Tigana Part 50

G.o.ds. Alberico shuddered even now, long years after, at the thought of such a war far to the west against the Ygrathens in all their power. He had swallowed his bile and absorbed all the mocking jibes Brandin sent east. Even then, long ago, he had preserved his discipline, kept his eyes on the real prize back home.

But he might have had the Peninsula of the Palm without effort this spring, a pure gift fallen from the sky, if that same Dianora di Certando had not saved the Ygrathen's life two months ago. It had been there for him, gently floating down: with Brandin a.s.sa.s.sinated the Ygrathens would have all sailed home and the western provinces would have lain open before him like so much ripe fruit.

Quileia's crippled King would have hobbled across the mountains to abase himself before Alberico, begging begging for the trade he needed. No elaborate letters then about fearing the mighty power of Ygrath. It would all have been so easy, so ... elegant. for the trade he needed. No elaborate letters then about fearing the mighty power of Ygrath. It would all have been so easy, so ... elegant.

But it was not so, because of the woman. The woman from one of his own provinces. The irony was coruscating, it was like acid in his soul. Certando was his his and Dianora di Certando was the only reason Brandin was alive. and Dianora di Certando was the only reason Brandin was alive.

And now-her third time in his life-she was the only reason there was an army from the west, a flotilla anch.o.r.ed in the Bay of Farsaro, waiting for Alberico to make the slightest move.

'They are fewer than us,' his spies reported daily. 'And not as well armed.'

Fewer, the three captains echoed each other in mindless litany. Not as well armed Not as well armed, they gibbered. We must move We must move, they chorused, their imbecilic faces looming in his dreams, set close together, hanging like lurid moons too near the earth.

Anghiar, his emissary in the Governor's Castle at Senzio, sent word that Casalia still favoured them; that the Governor realized that Brandin was not as strong as they. That he had been persuaded to see the virtue of tilting even further towards Barbadior. The emissary from the Western Palm, one of the few Ygrathens who had decided to stay with Brandin, was having a more difficult time each pa.s.sing day gaining audience with the Governor, but Anghiar dined with plump, sybaritic Casalia almost every night.

So now even Anghiar, who had grown lazy and self-indulgent, morally corrupt as any Senzian during his years there, was saying the same thing as all the others: Senzio is a vineyard ripe for harvesting. Come! Senzio is a vineyard ripe for harvesting. Come!

Ripe for harvesting? Didn't they understand? Didn't any of them realize that there was sorcery sorcery to reckon with? to reckon with?

He knew knew how strong Brandin was; he had probed and backed quickly away from the Ygrathen's power in the year they had both come here, and that had been when he himself was in his prime. Not hollow and weakened, with a bad foot and a drooping eye after almost being killed in that cursed Sandreni lodge last year. He was not the how strong Brandin was; he had probed and backed quickly away from the Ygrathen's power in the year they had both come here, and that had been when he himself was in his prime. Not hollow and weakened, with a bad foot and a drooping eye after almost being killed in that cursed Sandreni lodge last year. He was not the same same any more; he knew it, if none of the others did. If he went to war it had to be a decision made in the light of that. His military edge had to be enough to offset the Ygrathen's sorcery. He needed to be any more; he knew it, if none of the others did. If he went to war it had to be a decision made in the light of that. His military edge had to be enough to offset the Ygrathen's sorcery. He needed to be certain certain. Surely any man not a fool could see that that had nothing to do with cowardice! Only with a careful measuring of gains and losses, risks and opportunities.

In his dreams in his tent on the border he thrust the vacuous moon faces of his captains back up into the sky, and under five moons, not two, he slowly dismembered and defiled the staked-out body of the woman from Certando.

Then the mornings would come. Digesting messages like rancid food, he would begin to wrestle again, endlessly, with the other thing that was nagging him this season like an infected wound.

Something felt wrong. Entirely wrong. There was an aspect about this whole chain of events-from the autumn onwards-that jarred within him like a jangling, dissonant chord.

