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.