Tigana Part 12

When it became clear that the musicians were coming inside, it had taken a supreme act of self-control for her to regain the mien and composure proper to her parents' oldest, most trusted child.

In the house it became easier because the instant the two male guests stepped through the doorway Selvena had gone into her predictable mating frenzy. A course of behaviour so embarra.s.singly transparent to her older sister that it drove Alais straight back into her own habitual, detached watchfulness. Selvena had been crying herself to sleep for much of the year because it looked more and more as if she would still be unmarried when her eighteenth naming day came in the spring.

Devin, the singer, was smaller and younger-looking than she'd expected. But he was neat and lithe, with an easy smile and quick, intelligent eyes under sandy-brown hair that curled halfway over his ears. She'd expected him to be arrogant or pretentious, despite what her father had said, but she saw nothing of that at all.

The other man, Alessan, looked about fifteen years older, perhaps more. His black, tangled hair was prematurely greying-silvering, actually-at the temples. He had a lean, expressive face with very clear grey eyes and a wide mouth. He intimidated her a little, even though he was joking easily with her father right from the start, in exactly the manner she knew Rovigo most enjoyed.

Perhaps that was it, Alais thought: few people she'd met could keep up with her father, in jesting or in anything else. And this man with the sharp, quizzical features appeared to be doing so effortlessly. She wondered, aware that the thought was more than a little arrogant on her own part, how a Tregean musician could manage that. On the other hand, she reflected, she didn't know very much about musicians at all.

Which made her even more curious about the woman. Alais thought Catriana was terribly beautiful. With her commanding height and the startlingly blue eyes under the blaze of her hair-like a second fire in the room-she made Alais feel small and pale and bland. In a curious way that combined with Selvena's outrageous flirtation to relax rather than unsettle her: this sort of activity, compet.i.tion, exercise, was simply not not something with which she was going to get involved. Watching closely, she saw Catriana register Selvena's soft flouncing at Devin's feet and she intercepted the sardonic glance the red-haired singer directed at her fellow musician. something with which she was going to get involved. Watching closely, she saw Catriana register Selvena's soft flouncing at Devin's feet and she intercepted the sardonic glance the red-haired singer directed at her fellow musician.

Alais decided to go into the kitchen. Her mother and Menka might need help. Alix gave her a quick, thoughtful glance when she came in, but did not comment.

They quickly put a meal together. Back in the front room Alais helped at the sideboard and then listened and watched from her favourite chair next to the fire. Later she had genuine cause to bless Selvena's shamelessness. None of the rest of them would have dreamt of asking their guests to sing.

This time she could see the singers so she kept her eyes open. Devin sang directly to her once near the end and Alais, her colour furiously rising, forced herself not to look away. For the rest of that last song about Eanna naming the stars she found her mind straying into channels unusual for her-the sort of thing Selvena speculated about at night all the time, in detail. Alais hoped they would all attribute her colour to the warmth of the fire.

She did wonder about one thing though, having been an observer of people for most of her life. There was something something between Devin and Catriana, but it certainly wasn't love, or even tenderness as she understood either of those things. They would look at each other from time to time, usually when the other was unaware, and the glances would be more challenging than anything else. She reminded herself again that the world of these people was farther removed from her own than she could even imagine. between Devin and Catriana, but it certainly wasn't love, or even tenderness as she understood either of those things. They would look at each other from time to time, usually when the other was unaware, and the glances would be more challenging than anything else. She reminded herself again that the world of these people was farther removed from her own than she could even imagine.

The younger ones said their good-nights. Selvena doing so with a highly suspicious lack of protest, and touching, shockingly, fingertip to palm with both men in farewell. Alais caught a glance from her father, and a moment later she rose when her mother did.

It was impulse, nothing more, that led her to invite Catriana to come up with her. Immediately the words were spoken, she realized how they must sound to the other woman-someone so independent and obviously at ease in the company of men. Alais flinched inwardly at her own provincial clumsiness, and braced herself for a rebuff. Catriana's smile, though, was all graciousness as she stood.

'It will remind me of home,' she said.

