A great many men had heard the argument by then, though. A great many had nodded, hearing it.
Devin joined the other four about a mile south of the crossroads inn on the dusty road leading to Certando. They were waiting for him. Catriana was alone in the first cart but Devin climbed up beside Baerd in the second.
‘Bubbling like a pot of khav,’ he said cheerfully in response to a quizzical eyebrow. Alessan rode up on one side. He’d buckled on his sword, Devin saw. Baerd’s bow was on the cart, just behind the seat and within very quick reach. Devin had had occasion, several times in six months, to see just how quick Baerd’s reach could be. Alessan smiled over at him, riding bareheaded in the bright afternoon.
‘I take it you stirred the pot a little after we left?’
Devin grinned. ‘Didn’t need much stirring. The two of you have that routine down like professional players by now.’
‘So do you,’ said the Duke, cantering up on the other side of the cart. ‘I particularly admired your spluttering anger this time. I thought you were about to throw something at me.’
Devin smiled up at him. Sandre’s teeth flashed white through the improbable black of his skin.
Don’t expect to recognize us, Baerd had said when they’d parted in the Sandreni woods half a year ago. So Devin had been prepared. Somewhat, but not enough.
Baerd’s own transformation had been disconcerting but relatively mild: he’d grown a short beard and removed the padding from the shoulders of his doublet. He wasn’t as big a man as Devin had first thought. He’d also somehow changed his hair from bright yellow to what he said was his natural dark brown. His eyes were brown now as well, not the bright blue of before.
What he had done to Sandre d’Astibar was something else entirely. Even Alessan, who’d evidently had years to get used to this sort of thing, gave a low whistle when he first saw the Duke. Sandre had become—amazingly—an ageing black fighting man from Khardhun across the northern sea. One of a type that Devin knew had been common on the roads of the Palm twenty or thirty years ago in the days when merchants went nowhere except in company with each other, and Khardhu warriors with their wickedly curved blades were much in demand as insurance against outlaws.
Somehow, and this was the uncanny thing, with his own beard shaven and his white hair tinted a dark grey, Sandre’s gaunt, black face and deep-set, fierce eyes were exactly those of a Khardhu mercenary. Which, Baerd had explained, had been almost the first thing he’d noticed about the Duke when he’d seen him in daylight. It was what had suggested the rather comprehensive disguise.
‘But how?’ Devin remembered gasping.
‘Lotions and potions,’ Alessan had laughed.
It turned out, as Baerd explained later, that he and the Prince had spent a number of years in Quileia after Tigana’s fall. Disguises of this sort—colourings for skin and hair, even tints for eyes—were a perfected, important art south of the mountains. They assumed a central role in the Mysteries of the Mother Goddess, and in the less secret rites of the formal theatre, and they had played pivotal, complex parts in the tumultuous religion-torn history of Quileia.
Baerd did not say what he and Alessan had been doing there, or how he had come to learn this secret craft or possess the implements of it.
Catriana didn’t know either, which made Devin feel somewhat better. They’d asked Alessan one afternoon, and had received, for the first time, an answer that was to become routine through the fall and winter.
In the spring, Alessan told them. In the spring a great deal would be made clearer, one way or another. They were moving towards something of importance, but they would have to wait until then. He was not going to discuss it now. Before the Ember Days of spring they would leave their current Astibar–Tregea–Ferraut loop and head south across the wide grainlands of Certando. And at that point, Alessan had said, a great many things might change. One way or another, he’d repeated.
He hadn’t smiled, saying any of this, though he was a man with an easy smile.
Devin remembered how Catriana had tossed her hair then, with a knowing, almost an angry look in her blue eyes.
‘It’s Alienor, isn’t it? she demanded, virtually an accusation. ‘It’s that women at Castle Borso.’
Alessan’s mouth had twisted in surprise and then amusement. ‘Not so, my dear,’ he’d said. ‘We’ll stop at Borso, but this has nothing to do with her at all. If I didn’t know better, if I didn’t know your heart belonged only to Devin, I’d say you sounded jealous, my darling.’
