's so strange. So complicated. I think I learned something there. I think...”
"Devin, I really don't want the details!" She was angry with herself for how edgy this sort of thing made her feel.
"No, no. Not like that, though yes, there was that at the beginning. But . . ." He drew a breath. "I think what I learned was something about what the Tyrants have done to us. Not just Brandin, and not just in Tigana. Alberico too. Both of them, and to all of us."
"Such insight," she mocked, reflexively. "She must be even more skillful than you imagined."
Which silenced him. He leaned back in the chair again and she couldn't see his face. In the quiet that followed her breathing grew calmer.
"I'm sorry," she said at length. "I didn't mean that. I'm tired. I've had some bad dreams tonight. What do you want from me, Devin?"
"I'm not sure," he said. "I guess, to be a friend."
Again she felt pushed and uneasy. She resisted an instinctive, nervous urge to suggest he go write a letter to one of Rovigo's daughters. She said, "I've never been good at that, even as a child."
"Nor I," he said, shifting forward again. He had pushed his hair into a semblance of order. He said, "It is more than that between you and I though. You hate me sometimes, don't you."
She felt her heart thump. "We do not have to discuss this, Devin. I don't hate you."
"Sometimes you do," he pursued in that strange, dogged tone. "Because of what happened in the Sandreni Palace." He paused, and drew a shaky breath. "Because I was the first man you ever made love with."
She closed her eyes. Tried, unsuccessfully, to will that last sentence not to have been spoken. "You knew?"
"Not then. I figured it out later."
Pieces of another puzzle. Patiently putting it together. Figuring her out. She opened her eyes and gazed bleakly at him. "And is it your idea that discussing this interesting subject will make us friends?"
He winced. "Probably not. I don't know. I thought I'd tell you I want to be." There was a silence. "I honestly don't know, Catriana. I'm sorry."
Surprisingly, her shock and anger had both passed. She saw him slump back again, exhausted, and she did the same, reclining against the wooden headboard of her bed. She thought for a while, marveling at how calm she felt.
"I don't hate you, Devin," she said finally. "Truly, I don't. Nothing like that. It is an awkward memory, I won't deny that, but I don't think it has ever hindered us in what we have to do. Which is what really matters, isn't it?"
"I suppose so," he said. She couldn't see his face. "If that is all that matters."
"I mean, it's true what I said before: I've always been bad at making friends."
"Why?"
Pieces of the puzzle again. But she said, "As a girl, I'm not sure. Maybe I was shy, perhaps proud. I never felt easy in our village, even though it was the only home I'd ever known. But since Baerd named Tigana for me, since I heard the name, that has been all there is in the world for me. All that counts for anything at all."〓〓文〓檔〓共〓享〓與〓在〓線〓閱〓讀〓
She could almost hear him thinking about that.
He said, "Ice is for endings."
Which is exactly what Alienor had said to her. He went on, "You are still a living person, Catriana. With a heart, a life to live, access to friendship, even to love. Why are you sealing yourself down to the one thing only?"
And she heard herself reply: "Because my father never fought. He fled Tigana like a coward before the battles at the river."
She could have ripped her tongue bleeding from her mouth, out at the very root, the moment she had spoken.
"Oh," he said.
"Not a word, Devin! Don't say a word!"
He obeyed, sitting very still, almost invisible in the depths of his chair. Abruptly she blew out the candle; she didn't want light now. And then, because it was dark, and because he was so obligingly silent she was gradually able to regain control of herself. To move past the meaning of this moment without weeping. It took a long time in the darkness but eventually she was able to draw