"I looked in on Valery," Blaise said as he entered. "He's sleeping easily."

Serlo nodded. "I'll sleep more easily myself when we've found out who shot that arrow," he said. "I only hope the goddess and the god have decreed an eternal place of pain for men who use syvaren."

"I've seen worse things in war," Blaise said quietly. He had another thought, but he was too tired to shape it properly. "Good night," he said.

"Good night."

He heard the gate swing shut behind him. He would have felt better himself if a key had turned in the lock; he had his own views about the traditions of Arbonne. On the other hand, knowing what he knew about Bertran de Talair, it was unlikely in the extreme that the duke was in the palace tonight. Blaise shook his head. He went across the courtyard, through the inner doors, up the stairs and then down the corridor to the small room his status as a mercenary captain had earned him. Not a minor benefit; most of the corans slept together in dormitories or the great hall of Talair, with seniority merely placing one nearer the fire in winter or the windows in the summer heat.

He opened his door, almost stumbling with fatigue. He was aware of the scent of perfume an instant before he saw the woman sitting on his bed.

"You may remember," said Ariane de Carenzu, "that we had a number of matters to consider, you and I. We seem to have only dealt with the most public ones."

"How did you get past the guard?" Blaise said. His pulse had quickened again. He didn't feel tired any more. It was odd how swiftly that could happen.

"I didn't. There are other ways into this palace. And into mine, if it comes to that."

"Does Bertran know you are here?"

"I rather hope not. I doubt it. He was going out himself, I think. It is Midsummer, Blaise, and we are in Tavernel." He knew what that meant; the singer had told him just before this woman's soldiers had come to lead him away.

Her hair was down, of course, it always was, and her delicate scent imbued the small chamber with subtle, unsettling nuances. But Blaise de Garsenc had his own rules and his own code, and he had broken those rules and that code last summer in Portezza, enmeshed in a world of woman's perfume. He said, "I know where we are, actually. Where is the duke of Carenzu?" He meant it to be wounding; he wasn't sure why.

She was unruffled, at least to his eye, by candlelight. "My husband? In Ravenc Castle with En Gaufroy, I suspect. They have their own particular traditions at Midsummer and I'm afraid women aren't a part of them."

Blaise had heard about Gaufroy de Ravenc. His young bride was said to be still a virgin after almost three years of marriage. He hadn't heard the same sort of stories about Thierry de Carenzu, but then he hadn't asked, or been much interested.

"I see," he said heavily.

"No you don't," said Ariane de Carenzu sharply, irony and amusement gone from her voice. "I don't think you see at all. You will have just now concluded that I am wandering in the night because my husband's preference in bed partners is for boys. You will be deciding that I am to be understood in the light of that fact. Hear me then: I am here of my own choice, and no taste or orientation of the man my father married me to would affect that decision, short of physical restraint."

"So pleasure is all? What of loyalty?"

She shook her head impatiently. "When the day comes that a man and woman of our society may wed because they choose each other freely, then talk to me of loyalty. But so long as women are coinage in a game of castles and nations, even in Arbonne, then I will admit no such duty and will dedicate my life to changing the way of things. And this has nothing, nothing at all to do with Thierry's habits or preferences." She stood up, moving between him and the candle, her vivid face suddenly in shadow. "On the other hand, I know nothing of your own habits or tastes. Would you prefer me to leave? I can be gone quietly the same way I came in."

"Why should it matter if you are quiet or not?" he said, stubbornly holding to his anger. "We're in Arbonne aren't we? In Tavernel at Midsummer."

He couldn't read her eyes, with the one flickering candle behind her, but he saw again the impatient motions of her head. "Come, Blaise, you are cleverer than that. Discretion is at the heart of all of this. I am not here to bring shame to anyone, least of all myself. There is no public duty I owe my lord or my people in which I have been found wanting. I dare say that, and I know it to be true. Thierry has my respect and I am quite certain I have his. The duties I owe myself are different. What happens alone at night between two people who are adults about it need not impact upon the world in any way that matters."

"Then why bother? Why bother to be together? Has your Court of Love ruled on that?" He meant to sound sardonic, but it didn't come out that way.

"Of course it has," she said. "We come together to glory in the gift of life the goddess gave us… or the god, if you prefer. Sometimes the best things in our lives come to us of a night and are gone in the morning. Have you never found that?"

He had found something very near to that, but the morning's ultimate legacy had been lasting pain. He almost said as much. There was a silence. In the shadows, her silhouetted form might almost have been Lucianna's. He could imagine the same feel to her black hair and remember the light touch that traced a path along…

But no. Remembering the past was where his anger lay. This woman had done him no wrong that he knew of, and was, by her own lights, honouring him with her presence here. He swallowed.

She said, "It is all right. You are tired. I did not mean to offend you. I will leave."

Blaise could not afterwards have said what sequence of movements brought them together. As he gathered her in his arms he was aware that he was trembling; he had not touched a woman since Rosala, and that night, too, carried its heavy burden of anger and self-reproach, both during and afterwards. Even as he lowered his mouth to Ariane's, breathing deeply of the scent that clung to her, Blaise was bracing himself to resist the alluring ways of yet another sophisticated woman of the south. Lucianna had surely taught him that much; if he had learned nothing from a spring and summer in Portezza he would be a man living an utterly wasted life. Blaise was prepared, defended.

He was not. For where Lucianna Delonghi had used love and lovemaking as instruments, weapons in subtle, intricately devised campaigns, a pursuit of pleasure and power through binding men's spirits helplessly to her, Blaise was given a gift that night in Tavernel of a strong soul's love-making, without eluding, fierce as wind, with grace yet at the heart of it and needs of her own, offered honestly and without holding back.

And in the turning, interwoven movements of that night upon his bed in the city palace of Bertran de Talair, Blaise found, for a short while in the darkness after the one candle burned out, an easing of his own twin pains, the old one and the new, and an access to sharing hitherto denied him. He offered her what he had to give, and even, towards the end, with irony pushed back far away, some of the things he'd learned in Portezza, the skills and patterns of what men and women could do lying with each other when trust and desire came together. Accepting what he offered, laughing once, breathlessly as if in genuine surprise, Ariane de Carenzu bestowed upon him in turn something rich and rare, as a tree that flowers at night without a leaf, and Blaise was, for all the bitterness that lay within him, yet wise enough and deep enough to accept it as such and let her sense his gratitude.

In the end he slept, holding her in his arms, breathing the scent of her, slaked of hunger and need, returned to his weariness as to a garden, through the thickets and brambles of his history.