Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

Anything at all. Including a woman’s ornament with a hidden blade. And poison on the blade. An ornament for the hair, in black, with shining jewels, one of which released the spring that freed the blade. An exquisite, deadly thing.

Crafted in Ygrath, of course. For that was central to her plan tonight.

Anghiar’s head snapped back in shock. His mouth twisted in an involuntary snarl as his eyes bulged wide in staring agony. There was blood pumping from his throat, soaking into the sheets and the pillows, covering her.

He screamed, a terrible sound. He rolled off her, off the bed, onto the carpeted floor, clutching desperately at his throat. He screamed again. There was so much blood pulsing from him. He tried to stop it, pressing his hands to the wound. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t the wound that would kill him. She watched him, heard the screaming stop, followed by a wet, bubbling sound. Anghiar of Barbadior toppled slowly over on one side, mouth still open, blood leaking from his throat onto the carpet. And then his blue eyes clouded and closed.

Catriana looked down at her hands. They were steady as stone. And so was the beat of her heart. In a moment that was all the moments in her life. Entrances and endings.

There was a furious pounding on the locked door. Frantic shouting, a panic-stricken volley of curses.

She was not yet done. They could not be allowed to take her. She knew what sorcery could do to the mind. If they had her alive they had all of her friends. They would know everything. She was under no illusions, had known there was a final step from the time she formed this plan.

They were battering against the door now. It was large and heavy, would hold a moment or two. She rose up and put on the gown again. She did not want to be naked now, she couldn’t have really said why. Bending over the bed she took the Ygrathen weapon, that glittering agency of death, and, careful of the treated blade, laid it beside Anghiar to be quickly found. It was necessary that it be found.

There was a sharp splintering sound from the door, more shouting, a tumult of noise in the corridor. She thought about setting fire to the room—candle to blaze, it appealed to her—but no, they had to find Anghiar’s body and exactly what had killed him. She opened the casement window and stepped up on the ledge. The window was elegantly designed, easily tall enough for her to stand upright before it. She looked outwards and down for a moment. The room was over the garden, far above it. More than high enough. The scent of the sejoia trees came drifting up, and the heavy sweetness of tainflowers, and there were other night flowers whose names she did not know. Both moons had risen now, Vidomni and Ilarion watching her. She looked at them for a moment but it was to Morian she prayed, for it was towards Morian she was crossing, through the last portal of all.

She thought of her mother. Of Alessan. Of his dream that had become hers, and for which she was now to die in a land not her own. Briefly she thought of her father, knowing how much this all had to do with making redress, with the way each generation seemed to put its mark upon the next, one way or another. Let it be enough, she prayed then, aiming the thought like an arrow of the mind towards Morian in her Halls.

The door burst inward with a grinding crash. Half a dozen men stumbled into the room. It was time. Catriana turned back from the stars and the two moons and the garden. She looked down at the men from the window-ledge. There was a singing in her heart, a crescendo of hope and pride.

‘Death to Barbadior’s servants!’ she screamed at the top of her voice. ‘Freedom for Senzio!’ she cried, and then: ‘Long live King Brandin of the Palm!’

One man, quicker than the others, reacted, springing across the room. He was not quite quick enough, not as fast as she. She had already turned, the acid of those last, necessary words eating in her brain. She saw the moons again, Eanna’s stars, the wide, waiting darkness between them and beyond.

She leaped. Felt the night wind in her face and in her hair, saw the dark ground of the garden begin to hurtle up towards her, heard voices for an instant, and then none at all, only the loud, rushing wind. She was alone, falling. She had always been alone it seemed. Endings. A candle. Memories. A dream, a prayer of flames, that they might come. Then a last doorway, an unexpectedly gentle darkness seemed to open wide before her in the air. She closed her eyes just before she went through.

Chapter XIX

Warm night, the fragrance of flowers. Moonlight on the trees, on the pale stones of the garden wall, on the woman standing in the high window.

Devin hears a sound to his left and quickly turns. Rovigo running up, to stop, rigid with shock as his gaze follows Alessan’s upward. Behind him now comes Sandre with Alais.

‘Help me!’ the Duke orders harshly, dropping to the cobblestones beside Devin. His expression is wild, distraught, he has a knife in his hand.

‘What?’ Devin gasps, uncomprehending. ‘What do you . . . ?’

‘My fingers! Now! Cut them! I need the power!’ And Sandre d’Astibar slaps the hilt of the knife hard into Devin’s palm and curls his own left hand around a loose slab of stone in the street. Only his third and fourth fingers are extended. The wizard’s fingers, of binding to the Palm.

‘Sandre . . .’ Devin begins, stammering.

‘No words! Cut me, Devin!’

Devin does as he is told. Wincing, gritting his teeth against pain, against grief, he poises the sharp slim blade and brings it down on Sandre’s