Tigana

She had raised her eyebrows at that, the small outward gesture serving to show all she was prepared 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 second Baerd nodded again.

The girl Catriana blinked in manifest 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 enjoyed trying to push towards them. One night, ten years ago, she had found exactly where his boundaries of privacy lay, in one dimension at least. Surprisingly perhaps, their friendship had deepened from that time on.

Now, unexpectedly, 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 sufficient, thank you. a.s.suming it is enough for your purposes, whatever those are?" She said that last to the old man disguised as a Khardhu warrior. His skin colouring was really very good but she knew all about Baerd"s techniques of disguise. Over the years he and Alessan had shown up here in an effective diversity of appearances.

"I"m not absolutely sure what 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." 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?" she"d probed again, not really expecting 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 known the old man was a wizard. That was why she hadn"t reacted. Alienor had enough of a sense of humour to find their byplay amusing, and even to feel a little regretful when Catriana had gone. the old man was a wizard. That was why she hadn"t reacted. Alienor had enough of a sense of humour to find their byplay amusing, and even to feel a little regretful when Catriana had gone.

Two days afterwards Elena had come. 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 in the twilight. Elena had come 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 other"s shoulders.

"You should know better by now," she said sharply. "It gets cold up here when the sun goes down."

"I"m sorry," Elena said again, quickly motioning to remove the shawl. "But you"ll be chilled now. I"ll go down and get 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 candles and fires were being lit in houses and farms below. She looked beyond all these under the 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, more gently. "Stay with me."

Elena"s blue eyes widened in the darkness as she looked over. Her expression was grave, thoughtful. Unexpectedly, she smiled. And then, even more astonishingly, she moved nearer and drew her arm through Alienor"s, pulling her close. Alienor stiffened for a second, then allowed herself to relax against the other woman. She had asked for companionship. For the first time in more years than she could remember, she had asked for this. A completely 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 than the transience of desire, if only one believed it was deserved. No one had ever said such a thing to her in all the years since Cornaro 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 been set upon the road towards what she had become.

He had gone with Alessan, Devin. By now, they would probably be in the north as well. Alienor looked out, letting her thoughts 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 back and 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 bemus.e.m.e.nt that bordered on awe, that as the days heated up in summer, so did the nighttime pa.s.sions of Senzio. The hedonistic self-indulgence of that northern province, blessed with fertile soil and gentle weather, was a byword in the Palm and even over the seas. You could get whatever you wanted in Senzio, it was said, provided you were willing to pay for it. And fight someone to 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 dampened the nocturnal ardour of the Senzians-and their endless flow of visitors-for wine, for love-making in diverse combinations, and for brawling in the taverns 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 ma.s.sed ominously on the Ferraut border, the ever-increasing numbers of ships of the Ygrathen flotilla anch.o.r.ed 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 hadn"t been for hundreds of years. And though emissaries of both invading powers were prominently housed in opposite wings of what was now called the Governor"s Castle, Senzians still boasted that they were the only free province in the Palm.

A boast that began to ring more hollow with each pa.s.sing day and sybaritic night as the entire peninsula braced itself for a conflagration.

In the face of which onrushing 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 dispensed their 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 inducements to their patrons. For the eponymous owner of Solinghi"s, a tavern not far from the castle, good food, decent vintages and ales, and clean rooms in which to sleep were a.s.surances of a respectable if not an extravagant living, derived primarily from merchants and traders disinclined to traffic in the carnality of night, or at least to sleep and eat amid that overripe corruption. Solinghi"s also prided itself on offering, by day or night, the best music to be found in the city 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 unlikely trio: a Senzian harper, a piper from Astibar, and a young Asolini tenor who-according to a rumour started a couple of days before-was the singer who had disappeared after performing Sandre d"Astibar"s funeral rites last fall.

Rumours of every kind were rife in Senzio that spring, but few believed this one: such a prodigy was unlikely in the extreme to be singing in a put-together group like this. But in fact the young tenor had an exceptional voice and he was matched by the playing of the other two. Solinghi di Senzio was immensely pleased with their effect on business over the past week.