Thinking about that as the two of them went up the stairs past the lamps in their brackets and the wall-hangings her grandfather had brought back south from a voyage to Khardhun years and years ago, Alais tried to fathom what would lead a girl her own age to venture out among the rough and tumble of long roads and uncertain lodging. Of late nights and men who would surely a.s.sume that if she was among them she had to be available. Alais tried, but she honestly couldn't grasp it. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, something generous in her spirit opened out towards the other woman.

'Thank you for the music,' she said shyly.

'Small return for your kindness,' Catriana said lightly.

'Not as small as you think,' Alais said. 'Our room is over here. I'm glad this reminds you of home ... I hope it is a good memory.' That was probing a little, but not rudely, she hoped. She wanted to talk to this woman, to be friends, to learn what she could about a life so remote from her own.

They stepped into the large bedroom. Menka had the fire going already and the two bedspreads turned back. The deep-piled quilts were new this autumn, more contraband brought back by Rovigo from Quileia where winters were so much harsher than here.

Catriana laughed a little under her breath, her eyebrows arching as she surveyed the chamber. 'Sharing a room does. This is rather more than I knew in a fisherman's cottage.' Alais flushed, fearful of having offended, but before she could speak Catriana turned to her, eyes still very wide, and said casually, 'Tell me, will we need to tie your sister down? She seems to be in heat and I'm worried about the two men surviving the night.'

Alais went from feeling spoiled and insensitive to red-faced shock in one second. Then she saw the quick smile on the other woman's face and she laughed aloud in a release of anxiety and guilt.

'She's just terrible, isn't she? She's vowed to kill herself in some dreadfully dramatic way if she isn't married by the Festival next year.'

Catriana shook her head. 'I knew some girls like her at home. I've met a few on the road, too. I've never been able to understand it.'

'Nor I,' said Alais a little too quickly. Catriana glanced at her. Alais ventured a hesitant smile. 'I guess that's a thing we have in common?'

'One thing,' the other woman said indifferently, turning away. She strolled over to one of the woven pieces on the wall. 'This is nice enough,' she said, fingering it. 'Where did your father find it?'

'I made it,' Alais said shortly. She felt patronized suddenly, and it irritated her.

It must have shown in her voice, for Catriana looked quickly back over her shoulder. The two women exchanged a look in silence. Catriana sighed. 'I'm hard to make friends with,' she said at length. 'I doubt it's worth your effort.'

'No effort,' said Alais quietly. 'Besides,' she ventured, 'I may need your help tying Selvena down later.'

Surprised, Catriana chuckled. 'She'll be all right,' she said, sitting on one of the beds. 'Neither of them will touch her while they are guests in your father's house. Even if she slithers into their room wearing nothing but a single red glove.'

Shocked for the second time, but finding the sensation oddly enjoyable, Alais giggled and sat down on her own bed, dangling her legs over the side. Catriana's feet, she noticed ruefully, easily reached the carpet.

'She just might do that,' she whispered, grinning at the image. 'I think she even has a red glove hidden somewhere!'

Catriana shook her head. 'Then it's roping her down like a heifer or trusting the men, I guess. But as I say, they won't do anything.'

'You know them very well, I suppose,' Alais hazarded. She still wasn't sure whether any given remark would earn her a rebuff or elicit a smile. This was not, she was discovering, an easy woman to deal with.

'Alessan, I know better,' Catriana said. 'But Devin's been on the road a long time and I have no doubt he knows the rules.' She glanced away briefly as she said that last, her own colour a little high.

Still wary of another rejection Alais said cautiously, 'I have no idea about that, actually. Are Are there rules? Do any of them ... do you have problems when you travel?' there rules? Do any of them ... do you have problems when you travel?'

Catriana shrugged. 'The kind of problems your sister's longing to find? Not from the musicians. There's an unwritten code, or else the companies would only get a certain kind of woman to tour and that would hurt the music. And the music really does matter to most of the troupes. The ones that last, anyway. Men can be quite badly hurt for bothering a girl too much. Certainly they'll never find work if it happens too often often.'

'I see,' said Alais, trying to imagine it.

