PART THREE - EMBER TO EMBER chapter 9

IT 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 toward 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 Baerds soft breathing beside him. The Barbadians stopped at the gates of what had once been Nievolene lands. They werent anymore, 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.

"Well 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 mans 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 Rovigos man?”

Rovigos 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 didnt speak, and Devin could think of nothing to say. The informer was a paunchy, balding man of middle years. He didnt look especially evil. He looked like a man surprised on the way to his

favorite tavern. Devin wondered if hed had a wife and children. They hadnt asked Rovigos man about that; he was just as happy they hadnt.

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-colored horse among those tethered outside the inn. A soldiers 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 wasnt cold anymore, or tired; he hadnt 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 theyd been waiting for. By the time Devin heard the soft jingle of the soldiers 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 wasnt 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 ones 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 Barbadians 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 toward 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 Vidomnis 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.

The guard was comprehensively asleep. His uniform was unbuttoned and the lantern on the floor by

his side illuminated an empty flask of wine. He must have lost a dice roll, Devin thought, to have been posted so boringly on guard against nothing here among the horses and the straw.

He went down the ladder without a sound. And in the flickering light of that barn, amid the smell of hay and animals and spilled red wine Devin killed his first man, plunging his dagger into the Barbadians throat as the man slept. It was not the way his dreams of valiant deeds had ever had him doing this.

It took him a moment to fight back the churning nausea that followed. Its the smell of the wine, he tried to tell himself. There was also more blood than hed thought there would be. He wiped his blade clean before he opened the door for the other two.

"Well done," Baerd said, taking in the scene. He briefly laid a hand on Devins shoulder.

Alessan said nothing, but by the wavering light Devin read a disquieting compassion in his eyes.

Baerd had already set about doing what they had to do.

They left the guard where he was to be burned. The informer and the soldier from the Second Company they dragged towards one of the outbuildings. Baerd studied the situation carefully for a few moments, refusing to be rushed, then he placed the two bodies in a particular way, and wedged the door in front of them convincingly shut with what Devin assumed would later appear to be a dislodged beam.

The singing from the manor had gradually been fading away. Now it had come down to a single voice drunkenly caroling a melancholy refrain about love lost long ago. Finally that voice, too, fell silent.

Which was Alessans cue. At his signal they simultaneously set fire to the dry straw and wood in the guarded barn and two of the adjacent outbuildings, including the one where the dead men were trapped.

Then they fled. By the time they were off the property the Nievolene barns were an inferno of flame.

Horses were screaming.

There was no pursuit. They hadnt expected any. Alessan and Sandre had worked it out very carefully back in Ferraut. The charred bodies of the informer and the Second Company soldier would be found by Karaliuss men. The mercenaries of the First Company would draw the obvious conclusion.

They reclaimed their horses and headed west. They spent the night outside again in the cold taking turns on watch. It had gone very well. It seemed to have gone exactly as planned. Devin wished theyd been able to free the horses, though. Their screaming ran through his fitful dreams in the snow.

In the morning Alessan bought a cart from a farmer near the border of Ferraut and Baerd bargained with a woodcutter for a load of fresh-cut logs. They paid the new transit duty and sold the wood at the first fort across the border. They also bought some winter wool to carry to Ferraut town where they were to rejoin the others.

There was no point, Alessan said, in missing a chance at a profit. They did have responsibilities to their partners.

In fact, a disconcerting number of untoward events had ruffled the Eastern Palm in the autumn and winter that followed the unmasking of the Sandreni conspiracy. In themselves, none of them amounted to very much; collectively they unsettled and irritated Alberico of Barbadior to the point where his aides and messengers began finding their employment physically hazardous, in so far as their duties brought them into proximity with the Tyrant.

For a man noted for his composure and equanimity—even back in Barbadior when hed been only the leader of a middle-ranking family of nobility—Albericos temper was shockingly close to the surface all winter long.

It had begun, his aides agreed amongst each other, after the San-dreni traitor, Tomasso, had been found dead in the dungeons when they came to bring him to the professionals. Alberico, waiting in the room of the implements, had been terrifyingly enraged. Each of the guards—from Sifervals Third Company—had been summarily executed. Including the new Captain of the Guard; the previous one had killed himself the night before. Siferval himself was summoned back to Astibar from Certando for a

private session with his employer that left him limp and shaking for hours afterwards.

Albericos fury had seemed to border on the irrational. He had clearly, his aides decided, been radically unsettled by whatever had happened in the forest. Certainly he didnt look well; there was something odd about one of his eyes, and his walk was peculiar. Then, in the days and weeks that followed, it became manifest, as the local informers for each of the three companies began to bring in their reports, that Astibar town simply did not believe—or chose not to believe—that anything had happened in the forest, that there had been any Sandreni conspiracy at all.

Certainly not with the Lords Scalvaia and Nievole, and most certainly not led by Tomasso bar Sandre. People were commenting cynically all over the city, the word came. Too many of them knew of the bone-deep hatreds that divided those three families. Too many knew the stories about Sandres middle son, the alleged leader of this alleged plot. He might kidnap a boy from a temple of Morian, Astibar was saying, but plot against a Tyrant? With Nievole and Scalvaia?

No, the city was simply too sophisticated to fall for that. Anyone with the slightest sense of geography or economics could see what was really going on. How, by trumping up this "threat" from three of the five largest landowners in the distrada, Alberico was merely creating a sleek cover for an otherwise naked land grab.

It was only sheerest coincidence, of course, that the Sandreni estates were central, the Nievolene farms lay to the southwest along the Ferraut border, and Scalvaias vineyards were in the richest belt in the north where the best grapes for the blue wine were grown. An immensely convenient conspiracy, all the taverns and khav rooms agreed.

And every single conspirator was dead overnight, as well. Such swift justice! Such an accumulation of evidence against them! There had been an informer among the Sandreni, it was proclaimed. He was dead. Of course. Tomasso bar Sandre had led the conspiracy, they were told. He too, most unfortunately, was dead.

Led by Astibar itself all four provinces of the Eastern Palm reacted with bitter, sardonic disbelief.

They may have been conquered, ground under the heavy Barbadian heel, but they had not been deprived of their intelligence or rendered blind. They knew a Tyrants scheming when they saw it.

Tomasso bar Sandre as a skilled, deadly plotter? Astibar, reeling under the economic impact of the confiscations, and the horror of the executions, still found itself able to mock. And then there arrived the first of the viciously funny verses from the west—from Chiara itself— written by Brandin himself some said, though rather more likely commissioned from one of the poets who hovered about that court. Verses lampooning Alberico as seeing plots hatching in every barnyard and using them as an excuse to seize fowls and vegetable gardens all over the Eastern Palm. There were also a few, not very subtle sexual innu- endos thrown in for good measure.

The poems, posted on walls all over the city—and then in Tregea and Certando and Ferraut—were torn down by the Barbadians almost as fast as they went up. Unfortunately they were memorable rhymes, and people didnt need to read or hear them more than once . . .

Alberico would later acknowledge to himself that hed lost control a little. He would also admit inwardly that a great deal of his rage stemmed from a fierce indignation and the aftermath of fear.

There had been a conspiracy led by that mincing Sandreni. They had very nearly killed him in that cursed cabin in the woods.

This once, he was telling the absolute truth. There was no pretense or deception. He had every claim of justice on his side. What he didnt have was a confession, or a witness, or any evidence at all. Hed needed his informer alive. Or Tomasso. Hed wanted Tomasso alive. His dreams that first night had been shot through with vivid images of Sandres son, bound and stripped and curved invitingly backwards on one of the machines.

In the aftermath of the perverts inexplicable death, and the unanimous word from all four provinces

that no one believed a word of what had happened, Alberico had abandoned his original, carefully measured response to the plot.

The lands were seized of course, but in addition all the living members of all three families were searched out and death-wheeled in Astibar. He hadnt expected there to be quite so many, actually, when he gave that order. The stench had been deplorable and some of the children lived an unconscionably long time on the wheels. It made it difficult to concentrate on business in the state offices above the Grand Square.

He raised taxes in Astibar and introduced, for the first time, transit duties for merchants crossing from one of his provinces to another, along the lines of the existing tariff levied for crossing from the Eastern to the Western Palm. Let them pay—literally—if they chose not to believe what had happened to him in that cabin.

He did more. Half the massive Nievolene grain harvest was promptly shipped home to Barbadior. For an action conceived in anger he considered that one to be inspired. It had pushed the price of grain down back home in the Empire, which hurt his familys two most ancient rivals while making him exceptionally popular with the people. In so far as the people mattered in Barbadior.

At the same time, here in the Palm, Astibar was forced to bring in more grain than ever from Certando and Ferraut, and with the new duties Alberico was going to rake a healthy cut of that inflated price as well.

He could almost have slaked his anger, almost have made himself happy, watching the effects of all this ripple through, if it wasnt that small things kept happening.

For one, his soldiers began to grow restless. With an increase in hardship came an increase in tension; more incidents of confrontation occurred. Especially in Tregea where there were always more incidents of confrontation. Under greater stress the mercenaries demanded—predictably—higher pay. Which, if he gave it to them, was going to soak up virtually everything he might gain from the confiscations and the new duties.

He sent a letter home to the Emperor. His first request in over two years. Along with a case of Astibar blue wine—from what were now his own estates in the north—he conveyed an urgent reiteration of his plea to be brought under the Imperial aegis. Which would have meant a subsidy for his mercenaries from the Treasury in Barbadior, or even Imperial troops under his command. As always, he stressed the role he alone played in blocking Ygrathen expansion in this dangerous halfway peninsula. He might have begun his career here as an independent adventurer, he conceded, with what he saw as a nice turn of phrase, but as an older, wiser man he wished to bind himself more tightly and more usefully to his Emperor than ever before.

As for wanting to be Emperor, and wanting the cloak of Imperial sanction thrown over him— however belatedly—well, such things surely did not have to be put into a letter?

He received, by way of reply, an elegant wall-hanging from the Emperors Palace, commendations on his loyal sentiments, and polite regret that circumstances at home precluded the granting of his request for financing. As usual. He was cordially invited to sail home to all suitable honors and leave the tiresome problems of that far land overseas to a colonial expert appointed by the Emperor.

That, too, was as usual. Turn your new territory over to the Empire. Surrender your army. Come home to a parade or two, then spend your days hunting and your money on bribes and hunting gear. Wait for the Emperor to die without naming a successor. Then knife and be knifed in the brawl to succeed him.

Alberico sent back sincerest thanks, deep regrets, and another case of wine.

