Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

them. Neither man had laughed though, or even smiled. She would never forget that.

‘Can you sing?’ was all that Alessan had said.

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

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

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

‘Who is it?’ she called.

‘Devin. Will you let me come in?’

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

‘What is it?’ she called.

‘I’m not sure, actually. May I come in?’

‘The door isn’t locked,’ she said finally. She made sure the blankets were covering her, but the room was so dark it didn’t really matter.

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

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

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

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

‘I suppose that’s true enough,’ he said in a drained voice. ‘And I’m sorry, you don’t really need me to be telling you how to take care of yourself.’

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

He was silent. Then: ‘Catriana, I honestly don’t know why I’m here. I’m in such a strange mood tonight. I feel ridiculously sad.’

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

‘You light fires on the Ember Days?’ he asked.

‘Evidently.’

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

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

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

‘A reminder of Tigana?’ she said.

‘It would have to have been. As if . . . as if the Triad didn’t deserve full devotion or observance because of what they’d allowed.’ He paused, then in a meditative tone added, ‘It’s another example of our pride, isn’t it? Of that Tiganese arrogance Sandre always talks about. We make bargains with the Triad, we balance scales with them: they take away our name, we take away a part of their rites.’

‘I suppose so,’ she said, though it didn’t really strike her that way. Devin talked like this sometimes. She didn’t see the action as one of pride, or bargaining, just as a reminder to the self of how great a wrong had come to pass. A reminder, like Alessan’s blue wine.

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

‘I don’t know what mine was like,’ he said in that tightened voice. ‘I don’t even know if I could say that my father is proud. I guess I don’t know very much about him either.’ He really did sound peculiar.

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

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

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

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

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

‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘No, it isn’t that. It is . . . hardly that, Catriana. It has been a . . . difficult night.’

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

He pushed on doggedly. ‘Not that way. It’s so strange. So complicated. I think I learned something there. I think—’

‘Devin, I really don’t want the details!’ She was angry with herself for how edgy this sort of thing made her feel.

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

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

Which silenced him. He leaned back in the chair again and she couldn’t see his face. In the quiet that followed her breathing grew calmer.

‘I’m