"You are are expected to pair off with someone though,' Catriana added. 'As if it's the least you can do. Remove yourself as a temptation. So you find a man you like, or some of the girls find a woman, of course. There's a fair bit of that, too.' expected to pair off with someone though,' Catriana added. 'As if it's the least you can do. Remove yourself as a temptation. So you find a man you like, or some of the girls find a woman, of course. There's a fair bit of that, too.'

'Oh,' said Alais, clasping her hands in her lap.

Catriana, who was really much too clever by half, flashed a glance of mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and malice. 'Don't worry,' she said sweetly, looking pointedly at where Alais's hands had settled like a barrier. 'That glove doesn't fit me.'

Abruptly Alais put her hands to either side of her, blus.h.i.+ng furiously.

'I wasn't particularly worried,' she said, trying to sound casual. Then, goaded by the other's mocking expression, she shot back: 'What glove does does fit you, then?' fit you, then?'

The other woman's amus.e.m.e.nt quickly disappeared. There was a small silence. Then: 'You do have some spirit in you, after all,' Catriana said judiciously. 'I wasn't sure.'

'That,' said Alais, moved to a rare anger, 'is patronizing. How would you be sure of anything about me? And why would I let you see it?'

Again there was a silence, and again Catriana surprised her. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Truly. I'm really not very good at this. I warned you.' She looked away. 'As it happens, you hit a nerve and I tend to lash out when that occurs.'

Alais's anger, as quick to recede as it was slow to kindle, was gone even as the other woman spoke. This was, she reminded herself sternly, a guest in her house.

She had no immediate chance to reply though, or to try to mend the rift, because just then Menka bustled importantly into the room with a basin of water heated over the kitchen fire, followed by the youngest of Rovigo's apprentices with a second basin and towels draped over both his shoulders. The boy's eyes were desperately cast downwards in a room containing two women as he carried the basin and the towels carefully over to the table by the window.

The garrulous fuss Menka inevitably stirred up wherever she went broke the mood entirely-both the good and the bad parts of it, Alais thought. After the two servants left, the women washed up in silence. Alais, stealing a glance at the other's long-limbed body, felt even more inadequate in her own small, white softness and the sheltered life she'd lived. She climbed into bed, feeling as if she'd like to begin the whole conversation over again.

'Good night,' she said.

'Good night,' Catriana replied, after a moment.

Alais tried to read an invitation to further conversation in her tone, but she wasn't sure. If Catriana wanted to talk, she decided, she had only to say something.

They blew out their bedside candles and lay silently in the semi-darkness. Alais watched the red glow of the fire, curled her toes around the hot brick Menka had put at the foot of her bed, and thought ruefully that the distance to Selvena's side of the room had never seemed so great.

Some time later, still unsleeping though the fire was down to its embers, she heard a burst of hilarity from the three men downstairs. The warm, carrying sound of her father's laughter somehow worked its way into her and eased her distress. He was home. She felt sheltered and safe. Alais smiled to herself in the darkness. She heard the men come upstairs soon after, and go to their separate rooms.

She remained awake for a while, with an ear perked to catch the sound of her sister in the hallway-though she didn't really believe even Selvena would do that. She heard nothing, and eventually she fell asleep.

She dreamt of lying on a hilltop in a strange place. Of a man there with her. Lowering himself upon her. A mild moonless night glittering with stars. She lay with him upon that windy height amid a scattering of dew-drenched summer flowers, and in the high, unknown place of that dreaming Alais was filled with complex yearnings she could never have named aloud.

It was bitterly cold in the dungeon where they had thrown him at last. The stones were damp and icy, they smelled of urine and faeces. He'd only been allowed to put back on his linen underclothing and his hose. There were rats in the cell. He couldn't see them in the blackness but he had been able to hear them from the beginning and he'd been bitten twice already as he dozed.

Earlier, he had been naked. The new Captain of the Guard-the replacement for the one who'd killed himself-had permitted his men to play with their prisoner before locking him up for the night. They all knew Toma.s.so's reputation. Everyone knew his reputation. He had made sure of that; it had been part of the plan.

