ert eyes all she saw. Drinking it in.
In the crowded square in front of the Sandreni Palace that morning she had stood extremely still, listening to a clear voice soar from the inner courtyard out among the unnatural silence of the people gathered. A voice that lamented Adaon's death among the cedars of Tregea so bitterly, so sweetly, that Alais had been afraid she would cry. She had closed her eyes.
It had been a source of astonished pride for her when Rovigo had casually mentioned to her and her mother having had a drink the day before with one of the singers who were doing the Duke's mourning rites. He had even invited the young man, he said, to come meet his four ungainly offspring. The teasing bothered Alais not at all. She would have felt that something was wrong by now had Rovigo spoken
about them in any other way. Neither she nor her sisters nursed any anxieties about their father's affection. They had only to look at his eyes.
On the road home late at night, already badly unsettled by the thundering clatter of the Barbadian soldiers they had made way for at the city walls, she had been truly frightened when a voice called out to them from the darkness near their gate.
Then, when her father had replied, and she came gradually to understand who this was, Alais had thought her heart would stop from sheer excitement. She could feel the tell-tale color rising in her cheeks.
When it became clear that the musicians were coming inside, it had taken a supreme act of self-control for her to regain the mien and composure proper to her parents' oldest, most trusted child.
In the house it became easier because the instant the two male guests stepped through the doorway Selvena had gone into her predictable mating frenzy. A course of behavior so embarrassingly transparent to her older sister that it drove Alais straight back into her own habitual, detached watchfulness. Selvena had been crying herself to sleep for much of the year because it looked more and more as if she would still be unmarried when her eighteenth naming day came in the spring.
Devin, the singer, was smaller and younger-looking than she'd expected. But he was neat and lithe, with an easy smile and quick, intelligent eyes under sandy-brown hair that curled halfway over his ears. She'd expected him to be arrogant or pretentious, despite what her father had said, but she saw nothing of that at all.
The other man, Alessan, looked about fifteen years older, perhaps more. His black, tangled hair was prematurely greying, silvering actually, at the temples. He had a lean, expressive face with very clear grey eyes and a wide mouth. He intimidated her a little, even though he was joking easily with her father right from the start, in exactly the manner she knew Rovigo most enjoyed.$本$作$品$由$$網$提$供$下$載$與$在$線$閱$讀$
Perhaps that was it, Alais thought: few people she'd met could keep up with her father, in jesting or in anything else. And this man with the sharp, quizzical features appeared to be doing so effortlessly. She wondered, aware that the thought was more than a little arrogant on her own part, how a Tregean musician could manage that. On the other hand, she reflected, she didn't know very much about musicians at all.
Which made her even more curious about the woman. Alais thought Catriana was terribly beautiful. With her commanding height and the startlingly blue eyes under the blaze of her hair, like a second fire in the room, she made Alais feel small and pale and bland. In a curious way that combined with Selvena's outrageous flirtation to relax rather than unsettle her: this sort of activity, competition, exercise, was simply not something with which she was going to get involved. Watching closely, she saw Catriana register Selvena's soft flouncing at Devin's feet and she intercepted the sardonic glance the red-haired singer directed at her fellow musician.
Alais decided to go into the kitchen. Her mother and Menka might need help. Alix gave her a quick, thoughtful glance when she c