chapter 18
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NORMALLY WHEN SHE WENT UP ON THE RAMPARTS OF HER castle at su was to look south, watg the play of light and the ging colors of the sky above the mountains. Of late though, as springtime turowards the summer they had all been waiting for, Alienor found herself climbing to the northern ramparts instead, to pace the guards walk behind the ellations or lean upon the ch stone, gazing into the distance, ed in her shawl against the chill that still came when the su down.As if she could actually see as far as Senzio.
The shawl was a new one, brought by the messengers from Quileia that Baerd had told them would e. The on<var>藏书网</var>es who carried the messages that could, if all went right, turn the whole world upside down.
Not just the Palm: Barbadior too, where the Emperor was said to be dying, and Ygrath, and Quileia itself where, precisely because of what he was doing for them, Marius might not survive.
The Quileian messengers had stopped on their way to Fort Ortiz, as ropriate, to pay their respects to the Lady of Castle Borso and t her a gift from the new King of Quileia: an indigo- colored shawl, a color almost impossible to find here in the Palm, and one which was, she knew, a mark of nobility in Quileia, It was evident that Alessan had told this Marius a fair bit about her involvement with him over the years. Which was fine. Marius of Quileia, it seemed, was one of them; in fact, as Baerd had explai the afternoon after Alessan had ridden into the Braccio Pass and then away west, Marius was the key to everything.
Two days after the Quileians passed through, AJienan a habit of springtime rides that took her, casually, far enough afield to ate one or two ht stays at neighb castles. At which time she relayed a quite specific message to a hah 0 dozen equally specific people.
Senzio. Before Midsummer Not long afterwards, a silk-mert and then a singer she rather liked came down to Castle Borso with word of tremendous troop movements among the Barbadians. The roads were absolutely clogged with meraries marg north, they said. She had raised her eyebrows in quizzical mystification, but had allowed herself more wihan was ary each of those two nights, and had rewarded both men later, after her own fashion.
Up on the ramparts at su now, she heard a footstep oair behind her. She had been waiting for it.
Without turning, she said, "You are almost too late. The sun is nearly gone." Which was true; the color of the sky and the thin, u clouds in the west had darkened from pink through crimson and purple most of the way down to the indigo she wore about her shoulders.
Elena stepped out on the parapet.
"Im sorry," she said, inappropriately. She was always apologizing, still uneasy in the castle. She moved to the guards walk beside Alienor and looked out over the gathering darkness of the late-spring fields. Her long yellow hair fanned over her shoulders, the ends lifting in the breeze.
Ostensibly she was here to serve as a new lady-in-waiting to Alienor. She had brought her two young children and her few belongings into Borso tws after the Ember Days had ended. It was sidered a good idea that she be established here well before the time that might matter. It appeared, incredibly enough, that there could actually e a time when her being here might matter.
Tomaz, the gaunt, aged Khardhu warrior had said that it would be necessary for one of them to stay here. Tomaz, who was very clearly not from Khardhun, and just as clearly unwilling to say who he really was. Alienor didnt care about that. What mattered was that Baerd and Alessan trusted him, and in this matter Baerd was deferring to the dark, hollow-cheeked man absolutely,
"One of whom, exactly?" Alienor had asked. The four of them had been alone: herself, Baerd and Tomaz, and the red-headed young girl who didnt like her, Catriana.
Baerd hesitated a long time. "One of the Night Walkers," he said finally.
She had raised her eyebrows at that, the small outward gesture serving to show all she repared to reveal of her inward astonishment.
"Really? Here? They are still about?”
Baerd nodded.
"And that is where you were last night when you went out?”
After a sed Baerd nodded again.
The girl Catriana blinked in ma surprise. She was clever and quite beautiful, Alienor thought, but she still had rather a great deal to learn.
"Doing what?" Alienor asked Baerd.
But this time he shook his head. She had expected that. There were limits with Baerd; she erying to push towards them. One night, ten years ago, she had fouly where his boundaries of privacy lay, in one dimension at least. Surprisingly perhaps, their friendship had deepened from that time on.
Now, uedly, he grinned. "You could have them all stay here, of course, not just one.”
She had grimaced with a distaste only partly feigned. "One will be suffit, thank you. Assuming it is enough for your purposes, whatever those are?" She said that last to the old man disguised as a Khardhu warrior. His skin c was really very good but she knew all about Baerds teiques of disguise.
Over the years he and Ales-san had shown up here in an effective diversity of appearances.
"Im not absolutely sure what our purposes are," Tomaz had replied frankly. "But insofar as we need an anchor for what Baerd wants us to at least be able to try, one of them in this castle should be enough.”
"Enough for what?" shed probed again, not really expeg anything.
"Enough for my magic to reach out and find this place," Tomaz had said bluntly.
This time it was she who blinked and Catriana who looked unruffled and superior. Which was unfair, Alienor decided afterwards; the girl must have known the old man was a wizard. That was why she haded. Alienor had enough of a sense of humor to find their by-play amusing, and even to feel a little regretful when Catriana had gone.
