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 see
n 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."