It glinted and sparkled on the water of the stream and turned the budding leaves green-gold on the treesThe air was filled with birdsong and the leap and splash of trout in the stream
Erlein sat up slowly and looked at themDevin saw him become aware of the bandages on his handsErlein glanced over at the saddled horses and the two carts, packed and ready for the road
His gaze swung back and steadied on Alessan's faceThe two men, so improbably bound, looked at each other without speakingIt opened his stern face to warmth and lit the slate-grey of his eyes
"Had I known," Alessan said, "that you hated Tregean pipes quite that much I honestly wouldn't have played them
A moment later, horribly, Erlein di Senzio began to laughThere was no joy in that sound, nothing infectious, nothing to be sharedHis eyes were squeezed shut and tears welled out of them, pouring down his face
No one else spoke or movedIt lasted for a long timeWhen Erlein had finally composed himself he wiped his face on his sleeve, careful of his bandaged hands and looked at Alessan againHe opened his mouth, about to speak, and then closed it again
"I know," Alessan said quietly to him
"Khav?" Sandre chanel quilted handbag said again, after a moment
This time Erlein accepted a mug, cradling it awkwardly in both muffled handsNot long after they broke camp and started south again

Chapter 10

FIVE DAYS LATER, ON THE EVE OF THE EMBER DAYS OF SPRING, they came to Castle Borso
All that last afternoon as they moved south Devin had been watching the mountainsAny child raised in the watery lowlands of Asoli could not help but be awed by the towering southland ranges: the Braccio here in Certando, the Parravi east towards Tregea and, though he'd never seen them, the rumor of the snow-clad Sfaroni, highest of all, over west where Tigana once had been
It was late in the dayFar to the north on that same afternoon Isolla of Ygrath lay dead and dismembered under a bloody sheet in the Audience Chamber of the palace on Chiara
The sun setting behind a thrust spur of the mountains dyed the peaks to burgundy and red and a somber purple hueOn the very highest summits the snow still shone and dazzled in the last of the lightDevin could just make out the line of the Braccio Pass as it came down: one of the three fabled passes that had linked, in some seasons, and never easily, the Peninsula of the Palm chanel bags pink with Quileia to the south
In the old days, before the Matriarchy had taken deep root in Quileia there had been trade across the mountains, and the brooding piety of the springtime Ember Days had also presaged a quickening and stir of commercial life with the promise of the passes opening againThe towns and fortress-castles here in the southern highlands had been vibrant and vital thenWell-defended too, because where a trade caravan could cross, so could an armyBut no King of Quileia had ever been secure enough on his throne to lead an army north; not with the High Priestesses standing by at home to see him fail or fallHere in Certando the private armies had mostly bloodied their blades and arrows against each other, in savage southland feuds that ranged over generations and became the stuff of legend
And then the Quileian Matriarchy had come to power after all, in the time of Achis and Pasitheia, several hundred years agoQuileia under the priestesses had folded inward upon itself like a flower at dusk and the caravans ended
The southland cities dwindled into villages, or, if flexible and energetic enough, they changed their character and turned their faces gucci taske northward and to other things, as Avalle of the Towers had done in TiganaHere in the Certandan highlands the mighty lords who had once held glittering court in their huge warlike castles became living anachronismsTheir forays and battles with each other, once integral to the flow of events in the Palm, became more and more inconsequential, though not the less bitter or vicious for that
To Devin, touring with Menico di Ferraut, it had sometimes seemed that every second ballad they sang was of some lord or younger son pursued by enemies among these crags; or of ill-fated southland lovers divided by the hatred of their fathers; or of the bloody deeds of those fathers, untamed as hawks in their stern high castles among these foothills of the Braccio
And of those ballads, whether wild with battle and blood and villages set afire, or lamenting parted lovers drowning themselves in silent pools hidden in the misty hills, of all those songs, half again, it seemed to Devin, were of the Borso clan and set in and around the massive, piled, grim splendor of Castle Borso hard under Braccio Pass
There hadn't been any new ballads for a long time, very few in fact since the Quileian miu miu black bag caravans had stoppedBut of fresh stories and rumors there had been many in the past two decadesIn her own particular way, and in her own lifetime, Alienor of Castle Borso had already become a legend among the men and women of the road
And if these newer stories were about love, as so many of the older songs had been, they had little to do with anguished youth bewailing fate on windswept crags, and rather more to tell about certain changes within Castle Borso itselfAbout deep woven carpets and tapestries, about imported silk and lace and velvet, and profoundly disconcerting works of art in rooms that had once seen hard men plan midnight raids at trestle-tables, while unruly hunting dogs had fought for flung bones among the rushes of the floor
