Songs of Love & Death

honestly.” His broad shoulders rose and fell in a helpless shrug. “It may not be the course diplomacy recommends, but I think it is the best one nonetheless.”

YOU WERE RIGHT, Rolande; but you were wrong, too.

If the world had been a different place, a kinder, gentler place in which all of us obeyed Elua’s precept, everything might have been different.

It wasn’t.

You were too good for this world, you and Edmee alike.

I WROTE HONESTLY to Edmee.

She wrote honestly in reply, her letters tinged with affectionate dismay. My father sent you to court a royal bridegroom for me, and you seduce him instead? Either you found him so lacking you seek to protect me, or so perfect you must keep him for yourself. Which is it, Anafiel?

Meet him and decide for yourself, I wrote to her.

So I shall, in time, she wrote in reply. How can I not be intrigued by a man bold enough to capture your heart? If there is room for both of us in his, I can imagine far worse fates, near-brother.

Those words freed me from the shackles of guilt that weighed at me, freed me to enjoy my time in Tiberium with Rolande. The weeks that followed the arrival of Edmee’s second letter were some of the happiest I had known. Days were consumed with study; nights were filled with revelry and love. With the exception of barb-tongued Barquiel L’Envers, Rolande’s companions regarded our relationship well enough, and I formed friendships with several of the others. Even the Tiberians and the university Masters were reasonably tolerant, won over by Rolande’s good nature. It was Maestro Gonzago de Escabares, an Aragonian historian, who began calling me Antinous after the name of a young man who was once the beloved of a Tiberian Imperator. The nickname spread, and was meant more affectionately than not.

And then things changed again.

In the late days of autumn, the great rhetorician Master Strozzi made me a most unusual offer.

“Young Antinous,” he said to me in his private study, stroking his beard. “You are in a position to provide a service of untold value for your Prince Rolande. There is but one price. You can never, ever speak of it to him.”

I stared at him in outright astonishment. “What in the world do you mean?”

Master Strozzi lifted one hand in a portentous gesture. “I can speak no more unless you swear on Rolande’s life that it will never leave these walls.”

I shook my head, rejecting the offer without a thought. “No. We keep no secrets from one another, he and I.”

He shrugged and lowered his hand. “As you wish. Be advised that you speak of this meeting at your peril; and his.”

That night, I told Rolande of the extraordinary conversation. He heard me out patiently, and when I had finished, he said, “I think you ought to take him up on it.”

I stared at him, too. “Are you mad?”

“Think on it,” Rolande said. “He takes a conspirator’s tone. If there are those who seek to use you to get at me, best to learn it now. Easier to avoid the serpent in the path before you than the asp at your heel.”

The following day, I begged another audience with Master Strozzi and told him I’d had a change of heart.

He listened impassively to me, his hands folded on his desk. “You are here at the prince’s bidding.” I opened my mouth to deny it, and he forestalled me with one lifted finger, his gaze flinty. “Did you imagine for one instant I did not know exactly what you would do when I made the offer? We’ve had our eye on you ever since Prince Rolande left the brothel with you.” At my startled reaction, a hint of a smile curled his lip. “Ah yes, it was noted. Whores make some of the best spies.”

My skin prickled. “Who is we, Master?”

Master Strozzi rose from his desk and paced, hands clasped behind his back. “Who indeed? We are everyone and no one; we are everywhere and unseen. Did you think my warning in jest? It is a simple matter to slip poison in someone’s food. How well do you know Prince Rolande’s household staff?”

I didn’t answer, my thoughts racing.

“Oh, of course you could dismiss them all,” he said, following my unspoken thoughts. “Even the cook who’s known him since he was a babe. But who would you hire to replace them? Who can you trust?”

“You are threatening the Dauphin of Terre d’Ange,” I whispered in shock. “It is a dire business. I will go to the ambassador.”

His smile widened. “I am a respected scholar. Who would believe such a thing? No one in a position to help you.” He waved one hand. “Any mind, I am not threatening the prince. Now that you understand what is at stake, I am restating my offer to you.” He leaned over me. “You’re a quick-thinking young man. Observant, too. We can teach you to hone those skills, the better to serve the prince. Would you like to be able to anticipate a man’s actions as surely as I anticipated yours?” He paused to let the words sink in, pricking my curiosity. “To read a man’s thoughts on his face? To catch a lie before it’s spoken?”

“At what price?” I asked.

Master Strozzi gave an eloquent shrug. “Only your silence. You will return to Prince Rolande and tell him that I offered to counsel you in the art of selling access to royalty, bending a sympathetic ear to select causes for coins. Then you will begin your true lessons in the arts of covertcy.”

Easier to avoid the serpent in the path before you than the asp at your heel…

I made my choice. “I will do it.”

WAS IT THE right choice or the wrong one?

I think it was the right choice.

The choice I made afterward… that, I will never know.

....

I LIED TO Rolande, who believed me without a second thought, having no cause to do otherwise. I kept my silence to protect him, and began my lessons, thinking to divine the nature of this omnipresent, invisible menace.

I studied the arts of covertcy.

To my surprise, my instructor was not Master Strozzi, but Maestro Gonzago, the Aragonian historian who had dubbed me Antinous. He had a keen mind, and I admired him. When he asked me to aid him in compiling research for a treatise on the history of relations between Aragonia and Terre d’Ange, I was flattered.

Less so, when I learned the truth.

“Why, Maestro?” I asked him. “Why this…” I gestured vaguely, having no idea what this meant. “This… vast scheme?”

“The currents of history may turn on a single branch,” he said in a pragmatic tone. “Many branches together may form a dam. The patterns of influence interest me. Do they not interest you?”

I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant. “I think so, yes.”

Maestro Gonzago gave me a shrewd glance. “I am a mere scholar, but you are a well-positioned branch. I will teach you to leverage your placement wisely. What you do with this knowledge is your choice.”

All my life, I’d been reckoned clever and observant; but I never learned to see the world as I did until Gonzago de Escabares taught me to do so. He taught me to look and to listen, to distinguish a man’s trade by his clothing, his success at it by the set of his shoulders, his origin and history by layers of accent and dialect. To gauge a man’s state of mind by his gait; to gauge a woman’s happiness by the tone of her voice, the tilt of her head. He taught me to study faces, to watch for the myriad minute expressions that we make unawares, and the meanings thereof.

He taught me the nine telltales of a lie.

He quizzed me mercilessly about what I had seen throughout the day until observing and memorizing became a force of habit. He sent me on errands with my ears filled with wax plugs, forcing me to rely on my eyes; and when I had mastered that skill, he sent me out with drops of belladonna in my eyes, rendering the world over-bright and my vision blurred, painful and useless, forcing me to rely on my ears as I blundered my way across the city.