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

CHAPTER 12

"I hope you realize I do not want her back," Ranald de Garsenc says, glaring at the man on the far side of the room. He has expected this encounter, and has prepared himself, as much as he ever can be prepared for dealing with his father. The news of Rosala's flight to Arbonne, brought by two stammering, exhausted corans, was a shock but not, Ranald has come to realize during the course of the day, as much of one as might perhaps have been expected.

When he had learned—during this morning's earlier, furious discussion—about Galbert's visit to Garsenc and his claiming of the child, Ranald had laughed bitterly in his father's face.

"You did this, then," he'd said. "Not I, not anyone else. Your own folly, father. She angered you, didn't she? You had to say something, to put her in her place." Galbert had scowled furiously, clenching and unclenching his big hands.

"That is exactly what happened, isn't it?" Ranald had gone on. "You are the fool and the weakling, father. You lashed out in the heat of the moment. You had to tell her, didn't you, to see if you could get a reaction. You should have known better than to threaten to take her child."

"Threaten? Her child?" Galbert had made sure the instrument of his deep voice carried all possible nuances of contempt. "Is that how you see it? Not your own child? Not ours? Are you truly so feeble? I am shamed by you in the eyes of the god and all men."

There had been a servant in the room, and almost certainly men listening on the outside of each of the three doors to the chamber where they'd been. King Ademar's palace in Cortil was not the place for private discussions. Flushing, feeling suddenly defensive, Ranald had said, "We will talk later, when you have calmed your choler. It is clear you are in no condition to be spoken with now. I will await you here at midday, father. Until then."

He'd stalked quickly out of the room before Galbert could reply. A coran in the antechamber barely had time to be busy at the window. Ranald had ignored him. In fact he had been guardedly pleased with himself for that exit until, alone in his own rooms in the palace, he'd begun thinking more carefully through the implications of what his wife had done.

He'd sent a servant for ale and sat in a chair by the window looking out over a landscape where the sun was trying to break free of windblown autumn clouds. The king was hunting that morning. Someone had probably ridden out already to tell him the news; at Ademar's court ambitious men fell over each other to be the first to bring him tidings, particularly tidings damaging to the de Garsenc family. Galbert was seen as too powerful, Ranald knew. He probably was too powerful. Their family had blood as royal as Ademar's if one went back only two generations, and the High Elder was now first of all the king's advisers. Not much need to wonder why they were feared. There were those at court—and not a few of them—who would exult in Rosala's flight and their own discomfiture.

The servant had come back with a pitcher of beer and Ranald had gratefully drained his first flagon of the day. He'd stretched out his legs and closed his eyes. There was no comfort waiting for him though. His wife had lied to him in her last letter, had fled, carrying her child. His child. Had already given birth, it now appeared, in Arbonne. The corans who'd brought the tidings, riding north through the pass at horse-killing speed for two nights and a day, hadn't known if it was a boy or a girl. That mattered, of course, quite a lot. Ranald had found it hard to weigh political implications that morning though. He wasn't very good at it, for one thing. He would have preferred to be hunting with the king just then. In fact, what he really would have preferred was to be back at Garsenc, riding with his own men in his own forest. Slumped back, eyes closed, in that chair, he'd tried to picture Rosala with a babe. He had even tried, briefly, to imagine himself with one. He'd opened his eyes and filled his flagon from the pitcher on the table by his elbow.

He'd allowed himself no more. He would be meeting his father again at midday. It was necessary to be sober for such meetings, as he had learned, at a cost, over the years.

"I do not want her back," he repeats. It is noon; the clouds are gone and the sun is high in a pale sky, shining through the western windows. Ranald tries to keep his voice calm. He even moves nearer to his father so they can speak more softly. The servants have been dismissed this time. Ranald doesn't want this discussion to be common knowledge through the palace—or all of Gorhaut, for that matter.

Galbert is quieter as well now, Ranald sees. In fact the High Elder appears to be dangerously composed. Before answering, he deliberately selects a chair and settles his bulk in it. He has changed his clothing: he is in the blue robes of Corannos now. Blaise, before he left, used to refuse to talk to their father when he wore the robes of the god. He'd called them a desecration once. That had been the last time they'd seen Blaise, actually, at the peak of yet another raging argument about the Treaty of Iersen Bridge. That one had ended with Ranald's younger brother storming out of the room and the castle swearing never to return to Gorhaut while that treaty stood. Thinking back to that night, Ranald suddenly had an image of his wife crying silently in her seat by the fire while the three of them screamed at each other.

"You are rejecting her. A most natural reaction," his father says now, hands comfortably across his ample belly. He has gained weight, Ranald decides sourly. It goes with the increased power. "Indeed, a better man would already have made arrangements to have her killed. Shall I do that for you?"

"The way you arranged for the duke of Talair? Thank you, but no. You aren't very efficient, father." He can still trade barbs, to a point, but this subject makes Ranald uneasy. Truth is, he doesn't like the idea of Rosala dead. He doesn't want her back—that much is clear in his own mind—but that doesn't mean she has to be executed for reacting urgently to some threat by his father. He adds, "We trivialize ourselves if we pursue her in that way."

Galbert blinks, as if surprised. He probably is, his older son thinks. It isn't often that Ranald shows up for encounters in a state of such lucidity. He feels a tired self-contempt rising again. His father says, "You would let her go, then? And have the world laugh at you." Galbert uses the dismissive, flicking gesture Ranald has always hated. "Well, so much is your own affair. I cannot play the man for you forever. You will concede," he continues, in a tone of exaggerated civility, "that there is an issue regarding the child?"

There is, of course. Though, in fact, Ranald has come to realize during the course of the morning that he is ambivalent about that, too. He is, he has long ago decided, an ambivalent man. Life was so much simpler in the days when, as King Duergar's appointed champion, all he had to do was unhorse and defeat whomever they sent against him. He'd been good at that ten years ago; he'd been extremely good. He is less good at thinking through something like this. But if Rosala cares so much that she would risk death and accept exile to keep a child from Galbert's hands, well, Ranald, to be absolutely truthful, can understand such a feeling. The problem is, he can't give way to it. He is the duke of Garsenc, first among the nobility of Gorhaut; his father, who ought to have become duke himself when Ereibert his brother died childless, is High Elder of Corannos instead, with even more power accruing from that. Rosala's child—Ranald's child—is a pawn in an enormous game of power.

"If it is a boy," Ranald says quietly, "we take him back. I will offer her her life and her freedom to go where she will, but she gives back the babe—if it is a boy. If it is a girl child I truly do not care. Let them go. The king will free me to remarry. As soon as tomorrow, if I ask him. I'll beget other children. If only to make you happy, father." He smiles bitterly again. "Will you want all of them for your designs, or just a few?"

Galbert ignores that. "You say we should take a boy child back. Why should you imagine that Rosala would consent to such a thing, if that is why she fled in the first instance?" His voice, too, is low. He won't want this conversation bruited about either.

Ranald shrugs. "She too can have other children. For a life of freedom from us she might be willing to do this."

"And if not?" his father pursues, dangerously calm. "If she is not willing?"

Belatedly Ranald sees where this is going. It is going where almost everything Galbert de Garsenc has touched of late seems to go. He rises from his chair, suddenly agitated.

"Did you do this deliberately?" he snaps. "Did you goad her into flight purposely? To create this situation?"

Galbert smiles complacently, his eyes crinkling, almost disappearing into the folds of his skin. "What do you think? Of course I did," he murmurs.

"You are lying, aren't you." Ranald feels his hands forming into fists at his sides—his father's own gestures; he has tried and failed to break himself of it. "The truth is she goaded you and you spat out something you didn't mean to say."

His father shakes his head slowly back and forth, his jowls waggling with the motion. "Don't be completely the fool, Ranald. Why do you think I went to see her at Garsenc in the first place? Why would I want a baby? What would I do with an infant? You seem sober this morning. Seize the opportunity: think. It will be in your own interests, incidentally—whatever you might privately imagine—to confirm my version of the story. I cannot conceive of events falling out better for our purposes."

"Our purposes? Your own, you mean. You will now make war on Arbonne to bring back the child." It is just barely possible that his father is telling the truth; that this entire escapade of Rosala's flight was cunningly engineered. It is the way he deals with people, the way he has proceeded all his life.

With a crash that shatters the stillness the largest door to the room bangs open and thuds against the stone wall. Father and son wheel swiftly. Massive in the doorway, beard and hair dripping with perspiration, blood and grass stains on his broad shoulders and chest, mud spattering breeches and boots, King Ademar of Gorhaut throws his riding whip down on the stone floor and snarls, "I want her back! You hear me, Galbert? I want her back here immediately!" His face is a vivid red, his pale eyes are glassy with rage.

