Roban nodded. This made sense; he liked it when she gave him commands that made sense.

"Rudel Correze is travelling with the Delonghi," Valery said casually, almost as an afterthought. "They were all in a party with the Andoria."

"Wonderful," the countess said tartly. It pleased Roban to see her angry with someone else, even though Bertran's cousin was hardly the appropriate target. "Do I ban him, too? Do we spend this week antagonizing every important family in Portezza?" Signe de Barbentain seldom lost her temper, but Roban sensed it might be happening now. It gratified him that she understood and shared his concerns. He smoothed his doublet again.

Valery was shaking his head. "Blaise de Garsenc says that the man will do nothing here. That the Correze are too prudent to risk the economic hazards of violating a truce. He thinks Rudel has probably withdrawn from his contract in any case."

"Why would he think that?" Roban asked testily. "No one in that family turns their back on two hundred and fifty thousand in gold."

Valery looked apologetic. "I thought the same thing, my lord chancellor. Blaise tells me he knows Rudel Correze extremely well, though. He sees no danger from him now."

"We are relying on that coran from Gorhaut rather a great deal, aren't we?"

"Enough, Roban!" He realized his mistake the moment she spoke—the anger building in her had abruptly turned on him. It always seemed to happen that way, as if he was the safe target, the one she knew she could snap at without risk. Which was true, he thought ruefully. It had been true for decades. Once, he'd wondered if his wife knew how he felt about the countess, and if she cared. He hadn't thought about such things for a long time.

"We will not go down that road again," Signe was saying sternly. "The man is not simply a coran from Gorhaut. He is the son of Galbert de Garsenc, and if we have any hope of dividing Gorhaut on this issue he is that hope. It he betrays us, I will admit you were right before we all die. Is that enough, Roban? Will that content you?"

The chancellor swallowed hard, feeling the way he always felt when she lashed out at him. When he was younger he had actually wept sometimes behind the closed doors of his own quarters after she'd spoken to him in this way. He didn't do that anymore, but he sometimes felt like it. A terrible admission, the chancellor thought, for a man of his age and position. He wondered if she ever knew when his headaches were coming on, if she would have been more sympathetic, a little gentler perhaps, had he informed her.

Signe really didn't remember Roban ever being this obstinately tiresome when Guibor was alive. But then she hadn't had as much to do with him then; he was simply the efficient administrator in the background, and Guibor was not a man with whom advisers pushed their disagreements too hard. It looked as if she wasn't like that herself. Perhaps she depended on Roban too much, perhaps he felt she was weak and needed him to be stronger now. She didn't really know; it wasn't something she'd thought about very much. He was there, he had always been there, and she knew he could be trusted, that something assigned to him would be competently done if it was at all possible. He looked a little flushed today and there were circles under his eyes. It crossed her mind to wonder, as she watched him make his habitual little smoothing gesture down the front of his immaculate doublet, if Roban was overburdened—the usual fate of competent men.

She didn't, in fact, feel especially strong herself at the moment, but that wasn't for anyone to see or guess, even Roban, even Valery. "Send for Borsiard d'Andoria in Lussan," she told the chancellor. "I will give him an audience here. I will not ban him by fiat or decree. He will hear it from me in this castle."

Which is what had happened later that same afternoon. Borsiard had stormed into her audience chamber, raging in the most unpleasant manner, demanding Bertran de Talair's censure and death in redress for the slaughter of three noblemen of Andoria. He had actually had a belief that she might agree, Signe saw. He was seeing her as a woman, a woman who could be frightened by his rage, moved to do what he wanted her to do.

That realization was what had given her access to the cold anger she needed to quell the Portezzan. And he had been quelled. She had dealt with better men than he in the past. As soon as she'd begun to speak, slowly, letting her measured words fall like stones into the stillness of the room, Borsiard's bravado had seemed to leech away from him.

"Take your people and your goods and go," she had said, speaking from the ancient throne of the counts of Arbonne. "You will not be allowed trade or profit at a fair whose laws you have so vilely broken. The men who were killed were properly executed by the duke of Talair, who is our agent in this, as are all the nobility of Arbonne. Whatever your quarrel with Blaise de Garsenc of Gorhaut—a quarrel in which we have no interest whatever—the roads leading to the Lussan Fair were not the place to pursue it. In that, we have a great interest indeed. You will not be troubled as you leave Arbonne. Indeed, we will assign a company of our men to escort you safely to the Portezzan border… unless there is somewhere else you might wish to go?"

Guibor had taught her that; raise the issue yourself, take the initiative from the other person. And as if on cue, Borsiard d'Andoria's dark, handsome face had twisted with a spasm of malice. "Indeed there is," he had said. "There are matters I should like to pursue in Gorhaut. I will travel north from here."

"We have no doubt you will be welcome at the court of King Ademar," Signe had said calmly. This was not a man to unsettle her, however much he might be worth, whatever Roban might fear. He was far too predictable. She wondered how long his marriage would last. She allowed herself to smile; she knew how to make her smile a weapon if need be. "We only hope your lady wife does not find it cold in Cortil and dull there as winter comes to the north," she murmured. "If she prefers to go home we will be happy to offer her an escort. Indeed—" a thought born of the moment " — we will be most pleased to have her stay on at our court should you wish to go north without her. We imagine we could find ways to keep her amused. It would be unjust to deny a lady the pleasures of a fair because of her husband's transgressions. We do not behave that way in Arbonne."

She wondered, lying in bed that same night, if she might have cause to regret the loss of temper that had led to that last invitation. It could prove awkward in many ways to have Lucianna Delonghi—it was almost impossible to think of her by any other name, despite her marriages—in Barbentain and Lussan this month. On the other hand, had the woman wanted to stay for the fair, she could simply have joined her father's contingent in any case. The invitation lent a sanction of control to what could hardly have been prevented. Signe hoped it might be seen that way, at any rate. She was also, privately, somewhat curious to meet the woman again. The last time Lucianna Delonghi had been in Barbentain was six or seven years ago, before the first of her marriages. Her father had presented her to the count and countess. She'd been clever, as all her family were, beautiful already, watchful, very young. A great deal had evidently happened to her in the intervening years.

It might be interesting to see exactly what. Later, though, Signe thought. She didn't want to see anyone at the moment. She had retired early, leaving to Roban and the Keepers of the Fair the task of carrying out her orders regarding the Andoria. She doubted there would be difficulties; Borsiard had few corans with him this far from home, and was unlikely to embarrass himself by forcing a public removal from Lussan. He was, however, quite likely to go north to Gorhaut—as Roban had gloomily predicted. The chancellor was usually right about such things. What Borsiard would do there was harder to guess. But the implications could not be lost on anyone: Andoria was one less source of funding for Arbonne, one less ally if war did come, and possibly one more contingent of arms in the field if Gorhaut asked for them.