Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

sorry,’ she said at length. ‘I didn’t mean that. I’m tired. I’ve had some bad dreams tonight. What do you want from me, Devin?’

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

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

‘Nor I,’ he said, shifting forward again. He had pushed his hair into a semblance of order. He said, ‘It is more than that between you and me though. You hate me sometimes, don’t you.’

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

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

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

‘Not then. I figured it out later.’

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

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

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

‘I don’t hate you, Devin,’ she said finally. ‘Truly, I don’t. Nothing like that. It is an awkward memory, I won’t deny that, but I don’t think it has ever hindered us in what we have to do. Which is what really matters, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so,’ he said. She couldn’t see his face. ‘If that is all that matters.’

‘I mean, it’s true what I said before: I’ve always been bad at making friends.’

‘Why?’

Pieces of the puzzle again. But she said, ‘As a girl, I’m not sure. Maybe I was shy, perhaps proud. I never felt easy in our village, even though it was the only home I’d ever known. But since Baerd named Tigana for me, since I heard the name, that has been all there is in the world for me. All that counts for anything at all.’

She could almost hear him thinking about that.

He said, ‘Ice is for endings.’

Which is exactly what Alienor had said to her. He went on, ‘You are still a living person, Catriana. With a heart, a life to live, access to friendship, even to love. Why are you sealing yourself down to the one thing only?’

And she heard herself reply: ‘Because my father never fought. He fled Tigana like a coward before the battles at the river.’

She could have ripped her tongue bleeding from her mouth, out at the very root, the moment she had spoken.

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘Not a word, Devin! Don’t say a word!’

He obeyed, sitting very still, almost invisible in the depths of his chair. Abruptly she blew out the candle; she didn’t want light now. And then, because it was dark, and because he was so obligingly silent, she was gradually able to regain control of herself. To move past the meaning of this moment without weeping. It took a long time in the darkness but eventually she was able to draw a long, steady breath and know she was all right.

‘Thank you,’ she said, not entirely sure what she was thanking him for. Mostly, the silence.

There was no reply. She waited a moment then softly called his name. Again no answer. She listened, and eventually was able to make out the steady rise and fall of his breathing in sleep.

She had enough of a sense of irony to find that amusing. He had evidently had a difficult night though, and not just in the obvious ways.

She thought about waking him and sending him back to his own room. It would most certainly raise eyebrows if they were seen leaving here together in the morning. She discovered, though, that she didn’t really care. She also realized that she minded less than she’d expected that he’d figured out the one truth about her and had just learned another. About her father, but really more about herself. She wondered about that, why it didn’t bother her more.

She considered putting one of the blankets over him but resisted the impulse. For some reason she didn’t really want him waking in the morning and knowing she’d done that. Rovigo’s daughters did that sort of thing, not her. Or no: the younger daughter would have had him in this bed and inside her by now, strange moods and exhaustion notwithstanding. The older? Would have woven a new quilt at miraculous speed and tucked it around him with a note attached as to the lineage of the sheep that had given the wool and the history of the pattern she’d chosen.

Catriana smiled to herself in the darkness and settled back to sleep. Her restlessness seemed to have passed and she did not dream again. When she woke, just after dawn, he was gone. She didn’t learn until later just how far.

Chapter XI

Elena stood by the open door of Mattio’s house looking up the dark road to the moat and the raised drawbridge, watching the candles flicker and go out one by one in the windows of Castle Borso. At intervals people walked past her into the house, offering only a nod or a brief greeting if anything at all. It was a night of battle that lay ahead of them, and everyone arriving was aware of that.

From the village behind her there came no sound at all, and no light. All the candles were long snuffed out, fires banked, windows covered over, even the chinks