A Song for Arbonne

CHAPTER 4

Walking briskly through the crowded streets, calling cheerful replies to people she knew and to some she didn't, Lisseut was reminded over and again why the Midsummer Carnival in Tavernel was her favourite time of the year. Colours and crowds and light, the knowledge of a season's touring ended with time before another began, the hinge and axis of the year. Midsummer was a time between times, a space in the round of the year where all seemed in suspension, when anything might happen or be allowed. After nightfall, she thought, that would certainly be true in a variety of ways.

A masked figure clad in green and bright yellow sprang in front of her, arms outspread; in a mock growl that clashed with his birdlike costume he demanded an embrace as passersby laughed. Sidestepping neatly, Lisseut pirouetted out of his grasp. "Bad luck to kiss a singer before sundown!" she called over her shoulder. She'd made that one up two years back; it seemed to work. And by sundown she was usually with friends and so shielded from anyone coming to assert a deferred claim.

Not that the claims would ever be a serious problem. Not here, and not for her—too many people knew who she was by now, and even among the wildest of the students, the joglars and troubadours had an exalted status in Tavernel, even more so during Carnival. It was a debauched season, but one with its hierarchies and rules nonetheless.

As she crossed Temple Square, where the silver domes of Rian's principal shrine faced the square, golden towers of Corannos's, the south breeze brought her an almost forgotten tang of salt from the port. Lisseut smiled, glad to be back by the sea after a long winter and spring touring inland and in the mountains. Reaching the far side of the square, she was suddenly overwhelmed by the smells of cooking food and remembered that she hadn't eaten since midday on the road. Easy enough to forget to eat in haste to be in town, knowing how many friends she'd not seen for a year would be arriving that day and the next. But the smells reminded her that she was ravenous. She nipped into a cookshop and emerged a moment later chewing on a leg of fried chicken, careful to keep the dripping grease from staining her new tunic.

The tunic was a present to herself after a very successful spring in the eastern hills, her best tour yet by far. First at the goddess's own temple for a fortnight, and then at lofty Ravenc Castle, where Gaufroy de Ravenc had been more than generous to her and to Alain of Rousset, the troubadour with whom she'd teamed up that season. She'd even had untroubled nights there in a room all to herself with a wonderfully soft bed, since En Gaufroy evidently preferred Alain's charms to her own. Which was fine with Lisseut; Alain's clever verses, her own singing and whatever took place in the lord's chambers at night had led Gaufroy into a humour of exceptional largess when it came time for the two of them to leave.

When she'd briefly parted with Alain at Rousset town a few days after—he was planning to spend some time with his family before coming down to Tavernel, and she was committed to a performance at Corannos's shrine near Gavela—he was highly complimentary about her work and invited her to join him on the same circuit in a year's time. He was an easy man to work for and Lisseut found his songs well-crafted if less than inspired; she had had no hesitation about agreeing. A few of the other troubadours might offer richer, more challenging material for a joglar—Jourdain, Aurelian, certainly Remy of Orreze—but there was much to be said for Alain's relaxed congeniality, and something also to be said for the bonus his night-time skills offered with the priests and lords at certain temples and castles. Lisseut considered herself honoured to have been asked; it was her first repeat contract after three years on the roads, and the joglars of Arbonne fought and schemed for such offers from the better-known troubadours. She and Alain were to seal the agreement at the Guildhall before Carnival ended. A great many contracts would be negotiated and sealed this week; it was one of the reasons virtually all the musicians made a point of being there.

There were other reasons, of course; Carnival was sacred to Rian, as all Midsummer's rites were, and the goddess was patroness and guardian of all music in Arbonne, and so of all the itinerant performers who crossed back and forth along the dusty roads singing songs and shaping them in the name of love. One came to Tavernel at Midsummer at least as much in homage to Rian as for anything else.

That said, it had to be conceded that Carnival was also the wildest, least inhibited, most enjoyable time of the year for anyone not in mourning, or incapacitated, or dead.

Lisseut finished her chicken leg, paused to wipe her hands with elaborate fastidiousness on the apron of a portly, grinning fruit seller, and bought an orange from him. She rubbed it quickly on his crotch for luck, drawing ribald laughter from the crowd and a groan of mock desire from the man. Laughing herself, feeling glad to be alive and young and a singer in Arbonne in summer-time, Lisseut continued down towards the harbour and then right at the first crossing lane and saw the familiar, much-loved sign of The Liensenne swinging above the street.

As always, it felt like coming home. Home was really Vezét, of course, on the coast further east with the famous olive groves climbing up behind it, but this, the original "Tavern in Tavernel" for which Anselme of Cauvas had written his song years and years ago, was a kind of second home for all the musicians of Arbonne. Marotte, the proprietor, had served as a surrogate father and confidant for half the younger joglars and poets in his day, including Lisseut herself when she had first said goodbye to her parents and her home and followed her troubadour uncle onto the road, trusting in her voice and music to feed her and her mother-wits to keep her alive. Less than four years ago, that was. It seemed a much longer time. Grinning, she jauntily tipped her feathered hat to the lute-playing figure on the signboard—it was said to be a rendition of Folquet de Barbentain, the original troubadour-count himself—nodded back at a broad wink from one man amongst a crowd of half a dozen playing pitch-coin outside the door and stepped inside. She knew her mistake the instant she did so. Knew it even before Remy's exultant, skirling howl of triumph assaulted her ears over the din, even before Aurelian, standing next to Remy, intoned "Nine!" in a voice deep as doom, even before she saw the flushed hilarious crowd of musicians holding a dripping, moustachioed, furiously expostulating Arimondan upside-down over the accursed basin of water, preparing to dunk him again. Even before the covey of coin-pitchers outside pushed quickly in right behind her, cackling in glee.

She knew this tradition, in Rian's holy name! What had she been thinking of? She'd even nodded like a fatuous bumpkin at the people gathered outside waiting for the ritual ninth to enter, thus making it safe for them to follow. Friendly, simple-minded Lisseut, nodding happily on her way to a ducking only the ignorant were supposed to receive.

And now Remy, looking quite unfairly magnificent, bright hair in ringlets on his forehead, damp with perspiration, blue eyes positively glittering with hilarity, was swiftly approaching, followed by Aurelian and Jourdain and Dumars and even—oh the perfidy of it all! — the laughing figure of Alain, her erstwhile partner, along with fully half a dozen others, including Elisse of Cauvas, who was enjoying this unexpected development quite as much as she might be expected to. Lisseut registered Elisse's mocking smile and furiously cursed her own stupidity again. She looked around frantically for an ally, spotted Marotte behind the bar and pitched a plea for help at the top of her highly regarded voice.

Grinning from ear to ear, her surrogate father shook his head. No help there. Not at Midsummer in Tavernel. Quickly, Lisseut turned back to Remy, smiling in her most endearingly winsome fashion.

"Hello, my dear," she began sweetly. "And how have you been this—"

She got no further than that. Moving as gracefully as ever, Remy of Orreze, her former lover—every woman's former lover, someone had once said, though not bitterly—slipped neatly under her instinctive, warding gesture, put a shoulder to her midriff and had her hoisted in the air before Lisseut could even try to phrase some remotely plausible reason why she should be exonerated from the water-ducking. A dozen pairs of hands, both before and behind, hastened to assist him in bearing her aloft like some sacrifice of the Ancients towards the ducking basin by the bar. Every year! Lisseut was thinking, grasped too tightly to even struggle. We do this every cursed year! Where was my brain just now?

In the chaos around her she noticed that Aurelian had already turned back to the door to resume his counting. Remy had her around the waist from below and was tickling now, which was inexcusable, given what he ought to have remembered about her. Cursing, giggling helplessly, Lisseut felt her flailing elbow crack into something and was unconscionably pleased a second later to note that it was Elisse who staggered back, swearing like a soldier herself and holding a hand to the side of her head. Holy Rian must have guided her elbow; there was no one else in the room she would actually have wanted to hit! Well, with the exception of Remy, perhaps. She frequently wanted to hit Remy of Orreze. Many of them did, when they weren't listening intently to some favoured joglar singing his newest song.

Lisseut saw the basin loom beneath her. She felt herself being swung completely upside-down. Her feathered hat, which was also new, and expensive, flew from her head undoubtedly to be crushed underfoot amid the densely packed, raucously shouting crowd. Through the arc of a swiftly inverting world she glimpsed her dripping-wet Arimondan predecessor being unceremoniously bundled aside. Dragging a quick breath of tavern air into her lungs, still cursing herself for a dewy-eyed fool, Lisseut closed her eyes tightly as they swung her down into the water.

It wasn't water.

"Marotte!" she cried, spluttering and gasping when they finally lifted her out. "Marotte, do you know what he's done! This isn't—"

"Down!" Remy commanded, cackling uproariously. Lisseut frantically sucked air again just before she was once more submerged.

They held her under for a long time. When she finally surfaced, it took all her strength to twist her neck towards the bar and croak, "It's wine, Marotte! Cauvas sparkling! He's using—"

"Down!" Remy shrieked again, but not before Lisseut heard a howl of outrage from Marotte.

"What? Cauvas? Remy, I'll flay you alive! Are you dunking people in my best—?"

Pushed back under, her ears stopped, Lisseut heard no more, but a small, inner glint of satisfaction made the last ducking easier to endure. She even took a quick swig of the wine before they pulled her out for the third and final time. Cauvas sparkling gold was not something young joglars tasted very often, even conceding that being dunked head first into a basin of it after an oiled and perfumed Arimondan was not the connoisseur's preferred mode of consumption.

They swung her out and righted her in time for Lisseut to see a red-faced Marotte confronting Remy across the bar top.

"Carnival tithe, Marotte!" the fair-haired darling of the troubadours was saying, eyes alight with mischief. "You'll make more than enough off all of us this week to cover the cost."

"You madman, this is a sacrilege!" Marotte expostulated, looking as truly outraged as only a lover of fine wines could. "Do you know what Cauvas wine costs? And how many bottles you've wasted in there? How in the name of Rian did you get into my cellars?"

"Really, Marotte," Remy retorted with lofty, exaggerated disdain, "did you really expect a padlock to keep me out?" A number of people laughed.

"Seven!" Aurelian said crisply, his low voice cutting through the hilarity in the room. Everyone—including Lisseut, vigorously drying her face and hair with the towel one of the servers had kindly offered—turned expectantly towards the door. A young, red-headed student came in, blinked a little at the scrutiny he was subjected to and made his way uncertainly towards the bar. He ordered a flagon of ale. No one paid him any attention. They were watching the entrance.

They didn't have long to wait. The eighth person in was a broad-shouldered, competent-looking coran of middle years. As it happened, a number of those in the tavern knew him very well, including Lisseut. But before she had a chance to properly register and react to the enormity of what was about to happen the next man, the ninth, had already passed through the door.

"Oh, dearest god!" Marotte the innkeeper murmured, in an entirely uncharacteristic appeal to Corannos. In the abrupt silence his voice sounded very loud. The ninth was Duke Bertran de Talair.

"Nine," said Aurelian, an unnecessary confirmation. His voice was hushed, almost reverential. He turned to Remy. "But I really don't think… " he began.

Remy of Orreze was already moving forward, his handsome face shining, a wild, hilarious look in the blue eyes beneath the damp ringlets of his hair.

"Hoist him!" he cried. "We all know the rules—the ninth is ducked in Rian's name! Seize the duke of Talair!"

Valery, the coran, Bertran's cousin and old friend, actually stepped aside, grinning broadly as he sized up the situation. The duke himself, beginning to laugh, held up both hands to forestall the swiftly approaching Remy. Jourdain, very drunk already, was right behind Remy, with Alain and Elisse and a handful of others following a little more cautiously. Lisseut, mouth open in disbelief, realized in that moment that Remy was actually going to do it: he was about to lay hands on one of the most powerful men in Arbonne in order to dunk him in a tub of water. Correction, she thought, a tub of vintage, insanely expensive sparkling Cauvas wine. Remy—mad, cursed, blessed, impossible Remy—was going to do it.

He would have, if another man, clad in the blue-on-blue colours of Talair but with a full, reddish-brown beard and features that stamped him unmistakably as from Gorhaut, had not stepped forward from the doorway behind Bertran just then and levelled a drawn blade at Remy's breast.

Remy's reckless, giddy motion was carrying him forward over the slippery floor too swiftly to stop. From her place by the basin, Lisseut, hands flying to her mouth, saw the whole thing clearly. Bertran quickly spoke a name, but even before he did the man with the sword had shifted it aside. Not all the way, though, just enough for the tip to glance off Remy's left arm and away.

