Who had also, Devin abruptly realized, almost certainly lied when he said he’d forgotten the words to the cradle song. It was all suddenly very hard.
‘I will tell you what I know of him, and gladly,’ Alessan said. ‘But not tonight, for Catriana is right and we must get ourselves away before dawn. Right now I will swear faith with you as Baerd has done. I accept your oath. You have mine. You are as kin to me from now until the ending of my days.’
Devin turned to look up at Catriana. ‘Will you accept me?’
She tossed her hair. ‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’ she said carelessly. ‘You seem to have entangled yourself rather thoroughly here.’ She lowered her left hand though as she spoke, two fingers curled. Her fingers met his own with a light, cool touch.
‘Be welcome,’ she said. ‘I swear I will keep faith with you, Devin di Tigana.’
‘And I with you. I’m sorry about this morning,’ Devin offered.
Her hand withdrew and her eyes flashed; even by starlight he could see it. ‘Oh yes,’ she said sardonically, ‘I’m sure you are. It was very clear, all along, how regrettable you found the experience!’
Alessan snorted with amusement. ‘Catriana, my darling,’ he said, ‘I just forbade him to mention any details of what happened. How do I enforce that if you bring them up yourself?’
Without the faintest trace of a smile Catriana said, ‘I am the aggrieved party here, Alessan. You don’t enforce anything on me. The rules are not the same.’
Baerd chuckled suddenly. ‘The rules,’ he said, ‘have not been the same since you joined us. Why indeed should this be any different?’
Catriana tossed her head again but did not deign to reply.
The three men stood up. Devin flexed his knees to relieve the stiffness of sitting so long in one position.
‘Ferraut or Tregea?’ Baerd asked. ‘Which border?’
‘Ferraut,’ Alessan said. ‘They’ll have me placed as Tregean as soon as Tomasso talks—poor man. If I’d been thinking clearly I would have shot him as they rode by.’
‘Oh, very clear thinking, that,’ Baerd retorted. ‘With twenty soldiers surrounding him. You would have had us all in chains in Astibar by now.’
‘You would have deflected my arrow,’ Alessan said wryly.
‘Is there a chance he won’t speak?’ Devin interjected awkwardly. ‘I’m thinking about Menico, you see. If I’m named . . .’
Alessan shook his head. ‘Everyone talks under torture,’ he said soberly. ‘Especially if sorcery is involved. I’m thinking about Menico too, but there isn’t anything we can do about it, Devin. It is one of the realities of the life we live. There are people put at risk by almost everything we do. I wish,’ he added, ‘that I knew what had happened in that lodge.’
‘You wanted to check it,’ Catriana reminded him. ‘Can we afford the time?’
‘I did, and yes, I think we can,’ said Alessan crisply. ‘There remains a piece missing in all of this. I still don’t know how Sandre d’Astibar could have expected me to be the—’
He stopped there. Except for the drone of the cicadas and the rustling leaves it was very quiet in the woods. The trialla had gone. Alessan abruptly raised one hand and pushed it roughly through his hair. He shook his head.
‘Do you know,’ he said to Baerd, in what was almost a conversational tone, ‘how much of a fool I can be at times? It was in the palm of my hand all along!’ His voice changed. ‘Come on—and pray we are not too late!’
The fires had both died down in the Sandreni lodge. Only the stars shone above the clearing in the woods. The cluster of Eanna’s Diadem was well over west, following the moons. A nightingale was singing, as if in answer to the trialla of before, as the four of them approached. In the doorway Alessan hesitated for a moment then shrugged his shoulders in a gesture Devin already recognized. Then he pushed open the door and walked through.
By the red glow of the embers they looked—with eyes accustomed by now to darkness—on the carnage within.
The coffin still rested on its trestles, although splintered and knocked awry. Around it though, lay dead men who had been alive when they left this room. The two younger Sandreni. Nievole, a quiver of arrows in his throat and chest. The body of Scalvaia d’Astibar.
Then Devin made out Scalvaia’s severed head in a black puddle of blood a terrible distance away and he fought to control the lurch of sickness in his gorge.
‘Oh, Morian,’ Alessan whispered. ‘Oh, Lady of the Dead, be gentle to them in your Halls. They died dreaming of freedom and before their time.’
‘Three of them did,’ came a harsh, desiccated voice from deep in one of the armchairs. ‘The fourth should have been strangled at birth.’
Devin jumped half a foot, his heart hammering with shock.
The speaker rose and stood beside the chair, facing them. He was entirely hidden in shadow. ‘I thought you would come back,’ he said.
The sixth man, Devin realized, struggling to understand, straining to make out the tall, gaunt form by the faint glow of the embers.
Alessan seemed quite unruffled. ‘I’m sorry I kept you waiting then,’ he said. ‘It took me too long to riddle this through. Will you allow me to express my sorrow for what has happened?’ He paused. ‘And my respect for you, my lord Sandre.’
Devin’s jaw dropped open as if unhinged. He snapped it shut so hard he hurt his teeth; he hoped no one had seen. Events were moving far too fast for him.
‘I will accept the first,’ said the gaunt figure in front of them. ‘I do not deserve your respect though, nor that of anyone else. Once perhaps; not any more. You are speaking to an old vain fool—exactly as the Barbadian named me. A man who spent too many years alone, tangled in
