What else the evening might reveal, Devin didn't...
What else the evening might reveal, Devin didn't know; he hadn't allowed himself to slow down long enough to consider the question
There was no one there when he came to the lodge, though he lay silently among the trees for a long time to be certainThe front door was chained but Marra had been very good with such devices and had taught him a thing or twoHe picked the lock with the buckle of his belt, went inside, opened a window, and climbed out to relock the chainThen he slipped back in through the window, closed it, and took a look around
There was little option, reallyThe two bedchambers at the back would be dangerous and not very useful if he wanted to hearDevin balanced himself on the broad arm of a heavy wooden chair and, jumping, managed to make it up to the half-loft on his second attempt
Nursing a shin bruised in the process he took a pillow from one of the pallets stored up there and proceeded to cartier tank louis cartier wedge himself into the remotest, darkest corner he could find, behind two beds and the stuffed head of an antlered corbin stagBy lying on his left side, eye to a chink in the floorboards, he had an almost complete view of the room below
He tried to guide himself towards a mood of calm and patienceUnfortunately, he soon became irrationally conscious of the fact that the glassy eye of the corbin was glitteringly fixed upon himUnder the circumstances it made him nervousEventually he got up, turned the chestnut head to one side and settled in to his hiding-place again
And right about then, as the grimly purposeful activities of the day gave way to a time when he could do nothing but wait, Devin began to be afraid
He was under no real illusions: he was a dead man if they found him hereThe secrecy and tension in Tomasso bar Sandre's words and manner that morning made that clear enoughEven without what Catriana had tiffany and co necklace done in her own effort to overhear those words, and then to prevent him from doing soFor the first time Devin began to contemplate where the rash momentum of his wounded pride had carried him
When the servants came half an hour later to prepare the room they gave him some very bad momentsBad enough, in fact, to make him briefly wish that he was back home in Asoli guiding a plow behind a pair of stolid water buffaloesThey were fine creatures, water buffaloes, patient, uncomplainingThey plowed fields for you, and their milk made cheeseThere was even something to be said for the predictable grey skies of Asoli in autumn and the equally predictable peopleNone of their girls, for example, were as irritatingly superior as Catriana d'Astibar who had got him into thisNor would any Asolini servant, Devin was quite certain, ever have volunteered, as one Triad-blighted fool below was doing even now, to bring down a pallet balenciaga bag from the half-loft in case one of the vigil-keeping lords should grow weary
"Goch, don't be more of a fool than you absolutely must be!" the steward snapped officiously in reply"They are here to keep a waking watch all night, a pallet in the room is an insult to them bothBe grateful you aren't dependent on your brain to feed your belly, Goch!"
Devin fervently seconded the sentiments of the insult and wished the steward a long and lucrative existenceFor the tenth time since the Sandreni servants had entered the lower room he cursed Catriana, and for the twentieth time, himselfThe ratio seemed about right
Finally the servants left; heading back for Astibar to bear the Duke's body hereThe steward's instructions were painstakingly explicitWith idiots like Goch around, Devin thought spitefully, they had to be
From where he lay, Devin could see the daylight gradually waning towards duskHe found himself softly chanel diamond watches humming his old cradle song
His mind turned back to the morningTo the long walk through empty, dusty rooms of the palaceTo the hidden closet at the endThe sudden silken feel of Catriana when her gown had drifted above her hipsHe made himself stop that too
It grew steadily darkerThe first owl called, not far awayDevin had grown up in the country; it was a familiar soundHe heard some forest animal rooting in the underbrush at the edge of the clearingOnce in a while a gusting of the wind would set the leaves to rustling
Then, abruptly, there came a shining of white light through one of the drawn window curtains and Devin knew that Vidomni was high enough to look down upon this clearing amid the tall trees of the wood, which meant that blue Ilarion would be rising even nowWhich meant it would not be very much longerThere was a wavering of torchlight and the sound of voicesThe lock clinked, rattled, and the door swung chloe black op