Tigana (87 page)

‘We have to move away!’ Rovigo croaks, the words scarcely intelligible. ‘They will be searching.’

It is true. Devin knows it is. And if there is any gift, anything at all they can offer back to Catriana now, to where she might be watching with Morian, it is that her dying should not have been meaningless or in vain.

Devin forces himself up from his knees, he helps Sandre to rise. Then he turns to Alessan. Who has not moved, nor taken his eyes from the high window where there are still men standing and gesturing. Devin remembers the Prince the afternoon his mother died. This is the same. This is worse. He wipes at his eyes with the backs of his hands. Turns to Rovigo: ‘We are too many to stay together. You and Sandre take Alais. Be very careful. They may recognize her—she was with Catriana when the Governor saw them. We’ll go another way and meet you in our rooms.’

Then he takes Alessan by the arm, and turns him—the Prince does not resist, follows his lead. The two of them start south, stumbling down a lane that will take them away from the castle, from the garden where she lies. He realizes he is still holding Sandre’s bloodied dagger. He jams it into his belt.

He thinks about the Duke, about what Sandre has just done to himself. He remembers—his mind playing its familiar tricks with time and memory—a night in the Sandreni lodge last fall. His own first night that has led him here. When Sandre told them he could not take Tomasso out of the dungeon alive because he lacked the power. Because he’d never sacrificed his fingers in the wizard’s binding.

And now he has. For Catriana, not his son, and to no good at all. There is something that hurts so much in all of this. Tomasso is nine months dead, and now she lies in a garden in Senzio, dead as any of the men of Tigana who fell in war by the Deisa years ago.

Which was the whole point for her, Devin knows. She had told him as much in Alienor’s castle. He begins to cry again, unable to stop himself. A moment later he feels Alessan’s hand upon his shoulder.

‘Hold hard, for a little longer yet,’ the Prince says. His first words since her fall. ‘You lead me and I’ll lead you, and afterwards we will mourn together, you and I.’ He leaves the hand on Devin’s shoulder. They make their way through the dark lanes and the torchlit ones.

There is already an uproar in the streets of Senzio as they go, a careening, breathless thread of rumour about some happening at the castle.
The Governor is dead,
someone shouts feverishly, sprinting wildly past them.
The Barbadians have crossed the border,
a woman screams, leaning out from a window above a tavern. She has red hair, Devin sees, and he looks away. There are no guards in the streets yet; they walk quickly and are not stopped by anyone.

Thinking back upon that walk, later, Devin realizes that never, not for a single moment, did he doubt that Catriana had killed the Barbadian before she jumped.

Back at Solinghi’s Devin wanted nothing more than to go upstairs to his room and close his eyes and be away from people, from all the invading tumult of the world. But as they came through the door, he and the Prince, a loud, impatient cheer suddenly rose in the packed front room, running swiftly towards the back as well. They were well overdue for the first of the evening’s performances, and Solinghi’s was jammed with people who’d come to hear them play, regardless of the increasing noises from outside.

Devin and Alessan exchanged a glance. Music.

There was no sign of Erlein, but the two of them slowly made their way through the crowd to the raised platform in
the middle space between the two rooms. Alessan took up his pipes and Devin stood beside him, waiting. The Prince blew a handful of testing, tuning notes and then, without a word spoken, began the song Devin had known he would begin.

As the first high, mournful notes of the ‘Lament for Adaon’ spun out into the densely crowded rooms there was a brief, disconcerted murmur, and then silence fell. Into which stillness Devin followed Alessan’s pipes, lifting his voice in lament. But not for the god this time, though the words were not changed. Not for Adaon falling from his high place, but for Catriana di Tigana fallen from hers.

Men said after that there had never been such a stillness, such rapt attention among the tables in Solinghi’s. Even the servants waiting on patrons and the cooks in the kitchens behind the bar stopped what they had been doing and stood listening. No one moved, no one made a sound. There were pipes playing, and a solitary voice singing the oldest song of mourning in the Palm.

In a room upstairs Alais lifted her head from her tear-soaked pillow and slowly sat up. Rinaldo, tending to Sandre’s maimed hand, turned his blind face towards the door and both men were still. And Baerd, who had come back here with Ducas to tidings that smashed his heart in a way he had not thought could ever happen to him again, listened to Alessan and Devin below and he felt as if his soul was leaving him, as it had on the Ember Night, to fly through darkness searching for peace and a home, for a dreamt-of world in which young women did not die in this way.

Out in the street where the sound of the pipes and that pure lamenting voice carried, people stopped in their loud pursuit of rumour or the restless chasing of night’s pleasures and they stood outside the doors of Solinghi’s, listening to the notes of grief, the sound of love—held fast in the spell of a music shaped by loss.

For a long time after it was remembered in Senzio, that haunting, heartbreaking, utterly unexpected offering of the ‘Lament’ on the mild, moonlit night that marked the beginning of war.

They played only the one song and then ended. There was nothing left in either of them. Devin claimed two open bottles of wine from Solinghi behind the bar and followed Alessan upstairs. One bedroom door was partly open: Alais’s, that had been Catriana’s too. Baerd was waiting in the doorway; he made a small choking sound and stepped forward into the hallway and Alessan embraced him.

For a long time they stood locked together, swaying a little. When they drew back both of their faces looked blurred, unfocused. Devin followed them into the room. Alais was there and Rovigo. Sandre. Rinaldo, Ducas and Naddo. Sertino the wizard. All of them crowded into this one room; as if being in the room from which she’d gone would somehow hold her spirit nearer to them.