It drew blood. The man had meant to draw blood, Lisseut was almost certain of it. She saw her former lover come to an awkward, stumbling halt and clutch at his arm below the shoulder. His hand came away streaked with crimson. She couldn't see his expression, but it was easy enough to guess. There was a collective growl of anger from the musicians and students gathered in The Liensenne. The rule against drawn blades in taverns was as old as the university; indeed, it was one of the things that had permitted the university to survive. And Remy of Orreze, for all his impossible ways, was one of them. One of their leaders, in fact, and the big man who had just bloodied him with a blade was from Gorhaut.

In that tense moment, with the scene in the tavern on the brink of turning ugly, Bertran de Talair laughed aloud.

"Really, Remy," he said, "I don't think that would have been a good idea, much as Valery might have enjoyed suspending his own good judgment long enough to see me ducked." He flicked a sidelong glance at his cousin who, surprisingly, flushed. The bearded man with the drawn sword had not yet sheathed it. Now he did, at a nod from de Talair.

"I think Aurelian might have been trying to tell you as much," En Bertran went on. Lanky, dark-haired Aurelian had indeed remained by the bar, not far from Lisseut. He said nothing, watching the scene with sober, careful attention.

"You know the rules of Carnival," Remy said stoutly, his head high. "And your hired northern lout has just broken the city laws of Tavernel. Shall I report him to the seneschal?"

"Probably," Bertran said carelessly. "Report me as well. I should have told Blaise about the sword laws before we came. Report us both, Remy."

Remy gave a hollow laugh. "Much good that would do, me sending the duke of Talair to justice." He paused, breathing hard. "Bertran, you're going to have to decide one day: are you one of us, or are you a duke of Arbonne. By all rights you should be upside-down now over that basin, and you know it."

Genuinely amused, ignoring the presumption of Remy's using his name without a title, de Talair laughed again. "You should never have left your studies, my dear. A little more Rhetoric would have done you a world of good. That is as false a dichotomy as ever I've heard."

Remy shook his head. "This is the real world, no scholar's cloudland of dreams. In the real world choices have to be made."

Lisseut saw the duke's amused expression change then, and even at a distance she was chilled by what succeeded it. It was as if de Talair's tolerance had just been taken past some breaking point.

"And are you now going to tell me," he said coldly to Remy of Orreze, "how things operate in the real world? Are you, Remy? With two Arimondans here that I can see and a table from Portezza, none of whom I know, and a Gotzlander at the bar, and the goddess knows how many others upstairs in Marotte's bedrooms… you are going to tell me that in the real world, as you choose to conceive of it, a duke of Arbonne should have let himself be dunked in a barrel of water just now? I can tolerate insolence sometimes, but I'm afraid I can't indulge it. Think, lad. Sober up a little and use your brain."

"It isn't water," someone said. Uneasy laughter slid through the grim stillness that had followed the duke's words. Lisseut could see a crimson flush on the back of Remy's neck. She looked over at Aurelian; he was gazing back at her. They exchanged a glance of shared apprehension and concern.

"He filled the basin with Cauvas gold, my lord," Marotte added, bustling busily out from behind the bar now, striving to lighten the mood. "If you want him bloodied again I'll be pleased to volunteer."

"A whole basin of Cauvas?" En Bertran was smiling again, helping the innkeeper. "If that is true I may have been too hasty. Perhaps I should let myself be ducked!" There was a gust of relieved laughter; Lisseut found herself breathing more easily. "Come on, Remy," the Duke added, "let me buy us a bottle while Blaise takes care of that arm he cut."

"Thank you, no," said Remy with stiff pride. Lisseut knew all about that pride; she shook her head in exasperation. "I'll look after it myself." He paused. "And as it happens, I prefer drinking with other musicians during Carnival, not dukes of Arbonne."

His head high, he turned his back on Bertran and walked across the room and through the door beside the bar towards the chambers at the rear of the inn. He went past Lisseut without even acknowledging her presence. A moment later, Aurelian offered Bertran an apologetic grimace, shrugged at Lisseut and followed Remy out, pausing to collect a pitcher of water and clean towels from Marotte.

It was all very interesting, Lisseut thought. Ten minutes before, Remy of Orreze had been utterly in command of this room, a man in his element, shaping the mood of a late afternoon at Carnival. Now he suddenly seemed to be no more than a young inebriate, his last words sounding childish more than anything else, for all the proud dignity of his exit. He would know it, too, she realized, which probably accounted for the aggrieved tone she'd heard creeping into his voice at the end.

She actually felt sorry for him, and not because of the wound, which didn't appear to be serious. She was fully aware of how much Remy would hate knowing she felt that way. Smiling inwardly, Lisseut happily resolved to make a point of telling him later—a first measure of retaliation for her ruined tunic and trampled hat. Remy's art might demand respect and admiration, and his manic humour and inventiveness had shaped memorable nights for all of them, but that didn't mean there was no room for the taking of small revenges.

Looking over towards the duke, Lisseut saw the bearded Gorhaut coran glancing about the crowded room of musicians with an undisguised look of disdain on his face. She was suddenly sorry he'd been the one to wound Remy. No one should be allowed to draw a blade against a troubadour in this tavern and then wear an expression like that afterwards; particularly not a stranger, and most particularly not one from Gorhaut. Until the sun dies and the moons fall, Gorhaut and Arbonne shall not lie easily beside each other. Her grandfather used to say that, and her father had continued to use the phrase, often after returning from the Autumn Fair in Lussan with whatever profit he'd made from his olives and olive oil, trading with the northerners.

Lisseut, her anger rising, stared at the big coran from the north, wishing someone in the room would say something to him. He looked insufferably smug, gazing down on them all from his great height. Only Aurelian was as tall a man, but Aurelian had gone with Remy, and the lean musician, for all his unassuming brilliance, would not have been the man to face down this one. With a quick shrug that was more characteristic than she knew, Lisseut stepped forward herself.

"You are arrogant," she said to the northerner, "and have no business looking so pleased with yourself. If your liege lord will not tell you as much, one of us will have to: the man you injured may have been frivolous just now in a Carnival mood, but he is twice the man you are, with or without an illegal blade, and he will be remembered in this world long after you are dust and forgotten."

The mercenary—Blaise, the duke had called him—blinked in surprise. Up close he seemed younger than she'd first guessed, and there was actually a slightly different look in his eyes than Lisseut had thought she'd seen from by the bar. She wasn't certain what name to put to it, but it wasn't precisely haughtiness. Bertran de Talair was grinning, and so, unexpectedly, was Valery. Lisseut, registering their glances, was abruptly reminded that she was dripping wet from tangled hair to waist, and her new blouse was probably a dreadful sight and clinging to her much more closely than it should, in all decency. She felt herself flushing, and hoped it would be seen as anger.

"And there you have it, Blaise," the duke was saying. "Dust and forgotten. And more proof for you—if ever you needed it—of how terrible our women are, especially after they've been held upside-down. What would happen to this one back in Gorhaut? Do tell us."

For a long time the bearded coran was silent, looking down at Lisseut. His eyes were a curious hazel colour, nearly green in the lamplight. Almost reluctantly, but quite clearly, he said, "For speaking so to an anointed coran of the god in a public place she would be stripped to the waist and whipped on her belly and back by officers of the king. After, if she survived, the man so insulted would be entitled to do whatever he wanted with her. Her husband, if she had one, would be free to divorce her with no consequences at law or in the eyes of the clergy of Corannos."

The silence that followed was frigid. There was something deathly in it, like ice in the far north, infinitely removed from the mood of Carnival. Until the sun dies and the moons fall…

Lisseut suddenly felt faint, her knees trembled, but she forced her eyes to hold those of the northerner. "What, then, are you doing here?" she said hardily, using the voice control she'd so arduously mastered in her apprenticeship with her uncle. "Why don't you go back where you can do that sort of thing to women who speak their mind or defend their friends? Where you could do whatever you wanted with me and no one would gainsay you?"

"Yes, Blaise," Bertran de Talair added, still inexplicably cheerful. "Why don't you go back?"

A moment later, the big man surprised Lisseut. His mouth quirked sideways in a wry smile. He shook his head. "I was asked by the man who pays my wages what would be done to you in Gorhaut," he answered mildly enough, looking straight at Lisseut, not at the duke. "I think En Bertran was amusing himself: he has travelled enough to know exactly what the laws on such matters are in Gorhaut, and in Valensa and Gotzland, for that matter—for they are much the same. Did I say, incidentally, that I agreed with those laws?"

"Do you agree with them?" Lisseut pursued, aware that this room, among all her friends, was probably the only place on earth where she would have been quite so aggressive.

The man called Blaise pursed his lips reflectively before answering; Lisseut was belatedly realizing that this was no thick-witted northern lout.

"The duke of Talair just now humiliated a troubadour you say will be famous long after I am forgotten. He as much as called him an uneducated, drunken schoolboy. At a guess, that will have hurt rather more than the scratch from my blade. Will you agree that there are times when authority must be asserted? Or, if not, are you brave enough to turn that fire of yours against the duke right now? I'm the easy target, an outsider in a room full of people you know. Would that be a part of why you are pushing me like this? Would it be a fair thing to be doing?"

He was unexpectedly clever, but he hadn't answered her question.

"You haven't answered her question," said Bertran de Talair.

Blaise of Gorhaut smiled again, the same wry, sideways expression as before; Lisseut had a sense that he'd almost been expecting that from the duke. She wondered how long they'd known each other. "I'm here, aren't I?" he said quietly. "If I agreed with those laws I'd be home right now, wouldn't I, very likely wed to a properly disciplined woman, and very likely plotting an invasion of Arbonne with the king and all the corans of Gorhaut." He raised his voice at the end, quite deliberately. Lisseut, out of the corner of her eye, saw the Portezzans at their booth by the near wall exchange quick glances with each other.

"All right, Blaise," Bertran said sharply, "you have made your point. That is rather enough, I think."

Blaise turned to him. Lisseut realized that his eyes had not left hers from the time she'd approached, though his last point, whatever it actually was, had clearly been meant for the duke. "I think so too," the big coran said softly. "I think it is more than enough."

"Enough of what?" came an assured voice from the doorway. "Is something over too soon? Have I missed an entertainment?»

When Bertran de Talair grew pale, Blaise knew, the scar on his cheek became extremely prominent. He had seen it happen before, but not like this. The duke had gone rigid with anger or shock but he did not turn around. Valery did, very swiftly, moving so that his body was between Bertran's and the door.

"What are you doing here?" said de Talair, his back to the person addressed. His voice was cold as winter moonlight. Blaise registered that fact and moved, belatedly, to stand beside Valery. Even as he did, the crowd of men and women between them and the door was shifting awkwardly out of the way to reveal, as a parting curtain before a stage, the man standing in the entrance to the tavern.

He was huge, Blaise saw, robed in extravagantly expensive dark green satin trimmed with white fur, even in summer. Easily sixty years old, his grey hair cropped close like a soldier's, he stood lightly balanced, for all his size, and his posture was straight-backed and arrogant.

"What am I doing here?" he echoed mockingly. The voice was memorable, deep and resonant. "Isn't this where the singers are? Is this not Carnival? Cannot a man seek the solace and pleasure of music at such a time?"

"You hate musicians," Bertran de Talair said harshly, biting off his words. He still had not turned. "You kill singers, remember?"

"Only the impertinent ones," the other man said indifferently. "Only those who forget where they are and sing what they should not. And that was a long time ago, after all. Men can change, surely, as we move towards our waiting graves. Age can mellow us." There was nothing mellow about that tone, though. What Blaise heard was mockery, savage, acid-dipped.

And suddenly he knew who this had to be.

His eyes flicked to either side of the speaker, taking the measure of the three green-garbed corans flanking him. All wore swords, regardless of whatever laws Tavernel might have, and all three looked as if they knew how to use them.

He had a flashing memory of a path by Lake Dierne, six dead men in the spring grass. The crowd had fallen well back, leaving a cleared space around the two parties by the door. Blaise was aware that the slim, brown-haired woman, the one who had accosted him, was still standing just behind him.

"I will not banter with you," Bertran said quietly. His back was still to the door, to the huge man standing there with malice in his flint-grey eyes. "One more time, why are you here, my lord of Miraval?"

Urté de Miraval, framed massively in the doorway of The Liensenne, did not reply. Instead his heavy gaze, eyes deep-hooded in his face, swung over to look at Blaise. Ignoring Bertran's question as if it had been asked by an importuning farm labourer, he fixed Blaise with an appraising scrutiny. He smiled then, but there was no lessening of the malice in his expression.

"Unless I am greatly wrong," he said, "and I do not think I am, this will be the northerner who is so free with his bow to shed the blood of other men." The corans beside him shifted slightly. The motion, Blaise noted, freed space for their swords to be drawn.

"Your corans shot my pony and my horse," Blaise said quietly. "I had reason to believe they were minded to kill me."

