A Song for Arbonne

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  In this piece Alain had changed a great many elements of the traditional liensenne, shifting the narrative to the woman's point of view, while keeping enough of the familiar motifs to leave the audience in no doubt as to what they were hearing and appraising. Lisseut, keeping her instrumental ornamentation to a minimum, took them through it, serving the song as best she could, in simplicity. It was a long tune—most of the formal liensennes were, for audiences would balk and complain at the absence of elements they were expecting. The troubadour's challenge in this kind of song lay in using all of a the familiar motifs while making them vivid and new, in whatever ways his art allowed. Lisseut sang the rising of the second moon, the customary menace of jealous, prying eyes, a formulaic, if rather clever stanza on the three flowers that traditionally sheltered lovers, another on the trusted friend watching out from beyond the wall with his mood-shattering warning of sunrise, and the lovers' parting words.

  It was honest, professional work, and she knew she had the listeners with her. Even here, with an audience as profoundly versed as this one was, Lisseut knew, the way she sometimes did in the midst of performing, that she was doing justice to Alain's words and music. She was holding something in reserve, though, for the ending, for the place where Alain of Rousset had surprised even himself by reaching for something more than the usual closing platitudes of love triumphant and enduring and had found instead the rather more painful integrity of art.

  Lisseut allowed herself the briefest pause, no more, for more would be to point the change, the new thing, too greatly and mar the effect; then she pitched her voice upwards towards sorrow and sang the last verse of the song.

  When you come to say goodbye,

  When you come to say that you will wed,

  Do one thing for me

  In memory of love,

  Bring balm for the breaking of my heart.

  She looked at Bertran de Talair for a moment as she began, then at the bearded coran behind him, but she ended gazing out over the heads of her listeners at the doorway beside the bar through which Remy and Aurelian had gone. A reprise of the opening notes, as an echo of what had passed, a chord for the watchman, a chord for the garden nights that were gone, and she was done.

  In Bertran's blue cloak the brown-haired girl looked delicate and fragile, not exalted, Blaise thought. She was more clever-looking than formally beautiful, but there was no missing—even for him—the purity of her voice, and the unexpected sadness at the very end of the song caught him for a moment. He didn't know the new thing that note of sorrow represented, but he could hear the sound of it, and the meaning of the words took his mind down unusual channels. Not for long of course: he wasn't inclined to that sort of thing, by background or experience—but for just a moment Blaise of Gorhaut, looking at the slender woman sitting on the low stool with Bertran de Talair's cloak around her, held, in his mind's eye, a clear image of a woman in a garden, weeping for the loss of love.

  "Oh, wonderful," Ariane de Carenzu said in an oddly wistful voice, far removed from her imperious tones of before. The words carried clearly in the stillness that followed the last notes of the harp, and with them came the release of a tautness like the tension of a drawn bow in the room. Blaise drew a long breath and noted, with some surprise, that most of the people around him were doing the same.

  There would have been other cries of approval doubtless, a swelling of applause to honour the singer and the troubadour who'd written the song, but just then the door to The Liensenne banged loudly open, letting in raucous noises from the darkening street outside. Blaise turned quickly to look and saw who was standing there, and the shape and nature of the evening changed entirely in that moment.

  He was looking at the man he had killed on the black horse by Lake Dierne.

  CHAPTER 5

  It wasn't, of course. It wasn't the same man; the dead remained dead, even here in Arbonne, even on Midsummer Eve. But the dark-skinned, arrogant look was the same, the heft and build, the muscled, dangerous quality of the Arimondan was exactly as Blaise remembered it from that afternoon by the lake with the Arch of the Ancients just beyond.

  And the man was gazing at him with a look compounded equally of hatred and fierce joy.

  Beside Blaise, Valery said quickly out of the side of his mouth, "I did mean to tell you before. I should have. His brother, same birth. Be very careful."

  Blaise registered this without taking his eyes off the Arimondan by the door. The man was clad in the green livery of Miraval and he, too, wore a sword, the curved blade of his own country.

