Chapter 3
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EVEN BEFORE THE ING OF CAUTIOUS ALBERICO FROM OVERseas in Barbadior to rule in Astibar, the city that liked to call itself "The Thumb that Rules the Palm" had been known for a certain degree of asceticism. In Astibar the m rites were never done in the presence of the dead as was the practi the ht provinces: such a procedure was regarded as excessive, too fevered an appeal to emotion.They were to perform in the tral courtyard of the Sandreni Palace, watched from chairs and benches placed around the courtyard, and from the loggias above, leading off the interior rooms owo upper floors. In one of those rooms, marked by the appropriate hangings—grey-blue and black—lay the body of Sandre dAstibar, s over his eyes to pay the nameless doorman at the last portal of Morian, food in his hands and shoes on his feet, for no one living could know how long that final jouro the goddess was.
He would be brought down to the courtyard later, so that all those citizens of his city and its distrada who wished to do so—and who were willing to brave the rec eyes of the Barbadian meraries posted outside—could file past his bier and drop blue-silver leaves of the olive tree in the single crystal vase that stood on a plinth in the courtyard even now.
The ordinary citizens—weavers, artisans, shopkeepers, farmers, sailors, servants, lesser merts— would ehe palace later. They could be heard outside now: gathered to hear the music of the old Dukes m rites. The people drifting into the courtyard in the meantime were the most extraordinary colle of petty and high nobility, and of藏书网 accumulated mertile wealth that Devin had ever seen in one place.
Because of the Festival of Vines, all the lords of the Astibar distrada had e into town from their try estates. And being in town they could hardly not be present to see Sandre mourned—for all that many or most of them had bitterly hated him while he ruled, and the fathers randfathers of some h<bdi>.９9lｉｂ?</bdi>ad paid for poison or hired blades thirty years ago and more in the hope that these same rites might have taken place long since.
The two priests and Adaons priestess were already in their scats, seeming, in the manner of clergy everywhere, to be privy to a mystery that they collectively shielded from lesser mortals with the gravity of their repose.
Menicos pany waited in a small room off the courtyard that Tomasso had ordered set aside for their use. All the usual amenities were there, and some that were far from usual: Devin couldnt remembe<var></var>r seeing blue wine offered to performers before. Aravagaure, that. He wased though; it was too early and he was too mu edge. To calm himself he walked over to Eghano who was lazily drumming, as he always seemed to be, on a tabletop.
Eghano glanced up at him and smiled. "Its just a performance," he said in his soft sibilant voice. "We do what we always do. We make music. We move on.”
Devin nodded, and forced a smile iurn. His throat was dry though. He went to the side-tables, and one of the two h servants hasteo pour him water in a gold and crystal goblet worth more thahing Devin owned in the world. A moment later Menico signaled and they went out into the courtyard.
The dancers began it, backed by hidden strings and pipes. No voices. Not yet.
If Aldine and Nieri had burned love dles late last night it didnt show—or if it did, only in the tration and iy of their twinned movements that m.
Sometimes seeming to pull the music forward, sometimes following it, they looked—with their thin, whitened faces, their blue-grey tunid the jet-black gloves that hid their palms—truly otherworldly.
Which was as Menico had trained his dao be. Not inviting or alluring as some other troupes approached this dance of the rites, nor a merely graceful prelude to the real performance, as certain other panies ceived it. Menicos dancers were guides, cold and pelling, towards the place of the dead and of m for the dead. Gradually, inexorably, the slow grave movements, the expressionless, almost inhuman faces imposed the silehat roper on that restive, preening audience.
And in that silehe three singers and four musis came forward and began the "Invocation" to Eanna of the Lights who had made the world, the sun, the two moons and the scattered stars that were the diamonds of her diadem.
Rapt and atteo what they were doing, using all the trivances of professional skill to shape an apparent artlessness, the pany of Menico di Ferraut carried the lords and ladies and the mert princes of Astibar with them on a ruthlessly disciplined cresting of sorrow. In m Sandre, Duke of Astibar, they mourned—as roper—the dying of all the Triads mortal children, brought through Morians portals to move on Adaoh under Eannas lights for so short a time. So sweet and bitter and short a season of days.
Devin heard Catrianas voice reag upwards towards the high place where Alessans pipes seemed to be calling her, cold and precise and austere. He felt, even more than he heard, Menid Eghano grounding them all with their deep line. He saw the two dancers— now statues in a frieze, now whirling as captives irap of time— and at the moment that roper he let his own voice soar with the two syreo the space that had bee for them to fill, in the middle range where mortals lived and died.
