Tigana. Guy Gavriel Kay

Triad alone know why. I seem to remember once having a doting father’s fancy that one of these creatures might emerge with a talent of some sort.’

      Alix, from several feet away, mimed a blow with a spoon at her husband. Unabashed, his good spirits restored, Rovigo sent the youngest girl off to fetch the pipes while he set about refilling everyone’s glass.

      Devin caught Alais looking at him from the seat she’d taken next to the fire. Reflexively he smiled at her. She didn’t smile back, but her gaze, mild and serious, did not break away. He felt a small, unsettling skip to the rhythm of his heart.

      As it turned out, after the meal was over he and Catriana sang for better than an hour to Alessan’s pipes. Part of the way through, as they began one of the rousing old Certandan highland ballads, Rovigo left briefly and returned with a linked pair of Senzian drums. Shyly at first, very softly, he joined in on the refrain, proving as competent at that as at everything else Devin had seen him do. Catriana favoured him with a particularly dazzling smile. Rovigo needed no further encouragement to stay with them on the next song, and the next.

      No man, Devin found himself thinking, should need more encouragement to do anything in the world than that look from those blue eyes. Not that Catriana had ever favoured him with anything remotely resembling such a glance. He found himself feeling somewhat confused all of a sudden.

      Someone—Alais evidently—had filled his glass a third time. He drank a little more quickly than was good for him, given the legendary potency of blue wine, and then he led the other three into the next number: the last one for the two younger girls, Alix ruled, over protests.

      He couldn’t sing of Tigana, and he was certainly not about to sing of passion or love, so he began the very old song of Eanna’s making the stars and committing the name of every single one of them to her memory, so that nothing might ever be lost or forgotten in the deeps of space or time.

      It was the closest he could come to what the night had meant to him, to why, in the end, he had made the choice he had.

      As he began it, he received a look from Alessan, thoughtful and knowing, and a quick, enigmatic glance from Catriana as they joined with him. Rovigo’s drums fell silent this time as the merchant listened. Devin saw Alais, her black hair backlit by the fire, watching him with grave concentration. He sang one whole verse directly to her, then, in fidelity to the song, he sent his vision inward to where his purest music was always found, and he looked at no one at all as he sang to Eanna herself, a hymn to names and the naming of things.

      Somewhere, part of the way through, he had a bright image in his mind of a blue-white star named Micaela aloft in a black night, and he let the keenness of that carry him, high and soaring, up towards Catriana’s harmony and then back down softly to an end.

      IN THE QUIET of the mood so shaped, Selvena and the two younger girls went to bed with surprising tranquillity. A few moments later AIix rose as well, and so, to Devin’s disappointment, did Alais.

      In the doorway she turned and looked at Catriana. ‘You must be very tired,’ Rovigo’s daughter said. ‘If you like I can show you your room now. I hope you don’t mind sharing with me. Selvena usually does, but she’s in with the girls tonight.’

      Devin expected Catriana to demur, or worse, at this fairly transparent separation of the women and the men. She surprised him again though, hesitating only a second before rising. ‘I am tired, and I don’t mind sharing at all,’ she said. ‘It will remind me of home.’

      Devin, who had been smiling at the irony of the situation, suddenly found the expression less appropriate than he’d thought. Catriana had seen him grinning though; he wished, abruptly, that she hadn’t. She was sure to misunderstand. It occurred to him, with a genuine sense of unreality, that they had made love together that morning.

      For some time after the women had gone the three men sat in silence, each lost in his own thoughts. Rovigo rose at length and refilled their glasses with the last of the wine. He put another log on the fire and watched until it caught. With a sigh he sank back into his chair. Toying with his glass he looked from one to the other of his guests.

      It was Alessan who broke the silence though. ‘Devin’s a friend,’ he said quietly. ‘We can talk, Rovigo. Though I fear he’s about to be extremely angry with both of us.’

      Devin sat up abruptly and put aside his glass. Rovigo, a wry expression playing about his lips, glanced briefly over at him, and then returned Alessan’s gaze tranquilly.

      ‘I wondered,’ he said. ‘Though I suspected he might be with us now, given the circumstances.’ Alessan was smiling too. They both turned to Devin.

      Who felt himself going red. His brain raced frantically back over the events of the day before. He glared at Rovigo. ‘You didn’t find me in The Bird by accident. Alessan sent you. You had him follow me, didn’t you?’ he accused, turning to the Prince.

      The two men exchanged another glance before Alessan replied.

      ‘I did,’ he admitted. ‘I had a certain suspicion that there would be funeral rites for Sandre d’Astibar coming up and that we might be asked to audition. I couldn’t afford to lose track of you, Devin.’

      ‘I’m afraid I was behind you most of the way down the Street of the Temples yesterday,’ Rovigo added. He had the grace to look embarrassed, Devin noted.

      He was still furious though, and very confused. ‘You lied about The Bird then, all that talk about going there whenever you came back from a journey.’

      ‘No, that part was true,’ Rovigo said. ‘Everything I said was true, Devin. Once you were forced down to the waterfront you happened to end up in a place I know very well.’

      ‘And Catriana?’ Devin pursued angrily. ‘What about her? How did she—’

      ‘I paid a boy to run a message back to your inn when I saw that old Goro was letting you stay inside The Bird. Devin, don’t be angry. There was a purpose to all of this.’

      ‘There was,’ Alessan echoed. ‘You should understand some of it by now. The whole reason Catriana and I were in Astibar with Menico’s troupe was because of what I expected to see happen with Sandre’s death.’

      ‘Wait a minute!’ Devin exclaimed. ‘Expected? How did you know he was going to die?’

      ‘Rovigo told me,’ Alessan said simply. He let a small silence register. ‘He has been my contact in Astibar for nine years now. I formed the same impression of him back then that you did yesterday, and about as quickly.’

      Devin, his mind reeling, looked over at the merchant, the casual friend he’d made the day before. Who turned out to be not so casual at all. Rovigo put down his glass.

      ‘I feel the same way about Tyrants that you do,’ he said quietly. ‘Alberico here or Brandin of Ygrath ruling in Chiara and Corte and Asoli, and in that province Alessan comes from whose name I cannot hear or remember, hard as I might try.’

      Devin swallowed. ‘And Duke Sandre?’ he asked. ‘How did you know—?’

      ‘I spied on them,’ Rovigo said calmly. ‘It wasn’t hard. I used to monitor Tomasso’s comings and goings. They were wholly focused on Alberico; I was their neighbour here in the distrada, it was easy enough to slip onto their land. I learned of Tomasso’s deception years ago, and— though I won’t say it is a thing I am proud of—last year I was outside their windows at the estate and at the lodge on many different nights while they shaped the details of Sandre’s death.’

      Devin looked quickly over at Alessan. He opened his mouth to say something, then, without speaking, he closed it.

      Alessan nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said. He turned to Rovigo. ‘There are one or two things here, as there have been before, that you are better off not knowing, for your own safety and your family’s. I think you know by now it isn’t a matter of trust, or any such thing.’

      ‘After nine years I think I do know