Tomasso also knew she made equally sure Sandre...
Tomasso also knew she made equally sure Sandre was aware of the source of the tidingsNot that it mattered, really
She had died, drinking poisoned wine meant for her husband, in the final year of the Duke's reign, still working, to the last morning of her life, towards a reconciliation between Sandre and their middle child
Greater romantics than were either the father or the son might have allowed themselves to think that, as the Sandreni family pulled tightly together in the bloody, retaliatory aftermath of that poisoning, she had achieved her wistful hope by dying
Both men knew it was not so
In fact, it was only the coming of Alberico from the Empire of Barbadior, with his will-sapping sorcery and the brutal efficiency of his conquering mercenaries, that brought Tomasso and Sandre to a certain very late-night talk during the Duke's second year of exileIt was Alberico's invasion and one further thing: the monumental, irredeemable, inescapable stupidity of Gianno d'Astibar bar Sandre, titular heir to the shattered fortunes of their family
And to these two things there had slowly been added a third bitter truth for the proud, exiled DukeIt had gradually become more and more obvious, past all denial, that whatever of his own character and gifts had been manifested in the next generation, whatever of his subtlety and perception, his ability to cloak his thoughts and discern the minds of others, whatever of such skills he had passed on to his sons, had gone, all of it, to the middle child
Who liked boys, and would leave no heir himself, nor ever a name to be spoken, let alone with pride, in Astibar or anywhere else in the Palm
In the deepest inward place where he performed the complex act of dealing with his feelings for his father, Tomasso had always acknowledged, even back then, and very certainly now on this last evening road Sandre would travel, that one of the truest measures of the Duke's new chanel bags stature as a ruler of men had emerged on that winter night so long agoThe night he broke a decade's stony silence and spoke to his middle son and made him his confidant
His sole confidant in the painfully cautious eighteen-year quest to drive Alberico and his sorcery and his mercenaries from Astibar and the Eastern PalmA quest that had become an obsession for both of them, even as Tomasso's public manner became more and more eccentric and decayed, his voice and gait a parody, a self-parody, in fact, of the mincing, lisping lover of boys
It was planned, all of it, in late-night talks with his father on their estate outside the city walls
Sandre's parallel role had been to settle visibly and loudly into impotent, brooding, Triad-cursing exile, marked by querulous, blustering hunts and too much drinking of his own wine
Tomasso had never seen his father actually drunk, and he never used his own fluting voice when they were alone at night
Eight years ago they had tried an assassinationA chef, traceable only to the Canziano family, had been placed in a country inn in Ferraut near the provincial border with AstibarFor over half a year idle gossip in Astibar had touted that inn as a place of growing distinctionNo one remembered, afterwards, where the talk had begun: Tomasso knew very well how useful it was to plant casual rumors of this sort among his friends in the templesThe priests of Morian, in particular, were legendary for their appetites
A full year from the time they had set things in motion, Alberico of Barbadior had halted on his way back from the Triad Games, exactly as Sandre had said he would, to take his midday meal at a well-reputed inn in Ferraut near the Astibar border
By the time the sun went down at the end of that bright late-summer day every person in that inn, servants, masters, stable-boys, chefs, children and patrons, had had their backs, legs, arms and wrists broken and their miu miu nappa hands cut off, before being bound, living, upon hastily erected Barbadian sky-wheels to die
The inn was razed to the groundTaxes in the province of Ferraut were doubled for the next two years, and for a year in Astibar, Tregea and CertandoDuring the course of the following six months every living member of the Canziano family was found, seized, publicly tortured and burned in the Grand Square of Astibar with their severed hands stuffed in their mouths so that the screaming might not trouble Alberico or his advisers in their offices of state above the square
In this fashion had Sandre and Tomasso discovered that sorcerers cannot, in fact, be poisoned
For the next six years they had done nothing but talk at night in the manor-house among the vineyards and gather what knowledge they could of Alberico himself and events to the east in Barbadior, where the Emperor was said to be growing older and more infirm with each passing year
