Every song that Alessan was playing, every single tune, achingly high and sweet, heartbreakingly clear, one after another, was a song from Senzio.
A song for Erlein di Senzio, cloaked in bitterness and the shadows of night by the riverbank alone.
I will not say I am sorry, Alessan had told the wizard as the sun had set. But I can tell you that I grieve.
And that night, listening to the music the Prince of Tigana made upon his pipes, Devin learned the difference between the two. He watched Alessan, and then he watched the others as they looked at the Prince, and it was when he was gazing at Baerd that the need to weep did grow too strong. His own griefs rose to the call of the mountain pipes. Grief for Alessan and overmastered Erlein. For Baerd and his haunted night walking. For Sandre and his ten fingers and his dead son. For Catriana and himself, all their generation, rootless and cut off from what they were in a world without a home. For all the myriad accumulations of loss and what men and women had to do in order to seek redress.
Catriana went to the baggage and she opened and poured another bottle of wine. The third glass. And as always, it was blue. She filled Devin’s glass in silence. She’d scarcely spoken a word all night, but he felt closer to her than he had in a long time. He drank slowly, watching the cold smoke rise from his glass and drift away in the cool night. The stars overhead were like icy points of fire and the moon was as blue as the wine and as far away as freedom, or a home.
Devin finished his glass and put it down. He reached for his blanket and lay down himself, wrapping it around him. He found himself thinking about his father and of the twins for the first time in a long time.
A few moments later Catriana lay down not far away. Usually she spread her sleeping-roll and blanket on the far side of the fire from where he was, next to the Duke. Devin was wise enough now to know that there was a certain kind of reaching out in what she did, and that tonight might even mark a chance to begin the healing of what lay badly between them, but he was too drained to know what to do or say among all these complicated sorrows.
He said good-night to her, softly, but she did not reply. He wasn’t sure if she’d heard him, but he didn’t say it again. He closed his eyes. A moment later he opened them again, to look at Sandre across the fire. The Duke was gazing steadily into the flames. Devin wondered what he saw there. He wondered, but he didn’t really want to know. Erlein was a shadow, a darker place in the world against the dark by the riverbank. Devin lifted himself on one elbow to look for Baerd, but Baerd had gone away, to walk alone in the night.
Alessan hadn’t moved, or opened his eyes. He was still playing, lonely and high and sorrowful, when Devin fell asleep.
He woke to Baerd’s firm hand on his shoulder. It was still dark and quite cold now. The fire had been allowed to die to ember and ash. Catriana and the Duke were still asleep, but Alessan was standing behind Baerd. He looked pale but composed. Devin wondered if he’d gone to bed at all.
‘I need your help,’ Baerd murmured. ‘Come.’
Shivering, Devin rolled out of his blankets and began pulling on his boots. The moon was down. He looked east but there was no sign of dawn along the horizon. It was very still. Sleepily he shrugged into the woollen vest Alais had sent him by way of Taccio in Ferraut. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep or what time it was.
He finished dressing and went to relieve himself in the trees by the river. His breath smoked in the frosty air. Spring was coming, but it wasn’t quite here yet, not in the middle of the night. The sky was brilliantly clear and full of stars. It would be a beautiful day later when the sun came. Right now he shivered, and did up the drawstrings of his breeches.
Then he realized that he hadn’t seen Erlein anywhere.
‘What happened?’ he whispered to Alessan as he returned to the camp. ‘You said you could call him back.’
‘I did,’ the Prince said shortly. Standing closer Devin could see now how weary he looked. ‘He fought it so hard that he passed out just now. Somewhere out there.’ He gestured south and west.
‘Come on,’ Baerd said again. ‘Bring your sword.’
They had to cross the stream. The icy cold water drove all the sleep out of Devin. He gasped with the shock of it.
‘I’m sorry,’ Baerd said. ‘I’d have done it alone, but I don’t know how far away he is or what else is out here in this country. Alessan wants him back in camp before he revives. It made sense to have two men.’
