Tigana

"Did I deserve that?" she asked.

A terrible sadness pa.s.sed over Devin. He swallowed with some difficulty. "No," he said. "No, you didn"t."

Her eyes were still closed when he left the room.

He felt heavy and burdened, beyond merely tired; leaden with the weight of his thoughts, slowed by them. He stumbled going down the stairwell and had to fling out his free hand to brace himself against the stone wall. The motion left the candle unguarded and it went out.

It was very dark then. The castle was utterly still. Moving carefully, Devin reached the bottom of the stairs and he put the spent flame down on a ledge there. At intervals, high in the walls, tall thin windows let slanting moonlight fall across the corridor but the angle and the hour did not allow for any real illumination.

Briefly he considered going back for another candle but then, after standing still a moment to let his eyes adjust, Devin set out along what he thought to be the way they had come.

He was lost very soon, though not really alarmed. In his present mood there seemed to be something apposite about padding thus silently down the darkened hallways of this ancient highland castle in the dead of night, the stones cold against his feet.

There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.

Who had told him that? The words had come unbidden to his mind from some recess of memory. He turned into an unfamiliar corridor and pa.s.sed through a long room hung with paintings. Part of the way through, he found a voice for the words: it had been the old priest of Morian at the G.o.ddess"s temple by his family"s farm in Asoli. He had taught the twins and then Devin how to read and do sums, and when it appeared that the youngest boy, the small one, could sing he had given Devin his first lessons in the rudiments of harmony.

No wrong turnings, Devin thought again. And then, with a shiver he could not suppress, he remembered that this was not just the nadir of a night, it was the end of winter, the first of the Ember Days-when the dead were said to walk abroad. Devin thought again. And then, with a shiver he could not suppress, he remembered that this was not just the nadir of a night, it was the end of winter, the first of the Ember Days-when the dead were said to walk abroad.

The dead. Who were his dead? Marra. His mother, whom he had never known. Tigana? Could a country, a province, be said to have died? Could it be lost and mourned like a living soul? He thought of the Barbadian he had slain in the Nievolene barn.

He did quicken his pace then, over the dark, sporadically moonlit stones of the vast and silent castle.

It seemed to Devin that he walked for an endless time-or a time outside of time-pa.s.sing no one, hearing nothing save for his own breathing or the soft tread of his feet, before he finally recognized a statue in an alcove. He had admired it by torchlight earlier in the evening. He knew his room was just ahead and around a corner to the right. Somehow he had come entirely the wrong way along the whole far wing of Castle Borso.

He also knew, from earlier in the evening, that the room directly opposite the small fine statue of the bearded archer drawing a bow, was Catriana"s.

He looked up and down the corridor but saw only greater and lesser shadows among the bands of white moonlight falling from above. He listened, and heard no sound. If the dead were abroad they were silent.

No wrong turnings, Ploto the priest had told him long ago. Ploto the priest had told him long ago.

He thought of Alienor, lying with her eyes closed among her bright cushions and all her candles, and he was sorry for what he"d said to her at the end. He was sorry for many things. Alessan"s mother was dying. His own was dead.

Ice is for deaths and endings, Alienor had said to Catriana in the hall. Alienor had said to Catriana in the hall.

He was cold, and very sad. He moved forward and ended the silence, knocking gently on Catriana"s door.

She"d had a restless night, for many reasons. Alienor had disturbed her: both the unbridled sensuousness that emanated from the woman, and the obviously close, unknown past she shared with Alessan and Baerd.

Catriana hated unknown things, information hidden from her. She still still didn"t know what Alessan was going to do tomorrow, what this mysterious meeting in the highlands was all about, and ignorance made her uneasy and even, on a less acknowledged level, afraid. didn"t know what Alessan was going to do tomorrow, what this mysterious meeting in the highlands was all about, and ignorance made her uneasy and even, on a less acknowledged level, afraid.