So Menico di Ferraut had shaped his approach to the seldom-performed Full M Rites long aging forty years of art and a full, much-traveled life to the moment that this m had bee.
Even as he began to sing, Devi swelled with pride and a genuine love for the rotund, unassuming leader who had guided them here and into what they were shaping.
They stopped, as planned, after the sixth stage, for their own sake and their listeners. Tomasso had spoken with Menico beforehand, and the nobles progression past Sandres bier would nolace upstairs. After, the pany would finish with the last three rites, ending on Devins "Lament," and then the body would be brought down and the crowd outside admitted with their leaves for the crystal vase.
Menico led them out from the courtyard amid a silence so deep it was their highest possible accolade.
They reehe room that had been reserved for their use. Caught up in the mood they themselves had created, no one spoke. Devin moved to help the two dancers into the robes they wore between performances and then watched as they paced the perimeter of the room, slender and cat-like in their grace<dfn></dfn>. He accepted a glass of green wine from one of the servants but deed the offered plate of food.
He exged a gla not a smile —not now—with Alessan. Drenio and Pieve, the syrenya-players, were bent over their instruments, adjusting the strings. Eghanmatic as ever, was eating while idly drumming the table with his free hand. Menico walked by, restless and distracted. He gave Devin a wordless squeeze on the arm.
Devin looked for Catriana and saw her just then leaving the room through an inner archway. She glanced back. Their glances met for a sed, then she went on. Light, strangely filtered, fell from a high unseen window upon the space where she had been.
Devin really didnt know why he did it. Even afterwards when so much had e to pass, flowing outwards in all dires like ripples in water from this moment, he was never able to say exactly why he followed her.
Simple curiosity. Desire. A plex longing born of the look in her eyes before and the strange, floating place of stillness and sorrow where they now seemed to be. None or some or all of these. He felt as if the world wasnt quite as it had been before the dancers had begun.
He drained his wine and rose and he went through the same archway Catriana had. Passing through,
he too looked back. Alessan was watg him. There was no judgment iregeans glance, only an i expression Devin could not uand. For the first time that day he was reminded of his dream.
And because of that, perhaps, he murmured a prayer to Morian as he went on through the archway.
There was a staircase with a high, narrow, stained-glass window on the first-floor landing. In the many-colored fall of light he caught a glimpse of a blue-silver gown swirling to the left at the top of the stairs. He shook his head, struggling to clear it, to slip free of this eerie, dreamlike mood. And as he did, an uanding slid into plad he muttered a curse at himself.
She was from Astibar. She was going upstairs as was entirely fit and proper to pay her own farewell to the Duke. No lord or newly wealthy mert was about to deny her right to do so. Not after her singing this m. Oher hand, for a farmers son from Asoli by way of Lower Corte to ehat upstairs room would be sheerest, ill-bred presumption.
He hesitated, and he would have turned back then, had it not been for the memory that was his blessing and his curse and always had been. He had seen the hanging banners from the courtyard. The room where Sandre dAstibar lay was to the right, not the left, at the top of these stairs.
Devi up. He took care now, though still not knowing why, to be quiet. At the landing he bore left as Catriana had dohere was a doorway. He ope. Ay room, long unused, dusty hangings on the walls. Ses of a hunt, the colors badly faded. There were two exits, but the dust came to his aid now: he could see the print of her sandals going towards the door on the right.
Silently Devin followed that trail through the warren of abandoned rooms on the first floor of the palace. He saw sculptures and objects of glass, exquisite in their delicacy, marred by years of overlaid dust. Much of the furniture was gone, much that remained was covered over. The light was dim; most of the windows were shuttered. A great many darkened, begrimed portraits of stern lords and ladies gazed inimically down upon him as he passed.
He bht and again right, trag the path of Catrianas feet, careful to keep from getting too close. She went straight on after that through the rooms along the outer side of the palaohat offered onto the crowded balustrades overlooking the courtyard. It was brighter in these rooms. He could hear murmuring voices off to his right and he realized that Catriana was walking around to the far side of the room where Sandre lay in state.
At length he opened a door which proved to be the last. She was alone inside a very large chamber, standing by the side of a huge fireplace. There were three bronze horses on the mantelpied three portraits on the walls. The ceiling was gilded in what Devin knew would be gold. Along the outer wall where a line of windows overlooked the street there were two long tables laden with food and drink. This room, uhe others, had beely ed, but the curtains were still drawn against the m brightness and the crowd outside.
