He had sent the others from the room. Her heart was still beating very fast. She looked at his eyes and then quickly away, afraid that after what she had just said it would look like she was probing. She felt like a child again, confused, certain that she was missing something here. She had always, always hated not understanding what was happening. But at the same time there seemed to be this very odd, extraordinary warmth growing inside her, and a queer sensation of light, brighter than the candles in the room should have allowed.
Fighting to control her breathing, needing an answer, but absurdly afraid of what it might be, she stammered, ‘I … would you … explain that to me? Please?’
She watched him closely this time, watched him smile, saw what kindled in his eyes, she even read his lips as they moved.
‘When I saw you fall,’ he murmured, his hand still holding hers, ‘I realized that I was falling with you, my dear. I finally understood, too late, what I had denied to myself for so long, how absolutely I had debarred myself from something important, even the acknowledging of its possibility, while Tigana was still gone. The heart … has its own laws though, Catriana, and the truth is … the truth is that you are the law of mine. I knew it when I saw you in that window. In the moment before you leaped I knew that I loved you. Bright star of Eanna, forgive me the manner of this, but you are the harbour of my soul’s journeying.’
Bright star of Eanna. He had always called her that, from the very beginning. Lightly, easily, a name among others, a teasing for when she bridled, a term of praise when she did something well. The harbour of his soul.
She seemed to be crying, silently, tears welling up to slide slowly down her cheeks.
‘Oh, my dear, no,’ he said, with an awkward catch to his voice. ‘I am so sorry. I am a fool. This is far too sudden, tonight, after what you have done. Not tonight. I should never have spoken. I don’t even know if you—’
He stopped just there. But only because she had covered his mouth with her fingers to make him stop. She was still crying, but there seemed to be the most amazing brightness growing inside the room, far more than candles now, more than the moons, a light like the sun beginning to rise beyond the rim of darkness.
She slipped her fingers down from his mouth and claimed the hand he had held her with. We do with our hands what we cannot say. She still said nothing; she couldn’t speak. She was trembling. She remembered how her hands had been shaking when she walked out earlier tonight. So little time ago she had stood in a castle window and known she was about to die. Her tears fell on his hand. She lowered her head but others kept falling. She felt as though her heart were a bird, a trialla, only newly born, spreading wings, preparing to give voice to the song of its days.
He was on his knees beside the bed. She moved her free hand across and ran it through his hair, in a hopeless attempt at smoothing it. It seemed to be something she had wanted to do for a long time. How long? How long could such needs be present and yet never known, never acknowledged or allowed?
‘When I was young,’ she said finally, her voice breaking, but needing to speak, ‘I used to dream of this. Alessan, have I died and come back? Am I dreaming now?’
He smiled slowly, the deeply reassuring smile that she knew, that they all knew, as if her words had granted him release from his own fear, freed him to be himself again. To offer the look that had always meant that he was with them and so everything would be made all right.
But then, unexpectedly, he moved forward and lowered his head to rest it against the thin blanket covering her, as if seeking his own shelter, one that was hers to give to him. She understood; it seemed—oh, what goddess could have foretold this?—that she did have something to offer him. Something more than her death after all. She lifted her hands and closed them around his head, holding him to her, and it seemed to Catriana in that moment as if that newborn trialla in her soul began to sing. Of trials endured and trials to come, of doubt and dark and all the deep uncertainties that defined the outer boundaries of mortal life, but with love now present at the base of it all, like light, like the first stone of a rising tower.
There had been a Barbadian Tracker in Senzio, Devin learned later that night, and he was killed, but not by them. Nor did they have to deal with the kind of search party they’d feared. It was nearly dawn by the time they pieced the story together.
It seemed that the Barbadians had gone wild.
Finding the poisoned Ygrathen knife on the floor by Anghiar’s body, hearing what the woman cried before she leaped, they had leaped themselves—to all the murderously obvious conclusions.