So the guards had stripped him in the harsh brightness of the guardroom and they had amused themselves coa.r.s.ely, p.r.i.c.king him with their swords or with the heated poker from the fire, sliding them around his flaccid s.e.x, prodding him in the b.u.t.tocks or the belly. Bound and helpless, Toma.s.so had wanted only to close his eyes and wish it all away.

For some reason it was the memory of Taeri that wouldn't let him do that. He still couldn't believe his younger brother was dead. Or that Taeri had been so brave and so decisive at the end. It made him want to cry, thinking about it, but he was not going to let the Barbadians see that. He was a Sandreni. Which seemed to mean more to him now, naked and near the end, than it ever had before.

So he kept his eyes open and he fixed them bleakly on the new captain. He did his best to ignore the things they were doing to him, and the sn.i.g.g.e.ring, brutal suggestions as to what would happen tomorrow. They weren't very imaginative actually. He knew the morning's reality was going to be worse. Intolerably worse.

They hurt him a little with their blades and drew blood a few times, but nothing very much-Toma.s.so knew they were under orders to save him for the professionals in the morning. Alberico would be present then, as well.

This was just play.

Eventually the captain grew tired of Toma.s.so's steady gaze, or else he decided that there was enough blood flowing down the prisoner's legs, puddling on the floor. He ordered his men to stop. Toma.s.so's bonds were cut and they gave him back his undergarments and a filthy pest-infested strip of blanket and they took him down the stairs to the dungeons of Astibar and they threw him into the blackness of one of them.

The entrance was so low that even on his knees he'd sc.r.a.ped his head on the stone when they pushed him in. More blood, he realized, as his hand came away sticky. It didn't actually seem to matter very much.

He hated the rats though. He'd always been afraid of rats. He rolled the useless blanket as tightly as he could and tried to use it as a feeble club. It was hard though in the dark.

Toma.s.so wished he were a physically braver man. He knew what was coming in the morning, and the thought, now that he was alone, turned his bowels to jelly.

He heard a sound, and realized a moment later that he was whimpering. He fought to keep control of himself. He was alone though, and in freezing darkness in the hands of his enemies, and there were rats. He couldn't entirely keep the sounds from coming. He felt as if his heart was broken, as if it lay in jagged pieces at odd angles in his breast. Among the fragments he tried to a.s.semble a curse for Herado and his betrayal, but nothing seemed equal to what his nephew had done. Nothing seemed large enough to encompa.s.s it.

He heard another rat and lashed out blindly with his rolled weapon. He hit something and heard a squeal. Again and again he pounded at the place of that sound. He thought he had killed it. One of them. He was trembling, but the frenzy of activity seemed to help him fight back his weakness. He didn't weep any more. He leaned back against the damp slime of the stone wall, wincing because of his open cuts. He closed his eyes, though he couldn't see in any case, and he thought of sunlight.

It was then that he must have dozed, because he woke suddenly with a shout of pain: one of the rats had bitten viciously at his thigh. He flailed about with the blanket for a few moments, but he was s.h.i.+vering now and beginning to feel genuinely ill. His mouth was swollen and pulpy from Alberico's blow in the cabin. He found it painful to swallow. He felt his forehead and decided he was feverish.

Which is why, when he saw the wan light of a candle, he was sure he was hallucinating. He was able to look around though by its glow. The cell was tiny. There was a dead rat near his right leg and there were two more living ones-big as cats-near the door. He saw, on the wall beside him, a scratched-out image of the sun with notches for days cut into the rim. It had the saddest face Toma.s.so could ever remember seeing. He looked at it for a long time.

Then he looked back towards the glowing light and realized with certainty that this was was a hallucination, or a dream. a hallucination, or a dream.

His father was holding the candle, dressed in the blue-silver robe of his burial, looking down with an expression different from any Toma.s.so could ever remember seeing on his face.

The fever must be extreme, he decided; his mind was conjuring forth in this abyss an image of something his shattered heart so desperately desired. A look of kindness-and even, if one wanted to reach for the word, even of love-in the eyes of the man who'd whipped him as a child and then designated him as useful for two decades of plotting against a Tyrant.