Ihin, filtered light Devin closed the door behind him, deliberately letting the latch click shut.
The sound was a loud report iillness.
Catriana wheeled, a hand to her mouth, but even in the half-light Devin could see that what blazed in her eyes was fury and not fear.
"What do you think you are doing?" she whispered harshly.
He took a hesitant step forward. He reached for a witticism, a mild, defleg remark to shatter the heavy spell that seemed to lie upon him, upon the whole of the m. He couldnt find one.
He shook his head. "I dont know," he said holy. "I saw you leave and I followed. It ... isnt what you think," he finished lamely.
"How would you know what I think?" she snapped. She seemed to calm herself by an act of will. "I wao be alone for a few moments," Catriana said, trolling her voice. "The performance affected me and I o be by myself. I see that you were disturbed too, but I ask you as a courtesy to leave me to my privacy for just a little while?”
It was courteously said. He could have gohen. On any other m he would have gone. But Devin had already passed, half-knowingly, a portal of Morians.
He gestured at the food oables and said, gravely, a quiet observation of fad not a challenge or accusation, "This is not a room for privacy, Catriana. Wont you tell me why you are here?”
He braced for her rage to flare again, but once more she surprised him. Silent for a long moment, she said at length, "You have not shared enough with me to be owed an ao that. Truly it will be better if you go. For both of us.”
He could still hear muffled voices oher side of the wall to the right of the fireplad the bronze horses. This strange room with its laden, sumptuously covered tables and the grim portraits on the dark walls seemed to be a chamber in some waking trance. He remembered Catriana singing that m, her voice yearning upwards to where the pipes ea called. He remembered her eyes as she paused in the doorway theyd both passed through. Truly he felt as if he were irely awake, not in the world he knew.
And in that mood Devin heard himself say, over a sudden stri in his throat, "Could we not begin then? Is there not a sharing we could start?”
Once more she hesitated. Her eyes were wide but impossible to read in the uain light. She shook her head though and remained where she was, standing straight and very still on the far side of the room.
"I think not," she said quietly. "Not on the road Im on, Devin dAsoli. But I thank you for asking, and I will not deny that a part of me might wish things otherwise. I have little time now though, and a thing I must do here. Please—will you leave me?”
He had scarcely expected to find or feel so much regret, over and above all the nuahe m had already carried. He nodded his head—there was nothing else he could think of to do or say, and this time he did turn to go.
But a portal had indeed been crossed in the Sandreni Palace that m and ily the moment that Devin turhey both heard voices again—but this time from behind him.
"Oh, Triad!" Catriana hissed, snapping the mood like a fishbone. "I am cursed in all I turn my hands to!" She spun back to the fireplace, her hands frantically feeling around the underside of the mantelpiece.
"For the love of the goddesses be silent!" she whispered harshly.
The urgen her voice made Devin freeze and obey.
"He said he knew who built this palace," he heard her mutter under her breath. "That it should be right over—”
She stopped. Devin heard a latch click. A se of the wall to the right of the fire swung slightly open to reveal a tiny cubbyhole beyond. His eyes widened.
"Dont stand there gawking, fool!" Catriana whispered fiercely. &quo<var>９９ｌib?</var>t;Quickly!" A new voice had joihe others behind him; there were three now. Devin leaped for the cealed door, slipped inside beside Catriana, and together they pulled it shut.
A moment later they heard the door on the far side of the room click open.
"Oh, Morian," Catriana groaned, from the heart. "Oh, Devin, why are you here?”
Addressed thusly, Devin found himself quite incapable of framing ae response. For ohing, he still couldnt say why hed followed her; for ahe closet where they were hiding was only marginally large enough for the two of them, and he became increasingly aware of the fact that Catrianas perfume was filling the tiny space with a heady, uling st.
If he had been half in a dream a moment ago he abruptly found himself wide awake and in dangerous proximity to a woman he had seriously desired for the past two weeks.
Catriana seemed to arrive, belatedly, at the same sort of awareness; he heard her make a small sound in a register somewhat different from before. Devin closed his eyes, even though it itch-bla the
hidden closet. He could feel her breath tig his forehead, and he was scious of the fact that by moving his hands only a very little he could encircle her waist.
