Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey [30]
"I'm sorry, my lord!" I cried, guilt-stricken. He glanced at me with amusement and sat back down.
"Only insofar as you enjoy being sorry, my dear, which, while it is a considerable amount, occurs only after the fact, thus making it a singularly ineffective deterrent, yes?"
Confused, I nodded.
Delaunay sighed and crossed his legs, his expression turning serious. "Phedre, I don't object to your ambitious young friend. Indeed, you may well learn things in that quarter you'd not hear elsewhere. And," a flicker of amusement returned, "to a certain degree, I don't object to your penchant for escape and," leaning forward to pluck at the sleeve of Alcuin's tunic which I wore, "disguise. But there are dangers for a child alone in the City to which I cannot have you exposed. Henceforth if you wish, in your free time, to visit your friend, you will inform Guy."
I waited for more. "That's all?"
"That's all."
I thought it through. A man who spoke softly and seldom, Guy served Delaunay with intense loyalty and efficiency in a variety of unnamed capacities. "He'll follow me," I said finally. "Or have me followed."
Delaunay smiled. "Very good. You're welcome to try to detect and evade him, with my blessing; if you can do that, Phedre, I've no need to worry about you on your own. But you will inform him if you leave these grounds, for any reason."
His complacency was maddening. "And if I don't?" I asked, challenging him with a toss of my head.
The change that came over his face frightened me; truly frightened me, without a single tremor of excitement. His eyes turned cold, and the lines of his face set. "I am not of Kushiel's line, Phedre. I do not play games of defiance and punishment, and as I care for you, I will not allow you to endanger yourself for a childish whim. I don't demand unquestioning obedience, but I demand obedience nonetheless. If you cannot give it, I will sell your marque."
With that ringing in my ears, you may be sure I paid heed. I saw his eyes; I had no doubt that he meant his words. Which meant, of course, that as I sat with Hyacinthe in his mother's kitchen, somewhere nearby, quiet and efficient, Guy kept watch.
"What is it, then?" I asked Hyacinthe now. "Who is he really?"
He shook his head, black ringlets swinging. "That, I don't know. But there is something I do know." He grinned, baiting me. "I know why his poetry was banned."
"Why?" I was impatient to know. In the corner where she muttered over the stove, Hyacinthe's mother turned and glanced uneasily at us.
"Do you know how Prince Rolande's first betrothed died?" he asked.
It had happened before we were born, but thanks to Delaunay's ceaseless teachings, I was well-versed in the history of the royal family. "She broke her neck in a fall," I said. "A hunting accident."
"So they say," he said. "But after Rolande wed Isabel L'Envers, a song came to be heard in the stews and wineshops about a noble lady who seduced a stableboy and bid him to cut the girth on her rival's saddle the day she went a-hunting with her love."
"Delaunay wrote it? Why?"
Hyacinthe shrugged. "Who knows? This is what I heard. The men-at-arms of the Princess Consort caught the troubador who was spreading the song. When she had him interrogated, he named Delaunay as the author of the lyrics. The troubador was banished to Eisande, and it is said that he died mysteriously en route. She brought Delaunay in for questioning, but he refused to confess to authorship. So he was not banished, but to appease his daughter-in-law, the King banned his poetry and had every extant copy of his work destroyed."
"Then he is an enemy of the Crown," I marvelled.
"No." Hyacinthe shook his head with certainty. "If he were, he would surely have been banished, confession or no. The Princess Consort willed it, but he is still welcome at court. Someone protected him in this matter."
"How did you learn this?"
"Oh, that." His grin