"Of course, my liege," says the High Elder soothingly, recovering his poise with speed. "Of course you do. You are conscious of the insult to our family and seek to help us respond. We are profoundly grateful. Indeed, my son and I were just discussing how next to proceed."

"Proceed however you must! I want her back!" Ademar says again, running a gloved hand through his hair.

"And the child, too, of course." Galbert murmurs. "The child is so very important."

His deep, calming tones seem finally to take effect. The king of Gorhaut takes a breath and shakes his head as if to clear it. He says, a little more lucidly, "Of course. The child too. Very important. Heir to Garsenc, if it's a boy. Of course." He looks at Ranald for the first time and his eyes flick away.

"If they keep a boy child from us," Galbert de Garsenc says then, still in the quiet, assuaging voice, "the world can scarcely dispute our right to go after him."

Ademar bends suddenly and picks up his whip. He strikes it sharply against his own leg. "Right. You do it. Gotzland, Arimonda, the Portezzans… explain it, make it all sound right, whatever you need to do. But I want her back."

He spins on his heel, not even looking at Ranald a second time, and strides heavily from the room. Behind him, expressionlessly, a servant reaches in and swings the heavy door closed, leaving the two Garsenc men alone again.

Registering his elder son's expression, Galbert begins, quietly, to laugh. "Ah, well," he says, not bothering to hide his amusement, his jowls shaking, "you have just made a discovery. It seems that someone here at least desires the return of your lady wife. I do wonder why."

Ranald turns away. He feels sick to his stomach and he needs a drink. The memory of the king, huge and wrathful in the doorway, seems imprinted on his brain. He can't shake free of the image. He wonders where his own rage is, where his capacity for such feelings seems to have gone over the years.

"It all works out so neatly for you, doesn't it?" he says quietly, looking out the window now on the inner courtyard of the palace. Ademar's corans are dismounting there in the bright sunlight, displaying the bloody trophies of their hunt.

"If they shelter the wife and heir of Garsenc," his father says peacefully, in the deep, sonorous voice, "they must not imagine they can do so with impunity. In the eyes of the world we will have the cause we need."

"And if they do surrender them?" Ranald turns back from the window. He is wondering how long King Ademar has been coveting his wife. He wonders how he has never noticed it before. He wonders, finally, if his father has been quietly guiding that desire. Another tool, another instrument of policy. He ought to be challenging the king, he thinks. He almost has to. He knows he will do no such thing. Loathing himself, Ranald realizes that he is not going be able to continue this much longer without a drink.

His father is shaking his head. He asked Galbert a question, Ranald remembers. It has become difficult to concentrate. "Surrender them? Arbonne? Woman-ruled Arbonne?" The High Elder is laughing. "It will not happen. They will destroy themselves before they yield a woman and a newborn babe to us."

Ranald feels a taste, as of bile, in his mouth. "Or you will do the destroying for them."

"I will indeed do so," says Galbert de Garsenc, the glorious voice swelling now for the first time. "In the name of Corannos and for his eternal glory I will indeed destroy that place of festering, blood-smeared, womanish corruption. It is the quest of my days, the reason for all I do."

"And you are so close now, aren't you?" Ranald says, his own voice harsh. He is going to have to leave very soon, he knows. He is afraid he is about to be ill. He cannot get that image of the king out of his mind. "Everything has come together for you. Duergar's death, the treaty, Rosala's flight now, Ademar in the palm of your hand." He says that last too loudly, but he doesn't care any more. "All you need now, to deal with the other countries, to make it all acceptable to them, is for the child to have been a boy."

"You are correct," his father agrees, smiling benignly. "You astonish me, my son. I have prayed upon my knees to the god. I can only hope Corannos has heard my words and found me worthy to be answered, that I may strike soon with fire and sword in his most holy name. All I need, truly, as you say, is for the child to be a boy."

Rosala came back down the corridor from the room where her son lay sleeping. The wet-nurse they had found was with him, and the younger of the two priestesses who had been present at Cadar's birth was staying in Barbentain Castle for this first week. They were careful in Arbonne with babies, she was discovering, or, at least, careful with the babies of nobility. Some things were constant wherever in the world one went. Rosala doubted the same attention had been paid to the child of the wet-nurse in its village. She knew it had died; she didn't want to know how, or why. Children died in so many ways. The usual advice was not to grow too attached to them in the first year, lest the heart break if they were taken away. Rosala remembered hearing that years ago, and thinking it made sense; she didn't think that any more.

She had no idea how women held back from loving the small, desperately needy infants in their arms. She was grateful beyond words for the care they were offering Cadar. Crossing the mountains south in that jostling wagon she seemed to have passed from an endless nightmare to a sheltering haven.

An illusory thought, she knew. She was too versed in the ways of the world to imagine that she would simply be allowed to live here peacefully with her child and the old countess receiving troubadours and their joglars, listening to music and riding in the fields beside the river as the seasons followed each other and Cadar grew into a child and then a man. They had been known to kill women in Gorhaut for merely speaking impertinently to their husbands in a public place. What would they do to a woman who fled with a child? And not just any woman, or any child. The heir to the dukes of Garsenc was sleeping in the room she had just left, and Cadar was perilously near in succession to the throne itself while Ademar remained unwed. Third or fourth in line, actually, by one path of reckoning, depending on whether one counted the disinherited Blaise or not.

It didn't much matter. They would be coming for Cadar, and probably for her. It would begin with the formalities of statecraft, the richly clothed emissaries with their learned speeches and their gifts to the countess and the mellifluously written letters they would carry. The gifts would be elaborate; that was the way of things. The speeches would be eloquent and courteous. The demands in the letters would be unveiled and coldly precise, and backed by ultimatums that left nothing to the imagination.

Rosala wondered whether she should take ship for the east to release Arbonne from the burden of her presence. If somewhere in one of the fabled courts of magic in those far lands she might find a home for herself and Cadar. Another illusion, that. She knew the tales of what happened to fair-skinned women in the courts and bazaars of those lands of spice and silk. She knew what happened to their male children.

She could hear music, a murmur of voices and laughter spiralling up the stairwell from the great hall below. She couldn't remember the last time she'd heard laughter that didn't carry an edge of malice. They had told her that the music tonight, by a young man from Orreze, would be of a very high order. She knew she would be welcome if she went downstairs. She still felt tired, though, and extremely tender, not ready for the demands of public spaces. Privacy was a rare thing in her world, something to be valued as much as any other gift they had offered her here in Barbentain.

She sat down carefully in a recessed window seat to listen. The stone bench was cushioned, for which she was grateful. She reached over and unlatched the window. It was of stained glass, etched wonderfully with the image of a green island in the sea. The breeze came in, and through the window she could see the unfiltered light of the blue moon. They called it Riannon here for the goddess, not Escoran for the god. Because of that difference, she reflected, Arbonne was to be destroyed.

After a moment she rejected the thought: too simple an argument and conclusion. Nothing was that simple in the world.

She could hear the river running below in the darkness, making a soft, continuous murmur beneath the singing of the joglar. It was cool tonight on the isle of Barbentain; Rosala wrapped the woolen robe they had given her more closely about herself. The fresh air revived her, though, and brought back with its clarity the reassuring awareness that she had, by coming here, done all she could do for Cadar. The next moves, in the larger game, were not hers to make. The scale of her own life had suddenly become much smaller, focused on a heartbeat. She felt an urge—and almost laughed at herself—to go back up the corridor to look in upon his sleep again. It was strange how swiftly, how completely, love could re-enter one's world.

The last person she had loved was her father, and he had died by Iersen Bridge almost two years ago. Her mother had gone before him, in the last plague year. Her brother Fulk elicited no real intensities of emotion, nor did she in him, Rosala knew. He would not lead the pursuit to bring her back, but neither would he speak up to stay it. He was a good steward of Savaric, though, and she respected him for that. The Savaric lands were terribly exposed now, wide open to raids from Valensa across the newly drawn border of the Iersen River. If the treaty ever ceased to hold they would be vulnerable to even more than that.

It wouldn't hold, Fulk had told her last year during one of the rare times when they were both at Cortil. Truces like this one never did, but lands lost for long enough were likely to be lost forever. He had said it quietly, for her ears alone. Not for cautious Fulk de Savaric the openly critical talk of a powerful lord, with a new king on the throne. Their father would have been loud in his denunciations, Rosala knew, whatever the consequences.

As Blaise de Garsenc had been before he left, both the first time and then again a year later, after his abortive return home.

