Just then he heard the sound of Alessan’s pipes followed, a measure later, by Erlein’s harp. A moment after that a number of voices started in on one of the oldest, most rollicking highland ballads of all. About a legendary band of mountain outlaws who had ruled these hills and crags with arrogant impunity until they were surprised and defeated by Quileia and Certando together:
Thirty brave men rode apace from the north
And forty Quileians met them side by side.
There in the mountains each pledged to the other
And Gan Burdash high in his roost defied!
The booming voice of Marius led the others into the refrain. By then Devin had remembered something and he knew what he was going to try to do. He was aware that there was more than an element of lunacy in his planning, but he also knew he didn’t have much time, or many options.
His heart was pounding. He wiped his hands dry on his breeches and began moving more quickly through the trees along the line of the ridge he’d climbed. Behind him was the singing; beneath him now, perhaps fifteen feet east of this higher ridge and twenty feet below, was an assassin with a bow. The sun came out from behind the clouds.
Devin was above and behind the Quileian now. Had he been carrying a bow and been at all accomplished with one he would have had the other at his mercy.
Instead, what he had was a knife, and a certain pride and trust in his own coordination, and a tall giant of a mountain pine-tree rising all the way up to his ridge from just behind the boulder that sheltered the archer. He could see the other clearly now, clad in a masking green for the mountain trail, with a strung bow and half a dozen arrows to hand.
Devin knew what he had to do. He also knew—because there had been woods at home, if not mountain passes—that he could not climb down that tree with any hope of silence. Not even with the loud, seriously off-key voices screening his sounds from below.
Which left, so far as he could judge, only the one option. Others might have planned it better, but others weren’t on this ridge. Devin wiped his damp palms very carefully dry again and began concentrating on a large branch that stretched out and away from the others. The only one that might do him any good. He tried to calculate angle and distance as best he could, given an almost total lack of experience at this particular manoeuvre. What he was about to try was not a thing one did for practice, anywhere.
He checked the hang of the dagger in his belt, wiped his hands one last time, and stood up. Absurdly, the flash of memory that came to him then was of the day his brothers had surprised him hanging upside down from a tree, trying to stretch his height.
Devin smiled tightly and stepped to the edge of the cliff. The branch looked absurdly far away, and it was only half of the way down to the level of the pass. He swore an inward oath that if he survived this Baerd was going to teach him how to use a bow properly.
From the path below he heard the ragged voices swirling erratically towards the climax of the ballad:
Gan Burdash ruled in the mountain heights
And with his band he ranged from crag to glen,
But seventy brave men tracked him to his lair
And when the moons had set the peaks were free again!
Devin jumped. Air whistled past his face. The branch flew up to meet him, blurred, very fast. He stretched his hands, clutched it, swung. Only a little. Only enough to change his angle of descent, cut his momentum. Bring him directly down upon the killer behind the rock.
The branch held, but the leaves crackled loudly as he pivoted. He’d known they would. The Quileian flung a startled glance skyward and grappled for the bow.
Not nearly fast enough. Screaming at the top of his lungs, Devin plummeted like some hunting bird of these high places. By the time his target began to move Devin was already there.
Our kick-drop from the twenty-seven tree, he thought.
Falling, he tilted his torso so that it angled sideways across the upper body of the Quileian and he kicked out hard with both feet as he did. The impact was sickening. He felt his legs make jarring contact, even as he crashed into the other, driving all the air from his own lungs.
They smashed into the ground together, tumbling and rolling away from the base of the boulder. Devin gasped agonizingly for breath, he felt the world sway and rock wildly in his sight. He gritted his teeth and groped for his dagger.
Then he realized it was not necessary.
Dead before we both hit the ground, Marius had said. With a shuddering heave Devin forced air into his tortured lungs. There was an odd, knifing pain running up his right leg. He forced himself to ignore it. He rolled free of the unconscious Quileian and struggled, gasping and wheezing, for another breath of precious air. And then he looked.
