Tigana (36 page)

‘And I you,’ she’d said to him. ‘I think you know how much. Eanna light your path and bring you home.’ That was all she’d said. All she could think to say.

After he’d gone she had sat in the front room wrapped in an old shawl of her mother’s, gazing sightlessly at the ashes of last night’s fire until the sun came up.

By then the hard kernel of her own plan had been formed.

The plan that had brought her here, all these years after, to this other lonely bed on an Ember Night of ghosts when she should not have had to be alone. Alone with all her memories, with the reawakening they carried, and the awareness of what she had allowed to happen to her here on the Island. Here in Brandin’s court. Here with Brandin.

And so it was that two things came to Dianora that Ember Night in the saishan.

The memories of her brother had been the first, sweeping over her in waves, image after image until they ended with the ashes of that dead fire.

The second, following inexorably, born of that same long-ago year, born of memory, of guilt, of the whirlwind hurts that came with lying here alone and so terribly exposed on this night of all nights … the second thing, spun forth from all these interwoven things, was, finally, the shaping of a resolution. A decision, after so many years. A
course of action she now knew she was going to take. Had to take, whatever might follow.

She lay there, chilled, hopelessly awake, and she was aware that the cold she felt came far more from within than without. Somewhere in the palace, she knew, the torturers would be attending to Camena di Chiara who had tried to kill a Tyrant and free his home. Who had done so knowing he would die and how he would die.

Even now they would be with him, administering their precise measures of pain. With a professional pride in their skill they would be breaking his fingers one by one, his wrists and his arms. His toes and ankles and legs. They would be doing it carefully, even tenderly, solicitously guarding the beat of his heart, so that after they had broken his back—which was always the last—they could strap him alive on a wheel and take him out to the harbour square to die in the sight of his people.

She would never have dreamt Camena had such courage or so much passion in his heart. She had derided him as a poseur, a wearer of three-layered cloaks, a minor, trivial artist angling for ascension at court.

Not any more. Yesterday afternoon had compelled a new shape to her image of him. Now that he had done what he had done, now that his body had been given to the torturers and then the wheel there was a question that could no more be buried than could her memories of Baerd. Not tonight. Not unsheltered as she was and so awake.

What,
the thought came knifing home like a winter wind in the soul,
did Camena’s act make her?

What did it make of that long-ago quest a sixteen-year-old girl had so proudly set herself the night her brother went away? The night he’d seen a riselka under moonlight by the sea and gone in search of his Prince.

She knew the answers. Of course she did. She knew the names that belonged to her. The names she had earned here
on the Island. They burned like sour wine in a wound. And burning inside, even as she shivered, Dianora strove one more time to school her heart to begin the deathly hard, never yet successful, journey back to her own dominion from that room on the far wing of the palace where lay the King of Ygrath.

That night was different though. Something had changed that night, because of what had happened, because of the finality, the absoluteness of what she herself had done in the Audience Chamber. Acknowledging that, trying to deal with it, Dianora began to sense, as if from a very great distance, her heart’s slow, painful retreat from the fires of love. A returning, and then a turning back, to the memory of other fires at home. Fields burning, a city burning, a palace set aflame.

No comfort there of course. No comfort anywhere at all. Only an absolute reminder of who she was and why she was here.

And lying very still in darkness on an Ember Night when country doors and windows were all closed against the dead and the magic in the fields, Dianora told softly to herself the whole of the old foretelling verse:

One man sees a riselka
         his life forks there.

Two men see a riselka
         one of them shall die.

Three men see a riselka
         one is blessed, one forks, one shall die.

One woman sees a riselka
         her path comes clear to her.

Two women see a riselka
         one of them shall bear a child.

Three women see a riselka
         one is blessed, one is clear, one shall bear a child.

In the morning,
she said to herself amid cold and fire and all the myriad confusions of the heart.
In the morning it will begin as it should have begun and ended long ago
.

The Triad knew how bitter, how impossible all choices had seemed to her. How faint and elusive had been her dream within these walls of making it all come right for all of them. But of one truth she was now, finally, certain: she had needed
something
to be made clear along the twisting paths to betrayal that seemed to have become her life—and from Brandin’s own lips she had learned how that clear path might be offered her.

In the morning she would begin.

Until then she could lie here, achingly awake and alone, as on another night at home so many years ago, and she could remember.

P  A  R  T    T  H  R  E  E
E M B E R  T O  E M B E R

C H A P T E R   9

I
t was cold in the gully by the side of the road. There was a thin, sheltering line of birch trees between them and the gates of the Nievolene estate, but even so the wind was a knife whenever it picked up.

There had been snow last night, a rare thing this far north, even in midwinter. It had made for a white, chilled second night of riding from Ferraut town where they had started, but Alessan had refused to slow their pace. He had said increasingly little as the night wore on, and Baerd said little at the best of times. Devin had swallowed his questions and concentrated on keeping up.

They had crossed the Astibar border in darkness and arrived at the Nievolene lands just after dawn. The horses were tethered in a grove about a half-mile to the southwest, and the three men had made their way to this gully on foot. Devin dozed off at intervals through the morning. The snow made the landscape strange and crisp and lovely when the sun was out, but around mid-afternoon the grey clouds had gathered heavily overhead and it was only cold now, not beautiful at all. It had snowed again, briefly, about an hour before.