Thoughts of Blaise were difficult. He was here in Lussan she now knew, with the duke of Talair. It would be easy to see him, to send a message as clear or cryptic as she wanted it to be. She wondered if he'd yet learned she was in the castle. The priestesses had told her the whole fair was gossiping about the high-born lady from Gorhaut who'd been brought to the temple so near to giving birth. Othon, she had thought ruefully: he would have been constitutionally incapable of not telling the tale, nor had she really any right to have expected him to withhold it.

Blaise had never been the sort to listen to gossip, though, and En Bertran de Talair had sworn an oath not to tell him until she was ready. It was even probable—a sharp, new thought—that Blaise hadn't even known she was with child. There had been no communication at all since the night he'd gone away for the second time.

Rosala remembered that night. Sitting beside an open window in Arbonne with the murmuring river below and music wafting up the stairwell, she went back in her mind's eye to that wintry darkness, the stars lost and a storm wind howling, lashing snow and ice in rattling sheets against the windows of Garsenc Castle. She had listened to the father and the sons curse each other, heard the unforgivable names spoken, the vile things said, savagely wounding, more bitter than the night. She had wept silently, utterly ignored in her seat by the fire, ashamed of her own weakness, wanting so much to be gone from the room, from the tangled, savaged hatreds of the Garsenc men, but unable to leave without Ranald's permission and unwilling to draw attention to herself by speaking. The father would turn on her she knew, viciously, the moment he remembered she was there.

Numb with cold beside the guttering fire none of them had bothered to tend, the servants having prudently absented themselves, Rosala had felt the cold tears on her cheeks and heard her brother-in-law, reaching some final apex of his fury, denounce his father and brother in a voice raw with anguish before he stormed from the room and the castle into the wild night: naming the one man as a traitor to Gorhaut, obscenely unworthy of the god, and the other as a drunkard and a coward. She had agreed with both assessments, even as she wept. He was a cold, hard, bitter man, Blaise de Garsenc, with no grace or kindness ever shown to her at all, but he was right, he was so right about the other two.

She remembered lying awake in her bed that night when they finally retired. Ranald in the connecting room had dropped into a snoring slumber she could hear through the closed door. He spoke to himself in the night sometimes, crying out in grief like a child in the darkness of his dreams. In the first months of their marriage she had tried to comfort him at such times; she didn't do that any more. Chilled and afraid, listening to the mad keening of the wind, she had waited, listening for the sound of Blaise coming back for his gear before leaving. When he did, when she heard his booted tread in the hallway, she had risen from her bed and gone to his room, her own feet bare on the bitter stones.

He had been packing a saddle-bag by candlelight when she walked in. She did not knock on the door. There was snow on his clothing, ice clumped in the tawny hair and beard. She had been clad in nothing but her sleeping-gown, her fair hair let down about her shoulders for the night. He would never have seen her hair down before. They had looked at each other for a frozen moment, silent within the midnight silence of the castle, then Rosala had said, softly, not to be heard at all outside this room, outside the small space of this single candle's glow, "Will you not love me once? Only once before you go?"

And Blaise had crossed the room and lifted her in his arms and laid her down upon his bed, with her bright yellow hair spread out upon his pillow and her gown slipping with a rustle of sound above her waist as she raised her hips to let him move it so, and he had blown out the one candle and removed his wet clothing and taken her in darkness before he left his home again; taken her in silence, in rage and bitterness, and in the endless bone-deep anguish she knew he lived with because of his own lack of power. There had been no love that she could name in the room with the two of them, none at all.

And it had not mattered.

She had known what would be the things that might bring him to touch her that night, what would drive him, and she had not cared. Whatever it takes, she had thought in her own cold bed, summoning courage to her as from a far-off place while she waited for him to return. Whatever would bring him to take her for at least the one time.

And in his room later, in that darkness, with the unholy wind raging beyond the walls, the same thought again: she would accept and welcome—her hands grappling him hard to her, feeling him beginning to thrust with urgency, hearing the quickening pace of his breathing—whatever might bring him to give her the child Ranald could not.

He spoke her name once, after. She would remember that.

She did remember it, sitting in the window seat in Barbentain. Curiously, it had come to matter. Not so much for herself—she was not a woman who nurtured such illusions—but for Cadar. Rational or not, it somehow seemed important to her now that at her child's conception that one spoken link between the two of them had been made manifest. It was an irony of sorts that it was the man who had done so; her own single-minded need had precluded such a reaching out. She wondered what the priestesses of the goddess would say about that, what their teaching would be. What happened, in their doctrine, when Corannos and Rian came together in love—if they did? She knew almost nothing about the rituals of worship here in Arbonne, only the twisted versions of them uttered with loathing in Gorhaut by the brethren of the god. She wondered if she would be here long enough to learn the truth.

There were footsteps in the corridor behind her. The wet-nurse, she thought, quickly concerned. She was about to lean out from the window seat but the steps halted just before where she sat, and Rosala heard a woman's voice she did not know, and then a man's. She remained motionless in the shadows of the alcove and realized, after a moment, that the voices were speaking of murder.

"It is to be done neatly and in silence," the woman said nervously in accented Arbonnais. "She told me to say as much."

"I tend not to make a great deal of noise with a blade," the man answered, amused. His voice was deep and assured.

"You do not understand. This must not be traced to her. The body will have to be disposed of, and no one the wiser. She said it would be best if he didn't even see you, lest he cry out."

"Ah. She will be keeping him occupied? Oblivious to all else in the world? Does this sort of thing excite her? Will I have other duties, after?"

"You need not be vulgar," the woman said primly.

The man laughed softly. "Fear not. I will only follow your mistress's lead. If she wants to taste blood she will have to ask. He must see me, though, or there is no point in this. He must know who is killing him."

"He might call for help. We cannot allow—"

"He will not. This is not a man inclined to call for help. And there will not be very much time, I promise you. Come, which door? There is a ghost to be assuaged, and I have tarried."

They went by her then, shadows behind them and then before as they passed under the wall torch in the empty corridor. Rosala shrank back against the window. The joglar in the great hall below was singing of endless love and unrequited desire. Neither the man nor the woman turned as they went by. She knew neither of them. At a doorway a little distance down their footsteps stopped. Holding her breath, Rosala leaned out slightly. She saw the man smile then and draw a knife from his belt. He opened the door and slipped inside, moving with silent, feline grace. The door closed behind him. There came no sound at all from within the room. The woman hesitated for a moment and Rosala saw her make a quick, warding sign before hurrying along the corridor and down another flight of stairs at the far end.

It was silent in the hallway, save for the distant voice of the singer drifting up from below, mournful and melodious. Rosala brought her hands up to her face. There was a horror about to happen. She could scream, she knew, to summon aid, and perhaps it would be in time, more likely not. She was not a woman inclined to scream. She took a steadying breath, struggling to decide what to do. Her first, her only duty, was to Cadar, to guard her own safety as his sole shelter in the world. There was no disputing that, or what choice it compelled.

Rosala de Savaric stood up, looked back along the corridor to where her new-born son was sleeping and resolutely began walking the other way. She was her father's daughter, and would not sit silent in a window seat or turn her back and let a man be murdered in a castle that had given her haven.

As it happened, she knew whose suite of rooms the man with the blade had just entered. The mingled scents of spices and perfume had been redolent in the corridor since that guest had arrived. The priestesses and the wet-nurse had been talking about her obsessively for two days. Rosala paused outside that doorway only long enough to look back one last time towards Cadar's room, then she squared her shoulders in a gesture that had also been her mother's, and she opened Lucianna Delonghi's door and stepped inside.

Daufridi and his escort left the inn first. Bertran gave them some time and then they rode back to Lussan themselves, passing under the trees and then along the west bank of the river beneath the blue moon. Just inside the gates of the city the duke insisted on parting from the three of them.

He looked at Blaise, hesitated, and then smiled wolfishly in the moonlight. "I neglected to mention it to you—the baron of Castle Baude arrived this morning. I thought I would say hello to Mallin before retiring for the night. Shall I convey your good wishes?"

Even with what he had learned from Ariane de Carenzu last summer, there was still something disconcerting to Blaise about Bertran's indefatigable energy in this regard. With all that had just happened, with grim, huge discussions of his country's fate scarcely behind him, the duke of Talair was of a mind to go wandering in the night.

Blaise shrugged. "Please do," he murmured. "And to Soresina, if you should happen to see her."

Bertran's smile flashed briefly again. "Don't wait up. Sunrise will see me homeward, when the morning breaks." He always said that: the refrain of one of his own songs from years ago. He turned his horse and was gone into the shadows.

