Count Scar - SA (24 page)

I paused automatically to consider my answer, saw him smile behind his hand, and found myself laughing. "Ah, Count, how do you expect me to give your questions proper consideration if you
make me self-conscious? But the answer to this one is simple. You have reasoned correctly: Prince Alfonso must indeed have some motive other than the one he has stated to seek a meeting with
you."

"But if the prince's intent is not to lure me into an ambush for my destruction, what can it be? Does he perhaps hope to shift me from being the duke's man to his own? That seems the most
likely possibility, though I find it more than a little insulting that he should imagine I could easily be turned into so ripe a traitor."

I paused before answering, quite deliberately stretching it out this time. "That, Count Caloran, is something we are not likely to discover until we are before the prince himself."

Chapter Nine ~ Caloran

Chapter Nine ~ Caloran

1

1

The wind hit us as we came up onto the high ridge, snapping our cloaks behind us and whirling the horses' manes. The air was thin in the nostrils and cold with a bite of ice from the peaks above.

I pushed the hair out of my eyes and looked for Prince Alfonso.

Half a mile ahead, across a dry and stony upland, waited a group of men and horses, gathered in front of yellow striped tents. Morning sun glinted on helmets and shields, and their cloaks and
tunics were as brilliantly colored as our own. It looked as though Duke Argave's former mistress had transmitted Alfonso's message accurately. I glanced down at the blue-and-white velvet in
which I was clad, thinking ruefully that the puffed sleeves and long-toed shoes would be a real hindrance if it came to a fight. But that was why I had my knights with me.

I kicked my weary horse into a canter, and after only a momentary hesitation Brother Melchior and the knights followed. We thundered up to the waiting group of men from Nabarra. I reined my
horse in before them so hard that he reared, ten feet short of courtiers who scrambled to get out of the way. I leaped from the saddle and managed to land without stumbling in spite of the residual
pain in my ankle. Prince Alfonso was going to be forced to discredit any rumors he might have heard that the scarred Count of Peyrefixade was also lame.

"Greetings, Prince!" I shouted in Auccitan. He was easy to spot among his knights and courtiers, a man roughly my age, wearing a scarlet tunic worked with elaborate embroidery in gold thread,
a thin gold circlet on the dark brown curls Arsendis had mentioned approvingly. I noted with satisfaction that although my own new velvet clothes were much simpler than his, he had a gravy
stain on his chest.

"Greetings, Count," he replied, or something close, although it did not sound like the Auccitan Melchior had been teaching me. Nabarrese, perhaps? I had the impression that Nabarrese was as
different from Auccitan as the latter was from the Royal Tongue. The prince's next sentence might have been, "I am glad you are not tardy to our meeting," but it was impossible to be sure.

My lips pulled back from my teeth in an attempt at a smile. If he wanted to confuse me by speaking a language I didn't understand, he was not going to have the satisfaction of succeeding.

Standing here on a windy plateau, over the border into a kingdom where I didn't belong, surrounded by friends whom I had known only a few months, by armed enemies who might have
reinforcements hidden beyond the next ridge, and God knew how many fanatical heretics lurking in ambush, I had to project confidence or I might as well offer my throat at once and get it over
with.

The prince's mouth was twisted into a sneer, although looking at him it occurred to me that this might be his ordinary expression, not something put on just for me. In spite of his dark hair and
complexion, his eyes were a startling pale blue, giving him, I thought uncharitably, something of the look of a piebald gelding. He made no attempt to conceal an open stare at my scar, and I
turned the left side of my face toward him to allow him a good look.

"Your fair messenger did not tell me the true reason why you wished to meet with me, Prince," I said in the Royal Tongue. If he was not going to speak in the Auccitan I had been practicing so
assiduously with Melchior, I saw no reason why I should. Too bad I hadn't yet taught the priest any Allemann; we could have seen what the sneering prince had to say to that. "I am sure the
question of who administers justice in the village of Three Cuckoos was just a pretext, since it could have been solved easily by our seneschals. But I am glad we are finally having this chance to
meet face-to-face. It gives me the opportunity to ask why you've been trying to have me killed."

He followed what I had to say all right, keeping his pale eyes on my face and frowning with concentration. But he did not respond, only muttered something to the man next to him—chancellor, I
decided, from the heavy chain of office around his neck.

I glanced over at Melchior. He had an intense expression and seemed to be following their low-pitched conversation—listening perhaps with second hearing? There might be even more advantages
I had not yet appreciated in a magic-working priest.

The chancellor stepped toward us and spoke for his master, in an intelligible if heavily accented version of the Royal Tongue. "The prince comprehends not your talk of killing. He wishes only to
talk of the village, of Duke Argave, and of heretics. Can you speak not Auccitan?"

"Of course I speak Auccitan," I shot back in that language. The priest had been coaching me well. Two weeks ago I would have said, "Me talk Auccitan good."

The chancellor made a quick gesture to a servant, who brought out and assembled several camp chairs. The prince and I looked at each other from under our brows for a moment, then both reached
abruptly for the buckles on our sword belts, striving to be the first to prove his courage and his own good faith by disarming before the other. While I settled into my chair, with Brother Melchior
at my elbow, I said under my breath to the priest, "I hope he realizes what he said to me a minute ago was not Auccitan."

Melchior glanced over at Prince Alfonso, who was arranging himself in his chair, with his chancellor's assistance, in a way that would not wrinkle his cloak, and made a low sound that I could
almost have imagined was a chuckle. "There is one additional aspect of the princes personality about which I might not have informed you fully. He is genuinely stupid."