Shortly thereafter, at the end of the fall, a number of men in the disgruntled, out-of-favor Third Company withdrew from service and took late-season ship for home. The commanders of the First and Second used that same week to formally present—purely coincidence of course—their new wage demands and to casually remind him of past promises of land for the mercenaries. Starting, it was

suggested delicately, with their commanders.

Hed wanted to order the two of them throttled. Hed wanted to fry their greedy, wine-sodden brains with a blast of his own magic. But he couldnt afford to do it; added to which, exercising his powers was still a process of some real strain so soon after the encounter in the woods that had nearly killed him.

The encounter that no one in this peninsula even believed had taken place.

What he had done was smile at the two commanders and confide that he had already marked off in his mind a significant portion of the newly claimed Nievolene lands for one of them. Siferval, he said, more in sorrow than in anger, had been put out of the running by the conduct of his own men, but these two . . . well, it would be a hard choice. He would be watching them closely over the next while and would announce his decision in due course.

How long a while, exactly, had pursued Karalius of the First.

Truly, he could have killed the man even as he stood there, helmet under his arm, eyes hypocritically lowered in a show of deference. Oh, spring, perhaps, hed said airily, as if such matters should not be of great moment to men of good will.

Sooner would be better, had said Grancial of the Second, softly.

Alberico had chosen to let his eyes show just a little of what he felt. There were limits.

Sooner would let whichever of us you choose have time to see to the proper handling of the land before spring planting, Grancial explained hastily. A little ruffled, as he should be.

Perhaps it is so, Alberico had said, noncommittally. I will give thought to this.

"By the way," he added, as they reached the door. "Karalius, would you be good enough to send me that very competent young captain of yours? The one with the forked black beard. I have a special, confidential task that needs a man of his evident qualities." Karalius had blinked, and nodded.

It was important, very important, not to let them grow too confident, he reflected after they had gone and hed managed to calm himself. At the same time, only a genuine fool antagonized his troops. The more so, if he had ultimate plans to lead them home. By invitation of the Emperor, preferably, but not necessarily. Not, to be sure, necessarily.

On further reflection, triggered by that line of thought, he did raise taxes in Tregea, Certando, and Ferraut to match the new levels in Astibar. He also sent a courier to Siferval of the Third in the Cer- tandan highlands, praising his recent work in keeping that province quiet.

You lashed them, then enticed them. You made them fear you, and know that their fortunes could be made if you liked them enough. It was all a matter of balance.

Unfortunately, small things continued to go wrong with the balancing of the Eastern Palm as autumn turned into winter in the unusually cold weeks that followed.

Some cursed poet in Astibar chose that dank and rainy season to begin posting a series of elegies to the dead Duke of Astibar. The Duke had died in exile, the head of a scheming family, most of whom had been executed by then. Verses lauding him were manifestly treasonous.

It was difficult though. Every single writer brought in during the first sweep of the khav rooms denied authorship, and then—with time to prepare—every writer in the second sweep claimed to have written the verses.

Some advisers suggested peremptory wheels for the lot of them, but Alberico had been giving thought to a larger issue. To the marked difference between his court and the Ygrathens. On Chiara, the poets vied for access to Brandin, quivering like puppies at the slightest word of praise from him. They wrote paeans of exaltation to the Tyrant and obscene, scathing attacks on Alberico at request. Here, every writer in the Eastern Palm seemed to be a potential rabble-rouser. An enemy of the state.

Alberico swallowed his anger, lauded the technical skill of the verses, and let both sets of poets go free. Not before suggesting, however, as benignly as he could manage, that he would enjoy reading verses

as well-crafted on one of the many possible themes of rich satiric possibility having to do with Brandin of Ygrath. He had managed a smile. He would be very pleased to read such verses, hed said, wondering if one of these cursed writers with their lofty airs could take a hint.

None did. Instead, a new poem appeared on walls all over the city two mornings later. It was about Tomasso bar Sandre. A lament about his death, and claiming—unbelievably—that his perverse sexuality had been a deliberately chosen path, a living metaphor for his conquered, subjugated land, for the perverse situation of Astibar under tyranny.

Hed had no choice after that, once hed understood what the poet was saying. Not bothering with inquiries again, hed had a dozen writers pulled at random out of the khav rooms that same afternoon, and then broken, wristed, and sky-wheeled among the still-crowded bodies of the families of the conspirators before sundown. He closed all khav rooms for a month. No more verses appeared.

In Astibar. But the same evening his new taxes were proclaimed in the Market Square in Tregea, a black-haired woman elected to leap to her death from one of the seven bridges in protest against the measures. She made a speech before she jumped, and she left behind— the gods alone knew how shed come into possession of them—a complete sheaf of the "Sandreni Elegies" from Astibar. No one knew who she was. They dragged the icy river for her body but it was never found. Rivers ran swiftly in Tregea, out of the mountains to the eastern sea.

The verses were all over that province within a fortnight, and had crossed to Certando and southern Ferraut before the first heavy snows of the winter began to fall.

Brandin of Ygrath sent an elegantly fur-clad courier to Astibar with an elegantly phrased note lauding the Elegies as the first decent creative work hed seen emanating from Barbadian territory. He offered Alberico his sincerest congratulations.

Alberico sent a polite acknowledgment of the sentiments and offered to commission one of his newly competent verse-makers to do a work on the glorious life and deeds in battle of Prince Valentin di Tigana.

Because of the Ygrathens spell, he knew, only Brandin himself would be able to read that last word, but only Brandin mattered.

He thought hed won that one, but for some reason the womans suicide in Tregea left him feeling too edgy to be pleased. It was too intense an action, harking back to the violence of the first year after hed landed here. Things had been quiet for so long, and this level of intensity—of very public intensity— never boded well. Briefly he even considered rolling back the new taxes, but that would look too much like a giving in rather than a gesture of benevolence. Besides, he still needed the money for the army.

Back home the word was that the Emperor was sinking more rapidly now, that he was seen in public less and less often. Alberico knew he had to keep his mercenaries happy.

In the dead of winter he made the decision to reward Karalius with fully half of the former Nievolene lands.

The night after the announcement was made public—among the troops first, then cried in the Grand Square of Astibar—the horse barn and several of the outbuildings of the Nievolene family estate were burned to the ground.

He ordered an immediate investigation by Karalius, then wished, a day later, that he hadnt. It seemed that they had found two bodies in the smoldering ruins, trapped by a fallen beam that had barred a door.

One was that of an informer linked to Grancial and the Second Company. The other was a Barbadian soldier: from the Second Company.

Karalius promptly challenged Grancial to a duel at any time and place of the latters choosing.

Grancial immediately named a date and place. Alberico quickly made it clear that the survivor of any such combat would be death-wheeled. He succeeded in halting the fight, but the two commanders stopped speaking to each other from that point on. There were a number of small skirmishes among men of the two companies, and one, in Tregea, that was not so small, leaving fifteen soldiers slain and twice as many

wounded.

Three local informers were found dead in Ferrauts distrada, stretched on farmers wagon-wheels in a savage parody of the Tyrants justice. They couldnt even retaliate—that would involve an admission that the men had been informers.

In Certando, two of SifervaFs Third Company went absent from duty, disappearing into the snow- white countryside, the first time that had ever happened. Siferval reported that local women did not appear to be involved. The men had been extremely close friends. The Third Company commander offered the obvious, disagreeable hypothesis.

Late in the winter Brandin of Ygrath sent another suave envoy with another letter. In it he profusely thanked Alberico for his offer of verses, and said hed be delighted to read them. He also formally requested six Certandan women, as young and comely as the one Alberico had so kindly allowed him to take from the Eastern Palm some years ago, to be added to his saishan. Unforgivably the letter somehow became public information.

Laughter was deadly.

To quell it, Alberico had six old women seized by Siferval in southwestern Certando. He ordered them blinded and hamstrung and set down under a couriers flag on the snow-clad border of Lower Corte between the forts at Sinave and Forese. He had Siferval attach a letter to one of them asking Brandin to acknowledge receipt of his new mistresses.

Let them hate him. So long as they feared.

On the way back east from the border, Siferval said in his report, he had followed an informers tip and found the two runaway soldiers living together at an abandoned farm. They had been executed on the site, with one of them—the appropriate one, Siferval had reported— castrated first, so that he could die as hed lived. Alberico sent his commendations.

It was an unsettling winter though. Things seemed to be happening to him instead of moving to a measure he dictated. Late at night, and then at other times as well, more and more as the Palm gradually turned towards a distant rumor of spring, Alberico found himself thinking about the ninth province that no one yet controlled, the one just across the bay. Senzio.

The grey-eyed merchant was making a great deal of sense. Even as he found himself reluctantly agreeing with the man, Ettocio wished the fellow had chosen someone elses roadside tavern for his midday repast. The talk in the room was veering in dangerous directions and, Triad knew, enough Barbadian mercenaries used the main highway between Astibar and Ferraut towns. If one of them stopped in here now, he would be unlikely in the extreme to indulge the current tenor of the conversation as merely an excess of springtime energy. Ettocios license would probably be gone for a month. He kept glancing nervously towards the door.

"Double taxation now!" the lean man was saying bitterly as he pushed a hand through his hair. "After the kind of winter weve just had? After what he did to the price of grain? So we pay at the border, and now we pay at the gates of a town, and where in the name of Morian is profit?”

There were truculent murmurs of agreement all around the room. In a tavern full of merchants on the road, agreement was predictable. It was also dangerous. Ettocio, pouring drinks, was not the only man keeping an eye on the door. The young fellow leaning on the bar looked up from his crusty roll and wedge of country cheese to give him an unexpectedly sympathetic look.

"Profit?" a wool-merchant from northern Ferraut said sarcastically. "Why should Barbadior care if we make a profit?”

"Exactly!" The grey eyes flashed in vigorous agreement. "The way I hear it, all he wants to do is soak the Palm for everything he can, in preparation for a grab at the Emperors Tiara back in Barbadior!”

"Shush!" Ettocio muttered under his breath, unable to stop himself. He took a quick, rare pull at a mug of his own beer and moved along the bar to close the window. It was a shame, because the spring

day was glorious outside, but this was getting out of hand.

"Next thing you know," the lean trader was saying now, "hell just go right ahead and seize the rest of our land like hes already started to do in Astibar. Any wagers were servants or slaves within five years?”

One mans contemptuous laughter rode over the snarling chorus of response triggered by that. The room fell abruptly silent as everyone turned to confront the person who appeared to find this observation diverting. Expressions were grim. Ettocio nervously wiped down the already clean bartop in front of him.