Here on the border with his army all around him he was supposed to feel as if he he were calling the measure of the dance. Forcing Brandin and the entire Palm to respond to his tune. Seizing control again after a winter of being impacted upon in all those trivial, disconcerting, c.u.mulative ways. Shaping events so that Quileia would have no choice but to seek him out, so that back home in the Empire they could not mistake his power, the vigour of his will, the glory of his conquests. were calling the measure of the dance. Forcing Brandin and the entire Palm to respond to his tune. Seizing control again after a winter of being impacted upon in all those trivial, disconcerting, c.u.mulative ways. Shaping events so that Quileia would have no choice but to seek him out, so that back home in the Empire they could not mistake his power, the vigour of his will, the glory of his conquests.

That was how he was supposed supposed to feel. How he had indeed briefly felt the morning he'd heard that Brandin had abdicated in Ygrath. When he'd ordered his three armies north to the border of Senzio. to feel. How he had indeed briefly felt the morning he'd heard that Brandin had abdicated in Ygrath. When he'd ordered his three armies north to the border of Senzio.

But something had changed since that day and it was more than just the presence of opposition now waiting in the Bay of Farsaro. There was something else, something so vague and undefined he couldn't even talk about it-even if he'd had anyone to talk to-couldn't even pin it down, but it was there, nagging at him like an old wound in rain.

Alberico of Barbadior had not got to where he was, achieved this power base from which a thrust for the Tiara was imminent, without subtlety and thoughtfulness, without learning to trust his instincts.

And his instincts told him, here on the border, with his captains and his spies and his emissary in Senzio literally begging him to march, that something was wrong.

That he was not not calling the tune. Someone else was. Somehow, someone else was guiding the dangerous steps of this dance. He had truly no idea who it could be, but the feeling was there each morning when he woke and it would not be shaken off. Neither would it come clear for him under the spring sun, in that border meadow bright with the banners of Barbadior, with irises and asphodels, and fragrant with the scent of the surrounding pines. calling the tune. Someone else was. Somehow, someone else was guiding the dangerous steps of this dance. He had truly no idea who it could be, but the feeling was there each morning when he woke and it would not be shaken off. Neither would it come clear for him under the spring sun, in that border meadow bright with the banners of Barbadior, with irises and asphodels, and fragrant with the scent of the surrounding pines.

So he waited, praying to his G.o.ds for word of a death back home, agonizingly aware that the world might soon be laughing at him if he drew back, knowing, as spies kept hastening south in relays, that Brandin was getting stronger in Farsaro every day, but held there on the border by his craftiness, his instinct for survival, by that ache of doubt. Waiting for something to come clear.

Refusing, as the days slipped past, to dance to what might be someone else's tune, however seductively the hidden pipes might play.

She was numbingly afraid. This was worse, infinitely worse than the bridge in Tregea. There she had embraced and accepted danger because there was more than a hope of surviving the leap. It had been only water down below, however frigid it might be, and there had been friends waiting in the darkness around the bend to claim her from the river and chafe her back to life.

Tonight was different. Catriana realized with dismay that her hands were shaking. She stopped in the shadows of a lane to try to steady herself.

She reached up nervously to adjust her hair under the dark hood, fingering the jewelled black comb she'd set in it. On the s.h.i.+p coming here Alais, who had said she was used to doing so for her sisters, had evened and shaped her original swift cropping on the floor of the shop in Tregea. Catriana knew her appearance was perfectly acceptable now-more than that, actually, if the reactions of men in Senzio these past days meant anything.

And they had to mean something. For that was what had brought her out here in the darkness alone, pressed against a rough stone wall in a lane, waiting now for a noisy swarm of revellers to pa.s.s by in the street before her. This was a better part of town, so near the castle, but there was no truly safe quarter of Senzio for a woman alone in the streets at night.

She wasn't out here for safety though, which is why none of the others knew where she was. They would never have let her come. Nor would she, being honest with herself, have knowingly let any of them undertake anything like this.

This was death. She was under no illusions.

