chapter 19

AWARM NIGHT, THE FRAGRANCE OF FLOWERS. MOONLIGHT on the trees, on the pale stones of the garden wall, on the woman standing in the high window.

Devin hears a sound to his left and quickly turns. Rovigo running up, to stop, rigid with shock as his gaze follows Alessans upward. Behind him now comes Sandre with Alais.

"Help me!" the Duke orders harshly, dropping to the cobblestones beside Devin. His expression is wild, distraught, he has a knife in his hand.

"What?" Devin gasps, uncomprehending. "What do you . . . ?”

"My fingers! Now! Cut them! I need the power!" And Sandre dAstibar slaps the hilt of the knife hard into Devins palm and curls his own left hand around a loose slab of stone in the street. Only his third and fourth fingers are extended. The wizards fingers, of binding to the Palm.

"Sandre . . ." Devin begins, stammering.

"No words! Cut me, Devin!”

Devin does as he is told. Wincing, gritting his teeth against pain against grief, he poises the sharp slim blade and brings it down on Sandres exposed fingers, cleaving through. He hears someone cry out.

Alais, not the Duke.

But in the moment the knife cuts clean through flesh to grind against stone there is a swift and dazzling flash. Sandres darkened face is illuminated by a corona of white light that flares like a star about his head and dies away, leaving them blinded for a moment in the after-image of its glow.

Alais is on the Dukes other side, kneeling to quickly wrap a square of cloth about his bleeding hand.

Sandre lifts that hand, with an effort, silent in the face of pain. Without a word spoken, Alais helps him, her fingers supporting his arm.

From high above they hear a sharp, distant crash, the sound of men shouting. Silhouetted in the tall window, Catriana becomes suddenly taut. She screams something. They are too far away to make out the words. Too terribly far. They see her turn though, to the darkness, to the night.

"Oh, my dear, no. Not this!" Alessans voice is a ragged whisper scoured up from his heart.

Too late. Far, far too late.

On his knees in the dusty road, Devin sees her fall.

Not wheeling or tumbling to death, but graceful as she has always been, a diver cleaving the night downward. Sandre thrusts forward his maimed wizards hand, straining upward. He speaks rapid words Devin cannot understand. There is a sudden weirdly distorting blur in the night, a shimmer as of unnatural heat in the air. Sandres hand is aimed straight at the falling woman. Devins heart stops for a moment, seizing at this wild, impossible hope.

Then it starts beating again, heavy as age, as death. Whatever Sandre has tried, it is not enough. He is too far, it is too hard a spell, he is too new to this power. Any of these, all, none. Catriana falls. Unstayed, unchecked, beautiful as a moonlit fantasy of a woman who can fly. Down to a broken, crumpled ending behind the garden wall.

Alais bursts into desperate sobs. Sandre covers his eyes with his good hand, his body rocking back and forth. Devin can hardly see for the tears in his eyes. High above them, in the window where she had stood, the blurred forms of men appear, looking downward into the darkness of the garden.

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

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

or in vain.

Devin forces himself up from his knees, he helps Sandre to rise. Then he turns to Alessan. Who has not moved, nor taken his eyes from the high window where there are still men standing and gesturing.

Devin remembers the Prince the afternoon his mother died. This is the same. This is worse. He wipes at his eyes with the backs of his hands. Turns to Rovigo: "We are too many to stay together. You and Sandre take Alais. Be very careful. They may recognize her—she was with Catriana when the Governor saw them. Well go another way and meet you in our rooms.”

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

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

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

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

"Hold hard, for a little longer yet," the Prince says. His first words since her fall. "You lead me and Ill lead you, and afterwards we will mourn together, you and I." He leaves the hand on Devins shoulder.

They make their way through the dark lanes and the torchlit ones.

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

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

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

Devin and Alessan exchanged a glance. Music.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For a long time they stood locked together, swaying a little. When they drew back both of their faces looked blurred, unfocused. Devin followed them into the room. Alais was there and Rovigo. San-dre.

Rinaldo, Ducas and Naddo. Sertino the wizard. All of them crowded into this one room; as if being in the room from which shed gone would somehow hold her spirit nearer to them.