The warrior from Khardhun continued laughing for a long time, seemingly oblivious to the stares he was receiving. His sculpted, black features registered genuine amusement.

"What," said the grey-eyed one coldly, "is so very funny, old man?”

"You are," said the old Khardhu cheerfully. He grinned like a deaths head. "All of you. Never seen so many blind men in one room before.”

"You care to explain exactly what that means?" the Ferraut wool-merchant rasped.

"You need it explained?" the Khardhu murmured, his eyes wide in mock surprise. "Well, now. Why in the name of your gods or mine or his should Alberico bother trying to enslave you?" He jabbed a bony finger towards the trader whod started all this. "If he tried that my guess is theres still enough manhood in the Eastern Palm—barely —that you might take offense. Might even . . . rise up!" He said that last in an exaggerated parody of a secretive whisper.

He leaned back, laughing again at his own wit. No one else did. Ettocio looked nervously at the door.

"On the other side of the coin," the Khardhu went on, still chuckling, "if he just slowly squeezes you dry with taxes and duties and confiscations he can get to exactly the same place without making anyone mad enough to do anything about it. I tell you, gentlemen," he took a long pull at his beer, "Alberico of Barbadiors a smart man.”

"And you," said the grey-eyed man leaning across his own table, bristling with anger, "are an arrogant, insolent foreigner!”

The Khardhus smile faded. His eyes locked on those of the other man and Ettocio was suddenly very glad the warriors curved sword was checked with all the other weapons behind the bar.

"Ive been here some thirty years," the black man said softly. "About as long as youve been alive, Id wager. I was guarding merchant trains on this road when you were wetting your bed at night. And if lam a foreigner, well . . . last time I inquired, Khardhun was a free country. We beat back our invader, which is more than anyone here in the Palm can say!”

"You had magic!" the young fellow at the bar suddenly burst out, over the outraged din that ensued.

"We didnt! Thats the only reason! The only reason!”

The Khardhu turned to face the boy, his lip curling in contempt. "You want to rock yourself to sleep at night thinking thats the only reason, you go right ahead, little man. Maybe itll make you feel better about paying your taxes this spring, or about going hungry because theres no grain here in the fall. But if you want to know the truth Ill give it to you free of charge.”

The noise level had abated as he spoke, but a number of men were on their feet, glaring at the Khardhu.

Looking around the room, as if dismissing the boy at the bar as unworthy of his attention, he said very clearly, "We beat back Brandin of Ygrath when he invaded us because Khardhun fought as a country. As a whole. You people got whipped by Alberico and Brandin both because you were too busy worrying about your border spats with each other, or which Duke or Prince would lead your army, or which priest or priestess would bless it, or who would fight on the center and who on the right, and where the battlefield would be, and who the gods loved best. Your nine provinces ended up going at the sorcerers one by one, finger by finger. And they got snapped to pieces like chicken-bones. I always used to think," he drawled into what had become a quiet room, "that a hand fought best when it made a fist.”

He lazily signaled Ettocio for another drink.

"Damn your insolent Khardhu hide," the grey-eyed man said in a strangled voice. Ettocio turned from the bar to look at him. "Damn you forever to Morians darkness for being right!”

Ettocio hadnt expected that, and neither had the others in the room. The mood grew grimly introspective. And, Ettocio realized, more dangerous as well, entirely at odds with the brightness of the spring outside, the cheerful warmth of the returned sun.

"But what can we do?" the young fellow at the bar said plaintively, to no one in particular.

"Curse and drink and pay our taxes," said the wool-merchant bitterly.

"I must say, I do sympathize with the rest of you," said the lone trader from Senzio smugly. It was an ill-advised remark. Even Ettocio, notoriously slow to rouse, was irritated.

The young man at the bar was positively enraged.

"Why you, you ... I dont believe it! What right do you have—" He hammered the bar in incoherent fury. The plump Senzian smiled in the superior manner all of them seemed to have.

"What right indeed!" The grey eyes were icy as they returned to the fray. "Last time I looked, Senzio traders all had their hands jammed so deep in their pockets paying tribute money east and west that they couldnt even get their equipment out to please their wives!”

A raucous, bawdy shout of laughter greeted that. Even the old Khardhu smiled thinly.

"Last / looked," said the Senzian, red-faced, "the Governor of Senzio was one of our own, not someone shipped in from Ygrath or Barbadior!”

"What happened to the Duke?" the Ferraut merchant snapped. "Senzio was so cowardly your Duke demoted himself to Governor so as not to upset the Tyrants. Are you proud of that?”

"Proud?" the lean merchant mocked. "Hes got no time to be proud of anything. Hes too busy looking both ways to see which emissary from which Tyrant he should offer his wife to!”

Again, coarse, bitter laughter.

"Youve a mean tongue for a conquered man," the Senzian said coldly. The laughter stopped. "Where are you from that youre so quick to cut at other mens courage.”

"Tregea," said the other quietly.

"Occupied Tregea," the Senzian corrected viciously. "Conquered Tregea. With its Barbadian Governor.”

"We were the last to fall," the Tregean said a little too defiantly. "Borifort held out longer than anywhere else.”

"But it fell," the Senzian said bluntly, sure of his advantage now. "I wouldnt be so quick to talk about other mens wives. Not after the stories we all heard about what the Barbadians did there. And I also heard that most of your women werent that unwilling to be—”

"Shut your filthy mouth!" the Tregean snarled, leaping to his feet. "Shut it, or Ill close it for you permanently, you lying Senzian scum!”

A babble of noise erupted, louder than any before. Furiously clanging the bell over the bar, Ettocio fought to restore order.

"Enough!" he roared. "Enough of this, or youre all out of here right now!" A dire threat, and it quelled them.

Enough for the Khardhu warriors sardonic laughter to be audible again. The man was on his feet. He dropped coins on the table to pay his account, and surveyed the room, still chuckling, from his great height.

"See what I mean?" he murmured. "All these stick-like little fingers jabbing and poking away at each other. Youve always done that, havent you? Guess you always will. Until theres nothing left here but

Barbadior and Ygrath.”

He swaggered to the bar to claim his sword.

"You," said the grey-eyed Tregean suddenly, as Ettocio handed over the curved, sheathed blade. The Khardhu turned slowly.

"You know how to use that thing as well as you use your mouth?" the Tregean asked.

The Khardhus lips parted in a mirthless smile. "Its been reddened once or twice.”

"Are you working for anyone right now?”

Insolently, appraisingly, the Khardhu looked down on the other man. "Where are you going?”

"Ive just changed my plans," the other replied. "Theres no money to be made up in Ferraut town.

Not with double duties to be paid. I reckon Ill have to go farther afield. Ill give you going rates to guard me south to the Certandan highlands.”

"Rough country there," the Khardhu murmured reflectively.

The Tregeans face twitched with amusement. "Why do you think I want you?" he asked.

After a moment the smile was returned. "When do we go?" the warrior said.

"Were gone," the Tregean replied, rising and paying his own account. He claimed his own short sword and the two of them walked out together. When the door opened there was a brief, dazzling flash of sunlight.

Ettocio had hoped the talk would settle down after that. It didnt. The youngster at the bar mumbled something about uniting in a common front—a remark that would have been merely insane if it wasnt so dangerous. Unfortunately—from Ettocios point of view, at any rate—the comment was overheard by the Ferraut wool-trader, and the mood of the room was so aroused by then that the subject wouldnt die.

It went on all afternoon, even after the boy left as well. And that night, with an entirely different crowd, Ettocio shocked himself by speaking up during an argument about ancestral primacy between an Astibarian wine-dealer and another Senzian. He made the same point the tall Khardhu had made—about nine spindly fingers that had been broken one by one because they never formed a fist. The argument made sense to him; it sounded intelligent in his own mouth. He noticed men nodding slowly even as he spoke. It was an unusual, flattering response—men had seldom paid any attention to Ettocio except when he called time in the tavern.

He rather liked the new sensation. In the days that followed he found himself raising the point whenever the opportunity arose. For the first time in his life Ettocio began to get a reputation as a thoughtful man.

Unfortunately, one evening in summer he was overheard by a Barbadian mercenary standing outside the open window. They didnt take away his license. There was a very high level of tension across the whole of the Palm by then. They arrested Ettocio and executed him on a wheel outside his own tavern, with his severed hands stuffed in his mouth.

A great many men had heard the argument by then, though. A great many had nodded, hearing it.

Devin joined the other four about a mile south of the crossroads inn on the dusty road leading to Certando. They were waiting for him. Catriana was alone in the first cart but Devin climbed up beside Baerd in the second.

"Bubbling like a pot of khav," he said cheerfully in response to a quizzical eyebrow, Alessan rode up on one side. Hed buckled on his sword, Devin saw. Baerds bow was on the cart, just behind the seat and within very quick reach. Devin had had occasion, several times in six months, to see just how quick Baerds reach could be. Alessan smiled over at him, riding bareheaded in the bright afternoon.

"I take it you stirred the pot a little after we left?”

Devin grinned. "Didnt need much stirring. The two of you have that routine down like professional

players by now.”

"So do you," said the Duke, cantering up on the other side of the cart. "I particularly admired your spluttering anger this time. I thought you were about to throw something at me.”

Devin smiled up at him. Sandres teeth flashed white through the improbable black of his skin.

Dont expect to recognize us, Baerd had said when theyd parted in the Sandreni woods half a year ago. So Devin had been prepared. Somewhat, but not enough.

Baerds own transformation had been disconcerting but relatively mild: hed grown a short beard and removed the padding from the shoulders of his doublet. He wasnt as big a man as Devin had first thought.

Hed also somehow changed his hair from bright yellow to what he said was his natural dark brown. His eyes were brown now as well, not the bright blue of before.

What he had done to Sandre dAstibar was something else entirely. Even Alessan, whod evidently had years to get used to this sort of thing, gave a low whistle when he first saw the Duke. Sandre had become—amazingly—an aging black fighting man from Khardhun across the northern sea. One of a type that Devin knew had been common on the roads of the Palm twenty or thirty years ago in the days when merchants went nowhere except in company with each other, and Khardhu warriors with their wickedly curved blades were much in demand as insurance against outlaws.

Somehow, and this was the uncanny thing, with his own beard shaven and his white hair tinted a dark grey, Sandres gaunt, black face and deep-set, fierce eyes were exactly those of a Khardhu mercenary.