"They would have been," Urté de Miraval agreed, almost pleasantly. "Should I forgive you six deaths for that reason? I don't think I shall, and even if I were minded to, there is another aggrieved party in the case. A man who will be exceedingly happy to learn that you are here tonight. He might even join us later, which will be interesting. So many accidents happen amid the crowds of Carnival; it is one of the regrettable aspects of the celebration, wouldn't you agree?"

Blaise read the transparent threat; what he didn't know was its origin. From Valery's stiffened posture he sensed that the other man did.

"There is a law passed regarding killings between Miraval and Talair," Bertran's cousin said sharply from Blaise's side. "You know it well, my lord duke."

"Indeed, I do. So, if it comes to that, did my six slain men. If only our beloved countess in Barbentain could pass laws that guarded against the mishaps of a riotous night in the city. Would that not be a pleasant thing, a reassuring thing?" His eyes swung back from Valery to Blaise and settled there, with the predatory quality of a hunting cat.

And with that, Bertran de Talair finally turned to confront the man in the doorway.

"You frighten no one," he said flatly. "There is nothing but sour rancour in you. Even the grapes on your land taste of it. A last time, my lord of Miraval, for I will not permit this exchange to continue: why are you here?"

Again there was to be no reply, or not from the man addressed. Instead, a woman, hooded and cloaked, stepped around him and into the room from where she'd been hidden behind his bulk.

"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" she said. "This isn't at all what I wanted to happen." The words were contrite and distressed; the tone was as far from such feelings as it could possibly be. In that lazy drawl Blaise heard boredom and vexation, and more than a hint of power. Not another one, he thought. Not another of these women.

Astonishment and a different kind of anger flashed in the eyes of Bertran de Talair.

"Ariane, what, precisely, do you think you are doing? Is this a game? If so you have overreached yourself."

Ariane. Ariane de Carenzu, who was queen of the Court of Love. The woman so sharply addressed brought up one elaborately ringed hand and cast back her hood, shaking free her hair with an unconcerned motion.

She's married, though, Blaise thought stupidly. Her hair is supposed to be bound up, even in Arbonne. It wasn't. Her hair was thick and raven dark, and as he watched it fell in waves down her back, liberated from the transitory confines of the hood. There was a confused, excited murmur in the room. Looking at the woman standing beside Urté de Miraval, momentarily unable, in fact, to look away from her, Blaise thought he understood why.

"Overreach?" she said now, very quietly. "I don't think I allow language like that even from a friend, Bertran. I wasn't aware that I needed permission from you to visit The Liensenne.»

"You need no such thing. But you also know that—"

"I know only that the duke of Miraval was kind enough to invite me to join his company this evening to observe the delights of Carnival, and I was happy to accept. I would also have thought, evidently wrongly, that two high lords of Arbonne might, for tonight at least, lay down a petty feud they carry, at least enough to be civil in the company of women and on the night dedicated to the goddess."

"A petty feud?" Bertran echoed, incredulity in his voice.

Urté de Miraval laughed. "This is becoming tedious in the extreme," he said. "I came to hear what passes for music this season in Tavernel, not to bandy words in a doorway with a choleric degenerate. Whose songs are we hearing tonight?"

There was a stiff, short silence, then:

"Mine," said Alain of Rousset clearly. "We will hear my songs, if you like. Lisseut, will you be good enough to sing for us?"

It was, she thought much later, when she had space for calmer reflection on the turbulent events of that night, not so greatly surprising when looked at in a certain light. Remy and Aurelian were both out of the room, and Bertran was certainly not going to have his own verses sung at Urté de Miraval's request; of the troubadours who remained, Alain had more ambition than most and as much right to step forward as any, and since she'd just finished a season of touring with him it was perfectly logical that he ask her to perform.

All such clear thinking came afterwards, though. At the moment, Lisseut was aware only that she had just been humiliatingly inverted in a tub of Cauvas gold wine, that there was a spreading puddle beneath her feet, that her clothing was ruined, her hair soaked, and in such a resplendent condition she was now being asked to sing—for the first time-in the presence of three of the most powerful personages in Arbonne, one of whom also happened to be the most celebrated troubadour of their day.

She made a small, gulping sound in her throat, hoping immediately after that no one had heard. The big coran from Gorhaut turned, though, and favoured her with an ironic scrutiny from behind his thick, reddish beard. She glared fiercely up at him, and that brief surge of anger, as much as anything else, calmed her momentary attack of fright. With what she hoped was a casual gesture she tossed the towel she was still holding to the bearded man and turned to Alain.

"I would be honoured," she said, as calmly as she could.

Alain's face, visibly contending with anxieties of his own, didn't much help her to relax. She understood, of course: the troubadour was boldly seizing an unexpected chance to make a bid for wider renown—and was handing her the opportunity to do the same. A moment such as this, singing in The Liensenne at Midsummer Carnival before the dukes of Talair and Miraval and the reigning queen of the Court of Love… Lisseut blinked and swallowed. If she thought too much about the potential implications of what seemed about to happen she would probably make herself sick.

Fortunately, the next face she focused on was Marotte's, and the delighted encouragement she read in the innkeeper's visage was exactly what she needed. Someone brought her a harp, someone else placed a low stool and a floor cushion in the usual place near the booths on the left-hand wall, and somehow Lisseut found herself sitting there, holding and tuning the harp, even as she adjusted the cushion for comfort.

She was still wet, if not actually dripping any more, and she'd had no time at all to prepare. Glancing up, she saw Duke Bertran walking over, a thin smile playing about his lips. It didn't reach his eyes, though. With Urté de Miraval in the room, Lisseut doubted if En Bertran could actually be amused by anything. The duke removed his lightweight summer cloak and draped it loosely over her shoulders.

"You'll catch a chill otherwise," he said mildly. "If you leave it draped so, it won't get in the way of your hands." The first words he'd ever spoken to her. He turned and walked away, to sink gracefully into one of the three cushioned chairs Marotte had hastily provided near the performing area. Lisseut had a moment to absorb the fact that she was now wearing the midnight-blue cloak of the duke of Talair before Alain of Rousset, two spots of excitement showing on his cheeks, came over and said, softly, for her ears alone, "The 'Garden Song, I think. Sing it, don't shout it, Lisseut."

The troubadours' ancient, standard injunction to their joglars rang almost unheard in Lisseut's ears. What registered was that in his choice of song Alain was offering her another gift. She smiled up at him, confidently she hoped. He hesitated a moment, as if about to say more, but then he too withdrew, leaving her alone in the space where music was made.

Lisseut thought of her father, as she always did when she needed to find serenity and sureness, then she looked out over the slowly quieting crowd and said, pitching her voice carefully, "Here is a liensenne of the troubadour Alain of Rousset. I sing it tonight in honour of the goddess and of the Lady Ariane de Carenzu, who has graced us with her presence here." Better that, she thought, than trying to sort out some kind of precedence. She was conscious though, very conscious, that she was wearing En Bertran's cloak. It was scented with an elusive fragrance. She didn't have time to decipher what it was. What she did realize, as she always did before she sang—a fleeting awareness but real as the stones of a wall—was that moments like this, with music about to follow, were why she lived, what made her feel most truly alive.

She began with the harp alone, as Gaetan, her father's brother, had taught her years ago, letting the audience settle, and then, when the stillness was deep enough, she sang.

When you came into my garden,

When you came to tell me of your love,

The one moon in the sky

Seemed brighter than the sun

And a white light was shining in my heart.

When you took me in your arms,

To whisper words of a long desire,

The scents of the garden

Were my garments in the dark

And day a distant rumour of despair

It was a well-made song, if not a brilliant one. Alain knew his craft and he was young enough to be maturing still. The special thing though—the gift this song offered Lisseut—was that it was written for a woman's voice. There weren't many, which was why the female joglars of Arbonne spent much of their time transposing tunes written for male voices and ignoring as best they could the obvious inappropriateness of most of the themes.

In this piece Alain had changed a great many elements of the traditional liensenne, shifting the narrative to the woman's point of view, while keeping enough of the familiar motifs to leave the audience in no doubt as to what they were hearing and appraising. Lisseut, keeping her instrumental ornamentation to a minimum, took them through it, serving the song as best she could, in simplicity. It was a long tune—most of the formal liensennes were, for audiences would balk and complain at the absence of elements they were expecting. The troubadour's challenge in this kind of song lay in using all of a the familiar motifs while making them vivid and new, in whatever ways his art allowed. Lisseut sang the rising of the second moon, the customary menace of jealous, prying eyes, a formulaic, if rather clever stanza on the three flowers that traditionally sheltered lovers, another on the trusted friend watching out from beyond the wall with his mood-shattering warning of sunrise, and the lovers' parting words.

It was honest, professional work, and she knew she had the listeners with her. Even here, with an audience as profoundly versed as this one was, Lisseut knew, the way she sometimes did in the midst of performing, that she was doing justice to Alain's words and music. She was holding something in reserve, though, for the ending, for the place where Alain of Rousset had surprised even himself by reaching for something more than the usual closing platitudes of love triumphant and enduring and had found instead the rather more painful integrity of art.

Lisseut allowed herself the briefest pause, no more, for more would be to point the change, the new thing, too greatly and mar the effect; then she pitched her voice upwards towards sorrow and sang the last verse of the song.

When you come to say goodbye,

When you come to say that you will wed,

Do one thing for me

In memory of love,

Bring balm for the breaking of my heart.

She looked at Bertran de Talair for a moment as she began, then at the bearded coran behind him, but she ended gazing out over the heads of her listeners at the doorway beside the bar through which Remy and Aurelian had gone. A reprise of the opening notes, as an echo of what had passed, a chord for the watchman, a chord for the garden nights that were gone, and she was done.

In Bertran's blue cloak the brown-haired girl looked delicate and fragile, not exalted, Blaise thought. She was more clever-looking than formally beautiful, but there was no missing—even for him—the purity of her voice, and the unexpected sadness at the very end of the song caught him for a moment. He didn't know the new thing that note of sorrow represented, but he could hear the sound of it, and the meaning of the words took his mind down unusual channels. Not for long of course: he wasn't inclined to that sort of thing, by background or experience—but for just a moment Blaise of Gorhaut, looking at the slender woman sitting on the low stool with Bertran de Talair's cloak around her, held, in his mind's eye, a clear image of a woman in a garden, weeping for the loss of love.

"Oh, wonderful," Ariane de Carenzu said in an oddly wistful voice, far removed from her imperious tones of before. The words carried clearly in the stillness that followed the last notes of the harp, and with them came the release of a tautness like the tension of a drawn bow in the room. Blaise drew a long breath and noted, with some surprise, that most of the people around him were doing the same.

There would have been other cries of approval doubtless, a swelling of applause to honour the singer and the troubadour who'd written the song, but just then the door to The Liensenne banged loudly open, letting in raucous noises from the darkening street outside. Blaise turned quickly to look and saw who was standing there, and the shape and nature of the evening changed entirely in that moment.

He was looking at the man he had killed on the black horse by Lake Dierne.

CHAPTER 5

It wasn't, of course. It wasn't the same man; the dead remained dead, even here in Arbonne, even on Midsummer Eve. But the dark-skinned, arrogant look was the same, the heft and build, the muscled, dangerous quality of the Arimondan was exactly as Blaise remembered it from that afternoon by the lake with the Arch of the Ancients just beyond.

And the man was gazing at him with a look compounded equally of hatred and fierce joy.

Beside Blaise, Valery said quickly out of the side of his mouth, "I did mean to tell you before. I should have. His brother, same birth. Be very careful."

Blaise registered this without taking his eyes off the Arimondan by the door. The man was clad in the green livery of Miraval and he, too, wore a sword, the curved blade of his own country.

Urté de Miraval rose, without haste; so too, on the other side of Ariane de Carenzu, did Bertran. The lady remained sitting, though she had turned in her chair to glance over her shoulder at the door.

"Quzman," said the duke of Miraval, "I wondered where you were, and so long. See, as I promised you, there is a Gorhautian coran here you have expressed a desire to meet."

"I do see that," said the Arimondan. His voice was deep, almost musical. He smiled. "I am most pleased. In my country we have a saying: murderers must be dealt with swiftly lest the green grass wither beneath their tread. Will you come outside with me, or do you only fight from a distance?"

"It was not murder," said Valery sharply before Blaise could reply. "The priests and priestesses of Rian's Isle were witnesses and have told their tale."

The man called Quzman seemed not to have heard. There was something uncanny about his smile, the way his entire being seemed focused upon Blaise. Once, in a Gotzland castle, Blaise had seen a man look at another in that way, and death had followed before the night was done. Now, in response to the nakedness of this challenge, Blaise felt his own anger rekindling, a memory of the encounter by the lake, the luxuriously articulated, ugly words of the Arimondan on the black horse.

"You do seem distressed," he said to the man by the door, keeping his own voice relaxed, almost lazy, in the way his friend Rudel or even Bertran de Talair would say this thing. "Tell me, did I kill your brother or your lover there? Or were they one and the same?"