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

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

Sertino was gazing at Sandres hand. "Youre going to have to get in the habit of masking those fingers," he said. He held up his own left hand, and Devin saw the now-familiar illusion of completeness.

"I know," Sandre said. "I feel very weak right now though.”

"Doesnt matter," Sertino replied. "Two missing fingers seen will mean death for you. However weary we are, the masking must be constant. Do it. Now.”

Sandre looked up at him angrily, but the Certandan wizards round pink face showed nothing but concern. The Duke closed his eyes briefly, grimaced, and then slowly held up his own left hand. Devin saw five fingers there, or the illusion of such. He couldnt seem to stop thinking about Tomasso, dead in a dungeon in Astibar.

Ducas was offering him the bottle. He took it and drank. Passed it over to Naddo, and went to sit beside Alais on the bed. She took his hand, which had never happened before. Her eyes were red with weeping, her skin looked bruised. Alessan had slumped on the floor by the door, leaning against the wall.

His eyes were closed. In the light of the candles his face looked hollowed out, the cheekbones showing in angular relief.

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

"Sandre used magic, as well," Alessan said, not opening his eyes. "If theres a Tracker in Senzio hes in danger.”

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

"You arent in the highlands of Certando now," Rovigo said mildly.

"Doesnt matter," Ducas said. "Naddos right. If enough of us are down in the street and Sertinos with us to point out the Tracker then Id be ashamed of my men if we couldnt contrive a brawl that killed him.”

"Theres a risk," Baerd said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Devin wheeled back to where Erlein stood. In time to see Alessan cross the room in two swift strides and wrap the exhausted wizard in a bear hug that lifted Erlein, feebly protesting, clean off the ground.

Alessan released him and stepped back, the grey eyes shining, his face lit by a grin he couldnt seem to control. Erlein tried, without success, to preserve his own customary cynical expression. Then Baerd came up and, without warning, seized the wizard by the shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks.

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

Sertino handed Erlein a bottle. He drank, a long, thirsty pull. He wiped at his mouth. "It wasnt hard to guess from the way you were running that something was seriously wrong. I started to follow, but I dont run very fast anymore so I decided to use magic. I got to the far end of the garden wall just as Alessan and Devin reached the near side.”

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

Erlein shrugged elaborately. "Id never seen all of you run anywhere like that before." He grimaced.

"I suppose I was carried away.”

Alessan was smiling again; he couldnt seem to hold it in for very long. Every few seconds he glanced quickly over at the bed, as if to reassure himself of who was lying there. "Then what?" he asked.

"Then I saw her in the window, and figured out what was happening. So I ... I used my magic to get over the wall and I was waiting in the garden beneath the window." He turned to Sandre. "You sent an astonishing spell from so far, but you didnt have a chance. You couldnt know, never having tried, but you cant stop someone falling that way. You have to be beneath them. And they usually have to be unconscious. That kind of magic works on our own bodies almost exclusively; if we want to apply it to someone else their will has to be suspended or everything gets muddled when they see what is happening and their mind begins to fight it.”

Sandre was shaking his head. "I thought it was my weakness. That I just wasnt strong enough, even

with the binding.”

Erleins expression was odd. For a second he seemed about to respond to that, but instead he resumed his tale. "I used a spell to make her lose consciousness partway down, and a stronger one to catch her before she hit. Then a last to get us over the wall again. By then I was completely spent, and terrified they would trace us immediately if there was a Tracker anywhere in the castle. But they didnt, there was too much chaos. I think something else is happening back there. We hid behind the main temple of Eanna for a time, and then I carried her here.”

"Carried her through the streets?" Alais asked. "No one noticed that?”

Erlein grinned at her, not unkindly. "It isnt that unusual in Senzio, my dear." Alais flushed crimson, but Devin could see that she didnt really mind. It was all right. Everything was suddenly all right.

"We had better get down into the street then," Baerd said to Ducas. "Well have to get Arkin and some of the others. Regardless of whether there are Trackers, this changes things. When they dont find her body in the garden theres going to be an unbelievable search of the town tonight. I think there will have to be some fighting.”