  Urté de Miraval rose, without haste; so too, on the other side of Ariane de Carenzu, did Bertran. The lady remained sitting, though she had turned in her chair to glance over her shoulder at the door.

  "Quzman," said the duke of Miraval, "I wondered where you were, and so long. See, as I promised you, there is a Gorhautian coran here you have expressed a desire to meet."

  "I do see that," said the Arimondan. His voice was deep, almost musical. He smiled. "I am most pleased. In my country we have a saying: murderers must be dealt with swiftly lest the green grass wither beneath their tread. Will you come outside with me, or do you only fight from a distance?"

  "It was not murder," said Valery sharply before Blaise could reply. "The priests and priestesses of Rian's Isle were witnesses and have told their tale."

  The man called Quzman seemed not to have heard. There was something uncanny about his smile, the way his entire being seemed focused upon Blaise. Once, in a Gotzland castle, Blaise had seen a man look at another in that way, and death had followed before the night was done. Now, in response to the nakedness of this challenge, Blaise felt his own anger rekindling, a memory of the encounter by the lake, the luxuriously articulated, ugly words of the Arimondan on the black horse.

  "You do seem distressed," he said to the man by the door, keeping his own voice relaxed, almost lazy, in the way his friend Rudel or even Bertran de Talair would say this thing. "Tell me, did I kill your brother or your lover there? Or were they one and the same?"

  "Careful!" Valery whispered urgently again. But Blaise had the pleasure of seeing the Arimondan's smile stiffen into something harsh and artificial, a rictus, as of death.

  "You have a foul murderer's tongue, Northerner." It was Urté de Miraval. "I do not see why we should suffer it to wag freely among us, and then carry back a spy's tale to Ademar of Gorhaut."

  So that was brought into it too, now. Predictably.

  "That last is the thought of a fool," said Bertran calmly. "And as for murder: this man was set upon by while riding in peace on the countess's high road. His pony was slain and his horse, and six cowards in your service sought to kill him. I would not speak so glibly of murder, my lord of Miraval. I might, instead, give a passing thought to the competence of my corans were it my own six killers who were slain by one man alone."

  "These are words," said Quzman of Arimonda contemptuously. "Words and posturings, the sad vices of Arbonne. This man and I can end this alone outside, no one else need be part of it. Unless he is truly afraid. As for the new law you mention…»

  He took two strides into the room, graceful as a hunting cat, and knelt before Urté. "My lord, matters touching upon the honour of my family compel me to ask leave to withdraw from your service for a time, that my actions need have no bearing on your own affairs. Will you grant me leave?"

  "He will not," said a clear, cold voice. The only voice in the room that could have tried to wield authority in that moment.

  They all turned to her. Ariane de Carenzu had not troubled to rise or even fully turn to face the men. She was still looking over her shoulder, casually, her black hair tumbling down the back of her chair. There was nothing casual about her words though. "In the name of the countess of Arbonne I forbid this duel. There is a land price placed on deaths between Talair and Miraval. It has been proclaimed and posted and cannot be evaded—understand me, my lords—by sham devices of this sort. I will not let the countess be
mocked. Nor will I allow this night of the goddess to be marred in such a way. I hold you both strictly accountable, my lords, for the conduct of your men."

  "Surely so, but if he leaves my service—" Urté de Miraval began.

  "He requires your consent and you will not give it."

  The woman's voice was precise and authoritative, the flat tone of someone absolutely versed in command. Even after months in Arbonne, Blaise found it disconcerting to see the two dukes so accepting of a woman's unveiled note of power.

  He opened his mouth to speak, his own anger strong within him, and received a hard elbow in the ribs. "Don't do it!" Valery muttered, as if reading his mind.

