Lisseut, her anger rising, stared at the big coran from the north, wishing someone in the room would say something to him. He looked insufferably smug, gazing down on them all from his great height. Only Aurelian was as tall a man, but Aurelian had gone with Remy, and the lean musician, for all his unassuming brilliance, would not have been the man to face down this one. With a quick shrug that was more characteristic than she knew, Lisseut stepped forward herself.
"You are arrogant," she said to the northerner, "and have no business looking so pleased with yourself. If your liege lord will not tell you as much, one of us will have to: the man you injured may have been frivolous just now in a Carnival mood, but he is twice the man you are, with or without an illegal blade, and he will be remembered in this world long after you are dust and forgotten."
The mercenary—Blaise, the duke had called him—blinked in surprise. Up close he seemed younger than she'd first guessed, and there was actually a slightly different look in his eyes than Lisseut had thought she'd seen from by the bar. She wasn't certain what name to put to it, but it wasn't precisely haughtiness. Bertran de Talair was grinning, and so, unexpectedly, was Valery. Lisseut, registering their glances, was abruptly reminded that she was dripping wet from tangled hair to waist, and her new blouse was probably a dreadful sight and clinging to her much more closely than it should, in all decency. She felt herself flushing, and hoped it would be seen as anger.
"And there you have it, Blaise," the duke was saying. "Dust and forgotten. And more proof for you—if ever you needed it—of how terrible our women are, especially after they've been held upside-down. What would happen to this one back in Gorhaut? Do tell us."
For a long time the bearded coran was silent, looking down at Lisseut. His eyes were a curious hazel colour, nearly green in the lamplight. Almost reluctantly, but quite clearly, he said, "For speaking so to an anointed coran of the god in a public place she would be stripped to the waist and whipped on her belly and back by officers of the king. After, if she survived, the man so insulted would be entitled to do whatever he wanted with her. Her husband, if she had one, would be free to divorce her with no consequences at law or in the eyes of the clergy of Corannos."
The silence that followed was frigid. There was something deathly in it, like ice in the far north, infinitely removed from the mood of Carnival. Until the sun dies and the moons fall…
Lisseut suddenly felt faint, her knees trembled, but she forced her eyes to hold those of the northerner. "What, then, are you doing here?" she said hardily, using the voice control she'd so arduously mastered in her apprenticeship with her uncle. "Why don't you go back where you can do that sort of thing to women who speak their mind or defend their friends? Where you could do whatever you wanted with me and no one would gainsay you?"
"Yes, Blaise," Bertran de Talair added, still inexplicably cheerful. "Why don't you go back?"
A moment later, the big man surprised Lisseut. His mouth quirked sideways in a wry smile. He shook his head. "I was asked by the man who pays my wages what would be done to you in Gorhaut," he answered mildly enough, looking straight at Lisseut, not at the duke. "I think En Bertran was amusing himself: he has travelled enough to know exactly what the laws on such matters are in Gorhaut, and in Valensa and Gotzland, for that matter—for they are much the same. Did I say, incidentally, that I agreed with those laws?"
"Do you agree with them?" Lisseut pursued, aware that this room, among all her friends, was probably the only place on earth where she would have been quite so aggressive.
The man called Blaise pursed his lips reflectively before answering; Lisseut was belatedly realizing that this was no thick-witted northern lout.
"The duke of Talair just now humiliated a troubadour you say will be famous long after I am forgotten. He as much as called him an uneducated, drunken schoolboy. At a guess, that will have hurt rather more than the scratch from my blade. Will you agree that there are times when authority must be asserted? Or, if not, are you brave enough to turn that fire of yours against the duke right now? I'm the easy target, an outsider in a room full of people you know. Would that be a part of why you are pushing me like this? Would it be a fair thing to be doing?"
He was unexpectedly clever, but he hadn't answered her question.
"You haven't answered her question," said Bertran de Talair.
