A Song for Arbonne

CHAPTER 9

On the bright, mild morning in autumn when her life changes forever, Rosala de Garsenc is returning carefully from her favourite walk along the sloping, tree-lined path from the water mill back to the castle when she sees her father-in-law waiting for her astride his horse in the open space in front of the drawbridge.

Her breath quickening with the first stirrings of apprehension, she places her hands protectively in front of her rounded belly but resolutely does not alter her pace. Her husband is away at the court, and Galbert will know that.

"Good morrow, my lord," she says as she comes slowly up to the courtyard. The drawbridge of the castle is down; inside the forecourt a handful of corans are noisily practising with quarterstaves, beyond them serfs are unloading sacks of harvested grain watched carefully by the reeve. It is a bustling tithe day at Garsenc Castle. No one is close enough though to overhear anything the two of them might say to each other.

Galbert de Garsenc, massive and imposing in his riding clothes, makes no immediate reply to her greeting, looking stonily down upon her from his horse. He ought to have dismounted, of course, simple courtesy to his son's wife demands that; his failure to do so is a first signal, an attempt to intimidate. Rosala knows by now that almost everything this man does is meant as a means of control.

"Will you come in?" she says, as if there is nothing untoward in his manner at all. "You must know that Ranald is away, but I will gladly do what I may to make you comfortable." She smiles, but only briefly; she will not abase herself before this man, she has sworn it to herself.

He jerks his reins to make the horse dance a little, quite close to her. She stands motionless; she certainly isn't afraid of horses, and she is quite sure, for the obvious reason, that her father-in-law will not risk doing her any physical harm just now.

Galbert clears his throat. "Get in," he says, the celebrated voice icy cold. "Get into the castle immediately before you shame us further. I heard tell that you were walking abroad but refused to credit it. I came to see for myself, certain that the rumours must be idle and false. Instead I find you brazening about obscenely, parading in your condition before the serfs, exactly as I was told. Are you utterly corrupt that you do such things?"

She had actually thought it might be this. It is almost a relief to have been right, to know from what direction the latest attack is coming.

"You wrong me and cheapen yourself," she says as calmly as she can manage. "I am doing what the Savaric women have done for generations. You know it, my lord, do not feign otherwise. The women of my family have never kept to their rooms while carrying, they have always taken daily walks on the family estates."

He jerks the reins again; the horse dances uneasily. "You are a Garsenc now, not a Savaric."

"False. I will always be a Savaric. my lord. Do not deceive yourself. What I was born to may not be taken from me." She hesitates. "It may only be added to." That last is meant as conciliation; with Ranald away she really does not want a confrontation with his father. "My husband and lord knows I am not lingering abed; I told him of my family tradition when we first learned I was carrying. He raised no objection."

"Of course he didn't. Ranald is beneath contempt. A fool beyond words. He shames our ancestors."

Rosala smiles sweetly. "He did ask me to tell him if ever you spoke disparagingly of him to me. Would these words fit such a description?"

Be careful, she tells herself then. This is a man who will not be crossed. But it is hard to yield spinelessly to him; so very hard, remembering her own father and her home, to cringe before the High Elder, flush with his new ascendancy.

She sees Galbert check a too-swift reply. Ranald has a temper, and Blaise too, to a lesser degree. The father is as ice compared to both of them—his anger and his hate kept channelled, ruthlessly controlled.

"You are deliberately insolent," he says. "Shall I whip you for it?" His voice is incongruously mild speaking the words, as if he were merely offering to walk her about the grounds or summon a servant to her aid.

"Indeed," Rosala says hardily. "A worthy thought. You come here out of alleged concern for the child I carry, and then offer me a beating. A prudent course, my lord."

His turn to smile. His smile frightens her more than anything else. She tries not to let that show.

"I can wait," says Galbert de Garsenc softly. "You are not a child. Discipline can be delayed and you will still know the cause. I am a patient man. Get into the castle now, though, or I will be forced to handle you in front of the corans and the servants. You carry the first of the new generation of the Garsenc line and you will not be permitted to jeopardize that with this folly."

Rosala does not move. He is not going to hurt her. She knows that. A kind of reckless giddiness rises in her, a surge of hatred she cannot quite master. "Forgive me my ignorance, and that of my family," she says. "You are clearly to be deferred to in these matters, my lord. You know so much about helping women survive childbirth." A dangerous cut, one she might truly be made to pay for later. Galbert's first wife died, hours after giving birth to Blaise, and two subsequent wives did not survive their first confinements in this castle, with the children stillborn.

She has meant to wound, wisely or no, but nothing in his face shows that she has done so. "As I said," he murmurs, still smiling, "a whipping may be given at any time."

"Of course," she replies. "I live entirely at the mercy of your kindness, my lord. Though indeed, if you wound and scar me too greatly it might spoil the king's pleasure when he chooses to send for me, might it not?"

She hadn't planned to say anything like that; it has slipped out. She isn't sorry though, now that the words are spoken. The thought, and the fear behind it, are never far from her.

She sees the High Elder react for the first time. She wasn't even thought to have been aware of this aspect of things, she realizes. It is almost amusing: women are imagined to troop like so many sheep through the court, eyes down, dull minds shuttered, oblivious to whatever nuances might be passing about them. She could laugh, were her fears not so tangible.

Galbert de Garsenc's smile deepens now, the smooth-shaven, fleshy face creasing into something truly unpleasant. "You are hungry for that moment, I see. You are already in lust. You would prefer to kill the child that you might come panting and hot to Ademar's bed the sooner, would you not? You have all the vile corruption of women in you, especially those of your lineage. I knew it when first I ever saw you."

Rosala stiffens. She feels dizzy suddenly. The walk uphill, the bright sunlight overhead, and now this foul, streaming torrent of abuse. She actually wishes Ranald were home; his presence might have served to temper or at least deflect onto himself some of Galbert's viciousness. She has brought this upon herself, she thinks shakily. Better to have swallowed pride, to have meekly gone within. How can she, alone and at his mercy, possibly fight this man?

She looks up at him, a sickness within her. Her family is as good as this one, she tells herself fiercely, or so very nearly as to make no difference. She knows what has to be said now. Fighting for self-control, she speaks.

"Hear me. I will kill myself before I let him touch me. Do not ever doubt that this is so. And do not try to deny that you have encouraged the king's shameful thoughts, contemptuous of your son or any true sense of family honour, seeking only to bind a weak man more tightly to your use with whatever tools you may find. My lord, I am not a tool that will ever fit your hand. I will die before Ademar ever lies with me."

She watches his face narrowly, and adds, "Or you, my lord High Elder of Corannos. I will end my life before I suffer you to lay a hand or a lash upon this white flesh you dream about in the dark of the god's house at night." A shaft loosed wildly that one, but she sees it hit, squarely. Galbert's ruddy face goes suddenly white, his eyes creasing to slits and flicking away from hers for the first time. Rosala feels no triumph, only a renewed wave of nausea.

She turns abruptly away and begins to walk across the drawbridge into the forecourt. The corans have stopped their duelling, their attention caught by something in the manner of the two of them here outside the walls. She holds her head high and walks with what composure she can achieve.

"My lady Rosala." Galbert says from behind her, his voice raised slightly. She had known he would call her. He would need to have the final word. His nature will not permit otherwise. She thinks of not turning, of continuing on, but the corans have heard him call her. What she might do at some risk privately she dares not do in public: she might defy him to a certain point, but open shame he will not allow. A woman can be killed for that in Gorhaut.

She stops on the drawbridge and turns slowly back to look at him. After, she will remember that moment, the sun high, a breeze stirring the red and golden leaves of the chestnut trees along the avenue, birdsong in the branches, the stream beyond, glinting blue. A glorious autumn day.

"I wonder," says Galbert de Garsenc, lowering his voice, moving the horse nearer, "has your dear husband told you of our latest agreement? He has probably neglected to, in that forgetful way of his. We have decided that if you should bear a son it is mine. Ah! You seem surprised, Lady Rosala! It is just as I thought, the careless lad has not informed you. A boy is promised to Corannos, a daughter you may keep; a daughter is no use to me immediately, though I am sure I will devise a purpose for her later."

Rosala is actually afraid she is going to faint. The sun swings in an erratic arc in the blue sky. She takes a stumbling, sidelong step to keep her balance. Her heart is a thudding hammer in her breast. She tastes blood; she has bitten through her lip.

"You… you would deprive your family of an heir?" she stammers, her brain stunned, refusing to believe what she has just heard.

"No, no, no, not necessarily." He chuckles now, all benign good humour for the watching eyes of those inside the forecourt. "Though we need another Elder in our family at least as much as we need an heir in this castle. Ranald's brother" — he never speaks Blaise's name—"was to have followed me to the god. A great deal of our future depended upon that. His refusal has marred my planning, put me in a difficult position, but if you present me with a boy matters may yet be remedied. I will, of course, delay final consecration for a time, to judge how best to make use of the child—here at Garsenc or in the god's house. There will be many matters to be considered, but I daresay you will help me by having other children, dear daughter-in-law. And if you do not—seeing as it did take some time to conceive this one—why then I imagine Ranald could find a second wife who will. I am not greatly concerned on that score. And I must confess, I am looking forward to attending to a grandson's education and upbringing personally. I pray you, do not disappoint me, lady Rosala. Bear a strong boy child for me to take back to Corannos."

She can say nothing at all. She seems to have lost the power of speech. She can scarcely stand. She feels suddenly exposed, naked in this place to the indifferent or mildly curious scrutiny of her household corans and the serfs of the estate.

"You really ought to go in now," says Galbert kindly. "You do not look well at all. You ought to be in your bed, my child. I would escort you there myself but I am afraid I have no time to linger for such domestic intimacies. The press of affairs demands my attention back at court. I do trust you have taken my meaning, though, and I will not have to come again?"

He turns, not waiting for any reply, lifting one hand to her that the corans might note his salute; it is the hand that holds his whip, though. That will not be an accident; nothing with this man is an accident. She sees that he is smiling as he rides away.

Inside the castle a short time later, alone in her suite of rooms, white-knuckled hands gripping each other, Rosala de Garsenc realizes, without knowing the actual moment of making her decision, that she is going to leave.

Galbert made a mistake, she thinks. He never meant to tell her about these plans, he must have known how she would feel about them; she had angered him though, revealed an awareness of his thoughts, and he replied rashly, to frighten and wound her, to have the final word.

She doesn't know how she is going to do it, she only knows she will not stay and surrender her child to that man. I am at war now, she thinks, realizing that her only possible advantage is that she knows it and Galbert might not. Inside her, as if in response, the baby kicks hard against her ribs for the first time that morning.

"Hush," she whispers. "Hush, my love. It will not happen. Fear no harm, for none shall find you. Wherever in the world your father is, whether he ever comes to shelter you or no, I will guard you, little one. I swear it upon my life, and yours."

Blaise was thinking of the child as the men of Talair rode north through the cool breezes of autumn in Arbonne: of Aelis de Miraval's son, and Bertran's. Since Ariane had told him the tale that Midsummer night three months ago, he had thought about it more often than he would have expected to, unable not to gaze curiously at such times at the man his own father had paid a quarter of a million in gold to have killed.

A tragedy had unfolded here some twenty-three years ago, and the effects of it were still rippling through Arbonne today. He remembered Ariane's quiet, measured voice telling him the tale as dawn broke over the littered streets and alleys of Tavernel.

"As I told you just now," she had said, "discretion is everything in love. My cousin Aelis had none, though she was very young, and that might be considered an excuse. There was something uncontrolled in her, something too fierce. Hatred and love drove her hard, and she was not a woman to accept her fate, or work within walls built to house her."

"Neither are you," Blaise remembered saying. "What was the difference?"

She had smiled at that, a little sadly, and had not answered for a time.

"The difference, I suppose, is that I saw what she did, and what followed upon it. Aelis is the difference in my own life. She told her husband, you see. She hoarded the truth for a last, bitter swordstroke—with its own slow, killing poison, if you will. When the priestess who had come to her said she was not going to live they brought Urté to her confinement bed. He was sorrowful, I think. I have always thought he was genuinely in sorrow, though perhaps more for the loss of the power she offered him than anything else. Aelis had no softness in her though, she was all pride and recklessness, even on her deathbed. She pushed herself up in the bed and she told Urté the child was Bertran de Talair's."

"How do you know this?"

"I was there," Ariane had said. "As I say, that moment altered my own life, shaped what I think I have become. Those words she spoke to Urté changed our world, you know. We would live in a differently ordered country had Aelis not taken her vengeance."

"Vengeance for what?" Blaise had asked, though he was beginning, slowly, to understand.

"For not being loved," Ariane had said simply. "For being valued at too much less than she was. For being exiled to the dank, grim fastness of Miraval from the lights and laughter of her father's court."

He had thought it might be that. Once he would have scorned such a thing as beneath contempt, another woman's vanity marring the unfolding of the world. It had surprised him a little that he didn't still see it that way; at least that night in Tavernel, with Ariane de Carenzu in his arms he didn't. It had occurred to him then, with a shock he had tried to mask, that this new pattern of thought might be his own deepest rebellion against his father.

"I can guess what you are thinking," Ariane had said.

"No, I don't think you can," he had replied without elaborating. "What did Urté do?" he'd asked, pushing his own family affairs towards the back of his mind. There had been a sadness in Blaise that night, hearing the old tale. The question was a formality. He was sure he knew what En Urté de Miraval had done.

Ariane's answer had surprised him, though. "No one knows for certain. And that is the heart of Bertran's tragedy, Blaise. There was a son born before Aelis died. I watched the priestess bring him into the world. I heard him cry. Then Urté, who had been waiting, took him away, and not Aelis nor the priestess, and certainly not I at thirteen years of age, had the power to stop him within his own walls. I remember how his face changed when she told him who the father was; that I will never forget. And I remember him bending down over her, as she lay there, torn and dying, and whispering something into her ear that I could not hear. Then he left the room with Bertran's child crying in his arms."

"And killed it."

She shook her head. "As I say, no one knows. It is likely, probable, knowing Urté, knowing how such a child would have been heir to so much… to Barbentain, and so to Arbonne itself, as Aelis's child. It is likely, but we do not know. Bertran doesn't know. Not with certainty. If the child lived, if it lives now, only Urté de Miraval knows where it is."

Blaise had seen it clearly then, the harsh, ugly shape of Bertran's pain. "And so Urté could not be killed all these years—cannot be killed now—because any possibility of finding the truth or the child will die with him."

Ariane had looked up at him in the muted grey light of the room and nodded her head in silence. Blaise had tried to imagine what it would have been like to be thirteen years old and to have lived through such a night, to have it lying, like a weight of stones, in your own past.

"I would have killed him regardless," he had said after a long time. And she had answered only, "You and Bertran de Talair are very different men."

Riding north beside the river with Duke Bertran and the corans of Talair to the Autumn Fair in Lussan, Blaise thought again about that remark. It was very nearly the last thing she'd said to him that night before they'd dressed and she'd gone from his room alone, cloaked and hooded, with only a mild, chaste kiss of farewell in first grey light of day.

What made men so different from each other? Accidents of birth, of upbringing, of good fortune or tragedy? What sort of man would Blaise himself have become had he been the older son, the heir to Garsenc, and not the younger one for whom an unwanted destiny among the clergy of the god had been ordained by his father? What if his mother had lived, the question Signe de Barbentain had asked? Would she have made any difference? What if Galbert de Garsenc had somehow been a different, gentler, less power-obsessed man?

Though that last speculation was impossible, really; it was simply not possible to imagine his father as anything other than what he was. Galbert seemed absolute to Blaise, like a force of nature or some gigantic monument of the Ancients, one that spoke to nothing but power and had been in the world almost forever.

Bertran de Talair, too, was a younger son. Only the early death of his brother had brought him to the dukedom and set two great houses so harshly against each other. Before that he had followed the usual course: a sword for hire in battle and tournament, seeking fortune and a place in the world. The same path Blaise de Garsenc was to take, starting from Gorhaut, years after. The same path, that is, if one left out the music.

But the music could not be left out. It defined Bertran, just as it defined Arbonne, Blaise found himself thinking. He shook his head, almost amused at himself. Half a year now he had been here, and already his mind seemed to have this tendency to slide down channels it had never known before. Resolutely he pulled his wandering thoughts back to the present, to the high road of Arbonne built by the Ancients between the river and the grainfields to the east.

Looking ahead, squinting through the dust, Blaise was drawn from reverie. He was riding near the rear of the column, behind the long baggage-train of goods they were escorting to the fair—mostly barrels of Talair wine. He saw Bertran and Valery riding back towards him. Their pace was measured, but just quick enough to make him aware that something was happening at the front of the long column. Beyond the two of them he could make out banners in the distance. They seemed to be about to overtake someone. There was nothing in that, all the roads were crowded on the way to a fair, and the high road most of all. He raised his eyebrows as the two men came up and neatly turned their horses to fall into stride on either side of Blaise.

"Diversions, diversions," said Bertran airily. He had a smile on his face that Blaise recognized by now; it made him uneasy. "Unexpected pleasures of so many kinds await us. What," the duke went on, "can you tell me about someone named Rudel Correze?"

After a number of months with Bertran, Blaise was getting used to this sort of thing. It sometimes seemed to him that the Arbonnais preferred to be known as clever and witty more than anything else.

"He shoots fairly well," he said drily, trying to match Bertran's tone. "Ask Valery."

The big coran, now fully recovered, grunted wryly.

"We have been," said Bertran crisply, his tone changing without warning, "collectively avoiding a decision all summer. I think it is time to make it."

"Correze banners up ahead?" Blaise asked.

"Indeed there are. Among others. I think I recognized Andoria and Delonghi as well."

It was odd how the ambushes of life came upon one so utterly unawares. Or perhaps it wasn't all that odd, Blaise corrected himself: they wouldn't be ambushes otherwise, would they? It stood to reason, didn't it? He felt suddenly cold, though. He wondered if the other two men could read a response in him, and then he wondered why it had never even occurred to him that Lucianna might be coming to the Lussan Fair.

There was more than enough of importance happening in the world, as autumn came, to make an appearance by the Delonghi an obvious thing to have expected at this annual gathering. They would come to trade, to watch and wager or fight in the tournament, to celebrate the harvests and share news of the six countries before winter's snow and rain made the roads impassable. And where the men of the Delonghi were likely to be present, the celebrated, notorious jewel of the family would almost certainly be found. Lucianna was not prone to be left behind, anywhere.

The immediate question had been about Rudel, though, and Bertran had raised another issue as well.

Blaise addressed the question, making his tone as precise as he could. "You'll have to make a point of acknowledging Rudel himself, and his father if he's here. He might be. Once acknowledged, and under the truce of the fair Rudel will do nothing at all. In fact, it will probably amuse him to be seen in your company."

"It will amuse me as well," Bertran murmured, "to no end. I think I will enjoy meeting this man."

Most of the world knew now about the failed assassination and the money spent. A few people were aware of who it was who had fired that poisoned arrow and hit the wrong man. Rudel, so far as Blaise could judge, would have been seriously embarrassed—especially after heading straight to Gotzland to claim the promised fee. Bertran's sources at the court of King Jorg—who were remarkably well informed—had sent word later about how Rudel had been forced to repay the sum. He had already spent part of it, it was reported, and so his father had been compelled to intervene and square the account. Blaise could quite easily imagine how his old friend had felt about that.

In his own way, he was looking forward to seeing Rudel again. In the complex sparring match of their relationship he had won a victory in that garden in Tavernel, and both of them would know it. He didn't win so cleanly very often; it would be something to savour.

Or it might have been, except that Lucianna was here, and Blaise knew from experience that Rudel would use whatever weapons he needed to to even a score if he felt himself on the losing side of the slate. Blaise shook his head. He would have to try to deal with that if and when it happened. There was something else still to be addressed here, and Bertran and Valery were both watching him in silence as they rode. There was a growing commotion up at the front of their column and they seemed to be slowing down. He could see the overtaken banners clearly now: Correze, Delonghi, Andoria, one or two others he didn't recognize.

He turned to Bertran. The duke was bareheaded as usual, in the nondescript riding clothes he favoured on the road. It had saved his life once, Valery had told Blaise, when another would-be assassin had been unable to tell which man in their party was de Talair himself.

"There's no decision to make, really. Not now." Blaise kept his voice calm. Three men could now be seen riding back towards them, dust rising about their horses' hooves. "If we're to ride with the Portezzans there are a number of them who know me. There's no point in my trying to remain unrecognized."

"I thought as much," Bertran said. "Very well. From this time on may I assume it is Blaise de Garsenc who honours me by joining my corans for a time, despite his father's evident desire to have me killed?"

It was a watershed of sorts, a moment when many things could change. "As you like," said Blaise quietly.

The three riders had come nearer. He didn't recognize them. They were extravagantly garbed, even on the dusty road. Portezzans were like that.

"And on the other matter?" Bertran asked, the faintest hint of tension in his voice now. "The one we have been delaying upon?"

Blaise knew what the duke meant, of course he knew: What would you have me do, declare myself the true king of Gorhaut? His own words.

He shook his head. Something in his chest grew tight and heavy whenever he thought about that. It was a step across a chasm so wide he had never thought to see such a thing, even in his mind's eye. "No," he said. "Leave that. It is autumn now, and the truce of the fair. Gorhaut will do nothing here, if any of them even come, and then Ademar will have to wait until spring opens the mountains again. Let us wait and see what happens."

Valery said in his measured voice, "We might be doing things ourselves in winter, instead of waiting to see what others do."

Blaise turned to him. "I'm sorry," he said sharply, "if my reluctance to be used as a figurehead will spoil your winter."

Bertran, on his other side, laughed aloud. "Fair enough," he said, "though you are hardly a figurehead, if you are honest with yourself. If Ademar is seen as having betrayed his country with the Treaty of Iersen Bridge, is there a man in Gorhaut with a better claim to succeed him than you? Your brother, perhaps?"

"Perhaps," Blaise said. "He won't do anything, though. My father rules him." He hesitated. "Leave it, Bertran. Leave it for now."

There was a silence. In it, the three riders came up, trailed by young Serlo. They were clad in a magnificent black and crimson livery Blaise knew. He realized abruptly whose these men must be. His heart began beating quickly again. It seemed that whatever he did, wherever he went, events drew him back into his past. The first of the riders pulled up his horse and bowed unctuously low in his saddle.

"Very well, we will leave it for now," Bertran said quietly to Blaise. And then launched himself, almost before he'd finished speaking, in a hard, fluid, uncoiled movement from his horse.

He slammed into Blaise with his shoulder, knocking the wind from him, driving him from his own mount. The two of them landed hard in the dust of the road as the knife thrown by the second man in black and red whipped over the bowed head of the first and through the empty space where Blaise had been a moment before. Portezzans were legendary for their skill with knives.

But the corans of Bertran de Talair were the best trained in Arbonne. Valery killed the knife-thrower with a short, precise sword thrust, and Serlo, with an oath, dispatched the third man from behind without ceremony. Only the leader was left then, as Bertran and Blaise disentangled themselves and stood up. Bertran winced and flexed a knee.

Serlo and Valery had their blades levelled at the Portezzan from before and behind. It had all happened so quickly, so silently, that no one up ahead had even realized anything had taken place. There were two dead men on the ground, though. The Portezzan looked down at them and then at Bertran. He had a lean, tanned face and a carefully curled moustache. There were several rings on his fingers, over his riding gloves.

"I am perfectly content to surrender myself to your mercy," he said calmly, in flawless, aristocratic Arbonnais. "I will be ransomed by my cousin at a fair price, I can assure you of that."

"Your cousin has just violated a truce formally guaranteed by the countess of Arbonne," Bertran said icily. "He will answer to her for that even more than you."

"I am certain he will answer adequately," the man said blandly.

Bertran's face grew pale; Blaise recognized the signs of real rage building. He was still too much in shock to frame his own response.

"I am rather less certain than you," the duke said softly to the Portezzan. "But in the interim, you will now make reply to me: why would you seek to kill one of my companions?»

For the first time the man's expression grew hesitant. He looked sidelong at Blaise as if to verify something. His face cleared, and as it did, even before he spoke, Blaise understood what had just happened. Something in him, in his heart actually, seemed to make a sound like a bowstring plucked or the string of a lute.

"My lord and cousin Borsiard d'Andoria has a mortal grievance against this man," the Portezzan said. "It has nothing to do with you, En Bertran. He has nothing but respect and affection for you, my lord, and for the countess of Arbonne." The words were honeyed, mellifluous.

"An assault against a man in my company has a great deal to do with me, I'm afraid. And words of respect are meaningless when an assault takes place during the truce of a fair. Your lord and cousin has made a mistake."

"And I have never met Borsiard d'Andoria in my life," Blaise added. "I would be interested to know what his mortal grievance is." He knew, though, or thought he could guess.

"It is not a matter for proclaiming in public," the Portezzan said haughtily. "Nor do the Andoria explain themselves."

"Another mistake," said Bertran, in a blunt tone of finality. "I see no reason to delay this. As a duke of Arbonne sworn to uphold the countess's peace, I have an obvious duty here." He turned to Serlo. "Take three corans and string this man from a tree. You will strip and brand him first. The whole world knows the punishment decreed for those who violate a truce."

The Portezzan was a brave man, for all his posturing. "I am a man of rank and cousin to Borsiard d'Andoria," he said. "I am entitled to the treatment appropriate to my status."

Bertran de Talair shook his head. Blaise registered Valery's look of growing concern. He felt the same anxiety himself. The duke ignored them. He said, "Your status is that of an attempted murderer, violator of a truce all six countries have sworn to keep. No one will speak for you today." He turned back to Serlo. "Hang him."

Serlo had already summoned three other men. They pulled the Portezzan roughly from his horse. One man had a rope looped through his saddle. There was an oak tree at the edge of a field east of the road; they took him there.

"You cannot do this!" the Portezzan shouted, craning his neck to look back at Bertran, the first edge of fear entering his voice. He had truly never thought he might be in danger, Blaise realized. The immunity of his rank and kinship had led him to believe he could kill freely and be ransomed, that money and status could be an answer to anything.

"Are you sure of this?" Valery said quietly to his cousin. "We may need the Andoria later."

There was something nearly cruel in the blue eyes as Bertran de Talair watched his corans over by the tree. They were stripping the Portezzan; the man had begun to shout now. Bertran's voice was bleak as he answered Valery without turning, "We need no one so much that we lose our honour in pursuing them. Wherever the fairs are, the ruler of that country is bound to uphold the truce that allows us all to trade. You know it. Everyone knows it. What just happened was an insult to the countess and to Arbonne so arrogant I will not countenance it. Let Borsiard d'Andoria do what he will, those three men have to die. When we reach Lussan and Barbentain, my advice to the countess will be to ban the Andoria from entry to the fair. I expect she will do so."

He walked over and remounted his horse; Blaise, after a moment, did the same.

From up ahead, beyond the front of their column, a new commotion could now be heard. Beside the road, Bertran's corans had rigged a hanging rope around a branch of the tree. The condemned man had been stripped to his undergarments. Now Serlo resolutely pulled a knife from his belt, and while the others held the thrashing Portezzan, he set about carving into his forehead the brand of an oathbreaker. Blaise had seen this before. He resisted an impulse to turn away. They heard the man scream suddenly, high and desperate. Five riders had now peeled away from the party in front of them and were galloping furiously back through the grass at the side of the road.

"Take as many men as you need," said Bertran calmly to Valery. "Surround the tree. If those people attempt to stop the hanging you are to kill them. Blaise, wait here with me."

Without a word Valery moved to obey. The remaining corans of Talair had already begun moving swiftly into position, anticipating this. Swords out, arrows to bows, they formed a wide ring around the hanging tree. At the rear of the column beside Bertran, with two dead men on the ground beside them, Blaise watched the third Portezzan bundled onto the back of a horse, his hands tied before him, the knotted rope around his neck. There was blood dripping down his face from Serlo's branding. The five men racing back were shouting now, gesticulating wildly. Serlo looked back to Bertran, for the confirmation. The duke nodded once. Serlo stabbed the horse in the haunch with his blade. The animal bolted forward. The Portezzan seemed to actually spring backwards off the horse into the air. Then he dangled, swinging, an oddly disconnected figure. They had heard the cracking sound. He was already dead.