The assassin was a woman. Under all the circumstances, not a great surprise. She was not dead. Her forehead appeared to have glanced off the rock under the impact of his sprawling descent. She was lying on her side, bleeding heavily from a scalp wound. He had probably broken a number of her ribs with his kick. She had a profusion of cuts and scrapes from their tumble down the slope.
So, Devin noted, did he. His shirt was torn and he was badly scratched again, for the second time in half a day. There was a joke, something that ought to be amusing in that, but he couldn’t reach to it. Not yet.
He seemed to have survived though. And to have done what he’d been asked to do. He managed to draw one full, steadying breath just as Alessan and one of the Quileian soldiers came sprinting up the path. Erlein was just behind them, Devin saw with surprise.
He started to stand, but the world spun erratically and he had to be braced by Alessan. The Quileian guard flipped the assassin over on her back. He stood staring down upon her and then spat, very deliberately, into her bleeding face.
Devin looked away.
His eyes met Alessan’s. ‘We saw you jump from down there. You’re really supposed to have wings before trying that sort of thing,’ the Prince said. ‘Didn’t anyone ever tell you?’
The expression in the grey eyes belied the lightness of his tone. ‘I feared for you,’ he added softly.
‘I couldn’t think of anything else to do,’ Devin said apologetically. He was aware of a deep pride beginning to well up within him. He shrugged. ‘The singing was driving me mad. I had to do something to stop it.’
Alessan’s smile widened. ‘He reached an arm around and squeezed Devin’s shoulder. Baerd had done that too, in the Nievolene barn.
It was Erlein who laughed at the joke. ‘Come back down,’ the wizard said. ‘I’ll have to clean out those cuts for you.’
They helped him descend the slope. The Quileian carried the woman and her bow. Devin saw that it was made of a very dark wood, almost black, and was carved into a semblance of a crescent moon. From one end of it there hung a gathered and twisted lock of greying hair. He shivered. He had a fair idea of whose it would be.
Marius was on his feet, one hand on the back of his chair, as he watched them come down. His eyes barely flicked over the four men and the carried assassin. They locked, cold and grim, on the black curve of the moon bow. He looked frightening.
And the more so, Devin thought, because not at all afraid.
‘I think we are past the need to dance in words around each other,’ Alessan said. ‘I would like to tell you what I need and you will tell me if you can do it and that will be all we need say.’
Marius held up a hand to stop him.
He had now joined the three of them among the cushions on the golden cloth. The dishes and baskets had been cleared away. Two of the Quileians had taken the woman back up over the pass to where the rest of their company waited. The other four were posted some distance away. The sun was high, as high as it would get at noon this far south, this early in the spring. It had turned into a mild, generous day.
‘This Bear is a very bad word-dancer, Pigeon,’ the King of Quileia said soberly. ‘You know that. You probably know something else: how much it will grieve me to deny you a
ny request at all. I would like to do this differently. I would like to tell you what I cannot do, so you will not ask it and force me to refuse.’
Alessan nodded. He remained silent, watching the King.
‘I cannot give you an army,’ Marius said flatly. ‘Not yet, and perhaps never. I am too green in power, too far from the stability I need at home to lead or even order troops over these mountains. There are several hundreds of years of tradition I have to set about changing in very little time. I am not a young man any more, Pigeon.’
Devin felt a leap of excitement within himself and struggled to master it. This was too serious an occasion for childlike feelings. He could hardly believe he was here, though, so close to—at the very heart of—something of this magnitude. He stole a sidelong glance at Erlein and then looked more closely: the same quick spark of interest was in the other’s face. For all his years and his long travels, Devin seriously doubted if the troubadour-wizard had ever been so near to great events.
Alessan was shaking his head. ‘Bear,’ he said, ‘I would never ask you for that. For our sake as much as for your own. I will not have my name remembered as the man who first invited the newly awakened might of Quileia north into the Palm. If an army ever ventures from Quileia through these passes—and I hope we are both long dead before such a day—the wish of my heart will be for it to be slaughtered and driven back with losses so bloody that no King in the south ever tries again.’
