“I know.”
“Do you?” He laughed without humor. “Angelicus, how could you possibly understand? You’re the first D’Angeline to even set foot in Vralia in my lifetime.”
“I know you. And you’re the first Vralian to attend the University in its lifetime,” Chrétien said equably, smiling at him. “So.”
“I know, I know.” Rikard’s mouth twitched in a reluctant answering smile. “So. And here you are.” No one, he thought, was going to mistake Chrétien for a devout Vralian tradesman paying his respects to Sithonia today.
“I’m trying, Riko, truly.” Chrétien sipped his wine. “I do my best to understand. Vralia is very different for me.”
“My father thinks you’re a spy.” The words came out blunt and unexpected, and Rikard flushed a dull red from his hairline to his throat. Faint frown lines appeared between Chrétien’s brows.
“Does he, then?” His eyes, which were in shadow a violet so dark as to appear almost black, held Rikard’s. “Do you?”
“Of course not.” Rikard’s tongue suddenly felt thick and stupid. “No.” His heart pounded, as it always did when Chrétien looked directly at him like that. “If Terre d’Ange wanted to send a spy, it would hardly be you.”
“No?” Chrétien murmured, his tone mild. “Why not me?”
Rikard shook his head in denial and looked away. “The Dauphin? No. It’s too much to risk. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.” He took a long draught of wine. “There’s nothing to be seen here that I haven’t told you a dozen times over in the cafes of Tiberium.”
“But it’s getting worse.” Chrétien lifted his goblet, examining the workmanship. Light flooding the window behind him shone through the red Caerdicci wine and stained Rikard’s face incarnadine. “Isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Rikard said, “it is.” He was silent, thinking even an outsider had to notice the Prince-Protectorate’s troops swarming in St. Sithonia, countermanding his father’s orders, reacting with excessive force to any display of dissent.
And there was dissent; oh yes, indeed, there was dissent.
“Well.” Chrétien drained the last of his wine and set down the glass, vaulting from the window ledge with customary grace. “I know you won’t accept it,” he said, touching Rikard’s face with his fingertips, “but there will always be sanctuary open to you in Terre d’Ange nonetheless.”
Rikard’s cheek burned where Chrétien had touched it. He closed his eyes as Chrétien moved past him, curbing the familiar surge of resentment and desire. What do they expect of us, he wondered, what do they expect? Ichor runs in their veins even after a thousand and more years. So many centuries they’ve lived for beauty in Terre d’Ange, they’ve even bred for beauty in the Houses of the Night Court—what good is it except to make the rest of us miserable?
“We should leave, then? I do want to walk.”
Rikard opened his eyes and stared blankly in Chrétien’s direction. The fair brows arched again, the beautiful lips smiled.
“To the shrine. Remember?”
“Yes.” He finished his own wine. “I remember.”
Outside, with the vast sky stripping away the intimacy of enclosed spaces, it was easier.
“Come here,” Rikard said, halfway down the Governor’s Hill, leading Chrétien off the paved road. They clambered up a promontory of rock that scraped their hands but afforded a northern view. “I’ll give you a history lesson they don’t teach at the University.” He pointed to a narrow pass still filled with snow, etched in white between the fir-green and granite peaks of the mountains. “The Pass of Sithonia. That’s where she came through the mountains.”
“Name of Elua! Alone and on foot?”
“With a dinner plate wrapped in rags under her arm. No one expected her to get so far.” Rikard hunkered down and pitched a flake of rock, listening to it bounce and rattle down the crags. “It worked, you know. The Profaners thought it was the Wheel of Vral. They tracked her for twenty leagues.”
“All the way to St. Sithonia.” Chrétien gazed southward at the distant blue mirror that was Lake Khirzak, on the stony shores of which Sithonia had danced her way to martyrdom.
“It wasn’t called that then. It wasn’t called anything, there was nothing here but a fishing village with no name. That was over four hundred years ago.”
“I know.” He crouched on his heels beside Rikard, adjusting the battered scabbard that hung at his side with the ease of long practice. “I still say she went to a damnable lot of work, dying to protect a lifeless chunk of bronze, Riko.”