ESC HIS FATHERS BIER OUT THE EASTERN GATE IN THE hour before suomasso bar Satled his horse to an easy walk and allowed his mind to drift for the first time in forty-eight intensely stressful hours.
The road was quiet. Normally it would have been clogged at this hour with people returning to the distrada before curfew locked the city gates. Normally sundown cleared the streets of Astibar of all save the patrolling Barbadian meraries and those reckless enough to defy them in search of women or wine or other diversions of the dark.
This was not a normal time, however. Tonight and for the wo nights there would be no curfew in Astibar. With the grapes gathered and the distradas harvest a triumphant ohe Festival of Vines would see singing and dang and things wilder than those ireets for all three nights. For these three nights in the year Astibar tried to pretend it was sensuous, det Senzio. No Duke in the old days—and not even dour Alberiow—had been foolish enough to rouse the people unnecessarily by denying them this a release from the sober round of the year.
Tomasso glanced back at his city. The setting sun was red among thin clouds behind the temple- domes and the towers, bathing Astibar in an eerily beautiful glow. A breeze had e up and there was a bite to it. Tomasso thought about putting on his gloves and decided against it: he would have had to remove some of his rings and he quite liked the look of his gems in this elusive, transitory light. Autumn was very definitely upon them, with the Ember Days approag fast. It would not be long, a matter of days, before the first frost touched those last few precious grapes that had bee on chosen vio bee—if all fell rightly—the icy clear blue wihat was the pride of Astibar.
Behind him the eight servants plodded stolidly along the road, bearing the bier and the simple coffin—bare wood save for the Ducal crest above—of Tomassos father. Oher side of them the two vigil-keepers rode in grim silence. Which was not surprising, giveure of their errand and the plex, many-geioned hatreds that twisted between those two men.
Those three men, Tomasso corrected himself. It was three, if one chose to t the dead man who had so carefully planned all of this, down to the detail of who should ride on which side of his bier, who before and who behind. Not to mentioher more surprisiail of exactly which two lords of the province of Astibar should be asked to be his escorts to the hunting lodge for the night-long vigil and from there to the Sandreni Crypt at dawn. Or, to put the matter rather more to the point, the real point: which two lords could and should be entrusted with what they were to learn during the vigil in the forest that night.
At that thought Tomasso felt a nudge of apprehension within his rib cage. He quelled it, as he had taught himself to do over the years— unbelievable how many years—of discussing such matters with his father.
But now Sandre was dead and he was ag alone, and the night they had labored towards was almost upon them with this crimson waning of light. Tomasso, two years past his fortieth naming day khat were he not careful he could easily feel like a child again.
The twelve-year-old child he had been, for example, when Sandre, Duke of Astibar, had found him naked iraw of the stables with the sixteen-year-old son of the chief groom.
His lover had beeed of course, though discreetly, to keep the matter quiet. Tomasso had been whip