Ducas smiled again, more like a wolf than ever. "I hope so," was all he said.

"One moment," said Alessan quietly. "I want you all to witness something." He turned back to Erlein and hesitated, choosing his words. "We both know that you did this tonight without any coercion from me, and against your own best interests, in every way.”

Erlein glanced over at the bed, two sudden spots of red forming on each of his sallow cheeks. "Dont make too much of it," he warned gruffly. "Every man has his moments of folly. I like red-headed women, thats all. Thats how you trapped me in the first place, remember?”

Alessan shook his head. "That may be true, but it is not all, Erlein di Senzio. I bound you to this cause against your will, but I think you have just joined it freely.”

Erlein swore feelingly. "Dont be a fool, Alessan! I just told you, I ...”

"I know what you just told me. I make my own judgments though, I always have. And the truth is, I have been made to realize tonight—by you and Catriana, both—that there are limits to what I wish to do or see done for any cause. Even my own.”

As AJessan finished speaking, he stepped forward quickly and laid a hand on Erleins brow. The wizard flinched, but Alessan steadied him. "I am Alessan, Prince of Tigana," he said clearly, "direct in descent from Micaela. In the name of Adaon and his gift to her children, I release you to your freedom, wizard!”

Both men suddenly staggered apart, as if a taut cord had been cut. Erleins face was bone-white. "I tell you again," he rasped, "you are a fool!”

Alessan shook his head. "You have called me worse than that, with some cause. But now I will name you something you will probably hate: I will unmask you as a decent man, with the same longing to be free as any of us here. Erlein, you cannot hide anymore behind your moods and rancor. You cannot channel into me your own hatred of the Tyrants. If you choose to leave us, you can. I do not expect you will. Be welcome, freely, to our company.”

Erlein looked cornered, assailed. His expression was so confused Devin laughed aloud; the whole situation was clear to him now, and comical, in a bizarre, twisted way. He stepped forward and gripped the wizard.

"Im glad," he said. "Im glad youre with us.”

"Im not! I havent said that!" Erlein snapped. "I havent said or done any such thing!”

"Of course you have." It was Sandre, the evidence of exhaustion and pain still vivid in his lined, dark face. "You did it tonight. Alessan is right. He knows you better than any of us. Better, in some ways, than you know yourself, troubadour. How long have you tried to make yourself believe that nothing mattered

to you but your own skin? How many people have you convinced that that was true? Im one. Baerd and Devin. Perhaps Catriana. Not Alessan, Erlein. He just set you free to prove us all wrong.”

There was a silence. They could hear shouting from the streets below now, and the sound of running footsteps. Erlein turned to Alessan and the two men gazed at each other. Devin was suddenly claimed by an image, another of his intrusions of memory: that campfire in Ferraut, Alessan playing songs of Senzio for Erlein, an enraged shadow by the river. There were so many layers here, so many charges of meaning.

He saw Erlein di Senzio raise his hand, his left hand, with a simulation of five fingers there, and offer it to Alessan. Who met it with his right so their palms touched.

"I suppose I am with you," Erlein said. "After all.”

"I know," said Alessan.

"Come!" said Baerd, a second later. "We have work to do." Devin followed him, with Ducas and Sertino and Naddo, toward the back stairs beyond the window.

Just before stepping through Devin turned to look back at the bed. Erlein noticed, and followed his gaze.

"Shes fine," the wizard said softly. "Shell be just fine. Do what you have to do, and come back to us.”

Devin glanced up at him. They exchanged an almost shy smile. "Thank you," Devin said, meaning a number of things. Then he followed Baerd down into the tumult of the streets.

She was actually awake for a few moments before she opened her eyes. She was lying somewhere soft and unexpectedly familiar, and there were voices drifting towards and away from her, as if on a swelling of the sea, or like slow-moving fireflies in the summer nights at home. At first she couldnt quite make the voices out. She was afraid to open her eyes.

"I think she is awake now," someone was saying. "Will you all do me a great courtesy and leave me alone with her for a few moments?”

She knew that voice though. She heard the sound of a number of people rising and leaving the room.

A door closed. That voice was Alessans.