Tomasso began commissioning and collecting walking sticks with heads carved in the shape of the male organs of sexIt was rumored that he'd had some of his young friends model for the carversGianno, the heir, consolidated a burgeoning reputation as a genial, uncomplicated seducer of women and breeder of children, legitimate and illegitimateThe younger Sandreni were allowed to maintain modest homes in the city as part of Alberico's overall policy to be as discreet a ruler as possible, except when danger or civil unrest threatened him
At which time children might die on sky-wheelsThe Sandreni Palace in Astibar remained very prominently shuttered, empty and dustyA useful, potent symbol of the fall of those who might resist the TyrantThe superstitious claimed to see ghostly lights flickering there at night, especially on a blue-moon night, or on the spring or autumn Ember Nights when the dead were known to walk abroad
Then one evening in the country Sandre had told Tomasso, cartier watches women without warning or preamble, that he proposed to die on the eve of the Festival of Vines two autumns henceHe proceeded to name the two lords who were to be his vigil-keepers, and whyThat same night he and Tomasso decided that it was time to tell Taeri, the youngest son, what was afootHe was brave, not stupid, and might be necessary for certain thingsThey also agreed that Gianno had somehow sired one likely son, albeit illegitimate, and that Herado, twenty-one by then and showing encouraging signs of spirit and ambition, was their best hope of having the younger generation share in the unrest Sandre hoped to create just after the time of his dying
It wasn't, in fact, a question of who in the family could be trusted: family was, after all, familyThe issue was who would be useful and it was a mark of how diminished the Sandreni had become that only two names came readily to mind
It had been an entirely dispassionate conversation, Tomasso remembered, leading his father's bier southeast between the darkening trees that flanked the pathTheir conversations had always been like that; this one had been no differentAfterwards though, he had been unable to fall asleep, the date of the Festival two years away branded into his brainThe date when his father, so precise in his planning, so judicious, had decided he would die so as to give Tomasso a chance to try again, a different way
The date that had come now and gone, carrying with it the soul of Sandre d'Astibar to wherever the souls of such men wentTomasso made a warding gesture to avert evil at that thoughtBehind him he heard the steward order the servants to light torchesIt grew colder as the darkness fellOverhead a thin band of high clouds was tinted a somber shade of purple by the last upward-angled rays of lightThe sun itself was gone, down behind the treesTomasso thought of souls, his father's and his own
The white moon, Vidomni, rose, and then, imitation chanel handbag not long after, came blue Ilarion to chase her hopelessly across the skyBoth moons were nearly fullThe procession could have done without torches in fact, so bright was the twinned moonlight, but torchlight suited the task and his mood, and so Tomasso let them burn as the company cut off the road onto the familiar winding path through the Sandreni Woods, to come at length to the simple hunting lodge his father had loved
The servants laid the bier on the trestles waiting in the center of the large front roomCandles were lit and the two fires built up at opposite ends of the roomFood, they had set up earlier that dayIt was quickly uncovered on the long sideboard along with the wineThe windows were opened to air the cabin and admit the breeze
At a nod from Tomasso the steward led the servants awayThey would go on to the manor further east and return at daybreak
And so they were left alone, finallyTomasso and the lords Nievole and Scalvaia, so carefully chosen two years before
"Wine, my lords?" Tomasso asked"We will have three others joining us very shortly
He said it, deliberately, in his natural voice, dropping the artificial, fluting tone that was his trademark in AstibarHe was pleased to see both of them note the fact immediately, their glances sharpening as they turned to him
"Who else?" growled bearded Nievole who had hated Sandre all his lifeHe made no comment on Tomasso's voice, nor hid ScalvaiaSuch questions gave too much away, and these were men long skilled in giving away very little indeed
"My brother Taeri and nephew Herado, one of Gianno's by-blows, and much the cleverest He spoke casually, uncorking two bottles of Sandreni red reserve as he spokeHe poured and handed them each a glass, waiting to see who would break the small silence his father had said would followScalvaia would ask, Sandre had said
"Who is the third?" Lord Scalvaia asked softly
Inwardly Tomasso saluted his dead new cartier watches fat