Valdemar 06 - [Exile 02] - Exile’s Valor (37 page)

She was very glad, however, that all the parts of her costume had been fastened securely. It wouldn't do to have the coif and veil, or worse, the mask fall off, and reveal her for who she was.

She took the precaution, in a moment between dances, to knot her sleeves and tie up her veil all the same. No point in getting them tangled and pulled off either.

A kind of madness infected her, and she was not the only one. That was the thing about a masquerade; you could be as wild and silly as you liked under the anonymity of a mask. Especially if you had one of the more common masks; as she whirled through the steps of another dance, she saw at least two roosters, three Horned Men, and no less than five bears. She, of course, was one of a dozen Moon Maidens, and there were cats, Wild Women, goddesses and butterfly masks that were no less popular.

Another dance struck up immediately, this one a brasle, where two lines of dancers ran at each other, then seized new partners and whirled madly until it was time to run at each other again. She went through four rounds of that, when suddenly she was seized by someone in a costume she did not at all recognize.

He wore a half-mask of gold surmounted by a huge hat crowned with feathers, the costume an elaborate doublet and trews of silk and velvet in reds and yellows. And as the young man paused in their heady rush, he bent over and whispered, “I am the Moon Prince. Have I chosen aright, Selenay, my Moon Maiden?”

She pulled back, startled, and he laughed in Karath's voice and boldly plucked the rosebud from her belt. “I see by this token that I have!” he said, the mouth beneath the half-mask grinning. “Here—run with me!”

He took her hand; she hesitated only long enough to snatch a handful of her skirt so she could run more freely, and the two of them sprinted hand-in-hand off into the depth of the gardens, laughing like a pair of children.

She didn't know where they were going; she didn't care. They ran through torchlight and shadow, the sounds of music and merriment fading behind them. She more than half expected him to run toward Companion's Field, or some other remote place, but instead, he ran toward the Palace. Once again, he had chosen correctly; there was no one in this part of the garden at all, and little light. They were right beside the windows of the Collegium kitchen, which at this hour was dark. There, in the shadows of a thick clump of bushes, he finally stopped, and pulled her into his arms.

“Won't you unmask now, Selenay?” he murmured, confronted with the featureless oval of her disguise. And as if to set the example, he pulled off his hat, which proved to be fastened to his half-mask.

She put up her hands to the back of her head and loosened the chaplet, but he was too impatient to wait for her fumbling fingers. He carefully took off the chaplet, then the veil, and untied the mask himself, discarding each on the ground beside his hat. With every item he removed, her heart pounded a little faster.

When he had laid her face bare, he looked into her eyes for a long moment.

Then, suddenly, his arms were around her again, his lips crushed against hers, and she felt a heat rise in her and overwhelm her. She felt as if she was made of butter, melting against him, pressing her body into his, wanting nothing so much as to have the kiss go on forever and ever.

But—too soon for her desire—she felt his arms loosen, and he lifted his face from hers to stare down into her eyes again. There was just enough moonlight for him to see her upturned face; his was all in shadow, and she strained to hear his voice.

“By the gods, Selenay, I have wanted to do that from the moment I saw you!” he breathed.

She lifted her face wordlessly to his, but he shook his head, and with every evidence of regret, loosened her from his grasp.

“No,” he said, “I dare not, or I will not stop with but a kiss.”

“No?” she asked, feeling obscurely disappointed. “Then—”

“But I can do this,” he said, interrupting her. He dropped to his knees, clasping both her hands in his. “Here it is only you and I, not our countries, not our Councils, only ourselves to satisfy. We will please only ourselves; we will answer only to our own will, here. Selenay, I ask this for myself, and for myself—would you, will you, grant your hand to me in marriage?”

He had read her riddle; more than that, he had answered her invitation
and
her challenge and met it, his Prince to her Moon Maiden. And now—now, away from all witnesses, all eyes, he had asked her to wed him specifically for himself, and not for his country.

If this wasn't the answer to her questions, she could not imagine what could be.

“Yes,” she whispered. “With all my heart.”

He leaped to his feet and took her in his arms again, and her whole body thrilled to the caresses that he bestowed on it. She would quite willingly have torn off her own gown and melded her body with his there and then. It was his restraint that stopped anything more from happening.