Which meant she could not be dead. These were not Morians Halls, after all, with the voices of the dead surrounding her. She opened her eyes.

He was sitting on a chair drawn close to where she lay. She was in her own room in Solinghis inn, lying under a blanket in bed. Someone had removed the black silk gown and washed the blood from her skin. Anghiars blood, that had fountained from his throat.

The rush of memory was dizzying.

Quietly, Alessan said, "You are alive. Erlein was waiting in the garden below you. He rendered you unconscious and then caught you with his magic as you fell and brought you back.”

She let her eyes fall shut again as she struggled to deal with all of this. With the fact of life, the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, the beat of her heart, this curiously light-headed sensation, as if she might drift away on the slightest of breezes.

But she wouldnt. She was in Solinghis and Alessan was beside her. He had asked all the others to leave. She turned her head and looked at him again. He was extremely pale.

"We thought you had died," he said. "We saw you fall from outside the garden wall. What Erlein did, he did on his own. None of us knew. We thought you had died," he repeated after a moment.

She thought about that. Then she said: "Did I achieve anything? Is anything happening?”

He pushed a hand through his hair. "It is too soon to tell for certain. I think you did, though. There is a great deal of commotion in the streets. If you listen you can hear it.”

Concentrating, she could indeed make out the sounds of shouting and running feet passing beneath

the window.

Alessan seemed unnaturally subdued, struggling with something. It was very peaceful in the room though. The bed was softer than she had remembered it being. She waited, looking at him, noting the perennial unruliness of his hair where his hands were always pushing through it.

He said, carefully, "Catriana, I cannot tell you how frightened I was tonight. You must listen to me now, and try to think this through because it is something that matters very much." His expression was odd, and there was something in his voice she couldnt quite pin down.

He reached out and laid his hand over hers where it lay upon the blanket. "Catriana, I do not measure your worth by your fathers. None of us ever has. You must stop doing this to yourself. There was never anything for you to redeem. You are what you are, in and of yourself.”

This was difficult ground for her, the most difficult of all, and she found that her heartbeat had quickened. She watched him, blue eyes on his grey ones. His long, slender fingers were covering her own.

She said: "We arrive with a past, a history. Families matter. He was a coward and he fled.”

Alessan shook his head; there was still something strained in his expression. "We have to be so careful," he murmured. "So very careful when we judge them, and what they did in those days. There are reasons why a man with a wife and an infant daughter might choose— other than fear for himself—to stay with the two of them and try to keep them alive. Oh, my dear, in all these years I have seen so many men and women who went away for their children.”

She could feel her tears starting now and she fought to blink them back. She hated talking about this.

It was the hard kernel of pain at the core of all she did.

"But it was before the Deisa," she whispered. "He left before the battles. Even the one we won.”

Again he shook his head, wincing at the sight of her distress. He lifted her hand suddenly and carried it to his lips. She could not remember his ever having done that before. There was something completely strange about all of this.

"Parents and children," he said, so softly she almost missed the words. "It is so hard; we are so quick to judge." He hesitated. "I dont know if Devin told you, but my mother cursed me in the hour before she died. She called me a traitor and a coward.”

She blinked, moved to sit up. Too suddenly. She was dizzy and terribly weak. Devin hadnt told her any such thing; he had said next to nothing about that day.

"How could she?" she said, anger rising in her, against this woman she had never seen. "You? A coward? Doesnt . . . didnt she know anything about . . .”

"She knew almost all of it," he said quietly. "She simply disagreed as to where my duty lay. That is what I am trying to say, Catriana: it is possible to differ on such matters, and to reach a place as terrible as that one was for both of us. I am learning so many things so late. In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone.”

She managed this time to push herself up higher in the bed. She looked at him, imagining that day, those words of his mother. She remembered what she herself had said to her father on her own last night at home, words that had driven him violently out of the house into the dark. He had still been out there somewhere, alone, when she had gone away.

She swallowed. "Did it ... did it end like that with your mother? Was that how she died?”

"She never unsaid the words, but she let me take her hand before the end. I dont think Ill ever know if that meant . . .”