  He probably had, Blaise thought—the path of his thinking would have been clear enough. Blaise was, by his own insistence, not bound to Bertran de Talair by any oaths of fealty. He was a hired mercenary and could end his contract at any time, forfeiting only whatever pay was due to him and as yet untendered and freeing himself to fight the Arimondan, without seeking a by-your-leave from anyone, including this black-haired woman who styled herself a queen, if only of the troubadours' Court of Love.

  He drew a slow breath, met Valery's gaze for a moment and held his peace. He looked around the room. No one else seemed to have dared to move. With mild surprise he saw that the girl with the harp, still wearing Bertran's blue cloak, was staring at him from across the room. He couldn't read her gaze from a distance, but he could guess. She had thrust herself forward to defend the honour of the troubadour he'd wounded. She would probably be quite content if he died by a curved, bejewelled Arimondan sword.

  His gaze swept past her and upwards. On the upper storey of the inn, men and women had crowded to the railings, first for the music and now for what had followed. Most of their faces were hidden by the cross-beams; a procession of legs lined the hallway above his head, cut off at the trunk. It was odd, in a way, an audience of feet and calves and thighs in variously coloured hose.

  "You came here bearing a message, I think," Ariane de Carenzu continued, in the silence that had followed her last speech. She was looking at the Arimondan, Quzman. "Is it about the boats on the river?"

  The man glanced over at her. He had remained kneeling before Urté de Miraval. They were both large, exceptionally handsome men; it was a pose that might have been carved in relief on the stone wall of a chapel of Corannos in Gorhaut.

  "Yes," the dark-skinned man said finally. "It was about the boats."

  "They are beginning now?"

  "They are." He offered no title or any courtesy at all to the woman.

  "Then you will duel each other so for our amusement at Carnival," said the lady of Carenzu with a swift, flashing smile that was radiant and yet infused with capricious malice.

  "A game?" the Arimondan said, with derision. A ripple of anticipation and relief was sweeping across the room. Blaise saw Bertran turn quickly away to hide a smile.

  "It is almost all a game," Ariane said softly, in a rather different voice. "We play it, all of us, through our nights and days, until the goddess takes us home. But hear me again," she added calmly, "if any man of either of your parties dies tonight I will hold it as murder and tell the countess as much."

  "I haven't been on the river in years," said Bertran, an apparently inconsequential remark. He seemed to be struggling, with only partial success, to keep a thread of laughter out of his voice.

  Urté de Miraval heard it. "And I in decades," he said, rising to the bait. "But I will give you that, and twenty years' advantage of age and still best you, my lord of Talair, in any action that a man may honourably do among men."

  At that, Bertran did laugh aloud. With a whiplike malice of his own that Blaise did not fully understand, he said, "Only among men? A prudent concession my lord, under the circumstances."

  Urté de Miraval's head snapped back, as if from an actual lashing. It was the first time he'd lost his composure, Blaise realized, and wondered why. Something he'd overheard weeks ago tugged vaguely at his memory: there was a woman somewhere at the root of what lay between these two.

  "Bertran," began Ariane de Carenzu sharply, "I do not think that—"

  "Ariane, have done! You have imposed your will here, and we are mindful of you. Do not overreach; it is a failing. I told you when you walked in and I have told you as much before." Bertran's blue eyes as he wheeled to face her were hard and carried their own measure of authority now. "We will play games tonight on the river for your amusement. No one will be killed, by your command. Be content with what you may control. The past is not in your province."

  "Indeed it is not," said Urté de Miraval very softly, his self-control regained. Blaise had to lean forward to hear him. "None of the dead are. Men or women. Even children. Even children, if it comes to that."

  Which, for some reason, drew a response from Bertran de Talair. He turned from the dark-haired woman to look full into the face of the other duke standing not far away. There was a suddenly dangerous stillness in the room again, a sense of genuine menace radiating outward from where the two men stood.

  "It comes to that," said Bertran finally, his own voice little more than a whisper now. "Oh, believe me, my lord, it does." As the two of them locked gazes to the manifest exclusion of everyone else in the tavern, in the world, Blaise of Gorhaut realized, rather late, that the hatred here, the palpable weight of whatever lay in the past between them, was of a depth and texture infinitely greater than he had understood.