He held himself carefully motionless, tilting back from her as best he could, his owhing deliberately shallow. He felt more than suffitly a fool for having created this ridiculous situation—he wasnt about to pound his rapidly growing catalogue of sins by making a grope for her in the darkness.
Catrianas robe rustled gently as she shifted positiohigh brushed his. Devin drew a ragged breath, which caused him to inhale more of her st than was entirely good for him, given his virtuous resolutions.
"Sorry," he whispered, though she was the one whod moved. He felt beads of perspiration on his brow. To distract himself he tried to focus on the sounds from outside. Behind him the shuffling of feet and a steady, diffused murmur made it clear that people were still filing past Sandres bier.
To his left, in the room theyd just fled, three voices could be distinguished. One was, curiously, almnizable.
"I had the servants posted with the body across the way—it gives us a moment before the others e.”
"Did you notice the s on his eyes?" a much younger voice asked, crossing to the outer wall where the laden tables were. "Very amusing.”
"Of course I noticed," the first man replied acerbically. Where had Devin heard that tone? Aly. "Who do you think spent an evening sging up two astins from twenty years ago? Who do you think arranged for all of this?”
The third voice was heard, laughing softly. "And a fiable of food it is," he said lightly.
"That is not what I meant!”
Laughter. "I know it isnt, but its a fiable all the same.”
"Taeri, this is not a time for jests, particularly bad ones. We only have a moment before the family arrives. Listen to me carefully. Only the three of us know what is happening.”
"It is only us, then?" the young voice queried. "No one else? Not even my father?”
"Not Gianno, and you know why. I said only us. Hold questions and listen, pup!”
Just then Devin dAsoli felt his pulse accelerate in a quite unmistakable artly because of what he was hearing, but rather more specifically because Catriana had just shifted her weight again, with a quiet sigh, and Devin became incredulously aware that her body was now pressed directly against his own and that one of her long arms had somehow slipped around his neck.
"Do you know," she whispered, almost soundlessly, mouth close to his ear, "I rather like the thought of this all of a sudden. Could you be very quiet?" The very tip of her tongue, for just an instant, touched the lobe of his ear.
Devins mouth went bone dry even as his sex leaped to full, painful ere within his blue-silver hose. Outside he could hear that voice he almost knew beginning a terse explanation of something involving pall-bearers and a hunting lodge, but the void its explanations had abruptly been rendered definitively trivial.
What was not trivial, what was in fact of the vastest importance imaginable was the undeniable fact that Catrianas lips were busy at his ned ear, and that even as his hands moved—as of their own imperative accord—to touch her eyelids and throat and then drift downward to the dreamt-of swell of her breasts, her own fingers were nimble among the drawstrings at his waist, setting him free.
Oh, Triad!" he heard himself moan as her cool fingers stroked him, "Why didnt you tell me before that you liked it dangerous?" He twisted his head sharply and their lips met fiercely for the first time. He began gathering the folds of her gown up about her hips.
She settled ba a ledge against the wall behio make it easier for him, her owh noid and shallow as well.
"There will be six of us," Devin heard from the room outside. "By seoonrise I want you to be...”
Catrianas hands suddenly tightened in his hair, almost painfully, and at that moment the last folds of her robe rode free of her hips and Devins fingers slipped in among her undergarments and found the portal hed been longing for.
She made a small ued sound a rigid for just a sed, before beiremely soft in his arms. His fingers gently stroked the deepest folds of her flesh. She drew an awkward, reag breath, then shifted again, very slightly and guided Devin into her. She gasped, her teeth sinking hard into his shoulder. For a moment, lost in astonished pleasure and sharp pain, Devin was motionless, holding her close to him, murmuring almost soundlessly, not knowing what he was saying.
"Enough! The others are here," the third voice outside rasped crisply.
"Even so," said the first. "Remember then, you two e your own ways from town—not together!—to join us tonight. Whatever you do be sure you are not followed or we are dead.”
There was a brief silehen the door on the farthest side of the room opened and Devin, beginning now to thrust slowly, silently into Catriana, finally reized the voice hed been hearing.
For the same speaker tialking, but now he assumed the delicate, remembered, intonations of the day before.
"At last!" fluted Tomasso dAstibar bar Sandre. "We feared dreadfully that youd all trived to lose yourselves in these dusty recesses, o be found again!”
"No such luck, brother," a voice growled in reply. "Though after eighteen years it wouldnt have been surprising. I wo glasses of wine very badly. Sitting still for that kind of music all m is cursed thirsty work.”
