Presented with a note by a liveried page whose inscription was velvet phrased over steel, Arithon
Teir's'Ffalenn quashed the urge to laugh out loud for the blood-letting sport of sheer challenge. Since refusal would bring him a squad of armed men bearing an ultimatum, he accepted the clan dowager's invitation with the same style of combative grace. He did not change his clothes, or cut his hair, spilled in blond locks to his shoulders. Since Dakar had been dispatched ahead into Atwood, Rathain's prince stood at once and bade the young servant to guide him. Bearing no more than his lyranthe and sword, and a change of shirt in a knapsack, he entered the street and, with a nod to the footman, stepped into the waiting carriage.
The plush seats were crammed with mail-clad men-at-arms. Arithon displaced one to accommodate his instrument. His affable smile like the rose on the briar, he disarmed the rampant hostility that clenched their hardened fists to their weapons. 'You aren't going to need the ring in the nose. For today, I've agreed to lead willingly.'
The vehicle rolled uphill, its occupants disinclined to share conversation. Arithon tapped whistle tunes out on his forearms, until the matched team was reined to a halt. A lackey built like a retired drill-sergeant opened the carriage door and ushered him out. Past the arch of a covered entry, Arithon glimpsed the buttressed walls that cradled the upper citadel. The conveyance had stopped in the mid-town, in front of the palatial residence that housed the s'Brydion clan seat. He was chivvied inside. His escort clinked like mailed wolves at his heels, as the servant directed him through windowless corridors hung with shields like a barracks ward-room.
By contrast, Dame Dawr's apartment was a haven of sunlit comfort, tucked in a south-facing eyrie. Her taste ran to soft furnishings and saffron silk, with fine paintings preferred over the maces and edged weapons displayed on the panelled walls elsewhere. Led in by the servant, Arithon faced the formidable grandame herself. She had no attendants, but sat on a straight-backed, gryphon-carved couch, tucked like porcelain into an embroidered gown. White-haired, erect, she wore her ninety-eight years with paper-fine skin and distinguished character. If she walked with a stick, her rivet-bright eyes denounced her aged frailty with an air of emphatic impatience.
The lackey required no order to leave. The men-at-arms also remained in the ante-room, while the door-panel clicked firmly shut.
Left alone, drab as blight in a garden, Arithon set his lyranthe down on the carpet. Expectant, he laced relaxed fingers.
'You may sit,' said Dame Dawr.
A stool was left waiting, with squat lion feet and an embroidered heraldic cushion.
'I refuse the insult,' denounced the Prince of Rathain. He shook back the deceiving, dandified ringlets and dropped off his masking glamour.
Shown seal-black hair and the face of s'Ffalenn royalty, Dame Dawr displayed no surprise. Long since, she had guessed his identity. 'Wise man, to insist on no falsehood between us.'
Arithon's smile displayed the joy of the tiger, peerlessly faced with its match. He came forward, bent his head and his knee, and with genuine grace, kissed her fingers. 'Few are given the unlooked-for pleasure. My balladry caught your attention?'
Impressed by sheer mettle, Dame Dawr raised him. 'Despite the license allowed a free singer, satires that ridicule Alestron's defences are going to try someone's limits.' Not put off one bit by the tavern reek from his clothes, or his raffishly insolent grooming, she locked his grasp in her brittle, ringed hand. 'Charter law is not proof against s'Brydion temper.'
'I feared as much,' Prince Arithon said. 'But reprisal is not what concerns me.'
Reassured that he grasped her innuendo quite well, the grandame offered the stool once again, though this time with sharkish engagement. 'I gather you've come to provoke as a warning?'
Arithon sat, flushed to naked relief. 'By Ath, you're a gift that might save us a war. Shall I honestly tell you the reason?'
He spent the next several days closeted with Dame Dawr. She allowed him a room with a bath, and a bed, and had her seamstress redress his rough clothing. In return, he seemed willing enough to abide without testing the fact he was kept as her guarded prisoner. To the listening ears of the servants, he played as a bard for her private amusement. Between entertainment, he also engaged in piercingly deep conversation. If her verbal by-play stabbed for the viscera, his courtesy scarcely faltered. When the s'Brydion clan grandame dozed in her chair, he seized no ungallant advantage. At her invitation, he spent those intervals browsing through books and reading the ancient, hand-scripted accounts of her family's illustrious history.