  Beside him Valery muttered something under his breath that Blaise could not quite hear.

  "Come," Bertran added, breaking free of the frozen stare, his tone a sudden, exaggerated parody of ritual, "let us go. Let us all go forth by the light of the mingled summer moons to make sport on the river for the queen of the Court of Love."

  He moved towards the door without looking back. Valery followed quickly. Blaise glanced around the tavern one more time. Ariane de Carenzu's expression was odd now, vulnerable for the first time. People were beginning to stir, shaking their heads, blinking vaguely, as if freed of an enchanter's cast spell. On the upper landing the legs were moving, black and white hose, white and blue, wheat-coloured and russet, crimson and gold, pale and forest green—the brilliant colours of festival time.

  He watched for another moment, thinking about the words just spoken, nagged by the thread of a thought, and then moved with the crowd out the doorway and into the noisy street. On the way he passed very close to Quzman the Arimondan, closer than he needed to, in fact. He made a point of smiling as he did.

  Valery was waiting just outside the door. A man and a woman masked as a crow and a fox bumped into Blaise as they stumbled past, laughing uproariously. The man carried an open flask of wine, the woman's tunic was mostly unbuttoned. In the light of the lanterns above the doorway of The Liensenne, her breasts showed clearly for a moment. There was laughter ahead of them and behind and a constant, cacophonous sound of noisemakers being whirled and banged and thumped.

  "You don't have any of this in Gorhaut, I suppose," said Valery companionably, as if nothing of note had happened in the tavern. Blaise realized that he liked Bertran's cousin for this relaxed, unruffled quality, as much as for anything else. Just ahead of them the duke was walking amid a cluster of musicians, including the woman who had sung for them; she was still wearing Bertran's blue cloak.

  "Hardly," he said shortly, by way of reply, but he tried to keep the criticism out of his voice. What should he say to Valery: that he found this whole night's goddess-inspired exercise in lechery demeaning and vulgar, unworthy of any man who aspired to serve his country and his god?

  "I meant to tell you that there were two Arimondans," Valery said after a pause. There was riotous sound all around them; a young boy raced past, violently whirling a noise-maker shaped like the head of a bull. Two laughing women leaned precariously far out of a window overhead, trading ribald jests with those passing in the crowded street.

  "I'm sure," Blaise said drily. "Why didn't you?"


  Valery glanced briefly at him. "You didn't seem interested." He said it mildly, but Blaise heard the nuance in the words. "You haven't seemed much interested in anything. I wonder why you travel, sometimes. Most men leave home to learn about the wider world. You don't seem to want to know."

  A different sort of elbow in the ribs. Blaise thought of stating as much, but after a moment said only, "Some men leave home to leave home."

  After a moment Valery nodded. He didn't pursue the matter. Turning right, he followed Bertran and the troubadours up a darker laneway leading away from the sea.

  "How good are you with small boats on water?" he asked after a moment.

  "Passable," said Blaise cautiously. "What, exactly, are we about to do?"

  "A question!" said Valery of Talair, grinning suddenly. He looked younger, and very like his cousin when he smiled. "You actually asked a question!"

  Almost against his will Blaise laughed. He sobered quickly, concentrating, as Valery of Talair began to explain. Then, when Valery was finished and they had come to the river and Blaise saw what was there—the people, and the strung lights like glittering stars come down, the lanterns and faces in the windows of the merchant houses along the river, the ropes across the water mooring the rafts, the small boats waiting and others drifting downstream towards the invisible sea, some already capsized with men swimming beside them—he laughed aloud again, helplessly, at the childlike frivolity of it all.

  "Oh, Corannos," he said, to no one in particular, "what a country this is."

  But they had caught up with the others by then, the troubadours and joglars amid the crowd on the riverbank, and Bertran de Talair turned back to look at him.

  "We know that," he said levelly over the noise. "Do you?"