Riding beside Erlein in the second cart, Devin dragged his gaze away from the last shining of light on the peaks and looked at the castle they were nearingTucked into a fold of hills, with a moat around it and a small village just beyond, Borso was already in shadowEven as he watched, Devin saw lights being lit in the windowsThe last lights until the end of the Ember Days
"Alienor is a friend," was all that Alessan had cartier tank must volunteered

He reached an arm around and squeezed Devin's shoulderBaerd had done that too, in the Nievolene barn
It was Erlein who laughed at the joke"Come back down," the wizard said"I'll have to clean out those cuts for you
They helped him descend the slopeThe Quileian carried the woman and her bowDevin saw that it was made of a very dark wood, almost black, and was carved into a semblance of a crescent moon
From one end of it there hung a gathered and twisted lock of greying hairHe had a fair idea of whose it would be
Marius was on his feet, one hand on the back of his chair, as he watched them come downHis eyes barely flicked over the four men and the carried assassinThey locked, cold and grim, on the black tiffany cross curve of the moon bowHe looked frightening
And the more so, Devin thought, because not at all afraid
"I think we are past the need to dance in words around each other," Alessan said"I would like to tell you what I need and you will tell me if you can do it and that will be all we need say
Marius held up a hand to stop him
He had now joined the three of them among the cushions on the golden clothThe dishes and baskets had been cleared awayTwo of the Quileians had taken the woman back up over the pass to where the rest of their company waitedThe other four were posted some distance awayThe sun was high, as high as it would get at noon this far south, this early in the springIt had turned into a mild, generous montre cartier day
"This Bear is a very bad word-dancer, Pigeon," the King of Quileia said soberlyYou probably know something else: how much it will grieve me to deny you any request at allI would like to do this differentlyI would like to tell you what I cannot do, so you will not ask it and force me to refuseHe remained silent, watching the King
"I cannot give you an army," Marius said flatly"Not yet, and perhaps neverI am too green in power, too far from the stability I need at home to lead or even order troops over these mountainsThere are several hundreds of years of tradition I have to set about changing in very little timeI am not a young man anymore, Pigeon
Devin felt a leap of excitement within himself and omega de ville men's watches struggled to master itThis was too serious an occasion for childlike feelingsHe could hardly believe he was here, though, so close to, at the very heart of, something of this magnitudeHe stole a sidelong glance at Erlein and then looked more closely: the same quick spark of interest was in the other's faceFor all his years and his long travels, Devin seriously doubted if the troubadour-wizard had ever been so near to great events
Alessan was shaking his head"Bear," he said, "I would never ask you for thatFor our sake as much as for your ownI will not have my name remembered as the man who first invited the newly awakened might of Quileia north into the PalmIf an army ever ventures from Quileia through these gucci black bag passes, and I hope we are both long dead before such a day, the wish of my heart will be for it to be slaughtered and driven back with losses so bloody that no King in the south ever tries again
"If there is a King in the south and not another four hundred years of the Mother and her priestessesVery well," Marius said, "then tell me what it is you do need
Alessan's legs were neatly crossed, his long fingers laced in his lapHe looked for all the world as if he was discussing nothing of greater moment than, perhaps, the sequence of songs for an evening's performance
Except that his fingers, Devin saw, were so tightly squeezed together they were white
"A question first," Alessan said, controlling his christian dior saddle voice

Furiously clanging the bell over the bar, Ettocio fought to restore order"Enough of this, or you're all out of here right now!" A dire threat, and it quelled them
Enough for the Khardhu warrior's sardonic laughter to be audible againThe man was on his feetHe dropped coins on the table to pay his account, and surveyed the room, still chuckling, from his great height
"See what I mean?" he murmured"All these stick-like little fingers jabbing and poking away at each otherYou've always done that, haven't you? Guess you always willUntil there's nothing left here but Barbadior and Ygrath
He swaggered to the bar to claim his sword
"You," said the grey-eyed Tregean suddenly, as Ettocio handed over the curved, miu miu clutch sheathed bladeThe Khardhu turned slowly
"You know how to use that thing as well as you use your mouth?" the Tregean asked
The Khardhu's lips parted in a mirthless smile"It's been reddened once or twice
"Are you working for anyone right now?"