Blaise of Gorhaut smiled again, the same wry, sideways expression as before; Lisseut had a sense that he'd almost been expecting that from the duke. She wondered how long they'd known each other. "I'm here, aren't I?" he said quietly. "If I agreed with those laws I'd be home right now, wouldn't I, very likely wed to a properly disciplined woman, and very likely plotting an invasion of Arbonne with the king and all the corans of Gorhaut." He raised his voice at the end, quite deliberately. Lisseut, out of the corner of her eye, saw the Portezzans at their booth by the near wall exchange quick glances with each other.
"All right, Blaise," Bertran said sharply, "you have made your point. That is rather enough, I think."
Blaise turned to him. Lisseut realized that his eyes had not left hers from the time she'd approached, though his last point, whatever it actually was, had clearly been meant for the duke. "I think so too," the big coran said softly. "I think it is more than enough."
"Enough of what?" came an assured voice from the doorway. "Is something over too soon? Have I missed an entertainment?»
When Bertran de Talair grew pale, Blaise knew, the scar on his cheek became extremely prominent. He had seen it happen before, but not like this. The duke had gone rigid with anger or shock but he did not turn around. Valery did, very swiftly, moving so that his body was between Bertran's and the door.
"What are you doing here?" said de Talair, his back to the person addressed. His voice was cold as winter moonlight. Blaise registered that fact and moved, belatedly, to stand beside Valery. Even as he did, the crowd of men and women between them and the door was shifting awkwardly out of the way to reveal, as a parting curtain before a stage, the man standing in the entrance to the tavern.
He was huge, Blaise saw, robed in extravagantly expensive dark green satin trimmed with white fur, even in summer. Easily sixty years old, his grey hair cropped close like a soldier's, he stood lightly balanced, for all his size, and his posture was straight-backed and arrogant.
"What am I doing here?" he echoed mockingly. The voice was memorable, deep and resonant. "Isn't this where the singers are? Is this not Carnival? Cannot a man seek the solace and pleasure of music at such a time?"
"You hate musicians," Bertran de Talair said harshly, biting off his words. He still had not turned. "You kill singers, remember?"
"Only the impertinent ones," the other man said indifferently. "Only those who forget where they are and sing what they should not. And that was a long time ago, after all. Men can change, surely, as we move towards our waiting graves. Age can mellow us." There was nothing mellow about that tone, though. What Blaise heard was mockery, savage, acid-dipped.
And suddenly he knew who this had to be.
His eyes flicked to either side of the speaker, taking the measure of the three green-garbed corans flanking him. All wore swords, regardless of whatever laws Tavernel might have, and all three looked as if they knew how to use them.
He had a flashing memory of a path by Lake Dierne, six dead men in the spring grass. The crowd had fallen well back, leaving a cleared space around the two parties by the door. Blaise was aware that the slim, brown-haired woman, the one who had accosted him, was still standing just behind him.
"I will not banter with you," Bertran said quietly. His back was still to the door, to the huge man standing there with malice in his flint-grey eyes. "One more time, why are you here, my lord of Miraval?"
Urté de Miraval, framed massively in the doorway of The Liensenne, did not reply. Instead his heavy gaze, eyes deep-hooded in his face, swung over to look at Blaise. Ignoring Bertran's question as if it had been asked by an importuning farm labou
rer, he fixed Blaise with an appraising scrutiny. He smiled then, but there was no lessening of the malice in his expression.
"Unless I am greatly wrong," he said, "and I do not think I am, this will be the northerner who is so free with his bow to shed the blood of other men." The corans beside him shifted slightly. The motion, Blaise noted, freed space for their swords to be drawn.
"Your corans shot my pony and my horse," Blaise said quietly. "I had reason to believe they were minded to kill me."
"They would have been," Urté de Miraval agreed, almost pleasantly. "Should I forgive you six deaths for that reason? I don't think I shall, and even if I were minded to, there is another aggrieved party in the case. A man who will be exceedingly happy to learn that you are here tonight. He might even join us later, which will be interesting. So many accidents happen amid the crowds of Carnival; it is one of the regrettable aspects of the celebration, wouldn't you agree?"