Which had ended tonight. Which would truly end, most horribly, for Toma.s.so in the morning, amid pain he didn't even have the capacity to imagine. He liked liked this dream though, this fever-induced fantasy. There was light in it. It kept the rats away. It even seemed to ease the bone-numbing cold of the wet stones beneath him and against his back. this dream though, this fever-induced fantasy. There was light in it. It kept the rats away. It even seemed to ease the bone-numbing cold of the wet stones beneath him and against his back.

He lifted an unsteady hand towards the flame. Through a dry throat and torn, puffy lips he croaked something. What he wanted to say was, 'I'm sorry,' 'I'm sorry,' to the dream-image of his father, but he couldn't make the words come right. to the dream-image of his father, but he couldn't make the words come right.

This was a dream though, his dream, and the image of Sandre seemed to understand.

'You have nothing to be sorry for,' Toma.s.so heard his dream-father say. So gently. 'It was my fault and only mine. Through all those years and at the end. I knew Gianno's limitations from the start. I had too many hopes for you as a child. It ... affected me too much. After.'

The candle seemed to waver a little. A part of Toma.s.so, a corner of his heart, seemed to be knitting itself slowly back together, even though this was only a dream, only his own longing. A last feeble fantasy of being loved before they flayed him.

'Will you let me tell you how sorry I am for the folly that has condemned you to this? Will you hear me if I tell you I have been proud of you, in my fas.h.i.+on?'

Toma.s.so let himself weep. The words were balm for the deepest ache he knew. Crying made the light blur and swim though, and so he raised his shaking hands, and kept trying to wipe the tears away. He wanted to speak but his shattered mouth could not form words. He nodded his head though, over and over. Then he had a thought and he raised his left hand-the heart hand, of oaths and fidelity-towards this dream of his father's ghost.

And slowly Sandre's hand came down, as if from a long, long way off, from years and years away, seasons lost and forgotten in the turning of time and pride, and father and son touched fingertips together.

It was a more solid contact than Toma.s.so had thought it would be. He closed his eyes for a moment, yielding to the intensity of his feelings. When he opened them his father's image seemed to be holding something out towards him. A vial of some liquid. Toma.s.so did not understand.

'This is the last thing I can do for you,' the ghost said in a strange, unexpectedly wistful voice. 'If I were stronger I could do more, but at least they will not hurt you in the morning now. They will not hurt you any more, my son. Drink it, Toma.s.so, drink it and this will all be gone. All go away, I promise you. Then wait for me, Toma.s.so, wait if you can in Morian's Halls. I would like to walk with you there.'

Toma.s.so still did not understand, but the tone was so mild, so rea.s.suring. He took the dream-vial. Again it was more substantial than he'd expected it to be.

His father nodded encouragement. With trembling hands Toma.s.so fumbled and removed the stopper. Then with a last gesture-a final mocking parody of himself-he raised it in a wide, sweeping, elaborate salute to his own powers of fantasy and he drained it to the dregs, which were bitter.

His father's smile was so sad. Smiles are not supposed to be sad, Toma.s.so wanted to say. He had said that to a boy once, in a temple of Morian at night, in a room where he was not supposed to be. His head felt heavy. He felt as if he were about to fall alseep, even though he already was was asleep, and dreaming in his fever. He really didn't understand. He especially didn't understand why his father, who was dead, should ask asleep, and dreaming in his fever. He really didn't understand. He especially didn't understand why his father, who was dead, should ask him him to wait in Morian's Halls. to wait in Morian's Halls.

He looked up again, wanting to ask about that. His vision seemed to be going completely strange on him though.

He knew this was so, because the image of his father, looking down upon him, seemed to be crying. There were tears in his father's eyes.

Which was impossible. Even in a dream.

'Farewell,' he heard.

Farewell, he tried to say, in return. he tried to say, in return.

He wasn't sure if he'd actually managed to form the word, or if he'd only thought it, but just then a darkness more encompa.s.sing than he had ever known came down over him like a blanket or a mantle, and the difference between the spoken and the unspoken ceased to matter any more.

PART TWO.

D I A N O R A.