Court Duel (14 page)

"My own conscience demands that I make the attempt." Would
there even be another try?

I sighed as I opened my door, then Nessaren and Shevraeth
and the rain went out of my mind when I saw that my letter
table was not empty.

Two items awaited me. The first was a letter—and when
I saw the device on the heavy seal, my heart sped: the Marquise
of Merindar.

I ripped it open, to find only an invitation to a gathering
three weeks hence. No hint of any personal message.

Laying it aside, I turned my gaze to the other object.

Sitting in the middle of the table was a fine little vase
cut from luminous starstone, and in it, bordered by the most
delicate ferns, was a single rose, just barely blooming.

One white rose. I knew what that meant, thanks to Nee:
Purity of Intent.

ELEVEN

MY GLIMPSES OF SHEVRAETH WERE RARE OVER THE next three
weeks, and all of those were either at State events or else at
big parties held by mutual Court friends. I did not see the
Marquise of Merindar or her two children at all—Nee said
they rarely attended Court functions and entertained only in
their family's house on the outskirts of Athanarel's garden,
though the State rooms in the Residence could be hired by
anyone. The Marquise's invitation sat on my table, looking
rather like a royal summons.

Very different were the invitations that I received from the
Court young people, for as Nee had predicted, I
had
become popular. At least on the surface, everyone was friendly,
even Lady Tamara Chamadis, though her tone, and her fan, hinted
that she didn't find me amusing because she thought I was a
wit.

Others were more forthright in offering their friendship.
Not just the ladies, either. To my vast surprise, I seemed to
have collected several flirts. The Duke of Savona sought me out
at every event we both attended, insisting on the first dance
at balls—and lots more through the evening. He was an
excellent dancer, and I thoroughly enjoyed him as a partner.
His outrageous compliments just made me laugh.

My second most devoted admirer was Lord Deric Toarvendar,
Count of Orbanith. He was not content to meet me at balls but
showered invitations on me—to picnics, riding parties,
and other events that had to do with sport.

Among intimates, I'd discovered, young courtiers didn't
write invitations, they spoke them, usually at the end of some
other affair. Some people were overt—which meant they
wanted others to overhear and thus to know they'd been
excluded—but most were more subtle about it.

Not that Deric was particularly subtle. He made it obvious
that he thought I was fun and funny, as good a loser as I was a
winner. In the weeks after I received that rose, we had
competed at all kinds of courtly games, from cards to horse
racing. He was entertaining, and—unlike Certain
Others—easy to understand, and also easy to resist when
his flirting, wine- and moonlight-inspired, intensified to
wandering hands and lips.

The night before the Merindar party, I had made myself easy
to understand by planting a hand right in the middle of his
chest and pushing him away. "No," I said.

He found that funny, too, and promptly offered to drive me
to the Merindar party himself.

I accepted. By then I'd pretty much decided that he was the
one who had sent me the ring and the rose, for despite his
enthusiastic dedication to sport and his one energetic attempt
at stealing a kiss, he was surprisingly shy about discussing
anything as intimate as feelings.

This was fine with me. I felt no desire to tax him about it;
if I did and it proved I was right, it might change a
relationship I liked just where it was.

The night of the Merindar party, the weather was cold and
rainy, so Deric drove his handsome pony-trap to the Residence
to pick me up. It was not that long a distance to the Merindar
house. The Family houses were built around the perimeter of the
palace at Athanarel's extensive gardens, a tiny city within the
city of Remalna. None of these were castles, and thus could
never have been defended. They were palaces, designed for
pleasure and entertaining—and for secret egress.

The finest two were at opposite ends, the one belonging to
the Merindar family, and the other to the Chamadis family.

The Merindar palace most nearly resembled a fortress, for
all its pleasing design; there were few windows on the ground
level, and those on the upper levels seemed curiously blind.
And all around the house stood guards, ostensibly to protect
the Merindar family from grudge-holding citizens. I had
discovered that this was in fact not new; Galdran Merindar had
kept guards stationed around the house during his reign. As
king, he had not had to give a reason.