Two days afterwards Elena had e. Baerd had said it would be a woman. He had asked Alienor to take care of her. She had raised her eyebrows at that as well.
On the northern ramparts she glanced over iwilight. Elena had e up without a cloak; her hands were cupping her elbows tightly against her body. Feeling unreasonably irritated, Alienor abruptly removed her shawl and draped it over the others shoulders.
"You should know better by now," she said sharply. "It gets cold up here when the sun goes down.”
"Im sorry," Elena said again, quickly motioning to remove the shawl. "But youll be chilled now. Ill go down a something for myself.”
"Stay where you are!" Alienor snapped. Elena froze, apprehension in her eyes. Alienor looked out past her, past the darkening fields and the emerging flickers of light where night dles and fires were being lit in houses and farms below. She looked beyond all these uhe first stars of the evening, her eyes straining north, her imagination winging far beyond her sight to where the others would all be gathering now, or soon.
"Stay here," she said, mently. "Stay with me.”
Elenas blue eyes widened in the darkness as she looked over. Her expression was grave, thoughtful.
Uedly, she smiled. And then, even more astonishingly, she moved nearer and drew her arm
through Alienors, pulling her close. Alienor stiffened for a sed, then allowed herself to relax against the other woman. She had asked for panionship. For the first time in more years than she could remember, she had asked for this. A pletely different kind of intimacy. It felt, of late, as if something rigid and hard was falling away inside her. She had waited for this summer, for what it might mean, for so many years.
What had the young one said, Devin? About being allowed more tharansience of desire, if only one believed it was deserved. No one had ever said such a thing to her in all the years since aro of Borso had died fighting Barbadior. In which dark time his young widow, his bride, alone in a highland castle with her grief and rage, had bee upon the road towards what she had bee.
He had goh Alessan, Devin. By now, they would probably be in the north as well. Alienor looked out, lettihoughts stream like birds arrowing away through darkness, across the miles between, to where all of their fates would be decided when Midsummer came.
Dark hair and light blown bad mingled by the wind, the two women stood together in that high place for a long time, sharing warmth, sharing the night and the waiting time.
It had long been said, sometimes in mockery, sometimes with a bemusement that bordered ohat as the days heated up in summer, so did the night-time passions of Senzio. The hedonistic self- indulgence of that northern province, blessed with fertile soil ale weather, was a byword in the Palm and evehe seas. You could get whatever you wanted in Senzio, it was said, provided you were willing to pay for it. And fight someoo keep it, the initiated often added.
Towards the end of spring that year it might have been thought that burgeoning tensions and the palpable threat of war would have dampehe noal ardor of the Senzians—and their endless flow of visitors—for wine, for lovemaking in diverse binations, and for brawling iaverns and streets.
Someone might indeed have thought such a thing, but not anyone who knew Senzio. In fact, it actually seemed as if the looming portents of disaster—the Barbadians massed ominously on the Ferraut border, the ever-increasing numbers of ships of the Ygrathen flotilla anchored at Farsaro Island off the northwestern tip of the province—were simply spurs to the wildness of night in Senzio town. There were no curfews here; there hadnt been for hundreds of years. And though emissaries of both invading powers were promily housed in opposite wings of what was now called the Governors Castle, Senzians still boasted that they were the only free province i<samp>.</samp>n the Palm.
A boast that began t more hollow with each passing day and sybaritiight as the entire peninsula braced itself for a flagration.
In the face of whirushing intrusion of reality Senzio town merely intensified the already manic pace of its dark hours. Legendary watering-holes like The Red Glove or Thetaph were packed with sweating, shouting patrons every night, to whom they dispeheir harsh, overpriced liquors and a seemingly endless stream of available flesh, male or female, in the warrens of airless rooms upstairs.
Those innkeepers who had elected, for whatever reasons, not to trade in purchased love had to offer substantially different is to their patrons. For the eponymous owner of Solinghis, a tavern not far from the castle, good food, det vintages and ales, and rooms in which to sleep were assurances of a respectable if not aravagant living, derived primarily from merts and traders disined to traffi the ality of night, or at least to sleep a amid that overripe corruption.
Solinghis also prided itself on , by day ht, the best music to be found iy at any given time.
At this particular moment, shortly before the dinner-hour one day late in the spring, the bar and table patrons of the almost full tavern were enjoying the music of an urio: a Senzian harper, a piper from Astibar, and a young Asolini tenor who—acc to a rumor started a couple of days before—was the singer who had disappeared after perf Sandre dAstibars funeral rites last fall.
Rumors of every kind were rife in Senzio that spring, but few believed this one: such a prodigy was
unlikely ireme to be singing in a put-together group like this. But in fact the young tenor had an exceptional void he was matched by the playing of the other two. Solinghi di Senzio was immensely pleased with their effe business over the past week.
The truth was, he would have given them employment and a room upstairs if they made music like boarhounds in lust. Solinghi had been a friend of the dark-haired man who was now calling himself Adreano dAstibar for almost ten years. A friend, and more than that; as it happened, almost half the patrons of the inn this spring were men who had e to Senzio expressly to meet the three musis here. Solinghi kept his mouth shut, poured wine and beer, supervised his cooks and serving-girls, and prayed to Eanna of the Lights every night before he went to sleep that Alessan knew what he was doing.