Blaise read the transparent threat; what he didn't know was its origin. From Valery's stiffened posture he sensed that the other man did.
"There is a law passed regarding killings between Miraval and Talair," Bertran's cousin said sharply from Blaise's side. "You know it well, my lord duke."
"Indeed, I do. So, if it comes to that, did my six slain men. If only our beloved countess in Barbentain could pass laws that guarded against the mishaps of a riotous night in the city. Would that not be a pleasant thing, a reassuring thing?" His eyes swung back from Valery to Blaise and settled there, with the predatory quality of a hunting cat.
And with that, Bertran de Talair finally turned to confront the man in the doorway.
"You frighten no one," he said flatly. "There is nothing but sour rancour in you. Even the grapes on your land taste of it. A last time, my lord of Miraval, for I will not permit this exchange to continue: why are you here?"
Again there was to be no reply, or not from the man addressed. Instead, a woman, hooded and cloaked, stepped around him and into the room from where she'd been hidden behind his bulk.
"Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" she said. "This isn't at all what I wanted to happen." The words were contrite and distressed; the tone was as far from such feelings as it could possibly be. In that lazy drawl Blaise heard boredom and vexation, and more than a hint of power. Not another one, he thought. Not another of these women.
Astonishment and a different kind of anger flashed in the eyes of Bertran de Talair.
"Ariane, what, precisely, do you think you are doing? Is this a game? If so you have overreached yourself."
Ariane. Ariane de Carenzu, who was queen of the Court of Love. The woman so sharply addressed brought up one elaborately ringed hand and cast back her hood, shaking free her hair with an unconcerned motion.
She's married, though, Blaise thought stupidly. Her hair is supposed to be bound up, even in Arbonne. It wasn't. Her hair was thick and raven dark, and as he watched it fell in waves down her back, liberated from the transitory confines of the hood. There was a confused, excited murmur in the room. Looking at the woman standing beside Urté de Miraval, momentarily unable, in fact, to look away from her, Blaise thought he understood why.
"Overreach?" she said now, very quietly. "I don't think I allow language like that even from a friend, Bertran. I wasn't aware that I needed permission from you to visit The Liensenne.»
"You need no such thing. But you also know that—"
"I know only that the duke of Miraval was kind enough to invite me to join his company this evening to observe the delights of Carnival, and I was happy to accept. I would also have thought, evidently wrongly, that two high lords of Arbonne might, for tonight at least, lay down a petty feud they carry, at least enough to be civil in the company of women and on the night dedicated to the goddess."
"A petty feud?" Bertran echoed, incredulity in his voice.
Urté de Miraval laughed. "This is becoming tedious in the extreme," he said. "I came to hear what passes for music this season in Tavernel, not to bandy words in a doorway with a choleric degenerate. Whose songs are we hearing tonight?"
There was a stiff, short silence, then:
"Mine," said Alain of Rousset clearly. "We will hear my songs, if you like. Lisseut, will you be good enough to sing for us?"
It was, she thought much later, when she had space for calmer reflection on the turbulent events of that night, not so greatly surprising when looked at in a certain light. Remy and Aurelian were both out of the room, and Bertran was certainly not going to have his own verses sung at Urté de Miraval's request; of the troubadours who remained, Alain had more ambition than most and as much right to step forward as any, and since she'd just finished a season of touring with him it was perfectly logical that he ask her to perform.
All such clear thinking came afterwards, though. At the moment, Lisseut was aware only that she had just been humiliatingly inverted in a tub of Cauvas gold wine, that there was a spreading puddle beneath her feet, that her clothing was ruined, her hair soaked, and in such a resplendent condition she was now being asked to sing—for the first time-in the presence of three of the most powerful personages in Arbonne, one of whom also happened to be the most celebrated troubadour of their day.
