do for you?"

Lisseut heard a tired amusement in Blaise's voice. "Don't let the wine make you sentimental, Rudel. I am going to report you as an assassin at sunrise. You had best begin making your own plans."

The other did not move. "There is one thing," he said slowly, as if to himself. He hesitated. "The factors in all of the Correze branch houses will be sent a letter from me ordering them to receive and conceal you should the need ever arise."

"I will not go to them."

It was Rudel's turn to sound amused. "That much is out of my control. I can take no responsibility for your pride. But the letter will be written. I take it you are leaving your money with us?"

"But of course," said Blaise. "With whom else should I trust it?"

"Good," said Rudel Correze. "The one thing my father most hates is investors withdrawing their accounts. He would have been deeply unhappy with me."

"I would regret being the cause of such unhappiness."

Rudel smiled. "If I had not seen you, Blaise, I should be an extravagantly pleased man tonight, flushed with my great success. I might even go out and join the Carnival. Instead I am rendered curiously sad and forced to take a night voyage, which never agrees with my digestion. What sort of a friend are you?"

"One who is not an enemy, at any rate. Be careful, Rudel."

"And you. That Arimondan will kill you if he can."

"I know. If he can."

There was a silence. "A message for Lucianna?"

"None at all. The god guard you, Rudel."

Blaise took a step forward and the two men clasped hands. For a moment Lisseut thought they would embrace but they did not. She moved silently back along the wall, felt below in darkness with her feet for the wooden crate and slipped down into the odours of the alleyway. She heard the rats again as she moved quickly back towards the street. As she left the alley, she picked up her mask, discarded on the street, and put it on. She wanted some sort of barrier between herself and the world just then, and what she still wanted, even more than before, was a quiet time and a clear head that would let her think.

She didn't think she was going to get either tonight. She went back down the empty street away from the square at the top, past the massive iron doors that were the entrance to what she now knew was the Arbonnais palace of the House of Correze. She knew the name, of course. Everyone knew the name. She had stumbled into something very large and she didn't know what to do.

A little further down she came to the arched doorway she'd watched from before, when Blaise went down the alley. She slipped back into it, looking out from behind the elongated eye-slits of her mask.

She didn't have long to wait. Blaise of Gorhaut came striding out of the alleyway a few moments later. He stopped in the street and looked up at the stern, square tower of Mignano. She knew why now, she knew more than she should, or even wanted to know: Mignano was controlled by the Delonghi family, it had been for a great many years, and the only daughter of Massena Delonghi was a woman named Lucianna, twice married, twice widowed prematurely.

Three times married, she corrected herself. To Count Borsiard d'Andoria now. She wondered, briefly, why a man of power and means would marry her, knowing her family's ambition, knowing her own reputation. She was said to be very beautiful. How much could beauty excuse or compel? Blaise had turned away from the tower and was coming back down the street, walking quickly. The lantern light burnished his hair again, and the full beard.

She didn't know, until the moment she actually called his name, that she was going to do so. He stopped, a hand moving swiftly to his sword, then wavering before it dropped to his side. A woman's voice; he wouldn't fear a woman.

Lisseut came out from her archway into the light. Her mask was on. She reached up and removed it; the makeshift coiling she'd done with her hair came undone as she did, and she felt the tangled tendrils coming down about her face. She could imagine what she looked like.

"Ah," he said. "The singer." Some surprise in his voice, not a great deal. Not a great deal of interest, either. At least he recognized her. "You are a long way from the Carnival here. Do you want an escort back to where there will be people?"

His tone was courteous and detached, a coran of the god doing his sworn duty by someone in need. It hadn't even occurred to him why she was here, she realized. She was merely an Arbonnais female, presumably in need of assistance.

Her mother had always said she did too many things on impulse and that it would cost her one day. It already had, more than once. It was probably about to do so again, she thought, even as she opened her mouth.

"I followed you," she said. "I was on the garden wall under the plane tree. I heard what you both said, you and Rudel Correze. I'm trying to decide what to do about it."

She was briefly gratified at the level of astonishment that showed in his face, even behind the beard—as much a screen in its own way as all the masks were tonight. The feeling didn't last long. It was entirely possible, she realized, that he might kill her now. She didn't think so, but it was possible.

She braced herself for his fury. She thought, in the uncertain light, that she saw it come, a lifted head, a narrowed gaze upon her. He had stabbed Remy, she remembered. He had killed six men by Lake Dierne. His hands remained still, though. She saw him working out implications, surprise and anger giving way to a flatly professional appraisal. He was quick to control himself; had she not watched him earlier in the garden spilling wine in response to a woman's name spoken she would have thought him a cold, grim man.

"Why?" was all he said finally.

She'd been afraid of that question. She still didn't have an answer. She wished her hair was pinned properly, that her clothing was clean and dry. She felt like a street urchin. Her mother would be so ashamed.

"You seemed to be hurrying somewhere," she said hesitantly. "The way you left the pier. I think I was very… irritated with you in the tavern, I wanted to… know more."

"And now you do." He sounded more tired than angry, actually. "So, what will you do?" he asked.