"Careful!" Valery whispered urgently again. But Blaise had the pleasure of seeing the Arimondan's smile stiffen into something harsh and artificial, a rictus, as of death.

"You have a foul murderer's tongue, Northerner." It was Urté de Miraval. "I do not see why we should suffer it to wag freely among us, and then carry back a spy's tale to Ademar of Gorhaut."

So that was brought into it too, now. Predictably.

"That last is the thought of a fool," said Bertran calmly. "And as for murder: this man was set upon by while riding in peace on the countess's high road. His pony was slain and his horse, and six cowards in your service sought to kill him. I would not speak so glibly of murder, my lord of Miraval. I might, instead, give a passing thought to the competence of my corans were it my own six killers who were slain by one man alone."

"These are words," said Quzman of Arimonda contemptuously. "Words and posturings, the sad vices of Arbonne. This man and I can end this alone outside, no one else need be part of it. Unless he is truly afraid. As for the new law you mention…»

He took two strides into the room, graceful as a hunting cat, and knelt before Urté. "My lord, matters touching upon the honour of my family compel me to ask leave to withdraw from your service for a time, that my actions need have no bearing on your own affairs. Will you grant me leave?"

"He will not," said a clear, cold voice. The only voice in the room that could have tried to wield authority in that moment.

They all turned to her. Ariane de Carenzu had not troubled to rise or even fully turn to face the men. She was still looking over her shoulder, casually, her black hair tumbling down the back of her chair. There was nothing casual about her words though. "In the name of the countess of Arbonne I forbid this duel. There is a land price placed on deaths between Talair and Miraval. It has been proclaimed and posted and cannot be evaded—understand me, my lords—by sham devices of this sort. I will not let the countess be mocked. Nor will I allow this night of the goddess to be marred in such a way. I hold you both strictly accountable, my lords, for the conduct of your men."

"Surely so, but if he leaves my service—" Urté de Miraval began.

"He requires your consent and you will not give it."

The woman's voice was precise and authoritative, the flat tone of someone absolutely versed in command. Even after months in Arbonne, Blaise found it disconcerting to see the two dukes so accepting of a woman's unveiled note of power.

He opened his mouth to speak, his own anger strong within him, and received a hard elbow in the ribs. "Don't do it!" Valery muttered, as if reading his mind.

He probably had, Blaise thought—the path of his thinking would have been clear enough. Blaise was, by his own insistence, not bound to Bertran de Talair by any oaths of fealty. He was a hired mercenary and could end his contract at any time, forfeiting only whatever pay was due to him and as yet untendered and freeing himself to fight the Arimondan, without seeking a by-your-leave from anyone, including this black-haired woman who styled herself a queen, if only of the troubadours' Court of Love.

He drew a slow breath, met Valery's gaze for a moment and held his peace. He looked around the room. No one else seemed to have dared to move. With mild surprise he saw that the girl with the harp, still wearing Bertran's blue cloak, was staring at him from across the room. He couldn't read her gaze from a distance, but he could guess. She had thrust herself forward to defend the honour of the troubadour he'd wounded. She would probably be quite content if he died by a curved, bejewelled Arimondan sword.

His gaze swept past her and upwards. On the upper storey of the inn, men and women had crowded to the railings, first for the music and now for what had followed. Most of their faces were hidden by the cross-beams; a procession of legs lined the hallway above his head, cut off at the trunk. It was odd, in a way, an audience of feet and calves and thighs in variously coloured hose.

"You came here bearing a message, I think," Ariane de Carenzu continued, in the silence that had followed her last speech. She was looking at the Arimondan, Quzman. "Is it about the boats on the river?"

The man glanced over at her. He had remained kneeling before Urté de Miraval. They were both large, exceptionally handsome men; it was a pose that might have been carved in relief on the stone wall of a chapel of Corannos in Gorhaut.

"Yes," the dark-skinned man said finally. "It was about the boats."

"They are beginning now?"

"They are." He offered no title or any courtesy at all to the woman.

"Then you will duel each other so for our amusement at Carnival," said the lady of Carenzu with a swift, flashing smile that was radiant and yet infused with capricious malice.

"A game?" the Arimondan said, with derision. A ripple of anticipation and relief was sweeping across the room. Blaise saw Bertran turn quickly away to hide a smile.

"It is almost all a game," Ariane said softly, in a rather different voice. "We play it, all of us, through our nights and days, until the goddess takes us home. But hear me again," she added calmly, "if any man of either of your parties dies tonight I will hold it as murder and tell the countess as much."

"I haven't been on the river in years," said Bertran, an apparently inconsequential remark. He seemed to be struggling, with only partial success, to keep a thread of laughter out of his voice.

Urté de Miraval heard it. "And I in decades," he said, rising to the bait. "But I will give you that, and twenty years' advantage of age and still best you, my lord of Talair, in any action that a man may honourably do among men."

At that, Bertran did laugh aloud. With a whiplike malice of his own that Blaise did not fully understand, he said, "Only among men? A prudent concession my lord, under the circumstances."

Urté de Miraval's head snapped back, as if from an actual lashing. It was the first time he'd lost his composure, Blaise realized, and wondered why. Something he'd overheard weeks ago tugged vaguely at his memory: there was a woman somewhere at the root of what lay between these two.

"Bertran," began Ariane de Carenzu sharply, "I do not think that—"

"Ariane, have done! You have imposed your will here, and we are mindful of you. Do not overreach; it is a failing. I told you when you walked in and I have told you as much before." Bertran's blue eyes as he wheeled to face her were hard and carried their own measure of authority now. "We will play games tonight on the river for your amusement. No one will be killed, by your command. Be content with what you may control. The past is not in your province."

"Indeed it is not," said Urté de Miraval very softly, his self-control regained. Blaise had to lean forward to hear him. "None of the dead are. Men or women. Even children. Even children, if it comes to that."

Which, for some reason, drew a response from Bertran de Talair. He turned from the dark-haired woman to look full into the face of the other duke standing not far away. There was a suddenly dangerous stillness in the room again, a sense of genuine menace radiating outward from where the two men stood.

"It comes to that," said Bertran finally, his own voice little more than a whisper now. "Oh, believe me, my lord, it does." As the two of them locked gazes to the manifest exclusion of everyone else in the tavern, in the world, Blaise of Gorhaut realized, rather late, that the hatred here, the palpable weight of whatever lay in the past between them, was of a depth and texture infinitely greater than he had understood.

Beside him Valery muttered something under his breath that Blaise could not quite hear.

"Come," Bertran added, breaking free of the frozen stare, his tone a sudden, exaggerated parody of ritual, "let us go. Let us all go forth by the light of the mingled summer moons to make sport on the river for the queen of the Court of Love."

He moved towards the door without looking back. Valery followed quickly. Blaise glanced around the tavern one more time. Ariane de Carenzu's expression was odd now, vulnerable for the first time. People were beginning to stir, shaking their heads, blinking vaguely, as if freed of an enchanter's cast spell. On the upper landing the legs were moving, black and white hose, white and blue, wheat-coloured and russet, crimson and gold, pale and forest green—the brilliant colours of festival time.

He watched for another moment, thinking about the words just spoken, nagged by the thread of a thought, and then moved with the crowd out the doorway and into the noisy street. On the way he passed very close to Quzman the Arimondan, closer than he needed to, in fact. He made a point of smiling as he did.

Valery was waiting just outside the door. A man and a woman masked as a crow and a fox bumped into Blaise as they stumbled past, laughing uproariously. The man carried an open flask of wine, the woman's tunic was mostly unbuttoned. In the light of the lanterns above the doorway of The Liensenne, her breasts showed clearly for a moment. There was laughter ahead of them and behind and a constant, cacophonous sound of noisemakers being whirled and banged and thumped.

"You don't have any of this in Gorhaut, I suppose," said Valery companionably, as if nothing of note had happened in the tavern. Blaise realized that he liked Bertran's cousin for this relaxed, unruffled quality, as much as for anything else. Just ahead of them the duke was walking amid a cluster of musicians, including the woman who had sung for them; she was still wearing Bertran's blue cloak.

"Hardly," he said shortly, by way of reply, but he tried to keep the criticism out of his voice. What should he say to Valery: that he found this whole night's goddess-inspired exercise in lechery demeaning and vulgar, unworthy of any man who aspired to serve his country and his god?

"I meant to tell you that there were two Arimondans," Valery said after a pause. There was riotous sound all around them; a young boy raced past, violently whirling a noise-maker shaped like the head of a bull. Two laughing women leaned precariously far out of a window overhead, trading ribald jests with those passing in the crowded street.

"I'm sure," Blaise said drily. "Why didn't you?"

Valery glanced briefly at him. "You didn't seem interested." He said it mildly, but Blaise heard the nuance in the words. "You haven't seemed much interested in anything. I wonder why you travel, sometimes. Most men leave home to learn about the wider world. You don't seem to want to know."

A different sort of elbow in the ribs. Blaise thought of stating as much, but after a moment said only, "Some men leave home to leave home."

After a moment Valery nodded. He didn't pursue the matter. Turning right, he followed Bertran and the troubadours up a darker laneway leading away from the sea.

"How good are you with small boats on water?" he asked after a moment.

"Passable," said Blaise cautiously. "What, exactly, are we about to do?"

"A question!" said Valery of Talair, grinning suddenly. He looked younger, and very like his cousin when he smiled. "You actually asked a question!"

Almost against his will Blaise laughed. He sobered quickly, concentrating, as Valery of Talair began to explain. Then, when Valery was finished and they had come to the river and Blaise saw what was there—the people, and the strung lights like glittering stars come down, the lanterns and faces in the windows of the merchant houses along the river, the ropes across the water mooring the rafts, the small boats waiting and others drifting downstream towards the invisible sea, some already capsized with men swimming beside them—he laughed aloud again, helplessly, at the childlike frivolity of it all.

"Oh, Corannos," he said, to no one in particular, "what a country this is."

But they had caught up with the others by then, the troubadours and joglars amid the crowd on the riverbank, and Bertran de Talair turned back to look at him.

"We know that," he said levelly over the noise. "Do you?"

The river and the sea and the night were sacred to Rian, and Midsummer was holy to her, but Carnival was also a time when the order of the world was turned upside-down—sometimes literally, as in a vat of water, or Cauvas gold, Lisseut thought ruefully. The goddess was celebrated that night through Arbonne in laughter and amid noise and flowing wine and otherwise forbidden linkings in the darkness of cobbled laneways or grassy mews, or beds in houses where doors were left unlocked this one night of the year.

It was also celebrated in the city of Tavernel, and had been for years beyond number, with the challenge of the Boats and Rings on the river, here where the Arbonne came home to the sea after its long journey south from the mountains of Gorhaut.

Grateful for the hooded cloak Duke Bertran had forgotten or neglected to reclaim, Lisseut tried with only marginal success to pick up the thread of excitement and anticipation that had carried her into The Liensenne earlier in the day. It was still Carnival, she was still among friends and had even had—though there had been no time to properly absorb this—what appeared to be a spectacular success. But the presence of hatred, both ancient and new, was too strong now for her to regain the blithe mood of before. She looked over at the grim figure of Urté de Miraval and at the sleek Arimondan beside him, and she could not suppress a shiver, even within the cloak.

You kill singers, remember? So En Bertran had said to the duke of Miraval. Lisseut didn't know if that was true; if it was, then it had happened before her time and was not something anyone talked about. But Urté" had not denied it. Only those who sing what they should not, he had replied, unperturbed.

Laughter, jarring incongruously with her thoughts, drew her attention to the river and, in spite of herself, she was forced to smile. Jourdam, who prided himself on his athleticism even more than Remy did, had pushed his way through the crowd to the water's edge and, prudently removing his expensive boots, was evidently about to be the first of their group to try the boats.

Lisseut cast a quick glance up at the sky, just as Jourdain did, and saw that the moons were both clear of clouds and would be for a few moments. That mattered, she knew. It was hard enough to grasp the rings in a whirling, bouncing toy of a boat without contending with the added problem of not being able to see them.

"Are you sure you wouldn't prefer to be ducked in the basin?" Alain of Rousset called out from the safety of the bank. "It's an easier way to soak yourself!"

There was laughter. Jourdain said something impolite, but he was concentrating on stepping down and then settling himself in the tiny, bobbing craft that two men held close to the dock. He took the short, flat-bladed oar one of them offered him, glanced once more at the two moons—one waxing, one just past full—and nodded tersely.

They let the boat go. To screams of encouragement, Jourdain shot like a cork from a bottle out into the swiftly racing river.

"Ten copper pieces he doesn't make three rings," Alain cried loudly.

"Done!" said Elisse, who was sleeping with Jourdain that season.

"And ten more from me," Lisseut added quickly, more to wager against Elisse than for any other reason. "Are you good for it?"