The five shouting Portezzans reined up hard at the very edge of Valery's ring of men. They were hopelessly outnumbered, of course. The leader screamed something at Valery, lashing his handsome horse in impotent rage. Bertran turned to Blaise, as if bored by what was now happening.

"We have another small thing to sort out between us," he said, for all the world as if they were alone in the pleasant autumn countryside. "I have only just realized it myself. You may not be ready to assert any sort of claim in Gorhaut, but if we are riding to Lussan now with you clearly acknowledged as who you are—and with what has just now happened that decision has been made for us—then I cannot treat you as simply another of my corans. You may not like this—for reasons I can appreciate—but it would ill behoove us both for me to be seen giving you commands now. Will you accept a discharge from my service? Will you accept the hospitality and companionship of Talair as my friend and guest?"

It was, of course, the only action proper under the circumstances. And yes, Blaise was bothered by the change; it marked a transition, yet another, in a year when his life seemed to be careening with unsettling speed towards some destination as yet hidden in the distance.

He managed a smile, "I was wondering when my wages would begin to grate upon you. I confess I had not thought you were so careful with your money, my lord, it does go against the image all the world has of you."

Bertran, genuinely startled, laughed aloud. There was, just then, a silence in the gesticulating knot of men by the tree. Then sudden laughter carried. The five Portezzans turned to look at them. Their leader, a short, dark man on that splendid horse, stared across the distance for a long moment, ignoring the corans around him. Then he turned his horse without another word and rode back north. The other Portezzans followed.

"That," said Bertran, "was slightly unfortunate."

"Who was that man?"

The duke turned to him with surprise. "You were telling the truth, weren't you? You have really never met him. That was Borsiard d'Andoria, Blaise. You must at least have heard the name. He was recently married, in fact, to—"

"To Lucianna Delonghi. I know," Blaise interrupted. And then added, "That's why he wants to kill me."

Even amid the churning of all the emotions of this morning there was, deep within Blaise, a curious flicker of pride. Even now, after everything, Lucianna would have been speaking of him; that had to be it, of course. Borsiard d'Andoria was seeking to kill his new wife's former lover from Gorhaut.

Bertran de Talair was very quick. "Ah," he said softly. "Engarro di Faenna? It was true then, the rumour?"

"That I killed him for the Delonghi? Yes." Blaise surprised himself with how easy it was to say this now to the duke. He hesitated over the next thing, but then went on: "With Rudel Correze."

He saw Bertran absorbing this. "And so she wants you dead now?" He looked dubious.

Blaise shook his head. "I doubt it. She wouldn't care enough to bother covering that trail. Borsiard does, though. He probably had a part in the assassination of Engarro, though I didn't know it then. He's uneasy about me. Afraid of what I might say or do. Rudel they'll trust; he's a Delonghi cousin. I'm an unknown quantity." He stopped.

"And that would be his "mortal grievance" against you?"

Blaise looked at the duke. Bertran's blue eyes were searching, skeptical, and there was a glint in them now of something else.

"That would be a part of it," Blaise said carefully.

Bertran nodded his head slowly. "I thought so," he said after a moment. "The jewel of the Delonghi, the exquisite Lucianna. He's a jealous man then, our friend Borsiard. That is worth knowing." He nodded again. "It begins to make sense. One day you must tell me more about her. Are all the stories true? I've spoken to her of course, but in a crowded room, nothing more, and that was years ago when she was very young. Should I be grateful for that limited exposure? Is she as deadly as word has it?"

Blaise shrugged. "I have survived. So far."

"Damaged?"

"Scars. I'm dealing with them."

Bertran's mouth crooked. "That is the most that can be said of any of us in such affairs."

"You were in love," said Blaise, surprising himself again. "That goes deeper."

"So does death." After a moment Bertran shrugged, and then shook his head as if to break free of such thoughts. "Are we friends? Are you visiting Talair and sparing me the cost of a trained coran?"

Blaise nodded. "I suppose I am. This has become a strange path, though. Where do you think it will bring us out?"

Bertran looked amused. "That, at least, is easy enough: Barbentain Castle and Lussan town below it. Hadn't you heard? There's a fair about to start." He turned his horse and they began to ride.

Endlessly witty, Blaise thought, and at the price of almost everything else it sometimes seemed. He realized that he hadn't said anything to Bertran about saving his life.

On impulse he wheeled his horse and rode back a short way. Dismounting again, he found the dagger. The hilt was richly studded with gems in typically Portezzan fashion. He swung up into his saddle again and cantered to catch up with Bertran. The duke looked over, eyebrows raised, as he came up.

Blaise extended the blade, hilt foremost. "A shame to leave it," he said. "Thank you. That was quick moving, for a man past his best."

Bertran grinned. "My knee certainly is, at any rate." He took the dagger, examined it. "Pretty work," he said, "if a trifle gaudy." He put it in his belt.

Nothing more was said; nothing more would be said, Blaise knew. Men familiar with war had their codes in matters such as this. He had once thought that the Arbonnais corans would fall short in this, that they would be prone to commissioning rapturous troubadour verses to celebrate each minor deed of theirs in battle or tournament. It didn't happen that way, he had discovered. He seemed to have discovered a number of things in half a year, without really trying to do so.

The Portezzans ahead of them had begun to move, more quickly now. Borsiard d'Andoria would want to reach Barbentain ahead of Bertran. First complaint sometimes mattered in affairs such as this. They were two days' ride from the fair, though.

Valery, as if reading Blaise's mind, cantered up to them. Bertran looked at his cousin. "I'm not going to try to pass them myself. We'll take our time. Pick five men and go ahead," the duke said. "Find the countess or Roban the chancellor, either one, both together if you can. It is my counsel that all the Portezzans may freely be allowed to enter Lussan or the castle save the Andoria. Tell them why." The big, greying coran turned to go. "Valery," said Bertran. His cousin reined his horse and looked back over his shoulder. "Blaise de Garsenc is no longer in my service. He honours us at Talair with his company and his friendship. Perhaps he will even fight with our men in the tournament melee. Tell the countess."

Valery nodded, looked briefly at Blaise and galloped away in a swirl of dust up the line of their column.

And so the decision was made. Given what had happened, it might have even seemed forced, obvious. With the speed of recent events, they had forgotten something though, all three of them. Under the circumstances that was, perhaps, not altogether surprising. Which did not make it less of an oversight.

On their right, as Bertran and Blaise went by, the dead man, almost naked, swayed from the oak tree, blood still dripping from his forehead where the oathbreaker's brand had been carved.

CHAPTER 10

Roban, the chancellor of Arbonne, had had an intensely trying few days, for all the usual reasons associated with the Autumn Fair. For more years than he could remember, his had been the responsibility of supervising the many-faceted preparations for the annual arrival of what sometimes seemed to be half the known world. In the early days of the Lussan Fair, the burghers of the town had proudly taken charge of preparations themselves, but as the fair grew in importance and the tournament associated with it began to attract more and more of the celebrated figures of the six countries, including kings and queens on more than one occasion, the townsfolk were ultimately happy to swallow their pride and ask for help from the count in Barbentain. Faced with a matter as important, detail-oriented and essentially tedious as the logistics of preparing a month-long fair, the count had assigned the task to Roban. Naturally. As if he didn't have enough to do.

Of course the townsmen helped—as well they should, given how much wealth the Autumn Fair generated for Lussan—and the count had allocated monies adequate to let Roban appoint two Keepers of the Fair and two Keepers of the Seals to assist them. Having control of appointments was always vital, Roban had found; it let one choose men of competence instead of having to work with those who simply had favours owed to them. He was familiar with both scenarios after almost forty years in Barbentain.

In his first year of organizing the fair he had also picked a captain from among the Barbentain corans and empowered him to select and oversee one hundred serjans to police the fairgrounds from sunrise to sunset. At night there was little point in policing anything. The count's guarantee—now the countess's—of safety in Lussan and on the roads approaching the fair was only good until sundown. No ruler in any of the six countries was really able to enforce security after dark, though Roban had had the idea years ago of spending the money to light the three main streets of Lussan for the duration of the fair.

Small touches like that were what had made Lussan's fair by far the most celebrated and best attended in the six countries. For all his frustrations and his chronic sense of being overburdened, Roban was proud of that; he'd always felt that it was worth doing a task properly if it was worth doing at all. That was part of his problem, of course; that was why he ended up with so much to do. It was also the source of his own particular pride: he knew—and he was certain the count, and more recently, the countess, knew—that there was simply no one else in Barbentain, in all of Arbonne, who could handle details such as these as well as he.

The tax officers of the fair were under his direct authority—the tariffs levied on all goods leaving Lussan went straight to the countess's coffers—but the burghers of the town were responsible for appointing and paying the inspectors, notaries, scribes, clerks and couriers. They sent out their own heralds, too, into hamlets throughout the countryside in the harvest season, to remind the farmers and villagers of Arbonne—as if anyone was likely to need reminding—that the Autumn Fair was coming, with its puppet shows and performing animals, its dancers and singers, men who swallowed burning coals and others who made pigeons disappear, and pedlars who sold trinkets and toys and pottery and cures for everything from infertility to indigestion. And there were also, of course, the women who gathered in Lussan for that month from all parts of the known world, and who could be bought in a tavern room for an hour or a night.

Roban was happy to leave the supervision of such things to the burghers; his own concern was for those coming with more tangible goods to trade, over the mountains or by water to Tavernel and then up the high road along the river. The merchants came from everywhere, in fact, travelling with silk and wool and wood, with medicines and perfumes and staggeringly costly spices from the east, with daggers from Arimonda, swords and armour from the forges of Aulensburg, longbows from Valensa, carved icons of Corannos from Gorhaut, gold and silver jewellery from Portezza, Valensan cloth and cheese, wine and olives and olive oil from the south of Arbonne itself. You could buy virtually anything at the Lussan Fair, see people from almost anywhere in the known world and, for the price of a beaker of ale bought in a tavern, hear tales told by sea captains of the fabled countries to the south, far beyond the boundaries of the known.

You could also find, in private houses that sheltered the princes and great merchants from too-close scrutiny, discussions going forward, in rooms shuttered against the sun or candlelit at night, that would shape the flow of events in the six countries for the year to come.

The Lussan Fair was always the last of each year before winter closed the roads and passes. It was the final opportunity for face-to-face discussions for months. Roban knew from long experience that it was what happened behind those forbidding, ornate doors that became the most important legacy of any fair.

That was especially true this year, perhaps more than any other in memory, for the Treaty of Iersen Bridge between Gorhaut and Valensa had completely altered the long balance of power among the six countries, and Arbonne in particular had reason to weigh and fear the consequences of that.

It was therefore not surprising that when the hard-pressed and chronically anxious chancellor of Arbonne learned that Duke Bertran's cousin Valery sought urgent audience with the countess and himself, he concluded, with the glum certainty of the innately pessimistic, that he was not about to receive tidings apt to soothe his jangling nerves.

This, of course, turned out to be the case. Aghast, Roban stood beside the countess's chair in her small private room behind the audience chamber and heard Valery of Talair calmly recount a murder attempt on the problematic Gorhaut coran, the killing of two Portezzans from Andoria in response and then the summary execution of the third—a cousin to Borsiard himself, and, it appeared, very possibly a favourite. Valery was careful to spare them no details. The tensions that would ensue in the wake of all this, Roban calculated swiftly, were likely to ruin the fair before it began. They would also probably drive him to his bed for a day and a night with one of his blinding headaches.

It sometimes seemed to him that he'd spent his entire adult life here at Barbentain, with the count and now the countess, attempting to smooth over crises caused by the actions of the fractious, capricious noblemen of Arbonne. Roban was Arbonnais himself, of course, born to minor rank in Vaux Castle, but he'd been consecrated to Corannos early, in the way of younger sons of younger sons, then plucked from a chapel of the god by Guibor IV while still beardless, though with his abilities in numbers and letters already manifest.

He'd come to Barbentain and risen swiftly through the ranks of Guibor's court to the chancellorship. At the time of his appointment there had been much made of his youthful links with the clergy of the god—an act of careful political balancing by the count. That had been so long ago Roban doubted anyone even remembered any more. Few had objected to his precipitate ascent, even in an ambitious court. Even when he was young there had been something reassuringly earnest about Roban's manner. He was trusted. He deserved to be trusted, he often thought; if only he were listened to more often in this country of hot-blooded men and women with more passion for music than for orderly government.

Music was fine, Roban thought. He enjoyed the troubadours and joglars when he had the chance to hear them. He'd even written some verses himself long ago when formally courting the woman the count had suggested he marry. He couldn't remember the tunes or the lyrics very well—probably a good thing. There were limits to where music could take you, Roban had always thought, or, more properly, there were dimensions in affairs of state where it was necessary to leave aside the romantic troubadour strains and be ruthlessly practical. Roban was a pragmatic man, by his own estimation. He knew what implications flowed from what actions. He was aware that Bertran de Talair would know these things too, perhaps even better than he, but that much of the time the duke would simply not care. That was the way of things here in Arbonne, the chancellor thought gloomily. Witness what had happened two days ago on the high road beside the river.

There was no question that punishment had been called for, that something would have had to be done. What would have put the Andorians in a fury—and a contingent of them were reported to have also arrived today, coated in dust, horses lathered—was the summary action of the duke of Talair by the roadside. Noblemen were simply not executed in the manner of common thieves. Bertran had even had the man branded; Roban winced when Valery mentioned that, and turned away in a vain attempt to conceal his reaction. He tried to turn the motion into a coughing spasm, but suspected that the countess knew this was a subterfuge.

He was seldom able to conceal much from the countess. He had fallen in love the first time he'd ever seen her, forty years ago. He loved her yet, more than his life. He was almost certain that this, at least, she did not know—but it was one of the things that defined Roban of Vaux in his own eyes. He was a man who had loved one woman only and had done so for virtually all his days, notwithstanding his own marriage and children, notwithstanding their enormous difference in rank. He would die having loved the countess of Arbonne with the sustained, lifelong passion of his soul. He didn't even think about it any more, though there had been sleepless, sighing nights in a narrow bed long ago. By now, four decades later, it was simply a given, a fact upon which all else in his life had been founded.

In the room behind the audience chamber he smoothed his face, ran a hand down the front of his doublet in an habitual gesture and turned back to Bertran's cousin. Valery was pointing out, in a tone of calmly reasonable argument, that noblemen could not be allowed to violate a truce by attempting murder on the roads in the blithe expectation that a ransom of some sort would smooth things over for them. Bertran's extremely competent cousin—a man Roban approved of, actually—also noted that by acting summarily Bertran had decisively protected the countess's authority, while leaving her the option of chastising him and appeasing the Andoria, if she wished.

Roban, seeing a faint flicker of hope here, his mind quickly running through possibilities, tried to intercede at this point. He did not succeed. Bertran's own recommendation, Valery added smoothly without pausing for breath, was that no such appeasement should be contemplated. Roban closed his eyes. He was aware, just about then, that one of his headaches was indeed beginning to come on.

The countess's credibility as a woman ruling Arbonne, Valery of Talair said gravely, virtually demanded that she be seen to be as decisive as, say, Jorg of Gotzland would have been in the same situation. Borsiard d'Andoria should be barred from the fair, that was Bertran's suggestion. Naturally it was, Roban thought bitterly: it was amazing to the chancellor that such things could be thought and said, could be casually proposed, by otherwise intelligent men.

"Gotzland is not facing the real possibility of invasion next year," he said bluntly to Valery, finally seizing the chance to speak. "The countess has matters to consider that go beyond the protocols of trade fairs. It is a bad time—a very bad time—to be offending men as important as Borsiard d'Andoria."

"You would have let him buy his man's life? Let him swan about with a new bride in Lussan at the fair and in this castle having attempted murder on our roads? What if the Gorhaut coran had died? What then?"

"His death might have simplified things," Roban answered, too quickly. This was a sore spot for him. "You know what I think of this insanity En Bertran has proposed.»

"It was my daughter who proposed it," the countess said, speaking for the first time. It was a bad sign that her first words were to correct him. "Bertran agreed with Beatritz's suggestion. I also agreed. You objected, made your arguments, and were presented with my decision. Do not be tiresome, Roban. I know your concerns here, but I do not see how we can do other than back what Bertran has already done. I am going to ban Borsiard d'Andoria from the fair." The count, her husband, had been like that too, amazingly like that: hugely important decisions were made with a speed that stunned Roban.

"We will pay for it," he said, feeling his face attaining the unfortunate pink hue that came with agitation. "D'Andoria will be funding Gorhaut next year, I'll wager on it."

Valery of Talair shrugged indifferently. "They don't need funding, my lord chancellor. With the money they received from Valensa by the terms of Iersen Bridge they have more than enough. Look what they paid to assassinate Bertran. Did that appear to be the action of someone short of gold?"

"There is always a shortage of gold in wartime," Roban said darkly. He'd actually had some privy information about the exact sums paid and still owing from Valensa to Gorhaut by the terms of the treaty. The numbers terrified him.

"That reminds me," the countess said in a different tone, one Roban recognized apprehensively. "Daufridi of Valensa must be desperately short of money these days if he paid so much to Gorhaut for the lands they ceded him."

"I daresay he may have some problems," Roban said cautiously. He had learned it was always wise to be cautious when he heard that tone—it usually meant some plan or other was about to be proposed. Usually those plans made him extremely nervous. His headache was growing worse. He saw Valery grin just before the man brought a hand up quickly to cover his mouth. The men of Talair were so clever, it was almost unfair.

"We'll have to talk about that then," the countess murmured. "I do have an idea."

Roban had no notion what she was referring to; it rankled him that Valery appeared to know. His was the endlessly vexing position of being the man left behind to attend to details and minutiae; he was surrounded by quicksilver people whose minds leapt effortlessly down channels he found perilously dark.

The countess was gazing pointedly at Valery; she had seen his smile as well. "That is, if Bertran hasn't already had the same thought long before me." Her tone was not nearly as stern as Roban felt it ought to have been. It was her weakness, he thought, not for the first time: she loved her gallant, irresponsible noblemen far too much to rein them in properly. And Bertran de Talair, among all of them, was a special case.

"I am sure," Valery said gracefully, "that any thoughts En Bertran might have on the subject of Valensa will be conveyed to you as soon as he arrives. I believe we can expect him by the end of the day."

"I rather think," Signe de Barbentain said drily, "he will instead consent to inform me of measures he has already set in motion. Exactly as he did with those verses that nearly had him killed this summer. By the way," she turned to Roban, "this is important: I want Barbentain guards visible wherever the duke of Talair goes during the fair this month. No slight to Bertran's own corans, but anyone with designs upon him must be made aware that we are watching for them."

Roban nodded. This made sense; he liked it when she gave him commands that made sense.

"Rudel Correze is travelling with the Delonghi," Valery said casually, almost as an afterthought. "They were all in a party with the Andoria."

"Wonderful," the countess said tartly. It pleased Roban to see her angry with someone else, even though Bertran's cousin was hardly the appropriate target. "Do I ban him, too? Do we spend this week antagonizing every important family in Portezza?" Signe de Barbentain seldom lost her temper, but Roban sensed it might be happening now. It gratified him that she understood and shared his concerns. He smoothed his doublet again.

Valery was shaking his head. "Blaise de Garsenc says that the man will do nothing here. That the Correze are too prudent to risk the economic hazards of violating a truce. He thinks Rudel has probably withdrawn from his contract in any case."

"Why would he think that?" Roban asked testily. "No one in that family turns their back on two hundred and fifty thousand in gold."

Valery looked apologetic. "I thought the same thing, my lord chancellor. Blaise tells me he knows Rudel Correze extremely well, though. He sees no danger from him now."

"We are relying on that coran from Gorhaut rather a great deal, aren't we?"

"Enough, Roban!" He realized his mistake the moment she spoke—the anger building in her had abruptly turned on him. It always seemed to happen that way, as if he was the safe target, the one she knew she could snap at without risk. Which was true, he thought ruefully. It had been true for decades. Once, he'd wondered if his wife knew how he felt about the countess, and if she cared. He hadn't thought about such things for a long time.

"We will not go down that road again," Signe was saying sternly. "The man is not simply a coran from Gorhaut. He is the son of Galbert de Garsenc, and if we have any hope of dividing Gorhaut on this issue he is that hope. It he betrays us, I will admit you were right before we all die. Is that enough, Roban? Will that content you?"

The chancellor swallowed hard, feeling the way he always felt when she lashed out at him. When he was younger he had actually wept sometimes behind the closed doors of his own quarters after she'd spoken to him in this way. He didn't do that anymore, but he sometimes felt like it. A terrible admission, the chancellor thought, for a man of his age and position. He wondered if she ever knew when his headaches were coming on, if she would have been more sympathetic, a little gentler perhaps, had he informed her.

Signe really didn't remember Roban ever being this obstinately tiresome when Guibor was alive. But then she hadn't had as much to do with him then; he was simply the efficient administrator in the background, and Guibor was not a man with whom advisers pushed their disagreements too hard. It looked as if she wasn't like that herself. Perhaps she depended on Roban too much, perhaps he felt she was weak and needed him to be stronger now. She didn't really know; it wasn't something she'd thought about very much. He was there, he had always been there, and she knew he could be trusted, that something assigned to him would be competently done if it was at all possible. He looked a little flushed today and there were circles under his eyes. It crossed her mind to wonder, as she watched him make his habitual little smoothing gesture down the front of his immaculate doublet, if Roban was overburdened—the usual fate of competent men.

She didn't, in fact, feel especially strong herself at the moment, but that wasn't for anyone to see or guess, even Roban, even Valery. "Send for Borsiard d'Andoria in Lussan," she told the chancellor. "I will give him an audience here. I will not ban him by fiat or decree. He will hear it from me in this castle."

Which is what had happened later that same afternoon. Borsiard had stormed into her audience chamber, raging in the most unpleasant manner, demanding Bertran de Talair's censure and death in redress for the slaughter of three noblemen of Andoria. He had actually had a belief that she might agree, Signe saw. He was seeing her as a woman, a woman who could be frightened by his rage, moved to do what he wanted her to do.

That realization was what had given her access to the cold anger she needed to quell the Portezzan. And he had been quelled. She had dealt with better men than he in the past. As soon as she'd begun to speak, slowly, letting her measured words fall like stones into the stillness of the room, Borsiard's bravado had seemed to leech away from him.

"Take your people and your goods and go," she had said, speaking from the ancient throne of the counts of Arbonne. "You will not be allowed trade or profit at a fair whose laws you have so vilely broken. The men who were killed were properly executed by the duke of Talair, who is our agent in this, as are all the nobility of Arbonne. Whatever your quarrel with Blaise de Garsenc of Gorhaut—a quarrel in which we have no interest whatever—the roads leading to the Lussan Fair were not the place to pursue it. In that, we have a great interest indeed. You will not be troubled as you leave Arbonne. Indeed, we will assign a company of our men to escort you safely to the Portezzan border… unless there is somewhere else you might wish to go?"

Guibor had taught her that; raise the issue yourself, take the initiative from the other person. And as if on cue, Borsiard d'Andoria's dark, handsome face had twisted with a spasm of malice. "Indeed there is," he had said. "There are matters I should like to pursue in Gorhaut. I will travel north from here."

"We have no doubt you will be welcome at the court of King Ademar," Signe had said calmly. This was not a man to unsettle her, however much he might be worth, whatever Roban might fear. He was far too predictable. She wondered how long his marriage would last. She allowed herself to smile; she knew how to make her smile a weapon if need be. "We only hope your lady wife does not find it cold in Cortil and dull there as winter comes to the north," she murmured. "If she prefers to go home we will be happy to offer her an escort. Indeed—" a thought born of the moment " — we will be most pleased to have her stay on at our court should you wish to go north without her. We imagine we could find ways to keep her amused. It would be unjust to deny a lady the pleasures of a fair because of her husband's transgressions. We do not behave that way in Arbonne."

She wondered, lying in bed that same night, if she might have cause to regret the loss of temper that had led to that last invitation. It could prove awkward in many ways to have Lucianna Delonghi—it was almost impossible to think of her by any other name, despite her marriages—in Barbentain and Lussan this month. On the other hand, had the woman wanted to stay for the fair, she could simply have joined her father's contingent in any case. The invitation lent a sanction of control to what could hardly have been prevented. Signe hoped it might be seen that way, at any rate. She was also, privately, somewhat curious to meet the woman again. The last time Lucianna Delonghi had been in Barbentain was six or seven years ago, before the first of her marriages. Her father had presented her to the count and countess. She'd been clever, as all her family were, beautiful already, watchful, very young. A great deal had evidently happened to her in the intervening years.

It might be interesting to see exactly what. Later, though, Signe thought. She didn't want to see anyone at the moment. She had retired early, leaving to Roban and the Keepers of the Fair the task of carrying out her orders regarding the Andoria. She doubted there would be difficulties; Borsiard had few corans with him this far from home, and was unlikely to embarrass himself by forcing a public removal from Lussan. He was, however, quite likely to go north to Gorhaut—as Roban had gloomily predicted. The chancellor was usually right about such things. What Borsiard would do there was harder to guess. But the implications could not be lost on anyone: Andoria was one less source of funding for Arbonne, one less ally if war did come, and possibly one more contingent of arms in the field if Gorhaut asked for them.

Signe sighed in the darkness of her room. She knew Bertran had acted properly in what he'd done, that he'd made it easier for her by taking the burden upon himself. She only wished… she only wished he didn't seem to always find himself in situations where doing the proper thing meant so much trouble for all of them.

At the moment all she wanted to do was rest. There was sometimes a curious easing of care for her in the nighttime, in the embrace of sleep. It didn't always come to her easily, but when it did her dreams were almost always benign, comforting. She would be walking in the castle gardens, or with Guibor, young again, in that meadow she had loved beneath the Ancients' aqueduct near Carenzu, and sometimes the four children would be with them: clever Beatritz with her shining hair, the boys—Guibor eager and adventuresome, Piers watchful, a little apart—and then Aelis trailing behind them through the green, green grass. Aelis, in her mother's dreams, always seemed older than the others, though she was the youngest child. She would appear in the dreams as she had looked, coming into the flourish of her own late, fierce beauty, in the year before she died.

Signe reached towards sleep that night as a woman reaching for the last gentle lover of her days. The anxieties of day would still be waiting in the morning, with newer concerns appearing to join them, new dangers from the north… tonight she sought her dreams. She was not allowed to have them. The knocking at the outer door of her suite of rooms was so soft she would not have even heard it had she actually been asleep. One of the girls in the antechamber would have, though. Already Brisseau, the older of the two, hovered, anxious and wraithlike in her white night-robe, at the entrance to Signe's chamber.

"See who it is," the countess said, though there was only one person it could be at this hour.

Roban waited in the outer room while she donned her own robe. She went out to him; she disliked receiving men or conducting affairs of state in her bedchamber. He was still in the doublet he'd worn earlier in the day. Signe understood, with something of a shock, that he had not yet even gone to bed. It was very late, and the chancellor did not look well. His face was haggard and in the light of the candles the girls were hastily lighting his eyes were deep-sunken. He looked older than his years, she thought suddenly: they had worn him down in their service, she and Guibor. She wondered if he felt the labours had been worth the price. She wondered, for the first time, what he actually thought of the two of them. Or of her, more properly. Guibor was dead; one thought nothing but good of the dead. She realized she didn't really know what her chancellor's opinion of her might be. Frivolous, she decided; he'd probably concluded she was frivolous and impetuous and needed a steady, guiding hand. That might answer her question of earlier in the day about why he had pushed his views so urgently of late.

He really didn't look well, though.

"Sit," she said. "Before you begin, sit down. Brisseau, a flask of cider for the chancellor."

She thought Roban would refuse the chair but he did not; that only served to increase her own disquiet. Forcing herself to be patient she waited, sitting opposite him, until the cider had been brought and placed on the table. She waited again until he drank.

"Tell me," she said, finally.

"My lady, a message came to me from Rian's temple in the town earlier tonight," he said, his voice curiously faint. "It purported to be from someone who could not possibly have been in Lussan, requesting audience and… and sanctuary with you."

"Yes?"

"Yes, so I went down into town myself to see if it might possibly be a true message. I am afraid it is, my lady. I fear that we have the gravest crisis upon us now, one that makes the Andoria matter seem as nothing."

