Court Duel (11 page)

"Going back to the memoirs, Your Highness, how does one know
one is getting the words of the person whose name is in
front?"

She pulled down three more books and flipped to the backs,
each showing a seal and names and dates. Below these was
written:
Fellowship of the Tower.

"What is this, Your Highness, a sigil for a guild?"

"It is more than a guild. Men and women who join give up all
affiliation with their own land. There are five or six
establishments throughout the world. Members of the fellowship
are not just scribes, but are sworn to stay with the written
truth. If you find a copy of Queen Theraez's memoirs with the
Fellowship of the Tower's sigil in back, you can trust that
every word—every cross out—scrupulously reproduces
the papers kept in the Heraldry Archive, written in the queen's
own hand. Their purpose is to spread knowledge, not to comment
or to alter or improve."

She closed the books and replaced them, then turned to face
me. "This library was a haven for many of us during the late
king's reign. He liked appearing suddenly hither and yon, but
he never did come in here." She gave me a faint smile. "Are you
chilled, my dear? Shall we rejoin the others? You can warm up
again by dancing."

"Thank you for showing me the library, Your Highness," I
said.

"I hope you will find time for exploring in here during your
stay at Athanarel," she replied, leading the way to the
doors.

She was kind and unthreatening; and because we were alone, I
took a chance. "Did you know I was using your carriage to
escape that night?" I blurted. My words sounded sudden, and
awkward, and my face burned.

She sighed, looking down at her hand on the door's latch,
but she did not open the door. "It was an ill-managed thing,
not a memory one wishes to return to. Those were dangerous
days, and we had to act quickly." Then she opened the door, and
there were the footmen, and when she spoke again, it was about
the new musicians that were to play.

We'd reached the reception room before I realized that her
answer had admitted to a conspiracy without implicating anyone
but herself—and that it had also been a kind of apology.
But it was equally clear that she didn't want to return to the
subject, and I remembered what Nee had told me during our first
real conversation:
They don't talk of the war at
all.

Why?
I thought, as we joined the rest of the
company. The Renselaeuses won; surely such talk could no longer
harm them. And it was impossible to believe that they wanted to
protect those who had lost... those such as myself.

I shook my head as I made my way to Bran and Nee.
Impossible.

The reception room was larger now. Folding doors had been
thrown back, opening two rooms into one. The second room had
the customary tiers along its perimeter, with gorgeously
embroidered cushions and low tables for those who did not want
to dance. Above, in a cozy gallery, musicians played horns and
drums and strings, and in the center of the room, toes pointed
and arched wrists held high, eight couples moved through the
complicated steps of the taltanne.

The music was stirring and so well played I had to keep my
feet from tapping. Among the Hill Folk it was also impossible
to stay motionless when they played their music, yet it was
very different from this. Up on the mountains the music was as
wild as wind and weather, as old as the ancient trees; and the
dances retold stories even older than the trees. This music was
more controlled, with its artfully modulated melodies, themes,
and subthemes; controlled too were the careful steps of the
dance. Controlled, yet still beautiful.
And dangerous,
I thought, as I watched glances exchanged over shoulders and
across the precise geometric figures of the dance.

Then the Duke of Savona appeared before me. He bowed,
smiled, and held out his arm—and there was no time for
thought.

It was my very first dance in Court, and I would have liked
to try it with someone I knew. But at Court one didn't dance
with one's brother. With the Hill Folk, dance was a celebration
of life, sometimes of death, and of the changing of the
seasons. Here dances were a form of courtship—one that
was all the more subtle, Nee had said once, because the one you
danced with might not be the one you were courting.

Savona did not speak until the very end, and then it was not
the usual sort of compliment that Nee had led me to expect.
Instead, he clasped my hand in his, leaned close so that I
could smell his clean scent, and murmured, "Your favorite
color, Meliara. What is it?"

No titles, just that soft, intimate tone. I felt slightly
dizzy and almost said
Blue,
but I had just enough
presence of mind to stop myself. Blue being the primary
Renselaeus color, this might be misleading. "Lavender," I said.
My voice sounded to my ears like a bat squeak.

