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company. She died of the plague in Certando. I could have made life very hard for you. I didn’t and I’m not. I did let you know from the first that I found you attractive. I’m not aware that there is a sin in that if it is done with courtesy.’
    He released her arm, abruptly conscious that he had been gripping it very hard and that they were in an extremely public place, even with the early-afternoon lull. Instinctively he looked around; thankfully there were no Barbadians passing just then. There was a familiar tight feeling in his chest, as of the apprehended return of pain, that always came with the thought of Marra. The first true friend of hislife. Two neglected children, with voices that were gifts of Eanna, telling each other fears and dreams for three years in changing beds across the Palm at night. His first lover. First death.
    Catriana, released, remained where she was, and there was a look in her own eyes—perhaps at the naming of death—that made him abruptly revise his estimate of her age downwards. He’d thought she was older than him; now he wasn’t sure.
    He waited, breathing quickly after his outburst, and at length he heard her say very softly, ‘You sing too well.’
    Devin blinked. It was not at all what he’d expected.
    ‘I have to work very hard at performing,’ she went on, her face flushing for the first time. ‘Rauder is hard for me—all of his music. And this morning you were doing the “Song of Love” without even thinking about it, amusing the others, trying to charm me … Devin, I have to
concentrate
when I sing! You were making me nervous and I snap at people when I’m nervous.’
    Devin drew a careful breath and looked around the empty sunlit street for a moment, thinking. He said, ‘Do you know … has anyone ever told you … that it is possible and even useful to tell things like this to people—especially the people who have to work with you?’
    She shook her head. ‘Not for me. I’ve never been able to talk like that. Not ever.’
    ‘Why do it now, then?’ he risked. ‘Why
did
you come after me?’
    A longer pause than before. A cluster of artisans’ apprentices swept around the corner, hooting with reflexive ribaldry at the sight of the two of them standing together. There was no malice in it though, and they went by without causing any trouble. A few red and golden leaves skipped over the cobbles in the breeze.
    ‘Something’s happened,’ Catriana d’Astibar said, ‘and Menico told us all that you are the key to our chances.’
    ‘
Menico
sent you after me?’ It was almost completely improbable, after nearly six years together.
    ‘No,’ Catriana said, quickly shaking her head. ‘No, he said you’d be back in time, that you always were. I was nervous though, with so much at stake. I couldn’t just wait around. You’d left a little, um, upset, after all.’
    ‘A little,’ Devin agreed gravely, noting that she finally had the grace to look apologetic. He would have felt even more secure if he hadn’t continued to find her so attractive. He couldn’t stop himself from wondering—even now—what her breasts would look like, freed from the stiffness of her high-cut bodice. Marra would have told him, he knew, and even helped him with a conquest. They had done that for each other, and shared the tales after, travelling through that last year on the road before Certando where she died.
    ‘You had better tell me what’s happened,’ he said, forcing his thoughts back to the present. There was danger in fantasies and in memories, both.
    ‘The exiled Duke, Sandre, died last night,’ Catriana said. She looked around but the street was empty again. ‘For some reason—no one is sure why—Alberico is allowing his body to lie in state at the Sandreni Palace tonight and tomorrow morning, and then …
    She paused, the blue eyes bright. Devin, his pulse suddenly leaping, finished it for her:
    ‘A funeral? Full rites? Don’t tell me!’
    ‘Full rites!