Tigana (4 page)

It appeared that a year ago, in the midst of their interminable jockeying for ascendancy with the clergy of Morian
and Adaon, Eanna’s priests had convinced the Tyrant’s token council that there was too much licentiousness among the young of Astibar and that, more to the point of course, such licence bred unrest. And since it was obvious that the taverns and khav rooms bred licence …

It had taken less than two weeks for Alberico to promulgate and begin enforcing a law that no youth of less than seventeen years could buy a drink in Astibar.

Eanna’s dust-dry priests celebrated—in whatever ascetic fashion such men celebrated—their petty triumph over the priests of Morian and the elegant priestesses of the god: both of which deities were associated with darker passions and, inevitably, wine.

Tavern-keepers were quietly unhappy (it didn’t do to be loudly unhappy in Astibar), though not so much for the loss of trade as for the insidious manner in which the law was enforced. The promulgated law had simply placed the burden of establishing a patron’s age on the owner of each inn, tavern, or khav room. At the same time, if any of the ubiquitous Barbadian mercenaries should happen to drop by, and should happen—arbitrarily—to decide that a given patron looked too young … well, that was one tavern closed for a month and one tavern-keeper locked up for the same length of time.

All of which left the sixteen-year-olds in Astibar truly out of luck. Along with, it gradually became evident through the course of a morning, one small, boyish-looking nineteen-year-old singer from Asoli.

After three summary ejections along the west side of the Street of the Temples, Devin was briefly tempted to go across the road to the Shrine of Morian, fake an ecstasy, and hope they favoured Senzian green here as a means of succouring the overly ecstatic. As another, even less rational, option he contemplated breaking a window in Eanna’s
domed shrine and testing if any of the ball-less imbeciles inside could catch him in a sprint.

He forebore to do so, as much out of genuine devotion to Eanna of the Names as to an oppressive awareness of how many very large and heavily armed Barbadian mercenaries patrolled the streets of Astibar. The Barbadians were everywhere in the Eastern Palm of course, but nowhere was their presence so disturbingly evident as it was in Astibar where Alberico had based himself.

In the end, Devin wished a serious head-cold on himself and headed west towards the harbour and then, following his unfortunately still-functioning sense of smell, towards Tannery Lane. And there, made almost ill by the effluence of the tanner’s craft, which quite overwhelmed the salt of the sea, he was given an open bottle of green, no questions asked, in a tavern called The Bird, by a shambling, loose-limbed innkeeper whose eyes were probably inadequate to the dark shadows of his windowless, one-room establishment.

Even this nondescript, evil-smelling hole was completely full. Astibar was crammed to overflowing for tomorrow’s start of the Festival of Vines. The harvest had been a good one everywhere but in Certando, Devin knew, and there were plenty of people with astins or chiaros to spend, and in a mood to spend them too.

There were certainly no free tables to be had in The Bird. Devin wedged himself into a corner where the dark, pitted wood of the bar met the back wall, took a judicious sip of his wine—watered but not unusually so, he decided—and composed his mind and soul towards a meditation upon the perfidy and unreasonableness of women.

As embodied, specifically, by Catriana d’Astibar these past two weeks.

He calculated that he had enough time before the late-afternoon rehearsal—the last before their opening engagement
at the city home of a small wine-estate owner tomorrow—to muse his way through most of a bottle and still show up sober.
He
was the experienced trouper anyhow, he thought indignantly. He was a
partner
. He knew the performance routines like a hand knew a glove. The extra rehearsals had been laid on by Menico for the benefit of the three new people in the troupe.

Including impossible Catriana. Who happened to be the reason he had stormed out of the morning rehearsal a short while before he knew that Menico planned to call the session to a halt. How, in the name of Adaon, was he
supposed
to react when an inexperienced new female who thought she could sing—and to whom he’d been genuinely friendly since she’d joined them a fortnight ago—said what she’d said in front of everyone that morning?

Cursed with memory, Devin saw the nine of them rehearsing again in the rented back room on the ground floor of their inn. Four musicians, the two dancers, Menico, Catriana, and himself singing up front. They were doing Rauder’s ‘Song of Love’, a piece rather predictably requested by the wine-merchant’s wife, a piece Devin had been singing for nearly six years, a song he could manage in a stupor, a coma, sound asleep.