There were twenty of them in Senzio, an honour guard for Anghiar. They armed themselves, assembled, and made their way across to the western wing of the Governor’s Castle. They killed the six Ygrathens on guard there, broke down a door, and burst in upon Cullion of Ygrath, Brandin’s representative, as he struggled into his clothing. Then they took their time about killing him. The sound of his screams echoed through the castle.
Then they went back downstairs and through the courtyard to the front gates and hacked to death the four Senzian guards who had let the woman in without a proper search. It was during this that the captain of the Castle Guard came into the courtyard with a company of Senzians. He ordered them to lay down their arms.
The Barbadians were, according to most reports later, about to do so, having achieved their immediate purposes, when two of the Senzians, enraged at the butchery of their friends, fired arrows at them. Two men fell, one instantly dead, one mortally wounded. The dead one was Alberico’s Tracker. There ensued a bloody, to-the-death mêlée in the torchlit courtyard of the castle, soon slippery with blood. The Barbadians were slaughtered to the last man, taking some thirty or forty Senzians with them.
No one knew which man fired the arrow that killed Casalia the Governor as he came hastily down the stairs screaming hoarsely at them all to stop.
In the chaos that followed that death no one gave a thought to going down to the garden for the body of the woman who had started it all. There was an increasingly wild panic in the city as the news spread through the night. A huge, terrified crowd gathered outside the castle. Shortly after midnight two horses were seen racing away from the city walls, heading south for the Ferraut border. Not long after that the five remaining members of Brandin’s party in Senzio rode away as well, in a tight cluster under the risen moons. They went north of course, towards Farsaro where the fleet was anchored.
Catriana was asleep in the other bed, her face smooth and untroubled, almost childlike in its peace. Alais could not find rest though. There was too much noise and tumult in the streets and she knew her father was down there, amidst whatever was happening.
Even after Rovigo came back in and stopped at their door to look in on the two of them and report that there seemed to be no immediate danger, Alais was still unable to sleep. Too much had happened tonight, but none of it to her, and so she was not weary as Catriana was, only excited and unsettled in oddly discontinuous ways. She couldn’t even have said all the things that were working upon her. Eventually she put on the robe she’d bought two days before in the market and went to sit on the ledge of the open window.
It was very late by then, both moons were west, down over the sea. She couldn’t see the harbour—Solinghi’s was too far inland—but she knew it was there, with the Sea Maid bobbing at anchor in the night breeze. There were people in the streets even now, she could see shadowy forms pass in the lane below, and she heard occasional shouts from the direction of the tavern quarter, but nothing more now than the ordinary noises of a city without a curfew, prone to be awake and loud at night.
She wondered how near to dawn it was, how long she would have to stay awake if she wanted to see the sunrise. She thought she might wait for it. This was not a night for sleep; or not for her, Alais amended, glancing back at Catriana. She remembered the other time the two of them had shared a room. Her own room at home.
She was a long way from home. S
he wondered what her mother had thought, receiving Rovigo’s letter of carefully phrased almost-explanation sent by courier across Astibar from the port of Ardin town as they sailed north to Senzio. She wondered, but in another way she knew: the trust shared between her parents was one of the sustaining, defining elements of her own world.
She looked up at the sky. The night was still dark, the stars overhead even more bright now that the moons were setting; it probably lacked several hours yet till dawn. She heard a woman’s laughter below and realized with an odd sensation that that was the one sound she’d not heard earlier that night amid the tumult in the streets. In a curious, quite unexpected way, the woman’s breathless sound, and then a man’s murmur following close upon it served to reassure her: in the midst of all else, whatever might come, certain things would still continue as they always had.
There was a footstep on the wood of the stairway outside. Alais leaned backwards on the window-ledge, belatedly realizing she could probably be seen from below.
‘Who is it?’ she called, though softly, so as not to disturb Catriana.
‘Only me,’ Devin said, coming up to stand on the landing outside the room.. She looked at him. His clothing was muddy, as if he’d tumbled or rolled somewhere, but his voice was calm. It was too dark to properly see his eyes. ‘Why are you awake?’ he asked.