"More than good," Elisse replied with a toss of her golden hair. "I've been touring with real troubadours this spring."

It was such a patently envious, silly gibe that Lisseut burst into laughter. Alain's aggrieved expression showed that he couldn't quite see it that way. Lisseut squeezed his arm and then continued to hold it as they watched Jourdain do battle with the river.

Sober or not, he steered smoothly enough across the current to the first raft and, without apparent effort, reached up and across to gracefully pluck the garland of olive leaves that had been looped on a pole hanging out over the water. The priestess on the first raft quickly raised her torch to signal success. A shout of approval went up along both sides of the river. People were massed all the way down the banks to the final strand of rope running across the stream, and there were almost as many leaning out of windows in the high houses.

Paddling vigorously, leaning his body far over to one side, Jourdain angled his boat back the other way, trying to move across the river before the current took him sweeping past the second raft. He made it, barely, had an instant to steady himself and then reached upwards—the second ring was higher of course—and plucked the garland. He almost slipped, toppling back into his boat and very nearly falling out. But another torch was lifted and another shout went up.

Jourdain's near-fall cost him precious time, though, and when he righted himself properly and seized the oar again Lisseut, even at a distance, saw him make a swift decision to eschew the third raft near the far bank and head straight downriver towards the fourth. It was the number of garlands that counted, not the sequence.

It was also a wrong decision. Running straight downstream, Jourdain's tiny boat, seeming little more than a chip of bark in the racing Arbonne, accelerated dramatically as he approached the fourth moored raft.

"Do you want to pay us now?" Alain said to Elisse.

Despite the wager, Lisseut winced in anticipation as Jourdain, flying down the river, bravely rose to his feet as the moored raft hurtled towards him. He reached upwards and over for the elusive garland.

He didn't even come close. With a whoop they could hear all the way upstream at the starting pier his feet went flying from under him, the boat shot out into the stream and Jourdain, seeming to defy the pull of earth, hung horizontally above the river, bathed in moonlight for a suspended moment, before plunging into the Arbonne with a splash that sent a fountain of water upwards to soak the priest on the raft and those who had gathered there to see the contest.

He almost doused the torch, but he was nowhere near the garland. Two men leaped quickly off the raft to assist him in the water—people had been known to drown in this game—and Lisseut breathed more easily when she saw them pulling Jourdain towards one of the anchored boats near shore. From a distance they saw him raise an almost jaunty hand to show that he was all right.

"What is the best so far," Bertran de Talair asked in a quiet tone that brought Lisseut swiftly back to the reality of why they were here.

"One man has all four, my lord," said the nearest of the boatmen crouched at the end of the pier. "But he fell at the very beginning of the rope crossing, so no one has finished the course so far."

"Good," said the duke of Talair, stepping towards the end of the dock. "With your agreement, my lord," he said, turning towards Urté, "I will give you a target to shoot for."

Urté de Miraval made a negligent gesture that signalled assent. Not bothering to remove his boots, Bertran stood quietly as the boatmen manoeuvred the next small craft into position. Valery and the bearded coran from Gorhaut had moved down beside him, Lisseut saw. A murmur of sound, gathering and swelling as it went, began to race along the banks of the river carrying the news of what was about to happen.

Lisseut looked upwards, and in that same moment most of the others on the pier did the same. A bank of clouds, moving swiftly eastward with the breeze, had cut across the face of white Vidonne and would soon obscure the blue light of Riannon as well.

"Let me go first," said Valery of Talair, stepping past the duke in the shadows. "Wait for the moons. No one has challenged me so it doesn't matter if I miss." He quickly unbuckled his sword and handed it to one of the boatmen. He looked over his shoulder and Lisseut was close enough to hear him say, "Follow my line, Blaise. If you overshoot the third raft do everything you can to slow down before you reach the fourth—unless you're partial to the taste of river water."

The Arimondan beside Urté laughed at that. It was not a pleasant sound, Lisseut thought, looking over quickly. The man frightened her. She turned away, back to the river, hoping the Arimondan hadn't noticed her staring at him.

Valery was in the boat with the flat paddle to hand. He grinned up at Bertran. "If I get wet it's your fault."

"Of course," his cousin said. "It always is."

Then the boat was gone, out into the high, swift current of the river. A moment later, straining to see amid the shadows, Lisseut was made to understand something about the skills of men: Jourdain the troubadour was an athlete, and gifted, in the prime of his youth, but Valery of Talair was a professional coran, trained and hardened, and very experienced.

He snapped up the first wreath effortlessly, the boat turning back the other way almost before the priestess's torch had been raised and the responding shout had gone up along the bank. The second ring, which had initiated Jourdain's precipitate descent towards a watery immersion, was negotiated almost as easily and Valery, unlike the troubadour, kept both his balance and his control of the boat, paddling strenuously back across the river with a second triumphant torch lofted behind him and screams of wild approval on each bank.

"They think he's the duke," little Alain said suddenly, and Lisseut realized that it was true. The word that En Bertran was to run the river had gone racing down the banks before the clouds had come and Valery had taken his place. These screams and cries were those the people of Tavernel reserved for their favourites—and the troubadour duke of Talair had been one of those for most of his life.

Meanwhile, Valery, approaching the third of the moored rafts, stood up smoothly in his bobbing craft—making a perilous feat seem easy—and stretched up and over to snatch the third of the olive laurels from its pole. He dropped back down into the boat and began paddling furiously across the water, leaning into the task as the people watching from riverbank and overhanging window and the crowded boats moored against the shore stamped and roared their most extreme approval.

The angle back to the fourth and final raft was the most acute by far and Valery was working for all he was worth to avoid being carried downstream past the ring; Jourdain had jumped for the laurel here and smacked into the water. Valery of Talair pulled hard to the upstream edge of the raft, let his small craft turn with the current and then stood, smoothly again, and without evident haste or urgency lifted his paddle upward and swept it along the pole suspended high above the raft and out over the river—and he caught the olive ring thereby dislodged as his craft went hurtling beneath.

That is what it looked like to Lisseut, a long way upstream with swift clouds obscuring the moons and men and women jostling and shouting around her as the priest of Rian's signifying torch was thrust triumphantly skywards far down along the Arbonne. For some reason she glanced over at the coran from Gorhaut: an unconscious grin, an almost boyish expression of pleasure, showed in his face, making him look different suddenly, less austere and formidable.

"My cousin, too, is worth six men—no, a dozen!" Bertran de Talair said happily, looking at no one in particular. There was a stirring among the green-garbed corans of Miraval. Lisseut, feeling particularly sharp just then, doubted that En Bertran had spoken carelessly—there were verbal daggers in almost everything he and the duke of Miraval said in each other's presence. Ariane, her hair swept up again and hidden beneath her hood, said something to Urté that Lisseut could not hear. Ariane stepped forward beside Bertran, the better to see Valery approach the end of the course.

The rope across the river was the last obstacle. An enormous round shield with a hole drilled in its centre hung exactly halfway across with the rope passing through it. Whichever side of the shield his boat passed under, the competitor's task was to leap up, seize the rope and then pull his way hand over hand under or over or around the shield—an exceptional achievement in itself—and then all the way to the opposite bank.

Every one of the men who had made it this far would be formidably agile and strong. Ropes across water would not customarily faze them. This one was different. This one was virtually impossible. It had, for a start, been coated with attentive, careful malice in layers of beeswax. Just before being strung across the water it had also been oiled extravagantly with the purest olive oil from the celebrated groves and presses in the hills above Vezét. Then it was strung across the Arbonne in such a fashion that it sagged just low enough in the middle to force the hapless adventurer who had adroitly made it this far to pull his way hand over slippery hand along a cruelly upward inclination towards the dismally remote platform on the bank where triumph and glory awaited.

Lisseut, in three years of watching this contest on the river at Midsummer Carnival, had never seen anyone come close; she'd never even seen anyone cross the shield. She had seen quite a few undeniably graceful men made to look comically helpless as they struggled to find a way across the shield in the middle, or found themselves hanging on grimly, as if pinned down by the bright watching moons, unable to move at all while their legs kicked helplessly above the racing river.

There was a point to all this, she knew; during Carnival there was a point to everything, even the most apparently trivial or licentious activities. All the inversions and reversals of this night of the goddess, suspended outside the rhythms and the round of the year, found their purest emblem in these torchlit and moonlit images of gifted men rendered helpless and inept, forced either to laugh at their own predicament while themselves suspended on a slick rope or, if too grimly serious to share the hilarity, bear the mockery of a shrieking crowd.

No one, though, was mocking Valery of Talair that night, and there was nothing even faintly hilarious about him as he guided his tiny boat straight towards the shield. Approaching the rope, he stood up again and, without hesitation, with a neat, precise, economic movement, hurled himself up towards it just to the left of the shield. Tucking his knees in tight to his chest like a tumbler performing at a banquet he let his momentum swing him around in an arc at the top of which he released his precarious grip on the slippery rope and rose gracefully into the air—to come angling back down, as if it were the easiest, most natural thing in the world on this night or any other night, on the other side of the shield barrier.

For all the relished anticipation of comic failure, the people of Tavernel and those assembled in the city for its Carnival knew excellence when they saw it. They exploded with exultant approval of such stylish mastery. The shouts and applause assaulted the ears. Lisseut, back on the launching pier, heard a bark of delighted, surprised laughter beside her and turned in time to see the Gorhautian coran's bearded face completely unguarded now with pleasure. He caught her quick glance this time though; their eyes met for an instant and then his flicked away, as if he were embarrassed to have been so observed. Lisseut thought of saying something but changed her mind. She turned back to watch Valery deal with the rope.

And so saw, by a trick, an angle, a flaring of torchlight far down the dark river, how the arrow—white-feathered, she would remember, white as innocence, as winter in midsummer, as death—fell from the summit of its long, high arc to take the coran in the shoulder, driving him, slack and helpless, from the rope into the river and laughter turned to screaming in the night.

Blaise saw it too, out of the corner of his eye. He even marked, purely by reflex, with a professional's instinct, the two tall, dark-timbered merchant houses along the bank whence an arrow descending at that angle could have been let fly. And he, too, saw, by torchlight and the elusive gleam of the blue moon now riding free of the clouds, the white feathers Lisseut had seen. There was a difference, though. The difference was that he knew what those feathers meant, and the nagging thought from the tavern earlier in the evening grew fully formed and terrifying in his mind. By then he was running. A mistake, because the Carnival crowd was densely packed along the water's edge, and the rope from which Valery had fallen was a long way down the river. Pushing and swearing, using elbows and fists, Blaise forced his way through the shouting, roiling mass of people. Halfway down he glanced over at the river and saw Bertran de Talair paddling furiously in one of the small boats—which, of course, is what he ought to have done himself. Blaise's curses turned inward and he redoubled his efforts. One man, drunken, masked, snarled an oath and pushed back hard as Blaise elbowed his way past. Without even looking, unbalanced by fear, Blaise sent the man reeling with a forearm to the side of his head. He couldn't even be sorry, though he did wonder—a reflex again—about the possibility of a knife in the back. Such things happened in frightened crowds.

By the time he reached the pier by the rope the boatmen had taken Valery of Talair from the river. He was lying on the dock. Bertran was there already, kneeling beside his cousin with a priestess and a man who looked to be a physician. The arrow was embedded in Valery's shoulder; not, in fact, a killing wound.

Except that the feathers and the upper shaft of the arrow were white and the lower shaft, Blaise now saw, coming up to the pier, was of night-black ash, and he had seen black-and-white leggings above him on the second-floor landing of The Liensenne when the singer had finished her music and they were all preparing to leave. A sickness passed through him like a churning wave.

Valery's eyes were open. Bertran had his cousin's head cradled in his lap now; he was murmuring steady, reassuring words. The physician, a thin, beak-nosed man with greying hair tied back with a ribbon, was conferring tersely with the priestess, eyeing the black-and-white shaft with resolution. He was flexing his fingers.

"Don't pull it," Blaise said quietly, coming to stand above the four of them.

The doctor looked up quickly, anger in his eyes. "I know what I'm doing," he snapped. "This is a flesh wound. The sooner we have the arrow out the sooner we can treat and bind it."

Blaise felt tired suddenly. Valery had turned his head slightly and was looking up at him. His expression was calm, a little quizzical. Forcing himself to meet the coran's level gaze, Blaise said, still softly, "If you pull the shaft you'll tear more flesh and the poison will spread the faster. You may also kill yourself. Smell the arrow if you like. There will be syvaren on the head, and very likely on the lower shaft." He looked at the physician.

An animal-like fear showed in the man's face. He recoiled involuntarily. In the same moment, with a small, fierce sound of denial, Bertran glanced up at Blaise. His face had gone white and there was horror in his eyes. With sorrow and a slow, hard rage gathering together within him like clouds around the heart Blaise turned back to Valery. The wounded coran's expression had not changed at all; he had probably had an intuition, Blaise thought. Syvaren acted quickly.