Which, Baerd had explained, had been almost the first thing hed noticed about the Duke when hed seen him in daylight. It was what had suggested the rather comprehensive disguise.

"But how?" Devin remembered gasping.

"Lotions and potions," Alessan had laughed.

It turned out, as Baerd explained later, that he and the Prince had spent a number of years in Quileia after Tiganas fall. Disguises of this sort—colorings for skin and hair, even tints for eyes—were a perfected, important art south of the mountains. They assumed a central role in the Mysteries of the Mother Goddess, and in the less secret rites of the formal theater, and they had played pivotal, complex parts in the tumultuous religion-torn history of Quileia.

Baerd did not say what he and Alessan had been doing there, or how he had come to learn this secret craft or possess the implements of it.

Catriana didnt know either, which made Devin feel somewhat better. Theyd asked Alessan one afternoon, and had received, for the first time, an answer that was to become routine through the fall and winter.

In the spring, Alessan told them. In the spring a great deal would be made clearer, one way or another. They were moving towards something of importance, but they would have to wait until then. He was not going to discuss it now. Before the Ember Days of spring they would leave their current Astibar—Tregea—Ferraut loop and head south across the wide grainlands of Certando. And at that point, Ales-san had said, a great many things might change. One way or another, hed repeated.

He hadnt smiled, saying any of this, though he was a man with an easy smile.

Devin remembered how Catriana had tossed her hair then, with a knowing, almost an angry look in her blue eyes.

"Its Alienor, isnt it?" she demanded, virtually an accusation. "Its that woman at Castle Borso.”

Alessans mouth had twisted in surprise and then amusement. "Not so, my dear," hed said. "Well stop at Borso, but this has nothing to do with her at all. If I didnt know better, if I didnt know your heart belonged only to Devin, Id say you sounded jealous, my darling.”

The gibe had entirely the desired effect. Catriana had stormed off, and Devin, almost as embarrassed himself, had quickly changed the subject. Alessan had a way of doing that to you. Behind the deep,

effortless courtesy and the genuine camaraderie, there existed a line they learned not to try to cross. If he was seldom harsh, his jests— always the first measure of control—could sting memorably. Even the Duke had discovered that it was best not to press Alessan on certain subjects. Including this one, it emerged: when asked, Sandre said he knew as little as they did about what would happen come spring.

Thinking about it, as fall gave way to winter and the rains and then the snows came, Devin was deeply aware that Alessan was the Prince of a land that was dying a little more with each passing day.

Under the circumstances, he decided, the wonder wasnt that there were places they could not trespass upon but, rather, how far they could actually go before reaching the guarded regions that lay within.

One of the things Devin began to learn during that long winter was patience. He taught himself to hold his questions for the right time, or to restrain them entirely and try to work the answers for himself.

If fuller knowledge had to wait for spring, then he would wait. In the meantime he threw himself, with an unleashed, even an unsuspected passion, into what they were doing.

A blade had been planted in his own soul that starry autumn night in the Sandreni Woods.

Hed had no idea what to expect when theyd set out five days later with Rovigos horse-drawn cart and three other horses, bound for Ferraut town with a bed and a number of wooden carvings of the Triad.

Taccio had written Rovigo that he could sell Astibarian religious carvings at a serious profit to merchants from the Western Palm. Especially because, as Devin learned, duty was not levied on Triad-related artifacts: part of a successful attempt by both sorcerers to keep the clergy placated and neutralized.

Devin learned a great deal about trade that fall and winter, and about certain other things as well.

With his new, hard-won patience he would listen in silence as Alessan and the Duke tossed ideas back and forth on the long roads, turning the rough coals of a concept into the diamonds of polished plans. And even though his own dreams at night were of raising a surging army to liberate Tigana and storm the fabled harbor walls of Chiara, he quickly came to understand—on the cold paths of day—that theirs would have to be a wholly different approach.

Which was, in fact, why they were still in the east, not the west, and doing all they could—with the small glittering diamonds of Alessan and Sandres plans—to unsettle things in Albericos realm. Once Catriana confided to him—on one of the days when, for whatever reason, she deemed him worth speaking to—that Alessan was, in fact, moving much more aggressively than he had the year before when shed first joined them. Devin suggested it might be Sandres influence. Catriana had shaken her head. She thought that was a part of it, but that there was something else, a new urgency from a source she didnt understand.

Well find out in the spring, Devin had shrugged. Shed glared at him, as if personally affronted by his equanimity.

It had been Catriana though whod suggested the most aggressive thing of all as winter began: the faked suicide in Tregea. Along with the idea of leaving behind her a sheaf of the poems that that young poet had written about the Sandreni. Adreano was his name, Alessan had informed them, unwontedly subdued: the name was on the list of the twelve poets Rovigo had reported as being randomly death- wheeled during Albericos retaliation for the verses. Alessan had been unexpectedly disturbed by that news.

There was other information in the letter from Rovigo, aside from the usual covering business details.

It had been held for them in a tavern in north Tregea that served as a mail drop for many of the merchants in the northeast. They had been heading south, spreading what rumors they could about unrest among the soldiers. Rovigos latest report suggested, for the second time, that an increase in taxes might be imminent, to cover the mercenaries newest pay demands. Sandre, who seemed to know the Tyrants mind astonishingly well, agreed.

After dinner, when they were alone around the fire, Catriana had made her proposal. Devin had been incredulous: hed seen the height of the bridges of Tregea and the speed of the river waters below. And it

was winter by then, growing colder every day.

Alessan, still upset by the news from Astibar, and evidently of the same mind as Devin, vetoed the idea bluntly. Catriana pointed out two things. One was that she had been brought up by the sea: she was a better swimmer than any of them, and better than any of them knew.

The second thing was that—as Alessan knew perfectly well, she said—a leap such as this, a suicide, especially in Tregea, would fit seamlessly into everything they were trying to achieve in the Eastern Palm.

"That," Devin remembered Sandre saying after a silence, "is true, Im sorry to say.”

Alessan had reluctantly agreed to go to Tregea itself for a closer look at the river and the bridges.

Four evenings later Devin and Baerd had found themselves crouched amid twilight shadows along the riverbank in Tregea town, at a point that seemed to Devin terribly far away from the bridge Catriana had chosen. Especially in the windy cold of winter, in the swiftly gathering dark, beside the even more swiftly racing waters that were rushing past them, deep and black and cold.

While they waited, he had tried, unsuccessfully, to sort out his complex mixture of feelings about Catriana. He was too anxious though, and too cold.

He only knew that his heart had leaped, moved by some odd, tripled conjunction of relief and admiration and envy when she swam up to the bank, exactly where they were. She even had the wig in one hand, so it would not be tangled up somewhere, and found. Devin stuffed it into the satchel he carried while Baerd was vigorously chafing Catrianas shivering body and bundling her into the layers of clothing theyd carried. As Devin looked at her—shaking uncontrollably, almost blue with the cold, her teeth chattering—he had felt his envy slipping away. What replaced it was pride.

She was from Tigana, and so was he. The world might not know it yet, but they were working together—however elliptically—to bring it back.

The following morning their two carts had slowly rattled out of town, going north and west to Ferraut again with a full load of mountain khav. A light snow had been falling. Behind them the city was in a state of massive ferment and turmoil because of the unknown dark-haired girl from the distrada who had killed herself. After that incident Devin had found it increasingly hard to be sharp or petty with Catriana.

Most of the time. She did continue to indulge herself in the custom of deciding that he was invisible every once in a while.

It had become difficult for him to convince himself that they had actually made love together; that he had really felt her mouth soft on his, or her hands in his hair as she gathered him into her.

They never spoke of it, of course. He didnt avoid her, but he didnt seek her out: her moods swung too unpredictably, he never knew what response hed get. A newly patient man, he let her come to ride a cart or sit before a tavern fire with him when she wanted to. She did, sometimes.

In Ferraut town that winter for the third time, after the leap in Tregea, they had all been wonderfully fed by Ingonida—still in raptures over the bed theyd brought her. Taccios wife continued to display a particularly solicitous affection for the Duke in his dark disguise—a detail which Alessan took some pleasure in teasing Sandre about when they were alone. In the meantime, the rotund, red-faced Taccio copiously wined them all.

There had been another mail packet waiting from Rovigo in As-tibar. Which, when opened, proved to contain two letters this time, one of which gave off—even after its time in transit—an extraordinary effusion of scent.

Alessan, his eyebrows elaborately arched, presented this pale-blue emanation to Devin with infinite suggestiveness. Ingonida crowed and clasped her hands together in a gesture doubtless meant to signify romantic rapture. Taccio, beaming, poured Devin another drink.

The perfume, unmistakably, was Selvenas. Devins expression, as he took cautious possession of the envelope, must have been revealing because he heard Catriana giggle suddenly. He was careful not to

look at her.

Selvenas missive was a single headlong sentence—much like the girl herself. She did, however, make one vivid suggestion that induced him to decline when the others asked innocently if they might peruse his communication.

In fact, though, Devin was forced to admit that his interest was rather more caught by the five neat lines Alais had attached to her fathers letter. In a small, businesslike hand she simply reported that shed found and copied another variant of the "Lament for Adaon" at one of the gods temples in Astibar and that she looked forward to sharing it with all of them when they next came east. She signed it with her initial only.

In the body of the letter Rovigo reported that Astibar was very quiet since the twelve poets had been executed among the families of the conspirators in the Grand Square. That the price of grain was still going up, that he could usefully receive as much green Senzian wine as they could obtain at current prices, that Alberico was widely expected to announce, very soon, a beneficiary among his commanders for the greater part of the confiscated Nievolene lands, and that his best information was that Senzian linens were still underpriced in Astibar but might be due to rise.

It was the news about the Nievolene lands that triggered the next stage of spark-to-spark discussion between Alessan and the Duke.

And those sparks had led to the blaze.

The five of them did a fast run along the well-maintained highway north to Senzio with more of the religious artifacts. They bought green wine with their profit on the statuettes, bargained successfully for a quantity of linens—Baerd, somewhat surprisingly had emerged as their best negotiator in such matters— and doubled quickly back to Taccio, paying the huge new duties at both the provincial border forts and the city-walls.

There had been another letter waiting. Among the various masking pieces of business news, Rovigo reported that an announcement on the Nievolene lands was expected by the end of the week. His source was reliable, he added. The letter had been written five days before.

That night Alessan, Baerd, and Devin had borrowed a third horse from Taccio—who was deeply happy to be told nothing on theif intentions—and had set out on the long ride to the Astibar border and then across to a gully by the road that led to the Nievolene gates.