"I was hoping you would tell me," Lisseut said, looking down at the cat mask in her hands. "I heard you say that you were going to stay instead of leaving with him. I heard him say there might be a war, and I… I heard who paid for the killing." She forced her head up to meet his gaze.

"My father," he said bluntly. "Yes, go on."

She felt her brow knit with concentration. "I'm not famous for my self-discipline, but I don't want to go charging into something that is out of my depth."

"Oh, really," he said with mild sarcasm. "How restrained of you. More people should think that way. But the obvious question is: why trust me? Why are you telling me this on a dark street when no one in the world knows we're here together or knows what you just heard? Why are you asking Galbert de Garsenc's son what to do? You know who he is, you know who I am now. You know that Rudel Correze, my friend, is the man who killed Valery. You spied, you learned things that are important. Why are you standing with me now? Do you care so little for your life, or are you simply ignorant about what happens in the real world to people who do things like this?"

She swallowed. He was not an easy man, not at all. She pushed her hair back from her eyes again; it was snarled, miserably.

"Because I believe what you said to him. You didn't know I was there, you had no reason to lie. You had nothing to do with this killing. And you said you would not leave Arbonne and… and then you didn't tell him he killed the wrong man." She felt her forehead smooth as she realized the truth of what she was saying. These were her reasons; she was discovering them as she spoke. She even smiled. "I think you are an uncivilized northerner upon whom the better things in life are wasted, but I don't think you're evil and I do think you meant what you said."

"Why," said Blaise of Gorhaut in an odd, musing voice, "am I so completely surrounded by sentimental people tonight?"

She laughed aloud. A moment later, as if surprised by himself, Blaise grinned crookedly. "Come on," he said. "We shouldn't be seen in the neighbourhood. Connections will be made." He began walking back down the wide street. His long strides made no concession to her size and she had to take quick, skipping steps to keep up. It was, in fact, irritating again, and after a short while she grabbed his sleeve and with a vigorous tug forced him to slow his pace.

"The god wouldn't want you to make me run," she murmured. He opened his mouth and then closed it. She thought he had nearly laughed but wasn't sure, glancing up in the uncertain light and shadow.

It was then though, unfortunately, hand holding his sleeve, that she remembered that it was Carnival night, Midsummer Eve. It was said in Tavernel to be bad luck to lie alone tonight. She felt her mouth go dry. She swallowed and let go of his sleeve. He didn't even notice, striding along beside her at a more decent pace, broad-shouldered and competent, with the celebrated, notorious Lucianna Delonghi somewhere in his past. Unbidden, the image of the entwined couple in the dark laneway came vividly back to her. Oh, good, the woman had said, in a voice made husky by desire, and their hands had reached out to draw her into a shadowed sanctity.

Lisseut shook her head and swore to herself, breathing deeply of the night air. This was, of course, all Remy's fault. Before him such thoughts, such images, would have been alien to her. Well, mostly alien.

"Why are you letting him leave?" she asked, to change the pattern of her thoughts, to break the silence. There were more people around them now; mostly couples at this point in the evening she noted, and quickly suppressed that thought. "Because he's your friend?"

Blaise glanced down at her. She wondered if her voice sounded strained. He hesitated. Lisseut had a quick, flaring sense that if she had been a man he wouldn't have. He did answer, thought. "Partly that, obviously. We have been through… a great many things together. But there's more to it. Rudel Correze is an important man. He's his father's son, and his father is a very important man. If he's captured here we would have to decide what to do with him, and that could prove awkward. If a war comes, the cities of Portezza will be important, for money, and possibly more than that."

She took another chance. A large chance. "We?" she asked.

He was silent for a few strides. "You are," he said finally, "a clever woman, and obviously a brave one." She thought of sketching a mock bow in the roadway but refrained. "I suggest you try hard not to become too sentimental about this. I'm a professional coran, at the moment under contract to Duke Bertran, who is not dead though a man I had come to like is. In my profession one gets used to the deaths of people one likes, or one finds another profession. I could as easily be in Aulensburg serving Jorg of Gotzland by this autumn, and if he decides to join Gorhaut and if there is a war… I'll be back here and fighting for him against you. You must understand that. For now, I try to serve, as best I can, the needs of the man who pays me."

"Payment is all? Wouldn't you fight for Gorhaut because it is your country? Only for that reason, money aside?" She found that she was breathing hard again.

He fell silent as they walked, looking over and down at her. Their eyes met for a moment, then he glanced away. "No," he said finally. "Once I would have. Once I did. Not any more." He drew a slow breath. "Not since Iersen Bridge. I am a professional coran. Payment is all."

"And you can change sides that easily? There are no attachments that matter? No people, no principles?"

"You started the evening attacking me," he murmured. "Is it becoming a habit?"

Lisseut felt herself blushing.

"If you are fair," he went on, "you will acknowledge that there are principles behind what I do. Attachments are dangerous in my profession. So is sentiment."

"You've used that word at least four times tonight," she said, more tartly than she'd intended. "Is that your only word for human affection?"