The truth was, he would have given them employment and a room upstairs if they had made music like boarhounds in l.u.s.t. Solinghi had been a friend of the dark-haired man who was now calling himself Adreano d"Astibar 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 come to Senzio expressly to meet the three musicians 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 afternoon the patrons enjoying the young tenor"s rousing rendition 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 cl.u.s.ter of new customers. 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 cynical conclusions 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, one with short red hair, one with 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 mercenary who towered over the rest of the party.

A moment later another kind of reunion occurred. One with a different resonance that 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 silence. Then the man whom he"d addressed said "Naddo?" "Naddo?" in a tone even the most innocent Senzian could interpret. Any lingering doubts about that were laid to rest a second later by the way the two men embraced each other. in a tone even the most innocent Senzian could interpret. Any lingering doubts about that were laid to rest a second later by the way the two men embraced each other.

They even wept.

More than one man, eyeing the two women with frank admiration, decided that his chances of a conversation, and who knew what else, might be better than they"d first appeared if the men were all like that.

Alais had been moving through the days since Tregea in a state of excitement that brought an almost continuous flush to her pale skin and made her more delicately beautiful than she knew. What she did did know is why she had been allowed to come. know is why she had been allowed to come.

From the moment the Sea Maid"s Sea Maid"s landing-boat had silently returned to the ship in the moonlit harbour of Tregea, bearing her father and Catriana and the two men they"d gone to meet, Alais had been aware that something more than friendship was involved here. landing-boat had silently returned to the ship in the moonlit harbour of Tregea, bearing her father and Catriana and the two men they"d gone to 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 confidence in her, he"d explained what these people, his new partners, were really doing here, and what he appeared to have been doing in secret with them for a great many years.

It appeared that it had not been entirely a coincidence after all that they"d met three musicians on the road outside their home during the Festival of Vines last fall.

Listening intently, trying not to miss a syllable or an implication, Alais measured her own inward response to all of this and was pleased beyond words to discover that she was not afraid. Her father"s voice and 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 Rovigo, "If you are truly set on coming with us to Senzio, then we will have to find a place on the coast to put your daughter ash.o.r.e."

"Why, exactly?" Alais had said quickly before Rovigo could answer. She could feel her colour rising as all eyes turned to her. They were down below deck, crowded in her father"s cabin.

Baerd"s eyes were very dark by candlelight. He was a hard-looking, even a dangerous-seeming man, but his voice when he answered her was not unkind.

"Because I don"t believe in subjecting 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 father"s a.s.sistance and that of his men if he trusts them, is important to us. For you to come would be a danger without necessity. Does that make sense?"

She forced herself to be calm. "Only if you judge me a child, incapable of any contribution." She swallowed. "I am the same age as Catriana and I think I now understand what is happening here. What you have been trying to do. I have ... I can say that I have the same desire as any of you to be free."

"There are truths in that. I think she should come." 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. No right 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 turned to Rovigo, deferring to him with a gesture. In her father"s face Alais could see worry and love warring with his pride in her. And then, by the light of the candles, she saw that inner battle end.

"If we get through this alive," Rovigo d"Astibar said to his daughter, his life, his joy in life, "your mother will kill me. You know that, don"t you?"

"I"ll try to protect you," Alais said gravely, though her heart was racing like a wild thing.

It had been their talk at the railing of the ship, she knew. She knew it absolutely. The two of them looking at the cliffs under moonlight after the storm.

I don"t know what it is, she had said, but I need more 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 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 and meant what he had said, that he was allowing her to come with them to where the world they knew would be put into the balance.

Of that journey to Senzio she remembered two things particularly. Standing at the rail early one morning with Catriana as they moved north up the coast of Astibar. One tiny village, and then another and another, the roofs of houses bright in the sun, small fishing boats bobbing between the Sea Maid Sea Maid and the sh.o.r.e. and the sh.o.r.e.

"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 father"s." Her voice was odd, eerily detached from the meaning of the words.

"We have to stop, then!" Alais had murmured urgently. "I"ll tell my father! He"ll-"

Catriana laid a hand on her arm.