She wished she could be more like Devin sometimes, matching his seemingly tranquil acceptance of what he could or could not know. She had seen him storing away the pieces of what he did learn and patiently waiting to receive another piece, and then putting them together like the tiles of a children"s puzzle game.

Sometimes she admired that, sometimes it made her wild and contemptuous to see him so accepting of Alessan"s occasional reticence or Baerd"s chronic reserve. Catriana needed to know know. She had been ignorant for so much of her life, shielded from her own history in that tiny fishing village in Astibar. She felt that there was so much lost time to be regained. Sometimes it made her want to weep.

That was how she"d been feeling this evening before drifting into a shallow, uneasy sleep and a dream of home. She often dreamt of home since she"d left, especially of her mother.

This time she saw herself walking through the village just after sunrise, pa.s.sing the last house-Tendo"s, she even saw his dog-and then rounding the familiar curve of the sh.o.r.e to where her father had bought a derelict cottage and repaired it and raised a family.

In her dream she saw the boat already far out, trawling among the early-morning swell of the sea. It seemed to be springtime. Her mother was in the doorway of the cottage mending nets in the good light of the sunrise. Her eyes had been going bad for years and it was hard for her to work with her needle in the evenings. Catriana had gradually taken over the nightime needlework in her last year at home.

It was a beautiful morning in the dream. The stones of the beach gleamed and the breeze was fresh and light off the water. All the other boats were out as well, taking advantage of the morning, but it was easy to tell which one was their own. Catriana walked up the path and stood by the newly mended porch, waiting for her mother to look up and see her and leap to her feet with a cry, and fold her daughter in her arms.

Her mother did glance up from her work, but only to gaze seaward, squinting towards the light, to check the position of their boat. An old habit, a nervous one, and one that had probably done much to hurt her eyes. She"d a husband and three sons in that small boat though.

She didn"t see her daughter at all. Catriana realized with a queer pain that she was invisible here. Because she had gone, because she had left them and wasn"t there any longer. There was more grey, she saw, in her mother"s hair, and her heart ached as she stood there in mild sunlight to see how worn and hard her mother"s hands were, and how tired the kind face was. She had always thought of her mother as a young woman, until Tiena, the baby, had died in the plague six years ago. Things had changed after that.

It isn"t fair, she thought, and in the dream she cried aloud and was not heard. she thought, and in the dream she cried aloud and was not heard.

Her mother sat on a wooden chair on the porch in the early light, working on the nets, occasionally looking up to check the position of one small boat among so many bobbing on this alien eastern sea so far from the one she"d loved.

Catriana woke, her body twisting violently away from all the hurts embedded in that image. She opened her eyes, waiting for her heartbeat to slow, lying under several blankets in a room in Castle Borso. Alienor"s castle.

Alienor, who was the same age as Catriana"s worn, tired mother. It truly was not fair. Why should she be carrying such guilt, seeing such sad, hurtful images in her sleep, for having gone away? Why, when it was her mother who had given her the ring when she was fourteen, in the year the baby died. The ring that marked her as from Tigana and by the sea for anyone who knew the ancient symbols, and for no one else.

The ring that had so marked her for Alessan bar Valentin two years ago when he and Baerd had seen her selling eels and fresh-caught telanquy in Ardin town just up the coast from the village.

She had not been a trusting person at eighteen. She could not have said, then or now, why she"d trusted the two of them and joined them for that walk upriver out of town when the market was done. If pushed to an answer she would have said that there was something about Baerd that had rea.s.sured her.

It was on that walk that they had told her about her ring and about Tigana, and the axis of her life had tilted another way. A new running of time had begun from that moment, and with it the need to know.

At home that evening after dinner, after the boys had gone to bed, she told her parents that she now knew where they were from, and what her ring meant. And she asked her father what he was going to do to help her bring Tigana back, and what he had been doing all these years. It was the only time in her life she"d ever seen her mild, innocuous father in a rage, and the only time he"d ever struck her.