They were back seven days later with a new cart and a load of unspun country wool for Taccio to sell. Word of the fire had preceded them. Word of the fire was everywhere, Sandre reported. There had already been a number of tavern brawls in Ferraut town between men of the First and Second Companies.

They left the new cart with Taccio and departed, heading slowly back towards Tregea. They didnt need three carts. They were partners in a modest commercial venture. They made what slight profit they could, given the taxes and duties that trammeled them. They talked about those taxes and duties a great deal, often in public. Sometimes more frankly than their listeners were accustomed to hearing.

Alessan quarreled with the sardonic Khardhu warrior in a dozen different inns and taverns on the road, and hired him a dozen different times. Sometimes Devin played a role, sometimes Baerd did. They were careful not to repeat the performance anywhere. Catriana kept a precise log of where they had been and what they had said and done there. Devin had assured her they could rely on his memory, but she kept her notes nonetheless.

In public the Duke now called himself "Tomaz." "Sandre" was an uncommon-enough name in the Palm, and for a mercenary from Khardhun it would be sufficiently odd to be a risk. Devin remembered growing thoughtful when the Duke had told them his new name back in the fall. Hed wondered what it was like to have had to kill his son. Even to outlive his sons. To know that the bodies of everyone even distantly related to himself were being spreadeagled alive on the death-wheels of Barbadior. He tried to imagine how all of that would feel.

Life, the processes of living and what it did to you, seemed to Devin to grow more painfully complex all through that fall and winter. Often he thought of Marra, arbitrarily cut off on the way to her maturity, to whatever she had been about to become. He missed her with a dull ache that could grow into something heavy and difficult at times. She would have been someone to talk to about such things. The others had their own concerns and he didnt want to burden them. He wondered about Alais bren Rovigo, if she would have understood these things he was wrestling with. He didnt think so; she had lived too sheltered, too secluded a life for such thoughts to trouble her. He dreamt of her one night though, an unexpectedly intense series of images. The next morning he rode beside Catriana in the lead cart, unwontedly quiet, stirred and unsettled by the nearness of her, the crimson fall of her hair in the pale winter landscape.

Sometimes he thought about the soldier in the Nievolene barn— who had lost a roll of dice and carried a jug of wine to a lonely place away from the singing, and had had his throat slit there while he slept. Had that soldier been born into the world only to become a rite of passage for Devin di Tigana?

That was a terrible thought. Eventually, mulling it over through the long, cold winter rides, Devin worked his way through to deciding it was untrue. The man had interacted with other people through his days. Had caused pleasure and sorrow, doubtless, and had surely known both things. The moment of his ending was not what denned his journey under Eannas lights, or however that journey was named in the Empire of Barbadior.

It was difficult to sort out though. Had Stevan of Ygrath lived and died so that his fathers grief might work the destruction of a small province and its people and their memories? Had Prince Valentin di Tigana been born only to swing the killing blade that caused this to happen? And what about his youngest son then?

And what about the youngest son of the Asolini farmer who had fled from Avalle when it became Stevanien? Truly, it was hard to puzzle through.

In Senzio one morning, with the first elusive hints of spring softening the northern air, Baerd had come back from the celebrated weapons market with a bright, beautifully balanced sword for Devin.

There was a black jewel in the hilt. He offered no explanation, but Devin knew it had to do with what had happened in the Nievolene barn. The gift did nothing to answer any of his new questions, but it helped him nonetheless. Baerd began giving him lessons during their midday breaks on the road.

Devin worried about Baerd, in part because he knew that Alessan did.

His first impression in the cabin had been mostly wrong: a big, blond man, intimidatingly cool and competent. But Baerd was dark-haired and not actually large at all and, though his competence ran to such an astonishing number of things that it could still be intimidating after six months, he wasnt really cool.

Only guarded, careful. Closed tightly around the kernel of the hurt he had lived with for a long time.

In some ways, Devin realized, Alessan had it easier than Baerd. The Prince could find a temporary release in talk, in laughter, and most of all, and almost always, in music. Baerd seemed to have no release at all; he walked through a world shaped and reshaped every single moment around the knowledge that Tigana was gone.

It would drive him out at night sometimes, away from sleep, or from a fire theyd built up by a road.

He would rise without warning, neatly, quietly, and go out into the darkness alone.

Devin would watch Alessan watching Baerd as he went away.

"I knew a man like him once," Sandre said gravely one night after Baerd had left a warm room in a tavern for a fog-shrouded winter night in the Tregean hills near Borifort. "He used to have to go away by himself to fight off a need to kill.”

"That would be a part of it," Alessan had said.

Thoughts of winter, mood of a winters night.

But it was spring now, and as the sap of the earth rose green-gold to the warming light so did Devin feel his own mood lifting to the stir and quickening of the world through which they rode.

Wait for springtime, Alessan had said amid the browns and reds of autumn trees and the bare, harvested vines. And spring was upon them now, with the Ember Days approaching fast and at last—at long last—they were on the road for Certando and whatever answers lay there. Devin could not quell and did not want to quell the sense rising within him like sap in the green woods that whatever was going to happen was going to begin to happen soon.

In the second cart beside Baerd he felt gloriously, importantly alive. Ahead of them the glint of afternoon sunlight in Catrianas hair was doing something strange and wonderful to his blood. He was aware of Baerd giving him a curious scrutiny, and caught a half-smile playing across the others face. He didnt care. He was even glad. Baerd was his friend.

Devin began a song. A very old ballad of the road, "The Song of the Wayfarer": Im a long way from the house where I was born And this is just another winding trail, But when the sun goes down both of the moons will rise And Eannas stars will hear me tell my tale . . .

Alessan, whatever his mood might be, was almost always ready to join in a song and, sure enough, Devin had the Tregean pipes with him by the second verse. He looked over and caught a wink from the Prince riding beside them.

Catriana glanced back at them reprovingly. Devin grinned at her and shrugged, and Alessans pipes suddenly spun into a wilder dance of invitation. Catriana tried and failed to suppress a smile. She joined them on the third verse and then led them into the next song.

Later, in the summer, Devin would revive that image of the five of them in the first hour of the long ride south and the memory would make him feel very old.

He was young that day. In a way they all were, briefly—even Sandre, joining in on the choruses he knew in a passable baritone voice, reborn into his new identity, with a new hope to his long, unfading dream.

Devin took the third song back from Catriana, and sent his high clear voice along the road before them to lead the way down the sunlit, winding trail to Certando, to the Lady of Castle Borso, whoever she might be, and to whatever it was that Alessan had to find in the highlands.

First though, nearing sundown, they overtook a traveler on the road.

In itself that wasnt unusual. They were still in Ferraut, in the populated country north of Fort Ciorone where busy highways from Tregea and Corte met the north-south road they were on. Solitary travelers, on the other hand, were sufficiently rare for Devin to join Baerd in scanning the sides of the road to see if others were hidden in ambush.

A routine precaution, but they were in country where thieves would not survive long and in any case it was still daylight. Then as they drew nearer Devin saw the small harp slung over the mans back. A troubadour. Devin grinned; they were almost always good company.

The man had turned and was waiting for them to catch up. The deep bow he offered Catriana as she pulled the lead cart to a halt beside him was of such courtly grace it almost looked like a parody on the lonely road.

"Ive been enjoying the sound of you for the last mile," he said, straightening. "I must say Im enjoying the sight of you even more." He was tall, no longer young, with long, greying hair and quick eyes. He gave Catriana the sort of smile for which the troubadours of the Palm were notorious. His teeth were white and even in a leathery face.

"Heading south with the spring?" she asked, smiling politely at his flattery. "The old route?”

"I am indeed," he replied. "The old route at the usual time. And Id hate to tell someone as young and beautiful as you how many years Ive been doing it.”

Devin jumped down from beside Baerd and strolled closer to the man to confirm something. "I could probably guess," he said, grinning, "because I think I remember you. We did a wedding season in

Certando together. Did you play harp for Burnet di Corte two years ago?”

The sharp eyes looked him up and down. "I did," the troubadour admitted after a moment. "Im Erlein di Senzio and I was with damned Burnet for a season all right. Then he cheated me of my wages and I decided I was happier on my own again. I thought those were professional voices behind me. You are?”

"Devin dAsoli." The lie came easily. "I was with Menico di Ferraut for a few years.”

"And have clearly moved on to other, better things," Erlein said, glancing at their laden carts. "Is Menico still on the road? Is he any fatter than he was?”

"Yes to both," Devin said, concealing the guilt that still assailed him when he thought of his former troupe-leader. "So is Burnet last I heard.”

"Rot him," Erlein said mildly. "He owes me money.”

"Well," Alessan said, looking down from his horse, "we cant do anything about that but if you like we can run you up to Ciorone and a bed before curfew. You can ride with Baerd," he added quickly, as Erlein glanced at the empty seat beside Catriana.

"I would be most profoundly grateful—" Erlein began.

"I dont like Fort Ciorone," Sandre broke in suddenly. "They cheat you there and too many people learn what youre carrying and where youre going. Too many of the wrong kind of people. Its a mild night coming—I think were better off out here.”

Devin glanced over at the Duke in surprise. This was the first time hed offered any such opinion.

"Well, really Tomaz, I dont see why—" Alessan began.

"You hired me, merchant," Sandre growled. "You wanted me to do a job for you and Im doing it.

You dont want to listen, pay me now and Ill find someone who will." His eyes were fierce within the hollows of his blackened face.

And his tone was one that none of them could mistake. Whatever it was, Sandre had a reason for what he was doing.

"A little courtesy if you please," Alessan snapped, turning his horse to face the Dukes. "Or I will indeed turn you away and let you carry your old bones back to find someone else idiot enough to put up with you. I have managed," he said, swinging back to Erlein, "to find the most arrogant Khardhu on the roads of the Palm.”

"They are all arrogant," the troubadour replied with a shake of his head. "Comes with the curved swords.”

Alessan laughed. So too, following his lead, did Devin. "Theres a good hour of daylight left," Baerd said in a complaining voice. "We can make the Fort easy. Why sleep on the ground?”

Alessan sighed. "I know," he said. "But Im sorry. Were new to this run and Tomaz isnt. I suppose we ought to listen to him or were wasting his fee, arent we?" He looked back at Erlein and shrugged.

"There goes your ride to Ciorone.”

"Cant lose what you never had," the troubadour smiled. "Ill manage.”

"Youre welcome to share our fire," Devin interjected, trusting that hed read the Dukes brief glance correctly. He still wasnt sure what Sandre was doing.