"Should he be alone?" Rudel asked. "Under the circumstances?" There was something extraordinary about that, too, Blaise thought: the man raising the question had tried to kill Bertran three months ago.

"He won't be," Valery replied quietly, looking down the lane where his cousin had ridden. "Watch." A moment later they saw three horsemen canter out from the darkness and set off after the duke. In their brief transit through the torchlight by the city walls, one of them waved briefly; Valery lifted a hand in return. Blaise recognized the livery and relaxed a little: the countess of Arbonne was evidently taking pains to guard her wayward duke.

"Do they ride into the bedrooms, too?" he asked.

Valery chuckled and twitched his horse's reins. "In the bedrooms," he said, "we must assume he can take care of himself."

Rudel laughed. "Does he know he's being watched?"

"Probably," said Valery. "I think it amuses him."

"Most things seem to," Rudel assented.

Valery turned in the saddle to look at him. "Most things, but not all. Don't be misled, not if you're joining us. What you heard him say to Daufridi this evening, how he dealt with him, was the real thing. Much of the rest, what he's doing now, is part of a long escape."

There was a short silence. "A successful one?" Rudel Coreze was an extremely clever man. His tone was thoughtful.

Blaise was remembering that stairwell in Castle Baude again, a flask of seguignac passing back and forth. "I don't think so," he said quietly. Thai's why he works so hard. I think," he said to Valery, "that he should have killed Urté de Miraval a long time ago."

Valery's face was hidden in the darkness as they rode under a covered archway spanning the street. "So do I," said Bertran's cousin finally. They came out into blue moonlight again, slanting down past the steep roofs of houses. "But we aren't poets, are we, and there was a child." An old, tired anger was in his voice; embers raked over but not dead.

"This," said Rudel, "is going to have to be explained to me."

"Later," said Blaise. "Too tangled for tonight."

They rode on. Some of the streets by the market were lit, but there were no great crowds. The Lussan Fair, as all the other fairs, was not like a carnival. For one thing, it lasted for a month, and not even Bertran de Talair, Blaise thought, would survive that much revelry. The fairs were for doing business, with some nocturnal activities for spice.

Rudel, perhaps predictably, seemed to be thinking about just that, as they came up to the two lanterns burning outside the honey-coloured walls of the Talair palace and walked their horses to the stables at the back. The ostler came sleepily forward from the shadows and took their mounts. The three of them went back around to the front doors. Under the lanterns again, Rudel had an expression on his face that Blaise knew well.

"There is an amusing tavern I know," he said, "just beyond the Portezzan quarter of the market. Are we really going to put the night to bed, or is there some life left in us? I would enjoy buying a drink for the pretender to the crown of Gorhaut."

Valery looked around quickly, but Rudel's voice had been carefully low and the square before the house was empty. Even so, Blaise felt his pulse jump at the mention of what he'd said tonight. It had certainly had results.

It seems we do have some things to talk about after all, Daufridi of Valensa had said, looking with hard appraisal at Blaise, and then had listened intently, heavy brows drawn together, as Bertran de Talair outlined a number of propositions, some of them startling, one, at least, quite terrifying.

In the street outside the house Valery was shaking his head. "I'm an old man tonight. Too many twists in the road for my poor head. I want a pillow more than I can say. You two go on. Be young a little longer yet."

Blaise was torn, in fact, between equally strong desires: one for the quiet of his room, and another for some adequate external response to the excitement within himself. In the past when Rudel had suggested a night abroad, he had seldom demurred.

In those first months in Gotzland and then Portezza, after he'd left Gorhaut the first time—the thought came suddenly, new-minted, to him—he himself seemed to have been performing his own driven search for an avenue of escape. It seemed, after all, that the winding route through so many taverns and towns, all the tournaments and courts and castles, the night and morning roads, dawn mist above battlefields and a murder in Faenna, had brought him back, on this cool autumn evening in Arbonne, to Gorhaut, to the country that was his home, and to the Treaty of Iersen Bridge, which he had twice sworn—the second time on his mother's blood on a night of storm at Garsenc—that he would never accept.

Oaths by younger sons, even those of the most powerful families, rarely meant a great deal in the world. It seemed, tonight, as if his own vow might just possibly be different. Either that, or the paths of folly were even wider and smoother and more welcoming than they were said to be, and he was squarely set upon one of them now.

He was not going to fall asleep, he realized. Valery, with a crooked smile at the two of them, walked up to the palace door and knocked softly. The viewing grille slid back, and then the door was opened by the coran on watch. "Good night," Bertran's cousin called, over his shoulder. "Try to be quiet when you do come back. I promise you I'll be sleeping."

Blaise watched him go in, then turned to Rudel. By the lamplight he saw his friend's head tilted to one side, eyebrows arched expectantly in that expression he well remembered. Valery had said earlier that the young Bertran had been much like this; it wasn't hard to see the similarity.

"Lead on," he said. "If events continue as they seem to have begun, and you do intend to stay the course with me, this may be the last chance we'll have to enter a tavern as corans for hire and nothing more."

"Stay the course?" Rudel said, his voice swirling upwards as they began to walk. "Do you think you could possibly get rid of me now?" He turned a corner, heading towards the distant glow of lights by the market. It was a lovely night, clear as a shepherd's dream. "All the riches of my father wouldn't make me leave a game as diverting as this one has become."

"Oh good," said Blaise dourly. "I'm pleased to be amusing you again. What happens when I send you to your father to ask for all his riches to support us?"

Rudel Correze laughed. He was still laughing when six men ran out from the alley and blocked their path, before and behind, bows levelled at the two of them.

It was quiet in the dark street then, with the only lights a long way ahead or behind. Blaise, looking at the deadly purposeful shapes in front of them, had a brief image of Bertran somewhere in the city with Soresina de Baude, then another of Valery slowly climbing the winding stairs in the Talair city palace, heading peacefully to his rest.

"I find this," he heard Rudel say, "deeply offensive, I must say. I was greatly looking forward to that drink in The Senhal. You do know," he said, raising his voice for the benefit of the silent men surrounding them, "that I am the son of Vitalle Correze, and you are certainly dead men—dead in a most unpleasant fashion—if you molest us further."

One thing about Rudel, Blaise thought, using the time his friend was buying them to scan the shadowy street and alleys for possibilities of escape—he was never shy about invoking his father's name. Came with a good relationship, perhaps. Blaise would prefer to die before calling upon Galbert de Garsenc's even more prominent name as a means of succor.

A preference that might well be about to find its own grim realization. These weren't outlaws or renegades. With a sinking feeling, Blaise thought he recognized one of the bowmen. They wore no identifiable livery—naturally—but he was almost certain he'd seen the nearest man before: last summer, in Tavernel, standing with En Urté de Miraval in the entrance to The Liensenne on Midsummer Eve.

"I think I know them," he murmured to Rudel. I'm afraid this is bad."

"I didn't think it was particularly good," Rudel replied tartly. "You cut left, I go right?" They had swords, useless against archers. Blaise could think of no better plan. The streets were empty here. They were a long way from the market. They would have to hope uncertain light might make the bowmen miss.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You were better off being angry with me."

"Not really. Bad for the heart and liver, anger. That's what my father's doctor says. Live a placid life, he advises. I think I might try that next."

Poised, preparing to spring as soon as Rudel moved, Blaise briefly wondered why none of the archers had spoken a word or even made a gesture of command.

Then, when four more men strode quickly out from the alley and came up behind them, he understood. Why give commands when all you want to do is freeze your victims long enough for their executioners to slaughter them? He recognized one of these men, too. It was his last clear thought.

"A placid life, that's the thing," he heard Rudel repeat dreamily. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his slender, aristocratic friend crumple to his knees, just before the swinging blow from a wooden staff knocked him senseless too.

When he came to, it was with a headache so brutal the room lurched sickeningly as soon as he opened his eyes. He closed them quickly. What remained, as consciousness lingered tenuously, was an awareness that he was lying on something unexpectedly soft and there was a scent surrounding him. He knew that scent, it had associations for him, a great many. And an instant later, as full awareness returned, Blaise realized where he must be. His eyes snapped open with the shock and he twisted his head around to see. The movement made him immediately nauseated and he gasped with pain.

"I do regret that," a woman's voice said, "but I had to advise them you might not come willingly."

"Why bother?" Blaise gasped. He couldn't see her. She was behind him. It was only when he tried, with another painful effort, to turn his body that he realized that his limbs were bound. He was on her bed, which explained the softness, and his hands and feet were tied to the four bedposts. The never-forgotten scent of her perfume was all around him. "Why didn't you just have me killed in the street?"

"What?" said Lucianna Delonghi, moving at last into his field of vision. "And deprive myself of this pleasure?"