The music ended then, and he bowed over my hand and kissed
it. Then he smiled into my eyes. "Will you wear it tomorrow?"
he asked.

"Certainly. Your grace," I managed.

"Call me Russav." Another bow, and he turned away.

"Here's Geral Keradec." Bran stepped up, took my arm, and
turned me to face a tall red-haired young man. "Wants to dance
with you, sister."

Desperately I tried to clear my thoughts and respond
correctly. Geral—he also insisted on abandoning tides
right away—was funny, shy, and mild voiced. Encouraging
him to talk, I discovered that he liked music and poetry, and
that he was the heir to an old barony.

And so it went for the remainder of the evening. I was never
still, never had time to stop or sit down—or to think.
Increasingly I felt as if I had stepped down from a quiet
pathway expecting to encounter firm stones, but had instead
tumbled into a fast-moving river.

Twice I looked across the room to find Savona standing
against the wall, his powerful arms crossed, watching me. When
my eyes met his, he grinned. After the second time, I just had
to know what the Marquis of Shevraeth made of all this, and I
darted a fast glance at him under my partner's velvet-sleeved
arm as we twirled.

Shevraeth was in the dance at the other end of the room,
conversing quietly with his partner. He seemed completely
oblivious to everyone else.

And the Marquise of Merindar was not there at all.

NINE

"SAVONA DIDN'T DANCE WITH ANYONE ELSE," NEE said.

We were curled up in my sitting room. Outside the window,
the garden was a silhouette in the faint blue light of
dawn.

"We only danced that once. But then he asked me that
question about my favorite color," I said. "Ought I to wear it
tonight?"

She pursed her lips. "I'll wager my best necklace all the
decorations in that ballroom tonight will be lavender, even if
he has to empty the entire city today to find them. Did he say
anything else?"

"He asked me to call him Russav."

Her eyes widened. "I don't think
anyone
calls him
that—except for Vidanric, and sometimes Tamara. I think I
told you that he inherited when his parents died under
mysterious circumstances, when he was very small. We all grew
up calling him Savona."

"Well, I can't think of him as anything but Savona." Again
that sense of rushing down a rock-strewn river engulfed me.
"What does it all mean?"

"It means you are going to be very, very popular," Nee
predicted.

"Is that it?" I said, frowning.

"You mean, what does it signify in personal terms?" she
asked, her brows rising. "That question, my dear, you are the
one to answer, not I."

"But I can't answer it," I wailed. "I feel like I'm in a
whirlwind, and the wrong move will dash me on the rocks."

"You'll learn how to maneuver as you steer your own course,"
she said. "Everyone began with no experience."

I shook my head. "I think that Savona was born with
experience."

She set her cup down. "He was always popular with the wilder
children, the ones who liked dares and risks. He and Vidanric
both. Only, Vidanric was so small and lightboned he had to work
hard at it, while everything came easy to Savona, who was
always bigger and faster and more coordinated than anyone else.
I think it was the same when they discovered flirting—"
She hesitated, then shrugged and closed her lips.

And since the subject had come to include Shevraeth, I
didn't want to pursue it. Ever since our conversation on our
arrival at Athanarel, Nee had stopped talking about him. I told
myself I didn't want to hear any more anyway.

Now she drifted toward the door, her dressing gown trailing
behind her. "We'd better get to sleep. We have a very long
evening before us."

I nodded, wishing her a good rest. As I crawled into bed, I
felt a happy sense of anticipation. Not just because I had a
wonderful ball to look forward to—my very first. More
important to me was that the day after that was my Name Day and
the anniversary of the beginning of the long, terrible time I
spent as a prisoner and a fugitive.

My Flower Day had also been last year, but because of the
war there had been no music, no dancing, no celebration.

I remembered Bran's words just before I made the fateful spy
trip, "Next year I promise you'll have a Name Day celebration
to be remembered forever—and it'll be in the
capital."