Surprisingly, Erlein flushed; he looked somewhat embarrassed. "As to that, I thank you, but Ive nothing with me to bring to table or hearth.”

"You have been on the road a long time," Sandre said in a quieter voice. "I havent heard a Palm-born use that phrase in years. Its a lost tradition, that one.”

"You have a harp, dont you?" Catriana said, at just the right moment and in her sweetest voice. She glanced directly at Erlein for an instant, then demurely lowered her eyes again.

"I do," said the troubadour after a moment, affirming the obvious. He was devouring Catriana with

his gaze.

"Then you are far from empty-handed," Alessan said crisply. "Devin and my sister both sing, as youve heard, and I can manage these pipes a little bit. A harp will go gentle after dinner under the stars.”

"Say no more," said Erlein. "Youll be better company by a long go than my mouth talking wisdom with only my own ears to hear.”

Alessan laughed again.

"Theres trees over west, and a stream beyond them, if I remember rightly," Sandre said. "A good place to camp.”

Before anyone else could say a word Erlein di Senzio had jumped up and settled himself at Catrianas side. Devin, his mouth agape, closed it quickly at Sandres hidden, urgent gesture.

Catriana pulled west off the road to lead them toward the trees the Duke had pointed out. Devin heard her giggle at something the troubadour said.

He was looking at Sandre though. So were Baerd and Alessan.

The Duke glanced at Erlein whose back was to the four of them, then very briefly he held up his left hand with the third and fourth fingers carefully curled down. He gazed at Alessan deliberately and then back to the man beside Catriana.

Devin didnt understand. An oath? he thought, confused.

Sandre lowered his hand but his eyes remained locked on the Princes. There was an odd, challenging expression in them. Alessan had suddenly gone pale.

And in that moment Devin understood.

"Oh, Adaon," Baerd whispered on a rising note, as Devin leaped up on the cart beside him. "I do not believe this!”

Neither did Devin.

What Sandre was telling them, quite plainly, was that Erlein di Senzio was a wizard. One who had cut two fingers in his linking to the magic of the Palm.

And Alessan bar Valentin was a Prince of the blood of Tigana. Which meant, if the old tale of Adaon and Micaela was true, that he could bind a wizard to his service. Sandre had not believed it back in the cabin in the fall. Devin remembered that.

But now he was giving Alessan his chance. Which explained the challenge in his gaze.

A chance, or at least the beginnings of a chance. Thinking as fast as he ever had in his life, Devin turned to Baerd. "Follow my lead when we get there," he said softly. "I have an idea." Only later would he have time to reflect what a change six months had made. Only six months, one Ember season to another.

For him to speak so to Baerd, speak and be listened to ...

There was indeed a stream, as Sandre had known, or guessed. Not far from its banks they halted the carts. The usual twilight routine began. Catriana seeing to the horses, Devin to wood for the fire. Alessan and the Duke laid out the sleeping-rolls and organized the cooking gear and the food they carried.

Baerd took his bow and disappeared into the trees. He was back in twenty minutes, no more than that, with three rabbits and a plump, wingless grele.

"Im impressed," Erlein said from beside Catriana and the horses. His eyes were wide. "Im very impressed.”

"Im buying your music for later," Baerd said with a rare smile. The one he usually reserved for bargaining sessions at town fairs.

Devin had been watching Erlein as unobtrusively as he could. When he could manage to focus on the troubadours left hand—which never seemed to be still for more than an instant—there did seem to be an odd blurring, an occluding of air around it.

He had been waiting for Baerd to come back, now he waited no longer.

"You," he said, grinning at the returning hunter, "look like something that should be hunted yourself.

You are going to terrify every civilized merchant we meet. You need a haircut before you are fit for society, my friend.”

Baerd was very quick.

"I wouldnt talk, scamp," he shot back, tossing his prey over to Sandre by the wood gathered for the fire. "Not the way you look yourself. Or are you deliberately trying to be scruffy to scare away Alienor at Borso?”

Alessan laughed. So did Erlein.

"Nothing scares away Alienor," the troubadour chuckled. "And that one is exactly the right age for her.”

"What right age?" Alessan grinned slyly. "Over twelve and not yet buried suits her fine.”

"I dont like that," Catriana said primly as the five men laughed.

"Sorry," Alessan said trying to keep a straight face, as she stepped in front of him, hands firmly on her hips.

"You are not at all sorry, but you should be!" Catriana snapped. "You know very well I dont like that kind of talk. How do you think it makes me look? And you only do it when youre idle. Do something useful. Cut Devins hair. He does look awful, even worse than usual.”

"Me?" Devin squeaked in protest. "My hair? What do you mean? Its Baerd, not me! What about him?

Hes the one who—”

"You all need a haircut," Catriana pronounced with a blunt finality that admitted of no rebuttal. Her cold scrutiny rested critically on Erleins shaggy mane for a second. She opened her mouth, hesitated, then closed it, in a brilliant miming of polite restraint. Erlein flushed. His right hand went uneasily to tug at his shoulder-length strands.

His left hand never stopped playing restlessly with some pebbles hed gathered by the stream.

"I think," Devin said spitefully, "that youve just insulted our guest. That should make him feel properly welcome here.”

"I didnt say a word, Devin," she flared.

"You didnt have to," Erlein said ruefully. "Those magnificent eyes were somewhat less than pleased with what they saw.”

"My sisters eyes are almost never pleased with what they see," Alessan grunted. He was crouched beside one of the packs and after a moments rummaging pulled out a scissors and a comb. "I am fairly obviously being ordered to duty here. Theres half an hour of light left. Whos first victim?”

"Me," said Baerd quickly. "You arent touching me in twilight, Ill tell you that much.”

Erlein watched with interest as Alessan led Baerd over to a rock by the stream and proceeded—quite competently, in fact—to trim the other mans hair. Catriana went back to the horses, though not before offering Erlein another quick, enigmatic glance. Sandre stacked the wood for the fire and began skinning the rabbits and the grele, humming tunelessly to himself.

"More wood, lad," he said abruptly to Devin, without looking up. Which was perfect, of course.

Oh, Marian, Devin thought, a heady blend of excitement and pride racing through him. They are all so good.

"Later," was all he said, lounging casually on the ground. "Weve got enough for now and Im next with Alessan.”

"No youre not," Alessan called from by the river, picking up Sandres gambit. "Get the wood, Devin.

There isnt enough light to do three of you. Ill cut yours tomorrow, and Erleins now if he wants. Catriana

will just have to endure you looking fearsome for one more night.”

"As if a haircuts going to change that!" she called from the other side of the clearing. Erlein and Baerd laughed.

Grumbling, Devin stood up and ambled off toward the trees.

Behind him he heard Erleins voice.

"Id be grateful to you," the troubadour was saying to Alessan. "Id hate to have another woman look at me the way your sister just did.”

"Ignore her," Devin heard Baerd laugh as he strode back toward the fire.

"She is impossible to ignore," Erlein said in a voice pitched to carry to where the horses were tethered. He stood up and walked over to the riverbank. He sat down on the rock in front of Alessan. The sun was a red disk, westering beyond the stream.

Carrying an armful of wood, Devin looped quietly around in the growing shadows to where Catriana stood among the horses. She heard him come up but continued brushing the brown mare. Her eyes never left the two men by the river.

Neither did Devins. Squinting into the setting sun it seemed to him as if Alessan and the troubadour had become figures in some timeless landscape. Their voices carried with an unnatural clarity in the quiet of the gathering twilight.

"When was this last done for you?" he heard Alessan ask casually, his scissors busy in the long grey tangles of Erleins hair.

"I dont even remember," the troubadour confessed.

"Well," Alessan laughed, bending to wet his comb in the stream, "on the road we dont exactly have to keep up with court fashions. Tilt a little this way. Yes, good. Do you brush it across in front or straight back?”

"Back, by preference.”

"Fine." Alessans hands moved up to the crown of Erleins head, the scissors flashing as they caught the last of the sun. "Thats an old-fashioned look, but troubadours are supposed to look old-fashioned, arent they? Part of the charm. You are bound by Adaon s name and my own. I am Alessan, Prince of Tigana, and wizard you are mine!”

Devin took an involuntary step forward. He saw Erlein try, re-flexively, to jerk away. But the hand of binding held his head, and the scissors, so busy a moment before, were now sharp against his throat. They froze him for an instant and an instant was enough.

"Rot your flesh!" Erlein screamed as Alessan released him and stepped back. The wizard sprang from the stone as if scalded, and wheeled to face the Prince. His face was contorted with rage.

Fearing for Alessan, Devin began moving toward the river, reaching for his blade. Then he saw that Baerd had an arrow already notched to his bow, and trained on Erleins heart. Devin slowed his rush and then stopped. Sandre was right beside him, the curved sword drawn. He caught a glimpse of the Dukes dark face and in it—though he couldnt be absolutely sure in the uncertain light—he thought he read fear.

He turned back to the two men by the river. Alessan had laid down the scissors and comb neatly on the rock. He stood still, hands at his sides, but his breath was coming quickly.

Erlein was literally shaking with fury. Devin looked at him and it was as if a curtain had been drawn back. In the wizards eyes hatred and terror vied for domination. His mouth worked spasmodically. He raised his left hand and pointed it at Alessan in a gesture of violent negation.

And Devin saw, quite clearly now, that his third and fourth fingers had indeed been chopped off. The ancient mark of a wizards binding to his magic and the Palm.

"Alessan?" Baerd said.

"It is all right. He cannot do anything with his power now against my will." Alessans voice was quiet, almost detached, as if this was all happening to someone else entirely. Only then did Devin realize that the wizards gesture had been an attempt to cast a spell. Magic. He had never thought to be so near it in his life. The skin prickled at the back of his neck, and not because of the twilight breeze.

Slowly Erlein lowered his hand and slowly his trembling stopped. "Triad curse you," he said, low and cold. "And curse the bones of your ancestors and blight the lives of your children and your childrens children for what you have done to me." It was the voice of someone wronged, brutally, grievously.

Alessan did not flinch or turn away. "I was cursed almost nineteen years ago, and my ancestors were, and whatever children I or any of my people might have. It is a curse I have set my life to undo while time yet allows. For no other reason have I bound you to me.”

There was something terrible in Erleins face. "Every true Prince of Tigana," the wizard said with bitter intensity, "has known since the beginning how awful a gift the god gave them. How savage a power over a free, a living soul. Do you even know—" He was forced to stop, white-faced, his hands clenched, to regain control of himself. "Do you even know how seldom this gift has been used.”

