Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

Standing most of the way towards the throne, Dianora had time to observe the stately progress of the woman Brandin had called the finest musician in Ygrath. The assembled court of Chiara was lined several rows deep, flanking the approach to the King.

‘A handsome woman still,’ murmured Neso of Ygrath, ‘and she’s fifty years old if she’s a day.’ Somehow he had managed to end up next to her in the front row.

His unctuous tone irritated her, as always, but she tried not to let it show. Isolla was clad in the simplest possible robe of dark blue, betted at the waist with a slender gold chain. Her hair, brown with hints of grey, was cut unfashionably short—although the spring and summer fashion might change after today, Dianora thought. The colony always took its cue in these matters from Ygrath.

Isolla walked confidently, not hurrying, down the aisle formed by the courtiers. Brandin was already smiling a welcome. He was always immensely pleased when one or another of Ygrath’s artists made the long, often dangerous, sea voyage to his second court.

Several steps behind Isolla, and carrying her lute in its case as if it were an artifact of immeasurable worth, Dianora saw—with genuine surprise—the poet Camena di Chiara, clad in his ubiquitous triple-layered cloak. There were murmurs from the assembly: she wasn’t the only one caught off-guard by this.

Instinctively she threw a glance across the aisle to where Doarde stood with his wife and daughter. She was in time to see the spasm of hate and fear that flickered across his face as his younger rival approached. An instant later the revealing expression was gone, replaced by a polished mask of sneering disdain at Camena’s vulgar lowering of himself to serve as porter for an Ygrathen.

Still, Dianora considered, this was an Ygrathen court. Camena, she guessed in a flash of intuition, had probably had one of his verses set to music. If Isolla was about to sing a song of his it would be a dazzling coup for the Chiaran poet. More than sufficient to explain why he would offer to further exalt Isolla—and Ygrathen artists— by serving as a bearer for her.

The politics of art, Dianora decided, was at least as complex as that of provinces and nations.

Isolla had stopped, as was proper, about fifteen steps from the dais of the Island Throne, very close to where Dianora and Neso stood.

Neatly she proceeded to perform the triple obeisance. Very graciously—a mark of high honour—Brandin rose to his feet to bid her welcome. He was smiling. So was Rhun, behind him and to his left.

For no reason she would ever afterwards be able to name or explain Dianora turned from monarch and musician back to the poet bearing the lute. Camena had stopped a further half a dozen paces behind Isolla and had knelt on the marble floor.

What detracted from the grace of the tableau was the dilation of his eyes. Nilthleaves, Dianora concluded instantly. He’s drugged himself. She saw beads of perspiration on the poet’s brow. It was not warm in the Audience Chamber.

‘You are most welcome, Isolla,’ Brandin was saying with genuine pleasure. ‘It has been far too long since we have seen you, or heard you play.’

Dianora saw Camena make a small adjustment in the way he held the lute. She thought he was preparing to open the case. It did not look like an ordinary lute though. In fact—

Afterwards she was able to know one thing only with certainty: it had been the story of the riselka that made her so sharp to see. The story, and the fact that Brandin wasn’t certain if the second man—his guard—had seen her or not.

One man meant a fork in the path. Two men meant a death.

Either way, something was to happen. And now it did.

All eyes but hers were on Brandin and Isolla. Only Dianora saw Camena slip the velvet cover off the lute. Only Dianora saw that it was not, in fact, a lute. And only she had heard Brandin’s tale of the riselka.

‘Die, Isolla of Ygrath!’ Camena screamed hoarsely; his eyes bulged as he hurled the velvet away and levelled the crossbow he carried.

With the lightning reaction of a man half his years Brandin reflexively threw out his hand to cast a sorcerer’s shield around the threatened singer.

Exactly as he was expected to, Dianora realized.

‘Brandin, no!’ she screamed. ‘It’s you!’

And seizing the gape-mouthed Neso of Ygrath by the near shoulder she propelled herself and him both into the aisle.

The crossbow bolt, aimed meticulously to the left of Isolla on a line for Brandin’s heart, buried itself instead in the shoulder of a stupefied Neso. He shrieked in pain and shock.

Her momentum drove Dianora stumbling to her knees beside Isolla. She looked up. And for the rest of her days never forgot the look she met in the singer’s eyes.

She turned away from it. The emotion, the hatred was too raw. She felt physically ill, trembling with aftershock. She forced herself to stand; she looked at Brandin. He hadn’t even lowered his hand. There was still the shimmer of a protective barrier around Isolla.

Who had never been in danger at all.

The guards had Camena by now. He’d been dragged to his feet. Dianora had never seen anyone look so white. Even his eyes were white, from the drug. For a moment she thought he was going to faint, but then Camena threw his head back as far as he could in the iron grip of the Ygrathen soldiers. He opened his mouth, as if in agony.

‘Chiara!’ he cried once, and then, ‘Freedom for Chiara!’ before they silenced him, brutally.

The echoes rang for a long time. The room was large and the stillness was almost absolute. No one dared to move. Dianora had a sense that the court wasn’t even breathing. No one wanted the slightest attention drawn to them.

On the mosaic-inlaid floor Neso moaned again in fear and pain, breaking the