Insolently, appraisingly, the Khardhu looked down on the other man"Where are you going?"
"I've just changed my plans," the other replied"There's no money to be made up in Ferraut townNot with double duties to be paidI reckon I'll have to go farther afieldI'll give you going rates to guard me south to the Certandan highlands
"Rough country there," the Khardhu murmured reflectively
The Tregean's face twitched with amusement"Why do you think I want you?" he chanel cambon tote asked
After a moment the smile was returned"When do we go?" the warrior said
"We're gone," the Tregean replied, rising and paying his own accountHe claimed his own short sword and the two of them walked out togetherWhen the door opened there was a brief, dazzling flash of sunlight
Ettocio had hoped the talk would settle down after thatThe youngster at the bar mumbled something about uniting in a common front, a remark that would have been merely insane if it wasn't so dangerousUnfortunately, from Ettocio's point of view, at any rate, the comment was overheard by the Ferraut wool-trader, and the mood of the room was so aroused by then that the subject wouldn't die
It went on all afternoon, even after the boy left costume chanel jewelry as wellAnd that night, with an entirely different crowd, Ettocio shocked himself by speaking up during an argument about ancestral primacy between an Astibarian wine-dealer and another SenzianHe made the same point the tall Khardhu had made, about nine spindly fingers that had been broken one by one because they never formed a fistThe argument made sense to him; it sounded intelligent in his own mouthHe noticed men nodding slowly even as he spokeIt was an unusual, flattering response, men had seldom paid any attention to Ettocio except when he called time in the tavern
He rather liked the new sensationIn the days that followed he found himself raising the point whenever the opportunity aroseFor the first authentic hermes time in his life Ettocio began to get a reputation as a thoughtful man
Unfortunately, one evening in summer he was overheard by a Barbadian mercenary standing outside the open windowThey didn't take away his licenseThere was a very high level of tension across the whole of the Palm by thenThey arrested Ettocio and executed him on a wheel outside his own tavern, with his severed hands stuffed in his mouth
A great many men had heard the argument by then, thoughA great many had nodded, hearing it
Devin joined the other four about a mile south of the crossroads inn on the dusty road leading to CertandoThey were waiting for himCatriana was alone in the first cart but Devin climbed up beside Baerd in the cartier tank louis secon

In themselves, none of them amounted to very much; collectively they unsettled and irritated Alberico of Barbadior to the point where his aides and messengers began finding their employment physically hazardous, in so far as their duties brought them into proximity with the Tyrant
For a man noted for his composure and equanimity, even back in Barbadior when he'd been only the leader of a middle-ranking family of nobility, Alberico's temper was shockingly close to the surface all winter long
It had begun, his aides agreed amongst each other, after the Sandreni traitor, Tomasso, had been found dead in the dungeons when they came to bring him to the professionalsAlberico, waiting in the room of the implements, had been terrifyingly enragedEach of the guards, from Siferval's Third Company, had been summarily executedIncluding the new Captain of the Guard; the previous one had killed himself the night beforeSiferval himself was summoned back to Astibar from Certando for a private session with his employer that left him limp and shaking for hours afterwards
Alberico's fury had seemed to border on the irrationalHe had clearly, his aides decided, been chanel shopping bags radically unsettled by whatever had happened in the forestCertainly he didn't look well; there was something odd about one of his eyes, and his walk was peculiarThen, in the days and weeks that followed, it became manifest, as the local informers for each of the three companies began to bring in their reports, that Astibar town simply did not believe, or chose not to believe, that anything had happened in the forest, that there had been any Sandreni conspiracy at all
Certainly not with the Lords Scalvaia and Nievole, and most certainly not led by Tomasso bar SandrePeople were commenting cynically all over the city, the word cameToo many of them knew of the bone-deep hatreds that divided those three familiesToo many knew the stories about Sandre's middle son, the alleged leader of this alleged plotHe might kidnap a boy from a temple of Morian, Astibar was saying, but plot against a Tyrant? With Nievole and Scalvaia?
