‘Are they?’ Catriana’s voice was indifferent, but her colour was suddenly high.
‘Are they?’ Alienor echoed sharply. ‘You mean you haven’t established that for yourself? Dear child, what have you been doing with your nights? Of course they are! Don’t waste your youth, my dear.’
Catriana looked at her levelly. ‘I don’t think I am,’ she said. ‘But I doubt we’d have the same thoughts on that subject.’
Devin winced, but Alienor’s answer was mild. ‘Perhaps not,’ she agreed, unruffled. ‘But, in truth, I think the overlap would actually be greater than you imagine.’ She paused. ‘You may also find as you get older that ice is for deaths and endings, not for beginnings. Any kind of beginnings. On the other hand, I will ensure,’ she added, with a smile that was all kindness, ‘that you have a sufficiency of blankets to keep you warm tonight.’
Erlein groaned, dragging Devin’s attention away from the two women. He heard Catriana say, ‘I thank you for your solicitude,’ but he missed her expression. From the tone he could hazard a guess at what it would be.
He supported Erlein’s head as the wizard laboured to get his wind back. Alienor simply ignored them. She was greeting Baerd now with a friendly civility—a tone that was cheerfully matched, Devin noted instinctively, by Baerd’s own manner towards her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered to Erlein. ‘I couldn’t think of anything else.’
Erlein waved a feeble, still-unhealed hand. He’d insisted on removing the bandages before they’d entered the castle. ‘I’m sorry,’ he wheezed, surprising Devin considerably. ‘I forgot about the servants.’ He wiped his lips with the back of one hand. ‘I won’t achieve much for myself if I get us all killed. Not my idea of freedom, that. Nor, frankly, is this posture my notion of middle-aged dignity. Since you knocked me down you can kindly help me up.’ For the first time Devin heard a faint note of amusement in the troubadour’s voice. A survivor, Sandre had said.
As tactfully as he could he helped the other man stand.
‘The extremely violent one,’ Alessan was saying drily, ‘is Devin d’Asoli. He also sings. If you are very good he may sing for you.’
Devin turned away from Erlein, but perhaps because he’d been distracted by what had just happened he was quite unprepared to deal with the gaze he now encountered.
There is no possible way, he found himself thinking, that this woman is forty years old. He reflexively sketched the performer’s bow Menico had taught him, to cover his confusion. She was almost forty and he knew it: Alienor had been widowed two years after she’d been wed, when Cornaro of Borso had died in the Barbadian invasion of Certando. The stories and descriptions of the beautiful widow in her southland castle had begun very shortly after that.
They didn’t come even near to catching what she was—what he saw standing before him in a long gown of a blue so deep it was nearly black. Her hair was black, worn high upon her head and held by a diadem of white gold studded with gems. A few tendrils of hair had been artlessly allowed to fall free, framing the perfect oval of her face. Her eyes were indigo, almost violet under the long lashes, and her mouth was full and red and smiling a private smile as she looked at Devin.
He forced himself to meet that look. Doing so, he felt as though all the sluice-gates in his veins had been hurled open and his blood was a river in flood, racing through a steep wild course at an ever-increasing speed. Her smile grew deeper, more private, as if she could actually see that happening inside him, and the dark eyes grew wider for an instant.
‘I suppose,’ said Alienor di Certando, before turning back to Alessan, ‘that I shall have to try to be very good then, if that will induce you to sing for me.’
Her breasts were full and high, Devin saw, could not help but see. The gown was cut very low and a diamond pendant hung against her skin, drawing the eye like a blue-white fire.
He shook his head, fighting to clear it, a little shocked at his own reaction. This was ridiculous, he told himself sternly. He had been overheated by the stories told, his imagination rendered unruly by the opulent, sensuous furnishings in the room. He looked upwards for distraction and then wished he hadn’t.
On the ceiling someone not a stranger to the act of love had painted Adaon’s primal coupling with Eanna. The face of the goddess was very clearly that of Alienor and the painting showed—just as clearly—that she was in the very moment of rapture when the stars had streamed into being from her ecstasy.
