Traitor's Sun (67 page)

“Marguerida, have you ever noticed that you speak of the Darkovans as if they were another people, not your own?”

“Do I? Yes, I suppose I do. For all that I have lived here for nearly seventeen years, I still feel a bit removed, something of an alien. Or perhaps it is the habit of scholarship, that I tend to try to assess everything as objectively as I can. Except for music. All I have there is passion, and Mik gets slightly jealous sometimes.”

Katherine laughed. “Herm is the same about my painting, although he pretends otherwise. Once, when I was working in our apartment, the whole of which would almost fit into the studio space you gave me, and was staring at the canvas, trying to decide if a bit of vermilion would make the shadows better, he came in. I barely registered his presence, so after a few minutes, he cleared his throat and nearly scared me to death. ‘You never look at me like that,’ he said, and I wanted to clout him over the head, but I didn’t. He is right, you know. As much as I adore him, from the top of his shiny pate to his extremely well-formed feet, there is a part of me that belongs only to my work. He never has to worry about infidelity, but he does have a rival.”

“Yes. I know about that.” Marguerida let herself sigh into the wind. “I was writing an opera for Regis’ birthday when he died. I wanted to do something as grand as your ancestor’s
The Deluge of Ys,
using the legend of Hastur and Cassilda, which is a very famous song cycle here. Now I don’t know if I will ever be able to bring myself to complete it.” It cost her a great deal to admit this, but somehow speaking the words eased an ache in her chest she had not noticed until it left her. She remembered the freshly copied pages of score, and how the ink had flowed over them when Regis had his stroke.

“You must, Marguerida. If you don’t finish it, it will eat away at your guts and make you miserable.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I am an artist, and because I remember Amedi Korniel.”

“I’ve been wanting to ask you about him, but it never seemed the right time,” she answered, almost relieved that the topic had shifted away from gods and goddesses, or her feeling alienated on the world of her birth.

“Ask away—this is as good a time as any.”

“What was he like, and why did he stop composing in his sixties?”

“My great-uncle was a very cantankerous man, who had an opinion about everything. He was in his mid-eighties when I was born, and he died just before I left Renney. Nana adored him, he was her older brother, but even she found him maddening sometimes. He was a complete egotist, and thought the world should revolve around him. And he did not stop composing—just refused to let any of his work after
Ys
be performed. There are boxes of his compositions sitting in the Manse.”

“But why?” Marguerida’s heart leaped at the thought of these unpublished compositions by one of her favorite musicians, then sank as she realized that she would never have the opportunity to see them. Years before, she had resigned herself to never leaving Darkover again, and the desire to travel to other worlds had left her, but now she found herself aching to go to Renney and rescue the works of Amedi Korniel. She shook the feeling away sharply, but it lingered like the aftertaste of some bitter fruit.

“He was never satisfied with anything he did after the success of that opera, Marguerida. And it ate at him, like some terrible disease. He was paralyzed by the fear that his next work would not be as good. So learn from his mistake. Don’t let your music get corrupted by Regis’ death, or anything else!”

Marguerida was moved by the fervor in Katherine’s voice, and it gave her a sense of kinship as well. “I never realized until this second how much I have wanted another artist of some kind to talk to about . . . my work, Katherine. And you are right, of course, it would eat at me.” And then she realized it was more than just having similar drives. At last there was someone who understood her
need
for the music, for as much as Mikhail loved her, he had never been able to know that part of her mind. Even her friends in the Musicians Guild could not share the urgency of her work, regarding her only as a well-born amateur.

“I wish we could travel faster,” Kate said.

“If it were not for the wagons and carriages, we could. Mikhail and I covered the distance from the gates of Thendara to the ruins of Hali Tower in about four hours of hard riding, long ago, in the middle of the night, too, with a snowstorm coming in!”

“That sounds very exciting.”

“If being cold and terrified and under a compulsion is exciting, then yes, it was. Don’t fuss. We will get to Carcosa soon enough, and you can ring a peal over Herm’s head as much as you please.”

“And will you do the same with Domenic?”

“Probably not. I will just be so glad to have him back in my maternal clutches that I will forgive him. Except for this one instance, he has always been a very good boy.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, from my brief acquaintance at dinner that first time. He and Roderick are so different, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they are. There is something I have wanted to ask you, and not dared to, Kate.”

“Ask away.”

“What have you done to my sister-in-law? I was only half jesting when I wondered if you had bewitched her.”

“Well, in the first place, I haven’t
done
anything, except perhaps see her as a person instead of an Aldaran.” She hesitated, as if concerned she had been offensive. “When you are a portrait painter, you learn a great deal about people, because they will talk about themselves, even when I am trying to get their mouths down on canvas. So, I have been rather good at listening. And when Gisela took me to see Master Gilhooly, we talked during the journey, and I discovered that she was not a bad woman at all. She only needed to be heard without being prejudged because of her family.” Kate hesitated briefly. “I think you are right about my having a great deal of empathy, by the way. I’ve noticed that I seem to have a sixth sense about people that was always there, only I did not pay much attention to it, except to be aware of which people made me squirm and fidget. Gisela doesn’t, in the same way that Herm never did.”

“And being listened to reformed her?” Marguerida was amused and somewhat disbelieving.

Kate laughed. “No, I don’t think so. I gave her things to think about other than feeling unhappy about herself. And I believe that Mikhail coming to see Rafael and bringing him to that Council meeting was important as well. Giz really cares for Rafael, and she has felt perfectly miserable because she was the cause of his . . . estrangement from his brother.” She gestured ahead, to where Rafael Lanart was riding a horse length behind Mikhail. “That’s why
Dom
Damon hit her, you know.”

“What?”