He had not seen her for more than a year. She was clad in silk so diaphanous she might as well have been naked to his sight. The glitter of jewellery was all about her: a diadem in her hair, sapphires at each ear, diamonds and sea pearls around her throat. There were rings on her long fingers, gold and silver or ivory at each wrist and one spectacular, memorable pendant suspended between her breasts, red like the fire crackling on the hearth. She liked jewellery, he remembered, she liked fires in her rooms even when it wasn't cold, she liked cords and knots and toys in her bed.

His clothing and boots had been taken away; he was clad only in an undergarment that shielded his sex. He tried again, without success, to move his hands and realized, with a kind of despair, that what he was feeling, as much as fury and the several layers of pain, was the returning of desire, inexorable as the tides of the sea.

She was so beautiful it caused a kind of constriction around his heart. She was an incarnated vision from the legend of the paradise that waited for corans who died in battle. His mouth was dry. He looked at her, in her shining, long-limbed near-nakedness, and the memory of their love-making two summers ago, her body intertwined with his, legs wrapped high around him or straddling his waist as she rode above, her fingernails scoring his shoulders and arms, the eloquent, striving, backwards arch of her throat when she came to her culmination—it was with him again as if happening now, enveloping as the scent in the room. He became aware, helplessly, that his excitement would be visible. Lucianna, glancing downward, noted that. She had never been slow to observe such things. She looked away briefly, a small, satisfied smile curling about her lips.

"How sweet," she murmured, in the nuanced, husky voice. She moved out of his sight for a moment and then came back. "And all along I thought you left because you were angry, because you had lost your desire for me." She looked down upon him from the side of the bed. "I don't like it when men leave me, Blaise. Did I never tell you that?" There was a knife in her fingers now, taken from the bedside table. It too had gems in the hilt, rubies the colour of blood. She began to play with it, moving towards the foot of the bed, biting her lower lip as if thinking of something, chasing a memory, and then idly stroking the blade, as if unaware that she was doing so, along the sole of his foot. She twisted it suddenly and Blaise felt the point break the skin, drawing blood. He had been waiting for that.

"I left because you wanted me to, Lucianna. Do not pretend anything else." It was difficult to be coherent amid both the aftermath of the blow and the increasingly intense reality of desire. Her scent was all around him, pushing clear thought even further away. She continued to move about the bed, the curves and planes of her body lit by the fire's glow. He said, "Had you wanted to hold me you know you could have done so. I would not have been able to refuse, even after Engarro."

"Ah," she said, stopping now to look directly at him. Her skin was pale, flawless; it was still a shock sometimes to realize how young she was. "But you would have wanted to refuse, wouldn't you, my dear? You would have stayed only against your better judgment, tangled in my dark toils… is that not how it would have been, Blaise?"

He swallowed with difficulty. She was her father's daughter; the subtlest woman he had ever known. She was also dancing the knife upwards now, along the inside of his thigh. "I need a drink, Lucianna," he said.

"I know what you need. Answer my question."

Blaise turned his head away, and then back, to look her full in the eyes. "As it happens, you are wrong. I was even more innocent than you knew. Rudel tried to warn me—I didn't want to listen. I thought, if you can believe it, that you were only the way you were because your father had forced you to be his tool, an instrument of policy. I thought you could still love truly if you made a free choice, and I thought you might actually give that love to me." He felt the bitterness beginning to come back, step by step, mingled, as ever, with desire. "I was even more a fool than I might have appeared."

It occurred to him, incongruously, even as he was speaking, that Ariane de Carenzu had said something very like this to him in a different bed in summer, about choices and the paths of love. It also occurred to him, belatedly, that there was something more than a little absurd about this exchange; he had been brought here to die. He wondered where her husband was. Borsiard d'Andoria was probably waiting for her outside the city walls. It had been the corans of Miraval who had brought him here, though; a strange union this one had turned out to be. When one's enemies take counsel together, the proverb ran in Gorhaut, one wants the wings of a bird to fly, or the strength of lions to fight. He had neither at the moment. He was bound and helpless, head ringing like a temple bell, on Lucianna's bed.

"Do what you want," he said tiredly as she remained motionless, saying nothing. Her dark eyes, shadings carefully applied above and below, were wide but unreadable. The pupils were larger than they should have been. She had taken her drugs, he realized. They heightened her pleasures. He wondered if she used them all the time now. He wondered how any mortal woman could possibly be so beautiful.

He tried once more to swallow. "I would have thought the honour of your family, if nothing else, would preclude torturing a man who never did or meant you harm." I sound like a lawyer making a plea, he thought sourly. "If you must kill me, for your own reasons or your husband's, then have done with it, Lucianna." He closed his eyes again.

"You really aren't in a position to make requests, are you, Blaise?" Her tone had sharpened. "Or to comment unpleasantly on either my father's or my husband's courses of action." He felt the knife point in his thigh. He refused to react. He kept his eyes closed; it seemed to be his only option of denial. That, and silence. Once, in Mignano, she had known he was displeased about something she had said at a banquet. Her woman had come to lead him to her chambers much later than usual that night. When they arrived, he had seen why. There had been easily a hundred candles of different shapes and sizes burning around the bed where Lucianna had lain, naked in the flicker and dance of all that light like an offering in some temple of dead and forgotten gods. She had been bound, wrist and ankle, as he was now. She had waited for the woman to leave that night and had said, "You are unhappy. You have no cause to be. Do with me as you will." It had not been, he remembered noting even at the time, an apology. She was not a woman who apologized. Her body had glistened and shimmered with oil as she twisted slowly to left and right in the blaze of the candles, not smiling, her eyes enormous. Blaise had stood above the bed, looking down upon her for a long time. Slowly he had removed his own clothing as she lay bound beneath him in a dazzle of light, watching… and then he had untied all the knots that bound her before lowering himself to the bed.

Lucianna had laughed, he remembered. He had thought then it might be from a certain kind of relief. Now, living the moment again, he heard that laughter differently, as genuine amusement at his innocence: a war-trained Gorhaut coran in decadent Portezza, coupling with the least innocent woman in the world. Young as she was, Lucianna seemed never to have been young. The bitterness was in him again; there might always be that bitterness. Bertran de Talair, he thought suddenly, had never managed to move past what had happened to him in love when he was young.

She was silent still. Blaise kept his head averted, his eyes closed. He felt the knife blade withdraw and a moment later heard Lucianna say, "I thought, back then… I remember thinking towards the end of that summer, before Engarro was killed… that I had met you too late." An odd note in her voice. But that was not what finally caused Blaise to open his eyes. He had heard another sound, from the far end of the room, and felt the faintest thread of a draft across his skin.

When he looked up, Lucianna was turned away from him towards the door, and following her glance Blaise saw Quzman of Arimonda standing there, white teeth bared in a luxurious smile, a blade in his hand, long as a small sword.

Lucianna glanced over and down at Blaise for an instant, her eyes wide and black with the drug; then she turned her back on him entirely and moved towards the fire, leaving only empty space between Blaise and the Arimondan who had come to end his life. It had indeed been corans of Miraval who had brought him here; the last piece of the puzzle fell into place.

"Staked out like a horse thief," said Quzman with relish. "Were this Arimonda I would have him in the desert beside a hive of blood ants, and I would pour honey myself over his private parts and eyes and leave him there." Lucianna said nothing. She was gazing into the depths of the fire.

"How fortunate for me that this is not Arimonda," said Blaise stonily. He was not going to give this man any more satisfaction than the fact of his death would offer. "Land of cowards and incestuous catamites."

The Arimondan's smile never altered. "You are foolish," he said. "You should not be goading me. Not with your sex easy to my blade. Your life ends here. My brother's ghost is hungry for your shade in the afterworld and it is in my hands whether your passage to the god is easy or very hard."

"No it isn't," said Lucianna quietly, her back to both of them. "Do what you came to do, but quickly."

"What I came to do? I came for an execution," said the Arimondan, the smile deepening. "And perhaps for some pleasure upon his body when he is dead."

"You presume too greatly," said Lucianna, still not turning from the fire. Her voice was toneless, very low. The Arimondan laughed and moved towards the bed.

"A severe penalty it does seem," said Blaise to Lucianna, dragging his eyes away from the man with the blade towards the woman who had taught him all he knew about certain dimensions of joy and pain, "for having met you too late. I do hope this pleases your new husband, and perhaps even the next one."

She made a small sound; he thought it might be a kind of laugh. He didn't have time to decide, though, because just then, as he turned back to face his death the way a man does, with dignity and an acceptance of the infinite, eternal power of the god, the door opened again and, with utter stupefaction, Blaise saw his brother's wife step into the room behind the Arimondan.