There were indeed stars streaming all across the background of the ceiling fresco. It was, however, difficult to look at the background of the fresco. Devin forced his eyes down. What helped him reclaim his composure was meeting Catriana’s glance just then: a mingled look of caustic irony and a second thing he couldn’t quite recognize. For all her own splendour and the wild crimson glory of her hair, Catriana looked exceptionally young just then. Almost a child, Devin thought sagely, not yet fully realized or accomplished in her womanhood.
The Lady of Castle Borso was complete in what she was, from her sandalled feet to the band in her lustrous hair. Her nails, Devin noticed belatedly, were painted the same blue-black dangerous colour as her gown.
He swallowed, and looked away again.
‘I expected you yesterday,’ Alienor was saying to Alessan. ‘I was waiting for you and I’d made myself beautiful for you but you didn’t come.’
‘Just as well, then,’ Alessan murmured, smiling. ‘Had I seen you any more beautiful than you are now I might never have found the strength to leave.’
Her mouth curled mischievously. She turned to the others. ‘You see how the man torments me? Not a quarter of an hour in my home and he speaks of leaving. Am I well served in such a friend?’
The question was addressed, as it happened, directly to Devin. His throat was dry; her glance did disruptive things to the orderly flow of messages from brain to tongue. He essayed a smile, suspecting rather that the expression produced fell somewhere between the fatuous and the imbecilic.
Wine, Devin thought desperately. He was in serious need of an effective glass of something.
As if summoned by an art of timing more subtle than wizardry three servants in blue livery reappeared, each bearing seven glasses on a tray. Two of the trays, Devin saw, bore a red wine that was almost certainly Certandan.
The wine in the third set of glasses was blue.
Devin turned to Alessan. The Prince was looking at Alienor with an expression that spoke to something private and shared far in the past. For a moment her own expression and demeanour altered: as if she had laid aside for an instant the reflexive spinning of her webs of enticement. And Devin, a far more perceptive man than he had been six months before, thought he saw the hint of a sadness in her eyes.
Then she spoke and he was certain that he’d seen it. In some subtle way it calmed him, and shed a different, milder light on the mood in the room.
‘It is not a thing I am likely to forget,’ she said softly to Alessan, gesturing towards the blue wine.
‘Nor I,’ he replied. ‘Since it began here.’
She was silent a moment, eyelids lowered. Then the moment passed. Alienor’s eyes were sparkling again when they lifted. ‘I have the usual collection of letters for you. But one is very recent,’ she said. ‘Brought two days ago by a very young priest of Eanna who was terrified of me the whole time he was here. He wouldn’t even stay the night though he only arrived at sunset. I swear he rode out so fast he must have feared I’d have his robe off’ if he lingered for a meal.’
‘And would you have?’ Alessan grinned.
She made a face. ‘Unlikely. Eanna’s sort are seldom worth the trouble. Though he was pretty. Almost as pretty as Baerd, come to think of it.’
Baerd, quite unperturbed, simply smiled. Alienor’s glance lingered flirtatiously on him. There too, Devin noted. An exchange that spoke to events and things shared a long way back. He felt young suddenly, and out of his depth.
‘Where is the new message from?�
� Alessan asked.
Alienor hesitated. ‘West,’ was all she said. She glanced at the rest of them with a veiled question in her eyes.
Alessan noted it. ‘You may speak freely. I trust every man and woman here.’ He was careful not to even look at Erlein. Devin did look, but if he’d expected a reaction from the wizard he was disappointed.
With a gesture Alienor dismissed her servants. The old seneschal had already withdrawn to see to the preparation of their rooms. When they were alone Alienor walked over to a writing-table by one of the four blazing fireplaces and claimed a sealed envelope from a drawer. She came back and gave it to Alessan.
‘It is from Danoleon himself,’ she said. ‘From your own province whose name I cannot yet hear or say.’
And that, Devin had not expected at all.
