Tigana

The problem would have been positively laughable were it not so infuriating. It was the doing, he learned quickly enough, in the first i

It appeared that a year ago, in the midst of their interminable jockeying for ascendancy with the clergy of Morian and Adaon, Ea

It had taken less than two weeks for Alberico to promulgate and begin enforcing a law that no youth of less than seventeen years could buy a drink in Astibar.

Ea

Tavern-keepers were quietly unhappy (it didn't do to be loudly unhappy in Astibar) though not so much for the loss of trade as for the insidious ma

All of which left the sixteen-year-olds in Astibar truly out of luck. Along with, it gradually became evident through the course of a morning, one small, boyish-looking nineteen-year-old singer from Asoli.

After three summary ejections along the west side of the Street of the Temples, Devin was briefly tempted to go across the road to the Shrine of Morian, fake an ecstasy, and hope they favored Senzian green here as a means of succoring the overly ecstatic. As another, even less rational, option he contemplated breaking a window in Ea

He forebore to do so, as much out of genuine devotion to Ea

In the end, Devin wished a serious head-cold on himself and headed west towards the harbor and then, following his unfortunately still-functioning sense of smell, towards Ta

Even this nondescript, evil-smelling hole was completely full. Astibar was crammed to overflowing for tomorrow's start of the Festival of Vines. The harvest had been a good one everywhere but in Certando, Devin knew, and there were plenty of people with astins or chiaros to spend, and in a mood to spend them too.

There were certainly no free tables to be had in The Bird. Devin wedged himself into a corner where the dark, pitted wood of the bar met the back wall, took a judicious sip of his wine, watered but not unusually so, he decided, and composed his mind and soul towards a meditation upon the perfidy and unreasonableness of women.

As embodied, specifically, by Catriana d'Astibar these past two weeks.

He calculated that he had enough time before the late-afternoon rehearsal, the last before their opening engagement at the city home of a small wine-estate owner tomorrow, to muse his way through most of a bottle and still show up sober. He was the experienced trouper anyhow, he thought indignantly. He was a partner. He knew the performance routines like a hand knew a glove. The extra rehearsals had been laid on by Menico for the benefit of the three new people in the troupe.

Including impossible Catriana. Who happened to be the reason he had stormed out of the morning rehearsal a short while before he knew that Menico pla

Cursed with memory, Devin saw the nine of them rehearsing again in the rented back room on the ground floor of their i

And so perhaps, yes, he'd been a little bored, a little distracted, had been leaning a little closer than absolutely necessary to their newest, red-headed female singer, putting perhaps the merest shading of a message into his expression and voice, but still, even so…

"Devin, in the name of the Triad," had snapped Catriana d'Astibar, breaking up the rehearsal entirely, "do you think you can get your mind away from your groin for long enough to do a decent harmony? This is not a difficult song!"

The affliction of a fair complexion had hurtled Devin's face all the way to bright red. Menico, he saw, Menico who should have been sharply reprimanding the girl for her presumption, was laughing helplessly, even more flushed than Devin was. So were the others, all of them.

Unable to think of a reply, unwilling to compromise the tattered shreds of his dignity by yielding to his initial impulse to reach up and whack the girl across the back of her head, Devin had simply spun on his heels and left.

He'd thrown one reproachful glance at Menico as he went but was not assuaged: the troupe-leader's ample paunch was quivering with laughter as he wiped tears from his round, bearded face.

So Devin had gone looking for a bottle of Senzio green and a dark place to drink it in on a brilliant autumn morning in Astibar. Having finally found the wine and the tenuous comfort of shadows he fully expected to figure out, about half a bottle from now, what he should have said to that arrogant red-maned creature back in the rehearsal room.

If only she wasn't so depressingly tall, he thought. Morosely he filled his glass again. Looking up at the blackened crossbeams of the ceiling he briefly contemplated hanging himself from one of them: by the heels of course. For old time's sake.

"Shall I buy you a drink?" someone said.

With a sigh Devin turned to cope with one of the more predictable aspects of being small and looking very young while drinking alone in a sailor's bar.

What he saw was somewhat reassuring. His questioner was a soberly dressed man of middle years with greying hair and lines of worry or laughter radiating at his temples. Even so:

"Thank you," Devin said, "but I've most of my own bottle left and I prefer having a woman to being one for sailors. I'm also older than I look."

The other man laughed aloud. "In that case," he chuckled, genuinely amused, "you can give me a drink if you like while I tell you about my two marriageable daughters and the other two who are on their way to that age sooner than I'm ready for. I'm Rovigo d'Astibar, master of the Sea Maid just in from down the coast in Tregea."