A Song for Arbonne (32 page)

"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."