This particular afternoorons enjoying the young tenors rousiion of a Certandan ballad were rudely snapped out of their bar-pounding rhythm when the doors to the street were pushed open, revealing a largish cluster of new ers. Nothing of note in that, of course. Or not until the singer cut himself off in the middle of a chorus with a shouted greeting, the piper quickly laid down his pipes and leaped off the stage, and the harper lowered his own instrument and followed, if more slowly.
The enthusiasms of the reunion that ensued would have led to predictably ical clusions about the nature of the men involved, given the way of such things in Senzio, had the new party not included a pair of exceptionally attractive young women, oh short red hair, oh raven-dark. Even the harper, a dour, unsmiling fellow if ever there was one, was drawn almost against his will into the circle, to be crushed against the bony breast of a cadaverous looking Khardhu merary who towered over the rest of the party.
A moment later another kind of reunion occurred. Oh a different resohat even stilled the excitement of the newly mingled group. Another man rose and walked diffidently over to the five people who had just arrived. Those who looked closely could see that his hands were trembling.
"Baerd?" they heard him say.
There followed a moment of silehen the man whom hed addressed said "Naddo?" in a tone even the most i Senzian could interpret. Any lingering doubts about that were laid to rest a sed later by the way the two men embraced each other.
They eve.
More than one man, eyeing the two women with frank admiration, decided that his ces of a versation, and who knew what else, might be better than theyd first appeared if the men were all like that.
Alais had been moving through the days siregea in a state of excitement that brought an almost tinuous flush to her pale skin and made her more delicately beautiful than she knew. What she did know is why she had been allowed to e.
From the moment the Sea Maid s landing-boat had silently returo the ship in the moonlit harbor ea, bearing her father and Catriana and the two men theyd goo meet, Alais had been aware that something more than friendship was involved here.
Then the dark-skinned man from Khardhu had looked at her appraisingly, and at Rovigo with an amused expression on his lined face, and her father, hesitating for only a moment, had told her who this really was. And then, quietly, but with an exhilarating fiden her, hed explained what these people, his new partners, were really doing here, and what he appeared to have been doing i with them freat many years.
It appeared that it had not beeirely a ce after all that theyd met three musis on the road outside their home during the Festival of Vines last fall.
Listening ily, trying not to miss a syllable or an implication, Alais measured her own inward respoo all of this and leased beyond words to discover that she was not afraid. Her fathers void manner had much to do with that. And the simple fact that he was trusting her with this.
It was the other man—Baerd, they named him—who said to, "If you are truly set on ing with us to Senzio, then we will have to find a pla the coast to put your daughter ashore.”
"Why, exactly?" Alais had said quickly befo could answer. She could feel her color rising as all eyes turo her. They were down below deck, crowded in her fathers .
Baerds eyes were very dark by dlelight. He was a hard-looking, even a dangerous-seeming man, but his voice when he answered her was not unkind.
"Because I dont believe in subjeg people to unnecessary risks. There is danger in what we are about to do. There are also reasons for us to face those dangers, and your fathers assistand that of his men if he trusts them, is important to us. For you to e would be a danger without y. Does that make sense?”
She forced herself to be calm. "Only if you judge me a child, incapable of any tribution." She swallowed. "I am the same age as Catriana and I think I now uand what is happening here. What you have been trying to do. I have ... I say that I have the same desire as any of you to be free.”
"There are truths in that. I think she should e." It was, remarkably, Catriana. "Baerd," she went on, "if this is truly the time that will decide, we have no business refusing people who feel the way we do.
Nht to decide that they must huddle in their homes waiting to see if they are still slaves or not when the summer ends.”
Baerd looked at Catriana for a long time but said nothing. He turo, deferring to him with a gesture. In her fathers face Alais could see worry and love warring with his pride in her. And then, by the light of the dles, she saw that inner battle end.
"If we get through this alive,&quo dAstibar said to his daughter, his life, his joy in life, "your mother will kill me. You know that, dont you?”
"Ill try to protect you," Alais said gravely, though her heart was rag like a wild thing.
It had beealk at the railing of the ship, she knew. She k absolutely. The two of them looking at the cliffs under moonlight after the storm.
I dont know what it is, she had said, but I need more.
I know, her father had replied. I know you do. If I could give it, it would be yours. The world and the stars of Eanna would all be yours.
It was because of that, because he loved her a what he had said, that he was allowio e with them to where the world they knew would be put into the balance.
Of that jouro Senzio she remembered two things particularly. Standing at the rail early one m with Catriana as they moved north up the coast of Astibar. Oiny village, and then another and ahe roofs of houses bright in the sun, small fishing boats bobbiween the Sea Maid and the shore.
"That one is my home," Catriana said suddenly, breaking a silence, speaking so softly only Alais could hear. "And that boat with the blue sail is actually my fathers." Her voice was odd, eerily detached from the meaning of the words.