She made a small, gulping sound in her throat, hoping immediately after that no one had heard. The big coran from Gorhaut turned, though, and favoured her with an ironic scrutiny from behind his thick, reddish beard. She glared fiercely up at him, and that brief surge of anger, as much as anything else, calmed her momentary attack of fright. With what she hoped was a casual gesture she tossed the towel she was still holding to the bearded man and turned to Alain.
"I would be honoured," she said, as calmly as she could.
Alain's face, visibly contending with anxieties of his own, didn't much help her to relax. She understood, of course: the troubadour was boldly seizing an unexpected chance to make a bid for wider renown—and was handing her the opportunity to do the same. A moment such as this, singing in The Liensenne at Midsummer Carnival before the dukes of Talair and Miraval and the reigning queen of the Court of Love… Lisseut blinked and swallowed. If she thought too much about the potential implications of what seemed about to happen she would probably make herself sick.
Fortunately, the next face she focused on was Marotte's, and the delighted encouragement she read in the innkeeper's visage was exactly what she needed. Someone brought her a harp, someone else placed a low stool and a floor cushion in the usual place near the booths on the left-hand wall, and somehow Lisseut found herself sitting there, holding and tuning the harp, even as she adjusted the cushion for comfort.
She was still wet, if not actually dripping any more, and she'd had no time at all to prepare. Glancing up, she saw Duke Bertran walking over, a thin smile playing about his lips. It didn't reach his eyes, though. With Urté de Miraval in the room, Lisseut doubted if En Bertran could actually be amused by anything. The duke removed his lightweight summer cloak and draped it loosely over her shoulders.
"You'll catch a chill otherwise," he said mildly. "If you leave it draped so, it won't get in the way of your hands." The first words he'd ever spoken to her. He turned and walked away, to sink gracefully into one of the three cushioned chairs Marotte had hastily provided near the performing area. Lisseut had a moment to absorb the fact that she was now wearing the midnight-blue cloak of the duke of Talair before Alain of Rousset, two spots of excitement showing on his cheeks, came over and said, softly, for her ears alone, "The 'Garden Song, I think. Sing it, don't shout it, Lisseut."
The troubadours' ancient, standard injunction to their joglars rang almost unheard in Lisseut's ears. What registered was that in his choice of song Alain was offering her another gift. She smiled up at him, confidently she hoped. He hesitated a moment, as if about to say more, but then he too withdrew, leaving her alone in the space where music was made.
Lisseut thought of her father, as she always did when she needed to find serenity and sureness, then she looked out over the
slowly quieting crowd and said, pitching her voice carefully, "Here is a liensenne of the troubadour Alain of Rousset. I sing it tonight in honour of the goddess and of the Lady Ariane de Carenzu, who has graced us with her presence here." Better that, she thought, than trying to sort out some kind of precedence. She was conscious though, very conscious, that she was wearing En Bertran's cloak. It was scented with an elusive fragrance. She didn't have time to decipher what it was. What she did realize, as she always did before she sang—a fleeting awareness but real as the stones of a wall—was that moments like this, with music about to follow, were why she lived, what made her feel most truly alive.
She began with the harp alone, as Gaetan, her father's brother, had taught her years ago, letting the audience settle, and then, when the stillness was deep enough, she sang.
When you came into my garden,
When you came to tell me of your love,
The one moon in the sky
Seemed brighter than the sun
And a white light was shining in my heart.
When you took me in your arms,
To whisper words of a long desire,
The scents of the garden
Were my garments in the dark
And day a distant rumour of despair
It was a well-made song, if not a brilliant one. Alain knew his craft and he was young enough to be maturing still. The special thing though—the gift this song offered Lisseut—was that it was written for a woman's voice. There weren't many, which was why the female joglars of Arbonne spent much of their time transposing tunes written for male voices and ignoring as best they could the obvious inappropriateness of most of the themes.