And so perhaps, yes, he’d been a little bored, a little distracted, had been leaning a little closer than absolutely necessary to their newest, red-headed female singer, putting perhaps the merest shading of a message into his expression and voice, but still, even so …

‘Devin, in the name of the Triad,’ had snapped Catriana d’Astibar, breaking up the rehearsal entirely, ‘do you think you can get your mind away from your groin for long enough to do a decent harmony? This is
not
a difficult song!’

The affliction of a fair complexion had hurtled Devin’s face all the way to bright red. Menico, he saw—Menico who
should have been sharply reprimanding the girl for her presumption—was laughing helplessly, even more flushed than Devin was. So were the others, all of them.

Unable to think of a reply, unwilling to compromise the tattered shreds of his dignity by yielding to his initial impulse to reach up and whack the girl across the back of her head, Devin had simply spun on his heel and left.

He’d thrown one reproachful glance at Menico as he went but was not assuaged: the troupe-leader’s ample paunch was quivering with laughter as he wiped tears from his round, bearded face.

So Devin had gone looking for a bottle of Senzio green and a dark place to drink it in on a brilliant autumn morning in Astibar. Having finally found the wine and the tenuous comfort of shadows he fully expected to figure out, about half a bottle from now, what he
should
have said to that arrogant red-maned creature back in the rehearsal room.

If only she wasn’t so depressingly
tall,
he thought. Morosely he filled his glass again. Looking up at the blackened cross-beams of the ceiling he briefly contemplated hanging himself from one of them: by the heels of course. For old time’s sake.

‘Shall I buy you a drink?’ someone said.

With a sigh Devin turned to cope with one of the more predictable aspects of being small and looking very young while drinking alone in a sailor’s bar.

What he saw was somewhat reassuring. His questioner was a soberly dressed man of middle years with greying hair and lines of worry or laughter radiating at his temples. Even so:

‘Thank you,’ Devin said, ‘but I’ve most of my own bottle left and I prefer having a woman to being one for sailors. I’m also older than I look.’

The other man laughed aloud. ‘In that case,’ he chuckled, genuinely amused, ‘you can give me a drink if you like while
I tell you about my two marriageable daughters and the other two who are on their way to that age sooner than I’m ready for. I’m Rovigo d’Astibar, master of the
Sea Maid
just in from down the coast in Tregea.’

Devin grinned and stretched across the bar for another glass.

The Bird was far too crowded to bother trying to catch the owner’s rheumy eye, and Devin had his own reasons for not wanting to signal the man.

‘I’ll be happy to share the bottle with you,’ he said to Rovigo, ‘though your wife is unlikely to be well pleased if you press your daughters upon a travelling musician.’

‘My wife,’ said Rovigo feelingly, ‘would turn ponderous cartwheels of delight if I brought home a cowherd from the Certandan grasslands for the oldest one.’

Devin winced. ‘That bad?’ he murmured. ‘Ah, well. We can at least drink to your safe return from Tregea, and in time for Festival by a fingernail. I’m Devin d’Asoli bar Garin, at your service.’

‘And I at yours, friend Devin, not-as-young-as-you-look. Did you have trouble getting a drink?’ Rovigo asked shrewdly.

‘I was in and out of more doorways than Morian of Portals knows, and as dry when I left as when I’d entered.’ Devin rashly sniffed the heavy air; even among the odours of the crowd and despite the lack of windows, the tannery stench from outside was still painfully discernible. ‘This would not have been my first or my tenth choice as a place for drinking a flask of wine.’

Rovigo smiled. ‘A sensible attitude. Will I seem eccentric if I tell you I always come straight here when the
Sea Maid
is home from a voyage? Somehow the smell speaks of
land
to me. Tells me I’m back.’

‘You don’t like the sea?’

‘I am quite convinced that any man who says he does is lying, has debts on land, or a shrewish wife to escape from and—’ He paused, pretending to have been suddenly struck by a thought. ‘Come to think of it …’ he added with exaggerated reflectiveness. Then he winked.

Devin laughed aloud and poured them both more wine. ‘Why do you sail then?’

