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

CHAPTER 7

Even when he saw the peacocks in the extravagantly lit inner courtyard of the house where they brought him, Blaise wasn't sure where he had come. He had no sense of immediate danger from the five men escorting him, but, equally, he was under no illusion that he could have refused their courteously phrased request.

He was surprisingly weary. He'd been more honest with the singer, the straggle-haired girl named Lisseut, than he would have expected to be, especially after what she'd done. But if he'd been entirely truthful he would have added, at the end, that his desire for a vigil in a house of the god was at least as much for the cool silence such a solitude would afford as it was to mourn and honour Valery of Talair's passing to Corannos that night.

He had rather a great deal to think about and try to deal with just now, and wine and whatever might follow on a decadent night in Tavernel with a singer—however spirited and clever she might be—was not going to ease his heart or his mind tonight. Things seemed to have suddenly become difficult again.

His father had paid a quarter of a million in gold to Rudel Correze to kill the duke of Talair.

A clear message meant for all the world, and another, hidden, for his younger son alone: See what I have to work with, my errant child. See what I deny you for refusing me. How I strip away even your friendship. Learn the cost of your folly. How could you ever have dreamt of gainsaying me?

Was there any place on the surface of the earth where he might go and not be brought back, face to face as before the polished, merciless, self-revealing surface of a mirror, with Galbert, the High Elder of Corannos in Gorhaut?

And there was more, even more than that tonight. Lucianna was married again. Another sort of mirror that, distorting and dark: guttering candles beside a ravaged bed, the god's moon passing from a window, an eastern songbird in an ornate cage singing to break the heart—images so raw the eyes of memory flinched away.

He had come in the stillness of winter through the passes to Arbonne as to a place of haven or refuge, where he had never been before, would probably not be known, might serve in quiet anonymity whatever petty lord in whatever remote mountain fastness might offer him an adequate recompense. Where he might not ever hear her name spoken, whether in admiration or desire or contempt, or be forced to deal with all the hurting, hoarded memories from Portezza: images framed in the intricate textures of carpeting and tapestries, cushions of woven silk, vases and drinking cups of marble and alabaster, and weaving through them all, like a drifting veil of smoke, the sensuous, elusive scents he had come to know perilously well in the women's wing of the Delonghi palace in many-towered Mignano a year ago.

What is my sin, Blaise? Rudel was like that. A knife in the voice and in the thought behind. Quicksilver bright, insubstantial as a moon on water sometimes, then sharp and merciless and deadly as… as an arrow dipped in syvaren. And the sharpness in his perceptions, as much as in anything else. A man from whom it was difficult to hide.

For the sin, the transgression, lay—and Rudel knew it, they both knew it—in his having given Blaise exactly what he wanted. In taking a Gorhaut coran still numb with shock and anger in the aftermath of the Treaty of Iersen Bridge and drawing him away, first to Aulensburg and the ale-sodden, hunt-obsessed court of Jorg of Gotzland, and then down south by stages in fair, flowering springtime to something else, something entirely otherwise.

To the cities of Portezza and their intrigues, the delicate pleasures of subtle, wealthy men with sidelong smiles, and the infinitely versed women of those warring, brilliant city-states. And one windswept night, with distant thunder sounding on the hills north of Mignano, there had been Lucianna Delonghi's night-black hair at the head of a banquet table, the flash of her jewellery, the equally flashing wit with unsettling traps and double meanings everywhere, the mocking laugh, and then, astonishingly, what she was afterwards, elsewhere, under the painted canopy of a bed, clad only in the dazzle of that jewellery… what happened when mockery left the laughter but the laughter remained. That was Rudel's sin. And so, being honest, Blaise was forced to say there was really no sin at all, only a doorway offered—and with a warning, as well—through which he himself had walked, scarred by wounds from a winter battle when his king had died, into the seeming warmth of a firelit, candlelit, scented sequence of rooms, from which he'd emerged a season later with wounds that went deeper by far.

The peacocks were arrogantly unafraid. One of them seemed inclined to challenge their right to cross the courtyard before it turned and strutted away, opening the glorious panoply of its tail. Under the moons and in the blaze of torches there was something extravagant and profligate about the fan of colours on display. In his memories of Lucianna, too, there was little daylight; it all seemed to have happened in darkness or by candlelight, extravagant, profligate, in one palace or another, and once, on a steaming, airless summer's night not to be forgotten, with Rudel in Faenna when they had killed her husband on a contract for her father.

