Guy Kay - Tigana

And this morning, now, he'd been scarcely fifteen feet away, unsuspected, unknown, with a dagger at his belt and only one row of people between him and the man who'd tortured and killed his father.

He had to have been shielding himself against a blade.

But the thing was, the simple fact was, that Alessan couldn't know that. He hadn't tested it; hadn't tried. He had stood and watched. Observed. Played out his own cool plan of shaping events, steering them towards some larger abstraction.

His eyes hurt; there was a dull pulsing behind them, as if the sun were too bright for him. The woman in yellow had not moved away; she was still looking up at him with a slantwise glance hard not to understand. He didn't know where the child's father was, but it was clear that the woman didn't greatly care just now. It would be interesting, he thought, with that perverse, detached quirk of his mind that was always there, to see how many children were born in Chiara nine months from now.

He smiled at her again, meaninglessly, and made some form of mumbled excuse. Then he started back alone through the celebrating, uproarious crowd towards the inn where the three of them had been paying for their room by making music these past three days. Music might help right now, he thought. Very often music was the only thing that helped. His heart was still racing weirdly, as it had started to do when the woman broke the surface of the water with the ring on her hand after so long undersea.

So long a time he had actually begun to calculate if there was anything he could do to make use of the shock and fear that was going to follow upon her death.

And then she had come up, had been there before them in the water and, in the second before the roaring of the crowd began, Brandin of Ygrath, who had been rigidly motionless from the moment she dived, had collapsed to his knees as if struck from behind by a blow that had robbed him of all his strength.

And Alessan had found himself feeling ill and hopelessly confused even as the screams of triumph and ecstasy began to sweep across the harbor and the ships.

This is fine, he told himself now, forcing his way past a wildly dancing ring of people. This will fit, it can be made to fit. It is coming together. As I planned. There will be war. They will face each other. In Senzio. As I planned.

His mother was dead. He had been fifteen feet away from Brandin of Ygrath with a blade in his belt.

It was too bright in the square, and much too loud. Someone grabbed his arm as he went by and tried to draw him into a whirling circle. He pulled away. A woman careened into his arms and kissed him full upon the lips before she disengaged. He didn't know her. He didn't know anyone here. He stumbled through the crowd, pushed and pulled this way and that, trying numbly to steer himself, a cork in a flood, towards The Trialla, where his room was, and a drink, and music.

Devin was already at the crowded bar when he finally made it back. Erlein was nowhere to be seen yet. Probably still on the ship; staying afloat, as far from Brandin as he could. As if the sorcerer had the faintest scintilla of interest in pursuing wizards right now.

Devin, mercifully, said nothing at all. Only pushed over a full glass and a flagon of wine. Alessan drained the glass and then another very quickly. He had poured and tasted a third when Devin quickly touched his arm and he realized, with a sense of almost physical shock, that he'd forgotten his oath. The blue wine. Third glass.

He pushed the flagon away and buried his head in his hands.

Someone was speaking beside him. Two men arguing.

"You're actually going to do it? You're a goat-begotten fool!" the first one snarled.

"I'm joining up," the second replied, in the flat accents of Asoli. "After what that woman did for him I figure Brandin's blessed with luck. And someone who styles himself Brandin di Chiara is a long sight better than that butcher from Barbadior. What are you, friend, afraid of fighting?"

The other man gave a harsh bark of laughter. "You simple-minded dolt," he said. He flattened his voice in broad mimicry. "After what that woman did for him. We all know what she did for him, night after night. That woman is the Tyrant's whore. She spent a dozen years coupling with the man who conquered us all. Spreading her legs for him for her own gain. And here you are, here all of you are, making a whore into a Queen over you."

Alessan pushed his head up from his hands. He shifted his feet, pivoting for leverage. Then, without a word spoken, he hammered a fist with all the strength of his body and all the tormented confusion of his heart into the speaker's face. He felt bones crack under his blow; the man flew backwards into the bar and halfway over it, scattering glasses and bottles with a splintering crash.

Alessan looked down at his fist. It was covered with blood across the knuckles, and already beginning to swell. He wondered if he'd broken his hand. He wondered if he was going to be thrown out of the bar, or end up in a free-wheeling brawl for this stupidity.

It didn't happen. The Asolini who had proclaimed his readiness for war clapped him on the back with a hard, cheerful blow and the owner of The Trialla, their employer, in fact, grinned broadly, completely ignoring the shards of broken glass along the bar.

"I was hoping someone would shut him up!" he roared over the raucous tumult in the room. Someone else came over and wrung Alessan's hand, which hurt amazingly. Three men were shouting insistent demands to buy him a drink. Four others picked up the unconscious man and began carting him unceremoniously away in search of medical aid. Someone spat on the man's shattered face as he was carried by.

Alessan turned away from that, back to the bar. There was a single glass of Astibar blue wine in front of him. He looked quickly at Devin who said nothing at all.

Tigana, he murmured under his breath, as a Cortean sailor behind him bellowed his praise and ruffled his hair and someone else pushed over to pound his back, Oh, Tigana, let my memory of you be like a blade in my soul.

He drained the glass. Someone, not Devin, immediately reached to pick it up and smash it on the floor. Which started a predictable sequence of other men doing the same with their own drinks. As soon as he decently could he made his way out of the room and went upstairs. He remembered to touch Devin's arms in thanks as he went. In their room he found Erlein lying on his bed, hands behind his head, gazing fixedly at the ceiling. The wizard glanced over as Alessan came in, and his eyes quickly narrowed and grew frankly curious.

Alessan said nothing. He fell onto his pallet and closed his eyes which were still hurting. The wine, naturally hadn't helped. He couldn't stop thinking about the woman, what she had done, how she had looked rising like some supernatural creature from the sea. He couldn't force out of his mind the image of Brandin the Tyrant falling to his knees and burying his face in his hands.

Hiding his eyes, but not before Alessan, fifteen feet away, only that, had seen the shattering relief and the blaze of love that had shone through like the white light of a falling star.

His hand hurt terribly, but he flexed it gingerly and didn't think he'd broken anything. He honestly couldn't have said why he'd felled that man. Everything he'd said about the woman from Certando was true. All of it was true, yet none of it was the real truth. Everything about today was brutally confusing.

Erlein, unexpectedly tactful, cleared his throat in a way that offered a question.

"Yes?" Alessan said wearily, not opening his eyes.

"This is what you wanted to happen, isn't it?" the wizard asked, unwontedly hesitant.

With an effort Alessan opened his eyes and looked over. Erlein was propped on one elbow gazing at him, his expression thoughtful and subdued. "Yes," he said at length, "this is what I wanted."