Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

‘Something’s wrong!’ blind Rinaldo said abruptly beside him, tilting his head as if sniffing the air. Alessan stopped sketching the distrada terrain on the tablecloth and looked up quickly. So did Rovigo. Sandre had already half-risen from his chair.

Alais hurried up to the table. Even before she spoke Devin felt a finger of dread touch him.

‘Catriana’s gone!’ she said, fighting to keep her voice low. Her eyes flicked from her father to Devin, then rested on Alessan.

‘What? How?’ Rovigo said sharply. ‘We would have had to see her when she came down, surely?’

‘The back stairs outside,’ Alessan said. His hands, Devin, noticed, had suddenly flattened on the tabletop. The Prince stared at Alais. ‘What else?’

The girl’s face was white. ‘She changed her clothes. I don’t understand why. She bought a black silk gown and some jewellery in the market this afternoon. I was going to ask her about it but I . . . I didn’t want to presume. She’s so hard to ask questions of. But they’re gone. All the things she bought.’

‘A silk gown?’ Alessan said incredulously, his voice rising. ‘What in Morian’s name . . . ?’

But Devin already knew. He knew absolutely.

Alessan hadn’t been with them that morning, neither had Sandre. They had no way of understanding. A bone-deep fear dried his mouth and began hammering at his heart. He stood up, tipping over his chair, spilling his wine.

‘Oh, Catriana,’ he said. ‘Catriana, no!’ Stupidly, fatuously, as if she was in the room, and could still be stopped, still be kept among them, dissuaded from going out into the dark alone with her silk and jewels, with her unfathomable courage and her pride.

‘What? Devin, tell me, what is it?’ Sandre, voice like a knife. Alessan said nothing. Only turned, the grey eyes bracing for pain.

‘She’s gone to the castle,’ Devin said flatly. ‘She’s gone to kill Anghiar of Barbadior. She thinks that will start the war.’

Even as he spoke he was moving, rational thought quite gone, something deeper than that, infinitely deeper, driving him, though if she had reached the castle already there was no hope, no hope at all.

He was flying when he reached the door. Even so, Alessan was right beside him, with Rovigo only a step behind. Devin knocked someone down as they burst into the darkness. He didn’t look back.

Eanna, show grace, he prayed silently, over and over as they raced towards the risen moons. Goddess of Light, let it not be like this. Not like this.

He said nothing though. He sped towards the castle in the dark, fear in his heart like a living thing, bringing the terrible knowledge of death.

Devin knew how fast he could run, had prided himself on his speed all his life. But moving as if possessed, scarcely touching the ground, Alessan was with him when they reached the Governor’s Castle. They careened around a corner side by side and came to the garden wall and there they stopped, looking upwards past the branches of a huge, spreading sejoia tree. They could hear Rovigo come up behind them, and someone else further back. They did not turn to see. They were both looking at the same thing.

There was a figure silhouetted against torchlight in one of the highest windows. A figure they knew. Wearing a long dark gown.

Devin dropped to his knees in the moonlit lane. He thought about climbing the wall, about screaming her name aloud. The sweet scent of tainflowers surrounded him. He looked at Alessan’s face, and then quickly away from what he saw there.

How did she like to play?

Mostly, she didn’t, and especially not like this. She had not been the playing kind. She had liked swimming, and walks along the beach in the mornings, mostly alone. Other walks inland into the woods, picking mushrooms or mahgoti leaves for tea. She had liked music always, and the more since meeting Alessan. And yes, some six or seven years ago she had begun to have her own intermittent dreams of finding love and passion somewhere in the world. Not often though, and the man seldom had a face in those dreams.

There was a man’s face with her now though, and this was not a dream. Nor was it play. It was death. Entrances and endings. A candle shaping fire before it went out.

She was lying on his bed, naked to his sight and touch save for the jewellery shining at wrist and throat and ears and in her hair. Light blazed from all corners of the room. It seemed that Anghiar liked to watch his women respond to what he did. Come on top of me, he’d murmured in her ear. Later, she had replied. He had laughed, a husky sound deep in his throat, and had moved to be above her, naked as well, save for his ruffled white shirt which hung open showing the delicate blond hairs on his chest.

He was a skilful lover, a deeply experienced one. It was what let her kill him, in the end.

He lowered his head to her breasts before entering her. He took one nipple in his mouth, surprisingly gently, and began to run his tongue in circles over it.

Catriana closed her eyes for a moment. She made a sound, one she thought was right. She stretched her hands catlike above her head, moving her body sinuously under the pressure of his mouth and hands. She touched the black comb in her hair. Red vixen. She moaned again. His hands were on her thighs, moving upward and between, his mouth was still at her breast. She slid the comb free, pressed the catch so the blade sprang open. And then, moving without haste, as if she had all the time in the world, as if this single moment were the gathered sum of all the moments of her life, she brought her weapon down and plunged it into his throat.

Which meant that his life was over.

You could buy anything you wanted in Senzio’s weapon market.