"The food will be excellent, the music even better, but
watch out for the Flower and the Thorn," Deric said to me at
the end of the journey, just before we disembarked from the
pony-trap. "Of the two, the Flower is the more dangerous," he
added.

"Flower—is that the Marquise's son or daughter?"

"Lord Flauvic," Deric said with a twist to his lips and an
ironic gleam in his black eyes. "You'll understand the moment
you get a squint at him and hear his pretty voice. It was your
brother gave him the nickname last year, after Flauvic returned
from his sojourn at Aranu Crown's Court in Erev-li-Erval. He
spent almost ten years there as a page."

"A page," I repeated, impressed.

"Ten successful years," he added.

I considered this, making a mental note to stay away from
Lord Flauvic—who had also been recently named his
mother's heir, bypassing his older sister, Lady Fialma, the one
called the Thorn. I'd learned about pages in my reading, for
they had not been in use in Remalna for at least a century, and
a good thing, too. Unlike runners, who were from obscure birth
and kept—as servants—outside the main rooms until
summoned, pages were from good homes and waited on their
superiors within the State rooms. Which meant they were privy
to everything that went on—a very, very dangerous
privilege. According to my reading, pages who made political
mistakes were seldom executed. Instead they were sent home
before their term of indenture was over, which was a public
disgrace and, as such, a lifelong exile from the provinces of
power. Those who finished their time successfully tended to
return home well trained and formidably adept at political
maneuvering. A page trained at the Empress's Court would be
formidable indeed.

The only other thing I had known about Flauvic was that the
Marquise had sent him out of the kingdom when he was small in
order to keep him alive, the year after his father and two of
his uncles had met mysterious deaths. I hadn't met him
yet—apparently he never attended any State events or
social events outside of his own home, preferring to remain
there deep in his studies. An aristocratic scholar.

Studying what?
I wondered, as we were bowed inside
the house by blank-faced Merindar servants.

The grandeur around us was a silent testimony to wealth and
power. The air was scented with a complex mixture of exotic
flowers and the faintest trace of tanglewood incense, denoting
peace and kindred spirits.

"Easy over the fence," Deric said softly beside me.

We were already at the parlor. I suppressed a grin at the
riding term, then stepped forward to curtsy to the
Marquise.

"My dear Countess," Lady Arthal said, smiling as she pressed
my hand. "Welcome. Permit me to introduce my children, Fialma
and Flauvic. The rest of the company you know."

Lady Fialma was tall, brown-haired, with cold eyes and the
elevated chin of one who considers herself to be far above
whomever she happens to be looking at—or down on. She was
magnificently gowned, with so many glittering jewels it almost
hurt the eyes to look at her. She would have been handsome but
for a very long nose—which was the more obvious because
of that imperious tilt to her head—and thinly compressed
lips.

"Welcome," she said, in so faint and listless a voice that
it was almost hard to hear her. "Delighted to..." She shrugged
slightly, and her languidly waving fan fluttered with a
dismissive extra flick.

Lord Flauvic, on the other side of their mother, was
startlingly beautiful. His coloring was fair, his long waving
hair golden with ruddy highlights. His eyes were so light a
brown as to seem gold, a match for his hair. "... meet you,
Countess," he said, finishing his sister's sentence.
Politeness? Humor? Insult? Impossible to guess. His voice was
the pure tenor of a trained singer, his gaze as blank as glass
as he took my hand and bowed over it. Of medium height and very
slender, he was dressed in deep blue, almost black, with a rare
scattering of diamonds in his hair, in one ear, and on his
clothing.

I realized I was staring and looked away quickly, following
Deric into the next room. He fell into conversation with
Branaric, Shevraeth, and Lady Renna Khialem, the subject (of
course) horses. Deric's manner reminded me of someone relieved
to find allies. Next to Bran sat Nee, completely silent, her
hands folded in her lap.

Under cover of the chatter about horse racing, I looked
around, feeling a little like a commander assessing a potential
battlefield. Our hosts, despite their gracious outward manner,
had made no effort to bind the guests into a circle. Instead,
people were clumped in little groups, either around the
magnificent buffet, or around the fireplace. As I scanned them,
I realized who was there—and who was not there.

