"Fate." I answered unthinking, for Delaunay had specified that neither Alcuin nor I were to betray the extent of our learning without his approval. But a connection had formed in my mind, the linkage surfacing. "You were one of his teachers, at the University in Tiberium."
"Indeed." He made me a courtly little bow, with a click of his heels. "I have since retired, and travel at leisure to see the places of which I so long have spoken. But I had the privilege of teaching your…your Delaunay, he and his…"
"Maestro!" Delaunay’s voice, ringing with unalloyed pleasure, interrupted us as we entered the ballroom. He crossed the floor in great strides, beaming, embracing the older man with great affection. "Cecilie didn’t tell me you would be here."
Gonzago de Escabares wheezed at his embrace, thumping Delaunay’s back. "Ah, Anafiel my boy, I am old, and allow myself one luxury. Where the crux of history turns, I may be there to watch it grind. If it turns in Terre d’Ange, so much the better, where I may surround my aging form with such beauty." He patted Delaunay on the cheek, smiling. "You have lost none of yours, young Antinous."
"You flatter me, Maestro." Delaunay took de Escabares' hands in his, but there was a reserved quality to his smile. "I must remind you, though…"
"Ah!" The Aragonian professor’s expression changed, growing sharper and sadder. "Yes, of course, forgive me. But it is good to see you, Anafiel. Very good."
"It is." Delaunay smiled again, meaning it. "May we speak, later? There is someone I wish Phèdre to meet."
"Of course, of course." He patted my shoulder with the same indulgent affection. "Go, child, and enjoy yourself. This is no time to waste on aging pedants."
Delaunay laughed and shook his head, leading me away.
Silently, I cursed his timing, but aloud, I merely asked, "He taught you at the University?"
"The Tiberians collect scholars the way they used to amass empires," Delaunay said absently. "Maestro Gonzago was one of the best."
Yes, my lord, I thought, and he called you Anafiel, and Antinous, which is a name from the title of a poem which is proscribed, but he stumbled once over the name Delaunay, which Hyacinthe says is not truly yours, and he might have told me a great deal more had you not intervened, so while I do as you say, be mindful that I do also as you have taught.
But these things I kept silent, and followed obediently as he turned in a way that caused me to bump into a blonde woman with aquiline features, who turned about with a sharp exclamation.
"Phèdre!" Delaunay’s voice held a chastising note. "Solaine, I am sorry. This is Phèdre’s first such gathering. Phèdre, this is the Marquise Solaine Belfours, to whom you will apologize."
"You might let the girl speak for herself, Delaunay." Her voice held irritation; Solaine Belfours had no great love for Delaunay, and I marked it well, even as I cast an annoyed glance at him for placing me in this position. The collision was of his manufacturing; no child was trained in Cereus House without learning to move gracefully and unobtrusively through a crowd.
"The Marquise is a secretary of the Privy Seal," Delaunay remarked casually, placing a hand on my shoulder, letting me know the import of her position.
He wanted contrition from me, I knew; but while Delaunay may have known his targets and their weaknesses, he was not what I was. What I knew was born in the blood.
"Sorry," I muttered with ill grace, and glanced sullenly up at her, feeling the thrill of defiance deep in my bones. Her blue-green eyes grew cold and her mouth hardened.
"Your charge needs a lesson, Delaunay." She turned away abruptly, stalking across the ballroom. I looked at Delaunay to see his brows arched with uncertainty and surprise.
Beware of setting brushfires, Cecilie had said. Her comment made more sense to me now, although I did not of a necessity agree with it. I shrugged Delaunay’s hand off my shoulder. "Tend to Alcuin, my lord. / am well enough on my own."
"Too well, perhaps." He laughed ruefully and shook his head. "Stay out of trouble, Phèdre. I’ve enough to deal with this night."
"Of course, my lord." I smiled impudently at him. With another despairing shake of his head, he left me.
Left to my own devices, I daresay I did well enough. Several of the guests had brought companions and we made acquaintance. There was a slight, dark youth from Eglantine House whose quick grin reminded me of Hyacinthe. He did a tumbling dance alone with hoops and ribbons, and everyone applauded him. His patron, Lord Chavaise, smiled with pride. And there was Mierette, from Orchis House, who had made her marque and kept her own salon now. Steeped in the gaiety for which her house was renowned, she brought laughter and a sense of sunlight with her, and where she went, I saw pleasure and merriment light people’s faces.
Many of them, though, eyed Alcuin, who moved through the gathering oblivious to it all, serene and dark-eyed. I watched their faces and marked that among them all, one stood out. I knew him, for Vitale Bouvarre was an acquaintance of Delaunay’s; not a friend, I think, but he had been a guest at Delaunay’s house. He was a trader, of common stock-indeed, it was rumored there was Caerdicci blood in his lineage-but an excessively wealthy one, by virtue of an exclusive charter with the Stregazza family in La Serenissima.
His gaze followed Alcuin and his face was sick with desire.
When the last rays of sun had gone and darkness filled the long windows around the balcony, Cecilie clapped her hands and summoned us to dine. No fewer than twenty-seven guests were arrayed about the long table, ushered to our seats by solicitous servants clad in spotless white attire. Dishes came in an unceasing stream, soups and terrines followed by pigeon en daube, a rack of lamb, sallets and greens and a dish of white turnips whipped to a froth which everyone pronounced a delight of rustic sophistication, and all the while rivers of wine poured from chilled jugs into glasses only half-empty.
"A toast!" Cecilie cried, when the last dish-a dessert of winter apples baked in muscat wine and spiced with cloves-had been cleared. She lifted her glass and waited for silence. She had the gift, still, of commanding attention; the table fell quiet. "To the safety of our borders," she said, letting the words fall in a soft voice. "To the safety and well-being of blessed Terre d’Ange."
A murmurous accord sounded the length of the table; this was one point on which each of us agreed. I drank with a willing heart, and saw no one who did not do the same.
"Thelesis," Cecilie said in the same soft voice.
Near the head of the table, a woman rose.
She was small and dark and not, I thought, a great beauty. Her features were unremarkable, and her best asset, luminous dark eyes, were offset by a low brow.
And then she spoke.
There are many kinds of beauty. We are D’Angeline.
"Beneath the golden balm," she said aloud, simply, and her voice filled every corner of the room, imbued with golden light. "Settling on the fields/Evening steals in calm/And farmers count their yields." So simple, her lyric; and yet I saw it, saw it all. She offered the words up unadorned, plain and lovely. "The bee is in the lavender/The honey fills the comb," and then her voice changed to something still and lonely. "But here a rain falls never-ending/And I am far from home."
Everyone knows the words to The Exile’s Lament. It was written by Thelesis de Mornay when she was twenty-three years old and living in exile on the rain-swept coast of Alba. I myself had heard it a dozen times over, and recited it at more than one tutor’s behest. Still, hearing it now, tears filled my eyes. We were D’Angeline, bred and bound to this land which Blessed Elua loved so well he shed his blood for it.
In the silence that followed, Thelesis de Mornay took her seat. Cecilie kept her glass raised.