"If you use that blade," he heard Rosala announce in her crispest voice, "I swear by holy Corannos I will have you brought into the presence of the countess of Arbonne before this night is over, and I will not rest until you are both dealt with for breaching a truce with murder."

And then, with that spoken, as her own fierce inner momentum seemed to slow, all three of them staring at her, she registered for the first time—he actually saw it happen—who was lying on the bed, and she said, in a voice so completely different it could almost have made one laugh:

"Blaise?"

It was Lucianna who laughed. "How touching. A reunion," she murmured, turning from the fire. She was still holding her own jewelled blade. "The wandering children of Garsenc in the den of the dark lady. Someone will surely make a ballad of this."

"I think not," said Quzman of Arimonda. "Since both of them must now be slain."

His smile had gone. He took another step towards Blaise. "Now," said Lucianna Delonghi loudly, very clearly. The inner doors on either side of the bed burst open. Through them, swords drawn, rushed half a dozen corans in the countess's colours, followed quickly by Roban, the chancellor or Arbonne, and then more slowly by a black-haired, sumptuously dressed, darkly handsome man. Last of all, moving with extreme caution, a compress held to one side of his head, came Rudel Correze.

The corans surrounded the Arimondan. One of them seized the dagger from him. Quzman's gaze, bleak and malevolent, did not move from Lucianna's face now. Returning a brief, glacially patrician glance, she said, "You made an error and you are a crude, unpleasant man. The one might have been forgivable were the other not also the case. And both things, I might add, are equally true of the duke of Miraval, whom you serve in this matter."

She said that last very clearly as well. Blaise saw the handsome man who was her father smile thinly as Roban the chancellor winced. It was becoming slowly clear to Blaise that he was not, for the moment at least, about to die. That Lucianna had set this whole thing up as a trap for… whom? Quzman? Urté? Both? He looked to his left and saw Rudel leaning against a bedpost for support, gazing down on him with an expression that might have managed to be amused if his face had not been quite so green.

"If you do not stop standing there uselessly and cut these cords," Blaise snarled through clenched teeth, "I will not be responsible for what I do to you later."

"To me?" his friend replied with feeling. "What can you possibly do beyond what has been done already? I have just been half killed by corans of Miraval in the interests of a ploy by my cursed cousin Lucianna that had nothing at all to do with me." But he did begin, moving gingerly, to cut Blaise's bonds.

"You are, you understand, now taken into the custody of the countess of Arbonne," the chancellor was saying to Quzman. He did not look happy. Blaise, finally able to sit up, slowly chafing his wrists, had some idea why. "In the morning she will decide your fate," Roban finished coldly.

The Arimondan was a brave man. "My fate alone?" he said. "You see how the woman had the northerner trussed up for me like a hog for slaughter? You know her husband tried to kill him on the road. Will you let her play this double game and laugh at all of us?" Blaise glanced over at Lucianna; she had moved towards the windows, and had put on a heavier robe. She didn't bother looking back at Quzman, or at any of them.

"I do not see anyone laughing," said the chancellor. "And if her game was doubled, it was only against yourself. She informed me of your proposal last night, immediately after it was first made."

A good attempt at deflecting and controlling the damage, Blaise thought, but it was unlikely to succeed. Not with the other man who had entered the room standing there, listening attentively. He knew a fair bit about Massena Delonghi, actually. He had lived in his palaces two summers ago, sleeping with his daughter. He and Rudel Correze had killed a prince for him.

But it seemed, the way events were unfolding, that Lucianna had not intended to have Blaise murdered tonight after all, though the manner in which she had had him bound and what she had done and said still needed an answer. Or, he reflected, perhaps they did not. I don't like it when men leave me, Blaise. Did I never tell you that? Perhaps he had his answer. Perhaps she had said nothing more or less than truth. How novel that would be, he thought wryly.

As he had expected, the chancellor's effort at diversion did not succeed. "There is another person involved in this, though," said Massena Delonghi, the sleek, suave man who was said to be seeking to dominate Portezza, and to be using his daughter's marriages in steady pursuit of that goal. "This Arimondan, I am informed, is employed by the duke of Miraval. I understand from my dear daughter that it was the corans of Duke Urté who assaulted this young friend of ours, and our well-beloved cousin as well."

"Thank you," Rudel said brightly. "I am so pleased someone remembered that."

Roban did not look pleased at all. "We will, of course, seek to hear what En Urté has to say about all of this in the morning. For the moment, there is only this man, caught by your daughter's… devices… in the act of attempting murder."

"For which he will be branded and hanged, I trust?" Lucianna's brows were arched as she finally turned to look at them. Her voice and manner were a cool, glittering mirror of her father's. Blaise remembered this side of her too. She gazed at the chancellor: "Precisely as that poor cousin of my dear husband was branded and hanged by the duke of Talair. Precisely in the same way, I dare suggest. Or indeed we will have sad cause to question the impartiality of the countess of Arbonne in her justice towards strangers and towards those who serve her own high lords." The celebrated eyebrows remained pointedly high.

"And," Massena Delonghi now added, in a tone more of sorrow than reproach, "there must indeed be the morning's determination of Duke Urté's own responsibility for this most flagrant breach of the truce of the fair. A lamentable duty for the countess, I am sure, but if Portezzan nobleman are to be executed like common thieves, she surely cannot turn a blind eye to the transgressions of her own people, however lofty their rank."

Lucianna's father was enjoying every moment of this, Blaise realized. It was exactly the sort of multi-faceted intrigue the Delonghi most loved. Massena would have little or nothing actually vested in Urté's downfall or the countess's embarrassment, but would take pleasure and—Blaise had no doubt—in the end find some gain in being the figure at the heart of both eventualities. If Arbonne had hoped to keep her internal feuds close to her breast, that hope was almost certainly ended now. Blaise wondered, cynically, if Massena Delonghi would be writing to Galbert de Garsenc soon in Gorhaut, or sending his factor in Cortil on an informal visit to King Ademar's court, to suggest some quiet transaction by way of compensation to the Delonghi for the discomfiture of Arbonne.

Rudel, proving belatedly useful, if not efficiently so, had finally finished with Blaise's ankle bonds. He'd also found, discarded in a corner of the room, the removed clothing and boots. Moving as well as his pounding head would allow, Blaise dressed himself. He saw that Rosala had taken a seat on a low bench by the door, sitting alone at some distance from everyone else. She was watching his every movement, though, with a curiously strained expression. It occurred to him, with something of a jolt, that he had also been unclothed the last time they'd seen each other. So, for that matter, had she.

The door to the room was still open beside her. Through it now, arresting that particular line of thought, came Lucianna's servant. Blaise remembered Imera well. Her knowing features had accompanied him on a great many silent night walks through one palace or another to her mistress's rooms. Imera stopped in the doorway, took in the scene and allowed herself the briefest smile imaginable as she observed the Arimondan ringed with swords.

It seemed to Blaise, looking at her, as if he were actually being made to journey backwards through the course of this night—first in that inn outside the walls with Rudel and King Daufridi, now here in Lucianna's room—through the layers of his own past. All that was needed now—

"The countess of Arbonne has come," said Imera. Of course, thought Blaise, tenderly probing the blood-encrusted lump on the back of his skull, preparing to kneel.

He was not really surprised; he was even beginning to find the oddest element of humour in all of this. The small, elegant figure of Signe de Barbentain came briskly into the room, dressed in pale blue trimmed with pearls. She was followed—and this was a shock—by the bulky, grim-faced figure of Duke Urté de Miraval.

"My lady!" exclaimed Roban as they all sank down and then rose from their obeisances. "I thought you to be asleep. I did not want to—"

"Asleep?" said the countess of Arbonne. "With such beautiful music below and treachery above stairs in our palace? I have only the duke of Miraval to thank for bringing me here in time to deal with this. You and I, Roban, will have to have a talk in the morning."

"But countess," began the chancellor, a little too earnestly, "it is the duke of Miraval himself who—"

"Who was informed by an Arimondan in his employ of a plot by the wife of the banned Borsiard d'Andoria, a second attempt against the life of our dear friend from Gorhaut." Signe's voice and manner were chillingly austere.

"Quzman, I am sorry to say, has his own grievance against the northerner," Urté added smoothly. "So deep a hatred that he was willing to breach the truce of the fair to aid the lady of Andoria in her corrupt designs. I chose to allow the affair to proceed a certain distance, trusting it could be halted—and thereby exposing the Portezzan evil at its source. I am pleased to see that this has happened." He was staring coldly at Lucianna.