The gibe had entirely the desired effect. Catriana had stormed off, and Devin, almost as embarrassed himself, had quickly changed the subject. Alessan had a way of doing that to you. Behind the deep, effortless courtesy and the genuine camaraderie, there existed a line they learned not to try to cross. If he was seldom harsh, his jests—always the first measure of control—could sting memorably. Even the Duke had discovered that it was best not to press Alessan on certain subjects. Including this one, it emerged: when asked, Sandre said he knew as little as they did about what would happen come spring.
Thinking about it, as fall gave way to winter and the rains and then the snows came, Devin was deeply aware that Alessan was the Prince of a land that was dying a little more with each passing day. Under the circumstances, he decided, the wonder wasn’t that there were places they could not trespass upon but, rather, how far they could actually go before reaching the guarded regions that lay within.
One of the things Devin began to learn during that long winter was patience. He taught himself to hold his questions for the right time, or to restrain them entirely and try to work out the answers for himself. If fuller knowledge had to wait for spring, then he would wait. In the meantime he threw himself, with an unleashed, even an unsuspected passion, into what they were doing.
A blade had been planted in his own soul that starry autumn night in the Sandreni Woods.
He’d had no idea what to expect when they’d set out five days later with Rovigo’s horse-drawn cart and three other horses, bound for Ferraut town with a bed and a number of wooden carvings of the Triad. Taccio had written Rovigo that he could sell Astibarian religious carvings at a serious profit to merchants from the Western Palm. Especially because, as Devin learned, duty was not levied on Triad-related artifacts: part of a successful attempt by both sorcerers to keep the clergy placated and neutralized.
Devin learned a great deal about trade that fall and winter, and about certain other things as well. With his new, hard-won patience he would listen in silence as Alessan and the Duke tossed ideas back and forth on the long roads, turning the rough coals of a concept into the diamonds of polished plans. And even though his own dreams at night were of raising a surging army to liberate Tigana and storm the fabled harbour walls of Chiara, he quickly came to understand—on the cold paths of day—that theirs would have to be a wholly different approach.
Which was, in fact, why they were still in the east, not the west, and doing all they could—with the small glittering diamonds of Alessan and Sandre’s plans—to unsettle things in Alberico’s realm. Once Catriana confided to him—on one of the days when, for whatever reason, she deemed him worth speaking to—that Alessan was, in fact, moving much more aggressively than he had the year before when she’d first joined them. Devin suggested it might be Sandre’s influence. Catriana had shaken her head. She thought that was a part of it, but that there was something else, a new urgency from a source she didn’t understand.
We’ll find out in the spring, Devin had shrugged. She’d glared at him, as if personally affronted by his equanimity.
It had been Catriana though who’d suggested the most aggressive thing of all as winter began: the faked suicide in Tregea. Along with the idea of leaving behind her a sheaf of the poems that that young poet had written about the Sandreni. Adreano was his name, Alessan had informed them, unwontedly subdued: the name was on the list of the twelve poets Rovigo had reported as being randomly death-wheeled during
Alberico’s retaliation for the verses. Alessan had been unexpectedly disturbed by that news.
There was other information in the letter from Rovigo, aside from the usual covering business details. It had been held for them in a tavern in north Tregea that served as a mail drop for many of the merchants in the northeast. They had been heading south, spreading what rumours they could about unrest among the soldiers. Rovigo’s latest report suggested, for the second time, that an increase in taxes might be imminent, to cover the mercenaries’ newest pay demands. Sandre, who seemed to know the Tyrant’s mind astonishingly well, agreed.
After dinner, when they were alone around the fire, Catriana had made her proposal. Devin had been incredulous: he’d seen the height of the bridges of Tregea and the speed of the river waters below. And it was winter by then, growing colder every day.
