Guy Kay - A Song for Arbonne

"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.