"Of course it did!" she said quickly. "Of course it did, Alessan. We all do that. We do with our hands, our eyes, what we are afraid to say." She surprised herself; she hadnt known she knew any such thing.

He smiled then, and looked down to where his fingers still covered hers. She felt herself coloring. He

said, "There is a truth there. I am doing that now, Catriana. Perhaps I am a coward, after all.”

He had sent the others from the room. Her heart was still beating very fast. She looked at his eyes and then quickly away, afraid that after what she had just said it would look like she was probing. She felt like a child again, confused, certain that she was missing something here. She had always, always hated not understanding what was happening. But at the same time there seemed to be this very odd, extraordinary warmth growing inside her, and a queer sensation of light, brighter than the candles in the room should have allowed.

Fighting to control her breathing, needing an answer, but absurdly afraid of what it might be, she stammered, "I ... would you . . . explain that to me? Please?”

She watched him closely this time, watched him smile, saw what kindled in his eyes, she even read his lips as they moved.

"When I saw you fall," he murmured, his hand still holding hers, "I realized that I was falling with you, my dear. I finally understood, too late, what I had denied to myself for so long, how absolutely I had debarred myself from something important, even the acknowledging of its possibility, while Tigana was still gone. The heart . . . has its own laws though, Catriana, and the truth is ... the truth is that you are the law of mine. I knew it when I saw you in that window. In the moment before you leaped I knew that I loved you. Bright star of Eanna, forgive me the manner of this, but you are the harbor of my souls journeying.”

Bright star of Eanna. He had always called her that, from the very beginning. Lightly, easily, a name among others, a teasing for when she bridled, a term of praise when she did something well. The harbor of his soul.

She seemed to be crying, silently, tears welling up to slide slowly down her cheeks.

"Oh, my dear, no," he said, with an awkward catch to his voice. "I am so sorry. I am a fool. This is far too sudden, tonight, after what you have done. Not tonight. I should never have spoken. I dont even know if you—”

He stopped just there. But only because she had covered his mouth with her fingers to make him stop.

She was still crying, but there seemed to be the most amazing brightness growing inside the room, far more than candles now, more than the moons: a light like the sun beginning to rise beyond the rim of darkness.

She slipped her fingers down from his mouth and claimed the hand he had held her with. We do with our hands what we cannot say. She still said nothing; she couldnt speak. She was trembling. She remembered how her hands had been shaking when she walked out earlier tonight. So little time ago she had stood in a castle window and known she was about to die. Her tears fell on his hand. She lowered her head but others kept falling. She felt as though her heart were a bird, a trialla, only newly born, spreading wings, preparing to give voice to the song of its days.

He was on his knees beside the bed. She moved her free hand across and ran it through his hair, in a hopeless attempt at smoothing it. It seemed to be something she had wanted to do for a long time. How long? How long could such needs be present and yet never known, never acknowledged or allowed?

"When I was young," she said finally, her voice breaking, but needing to speak, "I used to dream of this. Alessan, have I died and come back? Am I dreaming now?”

He smiled slowly, the deeply reassuring smile that she knew, that they all knew, as if her words had granted him release from his own fear, freed him to be himself again. To offer the look that had always meant that he was with them and so everything would be made all right.

But then, unexpectedly, he moved forward and lowered his head to rest it against the thin blanket covering her, as if seeking his own shelter, one that was hers to give to him. She understood; it seemed— oh, what goddess could have foretold this?—that she did have something to offer him. Something more than her death after all. She lifted her hands and closed them around his head, holding him to her, and it

seemed to Catriana in that moment as if that new-born trialla in her soul began to sing. Of trials endured and trials to come, of doubt and dark and all the deep uncertainties that defined the outer boundaries of mortal life, but with love now present at the base of it all, like light, like the first stone of a rising tower.

There had been a Barbadian Tracker in Senzio, Devin learned later that night, and he was killed, but not by them. Nor did they have to deal with the kind of search party theyd feared. It was nearly dawn by the time they pieced the story together.

It seemed that the Barbadians had gone wild.

Finding the poisoned Ygrathen knife on the floor by Anghiars body, hearing what the woman cried before she leaped, they had leaped themselves—to all the murderously obvious conclusions.