In the closet Devin and Catriana g to each other, sharing a breathless laughter. Then a newer urgency came over Devin, and it seemed to him it was in her as well, and there was suddenly nothing in the peninsula that mattered half so much as the gradually accelerating rhythm of the movements they made together.
Devi her fingernails splay outwards on his back. Feeling his climax gathering he cupped his hands beh her; she lifted her legs and ed them around him. A moment later her teeth sank into his shoulder a sed time and in that moment he felt himself explode, silently, into her.
For an unmeasured, eed space of time they remained like that, their clothing damp where it had been crushed against skin. To Devin the voices from the two rooms outside seemed to e from infinitely far away. From other worlds entirely. He really didnt want to move at all.
At length however, Catriana carefully lowered her legs to the ground to bear her ow. He traced her cheekbones with a finger in the blaess.
Behind him the lords and merts of Astibar were still shuffling past the body of the Duke so many had hated and some few had loved. To Devihe younger geion of the Sandreni ate and drank, toasting ao exile. Devin, ed close with Catriana, still sheathed within her warmth, could not have hoped to find words to say what he was feeling.
Suddenly she seized one of his trag fingers and bit it, hard. He winced, because it hurt. She didnt say anything though.
After the Sandre, Catriana found the latd they slipped out into the room again. Quickly they reaheir clothes. Pausing only long enough to seize a chi-wing apiece, they hastily retraced their path back through the rooms leading to the stairway. They met three liveried servants ing the other way and Devin, feeling exceptionally alert and alive now, claimed Catrianas fingers and
wi the servants as they passed.
She withdrew her hand a moment later.
He glanced over. "Whats wrong?”
She shrugged. "Id as soon it wasnt proclaimed throughout the Sandreni Palad beyond," she murmured, looking straight ahead.
Devin lifted his eyebrows. "What would you rather they thought about us being upstairs? I just gave them the obvious, b explanation. They wont even bother to talk about it. This sort of thing happens all the time.”
"Not to me," said Catriana quietly.
"I didnt mean it that way!" Devin protested, taken aback. But unfortuhey were going dowairs by then, and so it was with a quite ued sense of estrahat he paused to let her re- ehe room before him.
More than a little fused, he took his place behind Menico as they prepared to go back out into the courtyard.
He had only a minor supp role in the first two hymns and so he found his thoughts wandering back over the se just played out upstairs. Back, and then back again, with the memory that seemed to be his birthright fog like a beam of sunlight upoail then another, illuminating and revealing what he had missed the first time around.
And so it was that by the time it was his own turn to step forward to end and the m rites, seeing the three clergy leaning forward expetly, noting how Tomasso struck a pose of rapt atten- tiveness, Devin was able to give the "Lament for Adaon" an undivided soul, for he was fused no longer, but quite decided in what he was going to do.
He began softly in the middle rah the two syrenyae, building and shaping the a story of the god. Then, when the pipes of Alessan came in, Devi his voice leap upward in respoo them, as though in flight from mountai to chasm brink.
He sang the dying of the god with a voice made pure in the caldron of his ow ached the o rise above that courtyard and beyond it, out among the streets and squares of high-walled Astibar.
High walls he inteo pass beyond that night—beyond, and then following a trail he would find, into a wood where lay a hunting lodge. A lodge where pall-bearers were to carry the body of the Duke, and where a number of men—six, the clear voice of his memory reminded him—were to gather in a meeting that Catriana dAstibar had just dohe very best she could short of murder to prevent him learning about. He strove to turn the acrid taste of that knowledge into grief for Adaon, to let it guide and ihe pain of the "Lament.”
Better for both of us, he remembered her saying, and he could recapture in his mind the regret and the ued softness in her voice. But a certain kind of pride at Devins age is perhaps strohan at any e of mortal man, and he had already decided, before even he began to sing, here in this crowded courtyard among the great of Astibar, that he was going to be the judge of what was better, not she.
So Devin sang the rending of the god at the hands of the women, and he gave that dying oregean mountain slope all he had to give it, making his voi arrow arg outwards to seek the heart of everyone who heard.
He let Adaon fall from the high cliff, he heard the sound of the pipes recede and fall a his grieving voice spiral downward with the god into Casadel as the song came to its end.
And so too, that m, did a part of Devins life. For when a portal of Morians has been crossed there is, as everyone knows, never a turning back.
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