There were people still awake and lights burning in the great hall of Barbentain. A lanky, dark-haired man was singing. Blaise paused in the doorway, listening for a moment. The voice was resonant and sad, quite beautiful actually. He thought he recognized the man, and one or two of the other musicians. Then he saw a woman he did know for certain: the joglar from Midsummer Eve, Lisseut. Her brown hair looked different tonight. He realized why after a moment: it was bright and clean, not soaked and tangled about her shoulders. Amused at the vivid memory, he waited until her gaze moved away from the singer to scan the room. When she saw him in the doorway, she smiled quickly and lifted a hand. Blaise, after a second, smiled back.

He was actually thinking about crossing the room to speak with her, but just then someone was at his elbow.

"I thought I'd wait a little while," Rudel said. "I wasn't entirely certain if you would be coming down before morning."

Blaise looked over at his friend. "Neither was I," he said quietly, "until just now. I feel free of something, actually."

Rudel's expression was sober. "Free to die?"

"We are always free for that. It is the god's gift and his burden."

"Don't be so pious. Not all of us are fool enough to invite it, Blaise."

Blaise smiled. "Is this Rudel Correze I am hearing? The most reckless mercenary of us all? If it will make you feel happier I will let you tell me, on the way home, all the reasons why I am a fool."

"It will make me feel a great deal happier," Rudel said. And proceeded to take up the invitation, in meticulous, lucid detail, all the way back from the castle to Bertran de Talair's palace in Lussan.

Blaise listened, for the most part, but as they neared Bertran's house again his mind wandered away, touching and withdrawing and then reaching hesitantly back to touch again the last, most difficult thing of a difficult night.

He had never seen a new-born babe before. The child had had a surprisingly full head of reddish hair and the Garsenc nose already, indisputably. He looked like Ranald. He also looked like Blaise. Rosala, holding him when he had finished nursing with the woman, before he was swaddled again, had revealed nothing at all in words or with her eyes. Nothing, that is, save love, as Blaise watched her watch her son sleep in her arms. They would be coming for him, of course. There was no question at all but that his grandfather and the king of Gorhaut would be coming after that child. Rosala had told Blaise, tersely, about her last encounter with Galbert. He wondered if his father had provoked that clash deliberately. It wasn't a thought he could share with her.

"You haven't even uttered a word in your own defence," Rudel complained sharply as they came up for the second time in a long night to stand beneath the lights burning outside Bertran's palace.

"I have none to offer. Every word you speak is true."

"Well, then?"

Blaise was silent for a moment. "Tell me, why did you spend so much of the assassination money on a jewel for Lucianna?"

Rudel grew still. It was quiet on the cobble-stoned street, with the stars shining far above.

"How do you know that? Did she tell you I—"

"No. She would never do that. Rudel, I recognized it. You pointed out that red gem to me once, at that jeweller's in Aulensburg. It wasn't a difficult connection to make. Take my meaning though, Rudel: we are all foolish in our different ways." It was quite dark where they stood, even with the two torches behind them. The sky was clear and a breeze was blowing. Both moons were down.

"I love her," his friend said finally. "I have no business calling any other man, living or dead, a fool."

Blaise honestly hadn't known, not until he had seen that memorable crimson gem blazing between Lucianna's breasts tonight. There was a sadness in him, shaped of many things.

He smiled though, and touched his friend on the arm. "You mentioned an amusing tavern quite some time ago. We appear to have been interrupted. If you are willing, I wouldn't mind trying again."

He waited, and saw Rudel, slowly, return his smile.

Sunrise saw them homeward, when the morning broke.

CHAPTER 13

Tournaments in Arbonne and duels performed in the presence of women were under the aegis of the queen of the Court of Love. It was Ariane de Carenzu, therefore, who was responsible for supervising the formalities attendant upon the challenge issued at the Lussan Fair between Blaise de Garsenc of Gorhaut and Quzman di Perano of Arimonda.

It was also Ariane who offered the most drily prosaic response of all to what Blaise had done the night before. They had gone to the Carenzu mansion in the morning: Blaise, Bertran, Valery and an extremely pale-looking Rudel Correze. A long night of drinking after a substantial blow to the head had not, it appeared, worked greatly to the advantage of the normally urbane scion of the Correze family.

For that matter, Blaise wasn't feeling entirely well himself, but he'd been more careful than Rudel in the tavern, and expected to become more functional as the day progressed; certainly by tomorrow at any rate, which was a good thing. Tomorrow he was going to be fighting a man to the death.

"I have no idea," Ariane said, reclining prettily on an upholstered divan in the room where she received them, "whether what you have done is sheerest folly or only moderately so."

Her tone was astringent and sardonic, a controlling voice more than a little at odds with the morning freshness of her appearance. She was dressed in pale yellow, the fabric cut with sky blue at bodice and sleeve, with a soft hat of the same mild blue shade on her dark hair, She was looking at Blaise as she spoke and her expression was not particularly mild.

"I cannot decide, because I do not know how well you fight. I do know that Urté would not have hired the Arimondan—the two Arimondans—if they were not very good indeed."

"Quzman? He is good," Bertran de Talair murmured. He was pouring an early glass of wine from a flask on a tray. He seemed more amused now than anything else, though his first reaction, when they told him what had happened, had been one of grimly silent reflection. He hadn't shared those thoughts.

"So is Blaise," said Rudel faintly from the depths of the chair into which he had carefully lowered himself. They could see only the top of his head. "Consider the dead brother and five corans of Miraval."

"Those were arrows," Valery said quietly. Of all of them, he seemed the most unhappy this morning. "This will be with swords."

"It need not be," Ariane said. "I could easily—"

Blaise shook his head quickly. "No point. He uses what he wants, so do I. I would be shamed by an attempt to control the weapons."

"You may be killed by a failure to do so," Ariane said tartly.

It was gradually becoming clear to Blaise, a knowledge accompanied by a growing bemusement, that the reactions of those around him to what was about to happen tomorrow were not entirely shaped by the pragmatic appraisal of risks and gains. They were concerned for him. The countess, Bertran and Valery, Rudel certainly, and now it was equally obvious—even to Blaise, who had never been good with understandings of this sort—that Ariane was speaking with more than an abstract interest in the rules of this challenge.

They had encountered her husband when they first entered the house, then Duke Thierry had gracefully excused himself when Bertran made it clear they were calling upon his wife in her formal capacity. The duke of Carenzu was a slender, well-built man, whose sexual tastes and appetites were in no way visible in his manner. He was also, Valery had said earlier, an exceptionally competent leader.

His wife, Blaise was thinking, was even more than that. He felt oddly unsettled now, meeting her lucid gaze, remembering, with unexpected clarity on this bright autumn morning, the summer night they had spent together, her words and manner as much as the act of love. It came to him that if they had been alone she might have been saying different things just now. For that matter, he might have been doing the same. This was a woman he trusted, Blaise suddenly realized, and he felt a momentary surprise.