‘No, no, that’s fine,’ Devin protested. His teeth were chattering.
‘I suppose I could have woken the old Duke from his rest. Or Catriana could have helped me.’
‘What? No, really, Baerd. I’m fine. I’m—’
He stopped, because Baerd was laughing at him. Belatedly Devin caught on to the teasing. It warmed him in a curious way. This was, in fact, the first time he’d ever been out alone in the night with Baerd. He chose to see it as another level of trust, of welcoming. Little by little he was beginning to feel more of a part of what Alessan and Baerd had been trying to achieve for so many years. He straightened his shoulders and, walking as tall as he could, followed Baerd west into the darkness.
They found Erlein di Senzio at the edge of a cluster of olive trees on a slope, about an hour’s walk from the camp. Devin swallowed awkwardly when he saw what had happened. Baerd whistled softly between his teeth; it wasn’t a pretty sight.
Erlein was unconscious. He had tied himself to one of the tree-trunks and appeared to have knotted the rope at least a dozen times. Bending down, Baerd held up the wizard’s waterflask. It was empty: Erlein had soaked the knots to tighten them. His pack and his knife lay together on the ground, a deliberate distance out of reach.
The rope was frayed and tangled. It looked as if a number of knots had been undone, but five or six still held.
‘Look at his fingers,’ Baerd said grimly. He drew his dagger and began cutting the rope.
Erlein’s hands were shredded into raw strips. Dried blood covered both of them. It was brutally clear what had happened. He had tried to make it impossible for himself to yield to Alessan’s summons. What had he hoped for? Devin wondered. That the Prince would assume he had somehow escaped and would therefore forget about him?
Devin doubted, in fact, if what Erlein had done carried any such weight of rational thought. It was defiance, pure and simple, and one had to acknowledge—not even grudgingly—the ferocity of it. He helped Baerd cut through the last of the bonds. Erlein was breathing, but showed no signs of consciousness. His pain must have been devastating, Devin realized, with a flashing memory of the wizard beaten to his knees and screaming by the river. He wondered what screams the night had heard, here in this wild and lonely place.
He felt an awkward mixture of respect and pity and anger as he gazed down at the grey-haired troubadour. Why was he making this so hard for them? Why forcing Alessan to shoulder so much more pain of his own?
Unfortunately, he knew some of the answers to that, and they were not comforting.
‘Will he try to kill himself?’ he asked Baerd abruptly.
‘I don’t think so. As Sandre said, this one is a survivor. I don’t think he’ll do this again. He had to run once—to test the limits of what would happen to him. I would have done the same thing.’ He hesitated. ‘I didn’t expect the rope though.’
Devin took Erlein’s pack and gear and Baerd’s bow and quiver and sword. Baerd slung the unconscious wizard over his shoulder with a grunt and they started back east. It was slower going back. On the horizon in front of them when they reached the stream the first grey of false dawn was showing, dimming the glow of the late-rising stars.
The others were up and waiting for them. Baerd laid Erlein down by the fire—Sandre had it burning again. Devin dropped the gear and weapons and went back to the river with a basin for water. When he returned Catriana and the Duke began cleaning and wrapping Erlein’s mangled hands. They had opened his shirt and turned up the sleeves, revealing angry weals where
he had writhed against the ropes in his struggle to be free.
Or is that backwards? Devin thought grimly. Wasn’t the binding of the rope his real struggle to be free? He looked over and saw Alessan gazing down at Erlein. He could read absolutely nothing in the Prince’s expression.
The sun rose, and shortly after that Erlein woke.
They could see him register where he was.
‘Khav?’ Sandre asked him casually. The five of them were sitting by the fire, eating breakfast, drinking from steaming mugs. The light from the east was a pale, delicate hue, a promise. It glinted and sparkled on the water of the stream and turned the budding leaves green-gold on the trees. The air was filled with birdsong and the leap and splash of trout in the stream.
Erlein sat up slowly and looked at them. Devin saw him become aware of the bandages on his hands. Erlein glanced over at the saddled horses and the two carts, packed and ready for the road.
