Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

there was no truly safe quarter of Senzio for a woman alone in the streets at night.

She wasn’t out here for safety though, which is why none of the others knew where she was. They would never have let her come. Nor would she, being honest with herself, have knowingly let any of them undertake anything like this.

This was death. She was under no illusions.

All afternoon, walking through the market with Devin and Rovigo and Alais, she had been shaping this plan and remembering her mother. That single candle always lit at sunset on the first of the Ember Days. Devin’s father had done the same thing, she remembered him saying. Pride, he’d thought it was: withholding something from the Triad because of what they had allowed to happen. Her mother wasn’t a proud woman, but neither had she permitted herself to forget.

Tonight Catriana saw herself as being like one of her mother’s forbidden candles on those Ember Nights while all the rest of the world lay shrouded in darkness. She was a small flame, exactly like those candles; one that would not last the night, but one that, if the Triad had any love at all for her, might shape a conflagration before she went out.

The drunken revellers finally staggered by, heading in the direction of the harbour taverns. She waited another moment and then, muffled in her hood, went quickly into the street, keeping to the side of it and started the other way. Towards the castle.

It would be much better, she thought, if she could somehow make her hands be still and slow her racing heart. She should have had a glass of wine back at Solinghi’s before slipping away, using the outside back stairs so that none of the others would see her. She’d sent Alais down to dinner alone, pleading a woman’s illness, promising to follow soon if she could.

She had lied so easily, had even managed a reassuring smile. Then Alais was gone and she was alone, realizing in that precise instant, as the room door gently closed, that she would never see any of the others again.

In the street she shut her eyes, feeling suddenly unsteady; she put her hand on a shop-front for support, drawing deep breaths of the night air. There were tain-flowers not far away, and the unmistakable fragrance of sejoia trees. She was near to the castle gardens then. She bit her lips, to force colour into them. Overhead the stars were bright and close. Vidomni was already risen in the east, with blue Ilarion to follow soon. She heard a sudden peal of laughter from the next street over. A woman’s laughter followed by shouting. The voice of a man. More laughter.

They were going the other way. As she looked up a star fell in the sky. Following its track to her left she saw the garden wall of the castle. The entrance would be further around that way. Entrances and endings, faced alone. But she had been a solitary child, and then solitary as a woman, drawn into an orbit of her own that took her away from others, even those who would be her friends. Devin and Alais only the latest of those who had tried. There had been others back home in the village before she left. She knew her mother had grieved for her proud solitude.

Pride. Again.

Her father had fled Tigana before the battles at the river.

There it was. There it was.

Carefully she drew back her hood. With real gratitude she discovered that her hands were steady now. She checked her earrings, the silver band about her throat, the jewelled ornament in her hair. Then she drew on to her hand the red glove she’d bought in the market that afternoon and she walked across the street and around the corner of the garden wall into the blaze of light at the entrance to the Governor’s Castle of Senzio.

There were four guards, two outside the locked gates, two just within. She allowed her hooded cloak to fall open, to let them see the black gown she wore beneath.

The two guards outside the gates glanced at each other and visibly relaxed, removing their hands from their swords. The other two moved nearer, the better to see by torchlight.

She stopped in front of the first pair. She smiled. ‘Would you be kind enough,’ she said, ‘to let Anghiar of Barbadior know that his red vixen has come?’ And she held up her left hand, sheathed in the bright red glove.

SHE HAD ACTUALLY been amused at first by Devin’s reaction and Rovigo’s in the market-place. Casalia, the plump, unhealthy looking Governor had ridden through, side by side with the emissary from Barbadior. They had been laughing together. Brandin’s emissary from the Western Palm had been several paces behind, among a cluster of lesser Senzians. The image and the message were as clear as they could be made.

Alais and Catriana had been standing at a silk-merchant’s stall. They had turned to see the Governor go by.

He had not gone by. Instead, Anghiar of Barbadior laid a quick restraining hand on Casalia’s braceleted wrist and they stopped their prancing horses directly in front of the two women. Thinking back on it, Catriana realized that she and Alais must have made a striking pair. Anghiar, blond and beefy, with an upturned moustache and hair as long as her own was now, evidently thought so.

‘A mink and a red vixen!’ he said, in a voice pitched for Casalia’s ear. The plump Governor laughed, too quickly, a little too loudly. Anghiar’s blue eyes stripped the women to their flesh under the bright sun. Alais looked away, but not down. Catriana met the Barbadian’s gaze as steadily as she could. She would not turn away from these men. His smile only deepened. ‘A red vixen, truly,’ he repeated, but this time to her, and not to Casalia.

The Governor laughed anyhow. They moved on, their party following, including Brandin’s emissary, looking grimly unhappy