"Who is it? Who is in the town?"

"Not in town any longer. I had no choice, my lady, I had to bring her up to the castle before anyone else knew she was here or what was happening." The chancellor drew an unsteady breath. "Countess, it seems that the Lady Rosala de Garsenc of Gorhaut has left the duke her husband without his knowledge. She seeks refuge with us. She is in Barbentain now, and, my lady… though I am far from expert in these matters, I believe that she may be about to give birth, even as we speak."

Cadar de Savaric, defiantly named and surnamed for his mother's father and family, entered the world in Barbentain Castle shortly before dawn that night.

Brought early to his time by the rigours of his mother's journey through the mountains to Arbonne, he was nonetheless sturdy and pink when he emerged, letting out a loud cry his exhausted mother heard as triumphant when the priestess of Rian, summoned hastily to the castle, drew him from her womb and clipped the birthing cord.

They washed him ceremoniously in milk warmed by the fire, as befitted a child of rank, and the older of the two priestesses swaddled him expertly in blue samite before handing him to the countess of Arbonne, who had remained in the room for the last long hours of Rosala's travail. Signe de Barbentain, white-haired, with the delicate blue veins showing in her pale, flawless skin, cradled the child and looked down upon it with an expression Rosala could not entirely comprehend but which she found deeply reassuring nonetheless. After a moment Signe walked over to the bed and laid the infant gently in his mother's arms.

Rosala had not expected the gentleness. She had not known what to expect. She had only realized, when Galbert de Garsenc had ridden away from her a week ago, that she was going to go south, however she possibly could. Beyond that she had not clearly thought.

The coming of the Lussan Fair had given her the chance. Garsenc lay near to the principal road that ran up into the mountain pass, and each day Rosala had seen small troupes of corans and tradesmen passing by their lands, often stopping to worship at the chapel, or do a bit of business in the castle or the village below.

Two days after her father-in-law's visit, Rosala wrote a note to her husband, saying that she was journeying north to her own family estate to await the birth of the child. She'd had a dream, she lied, a terrible nightmare of premonition. Too many infants and women had died in labour at Garsenc Castle, she wrote Ranald. It had frightened her for their child. She felt safer going home to Savaric. She hoped he would understand. She hoped he would come to her there when affairs at court allowed. She signed it with her name. She left the castle, unseen, by the postern gate that same night. Her favourite horse was kept in the coran's stables outside the walls so it could be readily exercised while she was unable to ride. There was no guard at the stables—no one would be rash enough to tempt the wrath of the Garsenc by approaching their horses. She had mounted awkwardly and ridden away, side-saddle, by the twin lights of the moons, the landscape both beautiful and frightening at night, the child large and heavy in her belly. She had only the faintest hope, dim as the stars beside bright Vidonne, of reaching her destination.

That one night was all she was capable of riding. Reluctantly, in real distress, she left the horse near a small hamlet before dawn and made her way on foot back to the road. At sunrise, walking slowly, hungry and extremely tired, she came upon the encampment of some travelling entertainers. Two women were bathing in a stream when she came up to them. They exclaimed at her condition. She used the first name that came into her head and told them she was travelling to Arbonne in search of aid in childbirth. Two infants had already died at birth, she lied, making the warding sign behind her hip. She was willing to do anything to save this one, she said. That last was true. It was entirely true.

The women made their own warding signs at the hint that she was seeking magic but generously welcomed her into their company for the journey south. Rosala rode through the mountains in a jouncing, lurching wagon with two thievish grey monkeys, a talking bird from the northern swamplands, an adder in a basket and a garrulous animal-trainer, whose teeth were bizarrely blue. Poison, he explained, from the snake before it was defanged. He fed it mice and small lizards that he caught. Every time the wagon hit a rut in the road, and there were a great many as they went through the pass, Rosala looked anxiously to the basket, to make sure the clasp still held. The bear and the mountain cat, thankfully, rode in their own wagon just behind them. She talked as little as she could, to avoid having to sustain an accent that would not give her away. It was relatively easy with Othon in the wagon: he was one of those men who would have pined away had he lost the use of his voice. He was kind to her, though, bringing soups and bread back from the communal fire at the dinner hour. She grew accustomed to the drone of his voice and the endlessly reiterated stories of past travels during the three slow days it took them to cross from Gorhaut over the summit of the pass and come down into Arbonne. It began to seem to her that she had always been with these people, riding in this wagon, that Garsenc Castle was the dream, something from another woman's life.

On the fourth morning, Rosala lifted the flap of the wagon and stepped outside just as the sun was rising over the hills east of them. She looked south over a landscape entirely strange to her and saw the river, bright blue in the morning light, flowing swiftly beside the road. In the distance, glittering, scarcely visible save for that shimmer in the sun, she saw towers.

"That'll be Barbentain," said Othon sagely from behind her. She looked over her shoulder and managed a weak smile. He scratched himself in several indelicate places, stretched and grunted. "Yon's the finest castle I've ever been to in all my days. We'll be there tonight, I reckon. There was a count there, not long ago—mayhap you heard of him—Guibor Third, or Fourth he may have been. Huge man, tall as a tree, fierce in war… and in love, as they all are down here." He chuckled lewdly, showing the blue teeth. "Any-hap, he was the finest figure of a man I ever saw in my days. His widow rules now. Don't know much about her. They say she used to be pretty but now she's old." Othon yawned and then spat into the grass. "We all get old," he pronounced and strolled away, scratching, to attend to his morning functions in the bush. One of the monkeys followed him.

Rosala placed a hand over her belly and looked along the bright, sinuous line of the river away to the south. There were cypresses on the ridges above them, and a species of pine she'd not encountered before. On the terraced slopes west of the road were the fabled olive trees of Arbonne.

She gazed at them for a moment, then turned back to look again at the far, shimmering turrets of the castle, where Guibor TV's widow ruled now. Marry the bitch, her husband had advised Ademar of Gorhaut not so long ago. Rosala's father had said once that the countess of Arbonne was the fairest woman in the world in her day. One thing, at least, in which he appeared to agree with Othon the animal-trainer.

Rosala didn't need her to be beautiful. Only kind, and with a certain kind of courage that she knew her presence would put greatly to the test. She was too versed in the nature of things not to know what her arrival in Barbentain would mean, carrying a possible heir to Garsenc—or a successor to the High Elder of the god in Gorhaut. She honestly didn't see what choice she'd had, though, unless it was to surrender the child, and that was no choice at all.

Later in the day, with the sun high in a bright, clear autumn sky, she began feeling the first pains. She hid them as best she could, but eventually even Othon noticed and his endless flow of words slowly dried up. He sent for the women and they comforted her as best they could, but they had a long way to go yet to Lussan. It was, in fact, well past nightfall by the time they set her down at the temple of Rian.

It was a healthy, well-made baby boy, Signe thought, surprised at the pleasure she felt holding him. Under all the circumstances, she should have been feeling nothing but the deepest concern for her own people. This child and his mother represented danger in its purest form, they could easily be Gorhaut's excuse for war. In the room outside, Roban was pacing like a father desperate for an heir, but Signe knew the source of his disquiet was entirely otherwise. He was almost certainly hoping Rosala de Garsenc's child would be a girl. For a girl, the corans of Gorhaut were far less likely to be unleashed upon them.

No such luck, it seemed. Rian and Corannos both appeared to have a hand in the events unfolding here, and when the god and the goddess worked together, the old saying went, men and women could only kneel and bow their heads. Signe, bowing her head, smiled down upon the child, swaddled in aristocratic blue, and carried him to his mother. Rosala de Garsenc was almost bone-white in the candlelight, and her blue eyes were enormous in her drawn face, but the expression in those eyes was as resolute and unafraid now as it had been all night. Signe admired her greatly. She had heard the story in the dark of night, told in bursts through the birthing pains: the reason for this flight, the plea for sanctuary.

It was not a request she was capable of refusing; even Roban, to his credit, had brought the woman across to Barbentain. He would probably deny it in the morning, but Signe was almost certain her chancellor, too, had been moved by Rosala's story. It was more than pragmatism that had caused him to bring the woman to the castle. She was, she realized, proud of him.

She was also aware that this sympathy, this yielding to the human impulse, might well destroy them all. Rosala, quite evidently, knew this too. Through the long night of labour, talking almost incoherently through her pain, the woman had nonetheless revealed a formidable intelligence. Her courage, too, was obvious. One would need courage and something more to stand up to Galbert de Garsenc in the way this woman had.

"Your child is here, my lady," Signe said softly by the bed, the formal words. "Will it please his mother to give him his name?"

"Cadar," said Rosala, lifting her voice to let the first speaking ring clearly in the world he had entered. "His name is Cadar de Savaric." She lifted her arms and Signe gave her the child.

There was more defiance here, the countess knew, to the point of provocation. She was glad Roban had not heard this; the chancellor had had enough stress for one day. She felt old and tired herself, weighted with the night and the years of her living. The time of music and laughter here in Barbentain seemed infinitely long ago, a dream, a troubadour's fantasy, not really part of her own history.

"He has a father," she felt obliged to say. "You are choosing to cut him off from that? What if his father wants to accept him, despite everything, to offer his protection? Will this name not be a bar to that?"

The woman was very tired, it was unfair to be taxing her in this way, but it was necessary, before the name went forth from this room. Rosala looked up with those clear blue northern eyes and said, "If his father chooses to come for him and shelter him I will think on this again." There was an intonation there, a stress on one word that stirred within Signe a new disquiet, like a note of music almost but not quite audible, sensed if not really heard.

Rosala said, "He will need a man and a woman to stand for him before the god—and the goddess, too, if you have such a ritual in Arbonne."

"We do. The Guardians of Rian and Corannos. We honour both here, I think you know that."

"I do know that. Will you honour my child and myself by standing up for Cadar? Is this too much to ask?"

It was, in many ways. It redoubled all the dangers this child represented for Arbonne to have the countess herself so identified with him. Roban would have turned pink with the vigour of his reaction.

"I will," said Signe de Barbentain, genuinely moved, looking down at the child. She had never seen her own grandson, born and lost on a winter's night so many years ago. Lost or dead, no one alive knew but Urté dc Miraval, and he was not going to tell. He was not ever going to tell. Time and memory and loss seemed tangled and twisted tonight, with avenues to sorrow everywhere. She was looking down on this fair-haired woman and thinking of Aelis. "The honour will be mine," she said. Rosala shifted the coverlet away and placed the infant against her breast. Blindly, with the most primal response of all, he began to suck. Signe was aware that she was dangerously close to tears. It was the sleepless night, she told herself sternly, but knew this was not so.

"And for the second Guardian?" she said. "Is there anyone you know here you would want to ask?"

There is a next stage to the story of every man, every woman, every child, a point at which the new thing that happens shapes what follows irrevocably. Such a moment it was when Rosala looked up from her pillow, her pale hair matted and damp about her head, her son at the breast, and said to the countess of Arbonne: "There is one, though it may be another presumption. My father said that whatever else was true of him, he was a brave and an honest man and, forgive me, I know he is an enemy of Galbert de Garsenc. That may not be the purest reason for naming a Guardian in the eyes of Corannos and Rian, but that is why my child needs guarding now. Is the duke of Talair in Lussan? Will he do this for us, do you think?"

Signe did weep then, and, moments later, frightening herself a little, she began to laugh, helplessly, through her tears. "He is here. And if I ask him I think he will," she said. There were already so many layers of interwoven memory here, so many echoes, and now one more, as Bertran, too, came into it.

She looked out the window; the first hint of gray was in the eastern sky. Something occurred to her then, far too late, one more thread in this dark, time-spun weaving: "You do know that your husband's brother is with the duke of Talair?"

And saw then, having been carefully observant all her life, two things. First that the woman had not in fact known this; and secondly, that it mattered to her, very much. Signe's earlier disquiet, like a dissonance of almost-heard music, came back to her. She had a question suddenly, she had several questions, but it was not time for them, and it might never be time. She suddenly missed Beatritz very much, wished her daughter had elected to come north for the fair this year instead of remaining on Rian's Island.

Rosala de Garsenc said, speaking carefully, "I would not want to see him yet. I would not want him to know I am here. Is this possible?"

"I do not think he would betray you, or try to send you back. We know a little of Blaise here now."

Rosala shook her head. "It isn't that. I am… too much entangled in that family. Would the duke tell him I was here?"

Signe shook her head, masking a growing unease. "Bertran deals with women in his own ways, and he cannot be said to be the most predictable of men, but he will not betray a confidence."

Rosala looked down at the child on her breast, trying to deal with what she had just learned. Cadar had an unexpectedly full head of hair, lying in whorls and ringlets upon his forehead. In the candlelight it was a distinctive shade of brown, nearly red. Very like his father's, she thought. This latest information should really not have surprised her so much; they had heard over the summer that Blaise had left Portezza again. She closed her eyes for a moment. It was difficult to have so many things to deal with just now. She was extremely tired.

She looked up at the countess. "I am a very great burden for you. I know this is true. I could see no other choices, though, for the child. Thank you for allowing me here. Thank you for accepting Guardianship. Will you do one more thing? Will you ask the duke of Talair to stand up with you for my son this morning before Corannos and Rian and against all those who would do him harm in the world?"

In the end, Roban the chancellor went himself with two of the corans of his own household to find En Bertran de Talair. The duke was not in his own bed. but the chancellor persevered and found him soon enough, though not, unfortunately, alone. A mildly embarrassing incident ensued, but not one of sufficient importance to affect Roban's mission.

They rode back across the lowered bridge to the castle on its island just as the sun was rising beyond the river, sending light, finally, like a blessing into the room where Rosala lay. Bertran de Talair entered that room with the morning brightness, wearing his habitual amusement like a cloak, sardonic laughter barely hidden in his eyes. He looked at the countess first, and then to where the woman lay, and lastly he looked down, without speaking upon the cradle at the foot of the bed and saw the sleeping child.

After a long time during which his expression could slowly be seen to change, he looked back at the mother lying in the bed. The priestess of Rian had washed her and dressed her in a blue silk robe, and had helped her with her hair. It lay, long and golden in the mild sunlight, combed out upon the pillow and over the coverlet. Her eyes were as blue as his own.

"My congratulations," he said formally. "You have a handsome son. I wish him good fortune all his life."

She was registering everything she could: the light, clear voice, the scar, the mutilated ear, the way his expressive face had altered when he allowed the irony to recede.

"Galbert de Garsenc, High Elder of Corannos in Gorhaut, would take this child from me," she said, without preamble or pleasantry. Her voice was carefully measured; she had prepared these words while they waited for him to come. It was bald, graceless, but she was too weary to do this eloquently, she could barely manage to say what needed to be said.

"So I have been informed," he replied gravely. "I am afraid, under those circumstances, that accepting Guardianship for my child will be more than ceremonial."

"Under the circumstances, I believe that to be so."

"Will you take this upon yourself?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied calmly. And then, after a pause, "I will die myself before you lose this child to him."

Her colour rose sharply, he saw, and her breathing quickened, as if released from a rigid effort of control. "Thank you," she whispered. There were tears now—for the first time all night, though he could not know that. She turned her head and looked at the countess. "Thank you both. This makes him as safe as the world will let him be. I think I can rest now."

They saw her close her eyes. She was asleep almost as soon as she finished speaking. Standing on either side of the bed Bertran and the countess exchanged a long glance. Neither spoke for several moments.

Finally the duke grinned; Signe had been more or less expecting that, it was almost a relief when it came, a breaking of the heavy spell of this night.

"You did this," he said, "not I. Never reproach me."

"I did not think you would refuse a child," she said quietly. "There will be no reproach. We must be what we are, or we become our enemies." It was morning, she hadn't slept all night. She didn't feel tired though, not any more. She walked to the eastern window and looked out over the island and the river and the red and golden autumn colours of her land.

In the doorway, Roban the chancellor heard those words exchanged and watched his countess move to stand at the window. She looked terribly small and fragile there, beautiful as ivory. He remained silent, smoothing down the front of his shirt again, unnecessarily. He was contemplating not only the nobility of the sentiments just expressed but the rapidly growing likelihood that they would all be conquered and dead by the summer of the year to come.

The taverns of Lussan were thronged at the time of the fair, and there were a great many of them. It was, therefore, only sheerest bad luck that led Othon the animal-trainer into The Arch late that night after he'd already visited three other inns and had commenced his enjoyment of the Lussan Fair in typically liquid fashion. Rendered even more garrulous than usual, Othon was holding forth at a table of sundry reunited performers, describing the unusual travelling companion he'd had in his wagon. For a man known to travel with a snake and monkeys to characterize any companion as unusual was sufficiently droll to earn him more attention than customary.

"Yellow-haired and blue-eyed, she was," Othon declared, "and very likely a beauty, though it was hard to see given her… condition, if you take my meaning." He paused. Someone obligingly refilled his glass. "Not many women look their best when about to drop a babe, in my experience.»

Someone made a lewd remark linking Othon's experience to his monkeys. Amid the laughter the animal-trainer drank again and then went on, with the placid tenacity of a storyteller used to holding the floor against difficult odds. He did not notice the three men at the next table who had stopped their own conversation to listen to what he was saying.

"She tried to pretend she was a farmer's wife or some such, a smith, a carter, but it was easy enough to see she was no such thing at all. I've been in enough castles in my time to recognize nobility, if you know what I mean." The wit at his table attempted another jest, but Othon's voice rode over him this time. "We left her at the goddess's temple here, and it is my personal wager that some lord of Gorhaut'll have a babe by now through the aid of the priestesses of Rian—and isn't that a jest?"

It might have been, but it was also somewhat near to the bone that autumn season. Everyone knew how tense affairs had become between Gorhaut and Arbonne, and no one wanted to be the first or the most obvious to laugh in a tavern filled with unfamiliar men from many countries. Disappointed, Othon subsided into silence for a few moments, before beginning, with impressive optimism, a new, discursive account of his last visit to Barbentain. He had lost his audience by then, though, and was largely talking to himself.

The three men at the next table had not only stopped listening, they had settled their account and left The Arch. In the street outside, expensively lit by lanterns during the fair season, the three corans, who happened to be from Gorhaut, and more particularly from Garsenc Castle, had a hurried, highly agitated consultation among each other.

At first they considered drawing straws to see which of them would ride back to Garsenc with what they thought they'd learned. It could be done in two days if a man killed horses under him. A moment's further deliberation induced them to alter this plan. There might be some real risk in bearing these tidings, or there might be profit to be found—it was hard to tell with the lords of Gorhaut, and especially so with the de Garsenc.

In the end, they each elected to forego the ransoms they might earn in the tournament melee—the reason they'd come to Lussan in the first place—in favour of collectively riding north with the almost certain news that the missing wife of Duke Ranald was in Lussan at the moment. Carefully they avoided comment, even among themselves, on the possible implications of this. They returned to their own inn, paid their accounts, saddled horses and rode.

Part of the bad luck—all of it, in fact, from Othon the animal-trainer's point of view—was that one of the three pulled up suddenly just before the wide-open northern gates of walled Lussan and grimly pointed something out to the other two. Silent, visibly shaken by what he said, they exchanged frightened glances, each nodding agreement with this new conclusion.

They did draw straws then after all. The one who'd had the disturbing thought drew the short straw, perhaps appropriately. He bade farewell to the other two and watched them start off on the hard ride back through the mountain pass. He returned to their inn alone. Later that night he killed the animal-trainer with a knife between the ribs when the latter stumbled alone into an alley to relieve himself. It was an easy killing, in fact, though it brought him no particular satisfaction. No ruler could guarantee safety after sunset, even during a fair. He was breaching a truce by doing this, though, and, as it happened, he didn't much like doing that, but his own likes or dislikes weren't greatly important in a situation such as this one had become. He cleaned his blade at a splashing fountain and went back into The Arch for another flask of ale. Killing, he'd always found, gave him a thirst.

It would not do, he had said to the other two corans at the city gates, to have Ranald de Garsenc, or worse, the High Elder himself, asking why the loose-tongued old man had been permitted to continue prattling idly, spreading a vicious story that could only do harm to the family the three corans had sworn oaths to serve.

A crowded table had heard Othon tell his story, though, and rumour and gossip were the most vigorously traded items of any fair. It was all over Lussan by the end of the next day that a noblewoman from Gorhaut had come south to bear a child. A few people had even heard a second tale, that the countess herself, and the duke of Talair, had been seen together, first in Rian's temple and then the god's stone chapel in Barbentain just after dawn that morning. Some clever person mentioned the birth rites of Guardianship to someone else. That, too, was all over the fair by nightfall.

Othon's death passed virtually without comment. Knifings after dark among the travelling folk were too ordinary to be worth much discussion. The animals were sold to another trainer before the fair was over. One of the monkeys, surprisingly, refused to eat, and died.

CHAPTER 11

"A challenge!" shouted the trovaritz from Aulensburg. The tavern was thronged, he wasn't loud enough, only those near him heard, and most of them laughed. The man, Lisseut saw from the next table over, was going to be persistent though. He climbed unsteadily onto his chair seat and then up on the table around which he and half a dozen other Gotzland musicians were sitting. He was roaring drunk, she saw. Most of the people in The Senhal were by then. She'd had two or three glasses of wine herself, to celebrate the beginning of the fair. Jourdain and Remy, after successful summer tours, one in Arimonda, the other among the cities of Portezza, were taking turns buying for the table while trading competitive tales of increasingly improbable triumphs.

The Gotzlanders began rhythmically banging their heavy flagons on the wooden table. The noise was so insistent it shaped a lull in the din of sound. Into that space in the noise the trovaritz on the table shouted again: "A challenge!"

"Damn that man," said Remy, in the middle of a story about a night in Portezzan Vialla when his music had been sung at the commune's summer feast while he had sat at the high table with the most powerful men of the city. Aurelian had been doing the singing, of course; Lisseut was still vexed at times that her lanky, dark-haired friend would continue to suspend his own steady rise among the ranks of the poets to revert to a joglar's role and spend a season lending the lustre of his voice to enhance Remy's name. Friendship, Aurelian had said mildly when she'd challenged him, and: I like to sing. I like singing Remy's songs. Why should I deny myself those pleasures? It was extremely hard to pick a fight with Aurelian.

"A challenge to the troubadours of Arbonne!" the Gotzlander roared. With the ebb in the tavern noise he was clearly heard this time. Even Remy turned around, his expressive face going still, to stare at the man balanced precariously on the next table top.

"Speak your challenge," said Alain of Rousset from their own table. "Before you fall and break your neck." He was much more assertive these days, Lisseut noted, with some pleasure. She'd had something to do with that: the success of their partnership, the recognition now beginning to come for both of them.

"Won't fall," said the trovaritz, very nearly doing exactly that. Two of his fellows had hands up, steadying him. A very crowded room had become remarkably quiet. The man reached downward urgently. Another of the Gotzland musicians obligingly handed him up a flagon. The trovaritz took a long pull, wiped his moustache with the back of his hand and declaimed, "Want you to show why we should keep following Arbonne. In our music. We do all your things in Aulensburg, there're singers in Arimonda 'n Portezza. Do everything you do now. Do it as well! S'time to come out from your shadow." He drank again, swayed, added in the stillness, "Specially 'cause you may not be here a year from now!"

Two of the others at his table had the grace to wince at that and haul the trovaritz down, but the thing had been said. Lisseut reached for anger but found only the sadness and the fear that seemed to have been with her since Midsummer. It didn't take brilliance to see enough of the future to be afraid.

There were four troubadours at their table, though she knew Aurelian would not volunteer his own music. He could sing for them, though. Remy and Jourdain exchanged a glance, and Alain cleared his throat nervously. Lisseut was about to speak her suggestion when someone took the matter away from all of them.

"I will make answer to that challenge, if I may." She knew the voice, they all knew the voice, but they hadn't seen the man come in. No one had even reported that he was in Lussan. Looking quickly around, Lisseut saw Ramir of Talair, carrying his lute, coming slowly forward from a corner at the very back of the tavern, picking his way carefully between tables of people to the center of the room.

Bertran's joglar had to be sixty years old now at least. He seldom toured for the duke any longer. Long past were the days when Ramir carried his lute and harp and Bertran de Talair's music to every castle and town of Arbonne, and into most of the major cities and fastnesses of the other five countries. He lingered in Talair mostly now, with a suite of rooms of his own and an honoured place by the fire in the hall. He hadn't even come to Tavernel for Midsummer the past two years. There had been some overly febrile speculation among the younger performers both seasons that it might soon be time for En Bertran to select a new joglar. There was no higher status imaginable for a singer; dreams or night-long sleeplessness could be shaped of such a fantasy.

Lisseut looked at the old performer with a mingling of affection and sadness. She had not seem him for a long time. He did look older now, frail. His round, kind face, scarred by a childhood pox, seemed to have been part of her world forever. A great deal would change when Ramir was gone, she realized, watching as he came shuffling forward. He didn't walk very well, she saw.

"Well, really—" Remy began, under his breath. "Shut up." Aurelian spoke with uncharacteristic sharpness. The lanky troubadour's face had an odd expression as he looked at Ramir.

Alain rose from his seat and hurried to bring Ramir the performer's stool and footrest. With a gentle smile the old joglar thanked him. Troubadours didn't tend to assist joglars, but Ramir was different. Declining Alain's offered hand, the old man cautiously lowered himself onto the low stool. He stretched out his left leg with an audible sigh of relief. One of the Gotzlanders laughed. Ramir had some trouble with the thong on his lute case and Lisseut saw an Arimondan at the table on the other side of them cover his mouth to politely hide a smile.

Ramir finally slipped his instrument out of the case and began tuning it. The lute looked to be as old as he was, but the sound, even in the tuning, was achingly pure. Lisseut would have given almost anything for such an instrument. She looked around The Senhal. The silence was a nervous one now, broken by whispers and murmuring. It was so crowded in the tavern it was hard to move. On the upper levels people had pushed to the railings to look down. Over on the eastern wall, on that higher level, Lisseut saw a gleam of long, dark hair by candlelight. She was a little surprised, but not greatly so. Ariane de Carenzu, her hair down, as ever, in defiance of tradition, sat beside a slender, handsome man, her husband. Lisseut knew Duke Thierry now. Before coming to Lussan she and Alain had spent a fortnight in Carenzu, at the particular request of the queen of the Court of Love. They each had a purse full of silver to show for it, and Lisseut had been given a crimson vest of fine wool trimmed with expensive squirrel fur against the coming cold. She had told Remy earlier in the evening that if he damaged her new vest in any way he would replace it or die. He had ordered a bottle of Cauvas gold wine by way of reply. They had been joking then, laughing about Midsummer, celebrating.

She looked back at Ramir. He was still tuning the lute, loosening his fingers as he did. Lisseut's uncle had taught her about that, one of the first lessons he had given her: whatever else you do, never rush the beginning. Start when you are ready to start, they will not leave as long as they see you preparing.

"We have a challenge here," Ramir said, almost conversationally, one ear tilted down towards the lute, fingers busy on the strings. His voice was pitched so they all had to lean forward to hear. The silence abruptly became complete. Another old joglar's trick, Lisseut knew. She saw, out of the corner of her eye, that Remy was now smiling as well.

"A curious challenge, really." For the first time Ramir looked briefly at the table of Gotzlanders. "How is one to fairly choose among the music of different countries, different heritages? Surely there is fine music made in Aulensburg and in Arimonda at the court of King Vericenna, as has just been urged upon us so… soberly… by our friend over there." There was a titter of amusement. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, Ramir's voice had begun to chime and weave with the apparently random chords he was playing upon the lute. Aurelian's face as he listened, Lisseut saw, was entranced, rigorously attentive.

"We are asked, in the light of this truth, why Arbonne should be pre-eminent." Ramir paused, looked around the room, not hurrying. "We are also asked, in nearly as many words, what there will be to mourn if Arbonne is lost."

He left a silence after that, save for the gentle, almost casual notes drawn from the instrument as if unconsciously.

Lisseut swallowed abruptly, with difficulty. Ramir said, "I am only a singer, and such questions are difficult to answer. Let me offer a song instead, with apologies if it should be found inadequate and fail to please." The ancient phrasing, that, no one used it any more. "I will sing a song of the first of the troubadours."