Her mother wept. Her father stormed about the house in the awkward manner of a man unused to raging, and he swore upon the Triad that he"d not taken his wife and daughter away before the Ygrathen invasion and the fall only to be sucked back into that ancient grief now.

And thus had Catriana learned the second thing that had changed her life.

The youngest of the boys had begun crying. Her father had stomped out then, slamming the door, rattling the windows. Catriana and her mother had looked at each other in silence a long time while a frightened child gradually subsided in the loft above their heads. Catriana held up her hand and showed the ring she"d worn for the past four years. She had looked a question with her eyes, and her mother had nodded once, not weeping now. The embrace they exchanged was one they both expected to be their last.

Catriana had found Alessan and Baerd at the best-known of the inns in Ardin town. It had been a bright night, she remembered, both moons high and nearly full. The night watchman at the inn had leered at her and groped when she sidled by him up the stairs towards the room he"d identified.

She had knocked and Alessan had opened to her name. His grey eyes, even before she spoke, had been curiously dark, as if antic.i.p.ating a burden or a grief.

"I am coming with you," she had said. "My father was a coward. We fled before the invasion. I intend to make that up. I will not sleep with you though. I"ve never slept with any man. Can I trust you both?"

Awake in Castle Borso she blushed in the darkness, remembering that. How impossibly young she must have sounded to them. Neither man had laughed though, or even smiled. She would never forget that.

"Can you sing?" was all that Alessan had said.

She fell asleep again, thinking about music, about all the songs she"d sung with him, crossing the Palm for two years. This time when she dreamt it was about water-about swimming in the sea at home, her greatest, sweetest joy. Diving for sh.e.l.ls at summer twilight among the startled flashing fish, feeling the water wrap her like a second skin.

Then without warning or transition the dream changed and she was on the bridge in Tregea again in a gathering of winter dark and wind, more terrified than she had imagined a soul could be. Only herself to blame, her own pride, her gnawing, consuming, unslaked need to make redress for the fact that they had fled. She saw herself mount and balance on the railing again, saw the racing, black tumultuous water far below, heard, even over the loud rush of the river, the pounding of her heart ...

And woke a second time just before the nightmare of her leap. Woke because what she had heard as the beat of her heart was a knocking at her door.

"Who is it?" she called.

"Devin. Will you let me come in?"

Abruptly she sat up in bed and pulled the topmost blanket to her chin.

"What is it?" she called.

"I"m not sure, actually. May I come in?"

"The door isn"t locked," she said finally. She made sure the blankets were covering her, but the room was so dark it didn"t really matter.

She heard him enter, but saw only the outline of his form.

"Thank you," he said. "You should lock your door, you know."

She wondered if he had any idea how much she hated being told things like that. "The only person likely to be roaming tonight was our hostess, and she was unlikely to be coming for me. There"s a chair to your left."

She heard him reach for it and sink back with a sigh into the deep armchair.

"I suppose that"s true enough," he said in a drained voice. "And I"m sorry, you don"t really need me to be telling you how to take care of yourself."

She listened for irony but heard none. "I seem to have managed tolerably well without your guidance," she said mildly.

He was silent. Then: "Catriana, I honestly don"t know why I"m here. I"m in such a strange mood tonight. I feel ridiculously sad."

There was something extremely odd in his voice. She hesitated a moment, then, carefully adjusting the blankets, reached over to strike a flint.

"You light fires on the Ember Days?" he asked.

"Evidently."

She lit the candle by her bed. Then, somewhat regretting the waspishness of that reply, added, "My mother used to light one-just one, as a reminder to the Triad, she used to say. Though I only understood what she meant after I met Alessan."

"That"s strange. So did my father," Devin said wonderingly. "I"ve never thought about that. I never knew why he did it. My father was not a man who explained things."

She turned to look at him, but he was deep in the chair and the wings hid his face.

"A reminder of Tigana?" she said.