Present: counts, countesses, a duke, a duchess, heirs to
these titles, and the only two people in the marquisate:
Shevraeth and our hostess.

Absent: anyone with the title of baron or lower, except
those—like Nee—who had higher connections.

Absent also were the Prince and Princess of Renselaeus.

"My dear Countess," a fluting voice said at my right ear,
and Lady Tamara's soft hand slid along my arm, guiding me
toward the lowest tier near the fireplace. Several people moved
away, and we sank down onto the cushions there. Tamara gestured
to one of the hovering foot-servants, and two glasses of wine
were instantly brought. "Did I not predict that you would show
us the way at the races as well?"

"I won only once," I said, fighting against
embarrassment.

Deric was grinning. "Beat me," he said. "Nearly beat
Renna."

"I had the best horse," I countered.

For a moment the conversation turned from me to the races
the week before. It had been a sudden thing, arranged on the
first really nice day we'd had, and though the course was
purported to be rough, I had found it much easier than riding
mountain trails.

As Deric described the last obstacles of the race in which I
had beaten him, I saw the shy red-haired Lord Geral listening
with a kind of ardent expression in his eyes. He was another
who often sought me out for dances but rarely spoke otherwise.
Might my rose and ring have come from him?

Tamara's voice recalled my attention "... the way with
swords as well, dear Countess?"

I glanced at her, sipping at my wine as I mentally reached
for the subject.

"It transpires," Tamara said with a glinting smile, "that
our sharpest wits are also experts at the duel. Almost am I
willing to rise at dawn, just to observe you at the cut and the
thrust."

I opened my mouth to disclaim any great prowess with the
sword, then realized that I'd walk right into her little verbal
trap if I did so. Now, maybe I'm not any kind of a sharp wit,
but I wasn't going to hand myself over for trimming so easily.
So I just smiled and sipped at my wine.

Fialma's faint, die-away voice was just audible on Tamara's
other side. "Tamara, my love, that is not dueling, but mere
sword-play."

Tamara's blue eyes rounded with perplexity. "True, true, I
had forgotten." She smiled suddenly, her fan waving slowly in
query mode. "An academic question: Is it a real duel when one
is favored by the opponent?"

Fialma said, "Is it a real contest, say, in a race when the
better rider does not ride?" She turned her thin smile to
Shevraeth. "Your grace?"

The Marquis bowed slightly, his hands at an oblique angle.
"If a stake is won," he said, "it is a race. If the point draws
blood, it is a duel."

A murmur of appreciative laughter met this, and Fialma
sighed ever so slightly. "You honor us," she murmured, sweeping
her fan gracefully in the half circle of Intimate Confidence,
"with your liberality. ..." She seated herself at the other
side of the fireplace and began a low-voiced conversation with
Lady Dara, the heir to a northern duchy.

Just beyond Fialma's waving fan, Lord Flauvic's metal-gold
eyes lifted from my face to Shevraeth's to Tamara's, then back
to me.

What had I missed? Nee's cheeks were glowing, but that could
have been her proximity to the fire.

Branaric spoke then, saluting Shevraeth with his wineglass.
"Duel or dabble, I'd hie me to those practices, except I just
can't stomach rough work at dawn. Now, make them at noon, and
I'm your man!"

More laughter greeted this, and Bran turned to Flauvic. "How
about you? Join me in agitating for a decent time?"

Lord Flauvic also had a fan, but he had not opened it.
Holding it horizontally between his fingers in the mode of the
neutral observer, he said, "Not at any time, Tlanth. You will
forgive me if I am forced to admit that I am much too
lazy?"

Again laughter, but more subdued. Heads turned. As the
smiling Marquise approached, she said, "You are all lazy,
children." She gestured at the artfully arranged plates of
food. "Come! Do you wish to insult my tastes?"

Several people converged on the table, where waiting
servants piled indicated dainties on little plates. The
Marquise moved smoothly through the milling guests, smiling and
bestowing soft words here and there. To my surprise, she made
her way to me, held out her hand, and said, "Come, my dear.
Let's see what we can find to appeal to you."