Blaise looked over at Rudel and saw his friend smiling crookedly back at him, still holding a cloth to the side of his head. They turned, simultaneously, to the chancellor of Arbonne. Roban's surprise was just a little too extreme again. This is a clever man, thought Blaise. He may get away with it, after all. Massena Delonghi, he noted, had paled a little beneath the dark tan, but he too was smiling slightly, showing a master's appreciation for the neatness of what was happening.

As if on cue to Blaise's thought, Roban said, "But countess, there was no Portezzan plot. The gracious lady Lucianna Delonghi d'Andoria was acting only to expose this selfsame Arimondan. She personally informed me of his designs last night. She only pretended to accede to his scheme to prevent a more summary murder of the Gorhaut coran. It seems to be her understanding that, ah… the duke of Miraval was actively involved in his underling's designs."

"Evidently a faulty understanding on my part," Lucianna murmured silkily into the silence that followed this. "One for which I must surely make amends to the duke when more private opportunity allows." She smiled at Urté, her most dazzling smile.

"My dear daughter has such an impulsive nature," Massena Delonghi added, playing out the game, "and she was naturally so anxious to make redress for her… equally impulsive husband's earlier transgression." He shrugged, and spread his hands. "It seems we have all been acting in good faith here."

"Except for one man," said Signe de Barbentain icily. She was looking at the Arimondan.

Blaise had seen it before, and now he registered it again: Quzman of Arimonda was neither a coward nor a fool. The man was smiling, ringed about with steel and hostile glances.

"Ever the way of things, is it not?" he asked quietly, looking directly at his employer. Duke Urté, stone-faced, made no reply. "I am the sacrifice after all, not the man who murdered my brother. I do wonder, though," he said, turning with bold eyes and no deference at all to the countess of Arbonne, "how I am presumed to have used ten of my lord of Miraval's corans tonight without his knowledge."

The weak link, Blaise thought, racing through possibilities. He's going to take Urté down with him. But he'd underestimated the Arbonnais again.

"That is a matter of some grief to me," En Urté de Miraval said, his deep voice conveying dimensions of regret. "I chose to test the loyalty and prudence of my corans, electing not to caution them about Quzman's designs or undermine his plot. I am sorry to say that ten of them did, indeed, succumb to his undeniable persuasiveness. They have their own hatred of this Gorhautian coran, arising from the deaths of five of their fellows half a year ago in a most unfortunate incident. They agreed to assist in this terrible deed."

"Then these men too must surely be punished," said Massena Delonghi to the countess, shaking his head at this latest revelation of the world's depredations, the evils that seemed to flourish so brazenly in the midst of good and honest men.

Quzman of Arimonda was still smiling, Blaise saw—a terrible expression now, of complete understanding.

"They have been punished," said Urté briefly. "They are dead."

And so the chancellor had indeed won, after all, Blaise realized. Given that his sole purpose here would have been to control the reverberations of this, to keep the countess from having to deal with the bitter feud between Miraval and Talair at this most sensitive juncture in Arbonne's affairs, he had almost certainly managed to do so. He turned to Rudel again and saw wry admiration in his friend's eyes as he looked towards the unassuming chancellor of Arbonne.

Impulsively, Blaise turned back towards the door, to the bench were Rosala was sitting, and read, without real surprise, an identically cynical understanding in her expression. She had always been that quick. It had been too easy to see her only as a woman at the beginning, the selected wife of his older brother—to fail to realize how clever she really was. But there had been moments, even in the few, brief intervals when he had been home, when Blaise had been forced to remind himself whose daughter Rosala was, and to remember that any child of Cadar de Savaric would know more than a thing or two about the world's affairs. Thinking so, he took a few steps towards her. Rosala was the last, in a real sense the largest, mystery of this night.

It was with a renewed surprise that he saw Signe de Barbentain turn as well, to smile at Rosala and then take a seat beside her on the bench. The countess of Arbonne took his sister-in-law's hands between her own. "You thought you were saving a life, didn't you?" she asked. Her voice was low, but Blaise, moving nearer, was concentrating now on the two of them and he heard. Behind him the chancellor was ordering the binding of the Arimondan.

"I did think that," he heard Rosala say. "I didn't know who it was."

"Which makes it a braver act, my dear. How is Cadar?"

Blaise blinked, and suddenly stopped where he was.

Rosala said, "Sleeping down the hall, with his nurse." She looked up at Blaise as she spoke those words, her clear blue eyes on his from across the room.

"Then why don't we leave these untidy affairs and go look in on your baby?" Blaise heard the countess say.

"I would like that," his brother's wife murmured, rising. Blaise realized that his heart was pounding. "You haven't seen him since the morning, have you?"

Signe stood up as well, smiling. "But I have been thinking of him all day. Shall we go?"

Blaise wasn't quite certain how, but he seemed to have crossed the room towards the two of them. The countess looked at him, her elegant features composed. He was staring at Rosala though. He bent, carefully, and saluted her on both cheeks.

"My lady, this is a great surprise," he said awkwardly, feeling himself flush. He had never been easy with her. "Am I understanding correctly? Have you had a child? Have you had a child here!?"

Her head was high, her handsome, intelligent features betrayed no distress at all, but up close now he could see marks of weariness and strain. She had burst into this room, even so, at the very real risk of her own life, following a man with a blade to save whoever it might have been who was in danger here.

She said gravely, "I am sorry you are discovering it in this fashion. I was told you were here, but there seemed to be no easy way to inform you, given that I have left Garsenc without Ranald's knowledge and am not going back." She paused for a moment, to let him begin dealing with that. "I did give birth two days ago, by grace of Corannos, and Rian. My son is asleep down the hall. His name is Cadar. Cadar de Savaric." She stopped a second time. Blaise was feeling as if he had been struck again, a second blow to the head, in the same place the staff had hit before. "You may see him if you like," his sister-in-law concluded.

"How sweet this is, how truly touching," came an amused voice just behind him. "The lost children of Gorhaut. Surely I was right, there will have to be a ballad about this. Why don't we all go dote upon the child?" He hadn't heard Lucianna coming up; once, his whole being would have been focused on knowing exactly where she was in any room. In the strangest way, Blaise felt an obscure sadness in this change.

"I don't recall inviting you," Rosala said calmly. "You might still feel like using the blade I saw."

So she had seen that knife, and probably the blood on him where the dancing blade had pricked. Blaise wondered what she had thought. He wondered what there was to think. Lucianna Delonghi, however, was not accustomed to being discomfited by other women. "I only stab babies when they wake me at night," she murmured in her laziest drawl. "Grown men tend to give greater cause, and different pleasures. Since I am awake, your child is safe for the moment. From me, at any rate. Are you not afraid, though, that dear, impetuous Blaise will seize and spirit him home to his brother and father?"

"Not really," said Rosala. She looked at Blaise. "Should I be?"

Lucianna laughed. The countess of Arbonne stood quietly, looking at Massena Delonghi's daughter, her expression thoughtful now, and under that level, appraising scrutiny Lucianna grew still. Blaise's mind was racing, despite the pulses of pain, struggling to sort through the towering implications of all of this. And there was something else as well, half-buried at the base of that tower: a night of storm in Garsenc Castle eight months ago, when he had left for the last time.

Quickly, he pushed that thought away. She had asked him a question and was waiting for his reply. He said, "Having left them myself, I am unlikely to be the one to take anyone back to that castle. As to that, at least, you need not be concerned. You know they are unlikely to accept this, though."

"We all know that," asked Signe de Barbentain. "There was some hope earlier that you might have a suggestion."

"A suggestion about what?" asked Rudel, coming up to them. "Cures for a cracked skull?"

"Family affairs," Blaise said shortly, though it was more than that, a great deal more, given who and what his family were.

And it was precisely in that moment that the new thought appeared and immediately began, with unsettling speed, to take shape in him. He made the required introductions and then turned back to look at the others on the far side of the room. He was suddenly thinking hard, and there was a cold logic, a kind of inexorability to where those thoughts were leading him. They didn't make him happy though, not at all.

Urté de Miraval was talking quietly with Massena Delonghi beside the fire. Quzman the Arimondan was in the process of being bound by the corans of Barbentain; they weren't being especially gentle about it. The man's head was held arrogantly high, however; he didn't bother to struggle. Next to Blaise, Rudel Correze bowed to the countess and then bent low and kissed Rosala's hand. Lucianna murdered something to her cousin, under her breath; Blaise didn't hear what it was.

He took a deep breath. Life might be easier, he reflected just before he spoke, if he didn't keep making it harder for himself.