"Ah," said Remy under his breath. "Ah, well." Ramir's fingers were busier now, the music beginning to take shape, the notes gathering as if from scattered places in the world at the joglar's bidding. "Anselme of Cauvas was of modest birth," Ramir said, and this too was of the old fashion, the vidan, the tale of the composer. No one in the newer generation did this any longer when beginning a song. "Anselme was clever and gifted, though, and was brought into the chapel of the god at Cauvas, and then Duke Raimbaut de Vaux took him into his household, and finally he came to the attention of the count himself, Folquet, and the count honoured Anselme for his wisdom and discretion and employed him in many affairs of state in all of the six countries for many years. And Anselme had several great loves among the noble ladies of his day, but always he was chaste and honourable, and never did he speak the name of any of these women, but in his passion and desire he began composing songs for them, and this was the beginning of the troubadours of Arbonne."

The music beneath the spoken words was beautiful, delicate as lace or the gems of a master jeweller, precise, many-faceted. Ramir said, "I could sing a song of love of Anselme of Cauvas tonight, I could sing his love songs all night long until the dawn came to draw us out the doors, but we have been given a different kind of challenge here, and so I will sing a different kind of song. With the permission and by the grace of all those gathered here, I will sing a song Anselme wrote once when he was far from home."

The music changed and was alone then, creating room for beauty by candle and lantern light in a thronged tavern, with the first cold breezes of autumn beginning to blow outside. Lisseut knew the tune immediately. Everyone at their table knew this tune. She waited, feeling close to tears, wanting to close her eyes but wanting also to watch Ramir, every movement he made, and a moment later she heard the jongleur sing:

Ramir's rich voice paused again, as he let the simple, sweet notes of the music take them away with it. There was an old, plain roughness to the song, words and music both. It was worlds removed from Jourdain's intricate melodies or the subtle interplay of thought and image and changing form in Remy's best work or Alain's new songs. This, though, was the authentic voice of something at its very beginning. Lisseut knew her own origins were here, those of all the joglars and troubadours, and, yes, of that table of Gotzland trovaritz, and all the Arimondan singers and Portezzan, and of those men in Gorhaut and Valensa who might actually venture to shape music of a different sort from the interminably thunderous battle hymns of those northern lands.

As if in answer to the flow of her thoughts, Ramir's voice was lifted again, not so vibrant perhaps as it once had been, but purified by years and the wisdom of those years into an instrument rare and fine as his lute:

Here in Gorhaut, so distant from my home,

Among men who care nothing for music,

And ladies who utter little of courtesy to poets

And even less of love, the memory of songbirds

In the branches of trees, of gardens watered

By the sweetness of the Arbonne itself,

Flowing from the mountains to the sea—

Such a vision—a blessing of Rian! — guides

Me to my rest at night with the promise of return.

The singing ended. Ramir continued the music for only a little longer, after the old fashion again, and then his fingers on the lute, too, were still. It was silent in the tavern. Lisseut looked slowly around at her friends. They had all heard this song before, they had all sung it themselves, but not like this. Not ever like this. She saw that of all those sitting there it was Remy who had tears in his eyes. Her own heart was full, there was an ache in it.

His head lowered, Ramir was carefully slipping his lute back into its case. It took him a long moment to deal with the thong again. No one yet had made a sound. He finished putting away his instrument. With a grimace, he awkwardly shifted his bad leg and rose from the low stool. He bowed gravely towards the table of Gotzlanders. Of course, Lisseut realized: they were the ones who had, after a fashion, called for his song. He turned to leave, but then, as if a new thought had just come to him, he looked back at the Gotzlanders.

"I am sorry," he said. "Will you permit me to correct something I said before?" His voice was soft again, they had to lean forward to hear. And Lisseut heard him say then, would ever after remember hearing Ramir of Talair say, with his gentle, muted sadness, "I told you I would not sing one of Anselme's songs of love. That is not true, on reflection. I did sing a love song after all."

It was Ariane de Carenzu, a moment later, from her place on the upper level of the inn, who was first on her feet to begin the applause. Everyone at the troubadours' table stood as the noise in The Senhal began to grow and grow. And then Lisseut saw the Gotzlanders rise, as one man, and begin pounding their fists and pewter mugs upon the dark oak wood of their table, shouting a fierce approval. She began to cry. Through the blurring rainfall of her sorrow and her pride she saw Ramir, clutching his lute in its case with both hands to his chest, walk slowly away. He didn't go back to his corner after all. He left the lights and the thunderous noise of the tavern and walked out into the autumn night under the stars.

There were some among the taverns and inns within and around Lussan that did their own highly successful business in the month of the fair by not remaining open during this lucrative season. The proprietor of The Silver Tree, a well-regarded country inn among fig and olive groves about three miles outside the city walls, had been surprised and more than pleased to join this small but select group. He accepted a considerable sum from Duke Bertran de Talair to house a number of the duke's corans and household during the fair. En Bertran himself would obviously spend most of his time in Lussan in his city palace there, or, indeed, in Barbentain itself with the countess, but he clearly found it useful to have a less conspicuous residence at his disposal, perhaps one where approaches to and from could be more closely monitored. The innkeeper speculated, but kept his thoughts to himself.

Sitting in the smaller, more comfortably furnished of the two ground-level rooms of that inn, with a fire blazing and the night wind blowing outside, Blaise fingered his wine glass and looked over again at Valery. He raised his eyebrows pointedly. Bertran's cousin merely shrugged. The duke himself was sitting at a table scribbling on a parchment, at times consulting other crumpled documents at hand. If Blaise hadn't known better he would have assumed that Bertran was dealing with affairs of importance. In fact, the duke was writing a song and had told them as much when he'd asked for silence some time ago.

They were waiting for someone. Corans were posted outside to warn them of an impending arrival. Bertran, needless to say, hadn't bothered to tell them who it was he was expecting. A surprise, he'd said blandly. Blaise didn't like surprises. He didn't like waiting. There were times when he wasn't sure if he liked Bertran de Talair.

The Talair wine, at least, was superb, and Blaise was comfortably warm in a deep-cushioned chair by the fire. There was food on a second, long table, and tapestries offered warmth and colour on the stone walls. He should, he told himself, be grateful for these blessings of continued life and give thanks to Corannos. He might so easily have died on the road four days ago. The talk since their arrival in Lussan was all about the banning of the Andoria from the fair. Blaise didn't normally spend much time listening to gossip and he didn't linger in places where he might hear it, but this was rather close to his own interests, and they had been given the details by Valery as soon as they'd entered the city.

They'd spent the first night in the Talair palace in town. Or rather, Blaise and Valery had. Bertran had had a nocturnal tryst he was characteristically unwilling to forego or postpone. There had been a curious incident when Roban, the chancellor of Arbonne—a hollow-cheeked, peremptory man Blaise had not met before—came looking for the duke in the hour before dawn. Valery, roused from sleep, had reluctantly named a house where Bertran might be found. The chancellor had grimaced in dismay. Valery had offered to go with the small party, but Roban, wrapped in fur against the cold, had declined. He'd looked over at Blaise with an expression of poorly concealed misgiving before riding off. Valery, seeing that look and catching Blaise's eye, had shrugged then, too. They'd yawned together and had gone back to their beds for what little remained of the night.

When they descended the stairs again Bertran had not yet returned. He came back later in the morning in a silent mood and had remained that way all day, venturing out alone twice for brief periods. He didn't enlighten them as to why. He went out again that night, smiling and scented, to a different house in the city. Blaise didn't bother asking Valery who lived there; he didn't want to know.

Towards the end of the next afternoon, the three of them had taken their horses and ridden out of Lussan and then along a winding country lane to The Silver Tree, where the larger part of the duke's men were staying. Bertran had again been silent during that ride. "We're meeting someone," was all he'd said when they set out. "After dark." Valery had only shrugged when Blaise looked at him. Blaise had decided that he was growing tired of Valery's shrugs, too.

He was gazing into the fire, trying with only marginal success to do some reflecting upon the larger, grimmer issues that awaited them, when Serlo appeared suddenly in the doorway leading to the larger room, making him start. "Someone has come, my lord. He is alone, cloaked and hooded, with his face concealed. He will not reveal himself."

Bertran shuffled his papers together before standing up. "That's all right. Show him in as he is and then guard the door for us. We should not be disturbed, Serlo, unless I call for you."

The young coran nodded and went out. Valery rose to his feet and Blaise did the same. There was a look of anticipation and of something else now—a kind of youthful, infectious delight—in the blue eyes of the duke. Blaise, against his will, began to feel a quickening excitement.

Serlo returned moments later escorting a man who was indeed wrapped in a long black mantle with a cloth wrapped about his face, concealing all but his eyes. The man wore a sword, but had, as Serlo noted, come alone. He waited until the young coran had withdrawn and closed the door behind himself. Then, with a neat sequence of movements, he let fall his cloak and hood and removed the scarf.

Blaise looked sharply over at Bertran, saw the genuine astonishment in the duke's expression and the swift beginning of anger, and then he began, helplessly, to laugh.

"Well, good evening to you all, at any rate," said Rudel Correze brightly as no one spoke. "I hope I'm not late, or early, or anything."

Bertran's colour had risen; the scar showed white on his face. "You had best tell me, very quickly, who you are and what you think you are doing," he said icily. Valery had now moved forward, a hand to his sword hilt, his glance moving uncertainly towards Blaise and then to the man in the doorway again.

Still laughing at the sheer audacity of it all, Blaise said, "Actually, you did say on the road to Lussan that you wanted to meet this man. Shall I perform the introductions?"

Bertran looked from Blaise back to the new arrival. "Ah," he said, his tone changing. He lifted one eyebrow. "The Correze son? With the poisoned arrows?"

Rudel bowed deeply. His hair was bright in the blazing light of the fire and the candles. He grimaced wryly when he straightened. "I do apologize for that. It was a long shot at night. I am glad to see you well, my lord." He turned to Valery. "And you. I trust you are recovered?"

"Entirely recovered, thank you," said Valery politely, letting go of his sword. "I am a walking tribute to the arts of the priestesses of Rian." There was a flicker of amusement in his eyes, Blaise saw.

His old friend turned to him last of all. "You must have greatly enjoyed that last conversation of ours," Rudel Correze said quietly. "Knowing what you knew, and chose to keep from me."

"Not really," Blaise said. "Not at the time, at any rate. I thought Valery was dead, and you caught me unawares with almost everything you told me. I had a difficult time, actually. I wouldn't have told you about your mistake, though, even if I had been inclined to. If you had learned the duke was alive you might have felt obliged to try again, and I would have had to have you taken then, with problems for everyone in Arbonne."

"Not to mention for myself," Rudel said lightly. He was listening carefully though.

"You would have deserved it," Blaise said. "I'll concede that afterwards I did enjoy the thought of you showing up in Gotzland to claim the money."

Rudel made a sour face. "I'm sure you did. You ensured I would arrive triumphantly in Aulensburg, report a successful mission, confirm the deposit of my ridiculous fee—and then deal with the discovery, a fortnight later, that the esteemed duke of Talair—" he smiled briefly at Bertran " — was engaged in ongoing diplomatic exchanges with King Jorg at Aulensburg and not, evidently, from beyond the grave."

"So you gave the money back?" Blaise feigned ignorance. He was now enjoying this.

"I gave back what was left of it, under some impolite pressure from Gorhaut's ambassador to the court in Aulensburg. Not a pleasant man, I can tell you. I had to approach my father's branch bank for certain sums that were not… readily available to me privately."

"After only a fortnight?" Blaise raised his eyebrows in feigned surprise. "What did you buy? All the gems of the east? How much could you have spent in two weeks?"

"Enough," said Rudel tersely, his handsome face colouring. "Enough that you may consider our personal slate from that night in Tavernel to be balanced, at the very least. My father currently has a view of me that may well match the one yours has of you. Paying out money does that to him, I'm afraid."

"Sad tidings," said Bertran de Talair, his equanimity regained. Blaise recognized the tone and the glint in his eyes. "But leaving, as I suppose we must, past trials for present affairs, I do think it reasonable to ask what you are doing here."

"It is entirely reasonable." Rudel paused, looked over at the long table by the far wall. "I did hear you were known for serving a good wine," he said politely.

Shaking his head, Valery walked over to the table and poured him a glass. He came back, handed it to the Portezzan, then stood near him, waiting. Bertran did not speak again, and neither, now, did Blaise. Rudel sipped, smiled his approval, and went on.

"I am sadly between contracts at the moment," he said calmly, and Blaise saw Bertran and Valery both take the point. "Given last summer's events, and the unexpected involvement of my old friend Blaise, I still had something of an interest in you, En Bertran. With nothing better to do before the tournament, I made a point of tracking your movements the past two days since we all arrived in Lussan and settled in for the fair—lamentably lacking the company of the choleric lord of Andoria." He drank again, with obvious pleasure. "When you took these quarters outside the walls in addition to your usual town residence, and then rode out here at day's end with only our cousin and my friend Blaise, it seemed appropriate to conclude that some meeting of a private nature was about to take place."

However composed Rudel might be, the duke of Talair was a match for him. Coolly, not smiling now, Bertran said, "Such a conclusion might indeed seem appropriate. The question is, why, having made that deduction, would you take it upon yourself to intrude upon that meeting?" There was something unreal, an almost hallucinatory quality to the dialogue taking place, Blaise thought. One of the men talking so pleasantly here had attempted to kill the other just three months ago for a quarter of a million in gold. He couldn't think of any other men he knew who could have had this conversation.

Rudel sipped his wine again. He favoured them all with his most brilliant smile. "To be honest," he murmured, "I thought it might be amusing."

Looking at his friend, at the clever, handsome face, Blaise knew with certainty that this was at least part of the truth, possibly even the largest part. He saw that Bertran realized it, too. The duke's own amusement was obvious. He shook his head and looked over at Valery. His cousin's expression was wry.

"Does this fellow remind you of anyone?" Bertran asked.

"Someone I grew up with, yes," Valery said. "A cousin I never expected to see reach the age you seem to have attained." Blaise turned his head towards the door; he had heard voices, and now there were footsteps outside. "What," Valery went on calmly, "do you want us to do with him?"

"I should mention," Rudel said quickly, before Bertran could reply, "that I had one more piece of information in solving this riddle. While I was watching by the walls this evening, at the gate from which you left, I did see a small party of men, one of them masked, the others hooded, ride out at darkfall. They were not in a hurry. It gave me the opportunity to have this most enjoyable encounter in private with you."

There came a diffident knocking at the door. "Yes, Serlo, what is it?"

The young coran's voice on the other side was angry and confused. "I am sorry, my lord, but another party is here. A man in a mask who says he has a meeting with you here tonight. He has an escort with him."

"Four men," Rudel said helpfully.

"Four corans with weapons," Serlo went on. "I don't recognize the livery."

"I don't think you are meant to," Bertran said, opening the door. "I think that is our proper guest. Escort him here, Serlo, and then entertain his escort. These may not, in the end, turn out to be friends, but they are guests tonight. Treat them accordingly."

Serlo, looking unhappy, went away.

"I grow more and more curious," said Rudel Correze cheerfully. "I'm so glad you invited me in."

Bertran swung the heavy door closed. His expression was quite sober. "We have only a moment," he said. "I can have my corans render you unconscious, or bind and gag you in a back room somewhere. I may have to. One last time: is it only idle mischief that brings you here?"

Rudel's expression, not surprisingly, had also changed, but less than one might have expected—unless one knew the man. Eyes bright in the firelight, he said, "I am not accustomed at this point in my career to having to solicit commissions, but I did tell you I was between engagements. You might spare my pride and regard that as a hint."

There was another brief silence, and then Bertran de Talair began, helplessly, to laugh. Blaise, staring at his friend, followed suit a moment later. Rudel grinned back at them both, pleased. Whatever one might ever say about Rudel Correze, Blaise thought ruefully, things were seldom dull when he was around.

The same, for that matter, might be said of En Bertran de Talair. The duke said, "You are seeking employment with me, is that correct?"

"I am."

"Might I ask why?"

And now Rudel's expression finally became serious, and one was inescapably reminded that this was the scion of one of the wealthiest, most aristocratic banking houses in Portezza, with family connections to most of the nobility in that country. He laid down his glass on the small table beside him.

"Shall we say that I do not mind if my skills are bought? Indeed, my profession demands that this be the case. I do mind, however, rather a great deal, when my relationships are similarly exploited without my knowing it. I was not aware that Blaise was with you when I accepted his father's contract. I would not have done so had I known. I have reason to believe that Galbert de Garsenc chose me only because of my friendship with his son, and not for any flattering appraisal of my talents. This thought does not please me. I have formally relinquished his contract. It will satisfy my own sense of honour to work to ensure that no one else successfully fulfils it, if the sum is offered again."

"I doubt it will be. They have made their point, and have a larger game to play now."

"I think you are correct in that, my lord, but even so, I would be pleased and proud to enter your employment, En Bertran."

Valery coughed. "I rather doubt," he said, "that we could afford your current rates."

Blaise grinned. Rudel did not. "I will be happy to forget that. It was an unnatural offer in a number of ways. I will be honoured to accept whatever you are paying my friend Blaise at this moment, though I cannot, as I'm sure you'll appreciate, work for less."

Blaise and Bertran exchanged a glance, looked over at Valery, and then all three of them began to laugh. Rudel attempted to look dignified which, Blaise reflected, is a difficult thing to do when three men are laughing at you.

This was, however, a friend, and one who had clearly been disturbed by the dangerous events of last summer. He was also proposing to join them—though Blaise still felt an inward disquiet when he tried to weigh his own complex allegiances here.

He let Rudel in on the jest. "You have undervalued yourself, I fear. I am not now being paid anything at all. I've left the duke's employ. I'm with him as a friend and a companion in the tournament two days from now. I'm afraid you won't want to work for my current wages."

Rudel reddened again. "I see. I seem to be bound by what I just proposed, however. I can understand your amusement."

Bertran shook his head, as another knock came at the door. "Not so. I will be pleased to have you with me." He grinned. "And diverted as well, I rather suspect. I'll pay you what I was paying Blaise before he changed his status with us. We can discuss this further at our leisure—indeed, we will have to. For now, I'll greatly value discretion from all of you." He turned to the door and opened it himself.

Serlo was there, standing a little behind an extremely tall, dark-bearded man with a lean, fighter's build. The man was indeed masked and hooded, clad in unrevealing black for the night ride. On the threshold he carefully took in the four of them, smiled thinly and removed his mask, revealing thick eyebrows and deep-set grey eyes.

"You have unexpected companions, de Talair," he said in accented Arbonnais. "In fact, if we count myself you seem to have assembled a room full of your enemies." Notwithstanding this remark, he stepped across the threshold with easy confidence. Bertran closed the door behind him.

"My cousin Valery," said the duke quietly. "One friend at least. It appears you know both Blaise de Garsenc and Rudel Correze. And I am certain they both know you."

Of course they did. If Rudel's appearance had been a shock to Blaise, this man's arrival was something stupefying. He had last seen those heavy-browed, calculating grey eyes almost two years ago on a frozen battlefield in the north. A wan sun had been setting, dead men piled in the crimson snow and three generations of war lying like a curse behind the savagely contested battle being waged.

Blaise bowed with briefest formality, masking his thoughts. Rudel and Valery bowed. And then Duke Bertran, turning back from making the introductions, did the same. One bowed to the monarchs of this world. "The younger Garsenc has prowess I have learned to fear," said King Daufridi of Valensa, glancing at Blaise. "As for the Correze scion, I would rather have thought his prowess was cause for your own fears, or were last summer's tales idle?"

"They were not, your highness," Bertran said, straightening. "But it seems, happily for my fragile peace of mind, that Rudel Correze now regrets accepting a contract to end the life of a man so inoffensive as myself and has joined my corans by way of redress. Is this not so?"

"It is," said Rudel. "I have seen the folly of my summer's ways, your highness. En Bertran has been good enough to allow me to display the truth of that in his employ." His tone was neutral and composed, but Blaise knew that Rudel, too, would be struggling to absorb the shock of this encounter. It occurred to him, unexpectedly, to wonder if the countess of Arbonne knew anything about this meeting.

"I begin to fear," said King Daufridi of Valensa, "that your celebrated charms, de Talair, will prove too much for me as well. I shall have to firm my resolution by remembering your own, ah… inoffensive words about me, from last spring." He crossed the room in three long strides, his boots resonating on the floorboards, and picked up Bertran's lute from the table. Striking three chords quite competently, he turned back to the four of them and chanted:

And what king lost to honour like craven Daufridi

Would retreat from that ice-field not to return?

Where went the manhood of Gorhaut and Valensa

When war was abandoned and pale peace brought

By weak kings and sons long lost to their lineage?

Bertran, at the side table pouring wine, paused in his movements, the decanter in one hand, a bemused expression on his face as he listened. Daufridi finished, struck a last chord and gently laid down the lute.

"Craven Daufridi," he repeated musingly. "I must admit, I was intrigued by what you thought you could achieve by inviting me here. I hadn't even planned on coming south to the fair this year. I'm getting too old for tournaments."

Bertran lifted a glass and walked over with it to the king. "I am pleased that I intrigued you sufficiently to have you join us. At the very least," he murmured, "I have now learned that your highness performs my music with skill. I have also been reminded that in my pursuit of balanced and well-shaped songs I ought to pay greater attention to possibilities the future might hold."

Daufridi, with a chuckle, took the glass and sank down into a deep chair. He stretched out his long legs towards the fire and motioned graciously for the rest of them to sit. They did. The king looked at Bertran, irony manifest in his clever, bearded features. He was of an age with the duke, Blaise knew, but looked older. He too was scarred—the red weal of a sword wound ran down the left side of his throat to disappear beneath his clothing. Blaise happened to know how far that sword stroke ran. He had seen the blow. It had ended a battle, though the man who dealt it had died in the doing by Iersen Bridge.

"You will now proceed to tell me," said Daufridi of Valensa, holding his wine up to admire its ruby colour in the firelight, "that your lines about my shameful cowardice were simply inserted for poetic symmetry. That your real targets were King Ademar of Gorhaut and this man's father—" he gestured with the glass towards Blaise " — and any insult to me was deeply regrettable and most unfortunate and you sincerely apologize for it. Galbert de Garsenc, incidentally, invited me to contribute to last summer's assassination fee. I thought it greatly excessive and declined. Just so you know." He drank from his glass. "The wine," he pronounced, "is excellent."

"Thank you. And so, I must say, is your reasoning and anticipation, your highness. You have completely preempted my own first words." Bertran's expression and tone were grave.

Daufridi remained amused. "I am disappointed now. Will political expediency cause a poet to so renounce his own creation?"

Blaise had heard tales about this king, about the keen-edged, fierce intelligence, a hitherto absent quality among the ale-sodden, brawling kings of watery Valensa. The very terms of the Treaty of Iersen Bridge, if nothing else, would speak to Daufridi's competence. Money given, if a great deal of it, in exchange for land sought and not won in fifty years of war. It didn't take a brilliant mind to judge who had gained the better of that treaty—if one left out what Gorhaut could now do with peace assured on its northern borders. Blaise wondered, for the first time, if those Portezzan negotiators Valensa had employed had really shaped the exchanges of letters and emissaries leading up to the treaty, or had merely acted as trained mouthpieces for the will of this shrewd, hard king.

He had wanted so much to kill this man two years ago.

He remembered hammering his way in grief-stricken rage towards Daufridi in the agonizing moments after his own King Duergar had toppled like a great tree from his saddle with that arrow in his eye, his death cry towering like a raven of the god in the frigid northern air. Blaise could hear it now, if he but closed his eyes. It had been Cadar de Savaric, Rosala's father, who had battled through to Daufridi first and inflicted that savage red wound, before dying under the maces and axes of the king's guard. Two giants of Gorhaut slain within moments of each other.

Two men who would have disembowelled themselves, Blaise thought bitterly, before signing the treaty of Iersen Bridge. The treaty his own father had so slyly devised, surrendering the ancient northlands of Gorhaut for Valensan gold, with his own designs dark-hidden in the shadows.

"I had always thought," Daufridi was saying, smiling that thin, cool smile of his beneath the full, greying beard, "that the troubadours valued nothing in this transitory world of ours so much as the sanctity of their art. Will you tell me now I was wrong all this time?"

Bertran, in the chair opposite the king, refused to be baited. Blaise sensed that the duke had prepared himself beforehand for something of this sort.

"All other things being equal," Bertran said quietly, "we value our work so highly because it might be the only thing we leave behind us for later generations, the only thing that will preserve our name after we die. One poet I know has gone so far as to say that everything men do today, everything that happens, whether of glory or beauty or pain, is merely to provide the matter of songs for those who come after us. Our lives are lived to become their music."

Daufridi steepled his long fingers before his face. "And you, de Talair? Do you believe this to be true?"

Slowly Bertran shook his head. "It is too rare a thought for me, too pure. I am, somewhat to my own surprise, more caught in the toils of this world than that. I would not have thought it once. I lived when I was younger in an almost open courtship of death. You may, perhaps, remember a little of that time. I am older now. I did not expect to live this long, to be honest." He smiled briefly. "Rudel Correze is far from the first to seek to aid me in my passage to Rian. But I find myself still among the living, and I have discovered that I value this world for itself, not merely as matter for someone's song. I love it for its heady wines and its battles, for the beauty of its women and their generosity and pride, for the companionship of brave men and clever ones, the promise of spring in the depths of winter and the even surer promise that Rian and Corannos are waiting for us, whatever we may do. And I find now, your highness, long past the fires of my heart's youth and yours, that there is one thing I love more even more than the music that remains my release from pain."

"Love, de Talair? This is a word I did not expect to hear from you. I was told you foreswore it more than twenty years ago. The whole world was speaking of that. This much I am certain I remember. My information, so far distant in our cold north, seems to have been wrong in yet another matter. What is the one thing, then, my lord duke? What is it you still love?"

"Arbonne," said Bertran de Talair. And with that, Blaise finally began to understand why they were here. He looked from Bertran, slight, controlled, but coiled, as always, like a Gotzland crossbow, to the tall, hard figure of the king of Valensa, and he wondered, wrestling with difficult emotions of his own.

He didn't have long to wait. Daufridi of Valensa was not a sentimental man; Blaise could have told Bertran as much. Unlacing his fingers, the king of Valensa reached for his glass and took another sip of wine before saying, prosaically, "We all love our countries, I daresay. It is not a novel emotion, de Talair."

"I did not mean to suggest it was," Bertran said quietly.

"I will confess to a similar passion for Valensa, and I doubt I would be wrong in attributing the same feeling for Gorhaut to young Garsenc here—whatever he might feel about certain… political decisions that have recently been implemented." He smiled thinly at Blaise, the same cool look as before, and turned to Rudel. "As for the Portezzans, they don't really have a country, do they? I imagine they offer the same love to their cities, or perhaps their families. Would that be fair, Correze?" He was being deliberately dry, almost pedantic, Blaise realized, smoothly resisting the emotional pull of Bertran's words.

"It would, your highness," Rudel said. He coughed. "I do hope my dear father becomes mindful again of that last."

The king showed a flash of teeth. "Ah. He is unhappy with you? You spent some of the money before you had to return it, didn't you? What a shame. But I'm certain your father will forgive you in time." He turned back to Bertran, who had remained motionless through all of this, waiting. The two men exchanged a long glance. Blaise had an eerie sense that he and Rudel, and Valery over by the fire, had been forgotten. It was as if they were not there.

Daufridi said, very softly, "It is unwise to love anyone or anything too greatly, de Talair. People die, things are taken from us. It is the way of our lives in this world."

"I have reason to know this. I have lived twenty-three years with that truth."

"And have therefore moderated your passions?"

"And am therefore resolved that I will not live through the death of my country as I endured the death of the woman I loved."

There was a silence then. Not daring to move, Blaise looked out of the corner of his eye at Rudel, and saw the rigid, focused expression on his friend's face.

"And so you asked me here," Daufridi of Valensa said at length, "to seek what aid I could give."

"I did. Is this a surprise?"

"Hardly. Will it be a surprise in turn if I say I can give you nothing?"

"I should be grateful to know why." Bertran was pale but quite composed.