And though a great deal of her was frustrated and disappointed, the rest of her was grateful and full of admiration at his self-control.

“Here,” he said, as he actually stepped away from her, then took her hand and bestowed a tender kiss on the palm. “You may be only one Moon Maiden among twelve, but we should not take the risk that you are missed. Let me help you mask again.”

And so she stood, burning with desire for him, as he, clever as her best maid, masked her hot cheeks with the silver ovoid again, and placed the veil over her head, and the chaplet atop it. Then he retrieved his own mask and resumed his guise as well. “Shall we walk?” he asked, “my own lady?”

A shiver went up her spine at the caress in his words.

“To cool ourselves,” she murmured in reply, and he laughed.

“I think that cooling is what we both need, my Moon Maiden!” he chuckled. “It is just as well that our masks will hide our faces, or they would surely betray us to anyone with eyes in his head!”

He took her hand, and led her back toward the festivities, at a far more decorous pace this time. She was glad of the night air and the chance to get her pounding heart to quiet itself. Her hand trembled in his, and he felt the trembling, and tightened his fingers about hers for a moment.

They passed other couples on their way to the dancing-lawn, making use of the little bowers and grottoes of the gardens, standing or sitting together. They also passed places shrouded in darkness from which little sighs and murmurs came that made her cheeks flush again, and a stab of envy lance through her.

But Karath took no notice, or at least, did not appear to. They sauntered on together, like any couple on a leisurely stroll, until they stepped onto the lawn below the terrace and into the full glare of the torchlight.

She did not know what she would have done then, but the situation was taken out of their hands by a wild game of crack-the-whip that crossed their path the moment they stepped onto the torchlit grass. The trailing girl seized Karath's hand in passing, and since he still had Selenay's she was perforce now the running, laughing, end of the “whip” until she in her turn could grab another hand.

Before long, the scampering line was too unwieldy to be a whip, and became a dancing, running snake, winding its way among the more sedate and older courtiers, who either laughed indulgently or frowned and snorted behind their masks. Around and around they went, in and out of the ornamental bushes, until everyone that had any youth in his body had been caught up in it; the musicians seemed to have been infected by the excitement, for they did not stop or even pause in their playing, until Selenay was out of breath, her side aching, the corners of her mouth actually hurting from all of the laughing and smiling she was doing. When they snaked around a potted rosemary tree, she finally let go of Karath's hand and that of the person behind her so that she could drop out of the line. The person behind her ran up and grabbed Karath's hand to keep the line going, and he was soon out of her sight.

With her hand pressed to her side, breathing hard, she sought out a stone bench that was too exposed to be a choice of lovers, and sat down on it. She wished she had the fan that she had lost, somewhere back when the dancing began. But at least the breeze was cool, and her gown was light; she fanned herself with a piece of her veil, and took deep breaths, waiting for the stitch in her side to pass.

But she had not been there long before Karath appeared again, and wonder of wonders, he brought a fan for her! He handed it to her with a graceful bow, and she thanked him and wafted herself with it, wondering gratefully if there was
any
other man here who would have thought of such a thing.

He took a seat beside her on the bench, and covered her free hand with his own. “One thing only, my own lady,” he said, quietly, his voice barely audible over the music. “Is it your pleasure that we make our choice known tonight, or would you—”

“Tonight!” she said quickly. “If we wait, if I go first to the Council—there will be objections, however trivial, and the Councilors will want to argue it over for days and days! But if we simply
tell
them, at the unmasking, they will accept what they must.”

“You are as wise as you are beautiful,” he said warmly, patting her hand. “I would not have thought of that. And—how fitting, for any who might recognize
my
costume if we are standing together at the unmasking—”

“Or better still,” she said, suddenly seeing it all in her mind's eye, “—on the terrace!”

His eyes sparkled behind his mask. “Oh, well thought! How soon before midnight strikes?”

That, she could answer, for there was a time-candle visible from where they sat. She pointed, and they could both see that there would be just enough time for them to sup into the Palace and get into place before the trumpeter marked the moment of unmasking.

