he said. ‘Two of them.’
‘Three,’ said Catriana unexpectedly.
‘Three,’ Alessan agreed cheerfully. ‘And one the next day at the Woolguild Hall. I also have—it has just occurred to me—a substantial wager in The Paelion that I expect to win.’
Which drew an already predictable growl from Baerd. ‘Do you seriously think the Festival of Vines is going to blithely proceed after what has occurred tonight? You want to go make music in Astibar as if nothing has happened? Music? I’ve been down this road with you before, Alessan. I don’t like it.’
‘Actually, I’m quite certain the Festival will go on.’ It was Sandre. ‘Alberico is cautious almost before he is anything else. I think tonight will redouble that in him. He will allow the people their celebrations, let those from the distrada scatter and go home, then slam down hard immediately after. But only on the three families that were here, I suspect. It is, frankly, what I would do myself.’
‘Taxes?’ Alessan asked.
‘Perhaps. He raised them after the Canziano poisoning, but that was different. An actual assassination attempt in a public place. He didn’t have much choice. I think he’ll narrow it this time—there will be enough bodies for his wheels among the three families here.’
Devin found it unsettling how casually the Duke spoke of such things. This was his kin they were discussing. His oldest son, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, cousins—all to be fodder for Barbadian killing-wheels. Devin wondered if he would ever grow as cynical as this. If what had begun tonight would harden him to that degree. He tried to think of his brothers on a death-wheel in Asoli and found his mind flinching away from the very image. Unobtrusively he made the warding sign against evil.
The truth was, he was upset just thinking about Menico, and that was merely a matter of costing the man money, nothing more. People moved from troupe to troupe all the time. Or left to start their own companies. Or retired from the road into a business that offered them more security. There would be performers who would be expecting him to go on his own after his success this morning. That should have been a helpful thought, but it wasn’t. Somehow Devin hated to make it appear as if they were right.
Something else occurred to him. ‘Won’t it look a bit odd, too, if we disappear right after the mourning rites? Right after Alberico’s unmasked a plot that was connected with them? We’re sort of linked to the Sandreni now in a way. Should we draw attention to ourselves like that? It isn’t as if our disappearance won’t be noticed.’
He said it, for some reason, to Baerd. And was rewarded a moment later with a brief, sober nod of acknowledgement.
‘Now that cloth I will buy,’ Baerd said. ‘That does make sense, though I’m sorry to say it.’
‘A good deal of sense,’ Sandre agreed. Devin fidgeted a little as he came under the scrutiny of those dark, sunken eyes. ‘The two of you’—the Duke gestured at Devin and Catriana—‘may yet redeem your generation for me.’
This time Devin refused to look at the girl. Instead his glance went over to the corner where Sandre’s grandson lay by the second, dying fire, his throat slashed by a family blade.
Alessan broke the silence with a deliberate cough. ‘There is also,’ he said in a curious tone, ‘another argument entirely. Only those who have spent as many nights outdoors as I have can properly appreciate the depth—as it were—of my preference for a soft bed at night. In short,’ he concluded with a grin, ‘your eloquence has quite overcome me, Devin. Lead me back to Menico at the inn. Even a bed shared with two syrenya-players who snore in marginal harmony is a serious improvement over cold ground beside Baerd’s relative silence.’
Baerd favoured him with a forbidding glare. One that Alessan appeared to weather quite easily. ‘I will refrain,’ Baerd said darkly, ‘from a recitation of your own nocturnal habits. I will wait here alone for Duke Sandre to return. We’ll have to burn this lodge tonight, for obvious reasons. There’s a body that will otherwise be missing when the servants come back in the morning. We’ll meet the three of you by the cache three mornings from now, as early as you see fit to rise from your pillows. Assuming,’ he added with heavy sarcasm, ‘that soft city living doesn’t prevent you from being able to find the cache.’
‘I’ll find it if he gets lost,’ Catriana said.
Alessan looked from one to the other of them, his expression wounded. ‘That isn’t fair,’ he protested. ‘It is just the music. You both know that.’
Devin hadn’t. Alessan was still gazing at Baerd. ‘You know it is only the music I’m going back for.’
‘Of course I know that,’ Baerd said softly. His expression changed. ‘I’m only afraid that the music will kill us both one of these days.’
Intercepting the look that passed between them then, Devin learned something new and sudden and unexpected—on a night when he’d already learned more things than he could easily handle—about the nature of bonding and about love.
‘Go,’ said Baerd with a scowl, as Alessan still hesitated. Catriana was already by the door. ‘We will meet you after the Festival. By the cache. Don’t,’ he added, ‘expect to recognize us.’
Alessan grinned suddenly, and a moment later Baerd allowed himself to smile as well. It changed his face a great deal. He didn’t, Devin realized, smile very often.
He was still thinking about that as he followed Alessan and Catriana out the door and into the darkness of the wood again.
Chapter VI
As it happened, the long path of that day and night did not lead back to the inn after all.
The three of them returned through the forest to the main road from Astibar to Ardin town. They walked in silence along the road under the arch of the autumn stars, cicadas loud in the woods on either side. Devin was glad of his woollen overshirt; it was chilly now, there might be a frost tonight.
It was strange to be abroad in the darkness so late. When they were travelling Menico was always careful to have his company quartered and settled by the dinner hour. Even with the stern measures both Tyrants had taken against thieves and brigands, the paths of the Palm were not often travelled by decent folk at night.
Folk such as he himself had been, only this morning. He had been secure in his niche and his calling, had even had—improbably enough—a triumph. He’d been poised on the edge of a genuine success. And now he was walking a road in darkness having abandoned any such prospects or security, and having sworn an oath that marked him for a death-wheel, in Chiara if not here. Both places actually, if Tomasso bar Sandre talked.
It was an odd, lonely feeling. He trusted the men he had joined—he even trusted the girl, if it came to that— but he didn’t know them very well. Not like he knew Menico or Eghano after so many years.
It occurred to him that the same dilemma applied to the cause he had just sworn to make his own: he didn’t know Tigana either, which was the whole point of what Brandin of Ygrath had done with his sorcery. Devin was in the process of changing his life for a story told under the moon, for a childhood song, an evocation of his mother, something almost purely an abstraction for him. A name.
He was honest enough to wonder if he was doing this as much for the adventure of it—for the glamour that Alessan and Baerd and the old Duke represented—as for the depth of old pain and grief he’d learned about in the forest tonight. He didn’t know the answer. He didn’t know how much Catriana fitted into his reasons, how much his father did, or pride, or the sound of Baerd’s voice speaking his loss to the night.
The truth was that if Sandre d’Astibar could stop his son from talking, as he had promised to do, then there was nothing to prevent Devin from carrying on exactly as he had for the past six years. From having the triumph and the rewards that seemed to lie before him. He shook his head. It was astonishing in a way, but that course, with Menico on the road, performing across the Palm— the life