"We have to stop, then!" Alais had murmured urgently. "Ill tell my father! Hell—”
Catriana laid a hand on her arm.
"Not yet," shed said. "I t see him yet. After. After Senzio. Perhaps.”
That was one memory. The other, very different, was of rounding the northern tip of Farsaro Island early in the m and seeing the ships of Ygrath and the Western Palm anchored in the harbor there.
Waiting for war. She had been afraid then, as the reality of what they were sailing towards was brought home to her in that vision, at once brightly colorful and forbidding as grey death. But she had looked over at Catriana, and her father, and then at the old Duke, Sandre, who named himself Tomaz now, and she had seen shadings of doubt and ay in each of them as well. Only Baerd, carefully ting the flotilla,
had a different kind of expression on his face.
If shed been forced to put a o that look she would have said, hesitantly, that it was desire.
The afternoon they had e to Senzio, and had moored the Maid in the crowded harbor and gone ashore, and so had e, at the end of the day, to an inn all the others seemed to know about. And the five of them had walked through the doors of that tavern into a flashing of jht and sudden as the sun e up from the rim of the sea.
Devin embraced her tightly and then kissed her on the lips, and then Alessan, after a moments visible ay at her presend a searg gla her father, did exactly the same. There was a lean-faced grey-haired man named Erlein with them, and then a number of other men iavern came up—Naddo was one name, Ducas another, and there was an older blind man with those two whose name she never caught. He walked with the aid of a magnifit stick. It had the most extraordinary carved eagles head, with eyes so pierg they seemed almost to be a pensation for the loss of his own.
There were others as well, from all over, it seemed. She missed most of their here was a great deal of he innkeeper brought them wiwo bottles of Senzio green and a third one of Astibars blue wine. She had a small, careful glass of each, watg everyorying to sort through the chaotic babble of all that was said. Alessan and Baerd drew briefly apart for a moment, she noticed; when they returo the table both men looked thoughtful and somewhat grim.
Then Devin and Alessan and Erlein had to go bad make their music for an hour while the others ate, and Alais, flushed and terribly excited, inwardly relived the feel of the two mens lips upon hers. She found herself smiling shyly at everyone, afraid that her face was giving away exactly what she was feeling.
Afterwards they made their stairs behind the broad back of the innkeepers wife to their rooms. And later, when it was quiet on that upper level Catriana led her from the room they were put in, down the hall to the bedroom Devin and Alessan and Erlein shared.
They were there, and a number of other men—some of the ones shed just met, and a feere strangers. Her father entered a moment later with Sandre and Baerd. She and Catriahe only women there. She had a moment to feel a little strange about that, and to think about how far she was from home, before everyone fell silent as Alessan pushed a hand through his hair and began to speak.
And as he did, Alais, trating, gradually came to uand with the others the dimensions, the truly frightening shape, of what he proposed to do.
At a certain poiopped and looked at three men one by o Duke Sandre first, then at a round-faced Certandan named Sertino sitting with Ducas, and finally, almost challengingly, at Erlein di Senzio.
The three of them were wizards, she uood. It was a hard thing to e to terms with. Especially Sahe exiled Duke of Astibar. Their neighbor in the distrada all her life.
The man called Erlein was sitting on his bed, his back against the wall, hands crossed over his breast.
He was breathing hard.
"It is clear to me now that you have lost your mind," he said. His voice shook. "You have lived in your dreams so long youve lost sight of the world. And now yoing to <var></var>kill people in your madness.”
Alais saw Devin open his mouth and then snap it shut without speaking.
"All of this is possible," Alessan said, with an ued mildness. "It is possible I am pursuing a path of madness, though I think not. But yes, there are likely to be a great many people killed. We always khat; the real madness would have been iending otherwise. For the moment though, pose your spirit and ease your soul. You know as well as I do, nothing is happening.”
"Nothing? What do you mean?" It was her father.
Alessans expression was wry, almost bitter. "Havent you noticed? You were in the harbor, you walked through the town. Have you seen any Barbadian troops? Any Ygrathens, soldiers from the west?
Nothing is happening. Alberico of Barbadior has his entire army massed on the border, and the man refuses to order them north!”
"He is afraid," said Sandre flatly in the silehat followed. "Hes afraid of Brandin.”
"Perhaps," her father said thoughtfully. "Or else he is just cautious. Too cautious.”
"What do we do then?" asked the red-bearded Tregean named Ducas.
Alessan shook his head. "I dont know. I holy dont know. This is ohing I never expected. You tell me," he said. "How do we make him cross the border? How do we bring him to war?" He looked at Ducas and then at each of the others in the room.
No one answered him.
They would think he was a coward. They were fools. They were all fools. Only a fool went lightly into war. Especially a war such as this, that risked everything fain he hardly cared about. Senzio?
The Palm? What did they matter? Should he throw twenty years away for them?
Every time a messenger arrived from ba Astibar something in him leaped with hope. If the Emperor had died . . .