She gestured, not sure what to say. ‘Too many things at once, I suppose. I’m not used to this.’
She saw his teeth as he smiled. ‘None of us are,’ he said. ‘Believe me. But I don’t think anything else will happen tonight. We are all going to bed.’
‘My father came in a while ago. He said it seemed to have quieted down.’
Devin nodded. ‘For now. The Governor was slain in the castle. Catriana did kill the Barbadian. There was chaos up there, and somebody seems to have shot the Tracker. I think that was what saved us.’
Alais swallowed. ‘My father didn’t tell me about that.’
‘He probably didn’t want to disturb your night. I’ll be sorry now if I have.’ He glanced past her towards the other bed. ‘How is she?’
‘She’s all right, really. Asleep.’ She registered the quick concern in his voice. But Catriana had earned that concern, that caring, tonight and before tonight, in ways Alais could scarcely even encompass within her mind.
‘And how are you?’ Devin asked, in a different tone, turning back to her. And there was something in that altered, deeper voice that made it difficult for her to breathe.
‘I’m fine too, honestly.’
‘I know you are,’ he said. ‘Actually, you are a great deal more than that, Alais.’
He hesitated for a moment, seeming suddenly awkward. She didn’t understand that, until he leaned slowly forward to kiss her full upon the lips. For the second time, if you counted the one in the crowded room downstairs, but this was really quite amazingly unlike the first. For one thing, he didn’t hurry, and for another, they were alone and it was very dark. She felt one of his hands come up, brushing along the front of her robe before coming to rest in her hair.
He drew back unsteadily. Alais opened her eyes. He looked blurred and softened, where he stood on the landing. Footsteps went past in the lane below, slowly now, not running as before. The two of them were silent, looking at each other. Devin cleared his throat. He said, ‘It is … there are still two or three hours to morning. You should try to sleep, Alais. There will be a … a great deal happening in the days to come.’
She smiled. He hesitated another moment, then turned to walk along the outer landing towards the room he shared with Alessan and Erlein.
She remained sitting where she was for some time longer, looking up at the brightness of the stars, letting her racing heart gradually slow. She replayed in her mind the ragged, very young uncertainty and wonder in his voice in those last words. Alais smiled again to herself in the darkness. To someone schooled by a life of observation, that voice had revealed a great deal. And it had been simply touching her that had done this to him. Which was, if one lingered to think about it and relive the moment of that kiss, a most astonishing thing.
She was still smiling when she left the window-edge and returned to her bed and she did fall asleep then, after all, for the last few greatly altered hours of that long night.
All through the next day everyone waited. A pall of doom like smoke hung over Senzio. The city treasurer attempted to assert control in the castle, but the leader of the Guard was disinclined to take orders from him. Their shouted confrontations went on all day. By the time someone thought to go down for the girl her body had already been taken away; no one knew where or by whose orders.
The work of the city ground to a halt. Men and women roamed the streets, feeding on rumour, choking on fear. On almost every corner a different story was heard. It was said that Rinaldo, the last Duke’s brother, had come back to the city to take command in the castle; by the middle of the day everyone had heard some version of the tale, but no one had seen the man.
A restless, nervous darkness fell. The streets remained crowded all night long. It seemed that no one in Senzio could sleep. The night was bright and very beautiful, both moons riding through a clear sky. Outside Solinghi’s inn a crowd gathered—there was no room at all inside—to hear the three musicians play and sing of freedom, and of the glory of Senzio’s past. Songs not sung since Casalia had relinquished his claim to his father’s Ducal Throne and allowed himself to be called Governor instead, with emissaries from the Tyrants to advise him. Casalia was dead. Both emissaries were dead. Music drifted out from Solinghi’s into the scented summer night, spilling along the lanes, rising towards the stars.
