Guy Kay - Tigana

Afterwards they made their way upstairs behind the broad back of the innkeeper's wife to their rooms. And later, when it was quiet on that upper level Catriana led her from the room they were put in, down the hall to the bedroom Devin and Alessan and Erlein shared.

They were there, and a number of other men, some of the ones she'd just met, and a few who were strangers. Her father entered a moment later with Sandre and Baerd. She and Catriana were the only women there. She had a moment to feel a little strange about that, and to think about how far she was from home, before everyone fell silent as Alessan pushed a hand through his hair and began to speak.

And as he did, Alais, concentrating, gradually came to understand with the others the dimensions, the truly frightening shape, of what he proposed to do.

At a certain point he stopped and looked at three men one by one. At Duke Sandre first, then at a round-faced Certandan named Sertino sitting with Ducas, and finally, almost challengingly, at Erlein di Senzio.

The three of them were wizards, she understood. It was a hard thing to come to terms with. Especially Sandre. The exiled Duke of Astibar. Their neighbor in the distrada all her life.

The man called Erlein was sitting on his bed, his back against the wall, hands crossed over his breast. He was breathing hard.

"It is clear to me now that you have lost your mind," he said. His voice shook. "You have lived in your dreams so long you've lost sight of the world. And now you are going to kill people in your madness."

Alais saw Devin open his mouth and then snap it shut without speaking.

"All of this is possible," Alessan said, with an unexpected mildness. "It is possible I am pursuing a path of madness, though I think not. But yes, there are likely to be a great many people killed. We always knew that; the real madness would have been in pretending otherwise. For the moment though, compose your spirit and ease your soul. You know as well as I do, nothing is happening."

"Nothing? What do you mean?" It was her father.

Alessan's expression was wry, almost bitter. "Haven't you noticed? You were in the harbor, you walked through the town. Have you seen any Barbadian troops? Any Ygrathens, soldiers from the west? Nothing is happening. Alberico of Barbadior has his entire army massed on the border, and the man refuses to order them north!"

"He is afraid," said Sandre flatly in the silence that followed. "He's afraid of Brandin."

"Perhaps," her father said thoughtfully. "Or else he is just cautious. Too cautious."

"What do we do then?" asked the red-bearded Tregean named Ducas.

Alessan shook his head. "I don't know. I honestly don't know. This is one thing I never expected. You tell me," he said. "How do we make him cross the border? How do we bring him to war?" He looked at Ducas and then at each of the others in the room.

No one answered him.

They would think he was a coward. They were fools. They were all fools. Only a fool went lightly into war. Especially a war such as this, that risked everything for a gain he hardly cared about. Senzio? The Palm? What did they matter? Should he throw twenty years away for them?

Every time a messenger arrived from back in Astibar something in him leaped with hope. If the Emperor had died…

If the Emperor had died he and his men were gone. Away from this blighted peninsula, home to claim an Emperor's Tiara in Barbadior. That was his war, the one he wanted to fight. The one that mattered, the only thing that had really mattered all these years. He would sail home with three armies and wrest the Tiara from the court favorites hovering there like so many ineffectual fluttering moths.

And after that he could make war back here, with all the gathered might of Barbadior. Then let Brandin of Ygrath, of the Western Palm, whatever he chose to name himself, then let him try to stand before Alberico, Emperor of Barbadior.

Gods, the sweetness of it…

But no such message came from the east, no such glittering reprieve. And so the bald reality was that he found himself camped with his mercenaries here on the border between Ferraut and Senzio, preparing to face the armies of Ygrath and the Western Palm, knowing that the eyes of the entire world would be upon them now. If he lost, he lost everything. If he won… well that depended on the cost. If too many of his men died here, what kind of an army would he have to lead home?

And too many men dying was a vivid prospect now. Ever since what had happened in the harbor of Chiara. Most of the Ygrathen army had indeed sailed home, exactly as anticipated, leaving Brandin crippled and exposed. Which is why Alberico had moved, why the three companies were here and he with them. The flow and shape of events had seemed to be on their side, in the clearest possible way.

Then the Certandan woman had fished a ring from the water for Brandin.

She haunted his dreams, that never-seen woman. Three times now she'd surfaced like a nightmare in his life. Back when Brandin had first claimed her for his saishan she had nearly drawn him into an insane war. Siferval had wanted to fight, Alberico remembered. The Third Company captain had proposed storming across the border into Lower Corte and sacking Stevanien itself.

Gods. Alberico shuddered even now, long years after, at the thought of such a war far to the west against the Ygrathens in all their power. He had swallowed his bile and absorbed all the mocking gibes Brandin sent east. Even then, long ago, he had preserved his discipline, kept his eyes on the real prize back home.

But he might have had the Peninsula of the Palm without effort this spring, a pure gift fallen from the sky, if that same Dianora di Certando had not saved the Ygrathen's life two months ago. It had been there for him, gently floating down: with Brandin assassinated the Ygrathens would have all sailed home and the western provinces would have lain open before him like so much ripe fruit.

Quileia's crippled King would have hobbled across the mountains to abase himself before Alberico, begging for the trade he needed. No elaborate letters then about fearing the mighty power of Ygrath. It would have all been so easy, so… elegant.

But it was not so, because of the woman. The woman from one of his own provinces. The irony was coruscating, it was like acid in his soul. Certando was his and Dianora di Certando was the only reason Brandin was alive.

And now, her third time in his life, she was the only reason there was an army from the west, a flotilla anchored in the Bay of Farsaro, waiting for Alberico to make the slightest move.

"They are fewer than us," his spies reported daily. "And not as well armed."

Fewer, the three captains echoed each other in mindless litany. Not as well armed, they gibbered. We must move, they chorused, their imbecilic faces looming in his dreams, set close together, hanging like lurid moons too near the earth.

Anghiar, his emissary in the Governor's Castle at Senzio, sent word that Casalia still favored them; that the Governor realized that Brandin was not as strong as they. That he had been persuaded to see the virtue of tilting even further towards the Barbadior. The emissary from the Western Palm, one of the few Ygrathens who had decided to stay with Brandin, was having a more difficult time each passing day gaining audience with the Governor, but Anghiar dined with plump, sybaritic Casalia almost every night.

So now even Anghiar, who had grown lazy and self-indulgent, morally corrupt as any Senzian during his years there, was saying the same thing as all the others: Senzio is a vineyard ripe for harvesting. Come!

Ripe for harvesting? Didn't they understand? Didn't any of them realize that there was sorcery to reckon with?