Daufridi shrugged. "I have a treaty signed, and I need five years, at least, to consolidate my hold on the lands they have ceded us. We need our own farmers there, we need to fill the villages with Valensans and give my own barons time to put down their roots in the castles that now are ours. Those men of Gorhaut who elect to stay—and some of them will—must be given time to feel that there are worse things than being subjects of the king of Valensa. In time, the treaty will offer us all the riches of that farmland north of the Iersen and more than recoup the money we have already paid and will pay out over the next three years. But I need peace to make all that happen." He sipped from his wine again. "It isn't very complex, de Talair. I would have expected you to know all this."

"So you are happy Gorhaut is looking now to the south."

Carefully Daufridi said, "I am not entirely unhappy."

Silence again. But into it there came now a light, cool voice.

"Forgive me," said Rudel Correze, "forgive my presumption, but I do have a question." Daufridi and Bertran both turned to him. "What do you imagine will happen to Valensa, your highness, if Gorhaut indeed comes south with fire and sword and conquers here?"

Blaise's own thought, his own question. Rudel had always been quicker to speak his mind. Portezzans tended to be. For the first time, he saw Daufridi shift in his seat a little uncomfortably.

"I have thought on that question," he admitted.

"And what have you concluded after such thinking?" It was Valery this time, from by the fire, his broad arms folded across his chest.

Bertran leaned forward a little in his chair and echoed his cousin softly. "What can you possibly have concluded, your highness, should Gorhaut destroy Arbonne and have all the wealth of this land and its ports on the sea to draw upon? If there are five countries, not six, a year from now? Do you really think you would have your five years of peace then, to… as you say, solidify your hold on that farmland north of Iersen? How long do you think it would be before Ademar turned north again?"

Something curious began to happen to Blaise just about then. It seemed to him as though the words each man was speaking had become like preordained speeches in some temple ritual of the god, or the well-known opening moves of a tavern game, each following the other, each compelling the move that followed.

Daufridi said, a slight edge to his voice, "As I say, I have considered this. I do not have any immediate conclusions."

And so Blaise, seeing the next moves now as clearly as if they had already happened, said, "Of course you do not. That is why you are here, isn't it, your highness? To see if the duke of Talair has a conclusion for you. And you find, to your disappointment, that what he wants is your help, which frightens you. You know—you know it is not in the interests of Valensa for Gorhaut to rule in Arbonne. Why will you then deny that aid, when asked for it?"

Daufridi of Valensa turned in his seat to look appraisingly at Blaise, his hard grey eyes almost lost beneath the heavy, drawn-together brows. "I have a question of my own, first," he said coolly. "One I should have asked at the outset perhaps, before being as frank as I have been. Why are you here, Garsenc? Why are you not at Ademar's court in Cortil anticipating the glory of this conquest your father and king have set in motion? There might even be land for you. Younger sons always want land, don't they? We have spoken of love of country—where then is yours, de Garsenc?"

Blaise had been waiting for that: it was the next foreknown speech, the next move in the game being played. He wondered if Bertran had prepared this, if he had seen it coming or even steered them towards this moment. It didn't really matter. The moment was upon them. He said, "Because I have set myself squarely against Ademar of Gorhaut. Because I think he is weak and unworthy of allegiance. Because it is my belief that he dispossessed and betrayed the people of my country with the Treaty of Iersen Bridge. Because the Gorhaut I love is the holy land where Corannos the god of the Ancients first came among the six countries we know, and the earliest corans swore their oaths to serve the god and their fellow men and walk a path of righteousness. Because the invasion of Arbonne would be a final straying from that path in pursuit of a dominion that could never, in the end, be preserved. Because my father knows that. He does not want to rule in Arbonne, he wants to put it to the fire. Because he has long ago lost whatever true communion with the god he ever had."

He drew a needful breath to check this rush of words spilling out of him like a river in flood over a dam that has been breached. And he said the last thing then, made the next move in the game, chose:

"And because before the Lussan Fair is ended I will have named myself claimant to the crown of Gorhaut, to see if there are men of honour in my country—and elsewhere—who will rally to my name and this cause."

He heard Rudel suck in his breath sharply. At least he'd surprised his friend, Blaise thought. If he did nothing else at all, he seemed to have succeeded in astonishing the unflappable scion of the House of Correze.

And the king of Valensa, too, he now saw. Daufridi's hands went to the arms of his chair and gripped there. He pushed for a moment, as if to lever himself to his feet, but then, with a visible effort, remained where he was.

It was silent in the room then. The only sound was the crackle of the fire and the strained breathing of four men. From outside, where the corans of the king were being entertained by Bertran's men, they heard a sudden loud burst of laughter.

"Ah, well," said Daufridi of Valensa at length, very softly. "Ah, well now. It seems we do have some things to talk about after all."

Blaise felt light-headed, almost numb. He reached for his wine and drank. The motion itself seemed odd, unnaturally slow. He felt as if the owl should be in the room with them, Beatritz de Barbentain's white owl, settling on his shoulder again to mark him as a fool, or whatever else he was.

CHAPTER 12

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it had not mattered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Most things seem to," Rudel assented.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Blaise?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blaise blinked, and suddenly stopped where he was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His daughter laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, then?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunrise saw them homeward, when the morning broke.

CHAPTER 13

Tournaments in Arbonne and duels performed in the presence of women were under the aegis of the queen of the Court of Love. It was Ariane de Carenzu, therefore, who was responsible for supervising the formalities attendant upon the challenge issued at the Lussan Fair between Blaise de Garsenc of Gorhaut and Quzman di Perano of Arimonda.

It was also Ariane who offered the most drily prosaic response of all to what Blaise had done the night before. They had gone to the Carenzu mansion in the morning: Blaise, Bertran, Valery and an extremely pale-looking Rudel Correze. A long night of drinking after a substantial blow to the head had not, it appeared, worked greatly to the advantage of the normally urbane scion of the Correze family.

For that matter, Blaise wasn't feeling entirely well himself, but he'd been more careful than Rudel in the tavern, and expected to become more functional as the day progressed; certainly by tomorrow at any rate, which was a good thing. Tomorrow he was going to be fighting a man to the death.

"I have no idea," Ariane said, reclining prettily on an upholstered divan in the room where she received them, "whether what you have done is sheerest folly or only moderately so."

Her tone was astringent and sardonic, a controlling voice more than a little at odds with the morning freshness of her appearance. She was dressed in pale yellow, the fabric cut with sky blue at bodice and sleeve, with a soft hat of the same mild blue shade on her dark hair, She was looking at Blaise as she spoke and her expression was not particularly mild.

"I cannot decide, because I do not know how well you fight. I do know that Urté would not have hired the Arimondan—the two Arimondans—if they were not very good indeed."

"Quzman? He is good," Bertran de Talair murmured. He was pouring an early glass of wine from a flask on a tray. He seemed more amused now than anything else, though his first reaction, when they told him what had happened, had been one of grimly silent reflection. He hadn't shared those thoughts.

"So is Blaise," said Rudel faintly from the depths of the chair into which he had carefully lowered himself. They could see only the top of his head. "Consider the dead brother and five corans of Miraval."

"Those were arrows," Valery said quietly. Of all of them, he seemed the most unhappy this morning. "This will be with swords."

"It need not be," Ariane said. "I could easily—"

Blaise shook his head quickly. "No point. He uses what he wants, so do I. I would be shamed by an attempt to control the weapons."

"You may be killed by a failure to do so," Ariane said tartly.

It was gradually becoming clear to Blaise, a knowledge accompanied by a growing bemusement, that the reactions of those around him to what was about to happen tomorrow were not entirely shaped by the pragmatic appraisal of risks and gains. They were concerned for him. The countess, Bertran and Valery, Rudel certainly, and now it was equally obvious—even to Blaise, who had never been good with understandings of this sort—that Ariane was speaking with more than an abstract interest in the rules of this challenge.

They had encountered her husband when they first entered the house, then Duke Thierry had gracefully excused himself when Bertran made it clear they were calling upon his wife in her formal capacity. The duke of Carenzu was a slender, well-built man, whose sexual tastes and appetites were in no way visible in his manner. He was also, Valery had said earlier, an exceptionally competent leader.

His wife, Blaise was thinking, was even more than that. He felt oddly unsettled now, meeting her lucid gaze, remembering, with unexpected clarity on this bright autumn morning, the summer night they had spent together, her words and manner as much as the act of love. It came to him that if they had been alone she might have been saying different things just now. For that matter, he might have been doing the same. This was a woman he trusted, Blaise suddenly realized, and he felt a momentary surprise.

They had told her about the meeting with King Daufridi. Bertran had discussed it with the countess and Roban as well; he had been in the palace early, before they came here this morning. Events were beginning to move with speed. With Rosala de Garsenc and a male child in Barbentain it was clear—it had to be clear to everyone, Blaise thought—that any number of dangerous things were likely to happen quickly. His head ached dully. He was beginning to regret the last part of the night almost as much as the first.

Looking at Ariane, drinking in her cool beauty like a reviving draught, he said, "This whole exercise is about how we are seen in the eyes of the world. I lose too much if I am thought to be afraid of him, or to be arranging the affair to my obvious advantage. I am grateful for your concern, but there is no point to this challenge if we manipulate it."

"And there is a point to this? We are entitled to assume that?" The same question the countess had asked.

He ignored the sharp tone and gave her the same answer. "I hope so. I hope there is."

In truth, he wasn't certain. He was certain of nothing just now. He felt like one of those legendary dancers from Arimonda's distant past who were said to have leaped over the horns of bulls for the pleasure of their kings. He was in the middle of such a leap right now, grimly conscious of the gleaming, killing horns. It had seemed to Blaise, late last night—a thought shaped half of piety and half of simple fear—that Corannos had actually guided him here to Arbonne. That his journey south had not been fortuitous, not simply an escape from burdens and sorrows at home or in Portezza. It had been a movement towards destiny, the one chance the world might offer him to make good the vow he'd sworn when he left Garsenc Castle. He hadn't known he would say what he had said to Daufridi of Valensa. He hadn't prepared his challenge to Quzman in advance. He was a dancer with the bulls, moving with their movements, in flight now over the horns of his fate.

Drawing a breath to gather and hold his thoughts, he told Ariane then how he wanted certain things to be done on the morrow. Her features grew still and focused as she listened.

Bertran came closer, resting a hand on the back of her divan. He added a suggestion when Blaise was done. Valery said nothing at all. He looked grimly unhappy. Blaise couldn't tell how Rudel looked; his friend was still slumped in his deep chair, only the fair, tousled hair visible from behind. He thought Rudel might even have fallen asleep, but discovered, when he was finished, that this was not so.

"My father was right," said the heir to the Correze fortune in a musing tone. "I will very probably go forth to repent this allegiance of mine more than all the other errors of my life. I ought surely to have known better than to leave the banking business and take up with madmen from Gorhaut."

There were a number of replies that could be made to that, from the cutting, to the witty, to the soberly judicious. No one said anything, though.

"He will want to cut downwards on the angle and then back across low for your knees," Valery said. Rudel was tightening the drawstrings on the leather armour to be worn by the two men fighting.

"I know," said Blaise. "It's the usual attack with a curved sword." He wasn't really concentrating though, either on the words of advice or the increasing level of sound he could hear from the pavilions. When he and Quzman were ready to emerge from their tents the sounds would rise to a crescendo and then fall for the ceremony of introduction before beginning again, on a different note, when the killing began. It was the same all over the world. Blaise had seen a number of challenges to the death. He had fought in a foolish one, years before, when a Valensan coran had insulted the king of Gorhaut in the presence of one of that king's newest, youngest corans. Blaise had been lucky to survive and he knew it; the Valensan had taken his youthful opponent too casually and paid the price. Blaise had worn the dead man's armour for years.

"He'll have a knife in his belt and one behind his left calf," Rudel murmured. "And he won't hesitate to throw. He's known for that, and accurate with both hands. Keep your shield up."

Blaise nodded again. They meant him a world of good, he knew; it was their anxieties that were producing this outpouring of instruction. He remembered being exactly the same way when serving as squire to friends in their challenges, including Rudel, three times if he remembered rightly.

He really wasn't paying close attention though. This had happened to him before: his mind wandered before battle, drifting along unexpected pathways. It kept him calm, until the moment the fighting began, when the sensation was akin to a muffling curtain pulled swiftly aside, and Blaise would feel all his senses converge like arrows upon the battleground.

Just now he was remembering Rudel's last comment in Ariane's chambers that morning. He thought about Vitalle Correze, who wanted his much-loved son to be a banker not a coran, and then about his relationship with his own father. He wasn't sure why his thoughts were turning that way. Perhaps as he grew older, saw more of the world and its interactions, he was corning to understand the degree to which the Garsenc men had poisoned each other. He suddenly wondered, for the first time, how Ranald would be feeling about Rosala's flight. He realized that he had no idea, absolutely none; he didn't know his brother very well.

Valery tapped him briskly on the shoulder and Blaise obediently sat down on the stool and straightened his legs in front of him. His friends knelt and began lacing and tying the supple Portezzan leather about his thighs and calves. Through a gap in the tent flap behind their bent heads Blaise could glimpse the dazzling colours of the pavilions in the morning sunlight, and the green grass where he would be fighting soon.

They hadn't raised the banner above his tent yet, following his instructions of yesterday. For most of the people in the pavilions or in the commoners' standing ground on the other side he was simply a Gorhautian coran enmeshed in some quarrel with an Arimondan. A quarrel that was about to offer them the most exciting entertainment there was. A handful of people knew more, and there would be rumours of course; there were usually rumours at a time like this.

He felt very calm. He was always calm before fighting now, though it hadn't been that way in the beginning, years ago. He had prayed last night, kneeling on the cold stone floor in the surprisingly handsome chapel of Corannos in Lussan. He had not asked for victory, a coran never did.

Before the two tall candles above the frieze he had offered the ancient prayers for sunrise and sunset and for the strength of the god's life-giving golden light. The frieze itself had been masterfully done, a rendering of Corannos bestowing fire upon the first men, that the nights might hold less terror than before.

Perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised by the serene grace of the god's houses here. They worshipped Corannos in Arbonne. He had always known that, there were corans here, after all, with the same rituals of initiation and invocation that he had passed through in Gorhaut, the same ones used in all six countries. It had been difficult, though, when he first arrived, in those early days at Castle Baude in the highlands, to overcome a lifetime of prejudice and vicious innuendo, much of it coming, of course, from his father. It was odd how often he was thinking about his father of late. Or perhaps not so odd after all, given what he was about to do. They said the mind reached backwards when one's life was in extreme peril.

Galbert de Garsenc had stipulated that his younger son follow him into the clergy of Corannos. It was not a matter for discussion; what the High Elder wanted, he was accustomed to receive. Blaise's repeated flights as a boy from the chapel school near Cortil, his silent endurance of the whippings he was given, both at home by Galbert's heavy hand and again when he returned to the Elders, and then his obdurate, absolute refusal to speak the vows of consecration when he turned sixteen had represented a colossal thwarting of the High Elder's carefully laid plans.

They had tried to starve him into submitting to the vows—on his father's orders. Blaise had never forgotten those weeks. He woke sometimes in the night remembering them. Even today pangs of hunger made him panic irrationally, and he could not lash a man.

Would your mother have made a difference? Signe de Barbentain had asked the first night he met her. He didn't know. He would never know. No man, with only the one life to live, could answer such a question. He remembered learning, when still a small boy, not to cry because there was no one in the world who would come with comfort if he did. The brethren in the chapel school were terrified of his father; none dared offer succour to the unworthy, ingrate son. Not ever. Once, in Garsenc, Ranald had slipped into Blaise's room at night with a salve for his brother's lacerated back. In the morning, when Galbert saw the healing ointment he had whipped Ranald and then Blaise a second time. Ranald never tried to intervene in his punishments after that. Blaise could have stopped running away. He could have taken the vows they demanded of him. Neither possibility ever occurred to him, not even as options to be considered. When it became clear that Blaise would die of starvation before he broke in this, Galbert calmly proposed to have him publicly executed for his disobedience. It was King Duergar himself, becoming aware of this savage family drama playing itself out, who had forbidden that execution, who had insisted on food and drink being brought for the starving boy, and it was Duergar who accepted the sworn fealty of a gaunt, silent, hollow-eyed sixteen-year-old one month later, and named him a coran of Gorhaut.

Duke Ereibert de Garsenc, doughty and hoar, had died childless when his two nephews were twenty-one and nineteen, his stern mastery in war allowing him to outface lifelong rumours about his lack of heirs. Ranald inherited. He withdrew, of necessity, from his position as King's Champion and became duke of Garsenc instead, lord of the richest, most powerful estates in Gorhaut. Blaise should by then have been, by his father's careful designs, firmly placed in the hierarchy of the god's brotherhood, ready for a smooth ascent all the way to the ultimate station Galbert held, as High Elder of Corannos, with kings and princes subject to his fiat. The Garsenc family should have been poised for generations of power in Gorhaut—the country held as if between the paws of the rampant bear that was on their escutcheon—whomever might nominally have been sitting on the throne.

Ranald would have sons to succeed him at Garsenc and to follow Blaise into the clergy; there would be daughters to bind other families with the hoops of marriage vows. And eventually, perhaps not so far in the future, there might be even more than all of this—there might be the throne itself. A Garsenc ruling in Cortil, and the borders of Gorhaut itself stretching all the time, though first—first of all things, of course—reaching across the mountain passes to the south, to Arbonne, where they were godless and heretical, ruled by women and womanish men steeped in their blood-soaked rites.

Blaise had known almost all of this from very early in his life. He had been the one Galbert talked to when the boys were young. There had been a brief time when he hadn't understood why that was so, and then a longer period when he'd felt sorry for Ranald. It had all been long ago.

"Boots," said Rudel.

Blaise lifted first his left leg and then his right.

"All right," said Valery. Blaise stood up, and Rudel reached around his waist and buckled on the long, Aulensburg-forged sword in its plain soldier's scabbard. From the table he hefted the light helmet. Blaise took it from him and set it on his head. Valery was waiting with the round, unornamented shield. Blaise took that too.

"Where do you want your knives?" Valery asked.

"One for the belt. I have the other." Valery asked no further questions, neither did Rudel. They, too, had both been through this before. Rudel, his face and manner sober, lifted a sleek black knife from the trunk beside the tent flap and handed it to Blaise.

Blaise smiled briefly at him. "Do you remember? You gave me this one?"

Rudel made a quick, warding sign. "I did no such thing. I found it for you. You paid me a copper piece for it. We don't give knives as gifts, you ignorant northerner."

Blaise laughed. "Forgive me. I forgot that you are a superstitious Portezzan farmer at heart. However did you get permission to leave your hoe in the vineyards to travel among men of rank?"

A frivolous gibe, not worthy of a response and receiving none, for the trumpets sounded then.

Valery and Rudel moved to stand on either side of the tent flaps. The tradition was for the squires to say nothing at this time; farewells of any sort were thought to be invitations to fate. Blaise knew this. He looked at each of them and smiled. He was still calm, but there was a slight telltale acceleration to his pulsebeat now, as silence settled like a bird to a branch outside.

He nodded, and Valery and Rudel each drew back a flap of the tent. He stepped past the two of them, ducking his head, and he came out into sunshine and the green grass of the battleground.

Quzman of Arimonda was the first person he saw, standing at the entrance to his own tent on the far side of the field. A banner was flying behind him: three black bulls on a crimson field. Blaise registered the curved sword worn across the Arimondan's back in the western fashion, and he saw the polished golden shield. He glanced east to check and remember the angle of the rising sun; that shield could blind him if the Arimondan used it to catch and throw back the light. Blaise was aware, but only as background, of excited, rapacious murmurs coming from all around them. A death challenge was the keenest sport there was.

The trumpets sounded again, briefly, and Blaise turned towards the central pavilion as the herald of Arbonne stepped forward. He was aware that his heart was beating even more rapidly now, but not from anticipation of the battle, not yet. There was something still to come, before the fighting.

The herald's rich voice rolled out, sonorously naming the most illustrious of those assembled there. Blaise saw King Daufridi of Valensa sitting next to the countess, his bearded features unreadable, betraying nothing more than idle, polite interest.

"To my left," cried the herald at last, his trained voice carrying effortlessly over the grass and the densely packed pavilions, "stands Quzman di Perno of Arimonda, prepared to lay his life before Corannos and Rian in this matter of his family's honour." He paused. Blaise drew a breath. It had come. "All right," he said to the two men behind him. "Do it." He didn't look back, but as the herald of Arbonne turned towards him he heard the rustle and flap of two banners being run up to fly above his tent, and a moment later there came, truly like the roaring of sea surf in wind, a swelling of sound that nearly drowned the herald's urgently rising voice.

"To my other hand," the herald proclaimed, "equally prepared to defend the honour of his name, stands Blaise de Garsenc of Gorhaut, who here lays claim before this assembled gathering of the six nations and upon this holy field where the god and goddess are judges of honour and worth, to the crown of the Kingdom of Gorhaut, falsely now held by traitorous Ademar!"

People were on their feet; the herald was shouting now. "En Blaise has also declared that this combat, freely entered into by him against a felon so proclaimed by the countess of Arbonne, shall serve as a warrant for the worth of his claim, and he willingly lays his life at hazard before you all in this moment of asserting his right to that same crown."

The last was scarcely heard over the thunder of noise from the pavilions and the standing grounds on the other side. It didn't matter whether the herald was audible or not. The banners told the story. Blaise turned slowly—it was all theatre now, all symbol, until the killing began—and he nodded his head, as an equal to his equals, to Signe de Barbentain and then to Daufridi of Valensa. And the countess of Arbonne rose, in the presence of her people and those gathered from the other countries of the world, and gestured to Blaise with an extended hand in welcome, equal to equal. There was screaming now. Blaise ignored it. He waited. One long moment, then another, and finally, the hairs rising on the back of his neck, he saw Daufridi stand. Tall and proud, the king of Valensa turned to left and right, not hurrying, a master of moments such as this, and then very slowly, facing Blaise, he laid his right hand on his left shoulder in the coran's salute.

He had done it. There had been no way of knowing if he would. It was not quite the full gesture of welcome that Signe had offered—Daufridi had far too complex a game of his own to play for that to be possible—but he had given more than they'd had any right to expect: an acknowledgement that Blaise was worthy of a king's standing up to recognize him.

Blaise closed his eyes with relief, and then opened them quickly again. He must not be seen to have doubted, though of course he had. There had been no promises from Daufridi at all—and certainly none regarding an event so unexpectedly swift to develop as this one had been. Leaving that inn outside the walls two nights ago, he had offered only the unreassuring remark that he would think on what Bertran had said. He had done so, evidently. He was with them, at least this far. Blaise was under no illusions though: if the King of Valensa ever decided that they were a greater danger than Ademar and Galbert, he would be swift in his denunciation. But for the moment, in the midst of this tumultuous maelstrom of sound, he had risen to his feet to welcome Blaise to the stage of world affairs. It was something; it was, in fact, a great deal. Keeping his expression as serene and unrevealing as he could, Blaise turned away from the pavilions to face his own tent, and so looked up for the first time at what flew above it now.

The rampant bear of Garsenc, crimson on its deep blue ground, carried its own full measure of significance for those who had not even known who he was until this moment. And above it, in pride and glory and most brazen declaration, flew the banner of the kings of Gorhaut.

Standing at the centre of a growing tidal wave of noise, Blaise looked up at that golden sun on its white ground, with the crown of kings above it and the sword of the god below, and it seemed to him, oddly, as if he had never really seen it before. In a way, he never had; not like this. Not lifted in the breeze and the light by his own command. It had begun. With this banner flying above his head and raised in his own name before the emblem of his country's kings as the noise from all around grew to a climax, louder than he would ever have thought possible.

He knew how to quell that sound. To bring the pavilions and the standing grounds back, like hunting dogs to heel, to what lay ahead of them now on this green grass beneath the morning sun. It had begun here, and it might end here, for there was still the affirmation of the god to be sought. Of Corannos, and of the goddess of Arbonne. For the first time in his life Blaise of Gorhaut offered a prayer to Rian. Then he turned to the Arimondan and he drew his sword.

Jousts for pleasure and sport were done on horseback in full tournament regalia, horse and rider armoured magnificently, the display lying as much in the glitter of the coran's equipment as in anything else. No one ever enjoyed losing—it could be hideously expensive for one thing—but the armour prevented all but the rare serious injury, and in the long run, save for a handful of the most celebrated fighters, wins and losses tended to even themselves out. Tournaments were entertainments, a parading of wealth and success, a revelation of prowess, diversions for the pavilions and the commons both, and they were regarded as such.

Challenges to the death were contested on foot. Only limited protection was allowed. There was no glitter to them, no elaborately ornate breastplate or decorated helm. Death fights were primitive encounters, even holy ones, reaching back to far distant times before the Ancients had come, most purely testing a man's courage and will and the power of his goddesses or gods. They were an entertainment too, of course, as the excitement of the assembled watchers now attested, but of a darker sort, with a grim, foreknown destination: a man broken and dying on trampled grass, mortality made harshly manifest for those gathered to bear witness and be reminded of their own end.

It was because of this more than anything else that when Blaise drew his sword the screaming stopped. In the dining halls of the sanctuary retreats of Corannos, where men and women sometimes withdrew from the world as they felt their endings draw near, there were always tapestries or paintings hung upon the walls, and in every sanctuary at least one of these works would show the gaunt, laughing figure of Death, bearing the mace with which he ground the life from men, leading a winding procession over a wintry hill to the west where the sun was going down. And always, by long tradition, the first figure in that procession, even before the crowned kings and queens of earth, hand in hand with Death himself, would be a tall coran in the prime of his days, his sword useless in its scabbard as Death led him away.

Quzman di Perano, with a smile, reached up and pulled his curved blade from the sheath on his back. He drew upon a clasp and let the scabbard fall behind him on the grass. One of his appointed squires from Miraval quickly knelt and picked it up. The Arimondan moved forward, light on his feet as a tumbler for all his size, and Blaise, watching closely, saw that his first steps carried a little west. As expected. He had seen this manoeuvre before, the last time he'd fought a challenge with a man from Arimonda. He had almost died that day.

Moving to meet the man whose brother he had slain, Blaise regretted, not for the first time, that he knew so little about his foe and how he fought. For all Valery's words about the propensities of those using curved swords—tendencies Blaise knew well—they had little actual knowledge of Quzman beyond what was obvious. He was a big man, cat-quick, and brave, with a longing for revenge and nothing at all to lose today. I could, Blaise thought, be dead before the sun rises much higher.

It had always been possible. There was no honour to be sought or found in a meaningless challenge, no elevation in the eyes of the gathered world beneath the banner of Gorhaut's kings—which was, of course, the point of all of this.

Moving forward, Blaise found what he was looking for. His small round shield rested on his left forearm, leaving his fingers free. He transferred his sword to that hand and stooped quickly. In the same motion, as Quzman came straight towards him, he seized and hurled a clump of earth squarely at the Arimondan's gleaming shield. Quzman stopped, surprised, and Blaise had time to rattle another dulling handful of mud against the shield before straightening and reclaiming his sword in his fighting hand.

Quzman was no longer smiling. It was Blaise who grinned now, with deliberate mockery. "Too pretty a toy," he said. It was quiet now, he did not have to raise his voice. "I'll have it cleaned when you are dead. How many men have you killed by blinding them first like a coward?"

"I wonder," said Quzman after a short silence, his beautiful voice thickened by passion, "if you have any idea how much pleasure your death will bring me?"

"I probably do. Blood ants on the plain. You told me already. By contrast, though," Blaise replied, "your life or death mean almost nothing to me at all. Welcome to the dance. Do you want to talk all morning or are you actually able to use that blade you carry?"

He was. He was more than able, and sorely provoked. The first stroke, exactly as Valery had predicted, was a downward angled slash on his backhand. Blaise parried smoothly, guiding it short of his body—but then was only barely quick enough, even with the anticipation, to block the vicious return sweep of the curved blade along the level of his knees. The impact, a grinding collision of weapons, was almost enough to numb his wrist. The man was strong, enormously so, and his reactions were even quicker than Blaise had guessed they would be.

Even as he thought this, Blaise was twisting desperately and dropping, guided only by reflexes of his own, an utterly instinctive movement shaped by years of combat in tournament and war, the primitive drive for survival letting him react to the curved sword abruptly planted, quivering, in the earth, to Quzman's gloved hand reaching for the back of his calf and the knife blade flung in a blurred motion for his throat. It went by, almost. Blaise felt a searing pain at the side of his head. He brought his sword hand quickly up to his ear and it came away soaked with blood. He heard a sound from the pavilions then, deep and low, like wind on a moor.