"It would have to have been. As if ... as if the Triad didn"t deserve full devotion or observance because of what they"d allowed." He paused, then in a meditative tone added, "It"s another example of our pride, isn"t it? Of that Tiganese arrogance Sandre always talks about. We make bargains with the Triad, we balance scales with them: they take away our name, we take away a part of their rites."

"I suppose so," she said, though it didn"t really strike her that way. Devin talked like this sometimes. She didn"t see the action as one of pride, or bargaining, just as a reminder to the self of how great a wrong had come to pa.s.s. A reminder, like Alessan"s blue wine.

"My mother is not a proud woman," she said, surprising herself.

"I don"t know what mine was like," he said in that tightened voice. "I don"t even know if I could say that my father is proud. I guess I don"t know very much about him either." He really did sound peculiar.

"Devin," she said sharply, "lean forward. Let me look at you." She checked her blankets; they covered her to the chin.

Slowly he shifted forward: the candlelight spilled across his wildly dishevelled hair, the torn shirt and the visible scratches and marks of teeth. She felt a quick surge of anger, and then a slower, deeper anxiety that had nothing to do with him. Or not directly.

She masked both reactions behind a sardonic laugh. "She was was roaming, I see. You look like you"ve been to war." roaming, I see. You look like you"ve been to war."

With an effort he managed a brief smile, but there was something sombre in his eyes: she could read it even by candlelight.

It unsettled her. "What is it then?" she pursued with broad sarcasm. "You tired her out and came here wanting more? I can tell you-"

"No," he said quickly. "No, it isn"t that. It is ... hardly that, Catriana. It has been a ... difficult night."

"You certainly look as if it was," she retorted, her hands gripping the blankets.

He pushed on doggedly. "Not that way. It"s so strange. So complicated. I think I learned something there. I think-"

"Devin, I really don"t don"t want the details!" She was angry with herself for how edgy this sort of thing made her feel. want the details!" She was angry with herself for how edgy this sort of thing made her feel.

"No, no. Not like that, though yes, there was that at the beginning. But ..." He drew a breath. "I think what I learned was something about what the Tyrants have done to us. Not just Brandin, and not just in Tigana. Alberico too. Both of them, and to all of us."

"Such insight," she mocked, reflexively. "She must be even more skilful than you imagined."

Which silenced him. He leaned back in the chair again and she couldn"t see his face. In the quiet that followed her breathing grew calmer.

"I"m sorry," she said at length. "I didn"t mean that. I"m tired. I"ve had some bad dreams tonight. What do you want from me, Devin?"

"I"m not sure," he said. "I guess, to be a friend."

Again she felt pushed and uneasy. She resisted an instinctive, nervous urge to suggest he go write a letter to one of Rovigo"s daughters. She said, "I"ve never been good at that, even as a child."

"Nor I," he said, shifting forward again. He had pushed his hair into a semblance of order. He said, "It is more than that between you and me though. You hate me sometimes, don"t you."

She felt her heart thump. "We do not have to discuss this, Devin. I don"t hate you."

"Sometimes you do," he pursued in that strange, dogged tone. "Because of what happened in the Sandreni Palace." He paused, and drew a shaky breath. "Because I was the first man you ever made love with."

She closed her eyes. Tried, unsuccessfully, to will that last sentence not to have been spoken. "You knew?"

"Not then. I figured it out later."

Pieces of another puzzle. Patiently putting it together. Figuring her out. She opened her eyes and gazed bleakly at him. "And is it your idea that discussing this interesting subject will make us friends?"

He winced. "Probably not. I don"t know. I thought I"d tell you I want to be." There was a silence. "I honestly don"t know, Catriana. I"m sorry."

Surprisingly, her shock and anger had both pa.s.sed. She saw him slump back again, exhausted, and she did the same, reclining against the wooden headboard of her bed. She thought for a while, marvelling at how calm she felt.

"I don"t hate you, Devin," she said finally. "Truly, I don"t. Nothing like that. It is an awkward memory, I won"t deny that, but I don"t think it has ever hindered us in what we have to do. Which is what really matters, isn"t it?"