If the Emperor had died he and his men were gone. Away from this blighted peninsula, home to claim an Emperors Tiara in Barbadior. That was his war, the one he wao fight. The ohat mattered, the only thing that had really mattered all these years. He would sail home with three armies and wrest the Tiara from the court favorites h there like so many iual fluttering moths.
And after that he could make war back here, with all the gathered might of Barbadior. The Brandin of Ygrath, of the Western Palm, whatever he chose to name himself, the him try to stand before Alberiperor of Barbadior.
Gods, the sweetness of it ...
But no such message came from the east, no such glittering reprieve. And so the bald reality was that he found himself camped with his meraries here on the border between Ferraut and Senzio, preparing to face the armies of Ygrath and the Western Palm, knowing that the eyes of the entire world would be upon them now. If he lost, he lost everything. If he won . . . well that depended on the cost. If too many of his men died here, what kind of an army would he have to lead home?
And too many men dying was a vivid prospeow. Ever since what had happened in the harbor of Chiara. Most of the Ygrathen army had indeed sailed home, exactly as anticipated, leaving Brandin crippled and exposed. Which is why Alberico had moved, why the three panies were here ah them. The flow and shape of events had seemed to be on their side, in the clearest possible way.
Then the Certandan woman had fished a ring from the water for Brandin.
She haunted his dreams, that never-seen woman. Three times now shed surfaced like a nightmare in his life. Back when Brandin had first claimed her for his saishan she had nearly drawn him into an insane war. Siferval had wao fight, Alberiembered. The Third pany captain had proposed st across the border into Lower Corte and sag Stevaself.
Gods. 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 mog gibes Brandi east. Even then, long ago, he had preserved his discipline, kept his eyes on the real prize bae.
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 Ygrathens life two months ago. It had been there for him, gently floating down: with Brandin assassihe Ygrathens would have all sailed home and the western provinces would have lain open before him like so much ripe fruit.
Quileias crippled King would have hobbled across the mountains to abase himself before Alberico, begging for the trade he needed. No elaborate letters then about fearing the mighty power of Ygrath. It would have all been so easy, so ... elegant.
But it was not so, because of the woman. The woman from one of his own provihe irony was corusg, it was like acid in his soul. Certando was his 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 anchored in the Bay of Farsaro, waiting for Alberiake 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, they gibbered. We must move, they chorused, their imbecilic faces looming in his dreams, set close together, hanging like lurid moons too he earth.
Anghiar, his emissary in the Governors Castle at Senzio, sent word that Casalia still favored 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 the 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 passing day gaining audieh 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.
e!
Ripe for harvesting? Didnt they uand? Didnt any of them realize that there was sorcery to re with?
He knew how strong Brandin was; he had probed and backed quickly away from the Ygrathens power in the year they had both e 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 anymore; he k, if none of the others did. If he went to war it had to be a deade in the light of that. His military edge had to be enoug?9９ｌｉb?o offset the Ygrathens sorcery. He o be 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 vaoon 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 ms would e. Digesting messages like rancid food, he would begin to wrestle again, endlessly, with the other thing that was nagging him this season like an ied wound.
Somethi wroirely wrong. There was an aspect about this whole 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 were calling the measure of the dance. F Brandin and the entire Palm to respond to his tune. Seizing trol again after a winter of being impacted upon in all those trivial, discerting, cumulative ways. Shapis so that Quileia would have no choice but to seek him out, so that bae in the Empire they could not mistake his power, the vigor of his will, the glory of his quests.
That was how he was supposed to feel. How he had indeed briefly felt the m hed heard that Brandin had abdicated in Ygrath. When hed ordered his three armies north to the border of Senzio.
But something had ged sihat 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 couldnt even talk about it—even if hed had ao talk to— couldnt 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 immi, 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 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 m when he woke and it would not be shaken off. her would it e clear for him uhe spring sun, in that border meadht with the banners of Barbadior, with irises and asphodels, and fragrant with the st of the surrounding pines.
So he waited, praying to his gods for word of a death bae, 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 e clear.
Refusing, as the days slipped past, to dao what might be someone elses 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 lao try to steady herself.
She reached up nervously to adjust her hair uhe dark hood, fingering the jeweled blab shed set in it. On the ship ing here Alais, who had said she was used to doing so for her sisters, had evened and shaped her inal swift cropping on the floor of the shop in Tregea. Catriana knew her appearance erfectly acceptable now—more than that, actually, if the reas 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 revelers to pass by ireet before her. This was a better part of town, so he castle, but there was no truly safe quarter of Senzio for a woman alone ireets at night.
She wasnt out here for safety though, which is why none of the others knew where she was. They would never have let her e. Nor would she, being ho with herself, have knowingly let any of them uake 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 dle always lit at su on the first of the Ember Days. Devins father had dohe same thing, she remembered him saying. Pride, hed thought it was: withholding something from the Triad because of what they had allowed to happen. Her mother wasnt a proud woman, but her had she permitted herself tet.
Tonight Catriana saw herself as being like one of her mothers forbidden dles on those Ember Nights while all the rest of the world lay shrouded in darkness. She was a small flame, exactly like those dles; ohat would not last the night, but ohat, if the Triad had any love at all for her, might shape a flagration before she went out.