He laughed again, surprising her. "If I concede you the point will you leave it?" he asked.

He stopped in the street. They were back among the crowds now. Someone jostled her going past. Blaise laid a hand on her shoulder as she turned to look at him. "I don't think I'm up to debating with you in the street tonight. I think I'd lose." He gazed down at her soberly, a professional again, assessing a situation. "You asked me earlier what you should do. I intend to speak to En Bertran in the morning. He should not be taxed with this tonight, I think that is obvious, quite aside from what I promised Rudel Correze. I will tell him everything that happened, including my decision to let Rudel have a chance to leave. I expect he'll agree with that, eventually, if not immediately. I'll also tell him who paid for that arrow. I promise you these things. If you don't trust me to do this, you can be there when we meet in the morning."

It was more than she could have expected, rather a great deal more. She said, however, being what her mother had always said she was, "You'll tell him everything? Including who you are?"

His expression did not change; he'd been expecting the question, she realized. He had already begun taking her measure; it was a curious thing to realize.

"If you insist that I do so, I will. I cannot stop you from telling, in any event. I don't go about killing women who learn too much. I can only ask you to let me be the judge as to when and whether to reveal that, as events unfold." He hesitated again. "I mean no harm to anyone you care about."

She thought of Remy, with a sword wound in his shoulder. She said, hardily, trying to sound cool and experienced. "Fine. I can give you that. But then I had better not be there when you speak to Bertran or he'll summon me after, alone, and ask me what else I heard—and I'm not very good at lying." She was conscious of his hand still on her shoulder.

He smiled. "Thank you. You are generous."

Lisseut shrugged. "Don't be sentimental," she said.

He laughed aloud, throwing his head back. An artisan with a noisemaker ran past them just then, producing a terrifying blast of sound. Blaise winced.

"Where shall I leave you?" he asked. "At the tavern?"

He had taken his hand from her shoulder. It was Midsummer Eve, in Tavernel. She said, "You don't have to leave me… actually. It is Carnival and the night has some time yet to run. We could share a bottle of wine, if you like, and… and, well if you are staying in Arbonne for a while longer you should know some of our customs." She looked away, despite herself, along the crowded street. "It is said to be… unlucky to spend tonight alone in this city."

Her mother had always said she would end up disgracing the family. She could blame her uncle for taking her out into the wide world as a singer. She could blame Remy of Orreze. She could blame the holy rites of Rian in Tavernel on Midsummer Eve.

She could wait, biting her lip, for the man with her to say, with devastating politeness, "Thank you. To both things. But I am not of Arbonne, truly, and if it brings me ill luck or no, a coran I admired has died tonight and my own customs require that I keep vigil for him in a house of the god."

"All night?" She looked back up at him. It took some courage.

He hesitated, reaching for words. Lisseut said then, knowing it was ill advised, "I don't know what happened in Portezza, obviously, but I am not like that. I mean, I don't normally—"

He put a hand over her mouth. She felt his fingers against her lips. "Don't say it," he murmured. "Leave me that much as my own."

He was an uncivilized northerner, she thought. He had stabbed Remy in the arm. Until the sun falls and the moons die, her grandfather and her father used to say, Gorhaut and Arbonne shall not lie easily beside each other. His fingers withdrew, he withdrew back into himself, behind his own mask. It was only the dangerous associations of Midsummer Eve, she told herself, and the disturbing intimacy of what she'd heard in that garden. There were other men to be with, men she knew and trusted, men of talent and wit and courtesy. They would be back at The Liensenne, in the downstairs room or upstairs with Marotte's wine and cheeses and their own harps and lutes and songs, celebrating Rian through the remaining hours of the goddess's most holy night. It was not likely she would have to lie alone.

Unless, in the end, she wanted to. With an unexpected sadness within her, Lisseut looked away beyond the man she was standing with, struggling to regain the diamond-bright mood of exhilaration that seemed to have slipped away from her somewhere in this strange night among the crowds and the music and the noisemakers and the one arching arrow and the words she'd heard spoken beside the plashing of a fountain.

And so it was, looking away along the crowded street, that she saw before he did the six men in crimson livery who now came up and surrounded them carrying torches, bearing swords.

MIDSUMMER

177

Their leader bowed gracefully to Blaise of Gorhaut. "It would be a great courtesy," he said, with perfect, grave formality, "if you would come with us."

Blaise looked quickly around; she could see him trying to take the measure of this new situation. He looked back at Lisseut, seeking a clue or explanation in her eyes; she had known he was going to do that. He didn't know the livery, of course. She did. She knew it well. And didn't much feel, just then, like helping him. How, she thought, surprised by her own swift anger, was a bedraggled joglar from Vezét's olive groves to compete with this sort of thing on a night of Rian?

"I don't think," she said, "that you are going to have your vigil with the god after all. I wish you joy of the night and the year." And took a shallow, fleeting satisfaction in the incomprehension that showed in his eyes before they took him away.

One of the men in crimson escorted her back to The Liensenne. Of course. They were flawlessly versed in such niceties. They had to be, she thought sourly, they were meant to be an example to all the world.