Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

could see worry and love warring with his pride in her. And then, by the light of the candles, she saw that inner battle end.

‘If we get through this alive,’ Rovigo d’Astibar said to his daughter, his life, his joy in life, ‘your mother will kill me. You know that, don’t you?’

‘I’ll try to protect you,’ Alais said gravely, though her heart was racing like a wild thing.

It had been their talk at the railing of the ship, she knew. She knew it absolutely. The two of them looking at the cliffs under moonlight after the storm.

I don’t know what it is, she had said, but I need more.

I know, her father had replied. I know you do. If I could give it, it would be yours. The world and the stars of Eanna would all be yours.

It was because of that, because he loved her and meant what he had said, that he was allowing her to come with them to where the world they knew would be put into the balance.

OF THAT JOURNEY to Senzio she remembered two things particularly. Standing at the rail early one morning with Catriana as they moved north up the coast of Astibar. One tiny village, and then another and another, the roofs of houses bright in the sun, small fishing boats bobbing between the Sea Maid and the shore.

‘That one is my home,’ Catriana said suddenly, breaking a silence, speaking so softly only Alais could hear. ‘And that boat with the blue sail is actually my father’s.’ Her voice was odd, eerily detached from the meaning of the words.

‘We have to stop, then!’ Alais had murmured urgently. ‘I’ll tell my father! He’ll—’

Catriana laid a hand on her arm.

‘Not yet,’ she’d said. ‘I can’t see him yet. After. After Senzio. Perhaps.’

THAT WAS ONE MEMORY. The other, very different, was of rounding the northern tip of Farsaro Island early in the morning and seeing the ships of Ygrath and the Western Palm anchored in the harbour there. Waiting for war. She had been afraid then, as the reality of what they were sailing towards was brought home to her in that vision, at once brightly colourful and forbidding as grey death. But she had looked over at Catriana, and her father, and then at the old Duke, Sandre, who named himself Tomaz now, and she had seen shadings of doubt and anxiety in each of them as well. Only Baerd, carefully counting the flotilla, had a different kind of expression on his face.

If she’d been forced to put a name to that look she would have said, hesitantly, that it was desire.

THE NEXT AFTERNOON they had come to Senzio, and had moored the Maid in the crowded harbour and gone ashore, and so had come, at the end of the day, to an inn all the others seemed to know about. And the five of them had walked through the doors of that tavern into a flashing of joy bright and sudden as the sun come up from the rim of the sea.

Devin embraced her tightly and then kissed her on the lips, and then Alessan, after a moment’s visible anxiety at her presence and a searching glance at her father, did exactly the same. There was a lean-faced grey-haired man named Erlein with them, and then a number of other men in the tavern came up—Naddo was one name, Ducas another, and there was an older blind man with those two whose name she never caught. He walked with the aid of a magnificent stick. It had the most extraordinary carved eagle’s head, with eyes so piercing they seemed almost to be a compensation for the loss of his own.

There were others as well, from all over, it seemed. She missed most of their names. There was a great deal of noise. The innkeeper brought them wine: two bottles of Senzio green and a third one of Astibar’s blue wine. She had a small, careful glass of each, watching everyone, trying to sort through the chaotic babble of all that was said. Alessan and Baerd drew briefly apart for a moment, she noticed; when they returned to the table both men looked thoughtful and somewhat grim.

Then Devin and Alessan and Erlein had to go back and make their music for an hour while the others ate, and Alais, flushed and terribly excited, inwardly relived the feel of the two men’s lips upon hers. She found herself smiling shyly at everyone, afraid that her face was giving away exactly what she was feeling.

Afterwards they made their way upstairs behind the broad back of the innkeeper’s wife to their rooms. And later, when it was quiet on that upper level Catriana led her from the room they were put in, down the hall to the bedroom Devin and Alessan and Erlein shared.

They were there, and a number of other men—some of the ones she’d just met, and a few who were strangers. Her father entered a moment later with Sandre and Baerd. She and Catriana were the only women there. She had a moment to feel a little strange about that, and to think about how far she was from home, before everyone fell silent as Alessan pushed a hand through his hair and began to speak.

And as he did, Alais, concentrating, gradually came to understand with the others the dimensions, the truly frightening shape, of what he proposed to do.

At a certain point he stopped and looked at three men one by one. At Duke Sandre first, then at a round-faced Certandan named Sertino sitting with Ducas, and finally, almost challengingly, at Erlein di Senzio.

The three of them were wizards, she understood. It was a hard thing to come to terms with. Especially Sandre. The exiled Duke of Astibar. Their neighbour in the distrada all her life.

The man called Erlein was sitting on his bed, his back against the wall, hands crossed over his breast. He was breathing hard.

‘It is clear