There were twenty of them in Senzio, an honor guard for Anghiar. They armed themselves, assembled, and made their way across to the western wing of the Governors Castle. They killed the six Ygrathens on guard there, broke down a door, and burst in upon Cullion of Ygrath, Brandins representative, as he struggled into his clothing. Then they took their time about killing him. The sound of his screams echoed through the castle.

Then they went back downstairs and through the courtyard to the front gates and hacked to death the four Senzian guards who had let the woman in without a proper search. It was during this that the captain of the Castle Guard came into the courtyard with a company of Senzians. He ordered them to lay down their arms.

The Barbadians were, according to most reports later, about to do so, having achieved their immediate purposes, when two of the Senzians, enraged at the butchery of their friends, fired arrows at them. Two men fell, one instantly dead, one mortally wounded. The dead one was Albericos Tracker.

There ensued a bloody, to-the-death melee in the torchlit courtyard of the castle, soon slippery with blood.

The Barbadians were slaughtered to the last man, taking some thirty or forty Senzians with them.

No one knew which man fired the arrow that killed Casalia the Governor as he came hastily down the stairs screaming hoarsely at them all to stop.

In the chaos that followed that death no one gave a thought to going down to the garden for the body of the woman who had started it all. There was an increasingly wild panic in the city as the news spread through the night. A huge, terrified crowd gathered outside the castle. Shortly after midnight two horses were seen racing away from the city walls, heading south for the Ferraut border. Not long after that the five remaining members of Brandins party in Senzio rode away as well, in a tight cluster under the risen moons. They went north of course, toward Farsaro where the fleet was anchored.

Catriana was asleep in the other bed, her face smooth and untroubled, almost childlike in its peace.

Alais could not find rest though. There was too much noise and tumult in the streets and she knew her father was down there, among whatever was happening.

Even after Rovigo came back in and stopped at their door to look in on the two of them and report that there seemed to be no immediate danger, Alais was still unable to sleep. Too much had happened tonight, but none of it to her, and so she was not weary as Catriana was, only excited and unsettled in oddly discontinuous ways. She couldnt even have said all the things that were working upon her.

Eventually she put on the robe shed bought two days before in the market and went to sit on the ledge of the open window.

It was very late by then, both moons were west, down over the sea. She couldnt see the harbor— Solinghis was too far inland—but she knew it was there, with the Sea Maid bobbing at anchor in the night breeze. There were people in the streets even now, she could see shadowy forms pass in the lane below, and she heard occasional shouts from the direction of the tavern quarter, but nothing more now than the ordinary noises of a city without a curfew, prone to be awake and loud at night.

She wondered how near to dawn it was, how long she would have to stay awake if she wanted to see the sunrise. She thought she might wait for it. This was not a night for sleep; or not for her, Alais

amended, glancing back at Catriana. She remembered the other time the two of them had shared a room.

Her own room at home.

She was a long way from home. She wondered what her mother had thought, receiving Rovigos letter of carefully phrased almost-explanation sent by courier across Astibar from the port of Ardin town as they sailed north to Senzio. She wondered, but in another way she knew: the trust shared between her parents was one of the sustaining, defining elements of her own world.

She looked up at the sky. The night was still dark, the stars overhead even more bright now that the moons were setting; it probably lacked several hours yet till dawn. She heard a womans laughter below and realized with an odd sensation that that was the one sound shed not heard earlier that night amid the tumult in the streets. In a curious, quite unexpected way, the womans breathless sound, and then a mans murmur following close upon it served to reassure her: in the midst of all else, whatever might come, certain things would still continue as they always had.

There was a footstep on the wood of the stairway outside. Alais leaned backward on the window- ledge, belatedly realizing she could probably be seen from below.

"Who is it?" she called, though softly, so as not to disturb Catri-ana.

"Only me," Devin said, coming up to stand on the landing outside the room. She looked at him. His clothing was muddy, as if hed tumbled or rolled somewhere, but his voice was calm. It was too dark to properly see his eyes. "Why are you awake?" he asked.

She gestured, not sure what to say. "Too many things at once, I suppose. Im not used to this.”