Quzman, his sword recaptured before it had even stopped vibrating in the ground, was smiling again, the white teeth gleaming. "Now that," he said, "is pretty. Why don't you throw some mud on it like a peasant? You do seem to enjoy scrabbling in the earth."

The pain was bad and would probably get worse, but Blaise didn't think his ear was gone. Not entirely, at any rate. He seemed to still be hearing sounds from that side. He thought of Bertran suddenly, with his own missing ear lobe. He thought of how much depended on his walking alive from this field. And with that his anger was upon him fully, the familiar, frightening daemon that came to him in battle.

"Spare your breath," he said thickly, and surged up from the ground to engage the other man. There were no words then, no space for words and indeed no breath, only the quick chittering clatter of blades glancing and sliding from each other, or the harder, heavier clang as sword met blocking shield, the controlled grunting of two men as they circled each other, probing with cold metal and cold eyes for an avenue along which they could kill.

Quzman of Arimonda was indeed good, and driven by the fierce pride of his country and his family, and he had a sworn vengeance to claim. He fought with the fluid, deadly passion of a dancer and Blaise was wounded twice more, in the forearm and across the back of his calf, in the first three engagements.

But Quzman's thigh was gashed, and the leather armour over his ribs was not quite equal to the scything blow it took on a forehand slash from an Aulensburg sword wielded by a man with a passion and rage of his own.

Blaise didn't stop to gauge how badly he had wounded the man. He drove forward, attacking on both sides, parried each time with impacts that sent shocks up his elbow and shoulder. He registered the welling of blood at Quzman's left side, ignoring as best he could the stiffening protest from his own leg as he pushed off it. He could easily have been crippled by that low blow, he knew. He hadn't been. He was still on his feet, and before him was a man who stood in the path of… what? Of a great many things, his own dream of Gorhaut not least of all. Of what his home should be, in the eyes of the world, in the sight of Corannos, in his own soul. He had said this two nights ago, words very like this, to King Daufridi of Valensa. He'd been asked if he loved his country.

He did. He loved it with a heart that ached like an old man's fingers in rain, hurting for the Gorhaut of his own vision, a land worthy of the god who had chosen it, and of the honour of men. Not a place of scheming wiles, of a degraded, sensuously corrupt king, of people dispossessed of their lands by a cowardly treaty, or of ugly designs under the false, perverted aegis of Corannos for nothing less than annihilation here south of the mountains.

It was one thing to have ambitions for one's homeland, dreams of scope and expansion. It was another to use the sky-blue cloak of the god to hide a smoke-shrouded inferno of men and women—a nation of them—thrown to burn on heretics' pyres. Blaise had seen such fires as a boy. He would never forget the first time. His father had clutched his shoulder and had not let him turn away.

He knew exactly what Galbert wanted, what Ademar of Gorhaut would be guided to do when he came south. He knew how strong, how wealthy the army of Gorhaut would be by the time the snows melted in the spring. He had seen those pyres; he would not watch another burn. He had sworn it to himself those long years ago, watching an old woman die screaming, flames in her white hair. And to stop them, to stop his father and his king, he had first to defeat this Arimondan who stood now in his way with a curved sword already reddened by Blaise's own blood.

The most celebrated troubadours and the better known joglars did not watch the tournaments from the commons' standing ground. By courtesy of Ariane de Carenzu, as a sign of their high favour in Arbonne, they were given a pavilion, not far down the lists from her own. An invitation to sit among those in the pavilion was one of the prime measures of success each year among the musicians, and this autumn marked the first time Lisseut had found herself included in the elect. She owed it to Alain, she knew, to his own growing reputation, and to the little man's brash assertiveness that memorable night in Tavernel when she had sung his song to the queen of the Court of Love and the dukes of Talair and Miraval.

And to the red-bearded Gorhaut coran who was now battling for his life on the grass before them. It seemed he wasn't just a coran, though. Not since those two bright banners had been run up above his tent and the herald's voice had fought to be heard over a roar of sound. She had known since Midsummer who Blaise de Garsenc was and had kept faith by telling no one. Now he had revealed his identity to the world, and had done something rather more than that. The man she had upbraided so caustically in The Liensenne a season ago, and had then followed to the Correze gardens later that same night, was laying claim to the crown of Gorhaut.

It was with a sense of deep unreality that Lisseut remembered inviting him to come back with her that night in Tavernel. Unlucky to spend tonight alone in this city, she had told him. Unluckier still to have a degree of presumption as rash as her own. Her mother would likely be forced to take to her bed if she found out about any of this. Even now, months after, Lisseut could not stop herself from flushing at the memory.

Looking up at those two banners in the wind, she wondered what he must have thought of her, of the wet and straggle-haired, interfering, impertinent singer who had accosted him twice in a night and then taken his arm in the street and invited him to bed with her. He didn't even like singing, she remembered. Lisseut, among friends in a bright pavilion, had winced at that thought, too. No one had noticed. The others were busy wagering on the coming fight, laying odds on a man's death.

Then thoughts of herself and memories of summer had gone flying far away, for the two men on the grass had drawn their blades, the straight sword and the curved one, and had advanced upon each other. Blaise had bent to throw grass and mud at the other man's shield, something she hadn't understood until Aurelian, without being asked, had quickly stooped to speak an explanation in her ear. She had not turned to him. She had been unable to take her eyes from the two men on the grass, though a part of her was recoiling in horror even as she watched. They spoke to each other, but none of them could hear the words. She saw the Arimondan react as if scalded by something said, and then spring to attack. She saw him parried, once and then twice, as her breath caught in her throat. Death was here. This was not for show. The reality of that came home to her, and just then she saw the curved sword planted, unexpectedly, in the earth.

And it had been in the next moment, precisely then, she would afterwards remember—the Arimondan's flung dagger slicing through Blaise's ear as he twisted away, then the swift, bright flowering of blood—that Lisseut of Vezét realized, with a cold dawning of despair, that her heart was gone from her. It had left without her knowing, like a bird in winter, flying north to a hopelessly wrong destination where no haven or warmth or welcome could even be imagined.

"Oh, mother," she whispered then, softly, to a woman far away among olive groves above a coastal town. No one paid any attention to her. Two men were trying to kill each other in front of them, and one of them had claimed a crown. This was matter for song, whatever happened; it was matter for tavern and castle talk for years to come. Lisseut, her hands gripping each other tightly in her lap, spoke a prayer then to sweet Rian, and watched, even as she felt the flight of her heart from her breast across the bright green grass.

Some things about fighting Blaise had had to teach himself, or learn from his brother at those rare intervals when he was at home and Ranald would consent to give him a secret lesson: Blaise was heading for the brethren, what use would skill with a blade be for him? Other elements he had learned from the men who guided him in swordsmanship, quite a few years later than most young men in Gorhaut, in the year after the king had already made him a coran, more as a rebuke to his High Elder than through any recognition of Blaise's merits.

But the greater part of his education had come in the field, in war and in the tournament melees, the nearest thing to warfare that peacetime offered. He was lucky he had survived in those first months and years. He knew that now. He'd been far too callow and untutored to have had any right to expect to walk away from battlefields at Thouvars or Graziani or Brissel, or those early tourneys at Aulensburg or Landeston in Valensa. By the time of Iersen Bridge, though, he had known the craft of killing and surviving extremely well. And it was there on that winter field that he had come nearest of all to dying: which was, of course, the darkest of many ironies at the heart of a soldier's life.

In any case, what Blaise proceeded now to do was as obvious to him as the direction of sunrise or the proper flight of birds in winter. The Arimondan was badly hurt on his left side. The task then was to make him use his shield again and again, to lift it high against forehand blows aimed towards shoulder or head. It didn't matter if the blows landed; against a good man they wouldn't be expected to. But with each one warded by a shield thrust upward in defence, Quzman's wound would be forced open more and his arm and side would grow weaker. It was straightforward, routine; any competent soldier would know this to be so.

Blaise became aware after a time that this was exactly what was happening. It began to be visible in the Arimondan 's face, though his expression of arrogant concentration never really changed. There was more blood now, welling from the wound in his side. Meticulously, with the precision all field surgeons claimed and most lacked, Blaise set about exploiting the injury he had inflicted.

His focus was calmly precise, unhurried, patient, so much so that he nearly died.

He ought to have been killed, for he was badly fooled. What Quzman did was feint a throw with another knife. For the second time he stepped backwards and stabbed his sword into the flattened grass, reaching towards his leg with his freed hand. Blaise, alert for the throw, was already dodging, twisting downwards again, when Quzman, on one knee, hurled his heavy shield instead like an athlete's disc with his left hand, cracking Blaise so savagely across the shins it sent him sprawling, crying out with the pain. The Arimondan seized his sword again and was up with frightening speed, lunging forward with a downward slash intended to decapitate.

Blaise rolled desperately backwards and flopped to one side, gasping at the pain in both legs. The descending sword bit earth a blade's width from his head, but Quzman was reaching in earnest now for his second knife, at quarters too close for swords as he fell forward upon Blaise.

He never reached that blade.

Years ago, during one of the endless campaigns against Valensa, King Duergar of Gorhaut, who had continued to take an interest in Galbert de Garsenc's curiously rebellious younger son, had called for Blaise to ride out alone with him one morning in the king's circuit of his army's encampment. On that springtime ride, as a purely passing remark, he had offered a suggestion as to where a useful blade might be secreted upon one's person, before pointing out how cherry trees in blossom were a good place for archers to hide.

In real pain, his sword useless, Blaise rolled again desperately and released his grip on his shield. And as he did so he claimed his own hidden dagger from the iron sheath he'd had made for it, at his king' suggestion, on the inside face of the shield. Jamming his right arm against the ground at the end of his awkward roll he rang the shield hard off Quzman's shoulder and then, pulling his left hand free with the blade, he stabbed the Arimondan twice, once deep in the muscles of the sword arm, and then a raking gash across the ribs already wounded.

Then he twisted out from under his writhing foe and struggled to his feet. He quickly regained his sword. Quzman, twisting in pain, his sword arm now useless, his left side streaming with fresh blood, lay on the smeared grass beneath him. There was a sound of people shouting in the distance, oddly remote. Blaise was aware that he was swaying unsteadily on his feet. His ear felt as if it were shredded, on fire. His legs, from the first sword wound and then the last shield blow, could barely support him. But he was upright, and he had his sword again, and the other man was down.

He set the point, as steadily as he could, at Quzman's throat. The Arimondan's black eyes gazed up at him implacably, without fear, even as death arrived for him.

"Do it," he said, "that my spirit may rejoin my brother's."

Blaise said, breathing in hard, short gasps, "I am free of your blood before the god? It was fairly done? I have your dispensation?"

Quzman managed a bitter smile. "It matters to you?" He dragged a breath. "You have it. It was fairly done." Another harsh breath. "It was more than fair, after the woman's rooms. You are free of my death. Do it."

The shouts and screaming had stopped, It was eerily silent now all around the ground where they stood. One man called out something from the commons' side. In the stillness his voice rose and fell away, leaving silence again. There was, Blaise realized, one more thing he could do this morning. And it seemed, remarkably, that he wanted to do it in any case.

He said, the words coming slowly as he struggled to control his breathing, "Your wounds are not mortal. I will need good men with me to do what I must do. I killed your brother when attacked by six corans and only after they first shot at me. Will you let this combat settle the past for us? I am loath to kill a brave man. I do not want your death on my hands, even with dispensation."

Quzman shook his head, his expression curiously tranquil now. "I might have agreed," he said, his breathing quick and shallow, "were it not for one thing. My brother carried no bow, he never did, and he died of an arrow in the throat. You ought to have fought him, Northerner. For killing him at a distance you must die, or I must."

Blaise shook his head. There was a great weariness in him now. "Need it be written before the god that we be enemies?" He fought off a renewed wave of pain. He could feel blood dripping from his ear. "It was not a tourney that day by the lake. I was fighting six men for my life. I am not going to kill you, Arimondan. If I ask, they will let you go from here. Do what you will with your life, but know that I will be pleased to have you in my company."

"Do not do this," said Quzman of Arimonda.

Blaise ignored him. He turned and began to walk—cautiously, because he could not move any other way just yet—towards the pavilion where the countess sat with Ariane and Bertran and die king of Valensa. It seemed a long way off. And it was very nearly the hardest thing he had ever done, not to try to move faster, not to look back and see.

He took five or six steps only. He had thought it might be thus. The man was an Arimondan. after all. There had been a slim chance, no more.

"I told you to kill me!" Quzman di Perano cried. Blaise heard footsteps crossing the grass. He flung a prayer outwards, to whoever might hear him from this field in Arbonne, the god, or the goddess who was more than his maiden daughter here. And with his silent invocation, he heard the impact of arrows.

Behind him the Arimondan grunted queerly and spoke a name, and there came the sound of a body falling on the grass.

For a long moment Blaise stood motionless, dealing with an unexpected regret. When he did turn it was towards his tent, to see Valery of Talair and Rudel Correze approaching, the two best archers he knew, both grim-faced, both with bows to hand and the arrows gone. He went slowly back to stand above the body of the Arimondan. Quzman lay face down in the grass, still gripping his splendid sword, but Blaise, gazing upon him, saw something he could not understand. There were four arrows, not two, in the dead man's body. He looked limp, almost comical, stuck full of arrows like a sorcerer's pin-doll. An ugly ending for a proud man. Blaise looked up, his brow furrowing, and saw a third man with a bow step forward as if he had been waiting to be noticed. The man began hesitantly to come across the grass towards them from the far end of the pavilions. A moment later Blaise blinked in astonished recognition. It had been a long shot, that one, but he remembered Hirnan of Baude, the best coran there, as being exceptionally good with his bow.

Hirnan came up to him and bowed, his expression awkward and anxious. "I must ask your forgiveness," he said. "I saw him rise up with the sword. I did not know the others had instructions from you."

"They didn't," Blaise said mildly. "I didn't know I was going to do that." He extended a hand and touched the big coran on the shoulder. "Well met again, Hirnan, and hardly a time to be asking forgiveness—you might have saved my life just there."

Hirnan took a relieved breath but did not smile. He seemed uneasy here on the grass with so many people watching them. "I heard what the herald said," he murmured. "We never knew who you were, you understand." He looked Blaise in the eye. "But I made my own judgment last spring. I claim no very great skills or dignity, but if you can use a man you can trust in your company I would be honoured. My lord."

Blaise felt a truly unexpected feeling of warmth beginning to steal through him, pushing away the pain. He liked this man and respected him. "The honour will be as much my own," he said gravely. "I made my own judgments too, in the highlands. But you are a sworn coran of the lord of Baude Castle. I doubt Mallin will be eager to lose one such as you."

For the first time, Hirnan allowed the trace of a smile to cross his face. "Look again," he said. "It was En Mallin himself who told me to ready my bow, there at the end when the Arimondan fell and you stood talking to him. I truly do not think he will object if I join you now."

Blaise did look over then, where Hirnan was indicating, to a bright yellow pavilion far down the lists, and he saw that Mallin de Baude was on his feet. Even at this distance he could see that the young baron was smiling. Memories of the springtime came flooding back as Blaise lifted a hand in salute. And then Mallin de Baude, as if born to such gestures, to performing them before the eyes of the gathered world, saluted Blaise in return with a lifted hand, and then he bowed to him, the way one bows to kings. Beside him, with exquisite grace, Soresina de Baude, in a skirt green as the grass, sank low to the ground and remained thus for a moment before she rose. There was a murmur from the pavilions and the commons, both.

Blaise swallowed, struggling without great success to adjust his own thinking to this sort of thing. It was difficult to resist the urge to return the salute in kind, but a man claiming a crown did not bow to minor barons. The rules of the game were changing; as of this morning they had changed for the rest of his life, however long or short that might be. There was something frightening in that thought.

Behind him there came a dry cough. He looked over his shoulder at Rudel and Valery. "That ear will need looking to. And there is a fourth arrow here," Valery said prosaically.

Rudel's expression was odd, as if astonishment were vying with hilarity for mastery in him. "And the man who fired it is making his appearance even as we speak, like the unmasked coran at the end of a puppet play. This is the end of the play, Blaise. You'd best think quickly. Look to the other tent."

Blaise looked. From behind the Arimondan's tent, very much indeed as from behind a stage curtain, resplendent in green and gold, with a longbow in one hand, came Urté de Miraval.

He was seen now by the pavilions and the commons both, and so the noise, not surprisingly, began to grow again. In the midst of it, Urté began walking towards them with a measured, unhurried tread, as if he were doing no more than stroll the grounds of Miraval.

He came up to Blaise and stopped, his carriage straight as a spear for all his years. There was a stillness where they stood, though the sounds continued to grow all around them.

"Do not," Urté said, "expect another salute. The last time I looked into the matter, Ademar was king of Gorhaut. I'm afraid I do not bow to the presumption of pretenders."

"Why do you save their lives, then?" It was Rudel who asked as Blaise kept silent, thinking as swiftly as he could.

The duke didn't bother to look at Rudel. His eyes held Blaise's as he smiled thinly. "The Arimondan was a disappointment. He cost me ten corans two nights ago, and a thousand in gold to Massena Delonghi this morning. And I didn't really want to be the sworn liege lord of a coran who killed this man from behind in a challenge. Bad for my own image, you understand."

"I think I do, actually," Blaise said. A cold anger was rising in him. "You were at risk if he survived, weren't you? Since you betrayed him in Lucianna's rooms, he might have continued to talk about how you were really part of that attempt on my life two nights ago. Very bad for your image, I agree. You didn't save me, my lord, you killed an inconvenient man."

The duke was undisturbed. "A fair reason to kill a man, I would say. You might want to take care to avoid becoming inconvenient yourself, as well as presumptuous."

Rudel gave a bark of shocked laughter. "Are you mad? Are you threatening him?"

Again Urté did not even look at him. Blaise said then, very deliberately, "Does it matter greatly what I do? I'd heard simple error was enough to cause you to kill, actually. Musicians who sang the wrong tune, loyal corans who made the mistake of obeying your instructions at the wrong time." He paused, and fixed his gaze on Urté. He knew he shouldn't say this, but there was a rage working through him now, and he didn't care any more: "And then there was a child who had the regrettably bad judgment to be sired by the wrong man, and a young wife who—"

"I believe that is enough," said Urté de Miraval. His smile was gone.

"Do you? What if I do not believe so, my lord? What if I choose to suggest otherwise? To become truly inconvenient, as you put it? To denounce you myself for plotting to have me slain? And for other things, however long ago?" Blaise felt his hands beginning to tremble. "If you wish, I will be pleased to fight you now. I have my attendants here, and there are two corans of Miraval already waiting by that tent. I will be happy to engage you. I don't like men who kill babies, my lord of Miraval."

Urté de Miraval's expression had grown thoughtful. He was calm again, if very pale now. "De Talair told you that?"

"He told me nothing. I have never asked him. This has nothing to do with Bertran."

The duke smiled again. It was not a pleasant smile this time either. "Ah, then," he murmured, "it was Ariane, last summer. Of course. I ought to have guessed. I love the woman dearly, but she loosens her tongue when bedded."

Blaise's head snapped back. "I have just offered once. Need I do so again? Will you fight me, my lord?"

After a moment, Urté de Miraval shook his head, seeming now to have fully recovered his composure, to be genuinely amused. "I will not. You are hurt, for one thing, and are possibly of some importance to us right now, for another. You fought bravely this morning, Northerner. I can honour a man for that, and I do. Look, the women are waiting for you. Go play out the game and then have your ear dealt with, coran. I rather fear you are going to look like de Talair when that blood is cleaned away."

It was a dismissal, in fact, a high lord speaking as if to some promising young swordsman, but Blaise, though recognizing that clearly, didn't quite know how to turn it into something else. Valery did it for him.

"There remains one unanswered question, my lord," Bertran's cousin murmured to the duke. And Urté turned to him as he had not done for Rudel. "Is it shame that keeps your back so straight just now? Shame because you have been off with an Arimondan on a dark trail of murder while the rest of us, including En Bertran, are trying to save Arbonne from a ruin we know to be coming. How far into the present will you carry the past, my lord, whether or not you killed the child?"

For an instant Urté was rendered speechless, and in that moment, feeling an easing of his own fury and a rush of satisfaction like a cool breeze, Blaise nodded politely to him and then turned his back, in the sight of all those watching. He heard his friends following as he began to walk towards the pavilion of the countess of Arbonne and the queen of the Court of Love, leaving the duke of Miraval standing alone on the grass with his bow, beside the body of his dead coran, the sunlight falling clearly upon the two of them.

Roban, the chancellor, standing discreetly but readily available towards the back of the countess's golden and white pavilion, saw the son of Galbert de Garsenc turn his back upon Urté de Miraval and begin to walk towards them. He winced. He hadn't heard a word of what had been spoken, of course, but the cool effrontery of the gesture carried its own message.

The messages were coming fast and furious this morning, all tending towards the same end. He still didn't like what was happening—it was too flamboyant, far too provocative for Roban—but he had to concede that the Gorhautian was carrying it off with real grace. Given what had just happened, he couldn't honestly claim to doubt the man any more. He might fail in this, they might all fail, but Blaise de Garsenc had abandoned any chance to betray them when he'd had the banner of the kings of Gorhaut raised above his tent this morning.

Roban made an unobtrusive gesture and one of his own people came hurrying over from the cleared space behind the pavilion. He sent the man running for the countess's physician and the priestess of healing as well.

In the middle of the field he saw En Urté make a belatedly imperious gesture, summoning the two Miraval corans to remove the body of the Arimondan. Roban had spent most of his life at court. He knew perfectly well why Urté had fired that long, splendid arrow shot from behind the tent. The duke, he was certain, had fully expected to find Blaise of Gorhaut already dead when he arrived at the Delonghi woman's rooms with the countess two nights ago. It wasn't any particular hatred of the young coran that would have driven him—de Miraval very possibly hadn't even known who Blaise really was—it would have been simply another blow, one more stupid, trivial, destructive blow in the endless war of Miraval and Talair. Bertran valued the Gorhautian and kept him close: therefore, and needing no other reason, Urté de Miraval would be pleased to see him slain. After which the Arimondan would have been abandoned to his fate, exactly as he had been in any event, and the unsettling, possibly dangerous lady from Portezza left to the countess. And to Roban, of course; the hard things were always left to Roban.

He watched as Blaise de Garsenc approached, walking with obvious difficulty. Some distance behind him the two green-garbed Miraval corans were running across the grass in response to their lord's summons. Roban was a thoughtful man, and it had long struck him as strange—and did so again now—that none of the blows between the warring dukes were ever directed at each other. It was as if—in some unspoken, unacknowledged fashion—they needed each other to keep alive the clear, bitter memories of that long-ago year, to give each other, however inexplicable it might appear, a reason to continue living.

It was ridiculous to Roban, hopelessly irrational, dark as pagan ritual, but at the same time something the countess had once said still rang true for him: it was virtually impossible ever to think of either man without immediately calling the other to mind. They were bound and grappled together, Roban thought, as in a net, by the death of Aelis de Miraval. Roban looked over and saw Bertran, relaxed and at ease in a chair under the countess's golden canopy. He was smiling broadly as he watched Urté stalk before his corans as they bore the Arimondan's body from the field.

It never stopped. It would not ever stop while the two of them lived. And who knew what people—and nations—they would draw down into the dark net with them, suspended forever in that time more than twenty years ago when a black-haired woman had died in Miraval?

The man who had just claimed the throne of Gorhaut was standing before the countess now. He looked, Roban thought, somewhat changed from before, even making allowance for the fact that he'd been bound and nearly naked on a woman's bed the last time the chancellor had seen him. The Gorhautian, for all the evident pain of his wounds—the gashed ear was dripping blood—carried himself with composure as he faced the two reigning ladies of Arbonne and the king of Valensa. He wasn't as young as Roban had first thought him to be, either. The look in his face just now included, unexpectedly, a hint of sadness. It was not the expression of a youthful man.

Behind him stood Bertran's cousin and Vitalle Correze's son, and a third coran in the livery of Castle Baude. They already looked like an entourage, the chancellor thought. Or was it only the manner of the Gorhautian himself that made that seem the case? Could the mere assertion of a claim effect so much of a change? It could, Roban decided, if the claim was as large as this one was. Men were often no more or less than what others saw in them, and no one in the world would ever look at this tall northern coran the same way ever again. That might, he thought suddenly, explain the sadness.

The countess rose, gesturing for those beside her to remain seated. Roban couldn't see her face, but he knew she would not be smiling. Not now, with so much cast into hazard this morning. She said, her light, clear voice carrying, "You have acquitted yourself on this field with honour Blaise de Garsenc, and have received the favour of Rian and Corannos. We call upon all those here to bear witness that the matter of blood between yourself and Quzman di Perano is ended and resolved forever." She glanced deliberately over to where the banner of the Gorhaut kings was snapping in the breeze above his tent. "As for other matters that have emerged this morning, we will have much to say to each other in the days to come, and we doubt not that the king of Valensa will wish to offer his wise counsel in these affairs. Such matters will be dealt with soon. For the moment, we offer you the care of our healers in Barbentain—" she glanced briefly back towards Roban, who nodded " — and we shall say nothing more at this time but an offered prayer that holy Rian will bless you with her grace."

Although that, Roban thought grimly, was a great deal to have said. The countess had made the point already when she rose to salute the Gorhautian at the first running up of his banners, but this was signalling it again, and quite unmistakably. The chancellor looked over his shoulder. The physician and the priestess had arrived; they were coming swiftly over, almost running. But there was one more thing to be done, Roban knew, before Blaise de Garsenc could be released from the public gaze into their care. This was theatre, and he was on the stage.

As the countess took her seat again it was Ariane who rose, beautiful in autumn hues of russet and pale gold. Sunrise and sunset, the chancellor thought, looking at the two women, or, since Ariane was not really young any more, perhaps noontide and twilight would better suit as images. The beauty of the lady of Carenzu was almost dazzling in the clear light. His own love, though, was for the older woman, for the grace of the ending day, and it would be until he died.

There was a rose to be given now. Mildly curious, in fact, as to what the Gorhautian would do, Roban heard Ariane's formal words spoken to invoke the symbolic rituals of the Court of Love. He was not a troubadour, not a coran, not a dancer or a wit or the sort of man who set styles of fashion at court among ladies. Even so, Roban the chancellor loved his country with his own enduring passion, with an inward, private flame, and he knew that these rituals, frivolous as they might seem, were what defined Arbonne and set it apart from the rest of the world. And he too, prosaic and dry and sober as he might be in the castle corridors of day, had had his own dreams of winning this rose and offering it—of course—to the countess before cheering multitudes. Not for some time had he had that dream, but it was not so very long ago, either.

"We have our traditions here in Arbonne," Ariane was saying. "Here, where Rian the goddess is so much more than merely Corinna, maiden daughter of the god. She has many incarnations, our goddess, and both death and life are contained in her. Which is why," she said, her clear, strong voice now the only sound among the pavilions, "which is why, at the end of a death challenge, there is a ceremony to honour Rian and the mortal women who are all her daughters. We ask the victor, the chosen of the goddess and the god, to give a rose." She paused. "Sometimes, as a higher recognition of his worth, we invite him to offer three."

She opened the coffer they had given her, and Roban saw that she had indeed chosen to invoke the full ceremony this morning. It was seldom done, but it was obvious that Signe and Ariane were marking this moment and this man as indelibly as they could. He wondered if the Gorhaut coran could possibly be aware of how much he had taken upon himself today. He wondered how long the man would live-but that, of course, was bound up in how long any of them could expect to live with a war coming, certain as winter and the spring to follow.

