Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [144]
Me, he praised, and requested that I continue. I sang a haunting Alban air that I had learned from Drustan mab Necthana's sisters, alternating weaving threads of soprano and contralto as best I could. Truly, it called for a man's tenor in the mix, but I reckoned no one in La Serenissima would notice. Emboldened, I followed it with a humorous D'Angeline tune usually sung in rounds during a game of kottabos, about a wager between a courtesan and three suitors. The Doge laughed aloud as I sang the different roles, and I marked how his trembling diminished as he relaxed. Even the servants ceased their rude blundering about to listen, smiling at the sense of it though they did not know the words, and when they resumed their chores, it was with a greater measure of care.
When I had done, I paused for a sip of water.
Cesare Stregazza leaned back, watching my face. "Leave us, please," he said to the servants. When they had gone, he turned back to me. "Sing me the song that lulled the Master of the Straits, little Contessa."
I glanced up, briefly surprised. The Doge knew more of me than I had known. I bowed my head in acquiescence, took up the harp once more, and sang. It is a hearth-song of the Skaldi, a song such as their women sing, and I learnedit among them, during that long, cold winter I spent as a slave in Gunter's steading. There are Skaldic war-songs the world has heard, of battle and glory and blood and iron. This was a gentler, homelier tune, about the sorrow of the women waiting by the hearth-side and the death of a young warrior-husband, of mourning come too soon and children unborn while the snow falls unending and the wolf howls outside the door.
I had not sung it since the day we first crossed the Straits, although I had written down the words for Thelesis de Mornay. I laid the harp aside when I finished.
"Brava," Cesare Stregazza said softly. "Well done, my lady." He lifted his cup of mulled wine and sipped it, and his hand scarce trembled at all. "Five songs, sung in three tongues; three lands you have travelled, and Caerdicca Unitas a fourth. Ysandre de la Courcel had scarce warmed her precarious throne when she chose you to send to Alba, and Marco's spies would have it that she's cast you out for girlish spite?"
"My lord Doge," I said deferentially. "Her majesty did not... cast me out. 'Tis a small misunderstanding, no more."
His wrinkled lips curved in a wry smile. "Oh, aye, is it? My son is a canny man, but he's never sat a throne of state. You are the best kind of weapon there is, Phèdre nó Delaunay; the kind that appears but a charming adornment. No sitting monarch with a measure of sense would leave you lying about for some enemy's hand to pick up, no, and it is my impression that Ysandre de la Courcel has a great deal of sense."
I raised my eyebrows. "My lord does me too much credit."
"Then give me some, Contessa," he snapped. "I've not held this throne by being an idiot, and I'll not hold it much longer if I can't use the tools that come to hand." Almost as if in response, the wine-cup he yet held began to tremble fiercely, hot liquid spilling over the rim. I rose with alacrity to take it from him and set it gently on the marble-toppedside table. "You see, even my body betrays me, making bad puns at my dignity's expense," Cesare said dryly, clasping his aged hands together once more. "But I shall at least have the opportunity to test the accuracy of my measurement of Ysandre de la Courcel. Today I learned that your Queen has agreed to make the progressus regalis come autumn. And if my enemies have their way, she will be in La Serenissima in time to observe the election of a new Doge, that mutual pledges may be exchanged."
There was a great deal of information in those words. I sat back