Just after dawn, word came. Alberico of Barbadior had crossed the border the afternoon before and was advancing north with his three armies, burning villages and fields as he went. Before noon they heard from the north as well: Brandin’s fleet had lifted anchor in Farsaro Bay and was sailing south with a favourable wind.
War had come.
All through Senzio town people left their homes, left the taverns and the streets and began thronging, belatedly, to the temples of the Triad.
In the almost deserted front room of Solinghi’s that afternoon one man continued to play the Tregean pipes, faster and faster and higher and higher, in a wild, almost forgotten tune.
C H A P T E R 2 0
The sea was at their back, at the end of a long goatherds’ track that wound down the slope to the sands just south of where they’d beached the ships and come ashore. About two miles north of them the walls of Senzio rose up, and from this height Dianora could see the gleaming of the temple domes and the ramparts of the castle. The sun, rising over the pine forests to the east, was bronze in a close, deep blue sky. It was warm already this early in the day; it would be very hot by mid-morning.
By which time the fighting would have begun.
Brandin was conferring with d’Eymon and Rhamanus and his captains, three of them newly appointed from the provinces. From Corte and Asoli and Chiara itself. Not from Lower Corte, of course, though there were a number of men from her province in the army below them in the valley. She had wondered briefly, lying awake one night in the flagship off Farsaro, if Baerd was one of them. She knew he wouldn’t be though. Just as Brandin could not change in this, neither could her brother. It went on. However much might alter, this single thing would go on until the last generation that knew Tigana died.
And she? Since the Dive, since rising from the sea, she had been trying hard not to think at all. Simply to move with the events she had set in motion. To accept the shining fact of Brandin’s love for her and the terrible uncertainties of this war. She no longer saw the riselka’s path in her mind’s eye. She had some sense of what that meant, but she made an effort not to dwell upon it during the day. Nights were different; dreams were always different. She was owner and captive, both, of a bitterly divided heart.
With her two guards just behind her she moved forward on the crown of the hi
ll and looked out over the wide east–west running valley. The dense green pine woods were beyond, with olive-trees growing on steeper ridges to the south and a plateau north leading to Senzio town.
Down below the two armies were just stirring, men emerging from their tents and sleeping-rolls, horses being saddled and harnessed, swords cleaned, bowstrings fitted and readied. Metal glinted in the young sun all along the valley. The sound of voices carried easily up to her in the clear bright air. There was just enough breeze to take the banners and lift them to be seen. Their own device was new: a golden image of the Palm itself, picked out against a background of deep blue for the sea. The meaning of Brandin’s chosen image was as clear as he could make it—they were fighting in the name of the Western Palm, but the truer claim was to everything. To a united peninsula with Barbadior driven away. It was a good symbol, Dianora knew. It was also the proper, the necessary step for this peninsula. But it was being taken by the man who had been King of Ygrath.
There were even Senzians in Brandin’s army, besides the men of the four western provinces. Several hundred had joined them from the city in the two days since they’d landed in the southern part of the bay. With the Governor dead and a squabble for meaningless power going on in the castle, the official policy of Senzian neutrality was in tatters. Helped, no one doubted, by Alberico’s decision to torch the lands through which he had come, in retaliation for Barbadian deaths in the city. Had the Barbadians moved faster Rhamanus might have had trouble landing the fleet in the face of opposition, but the winds had been with them, and they reached the city a full day before Alberico. Which let Brandin choose the obvious hill from which to overlook the valley, and to align his men where he wanted them. It was an advantage, they all knew it.
It had seemed less of one the next morning when the three armies of Barbadior arrived, emerging out of the smoke of burning to the south. They had two banners, not one: the Empire’s red mountain and golden tiara against their white background, and Alberico’s own crimson boar on a yellow field. The red in both banners seemed to dot the plain like stains of blood, while horsemen and foot-soldiers arrayed themselves in crisp, precisely drilled ranks along the eastern side of the valley. The soldiers of the Barbadian Empire had conquered most of the known world to the east.