Giggling with a giddy exhilaration, she now led
him
in through an unguarded door in the public part of the Palace, then back through the maze of corridors to the terrace door where she had so lately stood, There was no one there now, not even a page, and the doors stood open. Together, hand in hand, they walked out onto the terrace at the exact moment that the trumpeter sounded the call of midnight.

With a cheer, the masks came off—all but theirs. With an instinct for the drama of it, they both waited until the rest of the guests noticed that there was a couple standing alone on the brightly lit terrace where the Masque had taken place—

—that one of the figures was a Moon Maiden—

—began to grasp that the other
must
be Prince Karathanelan—

And at that moment, he pulled off his mask and flung it behind himself, as she pulled chaplet, veil, mask and coif all off, shaking her hair loose so that it fell down around her shoulders. And as the guests saw that it was
her,
he again pulled her to him, and bent down in their first public embrace and kiss.

She closed her eyes, as her ears filled with the great cheer that went up as her arms went around him.

And she thought, in that moment, that there could be no happier person in all of Valdemar than she.

F
ROM the moment it was announced, Alberich had deliberately planned to avoid the masquerade. This was precisely the sort of gathering at which he felt most uncomfortable. And after all, it was primarily a Court function, and not one at which he expected anything significant would happen either. Those older members of the Court upon whom he had his eye were unlikely to use such an occasion for any conspiratorial gathering; both he and Talamir were agreed on that. Of all the times and places in which one could talk with fellow conspirators, an occasion such as this, where there were dozens of people milling about, all masked so that you could not know just who, exactly, was around you, was not ideal. And furthermore (although many popular plays and romances would have attempted to persuade otherwise) a gathering that was held out of doors where you could never be sure there was not someone hiding and listening to you, was probably a very bad choice for passing on secret information.

Alberich hated this sort of entertainment with a passion. And since Selenay was going to be costumed identically with eleven of her ladies, at least until the moment of unmasking, this was probably one of the few times when she would be safer without a bodyguard. Unless, of course, all
twelve
of them were to be granted bodyguards. So he had said, decidedly, that he was not needed nor wanted, Talamir had agreed with him, and had suggested that he might wish to actually relax that evening for a change.

He had, in fact, decided to keep an eye on Norris that evening.

He already knew where to find him; there was not a performance tonight, and with all of the young nobles up at the masquerade, there was little chance that Norris would be meeting any of
them
down slumming with the actors tonight. No, if he met up with anyone above his own station, it would be because there was something more than drinking going on. This was one of the things that Alberich was going to keep a watch out for; someone who
should
be at the masquerade who was not.

If anybody had asked him what he was hoping to discover, he would have told them that he was not, in fact, hoping for anything. He knew better than to expect a result from any given evening; results never came when you expected them. You got ready for them in case they cropped up, and you watched for them to make sure you didn't miss them when they came, but you never expected them.

Since Myste would not be there tonight as it wasn't a performance night, he decided to trot out a new persona, one that was designed to blend in as well as Myste did—the aging, cranky scholar. His station would be shabby middle-class, genteel poverty, but poor because he spent all his money on books, travel to confer with other scholars, and paying to print his own monographs on obscure subjects. He wore clothing that was of good material, but not new, a long-sleeved, high-collared, belted tunic and trews of heavy linen in a rusty black, with a shirt of white linen, and the flat scholar's cap. Not shabby, but also neither well-cared-for nor well-fitted. He had an old leather satchel stuffed full of papers and books. He brought a reading book with him, parked himself in an out-of-the-way corner of the common room, and apparently kept his nose in it while he ate, in an absentminded fashion. He had engaged a room, but it was a very small one and did not come with candle or lantern, so it was perfectly reasonable for him to take his book here to read. He had debated getting a set of lenses like Myste's, but decided against it. If
he
were checking to see if someone was in disguise and snooping about, the first thing he would do would be to arrange to knock their lenses off to see if they were real. A pair of plain clear glass lenses would be a dead giveaway. And for once, his scars were an asset rather than a liability; by enhancing them rather than trying to conceal them and at the same time enhancing those creases that would, in time, become frown-lines, he was able to age himself credibly by nearly thirty years.