"Not yet," she"d said. "I can"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 morning and seeing the ships of Ygrath and the Western Palm anch.o.r.ed in the harbour there. Waiting for war. She had had been afraid then, as the reality of what they were sailing towards was brought home to her in that vision, at once brightly colourful 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 anxiety in each of them as well. Only Baerd, carefully counting the flotilla, had a different kind of expression on his face. been afraid then, as the reality of what they were sailing towards was brought home to her in that vision, at once brightly colourful 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 anxiety in each of them as well. Only Baerd, carefully counting the flotilla, had a different kind of expression on his face.

If she"d been forced to put a name to that look she would have said, hesitantly, that it was desire.

The next afternoon they had come to Senzio, and had moored the Maid Maid in the crowded harbour and gone ash.o.r.e, and so had come, 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 joy bright and sudden as the sun come up from the rim of the sea. in the crowded harbour and gone ash.o.r.e, and so had come, 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 joy bright and sudden as the sun come up from the rim of the sea.

Devin embraced her tightly and then kissed her on the lips, and then Alessan, after a moment"s visible anxiety at her presence and a searching glance at 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 in the tavern 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 magnificent stick. It had the most extraordinary carved eagle"s head, with eyes so piercing they seemed almost to be a compensation for the loss of his own.

There were others as well, from all over, it seemed. She missed most of their names. There was a great deal of noise. The innkeeper brought them wine: two bottles of Senzio green and a third one of Astibar"s blue wine. She had a small, careful gla.s.s of each, watching everyone, trying to sort through the chaotic babble of all that was said. Alessan and Baerd drew briefly apart for a moment, she noticed; when they returned to the table both men looked thoughtful and somewhat grim.

Then Devin and Alessan and Erlein had to go back and make their music for an hour while the others ate, and Alais, flushed and terribly excited, inwardly relived the feel of the two men"s 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 way upstairs behind the broad back of the innkeeper"s 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 she"d just met, and a few who were strangers. Her father entered a moment later with Sandre and Baerd. She and Catriana were the 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, concentrating, gradually came to understand with the others the dimensions, the truly frightening shape, of what he proposed to do.

At a certain point he stopped and looked at three men one by one. At 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 understood. It was a hard thing to come to terms with. Especially Sandre. The exiled Duke of Astibar. Their neighbour 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 have lost your mind," he said. His voice shook. "You have lived in your dreams so long you"ve lost sight of the world. And now you are going to kill people in your madness." lost your mind," he said. His voice shook. "You have lived in your dreams so long you"ve lost sight of the world. And now you are going to 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 unexpected 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 knew that; the real madness would have been in pretending otherwise. For the moment though, compose 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.

Alessan"s expression was wry, almost bitter. "Haven"t you noticed? You were in the harbour, you walked through the town. Have you seen any Barbadian troops? Any Ygrathens, soldiers from the west? Nothing is happening Nothing is happening. Alberico of Barbadior has his entire army ma.s.sed on the border, and the man refuses to order them north!"

"He is afraid," said Sandre flatly in the silence that followed. "He"s 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 don"t know. I honestly don"t know. This is one thing 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 for a gain he hardly cared about. Senzio? The Palm? Senzio? The Palm? What did they matter? Should he throw twenty years away for them? What did they matter? Should he throw twenty years away for them?

Every time a messenger arrived from back in 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 Emperor"s Tiara in Barbadior. That That was his war, the one he wanted to fight. The one that 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 favourites hovering there like so many ineffectual, fluttering moths. was his war, the one he wanted to fight. The one that 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 favourites hovering there like so many ineffectual, fluttering moths.

And after that that he could make war back here, with all the gathered might of Barbadior. Then let Brandin of Ygrath, of the Western Palm, whatever he chose to name himself, he could make war back here, with all the gathered might of Barbadior. Then let Brandin of Ygrath, of the Western Palm, whatever he chose to name himself, then then let him try to stand before Alberico, Emperor of Barbadior. let him try to stand before Alberico, Emperor of Barbadior.

G.o.ds, 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 mercenaries 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 prospect now. Ever since what had happened in the harbour of Chiara. Most of the Ygrathen army had indeed sailed home, exactly as antic.i.p.ated, leaving Brandin crippled and exposed. Which is why Alberico had moved, why the three companies were here and he with 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 she"d 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 wanted to fight, Alberico remembered. The Third Company captain had proposed storming across the border into Lower Corte and sacking Stevanien itself.