geance for Stevan?"
Dianora's heart thudded painfully. It was a name not spoken in Chiara. She saw Brandin's lips tighten in a way she had seen only a handful of times. But when he spoke his voice was as rigidly controlled as before.
"I judged that I had considered them fairly. Girald has governance in Ygrath as he was always going to have. He even has my saishan, as a symbol of that. Dorotea I invited here several times a year for the first several years."
"Invited here that she might wither and grow old while you kept yourself young. A thing no Sorcerer-King of Ygrath has ever done before, lest the gods punish the land for that impiety. But for Ygrath you never spared a thought, did you? And Girald? He is no King, his father is. That is your title, not his. What does the key to a saishan mean against that reality? He is even going to die before you, Brandin, unless you are slain. And what will happen then? It is unnatural! It is all unnatural, and there is a price to be paid."
"There is always a price," he said softly. "A price for everything. Even for living. I had not expected to pay it in my own family." There was a silence. "Isolla, I must extend my years to do what I am here to do."
"Then you pay for it," Isolla repeated, "and Girald pays and Dorotea. And Ygrath."
And Tigana, Dianora thought, no longer trembling, her own ache come back like a wound in her. Tigana pays too; in broken statues and fallen towers, in children slain and a name gone.
She watched Brandin's face. And Rhun's.
"I hear you," the King said at length to the singer. "I have heard more than you have chosen to say. I need only one thing further. You must tell me which of them did this." It was said with visible regret. Rhun's ugly face was screwed up tightly, his hands gestured with a random helplessness.
"And why," said Isolla, drawing herself up and speaking with the frigid hauteur of one who had nothing left to lose, "should you imagine their purposes to be at odds in this? Why the one or the other, King of Ygrath?" Her voice rang out, harsh as the message it bore.
Slowly he nodded. The hurt was clear in him now; Dianora could see it in the way he stood and spoke, however much he controlled himself. She didn't even need to look at Rhun.
"Very well," Brandin said. "And you, Isolla? What could they have offered to make you do this thing. Can you really hate me so much?"
The woman hesitated only for an instant. Then, as proudly, as defiantly as before, she said, "I can love the Queen so much."
Brandin closed his eyes. "How so?"
"In all the ways that you forsook when you chose exile here and love of the dead over the heart and the bed of your wife."
In any normal, any halfway normal time there would have been a reaction to this from the court. There would have had to be. Dianora heard nothing though, only the sound of a great many people breathing carefully as Brandin opened his eyes again to look down upon the singer. There was an unveiled triumph in the Ygrathen woman's face.∮本∮作∮品∮由∮∮網∮提∮供∮下∮載∮與∮在∮線∮閱∮讀∮
"She was invited here," he repeated almost wistfully. "I could have compelled her but I chose not to do so. She had made her feelings clear and I left the choice to her. I thought it was the kinder, fairer action. It would appear that my sin lies in not having ordered her to take ship for this peninsula."
So many different griefs and shapes of pain seemed to be warring for preeminence within Dianora. Behind the King she could see d'Eymon; his face was a sickly grey. He met her eyes for only an instant then quickly looked away. Later she might think of ways to use this sudden ascendancy over him but right now she felt only pity for the man. He would offer to resign tonight, she knew. Offer, probably, to kill himself after the old fashion. Brandin would refuse, but after this nothing would be quite the same.
For a great many reasons.
Brandin said, "I think you have told me what I had need to know."
"The Chiaran acted alone," Isolla volunteered unexpectedly. She g