Four days of her adroit quips and snide fencing failed to wear him to exhaustion. If her guileful traps at times forced him silent, she never unleashed his temper.
'You won't be dissuaded,' she stated on the fifth morning, when, backed into a stand-down, she confronted him over breakfast.
Arithon passed her a toast point with jam. 'You can't see the merit of lending support? Your hatched offspring are going to outnumber me.'
Dame Dawr snorted, accepting the plate. Her glance could have cowed a starved jackal. 'If the merit's past question, my spurred cockerels are full-grown. I'm too cagey to argue a cause I can't win. My grandsons aren't sensible on their home turf. Don't chance the mistake that might bait them.'
Rathain's prince watched her, prepared in his way to match her disdain against his listening stillness.
Since mage training could outreach her caustic, crone's patience, she harried him, stubborn as pig-iron. 'The worthy opponent knows when he's outfaced.'
His green eyes showed amusement. 'I still have to try The cynic alone claims to know all the answers. At least let me make my fool's bid worth your blessing.'
'On my terms,' said Dame Dawr. 'Else I'll turn you out. I won't have your death on my conscience.'
Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn inclined his head, his sable hair barbered back to trim elegance and his wit never less than hard-edged. 'Asandir's gone before you. He holds my bound oath, sworn over a knife-cut at Athir.'
Dame Dawr rejected that protest, no matter how starkly he phrased his demand to be left his due right to autonomy. 'You will go as a bard under shield of my patronage. I'll arrange for the wives to be present.'
That won her his striking, spontaneous smile, which warmed for its depth of intensity. ' "Who spits against heaven, it falls in his face." I'll accept your offer of backing in skirts. Without women, how could a man triumph?'
'You would,' the s'Brydion grandame replied, 'though at far higher cost, and seldom without weapons and bloodshed.'
Duke Bransian handled his grandmother's whims the way his hunting mastiff scratched fleas: by routing the itch with vigorous claws until the pest was scoured off his skin. To be rid of Dame Dawr, one acceded forthwith. The faster a man gave in to her wish, the sooner he could be done with her.
Tonight, the old tyrant demanded a family gathering, formally arranged with refined entertainment and cake. That meant doffing chain-mail and sword, without which any s'Brydion male felt exposed as a babe on its birthday. Tricked out in velvet, Bransian glared at the boots with the pearl-stitched cuffs just offered to him by his wife. 'I've got to wear those, for the sake of a singer who probably warbles in tremolo? No!' The Duke of Alestron folded his arms, hampered by his jingling cuff-ties. 'That pair has no hobnails, and besides, I already glitter and clink like some simpering maiden's court jewel-box.'
'Be glad I decided to leave out the hat,' said his duchess with arid equanimity. A raw-boned woman who fought like a ram, she plonked the reviled foot-wear into the hands of a servant. 'Just get them on him.' She tucked a fresh clove into her reticule, then smoothed her silk bodice, and added, 'I'd rather be tortured for one day a month than hear more of your yapping complaints.'
'My tongue's not so much to put up with,' groused Bransian. 'It's your snoring that drives me insane.' Crammed into the boots, and flushed to black humour, he refused the pressed ribbons to pleat the silk sleeves that billowed over his elbows. 'Too
much like the prize bullock prinked for the fair. Keep at this, we're going to be late.' Chin tucked in offence, he stalked towards the doorway, while the duchess's shrewd glance continued to bore unappeased holes in his back.
'You're not wearing that horrid old dagger again, strapped underneath your clean sleeve!'
'Damned well, I am!' Duke Bransian snapped. 'Dawr's pet minstrel could be an assassin.'
Since the towns of Kalesh and Adruin had been known to try murder by blowdart and poison, no s'Brydion lady who valued her marriage could argue the need to go armed. The stalemate quelled Liesse long enough to see both of them down to the hall.
There, Dawr's tame bard was installed by the dais on a stool of Paravian workmanship. Both sleeves and his knee-breeches nipped tight with cord, he wore high court fashion with natural elegance. Despite his nondescript colouring, the duchess's hitched breath said plainly enough that the creature was matchlessly handsome. The Duke of Alestron spared him no second glance. Beside Dawr's upright posture, he seemed but a mouse, pretty hands too soft and refined to bear any serious weapons. If he carried poison, his dainty bones would be crushed. Even the wine steward's boy looked to be more than a match for him.