All afternoon, walking through the market with Devin and Rovigo and Alais, she had been shaping this plan and remembering her mother. That single candle always lit at sunset on the first of the Ember Days. Devin's father had done the same thing, she remembered him saying. Pride, he'd thought it was: withholding something from the Triad because of what they had allowed to happen. Her mother wasn't a proud woman, but neither had she permitted herself to forget.

Tonight Catriana saw herself as being like one of her mother's forbidden candles on those Ember Nights while all the rest of the world lay shrouded in darkness. She was a small flame, exactly like those candles; one that would not last the night, but one that, if the Triad had any love at all for her, might shape a conflagration before she went out.

The drunken revellers finally staggered by, heading in the direction of the harbour taverns. She waited another moment and then, m.u.f.fled in her hood, went quickly into the street, keeping to the side of it and started the other way. Towards the castle.

It would be much better, she thought, if she could somehow make her hands be still and slow her racing heart. She should have had a gla.s.s of wine back at Solinghi's before slipping away, using the outside back stairs so that none of the others would see her. She'd sent Alais down to dinner alone, pleading a woman's illness, promising to follow soon if she could.

She had lied so easily, had even managed a rea.s.suring smile. Then Alais was gone and she was alone, realizing in that precise instant, as the room door gently closed, that she would never see any of the others again.

In the street she shut her eyes, feeling suddenly unsteady; she put her hand on a shop-front for support, drawing deep breaths of the night air. There were tainflowers not far away, and the unmistakable fragrance of sejoia trees. She was near to the castle gardens then. She bit her lips, to force colour into them. Overhead the stars were bright and close. Vidomni was already risen in the east, with blue Ilarion to follow soon. She heard a sudden peal of laughter from the next street over. A woman's laughter followed by shouting. The voice of a man. More laughter.

They were going the other way. As she looked up a star fell in the sky. Following its track to her left she saw the garden wall of the castle. The entrance would be further around that way. Entrances and endings, faced alone. But she had been a solitary child, and then solitary as a woman, drawn into an orbit of her own that took her away from others, even those who would be her friends. Devin and Alais only the latest of those who had tried. There had been others back home in the village before she left. She knew her mother had grieved for her proud solitude.

Pride. Again.

Her father had fled Tigana before the battles at the river.

There it was. There it was.

Carefully she drew back her hood. With real grat.i.tude she discovered that her hands were steady now. She checked her earrings, the silver band about her throat, the jewelled ornament in her hair. Then she drew on to her hand the red glove she'd bought in the market that afternoon and she walked across the street and around the corner of the garden wall into the blaze of light at the entrance to the Governor's Castle of Senzio.

There were four guards, two outside the locked gates, two just within. She allowed her hooded cloak to fall open, to let them see the black gown she wore beneath.

The two guards outside the gates glanced at each other and visibly relaxed, removing their hands from their swords. The other two moved nearer, the better to see by torchlight.

She stopped in front of the first pair. She smiled. 'Would you be kind enough,' she said, 'to let Anghiar of Barbadior know that his red vixen has come?' And she held up her left hand, sheathed in the bright red glove.

She had actually been amused at first by Devin's reaction and Rovigo's in the market-place. Casalia, the plump, unhealthy looking Governor had ridden through, side by side with the emissary from Barbadior. They had been laughing together. Brandin's emissary from the Western Palm had been several paces behind, among a cl.u.s.ter of lesser Senzians. The image and the message were as clear as they could be made.

Alais and Catriana had been standing at a silk-merchant's stall. They had turned to see the Governor go by.

He had not gone by. Instead, Anghiar of Barbadior laid a quick restraining hand on Casalia's braceleted wrist and they stopped their prancing horses directly in front of the two women. Thinking back on it, Catriana realized that she and Alais must have made a striking pair. Anghiar, blond and beefy, with an upturned moustache and hair as long as her own was now, evidently thought so.

'A mink and a red vixen!' he said, in a voice pitched for Casalia's ear. The plump Governor laughed, too quickly, a little too loudly. Anghiar's blue eyes stripped the women to their flesh under the bright sun. Alais looked away, but not down. Catriana met the Barbadian's gaze as steadily as she could. She would not turn away from these men. His smile only deepened. 'A red vixen, truly,' he repeated, but this time to her, and not to Casalia.