‘Forgive me,’ Alessan murmured. He strode quickly towards the nearest fire, tearing the letter open as he went. Alienor became very busy offering glasses of the red wine. Devin took a long drink from his. Then he noticed that Baerd had not touched his wine and that his gaze was fixed on Alessan across the room. Devin followed the look. The Prince had finished reading. He was standing rigidly, staring into the fire.
‘Alessan?’ Baerd said.
Alienor turned swiftly at that. Alessan did not move; seemed not to have even heard.
‘Alessan?’ Baerd said again, more urgently. ‘What is it?’
Slowly the Prince of Tigana turned from the flames to look at them. Or not really at them, Devin amended inwardly. At Baerd. There was something bleak and cold in his face. Ice is for endings, Devin thought involuntarily.
‘It is from Danoleon, I’m afraid. From the Sanctuary.’ Alessan’s voice was flat. ‘My mother is dying. I will have to start home tomorrow.’
Baerd’s face had gone as white as Alessan’s. ‘The meeting?’ he said. ‘The meeting tomorrow?’
‘That first,’ Alessan said. ‘After the meeting, whatever happens, I must ride home.’
Given the shock of that news and the impact Alessan’s words and manner had on all of them, the knock on Devin’s chamber door late that night came as a disorienting surprise.
He had not been asleep. ‘Wait,’ he called softly and struggled quickly into his breeches. He pulled a loose shirt on over his head and padded in his stockings across the floor, wincing at the cold of the stones where the carpeting ended. His hair disordered, feeling rumpled and confused, he opened the door.
In the hallway outside, holding a single candle that cast weird, flickering shadows along the corridor wall, was Alienor herself.
‘Come,’ was all she said. She did not smile and he could not see her eyes behind the flame. Her robe was a creamy white, lined with fur. It was fastened at the throat but Devin could discern the swell of her breasts beneath. Her hair had been loosened, tumbling over her shoulders and down her back in a black cascade.
Devin hesitated, his mouth dry again, his mind scattered and lagging. He put up a hand to try to straighten the hopeless tangle of his hair.
She shook her head. ‘Leave it like that,’ she said. Her free hand with the long dark nails came up and pushed through his brown curls. ‘Leave it,’ she said again, and turned.
He followed her. Her and the single candle and the unleashed chaos of his blood down a long corridor then a shorter one, through an angled sequence of empty public rooms then up a curving flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs an orange spill of light came from beyond a pair of open doors. Devin passed through those doors behind the Lady of Castle Borso. He had time to register the blaze of the fire, the rich, intricate hangings on the walls, the profusion of extravagant carpets on the floor, and the huge canopied bed strewn with pillows of all colours and sizes. A lean hunting dog, grey and graceful, regarded him from by the fire but did not rise.
Alienor laid her candle down. She closed the two doors and turned to him, leaning back against the polished wood. Her eyes were enormous, uncannily black. Devin felt his pulse like a hammer. The rush of his blood seemed loud in his veins.
‘I am burning up,’ Alienor said.
Somewhere a part of him, where proportion lived and irony took shape, wanted to protest, even to be amused at such a pronouncement. But as he looked at her he saw the quickening draw of her breathing and how shallow it was, saw the deep flush of her colouring … one of his hands as if of its own will came up and touched her cheek.
It was burning hot.
With a sound deep in her throat Alienor trapped his hand with one of her own and sank her teeth in the flesh of his palm.
And with that pain desire was loosed in Devin as it never had been in his life. He heard an oddly distorted sound and realized it had come from him. He took a half-step towards her and she was in his arms. Her fingers locked and twisted in his hair and her mouth met his with an avidness, a hunger that raked the rising fires of his own need to a point where awareness fled and drifted far away.
Everything was gone, or going. Tigana. Alessan, Alais, Catriana. His memories. Memory itself, that was his most sure anchor and his pride. Even the memory of the hallways to this room, the roads and years and rooms, all the other rooms that led to this one. And her.
He tore at the fastenings of her robe and buried his face between her breasts as they spilled free. She gasped, and her hands clawed at his shirt until it came away. He felt her nails tear the skin along his back. He twisted his head and bit her then and tasted blood. He heard her laugh.