"That was meant for me," Bertran said. His voice was like a scrape in the throat.

"Of course it was," Blaise said. Knowledge was in him, a cold certainty, the taste of it like ashes on his tongue.

"It was none of our doing, I will swear it by the goddess in her temple." Urté de Miraval's deep voice rang out. Blaise hadn't heard him approaching.

Bertran did not even look up. "Leave us," he said. "You will be dealt with later. You are a desecration wherever you walk."

"I do not use poison," de Miraval said.

"Arimondans do," said Bertran.

"He was on the launching pier with us the whole time."

Blaise, sick with knowing, opened his mouth to speak, but the priestess was before him.

"Leave off wrangling now," she said. "We must take him to a temple. Will someone find a way to carry him?"

Of course, Blaise thought. This was Arbonne. Valery of Talair, even though he was a coran, would not find his end in the sanctity of the god's house. He would pass to Corannos amid the dark rites of Rian. With a distaste that was akin to a fresh grief, Blaise turned away from the priestess; she had covered her head with a wide hood now. He saw that Valery's eyes were upon him again, and Blaise thought he understood the expression this time.

Ignoring the others, even Bertran, he knelt on the wet dock beside the dying man. "Be sheltered ever in the god," he said huskily, surprised by the difficulty he had in speaking. "I think I know who did this. I will deal with him for you."

Valery of Talair was pale as parchment beneath the moons and the torches. He nodded his head once, and then he closed his eyes.

Blaise rose. Without looking at anyone or staying for further words he strode from the dock. Someone made way for him; he realized only later that it had been Quzman, the Arimondan. Others also fell back before him but he was scarcely aware of any of them. There were those ashes in his throat and a queer blurring to his sight. Syvaren on the arrow. White feathers, white-and-black shaft. Blaise reached inward for the rage he needed, and it was there, but he could not ride it. There was too much grief, cold and clammy, coiled in tendrils as a mist in winter: half for Valery behind him and half for what he walked towards now, tall and grim as an image of the Ancients on a frieze, amid the flurrying torches and the smoke and noise and masks and, yes, in the distance, still the laughter of Carnival.

I will deal with him for you. Last words to a dying man, fellow coran of the god's long, hallowed brotherhood, a friend very nearly, here amid the goddess-shaped strangeness of Arbonne. And they were likely to have been a lie, those last words, the worst sort of lie.

CHAPTER 6

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

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

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

She followed the coran from Gorhaut.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How spectacular?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Payment in Portezzan coinage?"

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

"Who paid you, Rudel?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"My father."

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

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

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

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

"Why?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I hadn't."

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

"How? By poisoning someone?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"There is nothing I can do for you?"

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

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

"I will not go to them."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I know. If he can."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why?" was all he said finally.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lisseut felt herself blushing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MIDSUMMER

177

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

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

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

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

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.

CHAPTER 8

The crimson-clad guard of Carenzu took Lisseut through the late night streets and left her, with another flawless bow, at the doorway of The Liensenne. She stood there for a moment, undecided, listening to the uproar inside, a confused flurry of emotions working within her. As she hesitated, debating whether she wanted the conviviality of the tavern itself or the relative intimacy of a chamber upstairs, the noise subsided and a thin, reedy voice came drifting through the window, singing a plangent hymn to Rian.

Lisseut walked quickly around the corner, went down the laneway in back of the tavern, opened the rear door and started up the stairs. She was truly not of a mind just then to listen to Evrard of Lussan in his pious mode. On the stairway and then in the corridor she passed couples in ardent clinches—most of the chambers had been booked and overbooked long ago—before coming to the doorway of a room that was always reserved for this week and had been for years.

She knocked. It wouldn't be locked, she knew, but she had caused some embarrassment two years ago by walking in on three men and a woman, at what turned out to be an extremely inopportune time. Her difficult relations with Elisse dated from that moment.

By way of reply to her knocking, a reflective, mellifluous voice could be heard singing:

Alone am I and sorrowful for love has gone away,

Gone away on a white horse and left me here to mourn…

She smiled and opened the door. Aurelian, indeed alone, was sitting on one of the two beds, leaning back against the wall as he fingered his lute. His shirt was open at the throat and he had taken off his boots. His long legs extended well out over the side of the bed. He gave her a grave smile of welcome and, still singing, indicated with a motion of his head the table where an open bottle of wine stood, a number of glasses beside it. There was a rumpled scattering of clothes on the other bed and Lisseut saw blood on a shirt. She poured herself some wine, took a quick, much-needed drink, and carried the bottle over to refill Aurelian's goblet as well. There was one small window in the room. She walked to it and looked down. It overlooked the alley; there was no one below, but she could hear sounds from the street and Evrard's music drifting up from the downstairs room. Aurelian continued his own quiet singing, another son, the same theme:

My heart is lonely and brim-full of grief

When I remember the nights that are past,

When my sweet love would offer me

Delights beyond all earthly measure…

"I've never liked that verse," he said, breaking off abruptly, "but it isn't much good trying to talk to Jourdain about anything he's written, is it? I don't even know why I keep singing it."

"The tune," said Lisseut absently, still gazing out the window. "I've told you that before. Jourdain's always better at the music than the words."

Aurelian chuckled. "Fine. You be the one to tell him that." He paused; behind her she could almost feel his scrutiny. "You're too pensive for a Carnival night, my dear. You do know that Valery is recovering?"

"What?" She spun around. "I didn't… he's all right. How?"

"The High Priestess was in Tavernel tonight, don't ask this ignorant troubadour why. Affairs among the great. Valery should probably tithe the goddess from what he earns of Bertran for the rest of his life. She was able to deal with the poison, and the wound itself was minor. He'll be fine, they told us at the temple. So most of us came back here in a wonderful mood. Can't you hear? There are a great many people you know celebrating downstairs, why don't you go down?"

"Why don't you?" She and Aurelian knew each other very well.

He reached for his goblet. "There's only so much carousing I can take these days, even at Midsummer. Am I getting old, Lisseut?"

Lisseut made a face at him. "I don't know, most venerable sage. Are you?" Aurelian was, in fact, only two or three years older than she was, but he'd always been the quietest of them all, slightly removed from the wilder elements of the troubadour life.

"Where is Remy?" she asked, a natural extension of that last thought. She looked at the second, disordered bed, and back to Aurelian.

He arched one eyebrow elaborately. "Silly question. Rather depends on the hour, I'd imagine. He had a few assignations arranged."

"How is he?"

"Wounded pride. Nothing more, but a good deal of that. He'll probably drink himself into a fury tonight. We'd all best tread warily for a few days."

Lisseut shook her head. "Not I. He owes me for a hat and a shirt. Not to mention my own pride. I've no intention whatever of being nice to him. I plan to tell him that he looked like a sulky little boy when En Bertran was chastising him."

Aurelian winced. "The women of Vezét… what is it, do you think? The olive oil? Something about its sweetness that makes you all so fierce, to compensate?"

From the room below, the insistent voice of Evrard penetrated, still invoking Rian in the same tired ways. Feeling suddenly tired herself, Lisseut smiled wanly, laid her glass aside and sat beside Aurelian on the bed, leaning against his shoulder. Obligingly, he shifted a little and put a long arm around her.

"I don't feel very fierce," she said. "It's been a difficult night." He squeezed her arm. "I didn't like that Arimondan," she said after a moment.

"Or the northerner, I saw. But don't think about them. It has nothing to do with us. Think about your song. Alain's downstairs, by the way, happy as a crow in a grainfield. They're all talking about it, you know, even with everything else that happened."

"Are they? Oh, good, I'm so happy for Alain."

"Be happy for his joglar, Lisseut. And don't sign any contracts tomorrow without talking to me first—you're worth a great deal more now than you were this afternoon. Believe it."

"Then why don't you offer me a job?" An old tease, though his news was genuinely exciting. Too much had happened though, she couldn't reach through to any clear emotion, even for something like this.

Characteristically, he chose to take her seriously. "If I write a woman's song like Alain did, trust me, it will be yours. But for the rest, I'm not proud, my dear… I sing my own work still. I started on the roads as a joglar, and I'll end as one, I expect."

She squeezed his knee. "I wasn't being serious, Aurelian." One of the first rank of the troubadours, Aurelian was probably the very best of the joglars, with the possible exception of Bertran's own Ramir, who was getting old now and on the roads far less than he used to be.

Polite applause floated up from below. A new performer began tuning his instrument. Aurelian and Lisseut exchanged wry glances of relief, and then laughed quietly together. She lifted her head and kissed him on the cheek. "How many years in a row now?" she asked, knowing the answer very well.

"Together at Carnival? I am aggrieved and affronted that the nights are etched on my heart while you can't even remember. Four, now, my dear. Does that make us a tradition?"

"Would you like to be one?" she asked. His hand had moved upwards, stroking the nape of her neck. He had a gentle touch; he was a gentle man.

"I would like to know you and be your friend for the rest of my life," said Aurelian quietly. His dark head came down and they kissed.

Feeling a physical sense of release, and a genuine comfort on a night when she needed exactly that, Lisseut slid slowly back down on the bed and laced her fingers through his black, thick hair, pulling him down to her. They made love as they had before, three years running on this night… with tenderness and some laughter, and an awareness of shaping a still place together amid the wildness outside and the music below and the wheeling of the summer stars about the axis of the year.

Some time later, her head on his chest, his arm around her again, the two of them listened to a voice singing one of the oldest tunes, Anselme of Cauvas's most tender song. In The Liensenne someone always came back to it on Midsummer Eve:

Softly, not entirely certain why she was asking, Lisseut said, "Aurelian, what do you know about Lucianna Delonghi?"

"Enough to avoid her. It's Lucianna d'Andoria now, actually, since she's remarried, but no one but her husband's family will ever call her that. I would not place any sizable wager on Borsiard d'Andoria's long life or domestic happiness."

"Then why did he marry her? He's a powerful man, isn't he? Why would he invite the Delonghi into Andoria?"

Aurelian laughed quietly. "Why do men and women ever do anything less than rational? Why do the teachings of the metaphysicians of the university not guide us all in our actions? Shall we call it the influence of Rian on hearts and souls? The reason we love music more than rhetoric?"

This wasn't what she wanted to know.

"Is she beautiful, Aurelian?"

"I only saw her once, at a distance."

"And?"

"Remy could describe her better."

"Remy is out bedding someone or getting drunk. You tell me."

There was a short pause. The music of Anselme's sweet song drifted up to them.

"She is as beautiful as obsidian in new snow," said Aurelian slowly. "She glitters like a diamond by candlelight. There is fire in her like a ruby or an emerald. What other jewellery shall I give her? She offers the promise of danger and dark oblivion, the same challenge that war or mountains do, and she is as cruel, I think, as all of these things."

Lisseut swallowed with some difficulty. "You sound like Remy when he's had too much wine," she said finally, trying to manage a tone of irony. She had never heard Aurelian speak like that before. "And all this from a distance?"

"From the far end of a table in Faenna," he agreed calmly. "I would never have dared go nearer, but that was near enough. She is not for having, that one. Were it not an impiety I would say that the dark side of the goddess is in her. She destroys what she is claimed by."

"But still she is claimed."

"There is darkness in all of us, and desires we might prefer to deny by day." He hesitated. "I dream of her sometimes."

Lisseut was silent, unsettled again, sorry now that she had asked. Her confusion of before seemed to have come back in all its jangling discord. They lay together, listening to the music from below, and eventually it was the music that calmed her, as it almost always did. Before it ended they were both asleep. She dreamt, lying in Aurelian's arms, of arrows, though, and heard, in her dream, Rudel Correze's laughter in a garden.

In the morning she would waken with sunlight in the window to find Aurelian gone. Sprawled across the other bed, snoring and sodden, still in his boots and clothes, would be Remy of Orreze. Lisseut would hesitate only a moment, then, offering devout and genuinely grateful thanks to Rian and Corannos both, she would take the basin of water Aurelian had thoughtfully filled for her before he left, and empty it over the sleeping, fair-haired troubadour who'd been her first lover. Then she would flee through the door and down the stairs, leaving his shrieks of outrage behind to awaken all those who yet slumbered in The Liensenne on a bright Midsummer's Day. She would feel much, much better after that.

Every second or third year, in the absence of war or plague, it had been the custom of Guibor IV, count of Arbonne, to spend Midsummer Night in Tavernel at the Carnival, in homage to the goddess and to affirm for his people in the south that he was ever mindful of his duties to them and of the importance of the sea to Arbonne. Once, when young, he had even essayed the Boats and Rings on the river, plucking three garlands before missing the fourth and dousing himself in the river, to emerge with the booming good-natured laughter that was a part of why his country loved him.