The Governor laughed anyhow. They moved on, their party following, including Brandin's emissary, looking grimly unhappy for all the beauty of the morning.

Catriana had become aware of Devin at her shoulder and Rovigo beside his daughter. She looked at them and registered the clenched fury in their eyes. It was then that she'd felt amus.e.m.e.nt, however briefly.

'That,' she said lightly, 'is exactly how Baerd looked before he almost had us both killed in Tregea. I don't think I'm prepared to repeat the experience. I have no hair left to cut.'

It was Alais, cleverer by far than Catriana had realized at first, who laughed, carrying them past the moment. The four of them walked on.

'I would have killed him,' Devin said quietly to her as they paused by a leather goods booth.

'Of course you would have,' she said easily. Then realizing how that probably sounded, and that he was quite serious in what he'd said, she squeezed his arm. Not something she would have done six months before. She was changing, they all were.

But just about then, amus.e.m.e.nt and anger both fading, Catriana began to think about something. It seemed to her that the brightness of the day slid abruptly into shadow for a moment though there were no clouds in the sky at all.

She realized afterwards that she had decided to do it almost as soon as the idea took shape in her mind.

Before the morning market had closed she had managed to be alone long enough to purchase what she needed. Earrings, gown, black comb. Red glove.

And it was while doing these things that she'd begun to think about her mother and to remember the bridge in Tregea. Not surprisingly: the mind worked in patterns like that. Such patterns were why she was doing this, why she'd even been able to think of it. When night fell she would have to come away by herself, telling none of them. A lie of some sort for Alais. No farewells; they would stop her, just as she would have stopped any of them.

But something had to be done, they all knew it. A move had had to be made, and that morning in the market Catriana had thought she'd discovered what that move might be. to be made, and that morning in the market Catriana had thought she'd discovered what that move might be.

She'd spent the first part of this solitary walk through darkness wis.h.i.+ng she were braver though, that her hands would not tremble as they were. But they'd stopped shaking after all when she reached the garden wall and saw a star fall in the blue-black velvet sky.

'We'll have to search you, you understand,' said one of the two guards outside the gates, a crooked smile on his face.

'Of course,' she murmured, stepping nearer. 'There are so few benefits to standing watch here, aren't there?' The other one laughed, and drew her forward, not ungently, into the light of the torches and then a little past them, to the more private shadows at the side of the square. She heard a brief, low-pitched altercation between the two men on the other side of the gate, ending in a concise six-word order. One of them, manifestly outranked, reluctantly began heading inward through the courtyard to find Anghiar of Barbadior and tell him his dreams had just come true, or some such thing. The other hastily unlocked the gates with a key on a ring at his belt and came out to join the others.

They took some time with her, but were not unkind, nor did they presume too much in the end. If she was going to the Barbadian and found favour there, they could be at risk in offending her. She had counted on something like that. She managed to laugh softly once or twice, but not so much as to encourage them. She was thinking of patterns still, remembering the very first evening she'd come to Alessan and Baerd. The night porter at the inn groping for her as she went by, leering, sure of why she was there.

I will not sleep with you, she'd said when they opened to her knock. I have never slept with any man I have never slept with any man. So much irony in her life, looking back from these tangled shadows, the guards' hands moving over her. What mortal knew the way their fate line would run? Inevitably perhaps, she thought about Devin in the hidden closet of the Sandreni Palace. Which had worked out rather differently in almost every way than she had expected it to. Not that she'd been thinking of futures or fates that day. Not then.

And now? What should she be thinking now, as the patterns began to unfold again? The images, she told herself, cloaked in shadow with three guards: hold hard to the images. Entrances and endings, a candle starting a blaze.

By the time they were done with her the fourth guard was back with two Barbadians. They were smiling too. But they treated her with some courtesy as they led her through the open gates and across the central courtyard. Light spilled erratically downwards from interior windows above. Before they pa.s.sed inside she looked up at the stars. Eanna's lights. Every one of them with a name.

