Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

She looked back and saw four of the mercenaries following her, pounding loudly down the lane. One of them shouted a command to halt. If any of them had a bow, Catriana thought, she was quite likely to die in the next few seconds. Dodging from side to side she cut to her right down an alleyway and then quickly right again at the first crossing, doubling back the way she had come.

There were three names on Baerd’s list here in Tregea, and she knew where two of them might be found, but there was no way she could go to them for succour, not with the Barbadians so close behind. She would have to lose the pursuit herself, if she could, and leave it to Sandre to make the contact. Or Baerd, if he survived.

She ducked under the flapping ends of someone’s wash hanging above the street, and knifed over to her left towards the water. There were people milling about in the lanes, glancing up with mild curiosity as she went by. Their glances would change in a moment, she knew, when the Barbadians rumbled through after her.

The streets were a hopelessly jumbled maze. She wasn’t certain where she was, only that the river was north of her; at fleeting intervals she could glimpse the topmost masts of the ships. The waterfront would be dangerous though, much too open and exposed. She doubled back south again, her lungs sucking for air. Behind her, she heard a crashing sound and then a cacophony of irate shouts and curses.

She stumbled going around another corner to her right. Every moment, every turning, she expected this chaos of lanes to lead her straight back into her pursuers. If they fanned out she was probably finished. A wheel-wright’s cart blocked the lane. She flattened herself against the wall and sidled sideways past. Came to another crossing of roads. Sprinted straight through this time, past half a dozen children playing a skipping game with ropes. Turned at the second crossing.

And was grabbed hard just above her right elbow. She started to scream, but a hand was quickly slapped over her mouth. She bared her teeth to bite, violently twisting to escape. Then suddenly she froze in disbelief.

‘Quietly, my heart. And come this way,’ said Rovigo d’Astibar, removing his palm from her mouth. ‘No running. They are two streets over. Look as if you’re walking with me.’ Hand on her arm he guided her quickly into a tiny, almost deserted lane, looked back once over his shoulder, and then propelled her through the doorway of a fabric shop. ‘Now down behind the counter, quickly.’

‘How did you . . . ?’ she gasped.

‘Saw you in the square. Followed you here. Move, girl!’

She moved. An old woman took her hand and squeezed it, then lifted a hinged counter and Catriana ducked through and dropped to the floor behind it. A moment later the hinge swung up again and her heart stopped as a shadow appeared above her holding something long and sharp.

‘Forgive me,’ whispered Alais bren Rovigo, kneeling beside her. ‘My father says your hair might give you away when we leave.’ She held up the scissors she carried.

Catriana went rigid for a moment, then, closing her eyes without a word, she slowly turned her back on the other woman. A moment later she felt her long red tresses gathered and pulled. And then the long sharp cloth-cutter’s scissors rasped cleanly through in a line above her shoulders, severing a decade’s growth in a moment in the shadows.

There was a burst of noise outside, a clatter and hoarse shouting. It approached, reached them, went loudly past. Catriana realized that she was shaking; Alais touched her shoulder and then diffidently withdrew her hand. On the other side of the counter the old woman moved placidly about in the shadows of her shop. Rovigo was nowhere to be seen. Catriana’s breath came in ragged scourings of air and her right side ached; she must have crashed into something in her wild careen. She had no memory of doing so.

There was something lying on the ground beside her feet. She reached down and gathered the thick red curtain of her severed hair. It had happened so fast she’d hardly had time to realize what was being done.

‘Catriana, I’m so sorry,’ Alais whispered again. There was real grief in her voice.

Catriana shook her head. ‘Nothing . . . this is less than nothing,’ she said. It was difficult to speak. ‘Only vanity. What does it matter?’ She seemed to be weeping. Her ribs hurt terribly. She put a hand up and touched the shorn remains of her hair. Then she turned sideways a little, on the floor of the shop, down behind the counter, and leaned her head wearily against the other woman’s shoulder. Alais’s arms came up and around her then, holding her close while she cried.

On the other side of the counter the old woman hummed tunelessly to herself as she folded and sorted cloth of many colours and as many different textures, working by the wan light of afternoon as it filtered down to the street in a quarter where the leaning houses mostly blocked the sun.

Baerd lay in the mild darkness by the river, remembering how cold it had been the last time he was here, waiting with Devin at winter twilight to see if Catriana would come floating down to them.

He had lost the pursuit hours ago. He knew Tregea very well. He and Alessan had lived here for more than a year off and on after their return from Quileia, rightly judging this wild, mountainous province as a good place to seek out and nurture any slow flames of revolution.

They had been principally looking for one man they had never found, a captain from the siege of Borifort, but they had discovered others, and spoken to them, and bound them to their cause. And they had been back here