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Anger flamed wildly within herlike the head of Isolla of Ygrath in the Audience ChamberDianora could scarcely draw breath, so fierce was her sudden rageNever in her life had she felt anything like this, this white hot caldron in her heartAfter Tigana fell, after her brother was driven away, her hatred had been a shaped thing, controlled, channeled, driven by purpose, a guarded flame that she'd known would have to burn a long timeA caldron boiling over inside her, prodigious, overmastering, sweeping all before it like a lava flowHad Brandin been in her room at that moment she could have ripped his heart out with her nails and teeth, as the women tore Adaon on the mountainsideShe saw Scelto take an involuntary backwards step away from her; she had never known him to fear her or anyone else beforeIt was not an observation that mattered now
What mattered, all that mattered, the only thing, was that she had saved the life of Brandin of Ygrath today, trampling into muck and spattered blood the clear, unsullied memory of her home and the oath she'd sworn in coming here so long agoShe had violated the essence of everything she once had been; violated herself more cruelly than had any man who'd ever lain with her for a coin in that upstairs room in Certando
And in return? In return, Brandin had just sent for Solores di Corte, leaving her to spend tonight alone
Not, not a thing he should have done
It did not matter that even within the fiery heat of her own blazing Dianora could understand why he might have done this thingUnderstand how little need he would have tonight for wit or intelligence, for sparkle, for questions or suggestionsHis need would be for the soft, unthinking, reflexive gentleness that Solores chanel cambon handbags gaveThat she herself apparently did notThe cradling worship, tenderness, the soothing voiceHe would need shelter tonightShe could understand: it was what she needed too, needed desperately, after what had happened
But she needed it from him
And so it came to be that, alone in her bed that night, sheltered by no one and by nothing, Dianora found herself naked and unable to hide from what came when the fires of rage finally died
She lay unsleeping through the first and then through the second chiming of the bells that marked off the triads of the dark hours, but before the third chiming that heralded the coming of grey dawn two things had happened within her
The first was the inexorable return of the single strand of memory she'd always been careful to block out from among all the myriad griefs of the year Tigana was occupiedBut she truly was unsheltered and exposed in the dark of that Ember Night, drifting terribly far from whatever moorings her soul had found
While Brandin, on the far wing of the palace sought what comfort he could in Solores di Corte, Dianora lay as in an open space and alone, unable to deflect any of the images that now came sweeping back from years agoImages of love and pain and the loss of love in pain that were far too keen, too icy keen a wind in the heart, to be allowed at any normal time
But the finger of death had rested on Brandin of Ygrath that day, and she alone had guided it away, steering the King past the darkest portal of Morian, and tonight was an Ember Night, a night of ghosts and shadowsIt could not be anything like a normal time, and it was notWhat came to Dianora, terribly, one after another in unceasing progression like waves of the dark sea, were her last memories of her brother fake rolex swiss before he went away
He had been too young to fight by the DeisaNo one under fifteen, Prince Valentin had proclaimed before riding sternly north to warAlessan, the Prince's youngest child, had been taken away south in hiding by Danoleon, the High Priest of Eanna, when word came that Brandin was coming down upon them
That was after Stevan had been slainAfter the one victoryThey had all known; the weary men who had fought and survived, and the women and the aged and the children left behind, that Brandin's coming would mark the end of the world they had lived in and loved
They hadn't known then how literally true that was: what the Sorcerer-King of Ygrath could do and what he didThis they were to learn in the days and months that followed as a hard and brutal thing that grew like a tumor and then festered in the souls of those who survived
The dead of Deisa are the lucky onesSo it was said, more and more often, in whispers and in pain in the year Tigana died, by those who endured the dying
Dianora and her brother were left with a mother whose mind had snapped like a bowstring with the tidings of Second DeisaEven as the vanguard of the Ygrathens entered the city itself, occupying the streets and squares of Tigana, the noble houses and the delicately colored Palace by the Sea, she seemed to let slip her last awareness of the world to wander, mute and gentle, through a space neither of her children could travel to with her
Sometimes she would smile and nod at invisible things as she sat amid the rubble of their courtyard that summer, with smashed marble all around her, and her daughter's heart would ache like an old wound in the rains of winter
Dianora set herself to run the household as best she could, though three fake gucci watches of the servants and apprentices had died with her fatherTwo others ran away not long after the Ygrathens came and the destruction beganShe couldn't even blame themOnly one of the women and the youngest of the apprentices stayed with them
Her brother and the apprentice waited until the long wave of burnings and demolition had passed, then they sought work clearing away rubble or repairing walls as a limited rebuilding started under Ygrathen ordersLife began to return towards a normalityOr what passed for normality in a city now called Lower Corte in a province of that name
In a world where the very word Tigana could not be heard by anyone other than themselvesSoon they stopped using it in public placesThe pain was too great: the twisting feeling inside that came with the blank look of incomprehension on the faces of the Ygrathens or the traders and bankers from Corte who had swarmed quickly down to seek what profit they could among the rubble and the slow rebuilding of a cityIt was a hurt for which, truly, there was no name
Dianora could remember, with jagged, sharp-edged clarity, the first time she'd called her home Lower CorteThey all could, all the survivors: it was, for each of them, a moment embedded like a fish hook in the soulThe dead of Deisa, First or Second, were the lucky ones, so the phrase went that year
She watched her brother come into a bitter maturity that first summer and fall, grieving for his vanished smile, laughter lost, the childhood too soon gone, not knowing how deeply the same hard lessons and absences were etched in her own hollow, unlovely faceShe was sixteen in the late summer, he turned fifteen in the fallShe made a cake on his naming day, for the apprentice, the one old woman, her gucci new bag mother, her brother and herselfThey had no guests; assembly of any kind was forbidden throughout that yearHer mother had smiled when Dianora gave her a slice of the dark cake, but Dianora had known the smile had nothing to do with any of them
Her brother had known it tooPreternaturally grave he had kissed his mother on the forehead and then his sister, and had gone out into the nightIt was, of course, illegal to be abroad after nightfall, but something kept driving him out to walk the streets, past the random fires that still smoldered on almost every cornerIt was as if he was daring the Ygrathen patrols to catch himTo punish him for having been fourteen in the season of war
Two soldiers were knifed in the dark that fallTwenty death-wheels were hoisted in swift responseSix women and five children were among those bound aloft to dieDianora knew most of them; there weren't so very many people left in the city, they all knew each otherThe screaming of the children, then their diminishing cries were things she needed shelter from in her nights forever after
No more soldiers were killed
Her brother continued to go out at nightShe would lie awake until she heard him come inHe always made a sound, deliberately, so she would hear him and be able to fall asleepSomehow, he knew she would be awake, though she had never said a word
He would have been handsome, with his dark hair and deep brown eyes if he hadn't been so thin and if the eyes were not shadowed and ringed by sleeplessness and griefThere was not a great deal of food that first winter, most of the harvest had been burned, and the rest confiscated, but Dianora did the best she could to feed the five of themAbout the look in his eyes there was nothing she could tiffany co earrings do |
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