His gaze swung back and steadied on Alessan’s face. The two men, so improbably bound, looked at each other without speaking. Then Alessan smiled. A smile Devin knew. It opened his stern face to warmth and lit the slate-grey of his eyes.
‘Had I known,’ Alessan said, ‘that you hated Tregean pipes quite that much I honestly wouldn’t have played them.’
A moment later, horribly, Erlein di Senzio began to laugh. There was no joy in that sound, nothing infectious, nothing to be shared. His eyes were squeezed shut and tears welled out of them, pouring down his face.
No one else spoke or moved. It lasted for a long time. When Erlein had finally composed himself he wiped his face on his sleeve, careful of his bandaged hands, and looked at Alessan again. He opened his mouth, about to speak, and then closed it again.
‘I know,’ Alessan said quietly to him. ‘I do know.’
‘Khav?’ Sandre said again, after a moment.
This time Erlein accepted a mug, cradling it awkwardly in both muffled hands. Not long after they broke camp and started south again.
C H A P T E R 1 0
Five days later, on the eve of the Ember Days of spring, they came to Castle Borso.
All that last afternoon as they moved south Devin had been watching the mountains. Any child raised in the watery lowlands of Asoli could not help but be awed by the towering southland ranges: the Braccio here in Certando, the Parravi east towards Tregea and, though he’d never seen them, the rumour of the snow-clad Sfaroni, highest of all, over west where Tigana once had been.
It was late in the day. Far to the north on that same afternoon Isolla of Ygrath lay dead and dismembered under a bloody sheet in the Audience Chamber of the palace on Chiara.
The sun setting behind a thrust spur of the mountains dyed the peaks to burgundy and red and a sombre purple hue. On the very highest summits the snow still shone and dazzled in the last of the light. Devin could just make out the line of the Braccio Pass as it came down: one of the three fabled passes that had linked—in some seasons, and never easily—the Peninsula of the Palm with Quileia to the south.
In the old days, before the Matriarchy had taken deep root in Quileia there had been trade across the mountains, and the brooding piety of the springtime Ember Days had also presaged a quickening and stir of commercial life with the promise of the passes opening again. The towns and fortress-castles here in the southern highlands had been vibrant and vital then. Well defended too, because where a trade caravan could cross, so could an army. But no King of Quileia had ever been secure enough on his throne to lead an army north; not with the High Priestesses standing by at home to see him fail or fall. Here in Certando the private armies had mostly bloodied their blades and arrows against each other, in savage southland feuds that ranged over generations and became the stuff of legend.
And then the Quileian Matriarchy had come to power after all, in the time of Achis and Pasitheia, several hundred years ago. Quileia under the priestesses had folded inward upon itself like a flower at dusk and the caravans ended.
The southland cities dwindled into villages, or, if flexible and energetic enough, they changed their character and turned their faces northward and to other things, as Avalle of the Towers had done in Tigana. Here in the Certandan highlands the mighty lords who had once held glittering court in their huge warlike castles became living anachronisms. Their forays and battles with each other—once integral to the flow of events in the Palm—became more and more inconsequential, though not the less bitter or vicious for that.
To Devin, touring with Menico di Ferraut, it had sometimes seemed that every second ballad they sang was of some lord or younger son pursued by enemies among these crags; or of ill-fated southland lovers divided by the hatred of their fathers; or of the bloody deeds of those fathers, untamed as hawks in their stern high castles among these foothills of the Braccio.
And of those ballads, whether wild with battle and blood and villages set afire, or lamenting parted lovers drowning themselves in silent pools hidden in the misty hills—of all those songs, half again, it seemed to Devin, were of the Borso clan and set in and around the massive, piled, grim splendour of Castle Borso hard under Braccio Pass.
There hadn’t been any new ballads for a long time, very few in fact since the Quileian caravans had stopped. But of fresh stories and rumours there had been many in the past two decades. A great many. In her own particular way, and in her own lifetime, Alienor of Castle Borso had already become a legend among the men and women of the road.
