Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

for leverage. Then, without a word spoken, he hammered a fist with all the strength of his body and all the tormented confusion of his heart into the speaker’s face. He felt bones crack under his blow; the man flew backwards into the bar and halfway over it, scattering glasses and bottles with a splintering crash.

Alessan looked down at his fist. It was covered with blood across the knuckles, and already beginning to swell. He wondered if he’d broken his hand. He wondered if he was going to be thrown out of the bar, or end up in a free-wheeling brawl for this stupidity.

It didn’t happen. The Asolini who had proclaimed his readiness for war clapped him on the back with a hard, cheerful blow and the owner of The Trialla—their employer, in fact—grinned broadly, completely ignoring the shards of broken glass along the bar.

‘I was hoping someone would shut him up!’ he roared over the raucous tumult in the room. Someone else came over and wrung Alessan’s hand, which hurt amazingly. Three men were shouting insistent demands to buy him a drink. Four others picked up the unconscious man and began carting him unceremoniously away in search of medical aid. Someone spat on the man’s shattered face as he was carried by.

Alessan turned away from that, back to the bar. There was a single glass of Astibar blue wine in front of him. He looked quickly at Devin, who said nothing at all.

‘Tigana,’ he murmured under his breath, as a Cortean sailor behind him bellowed his praise and ruffled his hair and someone else pushed over to pound his back. ‘Oh, Tigana, let my memory of you be like a blade in my soul.’

He drained the glass. Someone—not Devin—immediately reached to pick it up and smash it on the floor. Which started a predictable sequence of other men doing the same with their own drinks. As soon as he decently could he made his way out of the room and went upstairs. He remembered to touch Devin’s arm in thanks as he went. In their room he found Erlein lying on his bed, hands behind his head, gazing fixedly at the ceiling. The wizard glanced over as Alessan came in, and his eyes quickly narrowed and grew frankly curious.

Alessan said nothing. He fell on to his pallet and closed his eyes which were still hurting. The wine, naturally, hadn’t helped. He couldn’t stop thinking about the woman, what she had done, how she had looked rising like some supernatural creature from the sea. He couldn’t force out of his mind the image of Brandin the Tyrant falling to his knees and burying his face in his hands.

Hiding his eyes, but not before Alessan, fifteen feet away, only that, had seen the shattering relief and the blaze of love that had shone through his eyes like the white light of a falling star.

His hand hurt terribly, but he flexed it gingerly and didn’t think he’d broken anything. He honestly couldn’t have said why he’d felled that man. Everything he’d said about the woman from Certando was true. All of it was true, yet none of it was the real truth. Everything about today was brutally confusing.

Erlein, unexpectedly tactful, cleared his throat in a way that offered a question.

‘Yes?’ Alessan said wearily, not opening his eyes.

‘This is what you wanted to happen, isn’t it?’ the wizard asked, unwontedly hesitant.

With an effort Alessan opened his eyes and looked over. Erlein was propped on one elbow gazing at him, his expression thoughtful and subdued. ‘Yes,’ he said at length, ‘this is what I wanted.’

Erlein nodded slowly. ‘It means war, then. In my province.’

His head was still throbbing, but less than before. It was quieter up here, though the noise from below still penetrated, a dull, steady background of celebration.

‘In Senzio, yes,’ he said.

He felt a terrible sadness. So many years of planning, and now that they were here, where were they? His mother was dead. She had cursed him before she died, but had let him take her hand as the ending came. What did that mean? Could it be made to mean what he needed it to?

He was on the Island. Had seen Brandin of Ygrath. What would he tell Baerd? The slender dagger at his side felt heavy as a sword. The woman had been so much more beautiful than he’d expected her to be. Devin had had to give him the blue wine; he couldn’t believe that. He’d hurt a hapless, innocent man so brutally just now, had shattered the bones of his face. I must look truly terrible, he thought, for even Erlein to be so gentle with me now. They were going to war in Senzio. This is what I wanted, he repeated to himself.

‘Erlein, I’m sorry,’ he said, risking it, trying to struggle upwards from this sorrow.

He braced for a stinging reply, he almost wanted one, but Erlein said nothing at all at first. And when he spoke it was mildly.

‘I think it is time,’ was what he said. ‘Shall we go down and play? Would that help?’

Would that help? Since when did his people—Erlein, even—need to minister to him so much?

They went back down the stairs. Devin was waiting for them on the makeshift stage at the back of The Trialla. Alessan took up his Tregean pipes. His right hand was hurting and swollen, but it was not going to keep him from making music. He needed music now, very badly. He closed his eyes and began to play. They fell silent for him in the densely crowded room. Erlein waited, his hands motionless on the harp, and Devin did, leaving him a space in which to reach upwards alone, yearning towards that high note where confusion and pain and love and death and longing could all be left behind him for a very little while.

Chapter XVIII

Normally when she went up on the ramparts of her castle at sunset