Fortunately—or unfortunately—Prince Alfonso seemed to have decided I was as defective in language ability as he. He spoke his version of Auccitan slowly and distinctly, enunciating each word
in a patronizing manner that made it easy to follow—that is, whenever he did not forget the word for something and insert the Nabarrese word instead, or give a perfectly innocuous Auccitan
word a strange pronunciation. There was enough room between his sentences for Melchier to mutter a running translation— though more often into Auccitan than into the Royal Tongue.

The village of Three Cuckoos, having served its purpose in getting me here, seemed to have dropped immediately from Alfonso's attention. I was concentrating so hard on his words I almost forgot
to pay attention to the meaning— until he got to his fourth sentence.

"It is good we are meeting at last, Count," the prince said, "two lords whose territories run along the border between two kingdoms. I am true to my own king, as I am sure you are true to
yours—" Here he hesitated for a second as though about to depart from what was clearly a prepared speech but changed his mind."—but that does not mean that you and I might not have
interests in common. If you listen to what I have to propose, you may find me a more useful ally even than Duke Argave. But first I need to warn you against the heretics who seek to kill you and
seize Peyrefixade."

"What heretics? What do you know?" I burst out as I realized what he was saying, then paused to repeat it in Auccitan. It would be deeply ironic if the heretics were trying to assassinate me at
the same time as the Inquisition was feeling grave doubts whether I might not be a hidden friend to the heretics.

And what was happening back at Peyrefixade while the prince kept me out of the castle?

His smirked a little, pleased to have startled me. Melchior spoke before I had time to find the words I wanted. "If you have information about the Perfected, then I order you as a son of the True
Faith to tell us at once."

Prince Alfonso seemed to take in for the first time that the counselor at my elbow was a priest. "If you want me as an ally," I said after only a brief pause to make sure I had the words right,

"prove it by telling me what danger awaits me, and how you know it!"

Alfonso muttered to his chancellor a minute. He wanted to give his prepared speech at his own pace, I thought, and did not like Melchior and me interrupting with questions. The chancellor said
as much, speaking for the prince: "If you will but be patient, Count, my gracious lord will explain it to you in his good time." I nodded curtly and sat back, trying to appear relaxed although the
nails bit into my palms.

"The members of the Inquisition who operate in my principality," Alfonso continued, "always consult me about anything they learn from the Perfected they question." The sneer was such a
permanent part of his expression that it was impossible to tell if he had heard that the Inquisition had been operating in my county without any reference to my own judicial authority and was
mocking me for it. "And recently I have heard a tale that was recounted by several, my Count. It is a tale concerning Peyrefixade, their intention to recapture the castle that once was
theirs—because they have learned that within the walls a powerful secret object is hidden."

The conviare, I wondered, which I had worn around my neck until it drew the magical fire to my bed? If so, the heretics would be gravely disappointed to dig into the wall by the new hearth and
find nothing there at all. "And do you know what they seek?" I asked casually. Could the heretics whom the archbishop said were looking for something long lost have decided it was in
Peyrefixade? It sounded as if, in desiring my castle, the heretics planned far more than covert devilishness—they intended to retake the power and presence that had once been theirs. The sun
climbed slowly higher in the sky, but the wind continued strong and chill.

Alfonso had clearly been enjoying the telling, but at my question he had to shake his head in disappointment. "Even under the most refined tortures they would not, or could not, say what it
might be. But two suggested separately that there might be an additional magical object in the castle: a conviare to help them find the hiding place of what they sought. Have you ever heard of a
conviare, my Count?"

I nodded. "You think this is what they want?"

"My information," and he lingered proudly over it being his information, "is that there are two magical objects hidden in your castle, and that the conviare, which was only casually hidden,
would lead them to that which could not be named."

Melchior had taken the conviare to the older members of his Order in the priory in the duke's city; from there, he had said, it would be sent to the main house of the Magians. I glanced sideways at
the priest without turning my head. Was there something important he had not told me? Did his own Order of the Three Kings intend to find whatever else the Perfected had hidden at
Peyrefixade, to use its forbidden magic for their own purposes?

I had intended to visit the Orders principal house very soon anyway, to make the priests a gift for Bruno's soul and to convey his bones to their cemetery. Now that trip was more urgent than
ever.

"Now that I have shown good faith by warning you, my Count," said the prince with what might have been intended as an ingratiating smile, "let me ask you a favor."

It took me a second to recognize what he meant by "favor." It was not an Auccitan word that I recognized, and it did not help that Melchior immediately translated it by another word that I also
did not know, but which almost sent me into a fit of highly inappropriate laughter. The closest cognate in the Royal Tongue meant not a generous gesture toward an equal but the sweet embraces
with which a maiden might reward a lover for his service.

Ignoring any insulting implications the prince's words might have—or that might slip unintended into the speech of someone who did not know Auccitan well—I answered cautiously, "What
would you like me to do for you, Prince?"

Now we had come to the real reason he had asked me here. I knew it more by the intensity with which Alfonso's chancellor leaned forward in his chair than by the prince's own sneering drawl. "I
would like you to promise me that you will not—at least not for the next year—marry the duke's daughter."

This was so unexpected that I could not immediately answer.

Melchior answered for me. "I hope you understand, Prince," he said smoothly, "that it is not seemly that we discuss here a marriage that it is not in our power to determine. The duke has granted
his daughter the right to choose her own husband, and we can scarcely decide for her. Nor would it be appropriate to speculate coarsely on a young woman's heart."

Alfonso abruptly pushed himself up by the arms of his camp chair. He lost his balance, and only his chancellor's hand under his elbow, steadying him, kept him from falling to his princely
backside on the hard ground. Alfonso snapped something at the chancellor, wrenching his arm from his grasp as though it had all been the other's fault. "Are you saying then," he demanded,
glaring up at me from a crouch, "that you are already engaged to marry the young duchess?"