Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [79]
As the servants began to pass among them with pitchers of wine and water and the first platters of food, Ista asked, “Who is Lord dy Arbanos?”
Cattilara eyed Arhys warily, but he merely replied, “Illvin dy Arbanos, my master of horse. He has been . . . unwell, these two months. I save his seat, as you see.” His last remark had almost a mulish air. He added after a long moment, “Illvin is also my half brother.”
Ista sipped at her goblet of watered wine, drawing family trees in her head. Another dy Lutez bastard, unacknowledged? But the great courtier had made a point of claiming all his scattered progeny, with regular prayers and offerings to the Bastard’s Tower for their protection. Perhaps this one had been got upon some woman already married, then folded silently into her family by the acquiescence of her cuckolded husband . . . ? The name suggested it. Silently, yet not secretly, if this dy Arbanos had claimed a place of the march and had his claim honored.
“It was a great tragedy,” Cattilara began.
“Too great to darken this evening’s celebration with,” growled Arhys. No gentle hint, that.
Cattilara fell silent; then, with obvious effort, evolved some inconsequential chatter about her own family in Oby, remarks upon father and brothers and their clashes with the Roknari stragglers along their border during last fall’s campaigns. Lord Arhys, Ista noted, took little upon his plate, and that little merely pushed about with his fork.
“You do not eat, Lord Arhys,” Ista ventured at last.
He followed her glance to his plate with a rather pained smile. “I am troubled with a touch of tertiary fever. I find starving it to be the most effective treatment, for me. It will pass soon.”
A group of musicians who had seated themselves in the gallery struck up a lively air, and Arhys, though not Cattilara, took it for pretext enough to let the limping conversation pause. Shortly after, he excused himself and went to consult with one of his officers. Ista eyed the empty seat beyond him, its place fully set. Someone had laid a cut white rose across the plate, in offering or prayer.
“Lord dy Arbanos appears to be much missed, in your company,” said Ista to Cattilara.
She glanced across the courtyard to locate her husband, leaning over another table in conversation and safely out of earshot. “Greatly missed. Truly, we despair of his recovery, but Arhys will not hear . . . it is very sad.”
“Is he a much older man than the march?”
“No, he’s my lord’s younger brother. By two years, nearly. The two have been inseparable most of their lives—the castle warder raised them together after the death of their mother, my father says, and made no distinction between them. Illvin has been master of horse here for Arhys for as long as I can remember.”
Their mother? Ista’s mind ratcheted backward over the hypothesized family tree. “This Illvin . . . is not a son of the late Chancellor dy Lutez, then?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” said Cattilara earnestly. “It was a great romance, though, I’ve always thought, in its day. It is said—” She glanced around, blushed a little, and lowered her voice, leaning in toward Ista. “The Lady of Porifors, Arhys’s mother—it is said, when Lord dy Lutez left her to attend court, she fell in love with her castle warder, Ser dy Arbanos, and he with her. Dy Lutez hardly ever returned to Porifors, and the date for Lord Illvin’s birth . . . well, it just didn’t work. It was a very open secret, I gather, but Ser dy Arbanos did not acknowledge Illvin until after their mother died, poor lady.”
And another reason for dy Lutez’s long neglect of his northern bride emerged . . . but which was cause and which effect? Ista’s hand touched the brooch at her breast. What a quandary this Illvin must have posed for dy Lutez’s vanity and possessiveness. Had it been a gracious and