Guy Kay - A Song for Arbonne

Small touches like that were what had made Lussan's fair by far the most celebrated and best attended in the six countries. For all his frustrations and his chronic sense of being overburdened, Roban was proud of that; he'd always felt that it was worth doing a task properly if it was worth doing at all. That was part of his problem, of course; that was why he ended up with so much to do. It was also the source of his own particular pride: he knew—and he was certain the count, and more recently, the countess, knew—that there was simply no one else in Barbentain, in all of Arbonne, who could handle details such as these as well as he.

The tax officers of the fair were under his direct authority—the tariffs levied on all goods leaving Lussan went straight to the countess's coffers—but the burghers of the town were responsible for appointing and paying the inspectors, notaries, scribes, clerks and couriers. They sent out their own heralds, too, into hamlets throughout the countryside in the harvest season, to remind the farmers and villagers of Arbonne—as if anyone was likely to need reminding—that the Autumn Fair was coming, with its puppet shows and performing animals, its dancers and singers, men who swallowed burning coals and others who made pigeons disappear, and pedlars who sold trinkets and toys and pottery and cures for everything from infertility to indigestion. And there were also, of course, the women who gathered in Lussan for that month from all parts of the known world, and who could be bought in a tavern room for an hour or a night.

Roban was happy to leave the supervision of such things to the burghers; his own concern was for those coming with more tangible goods to trade, over the mountains or by water to Tavernel and then up the high road along the river. The merchants came from everywhere, in fact, travelling with silk and wool and wood, with medicines and perfumes and staggeringly costly spices from the east, with daggers from Arimonda, swords and armour from the forges of Aulensburg, longbows from Valensa, carved icons of Corannos from Gorhaut, gold and silver jewellery from Portezza, Valensan cloth and cheese, wine and olives and olive oil from the south of Arbonne itself. You could buy virtually anything at the Lussan Fair, see people from almost anywhere in the known world and, for the price of a beaker of ale bought in a tavern, hear tales told by sea captains of the fabled countries to the south, far beyond the boundaries of the known.

You could also find, in private houses that sheltered the princes and great merchants from too-close scrutiny, discussions going forward, in rooms shuttered against the sun or candlelit at night, that would shape the flow of events in the six countries for the year to come.

The Lussan Fair was always the last of each year before winter closed the roads and passes. It was the final opportunity for face-to-face discussions for months. Roban knew from long experience that it was what happened behind those forbidding, ornate doors that became the most important legacy of any fair.

That was especially true this year, perhaps more than any other in memory, for the Treaty of Iersen Bridge between Gorhaut and Valensa had completely altered the long balance of power among the six countries, and Arbonne in particular had reason to weigh and fear the consequences of that.

It was therefore not surprising that when the hard-pressed and chronically anxious chancellor of Arbonne learned that Duke Bertran's cousin Valery sought urgent audience with the countess and himself, he concluded, with the glum certainty of the innately pessimistic, that he was not about to receive tidings apt to soothe his jangling nerves.

This, of course, turned out to be the case. Aghast, Roban stood beside the countess's chair in her small private room behind the audience chamber and heard Valery of Talair calmly recount a murder attempt on the problematic Gorhaut coran, the killing of two Portezzans from Andoria in response and then the summary execution of the third—a cousin to Borsiard himself, and, it appeared, very possibly a favourite. Valery was careful to spare them no details. The tensions that would ensue in the wake of all this, Roban calculated swiftly, were likely to ruin the fair before it began. They would also probably drive him to his bed for a day and a night with one of his blinding headaches.

It sometimes seemed to him that he'd spent his entire adult life here at Barbentain, with the count and now the countess, attempting to smooth over crises caused by the actions of the fractious, capricious noblemen of Arbonne. Roban was Arbonnais himself, of course, born to minor rank in Vaux Castle, but he'd been consecrated to Corannos early, in the way of younger sons of younger sons, then plucked from a chapel of the god by Guibor IV while still beardless, though with his abilities in numbers and letters already manifest.

He'd come to Barbentain and risen swiftly through the ranks of Guibor's court to the chancellorship. At the time of his appointment there had been much made of his youthful links with the clergy of the god—an act of careful political balancing by the count. That had been so long ago Roban doubted anyone even remembered any more. Few had objected to his precipitate ascent, even in an ambitious court. Even when he was young there had been something reassuringly earnest about Roban's manner. He was trusted. He deserved to be trusted, he often thought; if only he were listened to more often in this country of hot-blooded men and women with more passion for music than for orderly government.

Music was fine, Roban thought. He enjoyed the troubadours and joglars when he had the chance to hear them. He'd even written some verses himself long ago when formally courting the woman the count had suggested he marry. He couldn't remember the tunes or the lyrics very well—probably a good thing. There were limits to where music could take you, Roban had always thought, or, more properly, there were dimensions in affairs of state where it was necessary to leave aside the romantic troubadour strains and be ruthlessly practical. Roban was a pragmatic man, by his own estimation. He knew what implications flowed from what actions. He was aware that Bertran de Talair would know these things too, perhaps even better than he, but that much of the time the duke would simply not care. That was the way of things here in Arbonne, the chancellor thought gloomily. Witness what had happened two days ago on the high road beside the river.

There was no question that punishment had been called for, that something would have had to be done. What would have put the Andorians in a fury—and a contingent of them were reported to have also arrived today, coated in dust, horses lathered—was the summary action of the duke of Talair by the roadside. Noblemen were simply not executed in the manner of common thieves. Bertran had even had the man branded; Roban winced when Valery mentioned that, and turned away in a vain attempt to conceal his reaction. He tried to turn the motion into a coughing spasm, but suspected that the countess knew this was a subterfuge.

He was seldom able to conceal much from the countess. He had fallen in love the first time he'd ever seen her, forty years ago. He loved her yet, more than his life. He was almost certain that this, at least, she did not know—but it was one of the things that defined Roban of Vaux in his own eyes. He was a man who had loved one woman only and had done so for virtually all his days, notwithstanding his own marriage and children, notwithstanding their enormous difference in rank. He would die having loved the countess of Arbonne with the sustained, lifelong passion of his soul. He didn't even think about it any more, though there had been sleepless, sighing nights in a narrow bed long ago. By now, four decades later, it was simply a given, a fact upon which all else in his life had been founded.