Alessan, still upset by the news from Astibar, and evidently of the same mind as Devin, vetoed the idea bluntly. Catriana pointed out two things. One was that she had been brought up by the sea: she was a better swimmer than any of them, and better than any of them knew.
The second thing was that—as Alessan knew perfectly well, she said—a leap such as this, a suicide, especially in Tregea, would fit seamlessly into everything they were trying to achieve in the Eastern Palm.
‘That,’ Devin remembered Sandre saying after a silence, ‘is true, I’m sorry to say.’
Alessan had reluctantly agreed to go to Tregea itself for a closer look at the river and the bridges.
Four evenings later Devin and Baerd had found themselves crouched amid twilight shadows along the riverbank in Tregea town, at a point that seemed to Devin terribly far away from the bridge Catriana had chosen. Especially in the windy cold of winter, in the swiftly gathering dark, beside the even more swiftly racing waters that were rushing past them, deep and black and cold.
While they waited, he had tried, unsuccessfully, to sort out his complex mixture of feelings about Catriana. He was too anxious though, and too cold.
He only knew that his heart had leaped, moved by some odd, tripled conjunction of relief and admiration and envy when she swam up to the bank, exactly where they were. She even had the wig in one hand, so it would not be tangled up somewhere and found. Devin stuffed it into the satchel he carried while Baerd was vigorously chafing Catriana’s shivering body and bundling her into the layers of clothing they’d carried. As Devin looked at her—shaking uncontrollably, almost blue with the cold, her teeth chattering—he had felt his envy slipping away. What replaced it was pride.
She was from Tigana, and so was he. The world might not know it yet, but they were working together—however elliptically—to bring it back.
The following morning their two carts had slowly rattled out of town, going north and west to Ferraut again with a full load of mountain khav. A light snow had been falling. Behind them the city was in a state of massive ferment and turmoil because of the unknown dark-haired girl from the distrada who had killed herself. After that incident Devin had found it increasingly hard to be sharp or petty with Catriana. Most of the time. She did continue to indulge herself in the custom of deciding that he was invisible every once in a while.
It had become difficult for him to convince himself that they had actually made love together; that he had really felt her mouth soft on his, or her hands in his hair as she gathered him into her.
They never spoke of it, of course. He didn’t avoid her, but he didn’t seek her out: her moods swung too unpredictably, he never knew what response he’d get. A newly patient man, he let her come to ride a cart or sit before a tavern fire with him when she wanted to. She did, sometimes.
In Ferraut town that winter for the third time, after the leap in Tregea, they had all been wonderfully fed by Ingonida—still in raptures over the bed they’d brought her. Taccio’s wife continued to display a particularly solicitous affection for the Duke in his dark disguise—a detail which Alessan took some pleasure in teasing Sandre about when they were alone. In the meantime, the rotund, red-faced Taccio copiously wined them all.
There had been another mail packet waiting from Rovigo in Astibar. Which, when opened, proved to contain two letters this time, one of which gave off—even after its time in transit—an extraordinary effusion of scent.
Alessan, his eyebrows elaborately arched, presented this pale-blue emanation to Devin with infinite suggestiveness. Ingonida crowed and clasped her hands together in a gesture doubtless meant to signify romantic rapture. Taccio, beaming, poured Devin another drink.
The perfume, unmistakably, was Selvena’s. Devin’s expression, as he took cautious possession of the envelope, must have been revealing because he heard Catriana giggle suddenly. He was careful not to look at her.
Selvena’s missive was a single headlong sentence—much like the girl herself. She did, however, make one vivid suggestion that induced him to decline when the others asked innocently if they might peruse his communication.
In fact, though, Devin was forced to admit that his interest was rather more caught by the five neat lines Alais had attached to her father’s letter. In a small, businesslike hand she simply reported that she’d found and copied another variant of the ‘Lament for Adaon’ at one of the god’s temples in Astibar and that she looked forward to sharing it with all of them when they next came east. She signed it with her initial only.