Liesse pressed a hand to her husband's elbow. 'Your grandame will expect you to take the state chair.'
Since grumbling now was a profitless waste, Bransian crossed the carpet, mincing in his tight boots, and mounted the low stair with his duchess. He assumed the carved seat of familial authority, though with Dawr on the muscle, better than any, he knew that assumption held pitfalls. Fiercely scowling, he watched his three younger brothers arrive. Each brought his glittering, combative wife, and their packs of direct offspring who were unrecognizable, done up in jewels and silk.
Only Mearn looked at ease, most likely because he had three poniards sewn into the seams of his doublet. Agile as a snake in new skin, he seated his pregnant wife, then surveyed the proceedings with slit-eyed suspicion. 'Why's the old lady down there with the bard?'
'Who knows?' Parrien itched the burned skin left by a shave too hastily done with his dagger. 'Like the south wind, she veers each time you try to read her.'
'Trend-setting fashion?' suggested his wife, snatching his wrist with both hands before his irritable scraping drew blood. 'Or else just her roustabout style of insisting on nonconformity.'
Keldmar shook his head, snatched off the hat that made him look like a spaniel, and tossed the crushed velvet onto the table. 'Old dame's getting deaf. About time, you ask me. She's got her stirring fingers poked altogether too far into the hot coals of politics.'
'Deaf!' Bransian snorted.
'You wish in your dreams,' added Mearn. 'She's got something afoot, the conniving fiend.' About to add more, he clamped his jaw shut and went suddenly silent.
'Has your wife kicked you under the table again?' asked Parrien with needling interest. 'Mine tried that, once. Couldn't shut my trap. I roped her in bed and -' Shot stiff with a grunt, he glared at the petite brunette, all demure sweetness beside him.
'She's sharpened her hairpins,' Liesse whispered in smiling response to Bransian's raised eyebrows.
Conjecture ceased as Dawr's stick banged the floor. Her punctilious serving-man brought the lyranthe for the bard, while more liveried staff served cake, and a syrup-thick brandy in delicate snifters.
'That's drink for a toddler,' Sevrand griped from his place down the table.
Dawr sat at last and arranged her severe skirts, while the over-bred singer fussed his strings into tune with harmonics that stung for their clarity. Bransian poked at his cherry confection in distaste, shut his eyes, and prepared to be bored.
The first, ringing chord slashed the quiet like a sword, whetted to gleaming temper. All question of faulty hearing aside, Dawr possessed stringent taste. Her patronage had delivered a master. The choice of ballad was no effete romance, but a martial tale styled in clarion phrasing. Parrien shot straight. All but stretched across Liesse's lap, he badgered to say something urgent.
The duke shoved him off. 'Douse your sniping cant! Let me listen.'
After that, the tapestry of woven sound stole the breath for its power of raw captivation. The brothers s'Brydion ceased their clamour, drawn in, while the singer wielded voice and string with an artistry to storm the spirit. His matchless rendering described a war host that built on two fronts, then marched to besiege an isolate citadel. The story carried two posited endings: in one, the defenders died - woman, child, and man overwhelmed by relentless numbers. The other told of a triumph through courage and loss as the fortress's ruler ordered his own stronghold torn down and destroyed. Stone was pulled from stone; battlements were tumbled; the massive defence-works and timber gates burned. The invaders were ceded a field of wracked rubble, while their quarry stole away in unvanquished survival to enact a subversive campaign that undermined and wore down, and at last claimed the victory through long-term engagement.
Incensed by the bald-faced effrontery that had bearded them in their own hall, the brothers s'Brydion fumed in stunned stillness. The music's wild force held them ruthlessly thralled. Compelled to hold out through the last, burning verse, they turned in lashed fury upon the bard, who had never been what he seemed: an itinerant stranger plying a free singer's art to scratch out his nondescript living.
Black-haired, green-eyed, and stripped clear of the mage's glamour that had masked him, Arithon s'Ffalenn laid aside the lyranthe. He stood and confronted the threat of dismemberment glaring at him from the dais.
'I tried to tell you!' cracked Parrien, incensed. 'I heard his Grace play that way once, at Sanpashir. Such talent's uncanny, and keen as a weapon, and no trick to foist upon a clan holding sworn as a friend and an ally!'
