A Song for Arbonne. Guy Gavriel Kay

‘I’ve been hired already,’ he said. ‘Remember? Mallin de Baude, youngish fellow, a baron in Arbonne. Pretty wife.’

      Bertran laughed aloud. The lamb lifted its head and looked at them a moment, then resumed her own affairs. ‘Really,’ said the duke, ‘you belie your country’s reputation with jests like that: everyone knows the Gorhautians have no sense of humour.’

      Blaise allowed himself a thin smile. ‘We say the same thing back home about the Götzlanders. And Valensans smell of fish and beer, Portezzans always lie, and the men of Armonda mostly sleep with each other.’

      ‘And what do you say back home,’ Bertran de Talair asked quietly, ‘about Arbonne?’

      Blaise shook his head. ‘I haven’t spent much time back home in a long while,’ he said, dodging the question.

      ‘About four months,’ de Talair said. ‘That much I checked. Not so long. What do they say?’ His hands were loosely clasped about the flask. Late-afternoon sunlight glinted in his short brown hair. He wasn’t smiling any longer.

      Neither was Blaise. He met the clear blue gaze as directly as he could. After a long moment he said, in the silence of that high meadow, ‘They say that a woman rules you. That women have always ruled you. And that Tavernel at the mouth of the Arbonne River has the finest natural harbour for shipping and trade in the world.’

      ‘And Ademar of Gorhaut, alas, has no sheltered harbour on the sea at all, hemmed in by Valensa on the north and womanish Arbonne to the south. What a sad king. Why are you here, Blaise of Gorhaut?’

      ‘Seeking my fortune. There’s less of a mystery than you might want to make out.’

      ‘Not much of a fortune to be found chasing sheep for a minor baron in these hills.’

      Blaise smiled. ‘It was a start,’ he said. ‘The first contract I was offered. A chance to learn your language better, to see what else might emerge. There are reasons why it was a good idea for me to leave the Portezzan cities for a time.’

      ‘Your own reasons? On those of Ademar of Gorhaut? Would there by any chance be a spy behind that beard, my green-eyed young man from the north?’

      It had always been possible that this might be said. Blaise was surprised at how calm he felt, now that the accusation was out in the open. He gestured, and de Talair handed him the brandy flask again. Blaise took another short pull and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand; the seguignac was really extraordinarily good.

      ‘Indeed. Very important information to be gathered up here,’ he said, finding himself for some inexplicable reason in a good humour. ‘I’m sure Ademar will pay handsomely for a precise numbering of the sheep in these hills.’

      Bertran de Talair smiled again and shifted position, resting on one elbow now, his booted feet stretched out in front of him. ‘This could be just a start, as you say. An entry to our councils.’

      ‘And so I cleverly lured you into offering me a position by failing to shoot well on a hunt? You do me too much credit, my lord.’

      ‘Perhaps,’ said de Talair. ‘What does Mallin pay you?’

      Blaise named the figure. The duke shrugged indifferently. ‘I’ll double that. When can you start?’

      ‘I’m paid through to a fortnight from now.’

      ‘Good. I’ll expect you at Talair three days after that.’

      Blaise held up a hand. ‘One thing clear from the start. The same thing I told En Mallin de Baude. I’m a mercenary, not a liegeman. No oaths.’

      Bertran’s lazy, mocking smile returned. ‘But of course. I wouldn’t dream of asking you to swear to anything. I wonder, though, what will you do if Ademar comes south? Kill me in my sleep? Could you be an assassin as well as a spy?’

      Which, as it happened, was nearer to the bone than was at all comfortable. Blaise thought suddenly of the High Priestess of Rian on her island in the sea. He looked down at his hands, remembering Rudel, a moonless night in Portezzan Faenna, the garden of a palace in that dangerous city, fireflies, the scent of oranges, a dagger in his hand.

      He shook his head slowly, bringing his mind back to Arbonne, to this high plateau and the disturbingly perceptive man looking steadily at him now with those vivid blue eyes.

      ‘I’m no more a sworn man of Ademar’s than I will be of yours,’ Blaise said carefully to Bertran de Talair. He hesitated. ‘Do you really think he might come south?’

      ‘Might? In Rian’s holy name, why else did he make that peace with Valensa I’m trying so hard to undermine with my songs? You said it yourself: woman-ruled Arbonne. Our count dead, an ageing woman in Barbentain, no obvious heir in sight, wine fields and grainlands and a glorious port. Men who do nothing but write songs all day and yearn like callow boys for a woman’s cool hand on their brow at night … of course Ademar’s going to come down on us.’

      Blaise felt his mood changing, the pleasant fatigue of a day’s hard labour chased away by the words as clouds were blown by the mountain winds. ‘Why are you hiring me, then?’ he asked. ‘Why take that chance?’

      ‘I like taking chances,’ Bertran de Talair said, almost regretfully. ‘It is a vice, I’m afraid.’ The High Priestess, Blaise remembered, had said something much the same.

      Bertran shifted position again, sitting up now, and took a last pull of the seguignac before capping the flask. ‘Maybe you’ll end up liking us more than you think. Maybe we’ll find you a wife down here. Maybe we’ll even teach you to sing. Truth is, I had a man killed this spring, and good men are hard to come by, as I suspect you know. Leading a successful raid on Rian’s Island so soon after you got here was no mean achievement.’

      ‘How do you know about that?’

      Bertran grinned again, but without mockery this time; Blaise had the odd sensation of being able to guess what that smile might do to a woman the duke wanted to charm. ‘Anyone can kill a corfe on a hunt,’ de Talair went on, as if Blaise hadn’t spoken at all. ‘I need someone who knows when not to kill one. Even if he won’t tell me how he learned that or who he is.’ He hesitated for the first time, looking away from Blaise, west towards the mountains and Arimonda beyond. ‘Besides which, for some reason you’ve made me think of my son the last few days. Don’t ask me why. He died as an infant.’

      Abruptly he stood. Blaise did the same, seriously confused now. ‘I didn’t think you had ever married,’ he said.

      ‘I didn’t,’ Bertran said carelessly. ‘Why, do you think it is time?’ The sardonic, distancing smile was back. ‘A wife to warm my old bones at night, children to gladden the heart in my declining years? What an intriguing thought. Shall we discuss it on the way down?’

      He had begun walking towards his horse as he spoke, and so Blaise, perforce, did the same. It had grown colder now on this windy height, the sun hidden behind a grey mass of swiftly driven clouds. As an afterthought Blaise looked back and saw that the lamb was following. They mounted up and began to ride. From the crest of the ridge they could see Mallin and the rest of their party gathered east of them and below. Bertran waved briefly and they started down. Far in the distance, beyond meadow and wood and the other men, the castle could be seen, with the lavender fields in shadow beyond.

      On the way down, in the interval before they reached the others, the matter Bertran de Talair chose to raise had nothing at all to do with marital bliss, belated or otherwise, or with the soothing accoutrements of a quiescent old age.

      AND NOW, REMARKABLY or predictably, depending on how one chose to consider things, there came the unabashed glow of a candle from the curve of the stairway below the window niche where Blaise was keeping watch. Not even an attempt at stealth, he thought grimly. He heard the quiet sound of footsteps steadily ascending. As promised, though Blaise hadn’t really believed it on the hillside.

      ‘I imagine you’ll be posted on watch outside the baroness’s