‘Did anyone think to bring wine?’ Rinaldo asked in a faint voice.

‘I did,’ Devin said, going over to the Healer. Rinaldo looked pale and exhausted. Devin glanced at Sandre’s left hand and saw that the bleeding had been stopped. He guided Rinaldo’s hand to one of the wine bottles and the Healer drank, not bothering to ask for a glass. Devin gave the other bottle to Ducas, who did the same.

Sertino was gazing at Sandre’s hand. ‘You’re going to have to get in the habit of masking those fingers,’ he said. He held up his own left hand, and Devin saw the now-familiar illusion of completeness.

‘I know,’ Sandre said. ‘I feel very weak right now though.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Sertino replied. ‘Two missing fingers
seen will mean death for you. However weary we are, the masking must be constant. Do it. Now.’

Sandre looked up at him angrily, but the Certandan wizard’s round pink face showed nothing but concern. The Duke closed his eyes briefly, grimaced, and then slowly held up his own left hand. Devin saw five fingers there, or the illusion of such. He couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Tomasso, dead in a dungeon in Astibar.

Ducas was offering him the bottle. He took it and drank. Passed it over to Naddo, and went to sit beside Alais on the bed. She took his hand, which had never happened before. Her eyes were red with weeping, her skin looked bruised. Alessan had slumped on the floor by the door, leaning against the wall. His eyes were closed. In the light of the candles his face looked hollowed out, the cheekbones showing in angular relief.

Ducas cleared his throat. ‘We had best do some planning,’ he said awkwardly. ‘If she killed this Barbadian there will be a search through the city tonight, and Triad knows what tomorrow.’

‘Sandre used magic, as well,’ Alessan said, not opening his eyes. ‘If there’s a Tracker in Senzio he’s in danger.’

‘That we can deal with,’ Naddo said fiercely, looking from Ducas to Sertino. ‘We did it once already, remember. And there were more than twenty men with that Tracker.’

‘You aren’t in the highlands of Certando now,’ Rovigo said mildly.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Ducas said. ‘Naddo’s right. If enough of us are down in the street and Sertino’s with us to point out the Tracker then I’d be ashamed of my men if we couldn’t contrive a brawl that killed him.’

‘There’s a risk,’ Baerd said.

Ducas suddenly smiled like a wolf, cold and hard, without a trace of mirth. ‘I’d be grateful for a risk to take tonight,’ he said. Devin understood exactly what he meant.

Alessan opened his eyes and looked up from his place against the wall. ‘Do it, then,’ he said. ‘Devin can run any messages back here to us. We’ll move Sandre out, back to the ship if we have to. If you send word that—’

He stopped, and then uncoiled in one lithe movement to his feet. Baerd had already seized his sword from where it was leaning against the wall. Devin stood up, releasing Alais’s hand.

There came another rattle of sound from the stairway outside the window. Then the window opened as a hand pulled the glass outwards and Erlein di Senzio stepped carefully over the ledge and into the room with Catriana in his arms.

In the stony silence he looked at them all for a moment, taking in the scene. Then he turned to Alessan. ‘If you are worried about magic,’ he said in a paper-thin voice, ‘then you had best be very worried. I used a great deal of power just now. If there’s a Tracker in Senzio then anyone near me is extremely likely to be captured and killed.’ He stopped, then smiled very faintly. ‘But I caught her in time. She is alive.’

The world spun and rocked for Devin. He heard himself cry out with an inarticulate joy. Sandre literally leaped to his feet and rushed to claim Catriana’s unconscious body from Erlein’s arms. He hastened to the bed and laid her down. He was crying again, Devin saw. So, unexpectedly, was Rovigo.

Devin wheeled back to where Erlein stood. In time to see Alessan cross the room in two swift strides and wrap the exhausted wizard in a bear hug that lifted Erlein, feebly protesting, clean off the ground. Alessan released him and stepped back, the grey eyes shining, his face lit by a grin he couldn’t seem to control. Erlein tried, without success, to preserve his own customary cynical expression. Then Baerd came up and, without warning, seized the wizard by the shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks.

Again the troubadour struggled to look fierce and displeased. Again he failed. With an entirely unconvincing attempt at his usual scowl, he said, ‘Careful, you. Devin flattened me to the ground when you all ran out the door. I’m still bruised.’ He threw a glare at Devin, who smiled happily back at him.

Sertino handed Erlein a bottle. He drank, a long, thirsty pull. He wiped at his mouth. ‘It wasn’t hard to guess from the way you were running that something was seriously wrong. I started to follow, but I don’t run very fast any more so I decided to use magic. I got to the far end of the garden wall just as Alessan and Devin reached the near side.’

‘Why?’ Alessan asked sharply, wonder in his voice. ‘You
never
use your magic. Why now?’

Erlein shrugged elaborately. ‘I’d never seen all of you run anywhere like that before.’ He grimaced. ‘I suppose I was carried away.’

Alessan was smiling again; he couldn’t seem to hold it in for very long. Every few seconds he glanced quickly over at the bed, as if to reassure himself of who was lying there. ‘Then what?’ he asked.

‘Then I saw her in the window, and figured out what was happening. So I … I used my magic to get over the wall and I was waiting in the garden beneath the window.’ He turned to Sandre. ‘You sent an astonishing spell from so far, but you didn’t have a chance. You couldn’t know, never having tried, but you can’t stop someone falling that way. You have to be beneath them. And they usually have to be unconscious. That kind of magic works on our own bodies almost exclusively; if we want to apply it to someone else their will has to be suspended or everything gets muddled when they see what is happening and their mind begins to fight it.’