“The korriganed?”said Marguerite. “I thought—” That they stayed in their own lands. That Moreau had used theseemingof them for his own ends, and the fact of them could be safely forgotten.
Moreau spoke lightly, wiping the carapaces of beetles from his gloves. But she thought he was disturbed. “For example, when one attempts to divine anything connected to the korrigan-queen, the diviner sees only thorns. They say it is an enchantment she put on herself long ago. If Volucris has divined thorns, it means the queen has her hand on the king in Ghent now. God knows why.”
“Is this—this lady—this korrigan—is she aiding the duchess?” demanded Marguerite, a cold finger of fear down her back.
Moreau’s gesture was dismissive but his face was tense. “Why should she do so? Men are as birds to the korriganed; they fly past and are gone. She’s old as the trees; she was the one who seduced the enchanter Merlin in the long-ago. She has had many names and manylives.” Doubt crept into his voice. “But I had not—thought she cared anything for the world anymore.”
Volucris was being led away. His eyes were unfocused. Moreau added, “Your diviner ought to go and drink wine and sleep. His mind is still on the thorns. That will run him mad in the end. Go and get him drunk.”
Marguerite nodded at the attendants and they vanished, half-carrying her diviner.
Somewhere in the quivering summer air, cooling now with the drawing-on of night, the bells summoned the nuns to Vespers. The convent loomed above the garden, softly gray, as were so many things in Brittany. Marguerite said, tensely, “Why would one of these—these creatures—a korrigan—why would it meddle?”
He shook his head. “I have no notion. Isn’t it exhilarating?”
“I do not like powers I don’t understand.”
The expressive eyes opened wide. Clearly he’d put his momentary unease aside. “Do you dislike me, then, lady?”
Despite herself, their gazes locked. His eyes were warm, questioning. Marguerite swallowed and said, “What if this—queen—isaiding the duchess?”
“She is not,” said Julien, his voice suddenly hard. “She is a cruel old bitch who despises her own kin, and she is ancient besides. And if she meddles, I will best her.”
“Will you? As you bested the duchess in Nantes? Find me Maximilien of Austria if you are such a master!” Any other man would have flinched at the whipcrack of her voice. She could feel her attendants eyeing her sidelong, but she cared naught for them.
Softly, he said, “Do you mean to frighten me? I have learnt crueler lessons at crueler courts than yours. Would you have me go mad too, divining what cannot be seen?”
She breathed, and breathed again. Her anger was unseemly. “I would not,” she said.
“Don’t be angry,” he murmured, coaxing now, stepping near enough to drop the words light as feathers into her ear. “We must beallies. You do not trust me yet because I failed to capture the duchess. How can your trust be earned? Surely you do not think me wholly a mountebank.”
She was exasperated. Her common sense had survived ten years of regency without yet faltering, and now he seemed to have overturned both the logic of her mind and the order of her world. Her whole body had broken out in gooseflesh at his nearness. “How can my trust be earned? Secure me the duchess, see her married to Charles. Only that will put an end to this farce.”
“I havesaidit shall be done.” Flaring anger now caught in the softness of his voice, but she could not bring herself to upbraid him to go.
She ground her teeth. “Will it? How?”
“As grandly as you could wish. I wish to astonish you, my fair queen.”
“I waited for you to astonish me once, and you failed.”
He bowed his head. “That is true. Very well, here is what I shall do: I shall call the knights of Brittany out to a tourney, and that same day the city of Rennes will fall.”
“We do not have time for games.”
He still had not moved away; his body was animal-warm through his doublet. “I swear you will have time for this. If I am indulged, then I will swear you my loyalty, lady—not to France, but to you. Only to you. Can that not count for something?”
She stood still, remembering fire in the night, living roses pulled from the air. No, he was not a mountebank. He was a power the world had forgotten, if only she could learn to wield it. “A tourney?” she said.
“A tourney.”
A day later, Marguerite’s brother the king of France met them on the road, riding with Guillaume de La Trémoille in colorful panoply, a grand escort prancing and sweating at their backs. The king dismounted to greet his royal sister in the highest of good humor, thefaint sun catching the diamond buttons beneath the turned-up brim of his hat. A great strutting heap of knights pranced along behind him, prinked all over with jewels, the tufts of their velvet bristling like the ruffs of fighting-dogs.
“I see you have come ready to wed,” said Marguerite to her younger brother, smiling.
“I have come ready to hunt a unicorn before the wedding,” Charles returned, with gusto. “La Trémoille has said that the duchess of Brittany is sure to call a unicorn if she is brought again to Brocéliande. And we are sure to catch it and mount its horn in my hall.”
Marguerite wondered, sometimes, if she’d allowed her young brother too much license after their father died. She said, “Sire, the duchess is behind fortified walls in Rennes.”