"One moment, if you will," he said quietly, addressing the chancellor of Arbonne. It was interesting, actually: the other conversations stopped the moment he spoke, as if they had been waiting for him. He wasn't used to being the key to a gathering such as this. He wondered how it had happened. Lucianna was standing unnecessarily close to him. He tried to ignore that fact.

Roban the chancellor, who did not much like him, lifted an eyebrow.

Blaise said, "I do have a suggestion to make. This affair ultimately concerns only that man and myself." He nodded at the Arimondan. "There is nothing that need involve the countess or the… wider issues of our time. I killed his brother when attacked some time ago. He sees that as cause for vengeance. I might say I would feel the same, had it been my own brother slain." He heard Rosala make a small sound, an indrawn breath behind him. That was interesting too; of all of them, she seemed to be the first to sense where he was going. Or part of his path, at any rate. She could not know it all.

"What you say is not strictly true." said Massena Delonghi, interjecting soberly. "There remains the matter of the violated truce. Whatever might lie between the two of you, which is indeed your own affair, he was bound to hold back until the fair was over."

"And it isn't even their own affair in any case," said Rudel, irritatingly intruding himself. "Correct me if I err, but I do seem to recall hearing last summer of a decree by the countess of Arbonne regarding killings between Talair and Miraval."

Blaise understood what his friend was doing then, and reproached himself. He ought to have known better. Rudel wasn't intruding: he was handing Blaise the next thing to say, if he wanted to say it. And it seemed that he did want to say it, or he would not have begun this at all.

"As to that, I am in fact no longer a coran of Talair. Not since the attempt on my life on the road. With my identity revealed there it seemed inappropriate to Duke Bertran that he be giving Galbert de Garsenc's son commands as if to any other mercenary. I am with him now only as a friend. There is therefore no breach of the countess's decree in anything that passes between Quzman of Arimonda and myself."

The Arimondan had begun, again, to smile, the white teeth showing against his dark skin. His magnificent body was ridged and corded with muscle. He was clever, and extremely dangerous.

"I propose," said Blaise calmly, "that this man and I fight each other at the tournament, and that all affairs of tonight be considered ended with whatever happens then."

Quzman was looking at him. "I might be forced to regard you as a man, after all," he said. "To the death?"

Blaise shrugged. It had come. "Why bother, otherwise."

Behind him, Rudel Correze swore violently under his breath. Which meant that he had not, after all, seen exactly where this had been going. There was some small pleasure in that; he was rarely so far ahead of Rudel. Behind him, Rosala was silent now. It was the countess who spoke, very softly. "I should not allow this. You have a reason, I dare hope?"

"I hope so as well," Blaise said, not turning, his gaze holding the Arimondan's. The first moments of a challenge, he had been taught long ago, often determined what followed. It was important not to look away.

Urté de Miraval smiled broadly. "One thousand in gold on the Arimondan," he said. "If anyone chooses to cover."

"I will," said Massena Delonghi. "It will add spice to the watching."

His daughter laughed.

"It appears," said Signe de Barbentain, "that I am expected to consent to this. I cannot imagine whence that expectation comes. Why should the Arimondan be allowed an even chance at his life?"

Blaise turned to the courageous, exquisitely beautiful woman who ruled this country. "There is no reason but my asking it of you," he said gravely. "Arbonne has always been known for the greatness of its rulers and their generosity. There are those in Gorhaut who might prefer to deny that."

He paused; her blue gaze was intently searching his eyes. "I am not one of them, your grace. Not any longer."

He thought he saw a flicker of understanding, and then sorrow chasing it away, but he was certain of neither thing. Impulsively, he knelt before her. He felt her hand upon his head. The slender fingers curled in his hair and then down his cheek and beard. She lifted his chin to look at him.

"We are fond of you, Blaise of Gorhaut," she said formally. "We can only hope that this challenge does not bring us a new source of grief. We consent to it, because you have asked us to do so." She looked out over Blaise's head. "The Arimondan will remain in custody until this duel occurs, though he is not to be abused in any way. These two men will fight before us until one of them is dead, and this combat will take place on the first morning of the tournament by our decree. We will retire now. These matters are distasteful to us, and there is a child we have not seen all day."

In the end, Blaise went down the hall with the countess and Rosala. When they walked in, the baby was awake and nursing with the wet-nurse they had found for him. Blaise looked at him for a long time and then turned to Rosala. He said nothing, nor did he find any answers to unspoken questions in her face. He had not, in fact, expected to.

On his way back down the corridor alone some time after, he saw Imera waiting for him at a dark place by the stairwell. He had been half expecting this. She gestured with one hand. Looking beyond her, he saw that Lucianna's door stood ajar. Torchlight flickered and shifted in the corridor.

Once again, desire for her was in Blaise like a wave, like the hard surge of the black, starlit sea against a stony shore. And Blaise understood, standing there in the shadows with Lucianna's servant, that he was unlikely ever to be wholly free of this. In the next heartbeat, he realized, with a feeling akin to that which sometimes came when the white moon broke free of clouds to shine serenely down upon the earth where men and women lived and died, that he could deal with that desire. He was not a slave to it. He could ride above the wave. He took a slow breath, shook his head gently and went past Imera down the dark, winding stairs.

There were people still awake and lights burning in the great hall of Barbentain. A lanky, dark-haired man was singing. Blaise paused in the doorway, listening for a moment. The voice was resonant and sad, quite beautiful actually. He thought he recognized the man, and one or two of the other musicians. Then he saw a woman he did know for certain: the joglar from Midsummer Eve, Lisseut. Her brown hair looked different tonight. He realized why after a moment: it was bright and clean, not soaked and tangled about her shoulders. Amused at the vivid memory, he waited until her gaze moved away from the singer to scan the room. When she saw him in the doorway, she smiled quickly and lifted a hand. Blaise, after a second, smiled back.

He was actually thinking about crossing the room to speak with her, but just then someone was at his elbow.

"I thought I'd wait a little while," Rudel said. "I wasn't entirely certain if you would be coming down before morning."

Blaise looked over at his friend. "Neither was I," he said quietly, "until just now. I feel free of something, actually."

Rudel's expression was sober. "Free to die?"

"We are always free for that. It is the god's gift and his burden."

"Don't be so pious. Not all of us are fool enough to invite it, Blaise."

Blaise smiled. "Is this Rudel Correze I am hearing? The most reckless mercenary of us all? If it will make you feel happier I will let you tell me, on the way home, all the reasons why I am a fool."

"It will make me feel a great deal happier," Rudel said. And proceeded to take up the invitation, in meticulous, lucid detail, all the way back from the castle to Bertran de Talair's palace in Lussan.

Blaise listened, for the most part, but as they neared Bertran's house again his mind wandered away, touching and withdrawing and then reaching hesitantly back to touch again the last, most difficult thing of a difficult night.

He had never seen a new-born babe before. The child had had a surprisingly full head of reddish hair and the Garsenc nose already, indisputably. He looked like Ranald. He also looked like Blaise. Rosala, holding him when he had finished nursing with the woman, before he was swaddled again, had revealed nothing at all in words or with her eyes. Nothing, that is, save love, as Blaise watched her watch her son sleep in her arms. They would be coming for him, of course. There was no question at all but that his grandfather and the king of Gorhaut would be coming after that child. Rosala had told Blaise, tersely, about her last encounter with Galbert. He wondered if his father had provoked that clash deliberately. It wasn't a thought he could share with her.

"You haven't even uttered a word in your own defence," Rudel complained sharply as they came up for the second time in a long night to stand beneath the lights burning outside Bertran's palace.

"I have none to offer. Every word you speak is true."

"Well, then?"

Blaise was silent for a moment. "Tell me, why did you spend so much of the assassination money on a jewel for Lucianna?"

Rudel grew still. It was quiet on the cobble-stoned street, with the stars shining far above.

"How do you know that? Did she tell you I—"

"No. She would never do that. Rudel, I recognized it. You pointed out that red gem to me once, at that jeweller's in Aulensburg. It wasn't a difficult connection to make. Take my meaning though, Rudel: we are all foolish in our different ways." It was quite dark where they stood, even with the two torches behind them. The sky was clear and a breeze was blowing. Both moons were down.

"I love her," his friend said finally. "I have no business calling any other man, living or dead, a fool."

Blaise honestly hadn't known, not until he had seen that memorable crimson gem blazing between Lucianna's breasts tonight. There was a sadness in him, shaped of many things.

He smiled though, and touched his friend on the arm. "You mentioned an amusing tavern quite some time ago. We appear to have been interrupted. If you are willing, I wouldn't mind trying again."

He waited, and saw Rudel, slowly, return his smile.

Sunrise saw them homeward, when the morning broke.