this?" he asked.
"It is," Alessan said flatly.
After a moment Rovigo sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I am sorry," he said softly. "Forgive me, both of you. I should not have asked. I have opened a wound."
"I was the one who asked," Devin said quickly.
"The wound is always open," said Alessan, a moment later.
There was an extraordinary compassion in Rovigo's face. It was difficult to realize that this was the same man who had been jesting about Senzian rustics as husbands for his daughters. The merchant rose abruptly and became busy tending to the fire again, though the blaze was doing perfectly well. While he did so Devin looked at Alessan. The other man met his gaze. They said nothing though. Alessan's eyebrows lifted a little, and he gave the small shrug Devin had come to know.
"What do we do now, then?" asked Rovigo d'Astibar, returning to stand beside his chair. His color was high, perhaps from the fire. "I am as disturbed by this as I was when we first met. I do not like magic. Especially this kind of magic. It remains a matter of some . . . significance to me to be able to hear one day what I was just debarred from hearing."
Devin felt a rush of excitement run through him again: the other element to his feelings this evening. His pique at having been deceived in The Bird was entirely gone. These two, and Baerd and the Duke, were men to be reckoned with, in every possible way, and they were shaping plans that might change the map of the Palm, of the whole world. And he was here with them, he was one of them, chasing a dream of freedom. He took a long drink of his blue wine.
Alessan's expression was troubled though. He looked, suddenly, as if he were burdened with a new and difficult weight. He leaned slowly back in his chair, his hand going through the tangle of his hair as he looked at Rovigo in silence for a long time.
Turning from one man to the other, Devin felt abruptly lost again, his excitement fading almost as quickly as it had come.
"Rovigo, have we not involved you enough already?" Alessan asked at length. "I must admit this has become harder for me now that I have met your wife and daughters. This coming year may see a change in things, and I cannot even begin to tell you how much more danger. Four men died in that cabin tonight, and I think you know as well as I do how many will be death-wheeled in Astibar in the weeks to come. It has been one thing for you to keep an ear open here and on your travels, to quietly monitor Alberico's doings and Sandre's, for you and Baerd and I to meet every so often and touch palms and talk, friend to friend. But the shape of the tale is changing now, and I greatly fear to put you in danger."__文_檔_共_享_與_在_線_閱_讀_
Rovigo nodded. "I thought you might say something like that. I am grateful for your concern. But Alessan, I made up my mind on this a long time ago. I ... would not expect that freedom could be found or won without a price paid. You said three days ago that the coming spring might mark a turning-point for all of us. If there are ways that I can help in the days to come you must tell me." He hesitated, then: "One of the reasons I love my wife is that Alix would echo this were she with us and did she know."
Alessan's expression was still troubled. "But she isn't with us and she doesn't know," he said. "There have been reasons for that, and there will be more of them after tonight. And your girls? How can I ask you to endanger them?"
"How can you decide for me, or them?" Rovigo replied softly, but without hesitation. "Where is our choice, our freedom, if you do that? I would obviously prefer not to do anything that will put them into actual danger, and I cannot afford to suspend my business entirely. But within these confines, is there no aid I can offer that will make a difference?"
Finally understanding the source of Alessan's doubts, Devin kept grimly silent. This was something to which he had attached no weight at all, while Alessan had been wrestling with it all along