No, the city was simply too sophisticated to fall for thatAnyone with the slightest sense of geography or economics could see what was really going onHow, by trumping up this "threat" from three of the five largest landowners in the tiffany canada distrada, Alberico was merely creating a sleek cover for an otherwise naked land grab
It was only sheerest coincidence, of course, that the Sandreni estates were central, the Nievolene farms lay to the southwest along the Ferraut border, and Scalvaia's vineyards were in the richest belt in the north where the best grapes for the blue wine were grownAn immensely convenient conspiracy, all the taverns and khav rooms agreed
And every single conspirator was dead overnight, as wellSuch swift justice! Such an accumulation of evidence against them! There had been an informer among the Sandreni, it was proclaimedTomasso bar Sandre had led the conspiracy, they were toldHe too, most unfortunately, was dead
Led by Astibar itself all four provinces of the Eastern Palm reacted with bitter, sardonic disbeliefThey may have been conquered, ground under the heavy Barbadian heel, but they had not been deprived of their intelligence or rendered blindThey knew a Tyrant's scheming when they saw it
Tomasso bar Sandre as a skilled, deadly plotter? Astibar, reeling under the economic impact of the confiscations, and the horror of the executions, still found itself able gucci bookbag to mockAnd then there arrived the first of the viciously funny verses from the west, from Chiara itself, written by Brandin himself some said, though rather more likely commissioned from one of the poets who hovered about that courtVerses lampooning Alberico as seeing plots hatching in every barnyard and using them as an excuse to seize fowls and vegetable gardens all over the Eastern PalmThere were also a few, not very subtle sexual innuendos thrown in for good measure
The poems, posted on walls all over the city, and then in Tregea and Certando and Ferraut, were torn down by the Barbadians almost as fast as they went upUnfortunately they were memorable rhymes, and people didn't need to read or hear them more than once
Alberico would later acknowledge to himself that he'd lost control a littleHe would also admit inwardly that a great deal of his rage stemmed from a fierce indignation and the aftermath of fear
There had been a conspiracy led by that mincing SandreniThey had very nearly killed him in that cursed cabin in the woods
This once, he was telling the absolute truthThere was no pretense or deceptionHe had every claim of justice on his fairy bag prada sideWhat he didn't have was a confession, or a witness, or any evidence at allHe'd needed his informer aliveHe'd wanted Tomasso aliveHis dreams that first night had been shot through with vivid images of Sandre's son, bound and stripped and curved invitingly backwards on one of the machines
In the aftermath of the pervert's inexplicable death, and the unanimous word from all four provinces that no one believed a word of what had happened, Alberico had abandoned his original, carefully measured response to the plot
The lands were seized of course, but in addition all the living members of all three families were searched out and death-wheeled in AstibarHe hadn't expected there to be quite so many, actually, when he gave that orderThe stench had been deplorable and some of the children lived an unconscionably long time on the wheelsIt made it difficult to concentrate on business in the state offices above the Grand Square
He raised taxes in Astibar and introduced, for the first time, transit duties for merchants crossing from one of his provinces to another, along the lines of the existing tariff levied for crossing from the Eastern to the Western twiggy balenciaga

There was no pursuitThey hadn't expected anyAlessan and Sandre had worked it out very carefully back in FerrautThe charred bodies of the informer and the Second Company soldier would be found by Karalius's menThe mercenaries of the First Company would draw the obvious conclusion
They reclaimed their horses and headed westThey spent the night outside again in the cold taking turns on watchIt had gone very wellIt seemed to have gone exactly as plannedDevin wished they'd been able to free the horses, thoughTheir screaming ran through his fitful dreams in the snow
In the morning Alessan bought a cart from a farmer near the border of Ferraut and Baerd bargained with a woodcutter for a load of fresh-cut logsThey paid the new transit duty and sold the wood at the first fort across the borderThey also bought some winter wool to carry to Ferraut town where they were to rejoin the others