The drunken revelers finally staggered by, heading in the dire of the harbor taverns. She waited another moment and then, muffled in her hood, went quickly into the street, keeping to the side of it and started the other way. Toward the castle.
It would be much better, she thought, if she could somehow make her hands be still and slow her
rag heart. She should have had a glass of wine back at Solinghis before slipping away, using the outside back stairs so that none of the others would see her. Shed sent Alais down to dinner alone, pleading a womans illness, promising to follow soon if she could.
She had lied so easily, had even managed a reassuring smile. Then Alais was gone and she was alone, realizing in that precise instant, as the room dently closed, that she would never see any of the ain.
Ireet 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 o the castle gardens then. She bit her lips, to force color 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 street over. A womans 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 bae 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 gratitude she discovered that her hands were steady now. She checked her earrings, the silver band about her throat, the jeweled or in her hair. Then she drew onto her hand the red glove shed bought in the market that afternoon and she walked across the street and around the er of the garden wall into the blaze of light at the entrao the Governors Castle of Senzio.
There were fuards, two outside the locked gates, two just within. She allowed her hooded cloak fall open, to let them see the black gown she wore beh.
The two guards outside the gates gla each other and visibly relaxed, removing their hands from their swords. The other two moved he 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 e?" And she held up her left hand, sheathed in the bright red glove.
She had actually been amused at first by Deviion and Rovigos in the marketplace. Casalia, the plump, uhy looking Governor had ridden through, side by side with the emissary from Barbadior. They had been laughing together. Brandins emissary from the Western Palm had been several paces behind, among a cluster 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-merts stall. They had turo see the Governo by.
He had not gone by. Instead, Anghiar of Barbadior laid a quick restraining hand on Casalias braceleted wrist and they stopped their prang horses directly in front of the two women. Thinking ba 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 Casalias ear. The plump Governor laughed, too quickly, a little too loudly. Anghiars blue eyes stripped the women to their flesh uhe bright sun.
Alais looked away, but not down. Catriahe Barbadians 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 Brandins emissary, looking grimly unhappy for all the beauty of the m.
Catriana had bee aware of Devin at her shoulder and Rovigo beside his daughter. She looked at them aered the ched fury in their eyes. It was then that shed felt amusement, however briefly.
"That," she said lightly, "is exactly how Baerd looked before he almost had us both killed in Tregea. I dont think Im 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 horobably sounded, and that he was quite serious in what hed said, she squeezed his arm. Not something she would have done six months before. She was ging, they all were.
But just about then, amusement 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 m market had closed she had mao be alone long enough to purchase what she needed. Earrings, gown, blab. Red glove.
And it was while doing these things that shed 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 shed even been able to think of it. When night fell she would have to e 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 dohey all k. A move had to be made, and that m in the market Catriana had thought shed discovered what that move might be.
Shed spent the first part of this solitary walk through darkness wishing she were braver though, that her hands would not tremble as they were. But theyd stopped shaking after all when she reached the garden wall and saw a star fall in the blue-black velvet sky.
"Well have to search you, you uand," 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 bes to standing watch here, arent there?" The other one laughed, and drew her forward, not uly, 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 altercatioweewo men oher side of the gate, ending in a cise six-word order. One of them, maly outranked, relutly began heading inward through the courtyard to find Anghiar of Barbadior and tell him his dreams had just e true, or some such thing. The other hastily unlocked the gates with a key on a ring at his belt and came out to joihers.
They took some with her, but were not unkind, nor did they presume too mu the end. If she was going to the Barbadian and found favor there, they could be at risk in offending her. She had ted on something like that. She mao laugh softly once or twice, but not so much as to ence them.
She was thinking of patterns still, remembering the very first evening shed e 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, shed said when they opeo her knock. 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 khe way their fate line would run? Iably perhaps, she thought about Devin in the hidden closet of the Sandreni Palace. Which had worked our rather differently in almost every way than she had expected it to. Not that shed 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 dle starting a blaze.
By the time they were doh her the fuard 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 tral courtyard. Light spilled erratically downward from interior windows above. Before they passed inside she looked up at the stars. Eannas lights. Every one of them with a name.
They went into the castle through a pair of massive duarded 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 artly open. Beyond it, as they approached, Catriana caught a glimpse of a room elaborately furnished in dark, rich colors.
In the doorway itself stood Anghiar of Barbadior, in a blue robe to match his eyes, holding a glass of green wine and dev her with his gaze for the sed time that day.
She smiled, a 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 alohere were dles burning everywhere.
"Red vixen," he said, "how do you like to play?”
Devin had been edgy all week, uneasy in his own skin; he khey all felt the same way. The bination of building tension and enforced idleness, coupled with the awareness—one had only to look at Alessans faetimes—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 beeraordinary, a blessing of grace these past few days.