She saw his teeth as he smiled. "None of us are," he said. "Believe me. But I dont think anything else will happen tonight. We are all going to bed.”

"My father came in a while ago. He said it seemed to have quieted down.”

Devin nodded. "For now. The Governor was slain in the castle. Catriana did kill the Barbadian. There was chaos up there, and somebody seems to have shot the Tracker. I think that was what saved us.”

Alais swallowed. "My father didnt tell me about that.”

"He probably didnt want to disturb your night. Ill be sorry now if I have." He glanced past her toward the other bed. "How is she?”

"Shes all right, really. Asleep." She registered the quick concern in his voice. But Catriana had earned that concern, that caring, tonight and before tonight, in ways Alais could scarcely even encompass within her mind.

"And how are you?" Devin asked, in a different tone, turning back to her. And there was something in that altered, deeper voice that made it difficult for her to breathe.

"Im fine too, honestly.”

"I know you are," he said. "Actually, you are a great deal more than that, Alais." He hesitated for a moment, seeming suddenly awkward. She didnt understand that, until he leaned slowly forward to kiss her full upon the lips. For the second time, if you counted the one in the crowded room downstairs, but this was really quite amazingly unlike the first. For one thing, he didnt hurry, and for another, they were alone and it was very dark. She felt one of his hands come up, brushing along the front of her robe before coming to rest in her hair.

He drew back unsteadily. Alais opened her eyes. He looked blurred and softened, where he stood on the landing. Footsteps went past in the lane below, slowly now, not running as before. The two of them were silent, looking at each other. Devin cleared his throat. He said, "It is ... there are still two or three hours to morning. You should try to sleep, Alais. There will be a ... a great deal happening in the days to come.”

She smiled. He hesitated another moment, then turned to walk along the outer landing toward the room he shared with Alessan and Erlein.

She remained sitting where she was for some time longer, looking up at the brightness of the stars, letting her racing heart gradually slow. She replayed in her mind the ragged, very young uncertainty and wonder in his voice in those last words. Alais smiled again to herself in the darkness. To someone schooled by a life of observation, that voice had revealed a great deal. And it had been simply touching her that had done this to him. Which was, if one lingered to think about it and relive the moment of that kiss, a most astonishing thing.

She was still smiling when she left the window-ledge and returned to her bed and she did fall asleep then, after all, for the last few greatly altered hours of that long night.

All through the next day everyone waited. A pall of doom like smoke hung over Senzio. The city treasurer attempted to assert control in the castle, but the leader of the Guard was disinclined to take orders from him. Their shouted confrontations went on all day. By the time someone thought to go down for the girl her body had already been taken away; no one knew where or by whose orders.

The work of the city ground to a halt. Men and women roamed the streets, feeding on rumor, choking on fear. On almost every corner a different story was heard. It was said that Rinaldo, the last Dukes brother, had come back to the city to take command in the castle; by the middle of the day everyone had heard some version of the tale, but no one had seen the man.

A restless, nervous darkness fell. The streets remained crowded all night long. It seemed that no one in Senzio could sleep. The night was bright and very beautiful, both moons riding through a clear sky.

Outside Solinghis inn a crowd gathered—there was no room at all inside—to hear the three musicians play and sing of freedom, and of the glory of Senzios past. Songs not sung since Casalia had relinquished his claim to his fathers Ducal Throne and allowed himself to be called Governor instead with emissaries from the Tyrants to advise him. Casalia was dead. Both emissaries were dead. Music drifted out from Solinghis into the scented summer night, spilling along the lanes, rising toward the stars.

Just after dawn, word came. Alberico of Barbadior had crossed the border the afternoon before and was advancing north with his three armies, burning villages and fields as he went. Before noon they heard from the north as well: Brandins fleet had lifted anchor in Farsaro Bay and was sailing south with a favorable wind.

War had come.

All through Senzio town people left their homes, left the taverns and the streets and began thronging, belatedly, to the temples of the Triad.

In the almost deserted front room of Solinghis that afternoon one man continued to play the Tregean pipes, faster and faster and higher and higher, in a wild, almost forgotten tune.