Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

her heart, with a father dead and a brother gone and a mother gone even farther away: images of all three of them rising in her dreams from the ashes of the burning in her land.

And death was still there, still with her on that ship. She still had those dreams, but with them now, as fabled Chiara drew nearer under the brightness of the sky, was something else: a bemused, an almost numbed incredulity at how the line of her life had run. How things had fallen out so completely wrong, and yet so precisely as she had planned from the first.

She had tried to see that as an omen, closing her left hand three times over her thumb to make her wish come true, as she entered that new world.

Chapter VIII

It was strange, Dianora thought, still moving through the crowded Audience Chamber as spring sunlight filtered down on Brandin’s court from the stained-glass windows above, how the so-clear portents of youth were alchemized by time into the many-layered ambiguities of adult life.

Sipping from her jewelled cup she considered the alternative. That she had simply allowed things to become nuanced and difficult. That the real truths were exactly the same as they had been on the day she arrived. That all she was doing was hiding: from what she had become, and what she had not yet done.

It was the central question of her life and once more she pushed it away to the edges of her awareness. Not today. Not in any daytime. Those thoughts belonged to nights alone in the saishan when only Scelto by her door might know how sleepless she was, or find the tracks of tears along her cheeks when he came to wake her in the morning.

Night thoughts, and this was bright day, in a very public place.

So she walked over towards the man she’d recognized and let her smile reach her eyes. Balancing her chalice gracefully she sketched a full Ygrathen salute to the portly, soberly dressed personage with three heavy gold chains about his neck.

‘Greetings,’ she murmured, straightening and moving nearer. ‘This is a surprise. It is rare indeed that the so-busy Warden of the Three Harbours deigns to spare a moment from his so-demanding affairs to visit old friends.’

Unfortunately Rhamanus was as hard to ruffle or disconcert as he had ever been. Dianora had been trying to get a rise out of him ever since the night he’d had her bundled like a brown heifer out of the street in front of The Queen and on to the river galley.

Now he simply grinned, heavier with the years gone by and, latterly, his shore-bound duties, but unmistakably the man who’d brought her here.

One of the few men from Ygrath she genuinely liked.

‘Not so much flavour from you, girl,’ he mock-growled. ‘It is not for idle women who do nothing all day but put their hair up and down and up again for exercise to criticize those of us who have stern and arduous tasks that shorten our nights and put grey in our hair.’

Dianora laughed. Rhamanus’s thick black curls—the envy of half the saishan—showed not a trace of grey. She let her gaze linger expressively on his dark locks.

‘I’m a liar,’ Rhamanus conceded with untroubled equanimity, leaning forward so only she could hear. ‘It’s been a dead-quiet winter. Not much to do at all. I could have come to visit but you know how much I hate these goings-on at court. My buttons pop when I bow.’

Dianora laughed again and gave his arm a quick squeeze. Rhamanus had been kind to her on the ship, and courteous and friendly ever since, even when she’d been merely another new body—if a slightly notorious one—in the saishan of the King. She knew he liked her and she also knew, from d’Eymon himself, that the former Tribute Ship captain was an efficient and a fair administrator.

She had helped him get the posting four years ago. It was a high honour for a seaman, supervising harbour rules and regulations at the three main ports of Chiara itself. It was also, to judge from Rhamanus’s slightly threadbare clothing, a little too near the seat of power for any real gains to be extracted.

Thinking, she clicked her tongue against her upper teeth, a habit Brandin teased her about. He claimed it always signalled a request or a suggestion. He knew her very well, which frightened her at least as much as it did anything else.

‘This is the merest thought,’ she said now to Rhamanus quietly, ‘but would you have any interest at all in living in north Asoli for a few years? Not that I want to get rid of you. It’s a dreadful place, everyone knows that, but there are opportunities and I’d as soon a decent man reaped them as some of the greedy clutch that are hovering about here.’

‘The taxing office?’ he asked, very softly.

She nodded. His eyes widened slightly but, schooled to discretion, he gave no other sign of interest or surprise.

What he did do, an instant later, was glance quickly beyond her shoulder towards the throne. Dianora was already turning by then, an inexplicable sense, almost an antenna, having alerted her.

So she was facing the Island Throne and the doorway behind it by the time the herald’s staff rapped the floor twice, not loudly, and Brandin came into the room. He was followed by the two priests, and the priestess of Adaon. Rhun shambled quickly over to stand near by, dressed identically to the King except for his cap.

The truer measure of power, Brandin had once said to her, wouldn’t be found in having twenty heralds deafen a room by proclaiming one’s arrival. Any fool in funds for a day could rivet attention that way. The more testing course, the truer measure, was to enter unobtrusively and observe what happened.

What happened was what always happened. The Audience Chamber had been collectively poised as if on