There was no point, Alessan said, in missing a chance at a profitThey did have responsibilities to their partners
In fact, a disconcerting number of untoward events had ruffled the chanel costume jewelry Eastern Palm in the autumn and winter that followed the unmasking of the Sandreni conspiracyIn themselves, none of them amounted to very much; collectively they unsettled and irritated Alberico of Barbadior to the point where his aides and messengers began finding their employment physically hazardous, in so far as their duties brought them into proximity with the Tyrant
For a man noted for his composure and equanimity, even back in Barbadior when he'd been only the leader of a middle-ranking family of nobility, Alberico's temper was shockingly close to the surface all winter long
It had begun, his aides agreed amongst each other, after the Sandreni traitor, Tomasso, had been found dead in the dungeons when they came to bring him to the professionalsAlberico, waiting in the room of the implements, had been terrifyingly enragedEach of the guards, from Siferval's Third Company, had been summarily executedIncluding the new Captain of the Guard; the previous one had killed himself the night beforeSiferval himself was summoned back to Astibar from Certando for a louis vuitton kabelky private session with his employer that left him limp and shaking for hours afterwards
Alberico's fury had seemed to border on the irrationalHe had clearly, his aides decided, been radically unsettled by whatever had happened in the forestCertainly he didn't look well; there was something odd about one of his eyes, and his walk was peculiarThen, in the days and weeks that followed, it became manifest, as the local informers for each of the three companies began to bring in their reports, that Astibar town simply did not believe, or chose not to believe, that anything had happened in the forest, that there had been any Sandreni conspiracy at all
Certainly not with the Lords Scalvaia and Nievole, and most certainly not led by Tomasso bar SandrePeople were commenting cynically all over the city, the word cameToo many of them knew of the bone-deep hatreds that divided those three familiesToo many knew the stories about Sandre's middle son, the alleged leader of this alleged plotHe might kidnap a boy from a temple of Morian, Astibar was saying, but plot against a chanel classic bag Tyrant? With Nievole and Scalvaia?
No, the city was simply too sophisticated to fall for thatAnyone with the slightest sense of geography or economics could see what was really going onHow, by trumping up this "threat" from three of the five largest landowners in the distrada, Alberico was merely creating a sleek cover for an otherwise naked land grab
It was only sheerest coincidence, of course, that the Sandreni estates were central, the Nievolene farms lay to the southwest along the Ferraut border, and Scalvaia's vineyards were in the richest belt in the north where the best grapes for the blue wine were grownAn immensely convenient conspiracy, all the taverns and khav rooms agreed
And every single conspirator was dead overnight, as wellSuch swift justice! Such an accumulation of evidence against them! There had been an informer among the Sandreni, it was proclaimedTomasso bar Sandre had led the conspiracy, they were toldHe too, most unfortunately, was dead
Led by Astibar itself all four provinces of the Eastern Palm reacted with bitter, sardonic disbeliefThey louis vuitton denim may have been conquered, ground under the heavy Barbadian heel, but they had not been deprived of their intelligence or rendered blindThey knew a Tyrant's scheming when they saw it
Tomasso bar Sandre as a skilled, deadly plotter? Astibar, reeling under the economic impact of the confiscations, and the horror of the executions, still found itself able to mockAnd then there arrived the first of the viciously funny verses from the west, from Chiara itself, written by Brandin himself some said, though rather more likely commissioned from one of the poets who hovered about that courtVerses lampooning Alberico as seeing plots hatching in every barnyard and using them as an excuse to seize fowls and vegetable gardens all over the Eastern PalmThere were also a few, not very subtle sexual innuendos thrown in for good measure
The poems, posted on walls all over the city, and then in Tregea and Certando and Ferraut, were torn down by the Barbadians almost as fast as they went upUnfortunately they were memorable rhymes, and people didn't need to read or hear them more than montre cartier o