Tigana Guy Kay (books to read in a lifetime txt) 📖

the edge of a cliff for the past ten minutes, waiting. Now, just as collectively, the court plummeted into obeisance. Not one person in the whole crowded room was still speaking by the time the herald’s muted staff of office proclaimed the King. In the silence the two discreet raps on the marbled floor sounded like echoing thunder.

Brandin was in high good humour. Dianora could have told that from halfway across the room, even if she hadn’t had a hint from Rhun already. Her heart was beating very fast. It always did whenever Brandin entered a room where she was. Even after twelve years. Even still, and despite everything. So many lines of her life led to or from this man or came together, hopelessly intertwined, in him.

He looked to d’Eymon first, as always, and received the other’s expressionless bow, sketched low in the Ygrathen fashion. Then, as always, he turned and smiled at Solores.

Then at Dianora. Braced as she was, as she always tried to be, she still could not quite master what happened to her when the grey eyes found and held her own. His glance was like a touch, a gliding presence, fiery and glacial both—as Brandin was.

And all this from a look across a very crowded room.

Once, in bed, years before, she had dared to ask him a question that had long troubled her.

‘Is there sorcery involved when you love me here, or when we first meet in a public place?’

She hadn’t known what answer she wanted, or what to expect by way of reaction. She’d thought he might be flattered by the implication, or at least amused. You could never be sure with Brandin though, his mind ran through too many different channels and with too much subtlety. Which is why questions, especially revealing ones, were dangerous. This had been important to her though: if he said yes she was going to try to use that to kindle her killing anger again. The anger she seemed to have lost here in the strange world that was the Island.

Her expression must have been very grave; he turned on his pillow, head propped on one hand to regard her from beneath level brows. He shook his head.

‘Not in any way you are thinking. Nothing that I control or shape with my magic, other than the matter of children. I will not have any more heirs, you know that.’ She did know that; all his women did. He said, after a pause, carefully, ‘Why do you ask? What happens to you?’

For a second she thought she’d heard uncertainty in his voice, but one could never be sure of such things with Brandin.

‘Too much,’ she’d answered. ‘Too much happens.’

And she’d been speaking, for that one time, the unshielded truth of a no longer innocent heart. There was an acute understanding in his clear eyes. Which frightened her. She moved herself—moved by all the layers of her need—to slide over against his body again and then above and upon it that it might begin once more, the whole process. All of it: betrayal and memory mixed with yearning, as in the amber-coloured wine the Triad were said to drink—too potent for mortals to taste.

‘Are you truly serious about that posting in Asoli?’

Rhamanus’s voice was soft. Brandin had not gone to the throne but was making a relaxed circuit of the room—more evidence of his benign mood. Rhun, with his lopsided smile, shambled in his wake.

‘I confess I had never even given it a thought,’ the former Tribute captain added.

With an effort Dianora forced her thoughts back to him. For a second she had forgotten her own query. Brandin did that to her. It was not a good thing, she thought. For many reasons it was not a good thing.

She turned again to Rhamanus. ‘I’m quite serious,’ she said. ‘But I’m not sure if you would want the position—even if it were possible. You have more status where you are, and this is Chiara, after all. Asoli can offer you some chance at wealth, but I think you have an idea what would be involved. What matters to you, Rhamanus?’

It was more bluntly put than courtesy would have deemed appropriate, especially with a friend.

He blinked, and fingered one of his chains of office. ‘Is that what it comes down to?’ he asked hesitantly. ‘Is that how you see it? Can a man not perhaps be moved by the prospect of a new challenge, or even—at the risk of sounding foolish—by the desire to serve his King?’

Her turn to blink.

‘You shame me,’ she said simply, after a moment. ‘Rhamanus, I swear you do.’ She stilled his quick protests with a hand on his sleeve. ‘Sometimes I wonder what is happening to me. All the intriguing that goes on here.’

She heard footsteps approaching and what she said next was spoken as much to the man behind as to the one in front of her. ‘Sometimes I wonder what this court is doing to me.’

‘Should I be wondering as well?’ asked Brandin of Ygrath.

Smiling, he joined them. He did not touch her. He very seldom touched the saishan women in public, and this was an Ygrathen reception. They knew his rules. Their lives were shaped by his rules.

‘My lord,’ she said, turning and sketching her salutation. She kept her voice airily provocative. ‘Do you find me more cynical than I was when this terrible man brought me here?’

Brandin’s amused glance went from her to Rhamanus. It was not as if he’d needed the reminder of which Tribute captain had brought him Dianora. She knew that, and he knew she did. It was all part of their verbal dance. His intelligence stretched her to her limits, and then changed what those limits were. She noticed, perhaps because the subject had come up with Rhamanus, that there was as much grey in his beard now as black.

He nodded judiciously, simulating a deep concern over the question. ‘I would have to say so, yes. You have grown