On those nights, Signe de Barbentain reflected, lying in a room in the temple of Rian with a small fire to take away the chill that afflicted her now, even in summer, she'd had no concerns about the ancient saying in Tavernel that it was unlucky to lie alone on Midsummer Eve. She had lain with her husband, and the wild sounds outside had seemed part of a fabric of enchantment in the dark.

Tonight, though, she was alone and feeling afraid. Not for herself; her own summons to Rian would come when it came, and was unlikely to lie far off. She had long since come to terms with that. Her fear was for the land, for the dangerous rush of events that seemed to be gathering speed all around them.

New parts to the pattern had been discovered tonight and, starkly awake, looking at the flickering shapes that fire and guttering candle cast on the walls of her room, the countess of Arbonne tried again to deal with these new things. Gorhaut was coming south. There could be no honest denial of that truth any longer. Roban, the chancellor, had flatly predicted it the very same day word of the Treaty of Iersen Bridge had come to Barbentain. And now there was this purposeful, extravagant payment made for the death of Bertran de Talair. He might indeed have died tonight, Signe thought, suppressing a shiver. Had the clouds not come when they did, or had Beatritz not been in Tavernel and the bearded coran, Blaise, not known the arrow and the assassin, and so guessed the presence of syvaren on the head, Bertran could so easily have died, leaving Talair without a proper heir and Arbonne without a man it needed desperately.

And that same Gorhaut coran, Blaise, was a matter unto himself. For the fiftieth time, or the hundredth, Signe tried to weigh risks and gains in this gamble that Beatritz and Bertran had jointly undertaken in trying to bind Galbert de Garsenc's younger son to their cause. Roban had wanted nothing to do with it, had stalked grimly about the perimeter of the council room when the matter was first raised. She couldn't really blame him; Beatritz and Bertran, so unlike each other in most ways, yet shared a confidence in their own judgment and a penchant for taking risks that could be quite unnerving at times.

Blaise de Garsenc wasn't the kind of man she'd been led to expect, either. Rumour had told of a hardened mercenary, with a reputation won in the tournaments and the wars of the six countries over many years. According to Roban, she herself had presented the man with a laurel at the Autumn Fair in Lussan six years past; she didn't remember. It was hard to remember all the young men now. They seemed to remain as young as ever while she grew older all the time.

This man wasn't the grim northern warrior she'd anticipated. He had anger in him, yes, and easy enough to see, but he was clever, and more bitter than anything else, she judged. He had clearly been hurt in Portezza before he came here; there were rumours about that as well. They were probably true. Well, he would not be the first young man whose heart had been left lying on the carpet outside Lucianna Delonghi's bedchamber door, and he was not going to be the last.

In the darkness, Signe rubbed her aching fingers together under the bedcovers; she always seemed to be cold these days. In her time, all the young men had fallen in love with her in that same way. She had known how to deal with it, though. How to deny them the grace they had to be denied while leaving them their pride and even binding them more closely to her—and so, more importantly, to Guibor and the causes of Arbonne in the world. There was an art to the rituals of courtly love, and a purpose. She knew: she was the one who had defined and shaped both the purpose and the art.

Thirty years ago there might have been arts she would have practised to bind this Gorhaut coran to her. Not now, though; those were the tools and contrivances of younger women and, she judged—and her judgment was extremely good in these matters—with a different man. Not so soon after Lucianna Delonghi was done with him would Blaise of Gorhaut tread the path a woman's allure offered or besought.

Which left anger and hatred as the emotions they could most easily invoke, neither of which came readily to her hand, either long ago in her youth or now, with Guibor gone and the world a sad and empty place. It fell not neatly to her to invoke a son's hatred of his father to achieve her own ends, however desperately needful those ends might be.

And yet. And yet the man had spoken the words himself, with none of them to goad or induce them: What else would you have me do? Ride home in fell wrath and declare myself the true king of Gorhaut?

He hadn't meant it, hadn't known he might even possibly mean it, but the pain of Iersen Bridge was so raw in him, and so was his knowledge of his father's designs. Most of the world that mattered knew that Galbert de Garsenc's younger son had left Gorhaut denouncing the treaty his father had devised.

It might be possible. It might indeed be barely possible to find a rift here to widen north of the mountains in Gorhaut. She felt old though, and tired. She wished she could sleep. She didn't want to deal with matters of war. She wanted music and what warmth the sun could offer as summer ripened the vines. She wanted the gentler warmth of memories.

There came a very quiet tapping at her door. Only one person she could think of would be knocking here this late at night.

"Come in," she said. The fire and the single taper were still burning. By the flickering of their light she saw her last living child open and then close the door behind her, entering the room in a pale night-robe, with a sure tread that belied her blindness. The white owl lifted and flew to one of the bedposts.

Signe remembered the first time she'd seen Beatritz after her daughter's eyes had been sacrificed. It was not a memory she cared to relive. Even knowing the ancient, most holy reasons and the power gained, it was hard for a mother to see her child marred.

Beatritz came to stand beside the bed. "Did I wake you?"

"No. I'm thinking too much to be able to sleep."

"And I. Chasing too many thoughts on Rian's night." Her daughter hesitated. "Is there room for me, or will I disturb you? I'm troubled and fearful."

Signe smiled. "Child, there is always room for you beside me." She pulled the coverings back and her daughter lay down with her. Signe lifted one arm to enfold her and began to stroke the greying hair, remembering how soft it had been, how dark and shining and soft when Beatritz was a child. There had been two brothers and a sister and a father then. There are only the two of us left, Signe thought, humming a tune she'd almost forgotten. Only the two.

Walking back from the chapel of the god to Bertran's city palace, Blaise made a determined effort to empty his mind. There would be time in the morning and the days to come to think, to try to deal with the revelations of this night and the improbably, treacherous pathways that seemed to have been opened up before him. It was very late now, and he was bone-weary.

The streets were quiet; only occasional couples or small groups of apprentices went by, carrying wine and crumpled masks. Both moons were over west and the clouds were gone, chased by the breeze. It was still some time before dawn though, even on this shortest night of the year; overhead the stars were bright. They were said to be the god's lights in Gorhaut, Rian's here; Blaise wondered, for the first time, how much that difference mattered in the end. They would still be there, still as remote and coldly bright, whichever power mortal man linked them with. There were said to be lands—fabled and mysterious—far to the south beyond deserts and seas where different gods and goddesses were worshipped. Did the same stars shine there, and as brightly?

Blaise shook his head. These were late-night thoughts and useless ones. He was ready to fall into his bed and sleep for hours. In fact, he could probably drop off here in the street like the figures he could see sprawled in doorways. Most of those figures were not alone, and he could guess what had preceded their slumbers.

He had gone earlier to the largest of the domed temples of Rian, his first time ever inside such a place. He'd wanted to see Valery before the night was done. They'd let him in without demur; he'd expected to have to offer blood or some such ritual, but nothing of the sort took place. Valery had been sleeping. They'd let him stand in the doorway of the coran's room and look in by candlelight. Blaise could see that the shoulder had been carefully bandaged; as for the other healing thing that had happened here, that he had no way of judging, or even comprehending. In his experience syvaren had always killed.

On his way out he had seen an assembled company of people, both men and women, gathered in the largest part of the temple under the high dome. A priestess in a white robe was leading them through a service. Blaise hadn't lingered. He'd gone from there to the nearest house of Corannos, washing his hands ritually at the entrance, with both the supplication and the invocation spoken, and had knelt on the floor in the small, bare, stone-walled coran's chapel in front of the frieze. He'd been alone there, for the first time in a long time, and he'd tried to let the deep, enveloping silence lead him back into the presence and serenity of the god.

It hadn't happened though, not this night. Even in the chapel his mind had kept on circling back, like a hunting bird above a field where a hare has been seen, to that room in the Carenzu palace when he had said what he had said. He hadn't been serious, not even remotely so; the words had been meant to make clear to them all how helpless he truly was, whatever he might feel about what his father and King Ademar had done in Gorhaut. But they hadn't heard it that way, and in the silence that followed his outburst, when the white bird had lifted itself and settled on his shoulder, Blaise had felt the knock of his heart like a fist on the door of destiny.

He felt it again now, walking home through the quiet disarray of the streets, and he tried to force his mind away from such thoughts. He was too tired, this was too large.

Young Serlo was on guard under the lamps burning at the entrance to the duke's city palace. He nodded at Blaise from inside the iron gates, looked to left and right up the street and moved to open the gates. They hadn't been locked—one of the traditions of Midsummer here—but after an assassination attempt, a guard at the main entrance had seemed appropriate. Bertran's corans, led by Valery of Talair, were very good; there had been no training needed here, and even some things for Blaise to learn. The ongoing skirmishes with the corans of Miraval had had more than a little to do with that. A long-simmering feud among neighbouring castles shaped its own rules of conflict, very different from the clashes of armies.

"I looked in on Valery," Blaise said as he entered. "He's sleeping easily."

Serlo nodded. "I'll sleep more easily myself when we've found out who shot that arrow," he said. "I only hope the goddess and the god have decreed an eternal place of pain for men who use syvaren."

"I've seen worse things in war," Blaise said quietly. He had another thought, but he was too tired to shape it properly. "Good night," he said.

"Good night."

He heard the gate swing shut behind him. He would have felt better himself if a key had turned in the lock; he had his own views about the traditions of Arbonne. On the other hand, knowing what he knew about Bertran de Talair, it was unlikely in the extreme that the duke was in the palace tonight. Blaise shook his head. He went across the courtyard, through the inner doors, up the stairs and then down the corridor to the small room his status as a mercenary captain had earned him. Not a minor benefit; most of the corans slept together in dormitories or the great hall of Talair, with seniority merely placing one nearer the fire in winter or the windows in the summer heat.

He opened his door, almost stumbling with fatigue. He was aware of the scent of perfume an instant before he saw the woman sitting on his bed.

"You may remember," said Ariane de Carenzu, "that we had a number of matters to consider, you and I. We seem to have only dealt with the most public ones."

"How did you get past the guard?" Blaise said. His pulse had quickened again. He didn't feel tired any more. It was odd how swiftly that could happen.

"I didn't. There are other ways into this palace. And into mine, if it comes to that."

"Does Bertran know you are here?"

"I rather hope not. I doubt it. He was going out himself, I think. It is Midsummer, Blaise, and we are in Tavernel." He knew what that meant; the singer had told him just before this woman's soldiers had come to lead him away.

Her hair was down, of course, it always was, and her delicate scent imbued the small chamber with subtle, unsettling nuances. But Blaise de Garsenc had his own rules and his own code, and he had broken those rules and that code last summer in Portezza, enmeshed in a world of woman's perfume. He said, "I know where we are, actually. Where is the duke of Carenzu?" He meant it to be wounding; he wasn't sure why.

She was unruffled, at least to his eye, by candlelight. "My husband? In Ravenc Castle with En Gaufroy, I suspect. They have their own particular traditions at Midsummer and I'm afraid women aren't a part of them."

Blaise had heard about Gaufroy de Ravenc. His young bride was said to be still a virgin after almost three years of marriage. He hadn't heard the same sort of stories about Thierry de Carenzu, but then he hadn't asked, or been much interested.

"I see," he said heavily.

"No you don't," said Ariane de Carenzu sharply, irony and amusement gone from her voice. "I don't think you see at all. You will have just now concluded that I am wandering in the night because my husband's preference in bed partners is for boys. You will be deciding that I am to be understood in the light of that fact. Hear me then: I am here of my own choice, and no taste or orientation of the man my father married me to would affect that decision, short of physical restraint."

"So pleasure is all? What of loyalty?"

She shook her head impatiently. "When the day comes that a man and woman of our society may wed because they choose each other freely, then talk to me of loyalty. But so long as women are coinage in a game of castles and nations, even in Arbonne, then I will admit no such duty and will dedicate my life to changing the way of things. And this has nothing, nothing at all to do with Thierry's habits or preferences." She stood up, moving between him and the candle, her vivid face suddenly in shadow. "On the other hand, I know nothing of your own habits or tastes. Would you prefer me to leave? I can be gone quietly the same way I came in."

"Why should it matter if you are quiet or not?" he said, stubbornly holding to his anger. "We're in Arbonne aren't we? In Tavernel at Midsummer."

He couldn't read her eyes, with the one flickering candle behind her, but he saw again the impatient motions of her head. "Come, Blaise, you are cleverer than that. Discretion is at the heart of all of this. I am not here to bring shame to anyone, least of all myself. There is no public duty I owe my lord or my people in which I have been found wanting. I dare say that, and I know it to be true. Thierry has my respect and I am quite certain I have his. The duties I owe myself are different. What happens alone at night between two people who are adults about it need not impact upon the world in any way that matters."

"Then why bother? Why bother to be together? Has your Court of Love ruled on that?" He meant to sound sardonic, but it didn't come out that way.