"With us as winners, right?" I'd said. Well, here we were in
the capital after all, though we hadn't won the crown. I didn't
want a party—not at Court, attended by
strangers—but I looked forward to celebrating with
Bran.

I didn't have a lavender ball gown, so Mora and her
handmaids changed the ribbons on my white-and-silver one. I
felt splendid when I looked at myself in the mirror as Mora
brushed out my hair and arranged it to fall just right against
the back of the silver gown.

Last was the headdress, which Mora's deft fingers pinned
securely into place. It was mainly white roses with long white
ribbons and one lavender one tied in a bow. I had another new
fan, which hung from my waist on a braided silken cord of
white.

My spirits were high as I joined Nee and Bran. But instead
of walking down the stairs to go into the ballroom with the
rest of the guests, Nee and Bran led the way across the hall,
to the gallery that overlooked the ballroom, and stopped at the
landing at the top of the grand stairway.

And there we found Shevraeth waiting for us, looking
formidable and remote in his usual dark colors. Remembering
with dismaying intensity that the last time we had talked with
one another I had managed—again—to instigate a
quarrel, I felt embarrassment chase away my anticipation.

Shevraeth greeted us in his customary calm manner. When he
turned at last to Bran, I muttered out of the side of my mouth
to Nee, "You mean we have to go down these stairs—with
him—and everyone looking at us?"

"We're the guests of honor," she whispered back, obviously
trying not to laugh. She looked fabulous in her dark brown
velvet gown, embroidered all over with tiny gold leaves dotted
with little rubies. "We're supposed to be looked at! We'll open
the ball. You remember? I know I told you."

Bran flicked my shoulder. "Brace up, Mel. You'll like it. I
promise."

My attempt at a bland face obviously wasn't convincing. I
studied the toes of my dancing slippers, wishing with all my
strength that I was back in Tlanth, riding the mountain trails
with no humans in sight.

"Savona's waiting," Nee whispered to me.

Some invisible servant must have given a signal, for the
music started: an entire orchestra filling the vaulted room
with the strains of an ancient promenade. Had I been downstairs
among the glittering throng, I would have loved it, but I now
had Shevraeth standing right beside me, holding out his arm. I
just
knew
I would manage to do something
embarrassing.

I took a deep breath, straightened my shoulders, and tried
my best to smooth my face into a polite smile as I put my hand
on his sleeve.

Just before we started down, he murmured, "Think of this as
a battle."

"A battle?" I repeated, so surprised I actually looked up at
his face. He didn't look angry, or disgusted, or sarcastic. But
there was suppressed laughter in the way his gray eyes were
narrowed.

He replied so softly I could just barely hear it. "You've a
sword in your hand, and vast numbers of ravening minions of
some dreaded evil sorcerer await below. The moment you step
among them, you'll leap into battle, mowing them down in droves
..."

The absolute unlikelihood of it made me grin, on the verge
of laughter. And I realized that while he'd spoken we had come
safely down the stairs and were halfway along the huge room to
the Duke of Savona, who waited alone. On either side people
bowed and curtsied, as graceful as flowers in the wind.

I'd almost made it, and my smile was real—until I lost
the image and remembered where I was, and who I was with, and I
muttered defensively, "I don't really like battles, you
know."

"Of course I know," he returned, still in that soft voice.
"But you're used to them." And then we were before Savona, who
was resplendent in black and crimson and gold; and as the Duke
bowed, fanfare after fanfare washed over me like waves of
brilliant light.

Because Shevraeth was also a guest of honor, and had the
highest rank, it was his choice for the first dance, and he
held out his hand to me. Savona went to Nee, and Bran went to
Nee's cousin Tamara.

We danced. I moved through the complicated steps with
sureness, my whole body in harmony with the singing strings, my
eyes dazzled by the swirl of color all around me. Above our
dancing figures, and around us, flowers and ribbons and
hangings of every shade of violet and lavender made the room
seem almost impossibly elegant.