As they approached the end of the courtyard a pair of doors were opened by a footman in the dark red livery. Behind him, in a wide hallway, bearing flame in a slender candlestick, a lady-in-waiting stood, in the same colours, with white at wrist and throat and binding her dark hair. The footman bowed, the woman sank low in a curtsey. The candle in her hand did not even waver. "Will you honour me by following?" she asked.

Blaise was still under no illusions. Two of the guards had remained, he noted, waiting just inside the doorway. He was almost inclined to berate them all, to demand an end to this protracted charade of courtesy, but something in the perfection, the gravity of it, made him hold his peace. Whoever it was who had sent for him very clearly placed an exaggerated value on such things; it might be a useful piece of information.

And it was with that thought, following the woman's neat-footed progress down a corridor and up a wide, curving flight of stairs, with two guards in careful step behind him, that Blaise understood where he had to be, and something the singer had said, at the end, became belatedly clear to him.

They stopped before a closed door. The woman knocked twice and opened it; she stepped aside, gesturing with easy grace for Blaise to pass within. He did. They closed the door behind him, leaving him in that room without attendant or guard.

There was a fireplace, not lit. Candles in sconces on the walls and on tables placed around a richly furnished and carpeted room done in shades of dark blue and gold. Wine on one table, he saw, goblets beside a flask. Two, no, three doorways opening to inner rooms, a pair of very deep, high-backed chairs facing the fire. The windows on the outer wall were open to the breeze; Blaise could hear noises of revelry from below. There was a familiar, hard bitterness in him now, and a curiosity he could not deny, and a third thing, like the quickening hammer of a pulse, beneath both of these.

"Thank you for coming," said Ariane de Carenzu, rising from a divan on the far side of the room. Her black hair was still down about her shoulders, as it should not have been. She was dressed as before, jewellery upon her like fire and ice.

"I would accept the thanks if I had had a choice in the matter," Blaise said grimly. He remained just inside the doorway, assessing the room, trying not to stare too intently at the woman.

She laughed aloud. "Had I been certain you would elect to come I would have been happy to grant you that choice." Her smile made it clear she knew exactly what she was saying. She was very beautiful, the dark hair framing and setting off flawless white skin. Her dark eyes were wide-set and serene, the mouth was firm, and in her voice Blaise heard the note of control he had registered in the tavern when she had issued a command to the dukes of Talair and Miraval, and both had accepted without demur.

The women of Arbonne, he thought, trying to summon anger like a shield. He folded his arms across his chest. A little more than a year ago, on a spring night with the god's thunder outside on the northern hills, he had answered a different kind of summons to another black-haired woman's chambers. His life had been changed that night, and not, in the end, for the better.

There is wine by the fire, Lucianna Delonghi had said then, lying across her bed beneath the canopy of coupling figures. Shall we begin with that thirst?

There was no bed here, no lit fire, and the woman with him now poured the wine for both of them herself, and then neatly, without artifice, walked over to offer him a goblet. He took it without speaking. She did not linger beside him but turned and walked back to the divan. Almost without knowing he was doing so, Blaise followed. She sat and gestured with one hand and he took the chair she indicated. She was wearing perfume, a subtle scent, and not a great deal of it. There was a lute on a table at one end of the divan.

She said, without preamble, the dark brown eyes steady on his, "There are a number of matters we might wish to consider, you and I, before this night is over, but do you want to begin by telling me what happened after you left the river?"

He was tired, and his mind and heart had been dealt double blows tonight, but he was not so far unmanned as that.

He even found himself smiling, though he could not have said why. Perhaps the pure challenge of it, the directness of what she seemed to be trying to do. "I might," he murmured. "I might possibly want to tell you, but until I know who else is listening at the door behind you I would prefer to keep my own counsel, my lady. You will forgive me."

He had expected many things, but not delight. Her laughter chimed with her two hands clapping happily together, the long fingers momentarily obscuring the rubies about her throat.

"Of course I will forgive you!" Ariane de Carenzu cried, "You have just won me a wager of twenty-five silver barbens. You really shouldn't work in the service of men who undervalue you so much."

