| "A red vixen, truly," he repeated, but this time to her, and not to Casalia
The Governor laughed anyhowThey moved on, their party following, including Brandin's emissary, looking grimly unhappy for all the beauty of the morning
Catriana had become aware of Devin at her shoulder and Rovigo beside his daughterShe looked at them and registered the clenched fury in their eyesIt was then that she'd felt amusement, however briefly
"That," she said lightly, "is exactly how Baerd looked before he almost had us both killed in TregeaI don't think I'm prepared to repeat the experienceI have no hair left to cut
It was Alais, cleverer by far than Catriana had realized at first, who laughed, carrying them past the momentThe four of them walked on
"I would have killed him," Devin said quietly to her as they paused by a leather goods booth
"Of course you would have," she louis vuitton knockoff handbags said easilyThen realizing how that probably sounded, and that he was quite serious in what he'd said, she squeezed his armNot something she would have done six months beforeShe was changing, they all were
But just about then, amusement and anger both fading, Catriana began to think about somethingIt seemed to her that the brightness of the day slid abruptly into shadow for a moment though there were no clouds in the sky at all
She realized afterwards that she had decided to do it almost as soon as the idea took shape in her mind
Before the morning market had closed she had managed to be alone long enough to purchase what she neededEarrings, gown, black comb
And it was while doing these things that she'd begun to think about her mother and to remember the bridge in TregeaNot surprisingly: the mind worked in patterns like thatSuch patterns were why she was chanel jumbo xl bag doing this, why she'd even been able to think of itWhen night fell she would have to come away by herself, telling none of themA lie of some sort for AlaisNo farewells; they would stop her, just as she would have stopped any of them
But something had to be done, they all knew itA move had to be made, and that morning in the market Catriana had thought she'd discovered what that move might be
She'd spent the first part of this solitary walk through darkness wishing she were braver though, that her hands would not tremble as they wereBut they'd stopped shaking after all when she reached the garden wall and saw a star fall in the blue-black velvet sky
"We'll have to search you, you understand," said one of the two guards outside the gates, a crooked smile on his face
"Of course," she murmured, stepping nearer"There are so few benefits to standing watch here, gucci knockoffs aren't there?" The other one laughed, and drew her forward, not ungently, into the light of the torches and then a little past them, to the more private shadows at the side of the squareShe heard a brief, low-pitched altercation between the two men on the other side of the gate, ending in a concise six-word orderOne of them, manifestly outranked, reluctantly began heading inward through the courtyard to find Anghiar of Barbadior and tell him his dreams had just come true, or some such thingThe other hastily unlocked the gates with a key on a ring at his belt and came out to join the others
They took some with her, but were not unkind, nor did they presume too much in the endIf she was going to the Barbadian and found favor there, they could be at risk in offending herShe had counted on something like thatShe managed to laugh softly once or twice, but not so much fake fendi bag as to encourage themShe was thinking of patterns still, remembering the very first evening she'd come to Alessan and BaerdThe night porter at the inn groping for her as she went by, leering, sure of why she was there
I will not sleep with you, she'd said when they opened to her knockI have never slept with any manSo much irony in her life, looking back from these tangled shadows, the guards' hands moving over herWhat mortal knew the way their fate line would run? Inevitably perhaps, she thought about Devin in the hidden closet of the Sandreni PalaceWhich had worked our rather differently in almost every way than she had expected it toNot that she'd been thinking of futures or fates that day
And now? What should she be thinking now, as the patterns began to unfold again? The images, she told herself, cloaked in shadow with three guards: hold hard to the small chanel purse images |
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