“From what Gisela told me, her father put her up to mischief, years ago, because he wanted Mikhail and Rafael to be at odds although she did not know she was to deliberately estrange the two! And when he discovered that they no longer were, he took it out on her.”

“I am a fool! I should have guessed that something like that had happened! Of course, it all makes sense now!”

Kate shook her head. “I’m glad it does to you, because I am still rather in the dark. I don’t understand your ways yet, if I ever will. But I do grasp the fairly obvious—that my father-in-law had some intention of unseating Mikhail and putting Rafael in his place.”

“And Gisela walked right into his trap—poor woman.”

“My
breda
is not any sort of poor woman, Marguerida. She is just a very intelligent person who has had nowhere to put her energies except to cause trouble. And, I gather, Lady Javanne is in a similar position.”

“Yes, I believe that is true. You call her
breda
. That is so remarkable to me, for you have only known her for a few days. And she is not an easy person to know, Kate. I still think you bewitched her.”

“No one is easy to know, Marguerida. But Gisela is not as difficult as you imagine—all she needs or wants is to be treated fairly. And I have not ensorcelled anyone. If I were going to do such a thing, Gisela would not have been my choice.”

“I have seen the way Herm looks at you, Kate.”

The other woman chuckled softly. “And I have seen the way Mikhail looks at you. That isn’t sorcery—it’s sex!”

Marguerida shook her head. “It has to be more than that!”

“Of course it is, but . . . well, I just think that you and Mikhail are a good match. I always thought that Herm and I were, too, but now I am starting to wonder if I just persuaded myself that I understood him.”

“I don’t know if men and women ever understand each other, Kate. But you are right that Mik and I are a fine match—like two halves of a whole.”

“Yes, that’s it. I noticed how you always stand on his right side, as if you need to be on that side and never on the other. Will you tell me what that is about?”

“Gisela didn’t tell you? I am surprised, and rather pleased at her discretion.” Marguerida took a deep breath. “Shortly after I returned to Darkover, I was forced to make a journey into the overworld, to destroy what remained of Ashara Alton, and when I did, I pulled the keystone from a tower she had made there, and it . . . imprinted itself on my left hand. And then, later, Mikhail and I went into the past, and when we returned, he had the ring of Varzil the Good, which he wears on his right hand. This has given us a particular ability to combine our matrix energies together, to do certain workings that I can’t describe to you.”

“The Overworld? Is that the realm of the gods or something?”

“Not that I know of. It is a place and not a place at the same time, and even though I have been there a few times, I still don’t even begin to understand it. And if the gods are there, no one has reported it.”

“Marguerida, tell me the truth. There is something more going on here than taking Regis’ body to this
rhu fead
. I can feel the tension in the mounted men, and in everyone else, including you. It feels like you are expecting a storm or something.”

“If I had never told you that you possessed a degree of empathy, you never would have gotten so sensitive, would you?”

“Probably not. What is it?”

“We have received some information that the forces of the Federation may try to attack the funeral train after we leave Carcosa.”

“I thought you expected an attack on Comyn Castle.”

“That too.”

“I see. And Hermes left the castle and went to this Carcosa village because he had heard of the plot?”

“Yes.” Marguerida was uncomfortable now, for keeping the truth from Katherine for so many days, and more, from her own reluctance to put the other woman into danger. Perhaps she could be persuaded to remain behind in the town.

“Well, that explains a great deal. No wonder Herm didn’t tell me anything. I would have thought about it certainly, and who knows who might have caught my worrying. I confess that I never thought how difficult it might be to keep a secret in a world full of telepaths. It is better that I didn’t know.” She paused and frowned. “Gisela didn’t know about this either, did she?”

“No, she didn’t, because at the time we were not sure that her father was not mixed up in the entire stupid mess.” Thinking of
Dom
Damon, Marguerida spoke with more feeling than she intended, letting her damped-down fury expose itself.

“And now?”

“Now we know that
Dom
Damon was not conspiring with Lyle Belfontaine, which is a great relief, because having another enemy in our midst is more than . . .”

“My father-in-law does not seem to be to be a very able plotter, Marguerida. He just seems like an ignorant man who hits women when he does not get his way.” She paused and looked ahead, at the men riding ahead of her, finally fixing her gaze on Francisco Ridenow. “That man in the green-and-gold tunic there wants watching, if you ask me. I’m sure I was introduced to him, but for some reason I can’t recall his name—only that he is a person who makes me very uncomfortable!”

Marguerida’s eyes widened at this comment. How had Kate, without real
laran,
discerned that
Dom
Francisco was a potential threat? And how was she going to persuade the woman to undergo testing? “Why him in particular.”

“Something about the way he sets his shoulders, and how he keeps looking at Mikhail with . . . rancor.”

Marguerida nodded in agreement and grimaced a little. “Yes, that is close to the mark.
Dom
Francisco imagines that he could possess my husband’s matrix and use it, that it rightly belongs to him because it was his ancestor’s.”

“But when Giz explained to me a bit about the matrices, she said they were keyed to individuals. Hermes wears this pouch around his neck, and always has, but until she told me, I never had any idea what was in it. I just knew that it was something I should not touch or pry into. I thought it was some sort of amulet, like those my people wear to keep the ghosts away. So, how can Francisco think he can use Mikhail’s, if he knows that matrices are fixed on a person? For that matter, if what Gisela told me is accurate, how can Mikhail have one that belonged to this other person, this Varzil fellow?”

“When Varzil passed his matrix on to Mikhail, he managed to incorporate Mikhail’s own starstone into it—don’t ask me how! I saw it with my own eyes and I still don’t understand it! It was as near to magic as anything I have ever seen.”

“What would happen if Francisco got hold of the thing?”

“I don’t know, but I think it would probably kill both him and Mikhail.”

“Does Francisco know that?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t believe it, Kate.”