Prince Arithon struck back with a truth that smashed rhetoric. 'And had I tried to talk, you'd have heard my speech through?'
'Speech!' Keldmar ripped through his wife's fingers and shoved onto his feet, to a shattering crash of spilled plates. 'The man who even suggests we should run gets no word. Just my sword-thrust, straight through his liver!'
'By damn, forget blades! My bare fists will do,' howled Parrien in savage rejoinder. 'I don't sit still for the slangs of a coward!' Yet his combative lunge to arise became jolted short. Spun with a poleaxed, irate expression, he glared at his wife, who was not eating cake. Left-handed and deft, she waged her own style of assault beneath the lace edge of the table-cloth.
Primed to wicked interest, Mearn peered sidewards to see what new tactic had flummoxed his brother. He already knew how the duke was roped down: Liesse had his thigh pinned beneath her sleek leg. Draped like a vine over his shoulder and arm, she offered him brandy, while Bransian spluttered and roared, ' This is how you suggest we defeat an invasion? By wrecking our gates, and demolishing our battlements, and toppling our trebuchets into the inlet?'
'We've seen no evidence there's to be a campaign,' Mearn probed. Alone of the four brothers, he stood on his wiles. Before he decided to rile his wife, he would hear through the facts that provoked such a drastic argument.
On his feet, empty-handed, Arithon responded with chill provocation. 'The smoke from your foundry has blown on the wind. You've been recognized in Avenor.'
'You imply someone's sold us. Who?' thundered the duke. 'Give us the name, and I'll unwind his guts for the pigs' trough!'
Liesse snagged his elbow with tacit restraint. 'His Grace has received Dawr's ear on the matter. Perhaps we should listen before rushing to false conclusions?'
'Listen!' sneered Keldmar. 'That's for mincing ambassadors. Mealy-mouthed words never settled a thing! You want to arrive at a lasting solution, a bran-gling fight's always quickest.' He would have fetched his sword there and then, had his partridge-plump woman not clamped his wrist and hung on with the force of a lamprey.
'Your duke outranks you,' she murmured in warning. Then her titanic yank sat him back down before the wide eyes of his children.
Given the floor like a morsel of bait tossed befo
re bristling lions, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn advanced towards the dais. 'You don't need a leak. Etarra has ears within every town's walls, while the new batch of priests given charge at Avenor has been hand-picked for talented prescience. Your alliance has served me with invaluable help. Beyond any doubt, Mearn's fast wits in Tysan saved uncounted clan lives, as well as the living name of s'Gannley. But then is not now. This armed religion's become too strongly entrenched. Keep on as you have, and your irreplaceable heritage is going to face extirpation.'
'What are you suggesting?' Mearn twirled his brandy, his sharp features intrigued. 'Let the Light's weasels slink in for tea, then scratch their backs and befriend them?'
'Ah, no, prince!' cracked Bransian. 'My people won't have Lysaer's canting false priests! Ath's law will abide here, though we come to die for it.'
'You will be killed,' Arithon agreed, unequivocal. 'You and Alestron's loyal inhabitants, down to the last babe in the arms of its mother. Never forget! I bear the aware gift, bred into the s'Ahelas lineage when the king's ancestry was crossed with s'Dieneval. My passage through Kewar has forced the latent traits of Dari's rogue legacy into full flower. Your defence at Alestron will be written in blood, I foresee this!'
While the storm on the dais threatened explosion, and Keldmar and Sevrand surged to kick down the trestle and launch an assault with bare hands, Dawr raised her stick. She rapped the sounding-board of the lyranthe. The loud, booming knock broke across pandemonium, followed up by her scathing admonishment. 'Are we sunk low as townsmen, or just ravening boors! Hear his Grace through! You don't have to like what he says. He's asked for naught beyond your fair hearing.'
Arithon inclined his head and acknowledged her. He wore no jewels. Not so much as a clasp with a pin; his neat clothes bore no concealed weapons or knives. His close-fitted doublet and tie belt had no bosses for expediency to wrap his fine knuckles for in-fighting.
Not enamoured of his weaponless alliance one bit, Duke Bransian pent back his rage until his locked fists bent his cake fork. Too wise to press Dawr, he turned his murderous contempt on the insolent crown prince before him. 'What do you suggest beside flinging open our gates? Did my hearing deceive me? You actually think we should topple our defences down the east cliff and choke off the inlet that leads to the ocean?'