Rovigos daughter had seemed to grow wiser aler a more at ease among them with each passing day, as if sensing a need, a reason for her to be here, and so moving to fill that need. Observant, unceasingly cheerful, effortlessly versational, with questions and bright responses and a declared passion for long aes from all of them, she had, almost single-handedly, prevehree or four mealtimes from degeing into sullen grimness or fractious rancor. Blind Rinaldo the Healer seemed almost in love with her, so much did he seem to flourish when she was by his side. He wasnt 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.
Ihouse atmosphere of Senzio Alaiss 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 panions into versation, and the look in the mans eyes spoke volumes.
Now, at the end of dinner, having spent the last half-hour turning their market expedition of the m and afternoon into a veritable sea-voyage of discovery, Alais excused herself briefly a back upstairs. Her departure was followed by an abrupt return of grimo the table, an inexorable reversion to the single dominating preoccupation of their lives. Even Rovigo was not immune: he leaowards 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, searg out likely battlefields, and so the best place for them to position themselves wheime came for their own last roll of dice. Devin didnt much like thinking about that. It had to do with magid magic always bothered him. Besides which, there had to be a battle for anything to happen, and AJberico 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 harbor taverns tonight, braving the blandishments of the flesh- merts to keep in touch with the Tregeans men and Rovigos sailors, and a number of the others who had made their way north in respoo a long-awaited summons.
They also had a rumor to spread: about Rinaldo di Senzio, the Governors exiled uncle, said to be somewhere iy 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 ged ieen 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 Rinaldos eyes to ralize him, and the it very quiet The old man, huddled quietly now in a er of Solinghis, was unlikely ireme to be reized, and the only thing they could really do these days was tribute as much as they could to raising tensions iy. If the Governor could be made more anxious, the emissaries a little more uneasy . . .
Rinaldo himself said little, though it was he himself who had first suggested starting the rumor. He seemed to be coiling athering himself; with a war to e the demands on a Healer would be severe, and Rinaldo was not young anymore. When he did speak it was mostly with Sahe two old men, enemies from rival provinces iime before the Tyrants, now eased and distracted each other with whispered recolles 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 teo eat and drink alone, sometimes in Solinghis, more often elsewhere. A few of his fellow Senzians had reized 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 m 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 had up to enduring Erleins abrasiveness. One might have hought 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 wasnt worried about Erleins absences because Alessan wasnt. For the man to betray them in any way was certaih for himself. Erlein might be enraged and bitter and sullen, but he wasnt, by any stretch, a fool.
He had gone elsewhere to dihis evening as well, though he would have to be ba Solinghis 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 Devihat only really applied to the three of them. What some of the others scattered about the city were doing for release he couldnt imagine. Or, yes he could. This was Senzio.
"Somethings wrong!" Blind Rinaldo said abruptly beside him, tilting his head as if sniffing the air.
Alessan stopped sketg the distrada terrain oablecloth 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 Devi a finger of dread touch him.
"Catrianas gone!" she said, fighting to keep her voice low. Her eyes flicked from her father to Devin, theed on Alessan.
"What? How?&quo 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 Priared at Alais. "What else?”
The girls face was white. "She ged her clothes. I dont uand why. She bought a black silk gown and some jewelry in the market this afternoon. I was going to ask her about it but I ... I didnt want to presume. Shes so hard to ask questions of. But theyre gone. All the things she bought.”
"A silk gown?" Alessan said incredulously, his voice rising. "What in Morians name . . . ?”
But Devin already knew. He knew absolutely.
Alessan hadnt been with them that m, her had Sahey had no way of uanding.
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!" Stupidly, fatuously, as if she were in the room, and could still be stopped, still be kept among them, dissuaded from going out into the dark aloh her silk and jewels, with her unfathomable ce and her pride.
"What? Devin, tell me, what is it?" Sandre, voice like a knife. Alessan said nothing. Only turhe grey eyes brag for pain.
"Shes goo the castle," Devin said flatly. "Shes goo 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 didnt look back.
Eanna, show grace, he prayed silently, over and over as they raced toward the risen moons. Goddess of Light, let it not be like this. Not like this.
He said nothing though. He sped toward the castle in the dark, fear in his heart like a living thing, bringing the terrible knowledge of death.
Devin knew how fast he could run, had prided himself on his speed all his life. But moving as if possessed, scarcely toug the ground, Alessan was with him when they reached the Governors Castle.
They careened around a er side by side and came to the garden wall and there they stopped, looking upast the branches of a huge, spreading sejoia tree. They could hear Rovigo e up behind them, and someone else further back. They did not turn to see. They were both looking at the same thing.
There was a figure silhouetted against torchlight in one of the highest windows. A figure they knew.
Wearing a long dark gown.
Devin dropped to his knees in the moonlit lane. He thought about climbing the wall, about screaming her name aloud. The sweet st of tainflowers surrounded him. He looked at Alessans face, and then quickly away from what he saw there.
How did she like to play?
Mostly, she didnt, and especially not like this. She had not been the playing kind. She had liked swimming, and walks along the bea the ms, mostly aloher walks inland into the woods, pig mushrooms or mahgoti leaves for tea. She had liked music always, and the more since meeting Alessan. And yes, some six or seven years ago she had begun to have her own itent dreams of finding love and passion somewhere in the world. Not often though, and the man seldom had a fa those dreams.