And if these newer stories were about love, as so many of the older songs had been, they had little to do with anguished youth bewailing fate on windswept crags, and rather more to tell about certain changes within Castle Borso itself. About deep woven carpets and tapestries, about imported silk and lace and velvet, and profoundly disconcerting works of art in rooms that had once seen hard men plan midnight raids at trestle-tables, while unruly hunting dogs had fought for flung bones among the rushes of the floor.
Riding beside Erlein in the second cart, Devin dragged his gaze away from the last shining of light on the peaks and looked at the castle they were nearing. Tucked into a fold of hills, with a moat around it and a small village just beyond, Borso was already in shadow. Even as he watched, Devin saw lights being lit in the windows. The last lights until the end of the Ember Days.
‘Alienor is a friend,’ was all that Alessan had volunteered. ‘An old friend.’
That much, at least, was evident from the greeting she gave him when her seneschal—tall and stooped, with a magnificent white beard—ushered them gravely into the firelit warmth of the Great Hall.
Alessan’s colour was unusually high when the lady of the castle unlaced her long fingers from his hair and withdrew her lips from his own. She hadn’t hurried the encounter. Neither, even more interestingly, had he. Alienor stepped back, smiling a little, to survey his companions.
She favoured Erlein with a nod of recognition. ‘Welcome back, troubadour. Two years, is it?’
‘Even so, my lady. I am honoured that you remember.’ Erlein’s bow harkened back to an earlier age, to the manner they’d seen before Alessan had bound him.
‘You were alone then, I remember. I am pleased to see you now in such splendid company.’
Erlein opened his mouth and then closed it without replying. Alienor glanced at Alessan, a fleeting enquiry in her very dark eyes.
Receiving no response she turned to the Duke and the curiosity in her face sharpened. Thoughtfully she laid a finger against her cheek and tilted her head slightly to one side. The disguised Sandre endured her scrutiny impassively.
‘Very well done,’ said Alienor of Borso, softly so the servants and the seneschal by the doors could not hear. ‘I imagine that Baerd has the whole Palm taking you for a Khardhu. I wonder who you really are, under all of that.’ Her smile was quite ravishing.
Devin didn’t know whether to be impressed or unsettled. An instant later that particular dilemma was rendered irrelevant.
‘You don’t know?’ said Erlein di
Senzio loudly. ‘A terrible oversight. Allow me the introduction. My lady, may I present to you the—’
He got no further.
Devin was the first to react, which surprised him, thinking about it afterwards. He’d always been quick though, and he was closest to the wizard. What he did—the only thing he could think of to do—was pivot sharply and bury his fist as hard as he could in Erlein’s belly.
As it was, he was only a fraction of a second ahead of Catriana on Erlein’s other side. She had leaped to clap her hand over the wizard’s mouth. The force of Devin’s blow doubled Erlein over with a grunt of pain. This in turn had the unintended effect of throwing Catriana off balance and stumbling forward. To be smoothly caught and braced by Alienor.
The whole thing had taken perhaps three seconds.
Erlein sank to his knees on the opulent carpet. Devin knelt beside him. He heard Alienor dismissing her servants from the room.
‘You are a fool!’ Baerd snarled at the wizard.
‘He certainly is,’ Alienor agreed in a rather different tone, all exaggerated petulance and flounce. ‘Why would anyone think I’d want the burden of knowing the true identity of a disguised Khardhu warrior?’ She was still holding Catriana around the waist, quite unnecessarily. Now she let her go, with an amused expression at the girl’s rapid retreat.
‘You are an impetuous creature, aren’t you?’ she murmured silkily.
‘Not especially,’ said Catriana hardily, stopping a few feet away.
Alienor’s mouth quirked. She looked Catriana up and down with an expert eye. ‘I am horribly jealous of you,’ she pronounced at length. ‘And I would be, even if you had that hair chopped off and those eyes sewn shut. What magnificent men you are travelling with!’
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