Never, ever, had he done such a thing before.
Somehow they seemed to be on the bed among the coloured splay of the pillows. And then Alienor was naked above him, impaled on his sex, her mouth descending to his own as the two of them surged together through the arc of an act that strove to cast the world away. As far away as it could be hurled.
For an instant Devin thought he understood. In some unthinking flash of visceral illumination he thought he grasped why Alienor did this. The nature of her need, which was not what it seemed to be. Given another moment, a still place in the firmament, he could have reached out to put a name to it, a frame for the blurred awareness. He reached …
She cried out with her climax. Her hands slid along his skin, curving down. Desire obliterated thought, any straining towards thought. With a racking twist he virtually threw her to one side and swung himself above her, never leaving the warm shelter between her thighs. Cushions scattered around them, fell on the floor. Her eyes were tightly shut, her mouth forming soundless words.
Devin began to drive himself into her as if to drive away all the demons and the hurts, all the brutal deadening truths that were the world of the Palm in their day. His own climax when it came left him shuddering and limp, lost to where he was, only dimly clinging to what he knew to be his name.
He heard her whispering it softly, over and over. She moved gently out from under him. He rolled over on his back, eyes closed. He felt her fingers glide along his skin. He could not move. She was playing with his hands, caressing and guiding them out from his sides. Her lips and fingers danced down his chest and belly, over his satiated sex and further down, exploring along his thighs and legs, and down.
By the time he was aware of what she’d done he was bound hand and foot to the four posts of her bed, spreadeagled beneath her. His eyes flew open, startled and alarmed. He struggled. Uselessly—he was held in bonds of silk looped and knotted.
‘That,’ said Alienor in a husky voice, ‘was a wonderful beginning to a night. Shall I teach you something now?’ She reached, naked and magnificent, flushed and scored with his marks upon her, and brought something up from the floor beside the bed. His eyes grew wide when he saw what it was she held.
‘You are binding me against my will,’ Devin said, a little desperately. ‘This is not my idea of how to come together in love.’ He twisted hard again, at shoulder and hip; the silken bonds held firm.
Alienor’s answering smile was luminous. She was more beautiful in that moment than he could ever have imagined a wom
an being. In the huge dark pools of her eyes something stirred, primal and dangerous and terrifyingly arousing. He felt, improbably soon, a quickening in his sex. She saw it. Her smile deepened. One long fingernail stroked lightly, almost meditatively along his gathering tumescence.
‘It will be,’ murmured his dark lady, the Lady of Castle Borso. Her lips parted showing the sharp white teeth behind. He registered the taut firmness of her nipples as she opened her legs to straddle him again. He saw her caress what she had claimed from the carpet by the bed. Beyond her, by the fire, the wolfhound had its handsome head raised, watching them.
‘It will be,’ Alienor said again. ‘Trust me. Let me teach you now, and show you, this, and then this, and soon it will be your idea of how to come together. Oh yes, Devin, it will be very soon.’
She moved upon his body and the candlelight was deflected and then hidden as she came down over him. He struggled but only for a moment for his heart was pounding again and desire was overwhelmingly upon him, just as Alienor was, just as her own complex needs could be seen rising in her again, in the darkness of her eyes before they closed, in her movements above him, and in the ragged, reaching, upward, straining of her breath.
And before the night was over, before the half of it had passed, with the last candles of winter burning down, she had proven herself right, terribly, over and over again. And at the end even, she was the one who lay bound and open between the four pillars of the world that was her bed and Devin was no longer quite sure of who he was that he should be doing to her the things he was. The things that made her whisper and then cry aloud his name as she did, over and again. But he did know that she had changed him and had found a place within him where his need to seek oblivion was equal to her own.
The candle on his side of the bed burned out some time later. There was a small, scented drifting of smoke. The pattern of light and shade in the room changed; neither of them was asleep, they both noticed it. The fire was down to its embers; the dog still lay before it, its magnificent head stretched out on its paws.
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