"I object to that," said Bertran de Talair, entering the room from the door behind her. "I did not underestimate Blaise. I might possibly have judged your charms to be rather more distracting then they seem to be of late."

"I know your lute," Blaise said briefly. "I may not think much of your music, but I know the instrument." He was making an effort to keep his composure. He wasn't really looking at Bertran, either, because another woman, very tall, had walked in behind the duke. This one had grey in her dark hair and she was blind and there was a white owl on her shoulder. The last time he'd seen her was on an island in the sea when she'd told him the secrets of his own heart in the night dark of a forest.

"You might at least have tried," Bertran went on plaintively, addressing Ariane. "I'm minded to renege on our wager. You were about as seductive as a wet goat in a cave."

"Spare us a recitation of your preferences," Ariane replied sweetly.

It was the High Priestess of Rian, her blank eye sockets turned unerringly to where Blaise had risen from his chair, who told him the thing he most needed to know, as de Talair threw back his head in laughter.

"The wounded coran will live. He should be completely recovered after the shoulder injury heals."

"That cannot be," Blaise said, his mind clamping shut in denial. "There was syvaren on that arrow."

"And he owes you his life for telling them as much by the river," the priestess went on gravely. She was robed in a gown grey as the streaks in her hair. Her skin was darkened and roughened by sun and wind and the salt of the sea, a complete contrast to Ariane's alabaster smoothness. "They brought him to me in the temple here, and because I knew what this was and because it happened tonight, I was able to deal with it."

"You can't, though. You can't cure a man poisoned by syvaren. No surgeon in the world can do that."

She permitted herself the small, superior smile he remembered. "That last is true, at any rate. Nor could I have done so if too much time has passed and if I had not been in a consecrated place. It is also Midsummer Eve. You should have cause to remember, Northerner, that the goddess's servants can do things you might not expect when we are centred in her mysteries."

"We burn women in Gorhaut when they traffic in the magic of darkness." He wasn't sure why he'd said that, but he did indeed recall the apprehension he'd felt on the island, the pulsing of the forest floor beneath his feet, and something of that was coming back now. He was also remembering, as through a tunnel of smoke and years, the first witch-burning he'd ever seen. His father had pronounced the excoriation and had had both his young sons stand by him and watch.

The High Priestess of Rian was no longer smiling. "Fear makes men label women's power an act of darkness. Only fear. Consider the price of that: no woman would have dared try to save Valery of Talair if that arrow had been loosed in Gorhaut." She paused, as if waiting for a response, as a tutor with her charge. Blaise said nothing, keeping his face as impassive as he could. The owl flapped its wings suddenly but settled again on the priestess's shoulder. In a different tone she said, "I bring greetings for you from Luth of Baude, who now serves Rian with dignity on her Island."

Blaise grimaced at the recollection. "Luth couldn't serve a flask of ale with dignity," he said, anger and confusion overcoming him.

"You do not mean that, you are only unsettled. You might also be surprised at what any man may do when he, too, feels centred in his own being." The reproach was mild enough, but Blaise felt, as he had before with this woman, that there were meanings beneath the surface of her words, that she was speaking to a part of him that no one should have been able to address.

The very old woman who had burned on the Garsenc lands all those years ago had been pitiful more than anything else. A village neighbour had accused her at the year end godmoot of witching a cow so its milk would dry. Galbert had decided to make an example of the case. Every year, sometimes more often, such a course was needful, he had said to his sons.

The cow's milk had been unchanged even after the witch had died with her white hair blazing. Blaise had made a point of going back to the village, after, and asking about that. Something had sickened in him then, and did so again whenever the memory came back. He recalled, a memory thick and oppressive, his father's heavy hand on his shoulder at the burning, as Galbert made sure his recalcitrant younger child would not shame him by turning away. There had been no darkness, no secret, dangerous power in the terrified woman screaming until she choked among black smoke and the tongues of flame and the smell of burning flesh. Somehow Blaise had known it even then.

But there was magic in the High Priestess of Rian. He had felt it on that island. She had known about Rosala. That, in itself, was an almost impossible thing to deal with, or forget. And as for the poison tonight: Bertran was here laughing, had been gleefully wagering with Ariane de Car-enzu. Valery could not be dead. Even with syvaren on the arrow.