‘Trade is good,’ Rovigo said frankly. ‘The
Maid
is small enough to slip into ports down the coast or around on the western side of Senzio or Ferraut that the bigger traders never bother with. She’s also quick enough to make it worth my while running south past the mountains to Quileia. It isn’t sanctioned, of course, with the trade embargo down there, but if you have contacts in a remote enough place and you don’t dawdle about your business it isn’t too risky and there’s a profit to be made. I can take Barbadian spices from the market here, or silk from the north, and get them to places in Quileia that would never otherwise see such things. I bring back carpets, or Quileian wood carvings, slippers, jewelled daggers, sometimes casks of buinath to sell to the taverns—whatever’s going at a good price. I can’t do volume so I have to watch my margins, but there’s a living in it as long as insurance stays down and Adaon of the Waves keeps me afloat. I go from here to the god’s temple before heading home.’

‘But here first.’ Devin smiled.

‘Here first.’ They touched glasses and drained them. Devin refilled both.

‘What’s news in Quileia?’ he asked.

‘As a matter of fact, I
was
just there,’ Rovigo said. ‘Tregea was a stop on the way back. There are tidings, actually. Marius won his combat in the Grove of Oaks again this summer.’

‘I did hear about that,’ Devin said, shaking his head in rueful admiration. ‘A crippled man, and he must be fifty
years old by now. What does that make it—six times in a row?’

‘Seven,’ Rovigo said soberly. He paused, as if expecting a reaction.

‘I’m sorry,’ Devin said. ‘Is there a meaning to that?’

‘Marius decided there was. He’s just announced that there will be no more challenges in the Oak Grove. Seven is sacred, he’s proclaimed. By allowing him this latest triumph the Mother Goddess has made known her will. Marius has just declared himself King in Quileia, no longer only the consort of the High Priestess.’

‘What?’
Devin exclaimed, loudly enough to cause some heads to turn. He lowered his voice. ‘
He’s
declared … a man … I thought they had a matriarchy there.’

‘So,’ said Rovigo, ‘did the late High Priestess.’

Travelling across the Peninsula of the Palm, from mountain village to remote castle or manor, to the cities that were the centres of affairs, musicians could not help but hear news and gossip of great events. Always, in Devin’s brief experience, the talk had been only that: a way to ease the passing of a cold winter’s night around an inn fire in Certando, or to try to impress a traveller in a tavern in Cone with a murmured confiding that a pro-Barbadior party was rumoured to be forming in that Ygrathen province.

It was only talk, Devin had long since concluded. The two ruling sorcerers from east and west across the seas had sliced the Palm neatly in half between them, with only hapless, decadent Senzio not formally occupied by either, looking nervously across the water both ways. Its Governor remained paralytically unable to decide which wolf to be devoured by, while the two wolves still warily circled each other after almost twenty years, each unwilling to expose itself by moving first.

The balance of power in the peninsula seemed to Devin to have been etched in stone from the time of his first awareness.
Until one of the sorcerers died—and sorcerers were rumoured to live a very long time—nothing much would or could come of khav room or great hall chatter.

Quileia, though, was another matter. One far beyond Devin’s limited experience to sort out or define. He couldn’t even guess what might be the implications of what Marius had now done in that strange country south of the mountains. What might flow from Quileia’s having a more than transitory King, one who did not have to go into the Oak Grove every two years and there, naked, ritually maimed, and unarmed, meet the sword-wielding foe who had been chosen to slay him and take his place. Marius had not been slain, though. Seven times he had not been slain.

And now the High Priestess was dead. Nor was it possible to miss the meaning in the way Rovigo had said that. A little overawed, Devin shook his head.

He glanced up and saw that his new acquaintance was staring at him with an odd expression.

‘You’re a thoughtful young man, aren’t you?’ the merchant said.

Devin shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. ‘Not unduly. I don’t know. Certainly not with any insight. I don’t hear news like yours every afternoon. What do you think it will mean?’

One answer he was not to receive.

The tavern-keeper, who had quite efficiently succeeded in ignoring Rovigo’s intermittent signalling for another bottle of wine, now strode to their end of the bar, black anger visible on his features even in the darkened room.