They went into the castle through a pair of ma.s.sive doors guarded by four more men, then up two long flights of marble stairs and along a bright corridor on the highest level. At the end of this last hallway a door was partly open. Beyond it, as they approached, Catriana caught a glimpse of a room elaborately furnished in dark, rich colours.

In the doorway itself stood Anghiar of Barbadior, in a blue robe to match his eyes, holding a gla.s.s of green wine and devouring her with his gaze for the second time that day.

She smiled, and let him take her red-gloved fingers in his own manicured hand. He led her into the room. He closed and locked the door. They were alone. There were candles burning everywhere.

'Red vixen,' he said, 'how do you like to play?'

Devin had been edgy all week, uneasy in his own skin; he knew they all felt the same way. The combination of building tension and enforced idleness, coupled with the awareness-one had only to look at Alessan's face sometimes-of how close they were to a culmination, created a pervasive, dangerous irritability among them all.

In the face of such a mood Alais had been extraordinary, a blessing of grace these past few days. Rovigo's daughter had seemed to grow wiser and gentler and yet more at ease among them with each pa.s.sing day, as if sensing a need, a reason for her to be here, and so moving to fill that need. Observant, unceasingly cheerful, effortlessly conversational, with questions and bright responses and a declared pa.s.sion for long anecdotes from all of them, she had, almost single-handedly, prevented three or four mealtimes from degenerating into sullen grimness or fractious rancour. Blind Rinaldo the Healer seemed almost in love with her, so much did he seem to flourish when she was by his side. He wasn't the only one of them, either, Devin thought, almost grateful that the tensions of the time were preventing him from addressing his own inward feelings.

In the hothouse atmosphere of Senzio, Alais's delicate, pale beauty and diffident grace singled her out like some flower transplanted here from a garden in a cooler, milder world. Which was, of course, exactly true. An observer himself, Devin would catch Rovigo gazing at his daughter as she drew one or another of their new companions into conversation, and the look in the man's eyes spoke volumes.

Now, at the end of dinner, having spent the last half-hour turning their market expedition of the morning and afternoon into a veritable sea-voyage of discovery, Alais excused herself briefly and went back upstairs. Her departure was followed by an abrupt return of grimness to the table, an inexorable reversion to the single dominating preoccupation of their lives. Even Rovigo was not immune: he leaned towards Alessan and asked a sharp, low-voiced question about the latest foray outside the city walls.

Alessan and Baerd, with Ducas and Arkin and Naddo, had been scouting the distrada, searching out likely battlefields, and so the best place for them to position themselves when the time came for their own last roll of dice. Devin didn't much like thinking about that. It had to do with magic, and magic always bothered him. Besides which, there had to be a battle for anything to happen, and Alberico of Barbadior was hunkered down in his meadow on the border and showing no signs of moving at all. It was enough to drive men mad.

They had begun spending more time apart from each other in the days and evenings, partly for reasons of caution, but undeniably because too much proximity in this mood was good for none of them. Baerd and Ducas were in one of the harbour taverns tonight, braving the blandishments of the flesh-merchants to keep in touch with the Tregean's men and Rovigo's sailors, and a number of the others who had made their way north in response to a long-awaited summons.

They also had a rumour to spread: about Rinaldo di Senzio, the Governor's exiled uncle, said to be somewhere in the city stirring up revolution against Casalia and the Tyrants. Devin had briefly wondered about the wisdom of that, but Alessan had explained, even before Devin could ask: Rinaldo was greatly changed in eighteen years; few people even knew he had been blinded. He had been a much-loved man: for Casalia to have released such a word would have been dangerous back then. They had gouged Rinaldo's eyes to neutralize him, and then kept it very quiet.

The old man, huddled quietly now in a corner of Solinghi's, was unlikely in the extreme to be recognized, and the only thing they could really do these days was contribute as much as they could to raising tensions in the city. If the Governor could be made more anxious, the emissaries a little more uneasy ...