"Twice," Alessan said calmly. "Twice, to my knowledge. The old books recorded it so, though I fear all the books have been burned now.”

"Twice!" Erlein echoed, his voice skirling upwards. "Twice in how many generations stretching back to the dawn of records in this peninsula? And you, a puling princeling without even a land to rule have just casually—viciously—set your hands upon my life!”

"Not casually. And only because I have no home. Because Tigana is dying and will be lost if I do not do something.”

"And what part of that little speech gives you rights over my life and death?”

"I have a duty," Alessan replied gravely. "I must use what tools come to hand.”

"I am not a tool!" Erlein cried from the heart. "I am a free and living soul with my own destiny!”

Watching Alessans face Devin saw how that cry shafted into him. For a long moment there was silence by the river. Devin saw the Prince draw air into his lungs carefully, as if steadying himself under yet another burden, a new weight joined to those he already carried. Another part added to the price of his blood.

"I will not lie and say that I am sorry," Alessan said finally, choosing his words with care. "I have dreamt of finding a wizard for too many years. I will say—and this is true—that I understand what you have said and why you will hate me, and I can tell you that I grieve for what necessity demands.”

"It demands nothing!" Erlein replied, shrill and unrelenting in his righteousness. "We are free men.

There is always a choice.”

"Some choices are closed to some of us." It was, surprisingly, Sandre.

He moved forward to stand a little in front of Devin. "And some men must make choices for those who cannot, whether through lack of will or lack of power." He walked nearer to the other two, by the dark, quiet rushing of the stream. "Just as we may choose not to slay the man who is trying to kill our child, so Alessan may have chosen not to bind a wizard who might be needed by his people. His children.

Neither refusal, Erlein di Senzio, is a true alternative for anyone with honor.”

"Honor!" Erlein spat the word. "And how does honor bind a man of Senzio to Tiganas fate? What Prince compels a free man to a sure death at his side and then speaks of honor?" He shook his head. "Call it naked power and have done.”

"I will not," the Duke replied in his deep voice. It was quite dark now; Devin could no longer see his hooded eyes. From behind them all he heard the sounds of Baerd beginning to light the fire. Overhead the first stars were emerging in the blue-black cloak of the sky. Away west, across the stream, there was a last hint of crimson along the line of the horizon.

"I will not," Sandre said again. "The honor of a ruler, and his duty, lies in his care for his land and his people. That is the only true measure. And the price, part of the price of that, comes when he must go against his own souls needs and do such things that will grieve him to the very bones of his hands. Such things," he added softly, "as the Prince of Tigana has just done to you.”

But Erleins voice shot back, unpersuaded, contemptuous. "And how," he snarled, "does a bought sword from Khardhun presume to use the word honor or to speak about the burdens of a prince?" He wanted the words to hurt, Devin could see, but what came through in the inflections of his voice was the sound of someone lost and afraid.

There was a silence. Behind them the fire caught with a rush, and the orange glow spun outward, illuminating Erleins taut rage and Sandres gaunt, dark face, the bones showing in high relief. Beyond them both, Devin saw, Alessan had not moved at all.

Sandre said, "The Khardhu warriors I have known were deeply versed in honor. But I will claim no credit for that. Be not deceived: I am no Khardhu. My name is Sandre dAstibar, once Duke of that province. I know a little about power.”

Erleins mouth fell open.

"I am also a wizard," Sandre added matter-of-factly. "Which is how you were known: by the thin spell you use to mask your hand.”

Erlein closed his mouth. He stared fixedly at the Duke as if seeking to penetrate his disguise or find confirmation in the deep-hooded eyes. Then he glanced downwards, almost against his will.

Sandre already had the fingers of his left hand spread wide. All five fingers.

"I never made the final binding," he said. "I was twelve years old when my magic found me. I was also the son and heir of Tellani, Duke of Astibar. I made my choice: I turned my back on magic and embraced the rule of men. I used my very small power perhaps five times in my life. Or six," he amended.

"Once, very recently.”

"Then there was a conspiracy against the Barbadian," Erlein murmured, his rage temporarily set aside as he wrestled with this. "And then . . . yes, of course. What did you do? Kill your son in the dungeon?”

"I did." The voice was level, giving nothing away at all.

"You could have cut two fingers and brought him out.”

"Perhaps.”

Devin looked over sharply at that, startled.

"I dont know. I made my choice long ago, Erlein di Senzio." And with those quiet words another shape of pain seemed to enter the clearing, almost visible at the edges of the firelight.

Erlein forced a corrosive laugh. "And a fine choice it was!" he mocked. "Now your Dukedom is gone and your family as well, and youve been bound as a slave wizard to an arrogant Tiganese. How happy you must be!”

"Not so," said Alessan quickly from by the river.

"I am here by my own choice," Sandre said softly. "Because Tiganas cause is Astibars and Senzios and Chiaras—it is the same for all of us. Do we die as willing victims or while trying to be free? Do we skulk as you have done all these years, hiding from the sorcerers? Or can we not join palm to palm—for once in this folly-ridden peninsula of warring provinces locked into their pride—and drive the two of them away?”

Devin was deeply stirred. The Dukes words rang in the firelit dark like a challenge to the night. But when he ended, the sound they heard was Erlein di Senzio clapping sardonically.

"Wonderful," he said contemptuously. "You really must remember that for when you find an army of simpletons to rally. You will forgive me if I remain unmoved by speeches about freedom tonight. Before

the sun went down I was a free man on an open road. I am now a slave.”

"You were not free," Devin burst out.

"And I say I was!" Erlein snapped, rounding fiercely on him. "There may have been laws that constrained me, and one government ruling where I might have wished for another. But the roads are safer now than they ever were when this man ruled in Astibar or that ones father in Tigana—and I carried my life where I wanted to go. You will all have to forgive my insensitivity if I say that Brandin of Ygraths spell on the name of Tigana was not the first and last thought of my days!”

"We will," Alessan said then in an unnaturally flat voice. "We will all forgive you for that. Nor will we seek to persuade you to change your views now. I will tell you this, though: the freedom you speak of will be yours again when Tiganas name is heard in the world once more. It is my hope—vain, perhaps— that you will work with us willingly in time, but until then I can say that the compulsion of Adaons gift will suffice me. My father died, and my brothers died by the Deisa, and the flower of a generation with them, fighting for freedom. I have not lived so bitterly or striven so long to hear a coward belittle the shattering of a people and their heritage.”

"Coward!" Erlein exclaimed. "Rot you, you arrogant princeling! What would you know about it?”

"Only what you have told us yourself," Alessan replied, grimly now. "Safer roads, you said. One government where you might have wished for another." He took a step toward Erlein as if he would strike the man, his composure finally beginning to break. "You have been the worst thing I know, a willing subject of two tyrants. Your idea of freedom is exactly what has let them conquer us, and then hold us.

You called yourself free? You were only free to hide . . . and to soil your breeches if a sorcerer or one of their Trackers came within ten miles of your little screening spell. You were free to walk past death- wheels with your fellow wizards rotting on them, and free to turn your back and continue on your way.

Not anymore, Erlein di Senzio. By the Triad, you are in it now! You are in it as deep as any man in the Palm! Hear my first command: you are to use your magic to conceal your fingers exactly as before.”

"No," said Erlein flatly.

Alessan said nothing more. He waited. Devin saw the Duke take a half-step towards the two of them and then stop himself. He remembered that Sandre had not believed that this was possible.

Now he saw. They all saw, by the light of the stars and the fire Baerd had made.

Erlein fought. Understanding next to nothing, unnerved by almost all that was happening, Devin gradually became aware that a horrible struggle was taking place within the wizard. It could be read in his rigid, straining stance and his gritted teeth, heard in the rasp and wheeze of his shortening breath, seen in tightly closed eyes and the suddenly clenched fingers at his sides.

"No," Erlein gasped, once and then again and again, with more effort each time. "No, no, no!" He dropped to his knees as if felled like a tree. His head bent slowly downward. His shoulders hunched as if resisting some overmastering assault. They began to shake with erratic spasms. His whole body was trembling.

"No," he said again in a high, cracked whisper. His hands spread open, pressing flat against the ground. In the red firelight his face was a mask of staring agony. Sweat poured down it in the chill of night. His mouth suddenly gaped open.

Devin looked away in pity and terror just before the wizards scream ripped the night apart. In the same moment Catriana took two quick running steps and buried her head against Devins shoulder.

That cry of pain, the scream of a tormented animal, hung in the air between fire and stars for what seemed an appallingly long time.

Afterwards Devin became aware of the intensity of the silence, broken only by the occasional crackle of the fire, the rivers soft murmur, and Erlein di Senzios choked, ragged breathing.

Without speaking Catriana straightened and released her grip on Devins arm. He glanced at her but

she didnt meet his eye. He turned back to the wizard.

Erlein was still on his knees before Alessan in the new spring grass by the riverbank. His body still shook, but with weeping now. When he lifted his head Devin could see the tracks of tears and sweat and the staining mud from his hands. Slowly Erlein raised his left hand and stared at it as if it was something alien that didnt even belong to him. They all saw what had happened, or the illusion of what had happened.

Five fingers. He had cast the spell.

An owl suddenly called, short and clear from north along the river, nearer to the trees. Devin became aware of a change in the sky. He looked up. Blue Ilarion, waning back to a crescent, had risen in the east.

Ghostlight, Devin thought, and wished he hadnt.

"Honor!" Erlein di Senzio said, scarcely audible.

Alessan had not moved since giving his command. He looked down on the wizard he had bound and said, quietly, "I did not enjoy that, but I suppose we needed to go through it. Once will be enough, I hope.

Shall we eat?”

He walked past Devin and the Duke and Catriana to where Baerd was waiting by the fire. The meat was already cooking. Caught in a vortex of emotion, Devin saw the searching look Baerd gave Alessan.

He turned back in time to see Sandre reaching out a hand to help Erlein rise.

For a long moment Erlein ignored him, then, with a sigh, he grasped the Dukes forearm and pulled himself erect.

Devin followed Catriana back toward the fire. He heard the two wizards coming after them.

Dinner passed in near silence. Erlein took his plate and glass and went to sit alone on the rock by the stream at the very farthest extent of the fires glow. Looking over at his dark outline, Sandre murmured that a younger man would very likely have refused to eat. "Hes a survivor that one," the Duke added.

"Any wizard whos lasted this long has to be.”

"Will he be all right then," Catriana asked softly. "With us?”