‘If there is a King in the south and not another four hundred years of the Mother and her priestesses. Very well,’ Marius said, ‘then tell me what it is you do need.’
Alessan’s legs were neatly crossed, his long fingers laced in his lap. He looked for all the world as if he was discussing nothing of greater moment than, perhaps, the sequence of songs for an evening’s performance.
Except that his fingers, Devin saw, were so tightly squeezed together they were white.
‘A question first,’ Alessan said, controlling his voice. ‘Have you received letters offering to open trade?’
Marius nodded. ‘From both of your Tyrants. Gifts, messages of felicitation, and generous offers to reopen the old trade routes by sea and land.’
‘And each urged you to scorn the other as being untrustworthy and unstable in his power.’
Marius was smiling faintly now. ‘Are you intercepting my mail, Pigeon? Each did exactly that.’
‘And what,’ Alessan asked, direct as an arrow, ‘have you replied?’ For the first time, unmistakably, there was a taut cord of tension in his voice.
Marius heard it too. ‘Nothing yet,’ he said, his smile fading. ‘I want a few more messages from each of them before I move.’
Alessan looked down and seemed to notice his clenched fingers for the first time. He unlaced them and ran a hand, predictably, through his hair.
‘You will have to move, though,’ he said with some difficulty. ‘You will obviously need trade. In your position you have to begin showing Quileia some of the benefits you can offer. Traffic north will be the quickest way, won’t it?’ There was an awkward kind of challenge in his tone.
‘Of course,’ Marius said simply. ‘I have to do it. Why else am I King? It is only a question of timing—and with what happened this morning I think my timing has just been moved up.’
Alessan nodded, as if he’d known all this already.
‘What will you do, then?’ he asked.
‘Open the passes for both of them. No preferences, no tariffs for either. I will let Alberico and Brandin send me all the gifts and goods and envoys they want. I’ll let their trade make me truly a King—a King who brings new prosperity to his people. And I need to start doing it soon. Immediately, I now suspect. I have to put Quileia so firmly on a new path that the old one recedes as fast as I can make it. Otherwise I’ll die having done nothing but live somewhat longer than most Year Kings, and the priestesses will be in power again before my bones are picked clean underground.’
Alessan closed his eyes. Devin became aware of the rustling of leaves all around them and the sporadic calling of birds. Then Alessan looked up at Marius again, the grey eyes wide and calm, and he said, bluntly:
‘My request: that you give me six months before deciding on trade. And something else, in that interval.’
‘The time alone is a great deal,’ Marius said very softly. ‘But tell me the rest, Pigeon. The something else.’
‘Three letters, Bear. I need three letters sent north. First letter: you say yes to Brandin, conditionally. You ask for time to consolidate your own position before exposing Quileia to outside influences. You make it clear that your inclination towards him is based on his appearing stronger than Alberico, more likely to endure. Second letter: you reject, sorrowfully, all overtures from Astibar. You write Alberico that you are intimidated by Brandin’s threats. That you would dearly love to trade with the Empire of Barbadior, need to trade with them, but the Ygrathen seems too strong in the Palm for you to risk offending him. You wish Alberico all good fortune. You ask him to keep in contact with you, discreetly. You say you will be watching events in the north with close interest. You have not yet given Brandin a final decision, and will delay as long as you can. You send your warmest regards to the Emperor.’
Devin was lost. He reverted to his trick of the winter: listen, remember, think about it later. Marius’s eyes were bright though, and the cold, unsettling smile was back.
‘And my third letter?’ he asked.
‘Is to the Governor of the Province of Senzio. Offering immediate trade, no tariffs, first choice of prime goods, secure anchorage in your harbours for their ships. Expressing deep admiration for Senzio’s brave independence and enterprise in the face of adversity.’ Alessan paused. ‘And this third letter, naturally—’
‘Will be intercepted by Alberico of Barbadior. Pigeon, do you know what you would be setting in motion? How incredibly dangerous a game this is?’
