never heard anyone give such a description so happily."
He was rewarded with Alix's quick laughter and a wonderfully grave smile over her shoulder from Alais, busy at the sideboard.
Rovigo raised his glass, moving it in small circles to make a pattern in the air with the icy smoke. "Will you join me in drinking to the memory of our Duke and to the glory of music? I don't believe in making idle toasts with blue wine."
"Nor do I," Alessan said quietly. He lifted his own glass. "To memory," he said very deliberately. "To Sandre d'Astibar. To music." Then he added something else, under his breath, before sipping from the wine.
Devin drank, tasting, for only the third or fourth time in his life, the astonishingly rich, cold complexity of Astibar's blue wine. There was nothing like it anywhere else in the Palm. And its price reflected that fact. He looked over and saluted Rovigo with his glass.
"To all of you," Catriana said suddenly. "To kindness on a dark road." She smiled, a smile without any edge or mockery to it. Devin was surprised, then decided it was unfair for him to feel that way.
Not on the road I'm on, she'd said in the Sandreni Palace. And that was something he could understand now. For he too was on that road after all, despite what she'd done to keep him from it. He tried to catch her eye but failed. She was talking to Alix, now seated beside her. Briefly reflective, Devin turned his attention to his food.
A moment later Selvena touched his foot lightly. "Will you sing for us?" she asked with a delicious smile. She didn't move her hand. "Alais heard you, and my parents, but the rest of us have been here all day."
"Selvena!" Mother and older sister snapped the name together. Selvena flinched as if struck but, Devin noticed, it was to her father that she turned, biting her lip. He was looking at her soberly.
"Dear heart," he said, in a voice far removed from the raillery of before, "you have a lesson to learn. Our friends make music for their livelihood. They are our guests here tonight. One does not, light of my life, ask guests to work in one's home." Selvena's eyes brimmed with tears. She lowered her head.
In the same serious tone Rovigo said to Devin, "Will you accept an apology? She meant it in good faith, I can assure you of that."
"I know she did," Devin protested, as Selvena sniffled softly at his feet. "There is no apology needed."
"Truly, none," Alessan added, setting his plate of food aside. "We make music to live, indeed, but we also make music because doing so is most truly to live. It is not work to play among friends, Rovigo."
Selvena wiped her eyes and looked up at him gratefully.
"I shall be happy to sing," Catriana said. She glanced briefly at Selvena. "Unless of course it was only Devin you had in mind?"┆┆本┆┆作┆┆品┆┆由┆┆┆┆網┆┆友┆┆整┆┆理┆┆上┆┆傳┆┆
Devin winced, even though the slash had not been directed at him. Selvena flinched again, badly flustered for the second time in as many minutes. Out of the corner of his eye Devin saw an intriguing expression cross Alais's face.
Selvena began protesting earnestly that of course she'd meant all three of them. Alessan seemed amused by the entire exchange. Devin had a sudden intuition, looking at him, that this relaxed, sociable man was at least as close to the center of the Prince of Tigana as was the arrogantly precise figure he'd seen in the forest cabin.
He escapes this way, he thought suddenly. And even as the idea entered his mind he knew that it was true. He had heard the man play the "Lament for Adaon."
"Well," said Rovigo, smiling at Catriana, "if you are gracious enough to indulge a shameless child I blush to acknowledge as my own, it happens that I do have a set of Tregean pipes in the house, the Triad alone know why. I seem to remember once having a doting father's fancy that one of these creatures might emerge with a talent of some sort."
Alix, from several feet away, mimed a blow with a spoon at her husband. Unabashed, his good spirits restored, Rovigo sent the youngest