"White is for fidelity," Ariane said, holding the coffer up to be seen. There was a murmuring all along the pavilions, of anticipation and speculation. The morning was offering more than anyone could have imagined. "Yellow is for love, and red is for desire." She smiled. "You may bestow them as you choose, my lord de Garsenc. We will all be honoured by your doing so." Blaise of Gorhaut, grass-stained and bloody, bowed to Ariane and took the coffer from her long fingers. It was purest ceremony, Roban knew, a spectacle intended entirely for those in the other pavilions and the commons' standing grounds, and for the words and music of the troubadours and joglars who would carry it to castles and villages far beyond this field when the fair was over. Knowing this, having seen it so many times before, he was nonetheless moved. Gravely the man handed the open coffer to Vitalle Correze's son and took from it the white rose. He looked upon it in silence for a moment, before turning back to the queen. "Fidelity I offer where it is most richly deserved, if I might be allowed to name a woman who is not with us at this field. May I ask you to guard this for her and have it laid at her feet in my name when the time allows?"

Gravely Ariane nodded. "You may and I shall. Where should I carry it?"

"To my sister," said Blaise, and Roban was almost certain the emotion in his voice was not feigned. "To Rosala de Savaric de Garsenc, who kept faith with her child and her own vision of Gorhaut. And say to her, if you will, that I shall never break faith with her while I live."

The woman was still in the castle, Roban knew. This open ground was no place for someone only days past childbirth. The herald was declaiming her name now that all might hear it. There had been rumours, but this would be the first formal confirmation of who the mysterious woman in Barbentain was. They were going be talking about this morning in all six countries for a long time, Roban thought, shaking his head.

Blaise had already turned to take the red rose. He seemed to be hesitating, brow furrowed, but then Roban saw him smile slightly for the first time since he'd approached. Carrying it before him, laid across both palms, he limped a short distance down the row of pavilions and stopped before the handsomely carved and decorated chair of Lucianna Delonghi, who had bound him in ropes two nights ago, and cut him with her dagger. Extending both hands he gave her, with another low bow, the red rose of desire.

Roban, watching with frank curiosity, saw the woman go pale, even as the father, beside her, smiled—and then slowly stopped smiling as implications came home to him. Lucianna Delonghi said nothing at all; her composure seemed shaken for the first time the chancellor could remember. With a court-bred instinct Roban turned just then to look at Ariane, and saw how thin her mouth was as she watched. A new twist here, he thought. I wonder when that happened?

"I begin to think," murmured Bertran de Talair, speaking for the first time, "that we may have all found more than we bargained for in this man. I may yet learn to fear him. He has just taken his full revenge upon Bosiard d'Andoria."

It was true, Roban realized. This was a very public rose of desire offered to a married woman whose husband had been banned from the fair for trying to have Blaise killed. Everyone in the pavilions and most of the commons would now be certain they knew why. No wonder Massena Delonghi was no longer smiling. Turning back to the Portezzan pavilion, Roban was in time to see the Gorhautian speak one word to the woman, and the chancellor's line of vision was clear enough that he was very nearly certain that the word was farewell. The revenge, he considered, might not be only upon the husband.

The herald was busily crying Lucianna d'Andoria's name as Blaise came back for the yellow rose.

He took it in both hands, as he had held the other two, and turned to the countess and the queen. He looked from one to the other and then said, calmly in the stillness of the morning air, "This one, if you will allow, I shall keep for a time. In my own country of Gorhaut we speak love privately before we declare it to the world."

And then, before either woman could reply, without any dramatics at all, he fainted.

And that, thought the chancellor of Arbonne sagely as he motioned urgently for the healers, is probably the first act of this entire morning that wasn't meant for an audience.

As it happened, he was wrong.

"You might consider fainting if this goes on too long and you want to get out of here," Rudel had murmured, not moving his lips, as Blaise had taken the first rose. "Gallant victor pushed to his very limits. They'll like that. "

Towards the end, as he walked back from Lucianna's pavilion, Blaise had decided that it was, indeed, going on too long. He hadn't, actually, expected to see real pain in her eyes. Anger yes, and perhaps a scornful pride, but not that sudden pain.

Following upon everything else, it made him feel extremely strange. He didn't want to actually collapse, so he took Rudel's advice and allowed himself to seem to do so, slipping to the grass and letting his eyes fall closed. He heard voices of sharp concern about him, the countess calling for aid, Bertran's voice guiding the physician through the pavilion's seats to where he lay. Rudel and Valery quickly contrived a litter to carry him upon, and he heard Hirnan's brisk, highland accent clearing a path as they bore him away, out of the too-bright sun and the scrutiny of so many people. Part of the way back towards the castle Blaise did, in fact, lose consciousness, but not before the thought came to him, quite unexpectedly, along the momentarily undefended pathways of his mind, that Rosala's child, Cadar, was almost certainly his own son.

Most of the troubadours were loudly, even wildly expressive in their enthusiasm for what had just happened. Even when En Blaise de Garsenc fell to the ground in a faint it did not check their exuberant spirit. Remy, it seemed, had elected to forget about his swordspoint encounter with the man at Midsummer. He would probably end up regarding it as an early bond of blood between the two of them. Jourdain and Alain were already speaking of a hurried collaboration this afternoon, to have at least one song ready for the evening's banquet in Barbentain.

"You don't look well. What is it?" Aurelian, of course, the one who always noticed, even in the midst of pandemonium.

Lisseut managed a shaky smile for him. "I don't much like this kind of thing, I've just discovered."

"Neither do I, and I learned that some time ago. It is over now. We can go." He hesitated, looking down at her thoughtfully. "He will be all right, you know. I saw the physician and a priestess coming over."

"I did too. I'm sure he's all right." She was aware that there was an expression of knowledge on his part in what he had just said, and an admission in her brief reply. She didn't care. He had given out the white rose to his brother's wife, and the red to Lucianna Delonghi, who was as beautiful as Aurelian had said she was. He had kept the yellow one.

Beside her, Aurelian was silent for a moment. She saw some children running about on the grass now, play-acting battles. People were beginning to leave their pavilion and all the others, joining the milling, feverish crowd. The inns were about to become extremely busy in Lussan.

"And you, my dear?" Aurelian asked finally. "Will you be all right?"

"I don't know," she answered, truthfully.

CHAPTER 14

The blue moon is full tonight, Ranald realizes belatedly, lending its strange luminosity to the trees and rocks of the mountain pass. The creatures of the otherworld are rumoured to be able to move between their own land and this one on nights when Escoran is full. The mountains, in the shepherds' tales, are the haunts of many of them: ethereal creatures the size of flowers; hairy, great-footed monsters who can seize and devour an unwary horse and rider and leave nothing but bones for the morning sun to find; or the spirits who steal babies from their cradles by the fire and take them away under barrow and hill forever.

Ranald tries, again, to decide exactly why he is so unhappy to be here. He likes hunting, and night certainly holds no terrors for him, especially not in the company of fifty of the king's best men. In a sense this is simply a larger, more wide-ranging hunt.

In another sense, a more honest one, it is no such thing at all.

He looks over to his left and stares for a long moment at the grim profile of the only man who seems even less pleased than he to be here. Fulk de Savaric had the misfortune to be paying one of his rare visits to Cortil when the message came of his sister's flight and the king decided that same evening to ride. Ademar had made it clear that the dukes of Garsenc and Savaric were not merely being given the opportunity to join his company. They were expected to do so. Loyalty, the message was explicit, was very much at issue on this ride.

For two days and a night, with a second night upon them now, they have been in the saddle, changing horses three times, eating at speed and usually at a gallop. Ranald has never seen King Ademar like this, so intense, so focused in his rage.

This, he decides, is probably what is disturbing him most. That the king is visibly so much more incensed than he himself by Rosala's flight with the child. It is almost as if she fled from Ademar and not Ranald. In some ways that might even be true. Not that he harbours illusions about the strength of his relationship with his wife, but Ranald does wonder, almost wistfully, if she would have risked so much, including the life of the unborn child, just to leave Garsenc and his own company if his father and the king had not also been part of the picture. Large parts, both of them, with Galbert threatening to take the babe, and Ademar threatening… what? A seduction of the wife of the most powerful duke in the country? A ravishing of her if she proved unwilling?

It seems, on the evidence, that she has indeed proven unwilling, has chosen the astonishing, surely terrifying option of flight alone to another country rather than trust her husband to guard and shelter her from his father and their king. And what, he wonders, whether one considers it by the light of day or the blue shining of this moon, do all these things say about the character and strength of Ranald, duke of Garsenc, who is even now riding, however unwillingly, in the wake of his king across the mountain pass towards a slaughter in Arbonne?

In the end it is precisely as easy as any experienced soldier might have predicted it would be. The three Arbonnais corans in the watch-tower on the southern slopes of the range are accustomed to traffic from the north during the month of the Lussan Fair, and utterly confident—as they have every right to be—of the truce that always accompanies a fair.

Ademar halts his full company out of sight and sends five corans down towards the tower. They are greeted with courtesy by the guards, offered shelter and food and straw for the night. The three Arbonnais are killed even as these offers are being made. On the instructions of the king, as the signal is given and the rest of the company rides up, the three guardsmen are decapitated and castrated and the wooden buildings beside the stone tower are set on fire.

They ride more swiftly then, to be ahead of any message in the flames. A short time later they sweep down upon the nearby hamlet of Aubry like a wild hunt out of the shepherds' night terrors: fifty howling men on horses, swords out, torches in their free hands, burning and slaying without warning, without reason offered, without respite. This raid in a time of truce is a message, and the message is to be made as unambiguous as it can be.

Ranald, aware that he is being watched by the king and by the Elder who is here as his father's representative, makes a point, slightly sickened, of seeking out those few villagers who have some sort of weapon in their hands as they stumble from the huts amid the screaming of animals and small children. He is a very good fighter, once a celebrated one, though his brother latterly might have had the reputation, travelling the world in search of tournaments and wars. But it was Ranald who first taught Blaise anything about swordsmanship, and it was Ranald de Garsenc who, the year he turned nineteen, was named King's Champion in Gorhaut by Ademar's father, Duergar.

That had been, he has often thought, easily the best time of his life. Honoured by the king and the court for his prowess, excited by the attention of women of high rank and low, continually gratified by his own smooth, effortless skills, immersed in the oblivious, expansive confidence of youth, and free—more than anything else, free of his father for a little while.

Then his uncle, Ereibert de Garsenc, had died and Ranald had become duke, with all the defining burdens and powers of rank, and the specific implications of being near to an often-disputed throne. A new champion had been named ceremoniously, even as Ranald, returned to Garsenc Castle in the south, and his father, again, began to tell him what to do. More than ten years ago, that was. For all those years he has mostly been doing what Galbert tells him. He wonders what he could point to, if he tried, that has given him real pleasure in that time.

Certainly not this slaughter, or the meaning of it, in a time of truce. Ranald de Garsenc is hardly a sentimental man, and he has no trouble with warfare, or even the idea of conquest here in Arbonne. This isn't a war though, not yet. This is something ugly and vengeful. It is supposed to be his own revenge, he knows. He has not been consulted on the issue; he has only ridden, as required by his king, to deliver a message in blood and fire.

There is a small temple to the goddess Rian not far from the village, the northernmost temple in Arbonne, the nearest to Gorhaut. That is why they are here. The thirty or forty inhabitants of Aubry, awakened in the middle of the night, are killed, down to the last child. Like the guardsmen in the burning tower, the men—mostly shepherds and farmers—are decapitated and their genitals are hacked off. Ademar of Gorhaut knows exactly how to say what he thinks of the men in woman-ruled Arbonne. Then they ride on to the temple.

Under the light of Escoran at its full and the just-risen crescent of Vidonne, the eight priestesses of Rian in that small sanctuary are taken from their beds and are burned alive. The soldiers are made free of them first, by order of the king. Ademar moves his big horse restlessly back and forth, watching first one cluster of corans with a woman and then another. There is a great deal of screaming and a growing roar from the swiftly gathered bonfire of dry autumn wood. At one point, his pale yellow hair reddened in the firelight, Ademar looks over at Ranald and laughs.

"Do you not want a woman, my lord of Garsenc? A gift from your king, solace for your great loss?" He shouts it so others can hear.

Ranald, his sword still in his hand, though unnecessarily now, says, "Not before you, my liege. I will follow in this, as in all things."

Ademar throws his head back and laughs again. For a moment, Ranald is afraid the king will indeed dismount and join his corans among the pinioned women, but Ademar only slashes his horse again and moves nearer to where the Elder that Galbert has sent is watching the pyre. Ranald watches the king go, a bleakness in his heart. He knows what he should do. He knows he will not do it. In the mingling of firelight and the moons his eyes briefly meet those of Fulk de Savaric. Both men look away without speaking. He has seen burnings before, has ordered a number of them himself on the Garsenc lands, following his father's regime of having one such spectacle every year or so to keep the serfs and villagers properly subdued. He has watched impassively, time after time, setting an example. He has never seen eight women burned at once, though. The numbers shouldn't matter, but, when it finally begins, it appears that they do make a difference.

Through the screaming and the terrified noises of the farm animals all around, Ranald hears his father's designated Eider intone the ritual of denunciation and the formal curse of Corannos, and then, his voice rising in genuine triumph, invoking the god's gift of fire to eradicate heresy.

A scourging of the god, Galbert called this raid in the throne room of Cortil, when the king came out from a meeting with his High Elder and announced that he would be riding for Arbonne that same night.

The screaming continues among the flames until the smoke stops it, which is what always happens. The women slowly begin to turn black and the smell of burning flesh is strong. Ademar decides to leave. Having done what he came to do, his fury slaked for the moment, the king of Gorhaut leads his corans back towards the mountain pass. As they go past the still-smouldering outbuildings beside the lone watchtower one coran begins to sing, and soon almost all of them are doing so—a song of Gorhaut victorious in battle, the chosen warriors of Corannos in his most beloved land.

Three guardsmen in a tower, a hamlet of shepherds and farmers, eight priestesses raped and set on fire. A scourging of the god.

It is a beginning.

The west wind blew the smoke the other way, so he was able to see, quite clearly from the ridge at the fringe of the forest, exactly what was happening below. He watched the massacre in the village without expression, and felt a disturbing but unmistakable stirring in his loins when he saw men he knew dragging the women out from the temple, some naked, some in night-robes that were quickly ripped away. He was quite close, actually, though hidden among the trees. He heard not only the screams but the shouted jests of the corans. He recognized the king immediately, and a moment afterwards saw his own liege lord, the duke of Garsenc. These were, in fact, the men he had been riding north to find.

He was bothered by the burning, though in itself that would not have been enough to make him pause. He did pause, however, silent and watchful on his horse above Aubry, as the corans of Gorhaut finished their games and their work and the screaming died away. Nor did he move, though it was clearly past time to ride down, when he saw the king make a sudden, sweeping gesture and fifty horsemen swiftly remount and ride away, east and north towards the pass.

He was trembling, in fact, confused and unsettled by his own hesitation, visited, as he had been all day, by thoughts he would never have entertained before this morning. Habit and fear, the compulsions of his discipline, had sent him riding north from Lussan at midday to carry news to Cortil of what he had seen on the tournament ground that morning. He had stopped at a roadside inn for ale, and had then lingered there absurdly long, telling himself over and over that it was time to get up in the saddle again, that his tidings were critical, dangerous, that he was even at risk of suspicion if he delayed too long.

It was very nearly day's end, though, when he left that inn, riding at a gallop but not straining his horse. It was a long way to Cortil, he told himself, he had to be careful not to exhaust his mount. In the darkness under Escoran's blue light he had approached Aubry, preparing to bypass it on the road towards the pass, when he heard the sounds of horses and shouting men and stopped at the forest's edge to see, astonishingly, the king he had been riding north to warn.

And he stayed up there watching, motionless, as they slaughtered the people of a village and a temple and rode away. He wasn't especially shocked by what the corans were doing to the priestesses, nor even, really, by the burning of the women after they were done, though no halfway normal man could really enjoy such a thing. That wasn't what kept him silent up on the ridge. He had seen worse, or as bad at any rate, in the brutal years of war against Valensa, especially among the farms and towns on either side of the border. The longer a war went on, his father had told him once, the more terrible the things one saw, and did. It seemed to him to have been a true thing to say; he felt that way about much of what his father had told him over the years.

It wasn't even, though this was a part of it, the thrill he had felt that morning, straight up his spine and tingling in his hair, when Blaise de Garsenc had raised the banner of the kings above his tent and gone forth to battle. He had always thought—and had once or twice even said, though only to trusted friends—that the youngest of the de Garsenc was much the best of the three of them.

That wouldn't have made the difference, not in and of itself. A coran in Gorhaut learned, early, to keep his thoughts where they belonged: away from any actions he might be ordered to perform. His own sworn liege lord was Ranald, duke of Garsenc, and if the duke took most of his own orders from the father in Cortil, well, the corans of Garsenc were not expected to have any thoughts at all about that.

He would have gone down with his tidings, he realized finally, still sitting silently on his horse long after the king's company had gone, watching the burning fires spread from two of the wooden houses to a third, if it hadn't been for the one additional thing, drawn slowly up from his own history during this long day like a bucket from a well.

There was no sound now save the cackle of the flames and the wailing, very faint, of a child or an animal that was somehow not yet dead. After a moment that crying also stopped and there was only the rising sound of wind and the fires, growing to a roar as the last of the wooden houses caught.

What had kept him here, rooted to this ridge, watching his king and liege lord and corans he had known for years, was the memory of his father's last year.

His own family home had been a small tract of farmland proudly entered in their own name on the baron's records since the last plague had made labour scarce and left too many farms untended. A small bit of land, but his father's own, after a grinding lifetime of brutally labouring for someone else. It had been in the good grainlands in the north of Gorhaut, that farm. Or, to speak properly now, in the north of what had been Gorhaut. It was Valensa now, since the treaty that had surrendered land kept safe by King Duergar's own sword and the corans of the king and the courage of farmers and villagers fighting for what was theirs.

He had fought at Iersen Bridge himself. Fought and won in ice and blood among the army of Gorhaut, though grieving solely for his king after swords were sheathed and spears laid aside. A season later, no more than that, back in the south at Garsenc Castle where he served the young duke as an anointed coran, to the vast pride of his family, he had learned that his parents, along with all the other farmers and the inhabitants of entire villages of the north, were being told to pack and travel south to wherever they would, wherever they could find shelter.

It was only for a time, they were advised by the messengers of the new king, Ademar. The new king, in his wisdom, had taken thought for them, the messengers said—there would be wider, richer lands for all of them very soon. In the meantime, his father's lifelong dream and prayer of his own farm was gone, handed over to the Valensans they had been fighting for fifty years. Just like that.

His parents had actually been among the fortunate, in a way of thinking, finding a place with his mother's sister's husband east of Cortil; working for someone else again, but with a roof over their heads at least. He had seen his father twice there, but though the old man said little at the best of times, after the northern fashion, his eyes didn't convey any sense of good fortune to his son.

Everyone knew where the promised new lands were supposed to be. It was common talk in the country as much as in the taverns and castles. His father had said only one thing about that, at the end of his second visit, his last, to the farmyard hut that was now his parents' home.

They had been walking out together, he and his father, at twilight, looking out over the grey moorland in a drizzle of rain. "What," his father had said, turning aside to spit into the mud, "do I know about olive trees?"

His son had not replied. He had watched the thin rain falling on the moor. There was nothing to say. Nothing, that is, that would not be treason, or a lie.

This morning, though, on a challenge ground in Arbonne under a clear sky he had heard the younger son of Garsenc name Ademar a traitor and claim the throne of Gorhaut before lords and ladies of all six countries. And the simple truth was, he realized finally, sitting his horse on that ridge above a burning hamlet, he agreed with Blaise de Garsenc. His father would have felt the same way, he knew with certainty, though he would never have put such a thought into words. They were people of Gorhaut, their lives and lands charged to the protection of the king—and their safety and history and trust had been given away by him with a signed piece of paper. It was said that Galbert the High Elder had been behind the whole thing. That he wanted to destroy Arbonne because of the goddess they had down here. He didn't know much about that or very much care, but he had seen his father destroyed by living on another man's farm far from the northern lands he had known all his life.

His father had died at the end of that same summer, taking to his bed one morning, the scribe's letter had said, and passing to the god four days after without any last word spoken. He had not appeared to be in great pain, the scribe wrote. His mother had made her mark at the end, after the part wishing him all best fortune. He still carried it, that letter.

He looked down a last time on the burning of Aubry. He drew a long breath, finally clear in his mind, though not any the less afraid for that. When he began to ride again it was south, the way he had come, carrying a different message, grim with fire and death and with more of each to come, certain as mortal man was born to die.

He had actually made his choice, he realized, on the evening of that last walk with his father in the rain. He had had no way to put that decision into action. Now he did.

He put spurs to his horse, leaving the fires of Aubry behind him. His eyes were on the empty road before him, seeing how bright and strange it had become in the mingling of the moons.

Blaise hadn't been happy about it, but the priestess and the physician, agreeing with each other, had insisted that he drink an herbal concoction that led him to sleep for most of the day.

When he awoke, in a room in Barbentain, the western sky outside his window was soft with the hues of sunset, dark rose and purple, with the blue-black of twilight soon to come. He couldn't see the river from his bed, but through the open window he could hear it rushing past; in the middle distance lights were beginning to come on in the houses of Lussan. He watched for a while, feeling curiously at peace though conscious of pain in his legs and aware of bandages about his left ear. He brought one hand up and felt them.

Tentatively he turned his head back the other way and so realized, for the first time, that he was not alone.

"It could have been worse," Ariane said quietly. She was sitting in a chair halfway to the door. "You lost part of the earlobe, but they say it will be no more than that. Much the same as Bertran, actually."

"How long have you been here?"

"Not long. They said you would sleep until sundown. I asked if I could speak with you alone when you woke."

She had changed to sober clothing from the bright regalia of the morning; her gown was a dark blue in colour, with her customary crimson only in the trim of the sleeves. She looked very beautiful to him. She smiled. "Bertran has been going about the castle all day claiming that the two of you are now clearly revealed as long-separated brothers. The current version is that you were stolen by brigands from your cradle in Talair Castle and sold for three goats in a village in Gorhaut."

"Three goats? I'm outraged," Blaise said with a sigh. "Five at least. Tell him I refuse to be undervalued, even in a story."

Ariane's smiled faded. "You are unlikely to be undervalued, Blaise, here or anywhere else. Not after this morning. Your problems are almost certainly going to be of the opposite kind."

He nodded slowly. It seemed that he could do that much without pain. With an effort, he pushed himself up until he was sitting. There was a flask on a table by the bed.

"What is this?" he asked.

"More of what you had before. They said you might want it."

He shook his head. "Is there anything else?"

There was wine, in a decanter by the far wall. There was food as well, cold meats and cheeses and fresh-baked bread from the castle kitchen. He was, he discovered, ravenous. Ariane watered the wine and brought him a tray. Blaise ate swiftly for a few moments, then looked up again. She was smiling, scrutinizing him carefully from her chair.

"They said the herbs might make you hungry when you woke."

He grunted. "What else did they say, since they seem to know me so well?"

"That I wasn't to agitate or excite you." Her expression was demure.

Blaise felt oddly happy suddenly. A feeling of well-being suffused him, looking at the woman, feeling the calm and silence of the twilight. When he did leave this room the burdens of the world were waiting to be taken up. For the moment though, however brief the moment might be, all of that seemed agreeably remote. He was aware of her scent again, subtle as ever, but very much her own.

He said, "You aren't very good at not doing that, you know."

Surprisingly, she flushed. Blaise grinned. He shifted position and moved the lacquered tray to the chest beside his bed. She remained seated where she was.

"Has anything happened that I need to know about?" he asked. He really did feel remarkably well. More than well, actually. He wondered if the two physicians had predicted this, too. "Anything that requires me, or you, for the next little while?"

Ariane, her dark eyes wide, shook her head.

"Is there a lock on that door?"

The hint of a smile returned to her face. "Of course there is. And there are also four guards of the countess outside who would hear any key turning. Everyone knows I am here, Blaise."

She was right, of course. Deflated, he leaned back against the pillows.

Ariane rose then, tall and slender, her black hair down as it always was. "On the other hand," she murmured, walking to the door, "the corans of Barbentain are legendary for their discretion." She turned the key in the lock with a click. "And since the whole castle knows I'm here, we couldn't possibly be doing anything but discussing what happens next, could we?"

She walked slowly back towards him and stood by the edge of the bed. Blaise looked up at her, drinking in, as a draught of cool, reviving wine, the dark-eyed, flawless beauty of her.

"I had been wondering about that," he said after a moment. Her hand was playing idly with the coverlet, pulling it back a little from his chest and then tugging it up again. He was naked beneath. "What happens next, I mean."

Ariane laughed then, and drew the coverlet fully back from him. "We'll have to discuss it," she said, and, sitting on the bed, lowered her mouth to his. The kiss was brief, delicate, elusive. He remembered this about her. Then her lips moved down, found the hollow of his throat, and then down again, across his chest, and down again.

"Ariane," he said.

"Hush," she murmured. "I did promise not to make you agitate yourself. Don't make a liar out of me."

His turn to laugh, helplessly, and then, not long after, to stop laughing as other sensations took control of him. It had grown dark in the room by then, night deepening outside. They had lit no candles. In the shadows he saw her lift her head from his body and then rise to stand by the bed, another shadow, and slip free of her clothing. Then she moved again, in a swirl of scent and a rustle of sound, to rise up over him where he lay.

"Now remember, you aren't to get excited," Ariane de Carenzu said gravely as, with a smooth, liquescent motion, she lowered herself upon his sex.

Lights were shining now in the town across the water, someone's footsteps came down the hall, a voice answered a quiet challenge from the guards and then the footsteps went on. The river ran softly below, aiming for the distant sea. Blaise felt Ariane's movements above him like the rhythm of a tide. He lifted his hands to her breasts, and then began to trace the outline of her face in the darkness like a blind man. He slid his fingers over and over through the long glory of her hair. Once again, aware of how unfair such a thing was, he could not help but contrast her to Lucianna. It was the difference, he suddenly thought, between love-making as a process of sharing and as an act of art. There were dangers in both, Blaise thought, for the unwary. It occurred to him that he might very easily have given the morning's red rose to this woman, had he not wanted to send a private and a public message beneath the canopy of the Portezzan pavilion.

He must have slept, afterwards, he didn't know for how long. Ariane had dressed herself, and there were candles burning throughout the room. She had not left him, though, she was watching from the chair again, as if this were his first awakening. There was something deeply reassuring about waking to find her watching him; he wondered if she knew that was so. He felt differently this time, drowsier. He looked from her calm face to the window again. The feel of the night had changed while he slept; a moment later he realized why: the blue moon, which would be full tonight, was riding above the castle and the world.

Blaise turned back to Ariane. And with the movement, remembrance of the morning came flooding back over him, the clear, sunlit image of that banner of the kings flying in his name. He lifted one hand, in an instinctive gesture. And still half-asleep said, in a whisper near to dream: "But I don't want to be king of Gorhaut."

"I know," Ariane said, without moving. "I know you don't." With her night-black hair and her pale, almost translucent skin she looked like a ghost, a racoux, in the candlelight. She smiled ironically. "I wouldn't worry about it, Blaise. We are unlikely to live so long."

She left a little while after that. Bertran came in and visited briefly, sharing his new jest about their fraternity, deliberately avoiding anything of more weight or substance. Rudel and Valery came by. Blaise ate again while they were with him, a proper meal this time, brought by Hirnan; he was still hungry. The doctor and the priestess arrived afterwards and urged him to drink more of their herbal infusion. He declined. He felt all right, actually. Some pain in the ear, rather more at the moment across his shins and the back of his calf where the Arimondan's sword had caught him, but, on the whole, he was better off than he'd any right to be. He didn't want to be drugged again.

They left him alone for a time, going downstairs to the banquet and the singers. Blaise dozed a while, then got out of bed and sat by the window looking out. Faintly he could hear the music from below. He was thinking of Rosala, as it happened, when there came a knocking at his door again, and the countess herself came in, with Ariane and Bertran. Rudel was just behind them, and the chancellor, Roban. Their faces were grim. Ariane, Blaise saw immediately, had been crying. Before anyone could speak he made himself take a slow, deep breath as if pulling himself back to the world.

"There is a man who has come," said Bertran as the countess, very pale, kept silent. Her face was a mask, a carving in marble. There was a look in her eyes though, a depth of anger he had never seen before. "A man from Gorhaut. He has given us some extremely bad news and asked leave to be brought to you."

Valery and Hirnan ushered the man in. Blaise knew him, if only slightly. A coran of Garsenc, one of the better ones, he remembered Ranald saying once. The man, without a word spoken, sank to his knees before Blaise. His hands were uplifted and pressed together in position for the oath.