‘Wait a minute!’ Erlein di Senzio suddenly interjected, starting to rise.
‘You be silent!’ Alessan literally snarled the command in a voice Devin had never heard him use.
Erlein’s mouth snapped shut. He subsided, breathing harshly, his eyes coals of anger and burgeoning understanding. Alessan didn’t even look at him. Neither did Marius. The two of them sat on a golden carpet high in the mountains, seemingly oblivious to the existence of anything in the world but each other.
‘You do know, don’t you?’ Marius said finally. ‘You know exactly.’ There was a certain wonder in his voice.
Alessan nodded. ‘I’ve had enough time to think about it, Triad knows. Once the trade-routes open I think my province and its name are lost. With what you can offer him, Brandin will be a hero in the west, not a Tyrant. He will be so secure that there will be nothing I can do, Bear. Your Kingship may be my undoing. And my home’s.’
‘Are you sorry you helped me to it?’
Devin watched Alessan wrestle with that. There were currents of emotion running here, far beneath the surface of what he could see and understand. He listened, and remembered.
‘I should be sorry,’ Alessan murmured at length. ‘In a way it is a kind of treachery that I am not. But no, how can I possibly regret what we worked so hard to achieve?’ His smile was wistful.
Marius said, ‘You know I love you, Pigeon. Both of you.’
‘I know. We both know.’
‘You know what I am facing back home.’
‘I do. I have reason to remember.’
In the silence that followed Devin felt a sadness come over him, an echo of his mood at the end of the night. A sense of the terrible spaces that always seemed to lie between people. The gulfs that had to be crossed for even a simple touching.
And how much wider those gulfs must be for men such as these two, with their long dreams and the burdens of being who they were, and what. How hard it seemed, how brutally hard, for hands to reach out across so much history and such a weight of responsibility and loss.
&nbs
p; ‘Oh, Pigeon,’ said Marius of Quileia, his voice little more than a whisper, ‘you may have been an arrow shot from the white moon into my heart eighteen years ago. I love you as my son, Alessan bar Valentin. I will give you six months and your three letters. Build a bonfire to my memory if you hear that I have died.’
Even with what little he understood, on the uttermost edges of this, Devin felt a lump gather in his throat, making it difficult to swallow. He looked at the two of them and he couldn’t have said which man he admired more in that moment. The one who had asked, knowing what he asked, or the one who had given, knowing what he gave. He had an awareness though, humbling, inescapable, of how far yet he had to travel—a distance he might never traverse—before he could name himself a man after the fashion of these two.
‘Does either of you have any idea,’ Erlein di Senzio broke into the stillness, his voice grim as death, ‘how many innocent men and women may be butchered because of what you are about to do?’
Marius said nothing. Alessan wheeled on the wizard though.
‘Have you any idea,’ he said, his eyes like chips of grey ice, ‘how close I am to killing you for saying that?’ Erlein paled but did not draw back. Nor did his own eyes flinch away.
‘I did not ask to be born into this time, charged by my birth with trying to set it right,’ Alessan said, his voice held tightly again as if under a leash. ‘I was the youngest child. This should have been my brothers’ burden, either or both of them. They died by the Deisa. Among the lucky ones.’ Bitterness cracked through for a moment.
And was beaten back. ‘I am trying to act for the whole of the Palm. Not just for Tigana and her lost name. I have been reviled as a traitor and a fool for doing so. My mother has cursed me because of this. I will accept that from her. To her I will hold myself accountable for blood and death and the destruction of what Tigana was if I fail. I will not hold myself subject to your judgement, Erlein di Senzio! I do not need you to tell me who or what is at risk in this. I need you to do what I tell you, nothing more! If you are going to die a slave you might as well be mine as anyone else’s. You are going to fight with me, Senzian. Whether through your will or against it you are going to fight with me for freedom!’