"Of course it has," she said. "We come together to glory in the gift of life the goddess gave us… or the god, if you prefer. Sometimes the best things in our lives come to us of a night and are gone in the morning. Have you never found that?"

He had found something very near to that, but the morning's ultimate legacy had been lasting pain. He almost said as much. There was a silence. In the shadows, her silhouetted form might almost have been Lucianna's. He could imagine the same feel to her black hair and remember the light touch that traced a path along…

But no. Remembering the past was where his anger lay. This woman had done him no wrong that he knew of, and was, by her own lights, honouring him with her presence here. He swallowed.

She said, "It is all right. You are tired. I did not mean to offend you. I will leave."

Blaise could not afterwards have said what sequence of movements brought them together. As he gathered her in his arms he was aware that he was trembling; he had not touched a woman since Rosala, and that night, too, carried its heavy burden of anger and self-reproach, both during and afterwards. Even as he lowered his mouth to Ariane's, breathing deeply of the scent that clung to her, Blaise was bracing himself to resist the alluring ways of yet another sophisticated woman of the south. Lucianna had surely taught him that much; if he had learned nothing from a spring and summer in Portezza he would be a man living an utterly wasted life. Blaise was prepared, defended.

He was not. For where Lucianna Delonghi had used love and lovemaking as instruments, weapons in subtle, intricately devised campaigns, a pursuit of pleasure and power through binding men's spirits helplessly to her, Blaise was given a gift that night in Tavernel of a strong soul's love-making, without eluding, fierce as wind, with grace yet at the heart of it and needs of her own, offered honestly and without holding back.

And in the turning, interwoven movements of that night upon his bed in the city palace of Bertran de Talair, Blaise found, for a short while in the darkness after the one candle burned out, an easing of his own twin pains, the old one and the new, and an access to sharing hitherto denied him. He offered her what he had to give, and even, towards the end, with irony pushed back far away, some of the things he'd learned in Portezza, the skills and patterns of what men and women could do lying with each other when trust and desire came together. Accepting what he offered, laughing once, breathlessly as if in genuine surprise, Ariane de Carenzu bestowed upon him in turn something rich and rare, as a tree that flowers at night without a leaf, and Blaise was, for all the bitterness that lay within him, yet wise enough and deep enough to accept it as such and let her sense his gratitude.

In the end he slept, holding her in his arms, breathing the scent of her, slaked of hunger and need, returned to his weariness as to a garden, through the thickets and brambles of his history.

He woke some time later, disturbed by a sound outside in the street. She was still with him, head on his chest, her dark hair spread like a curtain to cover them both. He moved one hand and stroked it, marvelling.

"Well," said Ariane. "Well, well, well…»

He laughed quietly. She had meant him to laugh. He shook his head. "This has been the longest night I can remember." It was hard to believe how much had happened, in so many different ways, since they had arrived in Tavernel in the afternoon and walked through the thronged streets to The Liensenne.

"Is it over?" Ariane de Carenzu asked in a whisper. Her hand began moving slowly, fingernails barely brushing his skin. "If the songs tell true we have until the lark sings at dawn."

He felt desire returning, inexorable as the first beginning of a wave far out at sea. "Wait," he said awkwardly. "I have a question."

"Oh dear."

"No, nothing terrible or very difficult. Just something about Arbonne, about people we know Something I should have asked about a long time ago."

Her hand was still, resting on his thigh. "Yes?"

"What is it between Talair and Miraval? The hatred there?"

It was true, what he'd said, what he'd come to realize earlier tonight: there was something unnatural about the refusal to learn that had carried him through his months here in Arbonne.

Ariane was silent for a moment, then she sighed. "That is a terrible question, actually, and a difficult one. You'll have me chasing my own memories."

"Forgive me, I—"

"No, it is all right. I have been thinking about them all in any case. The memories are never far away. They have shaped so much of what we are." She hesitated. "Have you at least heard of Aelis de Barbentain, who became Aelis de Miraval?"

He shook his head. "I'm sorry. No."

"The youngest child of Signe and Guibor. Heir to Arbonne because her sister Beatritz went to the goddess and the two brothers died of plague quite young. Wedded to En Urté de Miraval when she was seventeen years old. My cousin." She hesitated, but only briefly. "Bertran's lover, and I think the only real love of his life."

There was a silence again. In it, Blaise heard once more, as if the speaker was actually in the room with them, Bertran's words on a dark stairway in the depths of another night: The god knows, and sweet Rian knows I've tried, but in twenty-three years I've never yet found a woman to equal her.

Blaise cleared his throat. "I think, actually, that last will be true. He said something to me in Baude Castle that would fit… what you just said."

Ariane lifted her head to look at him. "He must have been in a strange mood to say anything about it at all."

Blaise nodded his head. "He was."

"He must have trusted you, too, oddly enough."

"Or known the words would mean nothing to me."

"Perhaps."

"Will you tell me the story? It's time I began to learn."

Ariane sighed again, feeling ambushed almost by this entirely unexpected question. She had been thirteen that year, a bright, quick, laughing spirit, still a child. It had taken her a long time to recapture laughter afterwards, and the child in her had been lost forever the night Aelis died.

She was a grown woman now, with complex roles on the world stage and the burdens that came with those: queen of the Court of Love, daughter of one noble house, wedded into another. She was not a risk-taker by nature, not like Beatritz or Bertran; she thought things through more slowly before she moved. She would not have devised the scheme they had for this son of Galbert de Garsenc, nor had she approved when she was told of it. But by now she had made her own decisions about this man whose hard shell of bitterness so clearly served, like armour on a battlefield, to defend something wounded underneath.

So she told him the story, lying beside him after love on a bed in Bertran's palace, travelling back to the rhythm and cadence of her own words into the past as darkness outside slowly gave way to grey dawn. She told him all of it—quietly spinning the tale of sorrow from that long-ago year—save for one strand of the old weaving, the one thing she never told. It was not truly hers, that last secret, not hers to offer anyone, even in trust or by way of binding or in great need.

In the end, when she was done and fell silent, they did not make love again. It was difficult, Ariane had always found, to sustain any desires of her own in the present day when Aelis was remembered.

Elisse of Cauvas was vain, with, perhaps, some reason to be. She'd a ripe figure and a pleasing voice to go with the long-lashed, laughing eyes that made men feel wittier and more clever in her company than they normally did. Coming from the town that prided itself on being the birthplace of the first of the troubadours, Anselme himself, she often felt that she'd been destined to be a joglar and follow the life of the road, castle to castle, town to town. She considered herself miraculously released—and counted her blessings almost every morning when she awoke—from the tedium and premature ageing she associated with the life she might have expected as an artisan's daughter. Marry the apprentice, survive—if you were fortunate—too many childbirths in too few years, struggle to feed a family and keep a leaking roof intact and the cold lash of the winter wind from coming in through chinks in the walls.

Not for her, that life. Not now. With perhaps a single irritating exception she was almost certainly the best-known of the women joglars following the musicians' circuit about Arbonne. As for that single exception, until very recently the only recognition Lisseut of Vezét ever received seemed to occur because her name was similar to Elisse's! Jourdain had told an amusing story about that a year ago, and they'd laughed together over it.

The latest touring season had changed things, though, or started to change them. In two or three towns and a highland castle in the hills near Gotzland she and Jourdain had been asked their opinion of the wonderful music being made by Alain of Rousset and the girl who was his new joglar. And then, outrageously, Elisse had been asked by a fatuous village reeve, after a performance in a wealthy merchant's home in Seiranne, how the olive trees were faring back home in Vezét. When she realized what the man's mistake was, who he took her for, she'd been so furious she'd had to abandon the merchant's hall for a time, leaving Jourdain to amuse the guests alone while she regained her composure.

It wouldn't do, she thought, lying in an extremely comfortable bed on Midsummer Night, to dwell upon such things, or the unsettling success Lisseut had had with Alain's song earlier that evening—a frankly mediocre piece, Elisse had decided. Where had Jourdain's wits been, she thought, fighting a returning fury, when that glorious opportunity had arisen? Why hadn't he been quick enough to propose his own music for Ariane and the dukes, with Elisse to sing it? Only later, on the river, in the silly games men insisted upon playing, had her own troubadour, her current lover, pushed himself forward—to become an object of general amusement shortly afterwards, as he splashed into the water downstream.

Though 'current lover' might—it just possibly might—be an inappropriate phrase after tonight. Elisse stretched herself, cat-like, and let the bedsheet fall away, leaving her mostly uncovered in her nakedness. She turned her head towards the window, where the man she'd been lying with in the aftermath of love was now sitting on the ledge, picking at her lute. She didn't really like her lovers leaving her side without a word, as this one had, and she certainly didn't like other people handling the lute… but for this man she was prepared to make exceptions, as many exceptions and in whatever dimensions as proved necessary.

She'd brought the lute because she hadn't been entirely sure what was wanted from her. When Marotte, the owner of The Liensenne, had approached her with a whispered confidence earlier in the evening, telling her she'd be anxiously expected—those were his exact words—in the largest of the upstairs rooms after the third of the temple night chimes had sounded, Elisse had wondered if her singing days with Jourdain might possibly be winding to their close.

When she tapped at the room door though, wearing her best tunic, with a flower in her hair for Midsummer, the man who opened it gave her a slow, appraising smile that made her knees feel weak. It was Midsummer, and very late at night. She ought to have known it was not an audition she was being invited to. And, being honest, she didn't at all mind; there were many avenues to success in Arbonne for a woman of passion and spirit and some confidence in herself, and one of them was in this room.

One of them, in fact, was sitting on the window ledge, watching the eastern sky, his back to her, idly making music on her lute. He played very well, and when he lifted his voice—so softly she had to strain to hear, as if the words weren't meant for her at all—it was oddly sorrowful, though the song was not.

The song was his own, a very old one. A charming enough tune, Jourdain had dismissively called it once, tired of the endless springtime requests for it, even after all these years, and in preference to his own, far more musically intricate shapings.

Elisse, listening now to the quiet music and words, was prepared to disagree completely, if required—to regard this as the quintessence of all troubadour love songs. Lying in the wide bed alone, though with no complaint to offer about the hour just past, she had a feeling that her opinion would not be solicited, that it was, in fact, irrelevant. The man on the window ledge, she realized, had probably forgotten she was here.

That bothered her, but not unduly. In another man it might have been infuriating, cause enough to send her storming from the room, but this one was a different proposition from any other in her world, and Elisse of Cauvas was perfectly willing to take her cues from him, and only hope she was quick enough and, well, enjoyable enough, to make an impact of her own. She had never failed to do so before.

So she lay quietly and listened to Bertran de Talair play her lute and offer his own song to the coming of dawn above the empty street. She knew the words; everyone knew the words.

Even the birds above the lake

Are singing of my love,

And even the flowers along the shore

Are growing for her sake.

All the vines are ripening

And the trees come into bud,

For my love's footsteps passing by

Are summoning the spring.

Rian's stars in the night

Shine more brightly over her.

The god's moon and the goddess's

Guard her with their light.

It was really an almost childishly simple tune, with words to match, Elisse thought. Jourdain was right, of course; compared to the interwoven melodies he made her practise endlessly this was something a completely untrained person could sing, hardly worthy of the long apprenticeship demanded of the joglars of Arbonne.

Which made it even odder how near to tears she suddenly seemed to be, listening. Elisse couldn't remember the last time she'd cried, except in anger or frustration. It was because of Midsummer, she decided, and the extraordinary events of tonight, not least of which had been the long-imagined, though never really hoped for invitation to this room.

She reached for the pillow he had lain upon beside her in the dark and held it to herself for comfort, as the sweet refrain returned and brought the song to an end. The woman it celebrated was dead, she reminded herself, dead more than twenty years ago, before Elisse had even been born. She was dead, and would have been over forty years old by now had she lived, Elisse calculated. This wasn't real competition, she decided, she could allow these dawnsong memories without troubling herself. The dead were gone; she was the woman with him now, the one lying in his bed as Midsummer Night came to its end. The advantages, surely, were all hers. Elisse smiled, waiting for the moment when he would turn to see her waiting, her body offered to his sight, and for whatever else he wanted of her.

At the window, Bertran de Talair watched darkness surrender to grey in the streets below and then saw the first pale hues of morning streak the sky in the east. He wondered, idly, hopelessly, just how many dawns he had seen in this way, with the wrong woman waiting for him to come back to her in a bed he had abandoned. He wasn't going back to the bed. He pushed the very thought away, closing his eyes, letting his mind circle back, faithfully, to the ending of his song.

Even the birds above the lake

Are singing of my love,

And even the flowers along the shore

Are growing for her sake.

Dawn was breaking, the day was coming. There would be much to do, a world of complex things that demanded to be done. He opened his eyes, feeling her slipping away again as he did, slipping away in mist, in memory, with the child in her arms.