There was a mans face with her now though, and this was not a dream. Nor was it play. It was death.
Entrances and endings. A dle shaping fire before it went out.
She was lying on his bed, o his sight and touch save for the jewelry shining at wrist and throat and ears and in her hair. Light blazed from all ers of the room. It seemed that Anghiar liked to watch his women respond to what he did. e on top of me, hed murmured in her ear. Later, she had replied.
He had laughed, a husky sound deep in his throat, and had moved to be above her, naked as well, save for his ruffled white shirt which hung open showing the delicate blond hairs on his chest.
He was a skillful lover, a deeply experienced o was what let her kill him, in the end.
He lowered his head to her breasts before entering her. He took one nipple in his mouth, surprisingly gently, and began to run his tongue in circles over it.
Catriana closed her eyes for a moment. She made a sound, one she thought was right. She stretched her hands catlike above her head, moving her body sinuously uhe pressure of his mouth and hands.
She touched the blab in her hair. Red vixen. She moaned again. His hands were ohighs, moving upward aween, his mouth was still at her breast. She slid the b free, pressed the catch so the blade sprang open. And then, moving without haste, as if she had all the time in the world, as if this single momehe gathered sum of all the moments of her life, she brought her on dolu into his throat.
Which meant that his life was over.
You could buy anything you wanted in Senzios on market. Anything at all. Including a womans or with a hidden blade. And poison on the blade. An or for the hair, in black, with shining jewels, one of which released the<q></q> spring that freed the blade. An exquisite, deadly thing.
Grafted in Ygrath, of course. For that was tral to her plan tonight.
Anghiars head snapped ba shock. His mouth twisted in an involuntary snarl as his eyes bulged wide in staring agony. There was blood pumping from his throat, soaking into the sheets and the pillows, c her.
He screamed, a terrible sound. He rolled off her, off the bed, onto the carpeted floor, clutg desperately at his throat. He screamed again. There was so much blood pulsing from him. He tried to stop it, pressing his hands to the wound. It didnt matter. It wasnt the wound that would kill him. She watched him, heard the screaming stop, followed by a wet, bubbling sound. Anghiar of Barbadior toppled slowly over on one side, mouth still open, blood leaking from his throat onto the carpet. And then his blue eyes clouded and closed.
Catriana looked down at her hands. They were steady as stone. And so was the beat of her heart. In a moment that was all the moments in her life. Entrances and endings.
There was a furious pounding on the locked door. Frantic shouting, a panic-stri volley of curses.
She was not yet dohey could not be allowed to take her. She knew what sorcery could do to the mind. If they had her alive they had all of her friends. They would know everything. She was under no illusions, had known there was a final step from the time she formed this plan.
They were battering against the door now. It was large and heavy, would hold a moment or two. She rose up and put on the gown again. She did not want to be naked now, she couldnt have really said why.
Bending over the bed she took the Ygrathen on, that glittering agency of death, and, careful of the treated blade, laid it beside Anghiar to be quickly found. It was necessary that it be found.
There was a sharp splintering sound from the door, more shouting, a tumult of noise in the corridor.
She thought about setting fire to the room—dle to blaze, it appealed to her—but no, they had to find Anghiars body aly what had killed him. She opehe casement window and stepped up on the ledge. The window was elegantly designed, easily tall enough for her to stand upright before it. She looked outward and down for a moment. The room was over the garden, far above it. More than high enough. The st of the sejoia trees came drifting up, and the heavy sweetness of tainflowers, and there were ht flowers whose names she did not know. Both moons had risen now, Vidomni and Ilarion watg her. She looked at them for a moment but it was to Morian she prayed, for it was toward Morian she was crossing, through the last portal of all.
She thought of her mother. Of Alessan. Of his dream that had bee hers, and for which she was now to die in a land not her own. Briefly she thought of her father, knowing how much this all had to do
with making redress, with the way each geion seemed to put its mark upon the , one way or another. Let it be enough, she prayed then, aiming the thought like an arrow of the mind toward Morian in her Halls.
The door burst inward with a grinding crash. Half a dozeumbled into the room. It was time.
Catriana turned back from the stars and the two moons and the garden. She looked down at the men from the window-ledge. There was a singing in her heart, a cresdo of hope and pride.
"Death to Barbadiors servants!" she screamed at the top of her voice. "Freedom for Senziol" she cried, and then: "Long live King Brandin of the Palm!”
One man, quicker thahers, reacted, springing across the room. He was not quite quiough, not as fast as she. She had already turhe acid of those last, necessary words eating in her brain. She saw the moons again, Eannas stars, the wide, waiting darkness between them and beyond.
She leaped. Felt the night wind in her fad in her hair, saw the dark ground of the garden begin to hurtle up toward her, heard voices for an instant, and then all, only the loud, rushing wind. She was alone, falling. She had always been alo seemed. Endings. A dle. Memories. A dream, a prayer of flames, that they might e. Then a last doorway, an uedly gentle darkness seemed to open wide before her in the air. She closed her eyes just before she went through.
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