When Devin heard the jingle of horses approaching through the greyness, he realized that the Triad, for once, were holding open palms towards them. Or that, alternatively, the goddesses and the god had decided to give them a
chance to do something fatally rash. He pressed himself as flat as he could to the wet ground of the gully. He thought of Catriana and the Duke, warm and sheltered with Taccio in Ferraut.

A company of about a dozen Barbadian mercenaries materialized out of the grey landscape. They were laughing and singing in boisterous exuberance. Their horses’ breath and their own made white puffs of smoke in the cold. Flat in the gully Devin watched them go by. He heard Baerd’s soft breathing beside him. The Barbadians stopped at the gates of what had once been Nievolene lands. They weren’t any more, of course, not since the confiscations of the fall. The company leader dismounted and strode to the locked gates. With a flourish that drew cheers and laughter from his men he unlocked the iron gates with two keys on an ornate chain.

‘First Company,’ Alessan murmured under his breath. His first words in hours. ‘He chose Karalius. Sandre said he would.’

They watched the gates swing open and saw the horses canter through. The last man locked the iron gates behind him.

Baerd and Alessan waited another few moments then rose to their feet. Devin stood up as well, wincing at how stiff he felt.

‘We’ll need to find the tavern in the village,’ Baerd said, his voice so unusually grim that Devin glanced sharply at him in the growing gloom. The other man’s features were unreadable.

‘Not to go inside, though,’ Alessan said. ‘What we do here, we do unknown.’

Baerd nodded. He pulled a much-creased paper from an inner pocket of his sheepskin vest. ‘Shall we start with Rovigo’s man?’

Rovigo’s man turned out to be a retired mariner who lived in the village a mile to the east. He told them where the tavern was. He also, for a fairly significant sum of money, gave them a name: that of a known informer for Grancial and his Second Company of Barbadians. The old sailor counted his money, spat once, meaningfully, then told them where the man lived, and something of his habits.

Baerd killed the informer, strangling him two hours later as he walked along a country lane from his small farm towards the village tavern. It was full-dark by then. Devin helped him carry the body back towards the Nievolene gates and hide it in the gully.

Baerd didn’t speak, and Devin could think of nothing to say. The informer was a paunchy, balding man of middle years. He didn’t look especially evil. He looked like a man surprised on the way to his favourite tavern. Devin wondered if he’d had a wife and children. They hadn’t asked Rovigo’s man about that; he was just as happy they hadn’t.

They rejoined Alessan at the edge of the village. He was keeping watch on the tavern from there. Without speaking he pointed to a large dun-coloured horse among those tethered outside the inn. A soldier’s horse. The three of them doubled back west half a mile and lay down to wait again, prone and watchful by the side of the road. Devin realized he wasn’t cold any more, or tired; he hadn’t had time to think about such things.

Later that night under the cold white gaze of Vidomni in the clearing winter sky Alessan killed the man they’d been waiting for. By the time Devin heard the soft jingle of the soldier’s horse, the Prince was no longer by his side and it had been mostly accomplished.

Devin heard a soft sound, more like a cough than a cry. The horse snorted in alarm, and Devin belatedly rose up to try to deal with the animal. By then, though, he realized that
Baerd wasn’t beside him either. When he finally clambered out of the ditch to the road, the soldier—wearing the insignia of the Second Company—was dead and Baerd had the horse under control. The man, obviously off duty, from the casual look of his uniform, had evidently been on his way back to the border fort. The Barbadian was a big man, they all were, but this one’s face seemed very young under the moonlight.

They threw the body across his horse and made their way back to the Nievolene gates. They could hear the men of the First Company singing loudly from the manor-house along the curving drive. The sound carried a long way in the stillness of the wintry air. There were stars out now beside the moon; the clouds were breaking up. Baerd pulled the Barbadian off the horse and leaned him against one of the gate pillars. Alessan and Devin claimed the other dead man from where they had left him in the gully; Baerd tethered the Barbadian’s horse some distance off the road.

Some distance, but not too far. This one was meant to be found later.

Alessan touched Devin briefly on the shoulder. Using the skills Marra had taught him—it seemed several lifetimes ago—Devin picked the two elaborate locks. He was glad to be able to make a contribution. The locks were showy but not difficult. The arrogant Nievolene had not had much fear of trespassers.

Alessan and Baerd each shouldered a body and carried them through. Devin swung the gates silently shut and they entered the grounds. Not towards the manor though. They let the pale moonlight lead them over the snow to the barns.

There they found trouble. The largest barn was locked from the inside, and Baerd pointed silently, with a grimace, to a spill of torchlight that showed from under the double doors. He mimed the presence of a guard.

The three of them looked up. There was, clearly illuminated by Vidomni’s glow, a single small window open, high up on the eastern side.

Devin looked from Alessan to Baerd and then back to the Prince. He looked at the bodies of the two men already dead.

He pointed to the window and then to himself.

After a long moment Alessan nodded his head.

In silence, listening to the ragged singing from over in the manor-house, Devin climbed the outer wall of the Nievolene barn. By moonlight and by feel he deciphered hand- and footholds in the cold. When he reached the window he looked over his shoulder and saw Ilarion, just rising in the east.

He slipped through and into the upper loft. Below, a horse whickered softly and Devin caught his breath. His heart thudding, he froze where he was, listening. There was no other response. In the sudden, seductive warmth of the barn he crawled cautiously forward and looked down.