Rinaldo said little, though it was he himself who had first suggested starting the rumour. He seemed to be coiling or gathering himself; with a war to come the demands on a Healer would be severe, and Rinaldo was not young any more. When he did speak it was mostly with Sandre. The two old men, enemies from rival provinces in the time before the Tyrants, now eased and distracted each other with whispered recollections from bygone years, stories of men and women who had almost all crossed to Morian long ago.

Erlein di Senzio was seldom with them the past few days. He played his music with Devin and Alessan but tended to eat and drink alone, sometimes in Solinghi's, more often elsewhere. A few of his fellow Senzians had recognized the troubadour over the course of their time here, though Erlein seemed no more effusive with them than he was with any of their own party. Devin had seen him walking one morning with a woman who looked so much like him he was sure she was his sister. He had thought of walking over to be introduced, but hadn't felt up to enduring Erlein's abrasiveness. One might have naively thought that as events hung fire here, poised on the edge of a climax, the wizard would lay down his own grudges finally. It was not so.

He wasn't worried about Erlein's absences because Alessan wasn't. For the man to betray them in any way was certain death for himself. Erlein might be enraged and bitter and sullen, but he wasn't, by any stretch, a fool.

He had gone elsewhere to dine this evening as well, though he would have to be back in Solinghi's soon; they were due to play in a few minutes and for their music Erlein was never late. The music was their only sanctuary of harmony these last few days, but Devin knew that only really applied to the three of them. What some of the others scattered about the city were doing for release he couldn't imagine. Or, yes he could. This was was Senzio. Senzio.

'Something's wrong!' blind Rinaldo said abruptly beside him, tilting his head as if sniffing the air. Alessan stopped sketching the distrada terrain on the tablecloth and looked up quickly. So did Rovigo. Sandre had already half-risen from his chair.

Alais hurried up to the table. Even before she spoke Devin felt a finger of dread touch him.

'Catriana's gone!' she said, fighting to keep her voice low. Her eyes flicked from her father to Devin, then rested on Alessan.

'What? How?' Rovigo said sharply. 'We would have had to see her when she came down, surely?'

'The back stairs outside,' Alessan said. His hands, Devin, noticed, had suddenly flattened on the tabletop. The Prince stared at Alais. 'What else?'

The girl's face was white. 'She changed her clothes. I don't understand why. She bought a black silk gown and some jewellery in the market this afternoon. I was going to ask her about it but I ... I didn't want to presume. She's so hard to ask questions of. But they're gone. All the things she bought.'

'A silk gown? silk gown?' Alessan said incredulously, his voice rising. 'What in Morian's name ...?'

But Devin already knew. He knew absolutely.

Alessan hadn't been with them that morning, neither had Sandre. They had no way of understanding. A bone-deep fear dried his mouth and began hammering at his heart. He stood up, tipping over his chair, spilling his wine.

'Oh, Catriana,' he said. 'Catriana, no! no!' Stupidly, fatuously, as if she was in the room, and could still be stopped, still be kept among them, dissuaded from going out into the dark alone with her silk and jewels, with her unfathomable courage and her pride.

'What? Devin, tell me, what is it?' Sandre, voice like a knife. Alessan said nothing. Only turned, the grey eyes bracing for pain.

'She's gone to the castle,' Devin said flatly. 'She's gone to kill Anghiar of Barbadior. She thinks that will start the war.'

Even as he spoke he was moving, rational thought quite gone, something deeper than that, infinitely deeper, driving him, though if she had reached the castle already there was no hope, no hope at all.

He was flying when he reached the door. Even so, Alessan was right beside him, with Rovigo only a step behind. Devin knocked someone down as they burst into the darkness. He didn't look back.

Eanna, show grace, he prayed silently, over and over as they raced towards the risen moons. he prayed silently, over and over as they raced towards the risen moons. G.o.ddess of Light, let it not be like this. Not like this G.o.ddess of Light, let it not be like this. Not like this.

He said nothing though. He sped towards the castle in the dark, fear in his heart like a living thing, bringing the terrible knowledge of death.