Something clenched and hurtful in Blaise, that had been present since he'd seen the white-and-black shaft fly, began to loosen its grip inside him. Rudel Correze, he thought abruptly, was going to be a profoundly disconcerted man one day not far from now. A part of him wanted to smile at that, but instead Blaise found himself sinking back down into his chair and reaching for his wine. He cradled the silver goblet in both hands without drinking. He was going to have to be careful now, he thought, looking at the two women and the man. Extremely careful.

"How much power do you have?" he asked, keeping his voice even, looking at the blind woman. She was still standing behind the divan.

And unexpectedly—she was always unsettling him, it seemed—the priestess laughed. "What? Would you have a dissertation now on the Natural, Celestial and Ceremonial powers, with a subsidiary digression on the three Principal Harmonies? You think I am a lecturer at the university, perhaps? You haven't even offered me a fee, Northerner!"

Blaise flushed at the mockery. But even as the High Priestess ended, laughing still, Ariane de Carenzu's cool voice interceded, precise and sharp as a stiletto between the ribs. "However captivating the issue raised might be, I am afraid the furthering of your education will have to be delayed a short while. You might recall that I have a question proposed first. You declined to answer until you knew who was behind the door. That was fair enough. Now you know. I would be grateful for a reply."

What happened after you left the river? she had asked. The offered question and the heart of danger in this room tonight. Bertran de Talair stopped his restless pacing. He had picked up a crystal from one of the tables and held it now in one hand, turning it this way and that, accepting and diffusing candlelight, but his blue eyes were steady on Blaise's as he waited.

Blaise turned—as he seemed always to be turning—back to the High Priestess in her rough grey robe. Quietly, he said, "If you know my mind, as you seemed to when last we met, you can answer all such questions for them, can't you." He said it flatly; it was not a question.

Her expression, oddly, grew gentler, as if he'd sounded an unexpected chord. She shook her head. "I also told you that night that our powers are less than our desires would have them be, and they grow weaker when we are farther from the hearthstones of Rian. On the goddess's Island I could read some things in your heart and in your history, largely to do with love and hate, you will remember. I said I could tell your future. That was a lie. Nor can I read your mind right now. If you have things to tell us you will have to tell them yourself."

"Not all things," Blaise said calmly. "You could tell them who I am, for example."

There was a short silence, then:

"We all know who you are, Blaise de Garsenc." Bertran laid down the crystal as he spoke. His voice actually held a faint irritation. "Did you honestly think you were travelling in such secrecy? That you entered my service without my knowing whom it was I was hiring?" The candlelight on the clever, cynical face exposed his old white scar.

Blaise swallowed. Events were moving very fast. Abruptly, he recalled something. "But you asked me. You wanted to know who I was when first we met. If you knew, why ask?"

Bertran shrugged. "I learn more sometimes from questions I know the answers to. Really, Blaise, whatever you—or I, for that matter—may think of your father, he is one of the powers of our world today, and his younger son has been, for a number of years, a coran of some reputation of his own. It was no secret—among certain circles, at any rate—that Galbert de Garsenc's son left Gorhaut immediately after the Treaty of Iersen Bridge was signed. And when a distinctively tall, reddish-bearded Gorhaut coran of considerable skills was reported to be in Castle Baude some time after… it wasn't difficult to make an obvious guess. At which point I went to investigate matters for myself. Incidentally, I've never seen another man match arrows with my cousin at that distance before."

Feeling bludgeoned by the increasing pace of revelations, Blaise shook his head. "I didn't match him. And as it happens, the man who shot Valery tonight may well be better than either of us." He wasn't sure he'd actually meant to say that.

"Ah, well now," murmured Ariane de Carenzu, the words like a slow caress in the stillness of the room. "This brings us somewhere, finally." Blaise looked at her. Her lips were parted slightly, her eyes bright with anticipation.

"I had intended to tell the duke in the morning," he said carefully. "I undertook to wait until then."

"Was such an undertaking yours to give?" The caressing note was gone as swiftly as it had come. She had spoken this way in the tavern, to Talair and Miraval. Blaise hadn't liked it then, and he didn't now. He let his eyes grow wide, holding and challenging her. It was curious, and something he would have to think about afterwards, but with his identity out in the open he felt rather more equal to these people now. He had a suspicion that when he considered the matter he wouldn't be happy about it, since any feeling would be derived, ultimately, from being his father's son, but it was there, it was undeniably there.