Slowly, aware that this too was a beginning of something irrevocable, Blaise rose from the window seat and cupped his own hands around those of the coran. He heard the ancient oath of Corannos spoken to him then in that high room in Barbentain Castle as if he had never heard the words before. Exactly as with the banner, he thought: it was different when it was meant for you. For a moment he looked over at Ariane. She was weeping again. He turned back to the coran, concentrating on the words.

"I swear to you in the name of the high god Corannos of fire and light, and on the blood of my father and his father, that I will keep faith with you. I offer my service to the gates of death. I acknowledge you in the eyes of men and the most holy god as my liege lord."

The man paused. Blaise, just then, remembered his name: Thaune. He was from the northlands, the accent had given that away in any case. Thaune looked up and met his eyes for the first time. "And I acknowledge you also," he said, his voice surprisingly strong now as he spoke words that went beyond the ancient oath, "as my true king. I will not lie easy at night nor unclasp my sword belt until you are upon the throne in Cortil in the stead of the traitor now sitting there. In the name of Corannos, all this I swear."

Blaise cleared his throat. There was a feeling of dread in him; Ariane's tears, the silence of those around him. He said, "I accept your homage. I take you as my man, Thaune of Gorhaut. I offer you shelter and succour and my own sworn oath of fidelity before the god as your liege. I bid you rise." He shifted his hands and helped the coran stand. "And now," he said, "you had better tell me what has happened."

Thaune did so. In the midst of the telling, Blaise discovered with some real urgency, that he wasn't as fully recovered as he had thought he was. It was Hirnan, watching closely, who moved the chair by the window quickly over for him. Blaise sank down into it.

It seemed that his father and King Ademar had not begun with messengers and elegantly phrased demands for Rosala's return with her child. They had begun with fire.

Cadar was having an odd night, waking often to feed and then falling asleep again almost as soon as the wet-nurse put him to the breast. The priestess was indulgent, unworried. It took a week or two, she said, for some of the little ones to learn that the dark hours were for sleeping more and eating less. Rosala, aware that under normal circumstances at home she would be far removed from her baby at this stage, with Cadar and his nurse living in another wing of the castle, or indeed, elsewhere entirely, had still not been able to stop herself from walking down the corridor to look in on him when he cried.

She was coming sleepily back up the hallway clad only in the night-robe the countess had given her when she saw someone waiting in the shadows outside her door. She stopped, instinctively afraid, a hand fumbling to more properly close her robe.

"Forgive me," said the duke of Talair, moving forward into light. "I did not mean to frighten you."

Rosala took a shaky breath. "I am easily frightened of late. I never used to be."

"You are in a strange place," En Bertran murmured gravely, "and have a new responsibility. It is not unnatural, I think."

"Will you enter?" she asked. "I think I have wine left from earlier this evening. I can send a servant for more."

"No need," he said, "but thank you, yes, I will come in. There are tidings you should hear."

It was late at night. Something thumped within Rosala: her heart, pounding as if on a drum. "What has happened?" she asked quickly.

He made no immediate reply, opening her door instead and ushering her in. He waited until she had taken one of the chairs by the fire and he sat down on the low bench opposite. In the firelight his eyes were remarkably blue, and the scar on his cheek showed white.

"Is it Blaise?" she asked. She had been told about this morning, several times already, by many people. The duchess of Carenzu had brought her a white flower and explained the meaning of it. The flower was in a vase by the window now. She had sat looking at it for a long time after Ariane had left, thinking of what Blaise had done, and had surprised herself by beginning to cry.

"He is fine," said Bertran de Talair, reassuringly. He fingered his ear. "I'm afraid he is going to rather resemble me, in one regard at least, when the bandages come off, but other than that he is not seriously harmed." He hesitated. "I don't know how much it means to you, at this point, but I can say that he honored his name and his country's this morning."

"So I have been told. It does mean something to me, obviously, given what he declared before the challenge began. They will not wait long before coming after him."

The duke of Talair shifted a little in his seat then and left a small silence.

"I see," Rosala said, clasping her hands tightly in her lap. "They have come already."

"They have, but not for him. They will not learn about him for some days yet. They destroyed a village named Aubry tonight, killing everyone, and then they burned the priestesses of the temple there.

Rosala closed her eyes. Her hands began to tremble. "That was for me, then," she said. Her own voice unsettled her; it was dry and thin as a stream in a season of drought. It seemed to be coming from someone else, a long way off. "It was because of me."

"I'm afraid so."

"How many people?"

"We aren't certain yet. Perhaps fifty."

"Who was there? From Gorhaut, I mean." Her eyes were still closed. She brought, her arms up to wrap them around herself. She felt cold, suddenly.

His voice was gentle, but he was not shielding her from any of this. She understood that there was a large measure of respect for her in his not doing so. "The king himself, we are told." He hesitated. "Your husband and your brother as well."

Rosala opened her eyes. "They would have had no choice. I don't think either of them would willingly have done this."

Bertran de Talair shrugged. "I would not know. They were there." He looked closely at her a moment and then rose to tend to the fire. It had burned low, but there was fresh wood and kindling beside it, and he knelt, busying himself with them. She watched him, the neat, precise movements. He had not turned out to be what she'd expected from his verses, or from the tales told of his dealings with women in many countries.

"How do we know of this?" she asked at length.

He said, without turning, "A coran from Garsenc who was here for the tournament. He watched Blaise this morning and was riding north to tell the king what had happened."

"Why did he change his mind?"

Bertran looked briefly over his shoulder and shook his head. "That I do not know. I'll have to ask Blaise later." He turned back to the fire, shifting the wood. First one side caught, and then a moment later the other did. With a grunt of satisfaction he rose. "He swore fealty to Blaise tonight, as his liege lord and true king. He named Ademar as a traitor."

"Iersen Bridge, then," said Rosala quietly. "That is why he did it. He was probably a man from the north. There will be many who feel that way about the treaty."

"How many?" asked the duke of Talair. She realized that he meant the question seriously, that he was treating her as someone whose views on this would matter.

"That is hard to judge," she said. The fire had caught now, warming her. "Not enough, I don't think. Most of the men of rank who might matter are afraid of the king, and the common folk are even more afraid of the brethren of Corannos—who are ruled by my father-in-law."

He was silent. Looking into the fire Rosala saw a future there shaped of flame. Fifty people had died tonight for her. She closed her eyes again, but the imprint of the fire was still against her eyelids. The shock was beginning to pass.

"Oh, my son," she said. "Oh, Cadar." And then, "I will have to take him back. I cannot let them do this to people here. It is because he is a boy, you see. They will not let us be."

It seemed that she was crying again, the tears spilling to slide down her face before the fire. She heard the sound of a chair scraping the floor, and then a rustling, and then competent, capable hands had taken her and laid her head against a strong shoulder. His arm went around her.

"Neither of you is going back," said Bertran de Talair, his voice roughened. "The countess herself stood up for your child before Corannos and Rian and so did I. I swore an oath to you the night Cadar was born. I did not do so carelessly. I will swear it again: neither of you is going back to them while I live."

Something hard and tight in Rosala seemed to loosen, or she let go of her hold upon it, and she allowed herself to weep without shame in the arms of the duke of Talair. She wept for Cadar, for herself, for the dead and burned of that night, for all the dying and burning yet to come. His clasp was firm holding her, his voice low, murmuring words of comfort and heart's ease. No one had held her like this, Rosala thought, since her father had died. She wept for that, as well.

She could not know it, but Bertran de Talair's thoughts just then were almost a mirror of her own: he was thinking that he could not remember the last time he had held a woman in this way, offering shelter and strength and not simply the passion of a moment. And then, a moment later, he realized that this was untrue: that he could remember the last time, quite well actually, if he allowed the memory in through his barriers.

The last woman he had held this way, his own heart beating as if for hers, had later died in Miraval giving birth to his child, twenty-three years ago.

Blaise stopped outside the partially open door of Rosala's room. He had been coming to tell her of the news that had reached them that night, feeling the dread of all such message-bearers, but not wanting her to learn it badly, from a stranger. Ranald had been at Aubry, Thaune had said, and Fulk de Savaric, her brother. About to knock, he heard two voices, and realized a moment later that he had been anticipated in his errand. He felt an unexpected mixture of emotions. Relief, mostly, in the end.

Uncertain whether to enter or leave, he heard Rosala abruptly speak in a stricken voice of taking the child back to Gorhaut. Grieving for her, understanding exactly what she meant, and humbled again by what it seemed she was, he heard Bertran de Talair, unexpectedly gruff, repeating an oath he'd evidently sworn to her before. Blaise heard Rosala begin to weep then, and through the angle of the door, in the light of the fire's glow, he saw the duke move to the arm of her chair to hold her while she cried.

He felt an intruder, a cause of the distress the other man was trying to assuage. He ought to have been comforting her himself, he thought. He owed her that much. He owed her at least that much. Blaise looked back up the corridor and saw Hirnan waiting discreetly at the farther end. Feeling his wounds again and weary still, but with a suddenly urgent need to at least finish what he had begun with the white rose this morning, he knocked on the door and said, quietly, so as not to startle them too greatly, "For what it is worth, I have an oath of my own from this morning to repeat."

They both looked up; Bertran calmly, Rosala wiping quickly at her eyes. She shifted a little then and the duke rose, allowing her to stand and then walk forward. A little too late Blaise realized what she was about to do. Quickly, trying to forestall her, he moved into the room so that, in the end, they ended up on their knees, both of them, facing each other before the fire. He wouldn't have blamed Bertran for laughing, but the duke was silent and watchful.

The lost children of Gorhaut, Lucianna had said two nights ago. Truth to that, Blaise thought. Through her tears he saw Rosala offer the glimmer of a smile.

"Will you not accept my homage, my lord?"

He shook his head.

"You will have to become accustomed to this," she murmured. "Kings can't go about kneeling to women."

"I am not a king yet," he said, "and to some women I think they can. I understand the duke of Talair has vowed that he will not let them take you while he lives." He looked at Bertran, whose expression remained devoid of irony. "Hear me, then. In the name of the most holy god, I swear I will keep faith with you, Rosala. My claim to the throne is as nothing if we surrender you and Cadar." He heard the roughness in his own voice at the end.

It was the first time he had actually spoken the child's name. It sounded strange to him as an infant's name. Cadar was a name of power for Blaise, for an entire generation in Gorhaut, given their vivid images of Rosala's father. It was a name of pride, of hope… if the child lived long enough.

Rosala shook her head. "We should not matter so much, he and I," she murmured. "There is too much at stake here."

Behind her, Bertran said quietly, "Sometimes people end up mattering more than one might expect. My lady, the two of you are what is at stake. They will use you to begin the war. They already have."

"Then send us back," she whispered. She was looking at Blaise, not at Bertran.

"It would make no difference," the duke answered quietly. "Not now. They would kill you and keep him and still find a reason to come down on us. They have all the dispossessed of their northlands hungry to be assuaged. This isn't like the old romances: Elienna carried off to Royaunce and an army going after her. This is pure politics now, the hard game of nations. My lady Rosala, Arbonne is the last clause, if you will, of the Treaty of Iersen Bridge."

Blaise, closely watching her, saw the handsome, intelligent features accept the truth of Bertran's words. She knew as much about these things as Ariane or Lucianna, or indeed, he and Bertran. She always had. There were tears still on her cheeks, revealed by the firelight; awkwardly, regretting how difficult such gestures seemed to be for him, he brought up a hand and brushed them away. He wished he were more graceful, more at ease with himself. He said, "You owe no homage to me, Rosala."

She looked again as if she would protest, but in the end said only, "I may thank you for the flower?"

Blaise found that he could smile. "I would expect you to."

Bertran laughed quietly. Rosala, a second later, returned the smile tremulously, but then she lowered her face into her hands.

"How can we speak thus?" she cried. "They burned women tonight. Because of me. They never even knew who I was and they were taken from their beds and raped by Ademar's corans and—say nothing, I know they were! — and then they were burned alive. With all that the two of you know, will you tell me how I am to live with that? I can hear them screaming now."

Blaise opened his mouth and closed it. He looked past her at Bertran, whose eyes were shadowed and dark with the fire behind him. The duke said nothing either. With all that the two of you know. He knew nothing, in the face of this. There were no words he could think of to say.

So he spoke her name. What was it about the speaking of a name? Slowly he brought up his arms again and gently took her head between his hands and, leaning forward, he kissed her on the brow. He wished there were more he could do, but there didn't seem to be. Women had been burned tonight, on a pyre of his father's long dreaming. Men had been slain and mutilated. He, too, could hear the screaming.

"In the morning… " he said roughly. "We will all be stronger in the morning." Lame words, an empty truth. It was this night that needed dealing with. He looked over at the duke again for a moment and then rose and left the room. Bertran would be better at this, he thought, than he himself would be. There was less history here for the duke, he knew women so much better. There was an ache inside Blaise, though, walking from her chamber.

Oh, Ranald, he thought; said it aloud, actually, softly in the empty corridor. She might even have made a man of you, this one, if she had been allowed. His brother had been at Aubry tonight. Blaise was nearly certain that Ranald wouldn't have wanted to be, but that didn't matter, did it? He had been there.

Heavy with burdens, of past and future both, Blaise suddenly stopped and stood very still. A child had cried out in a room behind him. He listened but there was no other sound. A cry in a dream that must have been. Cadar's.

Did new-born infants dream? Blaise didn't know. He only knew that he could not turn back, could not now, if ever, ask Rosala the question in his heart. It doesn't matter, he told himself. It makes no difference at all to anything.

A lie, of course, but the sort of lie that lets one carry on.

By the time she reached the top of the stairway and saw the guards outside the door, Lisseut was already regretting she had come. She had no business here, no claim to this man's attention, especially so late at night after he had been seriously wounded in combat. She didn't even know exactly what she wanted to do, or say, if he should happen to be still awake, and should happen to receive her. Someday, she thought despairingly, she really was going to have to absorb her mother's so-often-repeated lesson and accept that one did not always have to follow the path lit by impulse and first reactions.

More than anything else, she knew, it had been the news from Aubry that had drawn her here. It hadn't taken long for the tidings to sweep downstairs through Barbentain and race along the great hall, where those joglars and troubadours honoured with places in the morning's pavilion were offering their performances after dinner.

The music had stopped, of course. One did not sing liensennes of courtly, unrequited love or ribaldries of enthusiastically answered passion in the forests of Arbonne when news came of a village destroyed and women burned alive by the king of Gorhaut. Love had no place in the scheme of things in the wake of such horror.

But if that were the case, what, in truth, was she doing here, hesitantly approaching a doorway on this upper level of Barbentain? Alain had agreed to wait a little while for her downstairs. She didn't much want to walk back to the inn alone. An old man had been murdered in an alley a few nights ago. There were too many unknown people from too many countries wandering in the darkness of Lussan during the fair. She hadn't had the courage to ask Aurelian to wait-he knew too much, after this morning. It was the first time Lisseut could remember that she'd wanted to hold something back from him. Alain was easier; they had their understandings after two seasons together now. He wouldn't even speculate.

The horror of the tidings from Aubry had drawn her back, in a single dark leap of memory, to that garden in Tavernel last summer, when she had listened from a place of hiding on the wall and learned who the bearded northern coran was, and heard him speak with Rudel Correze of war coming with Gorhaut. Now everyone knew who he was, since this morning, and war was no longer coming, it was upon them. And the coran she had impulsively followed that Midsummer night had claimed Gorhaut's crown today.

On that thought she almost did turn back, but she had reached a place where the wall torches lit the corridor, and she realized that the guards outside his door were watching her. One of them she knew, a coran from Vezét, from a farm not far from her father's. She wasn't sure whether she was happy about that or not.

Having been seen, though, and almost certainly recognized, she was not about to turn and skulk away. Grateful that she looked presentable, at least, in her newest tunic bought for the fair and the vest Ariane had given her, and aware that if the guards knew her they would almost certainly also know she'd been among the selected performers tonight, Lisseut walked forward with her head high.

"Hello, Fabrise," she said to the man she knew. "I didn't realize you were in Barbentain. Is your father well?"

He grimaced briefly in response. "He is, I thank you. Will you tell us what you are doing here?" Formal, extremely formal. No warmth at all. They had clearly been instructed that guard duty tonight outside this door was not ceremonial. After Blaise's declaration this morning it stood to reason, and after the attack on Aubry tonight every coran in Arbonne would be on edge. Again, Lisseut wondered why she had never listened to her mother more attentively.

She said hardily, "I thought if Blaise de Garsenc was awake he might be willing to speak with me." There was no reply at all to that. "We are friends," she added—it was almost true, in a manner of speaking—"and I wanted to see how he was. Is he sleeping?"

For a long moment four grim corans regarded her in silence. Finally one of them, evidently concluding that whatever she was, it was something other than an immediate danger, made a wry face. "What is it," he said, addressing Fabrise, "about your women from Vezét, will you tell me?"

Fabrise frowned. Lisseut felt herself flushing. This was pretty much what she'd feared would happen. Oh, mother, she thought. It had actually occurred to her several times during the day that it might be a good time for a visit home. She could sleep in her old bed, see people she'd grown up with, talk with her mother while they did the endless needlework in the doorway, or with her father, walking among the olive groves. It might be a good thing to do, she'd thought. It had been a long time since she'd been back, and home sometimes was a place where the heart could be eased.

"I know this woman. She is not like that," said Fabrise of Vezét; her pulse quickened at his loyalty.

"Nor is this a night," she said, emboldened, unwilling as ever to have someone else fight a battle for her, even a small one, "when a man of Arbonne should speak any ill of the women of his country. I will accept an apology, coran, if you offer one."

There was a great deal to be said for the training that regular appearances in public gave one. She was easily able to outface the coran who had made that jest. He lowered his head and mumbled words that did sound contrite. He looked young, Lisseut thought. He had probably meant no real offense, though he did have a great deal to learn.

On the other hand, what innocuous reason could she offer for being here? Truth was, the young coran was right, if not about the women of Vezét, then rather definitely about this particular one. We are friends, she had said. If a friendship could be built on a night's clandestine spying like an audrade on a garden wall followed by a rejected invitation to share her Midsummer bed. He had smiled at her two nights ago here in Barbentain. Did that count? She had even thought he was about to come over to her, before Rudel Correze had appeared at his elbow and the two men had walked away.

That had been before this morning's challenge, though: before everything had changed. These corans in the hallway were, she made herself repeat it again in her mind, the guards appointed for a man who had claimed a throne.

She bit her lip. Began her retreat. "It is late, I know… " she murmured.

"He is awake," Fabrise said, "but not in his room. He went to see his sister. His brother's wife, I mean. The one who gave birth last week. I think he wanted to be the one to tell her the news."

"Her husband was there," the coran she'd reprimanded now confided, as if anxious to make amends. "At Aubry, I mean. And also her—" He stopped with a grunt as one of the others sank an elbow in his ribs.

The four men looked quickly down the corridor, and so Lisseut turned with them—to see Blaise de Garsenc approaching from the shadows.

"And also her brother," Blaise said, finishing the sentence. He was walking quite slowly, limping a little; he looked pale beneath the beard and there were smudged circles of fatigue under his eyes. He came up to them and stopped, looking at the four men, not at her. "There is going to be gossip, of course, but we might appropriately leave it to others, don't you think?"

It was mildly said, but the young coran went crimson to the roots of his hair. Lisseut actually felt sorry for him. Then she forgot about the man entirely as she met Blaise's scrutiny.

"Hello, Lisseut," he said. She hadn't been positive he would remember her name. He seemed unsurprised to find her in the hallway outside his room.

She took a breath and said, straining for a normal tone, "I'm not sure, do I curtsey?"

"I'm not sure either," he said calmly. "Why don't we omit it for now? I thought I heard your voice earlier. The song from Midsummer, the woman singing in the garden?"

"I didn't think you had listened so carefully back then," she said.

"I didn't either," he murmured. "Evidently some of it stayed with me. Will you come in?" He opened the door to his room and stepped aside for her to enter.

Feeling suddenly shy, Lisseut walked in. He followed, closing the door behind them. There were candles on chests beside and at the foot of the bed and on the two tables in the room. They were guttering low, though, and others had gone out. He busied himself for a moment lighting new ones.

"There is wine by the far wall," he said over his shoulder. "Pour us each a cup, if you will." Glad of something to do, she moved to the sideboard and did so. A faint scent of perfume lingered in the air. She thought that if she tried she would recognize it; she didn't try. She carried the cups back and stood uncertainly in the middle of the room. The bed, she noticed, was rumpled, the covers in disarray. He seemed to notice this at about the same time, moving over to smooth them as best he could.

"Forgive me," he said. "This room is in no condition to receive a lady."

He was being astonishingly kind, she thought. Kindness wasn't what she needed, though. She said, "Even the sort of lady who spies on you at night?"

He grinned, though his fatigue was still evident. He came over and took his wine, motioning her to one of the chairs by the window. He sank into the other, with a half-suppressed sigh of relief.

"You are in pain," Lisseut said quickly. "I have no right to keep you awake."

"You won't be able to for very long," he said, somewhat ruefully. "Much as I'd like to talk, they gave me some herbal thing earlier and I'm still sleepy with it. They wanted me to have more but I said no."

"You probably should have taken it," she said.

He grinned mockingly. She remembered that quickness from Midsummer. It had been one of the things she hadn't expected from a coran of Gorhaut. "I wouldn't have taken you for so obedient a woman. Do you always do what you're told?" he asked.

She smiled then herself, for the first time. "Always," she said. "I can't remember the last time I didn't obey instructions."

He laughed, and sipped his wine. "I saw you in the troubadours' pavilion this morning," he said, surprising her again. "Ariane told me only those of the first rank are invited there. Is this new for you? Should I be offering congratulations?"

Ariane. That was the perfume. Of course, she told herself: they would have had a council here when the tidings came. But what she was remembering was five corans in crimson escorting him away on Midsummer Eve.

He had asked a question; Lisseut shook her head, pushing such thoughts away. She said, "Congratulations? Wouldn't that be absurd? After you didn't let me salute you?"

His eyes were bright in the light of the candle on the table and the beard showed quite red. "Go ahead if you really want to. Curtsey and kneel. Kiss my foot three times. You'll help me get used to it." There was a bitterness she hadn't expected in his voice. He paused a moment. "I'm not a king yet, you know. I probably never will be. I'm only someone who's made a large and foolish claim because I hate what's happened to my country."

"From what I understand of the men of Gorhaut, that's worthy of honour in itself," she murmured.

His expression changed. "I'm not sure that isn't as much an attack as a compliment."

"Can you blame me, tonight?"

There was a silence. Without speaking, he shook his head. She took a quick sip of her wine and averted her eyes. This wasn't at all how she had wanted this conversation to go. She didn't really know what she had wanted, but it wasn't this. Thinking quickly, reaching for a new direction, she said, "You did miss something… unique in the hall tonight. A canzone about your morning's triumph, written at dazzling speed, rhymed in triplets, with a refrain that was simply your name sung four times on a descending scale."

"What?"

She kept her tone blandly innocuous. "We should be fair about that last bit, though: «Garsenc» is a difficult rhyme in Arbonnais."

He looked pained. "You're not being serious?"

"I'm a serious person, hadn't you noticed? It was composed by an old companion of yours, too, Evrard of Lussan."

"An old what?" He blinked. "Evrard? He called himself that?" He looked so astonished she had to laugh. "How… how does anyone know my connection with him?"

She was smiling now, enjoying this. "From Rian's Island? He began telling us all about it immediately after the challenge this morning. No one knew before, but as of today you are a link worth exploiting. Apparently you yourself and no lesser mortal were entrusted by En Mallin de Baude with the delicate task of assuaging Evrard's wounded sensibilities last spring. Is it true, Blaise?"

He was slowly shaking his head, though in wonder, not denial. "I thought he was a pompous, offensive fool, but Mallin asked me to bring him back so I did. Unconscious, actually. My companion." He snorted. "We slung him like a sack of grain into a skiff. I wouldn't have been greatly distressed if he'd fallen overboard." He shook his head again, as if bemused by the memory. "I thought all the troubadours were like that."

"And all the joglars? Do you still think so?"

"Hardly," he said directly, not bothering to make a jest of it or a compliment, or anything at all. He met her gaze for a moment, and it was Lisseut who looked away, out the window. There was silence then for a while. She sat gazing out at the late-night stars, listening to the river. It was not a difficult stillness, she decided.

"May I ask something of you?" he said at length, quietly. She looked back at him. "I am genuinely weary, Lisseut. I 'm afraid I m too tired to entertain you properly, I'm almost too tired to sleep, and there is a great deal to be done tomorrow. I don't know if this is an imposition, something one doesn't ask of a professional, but will you sing for me, to help me rest?" A faint smile in the flickering light. "To show me again that all of you aren't like Evrard?"

"I didn't think you liked music." She was sorry the moment she'd said that. Why was she always challenging him?

He didn't take offense, or else he was being very patient with her. "If I said that I regret it. I grew up with music in Gorhaut, however different it might have been. One day I will want to try to explain to you that my country is not only… what it has been made to be tonight." He hesitated, choosing his words. "I think there are… parts of the troubadour world here, courtly love, that I find unsettling. Perhaps I needed time to understand it better. I thought once it made your men weak, your women presumptuous." He paused again. "There is no weakness I have found in the men of Arbonne."

"And the women?"

He had been waiting for that, she realized. "The women are intolerably presumptuous." She knew that tone though, by now, and he was grinning at her again, tired as he was. She found that she could smile back.

"I will be happy to sing for you," she said quietly. "It is no imposition. Not when asked of a friend." There, she had said it.

He looked surprised again, but not uncomfortably so. He opened his mouth and closed it. She silently willed him to voice whatever thought he was struggling with, but all he said after a moment was, "Thank you." He rose, with a difficulty he didn't bother to hide, and limped over to stretch out on the bed. He pulled off his boots but didn't bother with the covers or his clothing.

Nothing of any great import had been done, nothing said, but Lisseut stood up as well, feeling a warmth inside and an unexpected calm. Moving quietly about the room she began blowing out the candles. She left two burning, one on the sideboard and one on the small table by the window, and then, in the near darkness, she began to sing. Not of love or war or the goddess or the god, or anything at all of the adult world. On the night he had named himself king of Gorhaut, the night Aubry had burned, Lisseut sang for Blaise of Gorhaut lullabies of childhood, the ones her mother had sung to her so many years ago.

Only when she was certain, from the steady rise and fall of his breathing, that he was asleep did she allow herself a last song for her own heart's easing. It was another very old melody this one, so ancient no one was certain who had written it, or even what dim, half-remembered legend or tale it recounted. It had always seemed to Lisseut to be almost unbearably sad. She had never thought she would feel it applying to her own life. But in Blaise de Garsenc's room that night, while he slept, she sang it softly for herself, and when she came to the verses at the end, she realized that she was very nearly offering them as a prayer:

Thy table set with rarest wine,

Choice meats, sweet ripened fruit

And candlelight when we dine

In Fionvarre.

On we two the high stars will shine

And the holy moon lend her light.

If not here you will be mine

In Fionvarre.

Her uncle had taught her that song in Vezét, long before he had taken her from her father's house and offered her the life of the singers on the road. And the roads had been good to her, had given her friends and companions, a generous measure of success, fame almost, and they had led her here tonight, following, as ever, the quick impulses of her spirit, and now the unbidden need of her heart.

Strangely at peace now, Lisseut realized that she had come looking for an answer in this room and she had found it after all. This was not a man whose life she had a right to share. He was a friend; she knew that now, knew that he would make some place for her in the pattern of his days, however long or short they were to be. But for more than that, more than that small place, she had no right and he no proper space in what his life had now become. The banner in the wind this morning had made this so.

And it would be all right, Lisseut thought, as she ended the song. She was no longer a child. Life did not always or even normally grant one the wishes of the heart. Sometimes it came near, sometimes not very near at all. She would accept, with gratitude, what seemed to have been allowed her tonight—with a hope, a prayer to Rian, that there might be more such moments graciously allowed, before the goddess called either or both of them back to her.

She left him sleeping, with the last two candles burning down and the moons long set and the river murmuring its own infinitely older, endless song far below the window.