"I think so," Sandre answered, sipping his wine. He turned to Alessan. "Hell try to run away tonight though.”

"I know," the Prince said.

"Do we stop him?" It was Baerd.

Alessan shook his head. "Not you. I will. He cannot leave me unless I let him. If I call he must return.

I have him . . . tethered to my mind. It is a queer feeling.”

Queer indeed, Devin thought. He looked from the Prince to the dark figure by the river. He couldnt even imagine what this must feel like. Or rather, he could almost imagine it, and the sensation disturbed him.

He became aware that Catriana was looking at him and he turned to her. This time she didnt look away. Her expression, too, was strange; Devin realized she must be feeling the same edginess and sense of unreality that he was. He suddenly remembered, vividly, the feel of her head against his shoulder an hour ago. At the time hed hardly registered the fact, so intent had he been on Erlein. He tried to smile reassuringly, but he didnt think he managed it.

"Troubadour, you promised us harp music!" Sandre called out abruptly. The wizard in the darkness didnt respond. Devin had forgotten about that. He didnt feel much like singing and he didnt think Catriana did either.

So, in the event, what happened was that Alessan expressionlessly claimed his Tregean pipes and began to make music alone beside the fire.

He played beautifully, with a pared-down economy of sound— melodies so sweetly offered that

Devin, in his current mood, could almost imagine Eannas stars and the blue crescent of the one moon pausing in their movements overhead so as not to have to wheel inexorably away from the grace of that music.

Then a short while later Devin realized what Alessan was doing and he felt, abruptly, as if he was going to cry. He held himself very still, to keep control, and he looked at the Prince across the red and orange of the flames.

Alessans eyes were closed as he played, his lean face seemed almost hollowed out, the cheekbones showing clearly. And into the sounds he made he seemed to pour, as from a votive temple bowl, both the yearning that drove him, and the decency and care that Devin knew lay at the root of him. But that wasnt it, that wasnt what was making Devin want to cry: Every song that Alessan was playing, every single tune, achingly high and sweet, heartbreakingly clear, one after another, was a song from Senzio.

A song for Erlein di Senzio, cloaked in bitterness and the shadows of night by the riverbank alone.

I will not say I am sorry, Alessan had told the wizard as the sun had set. But I can tell you that I grieve.

And the night, listening to the music the Prince of Tigana made upon his pipes, Devin learned the diiference between the two. He watched Alessan, and then he watched the others as they looked at the Prince, and it was when he was gazing at Baerd that the need to weep did grow too strong. His own griefs rose to the call of the mountain pipes. Grief for Alessan and overmastered Erlein. For Baerd and his haunted night walking. For Sandre and his ten fingers and his dead son. For Catriana and himself, all their generation, rootless and cut off from what they were in a world without a home. For all the myriad accumulations of loss and what men and women had to do in order to seek redress.

Catriana went to the baggage and she opened and poured another bottle of wine. The third glass. And as always, it was blue. She filled Devins glass in silence. Shed scarcely spoken a word all night, but he felt closer to her than he had in a long time. He drank slowly, watching the cold smoke rise from his glass and drift away in the cool night. The stars overhead were like icy points of fire and the moon was as blue as the wine and as far away as freedom, or a home.

Devin finished his glass and put it down. He reached for his blanket and lay down himself, wrapping it around him. He found himself thinking about his father and of the twins for the first time in a long time.

A few moments later Catriana lay down not far away. Usually she spread her sleeping-roll and blanket on the far side of the fire from where he was, next to the Duke. Devin was wise enough now to know that there was a certain kind of reaching out in what she did, and that tonight might even mark a chance to begin the healing of what lay badly between them, but he was too drained to know what to do or say among all these complicated sorrows.

He said good-night to her, softly, but she did not reply. He wasnt sure if shed heard him, but he didnt say it again. He closed his eyes. A moment later he opened them again, to look at Sandre across the fire. The Duke was gazing steadily into the flames. Devin wondered what he saw there. He wondered, but he didnt really want to know, Erlein was a shadow, a darker place in the world against the dark by the riverbank. Devin lifted himself on one elbow to look for Baerd, but Baerd had gone away, to walk alone in the night.

Alessan hadnt moved, or opened his eyes. He was still playing, lonely and high and sorrowful, when Devin fell asleep.

He woke to Baerds firm hand on his shoulder. It was still dark and quite cold now. The fire had been allowed to die to ember and ash. Catriana and the Duke were still asleep, but Alessan was standing behind Baerd. He looked pale but composed. Devin wondered if hed gone to bed at all.

"I need your help," Baerd murmured. "Come.”

Shivering, Devin rolled out of his blankets and began pulling on his boots. The moon was down. He looked east but there was no sign of dawn along the horizon. It was very still. Sleepily he shrugged into

the woolen vest Alais had sent him by way of Taccio in Ferraut. He had no idea how long hed been asleep or what time it was.

He finished dressing and went to relieve himself in the trees by the river. His breath smoked in the frosty air. Spring was coming, but it wasnt quite here yet, not in the middle of the night. The sky was brilliantly clear and full of stars. It would be a beautiful day later when the sun came. Right now he shivered, and did up the drawstrings of his breeches.

Then he realized that he hadnt seen Erlein anywhere.

"What happened?" he whispered to Alessan as he returned to the camp. "You said you could call him back.”

"I did," the Prince said shortly. Standing closer Devin could see now how weary he looked. "He fought it so hard that he passed out just now. Somewhere out there." He gestured south and west.

"Come on," Baerd said again. "Bring your sword.”

They had to cross the stream. The icy cold water drove all the sleep out of Devin. He gasped with the shock of it.

"Im sorry," Baerd said. "Id have done it alone, but I dont know how far away he is or what else is out here in this country. Alessan wants him back in camp before he revives. It made sense to have two men.”

"No, no, thats fine," Devin protested. His teeth were chattering.

"I suppose I could have woken the old Duke from his rest. Or Catriana could have helped me.”

"What? No, really, Baerd. Im fine. Im—”

He stopped, because Baerd was laughing at him. Belatedly Devin caught on to the teasing. It warmed him in a curious way. This way, in fact, the first time hed ever been out alone in the night with Baerd. He chose to see it as another level of trust, of welcoming. Little by little he was beginning to feel more of a part of what Alessan and Baerd had been trying to achieve for so many years. He straightened his shoulders and, walking as tall as he could, followed Baerd west into the darkness.

They found Erlein di Senzio at the edge of a cluster of olive trees on a slope, about an hours walk from the camp. Devin swallowed awkwardly when he saw what had happened. Baerd whistled softly between his teeth; it wasnt a pretty sight.

Erlein was unconscious. He had tied himself to one of the tree-trunks and appeared to have knotted the rope at least a dozen times. Bending down, Baerd held up the wizards waterflask. It was empty: Erlein had soaked the knots to tighten them. His pack and his knife lay together on the ground, a deliberate distance out of reach.

The rope was frayed and tangled. It looked as if a number of knots had been undone, but five or six still held.

"Look at his fingers," Baerd said grimly. He drew his dagger and began cutting the rope.

Erleins hands were shredded into raw strips. Dried blood covered both of them. It was brutally clear what had happened. He had tried to make it impossible for himself to yield to Alessans summons. What had he hoped for, Devin wondered. That the Prince would assume he had somehow escaped and would therefore forget about him?

Devin doubted, in fact, if what Erlein had done carried any such weight of rational thought. It was defiance, pure and simple, and one had to acknowledge—not even grudgingly—the ferocity of it. He helped Baerd cut through the last of the bonds. Erlein was breathing, but showed no signs of consciousness. His pain must have been devastating, Devin realized, with a flashing memory of the wizard beaten to his knees and screaming by the river. He wondered what screams the night had heard, here in this wild and lonely place.

He felt an awkward mixture of respect and pity and anger as he gazed down at the grey-haired

troubadour. Why was he making this so hard for them? Why forcing Alessan to shoulder so much more pain of his own?

Unfortunately, he knew some of the answers to that, and they were not comforting.

"Will he try to kill himself?" he asked Baerd abruptly.

"I dont think so. As Sandre said, this one is a survivor. I dont think hell do this again. He had to run once—to test the limits of what would happen to him. I would have done the same thing." He hesitated. "I didnt expect the rope though.”

Devin took Erleins pack and gear and Baerds bow and quiver and sword. Baerd slung the unconscious wizard over his shoulder with a grunt and they started back east. It was slower going back.

On the horizon in front of them when they reached the stream the first grey of false dawn was showing, dimming the glow of the late-rising stars.

The others were up and waiting for them. Beard laid Erlein down by the fire—Sandre had it burning again. Devin dropped the gear and weapons and went back to the river with a basin for water. When he returned Catriana and the Duke began cleaning and wrapping Erleins mangled hands. They had opened his shirt and turned up the sleeves, revealing angry weals where he had writhed against the ropes in his struggle to be free.

Or is that backwards, Devin thought grimly. Wasnt the binding of the rope his real struggle to be free? He looked over and saw Ales-san gazing down at Erlein. He could read absolutely nothing in the Princes expression.

The sun rose, and shortly after that Erlein woke.

They could see him register where he was.

"Khav?" Sandre asked him casually. The five of them were sitting by the fire, eating breakfast, drinking from steaming mugs. The light from the east was a pale, delicate hue, a promise. It glinted and sparkled on the water of the stream and turned the budding leaves green-gold on the trees. The air was filled with birdsong and the leap and splash of trout in the stream.

Erlein sat up slowly and looked at them. Devin saw him become aware of the bandages on his hands.

Erlein glanced over at the saddled horses and the two carts, packed and ready for the road.

His gaze swung back and steadied on Alessans face. The two men, so improbably bound, looked at each other without speaking. Then Alessan smiled. A smile Devin knew. It opened his stern face to warmth and lit the slate-grey of his eyes.

"Had I known," Alessan said, "that you hated Tregean pipes quite that much I honestly wouldnt have played them.”

A moment later, horribly, Erlein di Senzio began to laugh. There was no joy in that sound, nothing infectious, nothing to be shared. His eyes were squeezed shut and tears welled out of them, pouring down his face.

No one else spoke or moved. It lasted for a long time. When Erlein had finally composed himself he wiped his face on his sleeve, careful of his bandaged hands and looked at Alessan again. He opened his mouth, about to speak, and then closed it again.

"I know," Alessan said quietly to him. "I do know.”

"Khav?" Sandre said again, after a moment.

This time Erlein accepted a mug, cradling it awkwardly in both muffled hands. Not long after they broke camp and started south again.