"You will remember," he said quietly to the duchess of Carenzu, "that I was under the impression that En Bertran would be mourning the death of his cousin this evening."

"How solicitous of you." It was Bertran. "And was that the reason for your undertaking?"

"In part," Blaise said, turning back to him. "There were others."

"Which were?"

Blaise hesitated. There was danger here. "The desire to avoid an extremely delicate political problem for us all, and another reason which is private to me."

"I am not certain we can value that privacy, tonight, and I rather think the people in this room can shape their own judgments and responses to any political problems, however delicate, that might emerge from what you say. I think you had best tell me who this person is." The duke's posture and voice were as lazy as ever, but Blaise had been with him long enough now not to be fooled by that.

"Don't be obtuse, Bertran. We know exactly who this person is." A fifth voice in the room, from one of the two chairs before the fire, assured, quite uncompromising. Blaise wheeled swiftly around but saw no one at all, until the speaker rose, with caution, and he finally understood. The others, he noted grimly, had not been surprised.

He had looked over at those chairs when he first entered the room, of course; they were wide, richly upholstered and straight-backed, facing the fireplace, but not so large as to conceal a man.

But this was Arbonne, and a woman was another matter. Particularly a small, fine-boned, white-haired woman whom he knew to be—for he had seen her before, bestowing honours at tournaments—Signe be Barbentain, countess of Arbonne.

She was looking at the duke. "If you have been listening at all carefully, Bertran, then this should be one of those questions you already know the answer to. If so, you should not shame a coran who tells you he has given an undertaking not to speak. We do not behave that way here, whatever may happen elsewhere in this decaying world."

She was clad in blue and a pale cream colour with pearl buttons, close set, running up the front of her gown. Her hair was held back with a golden diadem. She wore no other ornaments save for two rings on her fingers. She had been celebrated, Blaise knew, as the most beautiful woman in the world in her time. He could see it, even now. Her eyes were astonishing, so dark they were almost black.

He bowed, a straight leg forward, one hand brushing the carpet. His coran's training would have had him do so, even if his instincts had not.

She said, "Mine cannot be the only source of information that reported last year that the younger son of Galbert de Garsenc spent a season in Mignano and Faenna at the palaces of the Delonghi. Nor can I be the only one to have heard certain rumours—which we need not now pursue—concerning the unfortunate death of Engarro di Faenna. But the name to be linked with all of this—a name that indeed would give rise to complexities in affairs of state, as well as eliciting a personal response from our friend here—is surely that of Rudel Correze. Who is, I am reliably informed, much sought-out as an assassin, in good part for his skill with a bow. You need not," she added calmly, looking directly at Blaise for the first time, "reproach yourself for an undertaking breached. You did not tell me this."

Blaise cleared his throat. It sounded harsh in the silence. "Evidently I did," he said.

She smiled. "You didn't even know I was here."

Blaise found himself, unexpectedly, smiling back. "Then I should reproach myself for that. It was unprofessional, and careless." He drew a breath. "My lady, I advised Rudel Correze to take ship tonight because I was going to inform the city authorities of his identity in the morning."

"City authorities? You meant me, I dare assume." Bertran had walked around the divan now to stand by Ariane. Beatritz, the High Priestess, had not moved or spoken for some time.

Blaise shook his head. "He thinks he killed you. I did not disabuse him of the notion."

After a moment Bertran threw back his head and laughed aloud. "So he will sail away to claim whatever fee it was, from whoever paid him. Oh, splendid, Blaise! The embarrassment will be with him a long time."

"I thought so too. And for using syvaren it is the least he should suffer. But I think you will agree it would have been impolitic to seize the favoured son of the Correze family. At this juncture of affairs."

Ariane de Carenzu was nodding. "Extremely impolitic. It could have been very awkward to have him in custody here."

"I concluded as much," Blaise said mildly. But he was delaying now, evading; there was an issue still buried here, waiting like a trap.

And so, naturally, it was the High Priestess who finally spoke, almost on cue with his own thought, "Is there more we should know?" As she spoke, the white owl lifted suddenly, wings briefly spread, and alighted gently on the shoulder of the countess. Who was Beatritz's mother, Blaise suddenly remembered. Signe de Barbentain reached up and gently stroked the bird.