In the body of the letter Rovigo reported that Astibar was very quiet since the twelve poets had been executed among the families of the conspirators in the Grand Square. That the price of grain was still going up, that he could usefully receive as much green Senzian wine as they could obtain at current prices, that Alberico was widely expected to announce, very soon, a beneficiary among his commanders for the greater part of the confiscated Nievolene lands, and that his best information was that Senzian linens were still underpriced in Astibar but might be due to rise.
It was the news about the Nievolene lands that triggered the next stage of spark-to-spark discussion between Alessan and the Duke.
And those sparks had led to the blaze.
The five of them did a fast run along the well-maintained highway north to Senzio with more of the religious artifacts. They bought green wine with their profit on the statuettes, bargained successfully for a quantity of linens—Baerd, somewhat surprisingly, had emerged as their best negotiator in such matters—and doubled quickly back to Taccio, paying the huge new duties at both the provincial border forts and the city-walls.
There had been another letter waiting. Among the various masking pieces of business news, Rovigo reported that an announcement on the Nievolene lands was expected by the end of the week. His source was reliable, he added. The letter had been written five days before.
That night Alessan, Baerd and Devin had borrowed a third horse from Taccio—who was deeply happy to be told nothing of their intentions—and had set out on the long ride to the Astibar border and then across to a gully by the road that led to the Nievolene gates.
They were back seven days later with a new cart and a load of unspun country wool for Taccio to sell. Word of the fire had preceded them. Word of the fire was everywhere, Sandre reported. There had already been a number of tavern brawls in Ferraut town between men of the First and Second Companies.
They left the new cart with Taccio and departed, heading slowly back towards Tregea. They didn’t need three carts. They were partners in a modest commercial venture. They made what slight profit they could, given the taxes and duties that trammelled them. They talked about those taxes and duties a great deal, often in public. Sometimes more frankly than their listeners were accustomed to hearing.
Alessan quarreled with the sardonic Khardhu warrior in a dozen different inns and taverns on the road, and hired him a dozen different times. Sometimes Devin played a role, sometimes Baerd did. They were careful not to repeat the performance anywhere. Catriana kept a precise log of where they had been and what they had said and done there. Devin had assured her they
could rely on his memory, but she kept her notes none the less.
In public the Duke now called himself ‘Tomaz’. ‘Sandre’ was an uncommon-enough name in the Palm, and for a mercenary from Khardhun it would be sufficiently odd to be a risk. Devin remembered growing thoughtful when the Duke had told them his new name back in the fall. He’d wondered what it was like to have had to kill his son. Even to outlive his sons. To know that the bodies of everyone even distantly related to himself were being spreadeagled alive on the death-wheels of Barbadior. He tried to imagine how all of that would feel.
Life, the processes of living and what it did to you, seemed to Devin to grow more painfully complex all through that fall and winter. Often he thought of Marra, arbitrarily cut off on the way to her maturity, to whatever she had been about to become. He missed her with a dull ache that could grow into something heavy and difficult at times. She would have been someone to talk to about such things. The others had their own concerns and he didn’t want to burden them. He wondered about Alais bren Rovigo, if she would have understood these things he was wrestling with. He didn’t think so; she had lived too sheltered, too secluded a life for such thoughts to trouble her. He dreamt of her one night though, an unexpectedly intense series of images. The next morning he rode beside Catriana in the lead cart, unwontedly quiet, stirred and unsettled by the nearness of her, the crimson fall of her hair in the pale winter landscape.
Sometimes he thought about the soldier in the Nievolene barn—who had lost a roll of dice and carried a jug of wine to a lonely place away from the singing, and had had his throat slit there while he slept. Had that soldier been born into the world only to become a rite of passage for Devin di Tigana?
That was a terrible thought. Eventually, mulling it over through the long, cold winter rides, Devin worked his way through to deciding it was untrue. The man had interacted with other people through his days. Had caused pleasure and sorrow, doubtless, and had surely known both things. The moment of his ending was not what defined his journey under Eanna’s lights, or however that journey was named in the Empire of Barbadior.