They would learn, he knew. They were going to find out soon enough, when the whole world did. He didn't want it to happen that way. He turned from the countess back to Bertran de Talair, who was, after all, the man who was to have been killed, and the man he was working for.

"There are two more things that matter. One is the fee." He drew a breath. "Rudel Correze was to be paid two hundred and fifty thousand in gold for killing you."

It was a matter of some real satisfaction to see that En Bertran, the worldly, infinitely sophisticated duke of Talair, was no more able to conceal his shock at the size of the figure than Blaise had been in the Correze garden earlier that night. Ariane de Carenzu put a hand to her mouth. The countess was behind Blaise. The High Priestess did not move, nor did her face show any expression at all. He hadn't expected it to.

"Who, then?" Bertran asked finally, his voice showing strain for the first time. "That is the second thing?"

Blaise nodded. The old anger was in him again, the difficult, continuous pain that seemed to be endlessly rising from this source as if from an underground spring that never dried. He was blunt, because he could not be anything else.

"My father," he said. "In the name of the king of Gorhaut."

And was undone, he later realized, looking back, by the next words spoken in the room.

"But that must be terrible for you," said the countess of Arbonne with passion.

They all turned to her. She was looking at Blaise, the magnificent dark eyes wide. "He used your own friend for this? Amongst all the possible assassins? How he must hate you! What could you ever have done to make your father hate you so?"

There was, it seemed to Blaise, a lifetime's worth of compassion in those eyes. And some of it now was for him, remarkably. It was less than two years, he thought suddenly, as a stray piece of the story came back, since her husband had died. And theirs was said to have been that rarest thing, a true love match. He turned, on impulse, to look at the niece, Ariane, with her own dark eyes and a suddenly wistful expression, and then at the daughter, the priestess, whose eyes were gone and whose face showed only an intense concentration. There had been another daughter, he vaguely remembered. She was dead. There was a bitter tale there, too, one he probably should know but did not. Affairs in Arbonne had not occupied him greatly in his growing years or his time among the armies and the tournaments.

He turned back to the old woman whose beauty had been the talk of the world in her bright day, and he saw that now, at the late twilight of her time, she had another kind of splendour to her, shaped of sorrows and hard-learned things. For all the staggering import of what he had just told them, it was of his own most private pain that she had first spoken. Not even Rudel, who knew him so well, and who had subtlety and cleverness to spare, had thought through to what Signe de Barbentain had immediately understood. It was quiet in the room; distantly they could hear the late, lingering noises of Carnival. Blaise wondered if she really wanted an answer to the question. He said, roughly, "Some men do not like being denied. In anything. I suppose a son's denial will cut deeper than most. I was to enter the clergy of the god, follow my father among the Elders of Corannos. It began with that. There have been other things. I am not blameless."

"Are you excusing him?" She asked it gravely.

Blaise shook his head. "Not that." He hesitated. "We are a hard family with each other. My mother should not have died."

"At your birth?"

It was strange, to be talking to the countess of Arbonne about these things, and yet, in another way, it seemed unexpectedly apt. He nodded.

She tilted her head slightly to one side, a distinctive gesture. "Would she have made a difference, do you really think? In Gorhaut?"

"I like to believe so," Blaise said. "It isn't the kind of thing we can know."

"The dead," said Bertran de Talair quietly, "can drive you hard."

Blaise and the women turned to him. The duke looked oddly unfocused, inward, as if he'd not really meant to say that, as if it opened him more than he wanted. Blaise had another memory in this night of inexorable, unbidden remembrance—that dark stairway in Castle Baude very late at night, a flask of seguignac passing back and forth, the weary sadness in the face of the man who'd just seduced a woman he hadn't even known a fortnight before.

"They can drive you away from the living, as well," said Beatritz the priestess, and in her voice Blaise heard an asperity that told him this was not a new matter between her and the duke. These people had all known each other a long time, he reminded himself. Bertran's mouth narrowed.

"A loving, sisterly thought," he said coldly. "Shall we discuss families again?"

"Twenty years and more down the road, I would name it an adult thought," the High Priestess replied, unperturbed. "Tell me, my lord, what heir would be governing your lands tonight if that arrow had killed you? And if Ademar of Gorhaut chooses to bring an army south, would you say we are stronger or weaker for the hatred between Miraval and Talair? Pray share your thoughts. You will forgive me," she added with sharp sarcasm, "for asking questions about today's world, not requesting sweet verses from two decades ago."

"Enough," said Signe de Barbentain sharply. "Please. Or you will both make me feel that I have lived too long."

It was Ariane who took them past the moment. "More than enough," she murmured, reaching for her wine. She took a sip and set the goblet down, not hurrying. "This is a tiresome, ancient wrangle, and there seem to be new matters that require our consideration. First of all, our bearded friend." The dark eyes turned to Blaise, appraisingly. "Are you?" she asked bluntly. "Are you a friend?"

He had actually been ready for this. "I am a hired coran in the service of the duke of Talair," he replied. The correct answer, the professional one.

"Not good enough," said Ariane calmly. "Not any more. Your father paid a quarter of a million in gold to kill your employer. You will, I am afraid, have to elect to be more than you say, or less. Just as Rudel Correze is not merely another assassin among many, just as his name and lineage create dilemmas out of the ordinary, so, too, do yours. Under the circumstances, rather more so. There may be a war. You know the implications of Gorhaut having ceded lands in the Treaty of Iersen Bridge at least as well as we do. The son of Galbert de Garsenc cannot remain in Arbonne as an ordinary coran any more than Bertran can pretend to be just another troubadour drinking and dicing in The Liensenne." Her voice was even and precise, carrying the tones, in fact, of a commander of men on a battlefield.

And what she said was true. He knew it, even as the old, sour anger came back. It was happening again: wherever he went in the world, alone or in company, in secret or carrying the bright flourish of his reputation into battle or tournament, it seemed that his father was there, with him or before him, barring and bolting doorways, a shadow across the light.

Blaise became aware that his hands were clenched at his sides. Deliberately he forced them to relax. He took a deep breath and turned to the duke.

"I honour my contracts," he said. "I believe you know that."

Bertran gave his small shrug. "Of course I do, but that hardly matters any more. Men, even kings and clerics of the god, do not spend two hundred and fifty thousand to dispose of a singer whose song they feel has embarrassed them. The game had changed, Blaise, it is larger than you and I and our private dealings. You are a player of significance now, whether you want to be or not."

Stubbornly, Blaise shook his head. "I am a coran for hire. Pay me enough and I will serve you in war or peace. Turn me off and I'll seek other employment."

"Stop mouthing rote words, Blaise de Garsenc. It ill becomes you to pretend you do not understand what is being said." Beatritz, tall and implacable, spoke in a voice of grim adjudication. "You are the son of the most important man in Gorhaut. The king is a tool in Galbert's hands, and we all know it. Your family, whatever their inner turmoil, have holdings more powerful than any other in that country, the more so since all the northern lords have been dispossessed by the Treaty. Will you stand before us, before the countess of Arbonne, and claim that the only difference between you and Luth of Baude is that you are better with a sword? Have you been running from your father all these years because you will not oppose him?"

"Not oppose him?" Blaise echoed, shocked into genuine fury. "I have spent my life opposing him, at home and then beyond our walls. I hate everything the Treaty represents. I left Gorhaut so as not to live in a country so stripped of its pride. Everyone there knows it. I have made my statement. What else would you have me do? Ride home in fell wrath and declare myself the true king of Gorhaut?

And stopped, abashed and appalled by the quality of the silence that followed. By the intent, focused, deeply revealing expressions of the two women and the man by the divan. Blaise swallowed with difficulty; his mouth was dry. He closed his eyes for a moment, hearing his own last words as a weirdly distorted echo in the chamber of his skull. Opening his eyes again he turned, slowly, his heart pounding now as if he'd been running a long distance, and looked towards the fire, to where the countess of Arbonne was standing, small and delicate, white-haired, still beautiful, one hand on the back of a chair for support, her astonishing eyes gazing into his, and smiling, smiling now, he saw, with the radiant, indulgent approval of a mother for a child who has passed, all unexpectedly, a test thought to be beyond him.

No one spoke. In the rigid stillness of that room in Tavernel on Midsummer Night, at the hinge, the axis, the heart of the year, the white owl suddenly lifted itself, gliding silently on wide wings to settle on Blaise's shoulder like a benediction or a burden beyond all common measure.