The Curse of Chalion

Lois McMaster Bujold


Chalion

Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 28
Chapter 29

The Curse of Chalion
by Lois McMaster Bujold

Acknowledgements

   The Author would like to thank Professor William D. Phillips, Jr., for History 3714, the most useful four hundred dollars and ten weeks I ever spent in school; Pat “Oh, c’mon, it’ll be fun” Wrede for the letter game that first drew the proto-Cazaril, blinking and stumbling, from my back-brain into the light of day; and, I suppose, the utility companies of Minneapolis for that hot shower one cold February, where the first two items collided unexpectedly in my head to create a new world and all the people in it.

Chapter 1

   Cazaril heard the mounted horsemen on the road before he saw them. He glanced over his shoulder. The well-worn track behind him curled up around a rolling rise, what passed for a hill on these high windy plains, before dipping again into the late-winter muck of Baocia’s bony soil. At his feet a little rill, too small and intermittent to rate a culvert or a bridge, trickled greenly across the track from the sheep-cropped pastures above. The thump of hooves, jangle of harness, clink of bells, creak of gear and careless echo of voices came on at too quick a rhythm to be some careful farmer with a team, or parsimonious pack-men driving their mules.
   The cavalcade trotted around the side of the rise riding two by two, in full panoply of their order, some dozen men. Not bandits—Cazaril let out his breath, and swallowed his unsettled stomach back down. Not that he had anything to offer bandits but sport. He trudged a little way off the track and turned to watch them pass.
   The horsemen’s chain shirts were silvered, glinting in the watery morning sunlight, for show, not for use. Their tabards of blue, dyes almost matching one with another, were worked with white in the sigil of the Lady of Spring. Their gray cloaks were thrown back like banners in the breeze of their passing, pinned at their shoulders with silver badges that had all the tarnish polished off today. Soldier-brothers of ceremony, not of war; they would have no desire to get Cazaril’s stubborn bloodstains on those clothes.
   To Cazaril’s surprise, their captain held up a hand as they came near. The column crashed raggedly to a halt, the squelch and suck of the hooves trailing off in a way that would have had Cazaril’s father’s old horse-master bellowing grievous and entertaining insults at such a band of boys as this. Well, no matter.
   “You there, old fellow,” the leader called across the saddlebow of his banner-carrier at Cazaril.
   Cazaril, alone on the road, barely kept his head from swiveling around to see who was being so addressed. They took him for some local farm lout, trundling to market or on some errand, and he supposed he looked the part: worn boots mud-weighted, a thick jumble of mismatched charity clothes keeping the chill southeast wind from freezing his bones. He was grateful to all the gods of the year’s turning for every grubby stitch of that fabric, eh. Two weeks of beard itching his chin. Fellow indeed. The captain might with justice have chosen more scornful appellations. But… old?
   The captain pointed down the road to where another track crossed it. “Is that the road to Valenda?”
   It had been… Cazaril had to stop and count it in his head, and the sum dismayed him. Seventeen years since he had ridden last down this road, going off not to ceremony but to real war in the provincar of Baocia’s train. Although bitter to be riding a gelding and not a finer warhorse, he’d been just as glossy-haired and young and arrogant and vain of his dress as the fine young animals up there staring down at him. Today, I should be happy for a donkey, though I had to bend my knees to keep from trailing my toes in the mud. Cazaril smiled back up at the soldier-brothers, fully aware of what hollowed-out purses lay gaping and disemboweled behind most of those rich facades.
   They stared down their noses at him as though they could smell him from there. He was not a person they wished to impress, no lord or lady who might hand down largesse to them as they might to him; still, he would do for them to practice their aristocratic airs upon. They mistook his returning stare for admiration, perhaps, or maybe just for half-wittedness.
   He bit back the temptation to steer them wrong, up into some sheep byre or wherever that deceptively broad-looking crossroad petered out. No trick to pull on the Daughter’s own guardsmen on the eve of the Daughter’s Day. And besides, the men who joined the holy military orders were not especially noted for their senses of humor, and he might pass them again, being bound for the same town himself. Cazaril cleared his throat, which hadn’t spoken to a man since yesterday. “No, Captain. The road to Valenda has a roya’s milestone.” Or it had, once. “A mile or three farther on. You can’t mistake it.” He pulled a hand out of the warmth of the folds of his coat, and waved onward. His fingers didn’t really straighten right, and he found himself waving a claw. The chill air bit his swollen joints, and he tucked his hand hastily back into its burrow of cloth.
   The captain nodded at his banner-carrier, a thick-shouldered… fellow, who cradled his banner pole in the crook of his elbow and fumbled out his purse. He fished in it, looking no doubt for a coin of sufficiently small denomination. He had a couple brought up to the light, between his fingers, when his horse jinked. A coin—a gold royal, not a copper vaida—spurted out of his grip and spun down into the mud. He stared after it, aghast, but then controlled his features. He would not dismount in front of his fellows to grub in the muck and retrieve it. Not like the peasant he expected Cazaril to be: for consolation, he raised his chin and smiled sourly, waiting for Cazaril to dive frantically and amusingly after this unexpected windfall.
   Instead, Cazaril bowed and intoned, “May the blessings of the Lady of Spring fall upon your head, young sir, in the same spirit as your bounty to a roadside vagabond, and as little begrudged.”
   If the young soldier-brother had had more wits about him, he might well have unraveled this mockery, and Cazaril the seeming-peasant drawn a well-earned horsewhip across his face. Little enough chance of that, judging by the brother’s bull-like stare, though the captain’s lips twisted in exasperation. But the captain just shook his head and gestured his column onward.
   If the banner-bearer was too proud to scramble in the mud, Cazaril was much too tired to. He waited till the baggage train, a gaggle of servants and mules bringing up the rear, had passed before crouching painfully down and retrieving the little spark from the cold water seeping into a horse’s print. The adhesions in his back pulled cruelly. Gods. I do move like an old man. He caught his breath and heaved to his feet, feeling a century old, feeling like road dung stuck to the boot heel of the Father of Winter as he made his way out of the world.
   He polished the mud off the coin—little enough even if gold—and pulled out his own purse. Now there was an empty bladder. He dropped the thin disk of metal into the leather mouth and stared down at its lonely glint. He sighed and tucked the pouch away. Now he had a hope for bandits to steal again. Now he had a reason to fear. He reflected on his new burden, so great for its weight, as he stumped up the road in the wake of the soldier-brothers. Almost not worth it. Almost. Gold. Temptation to the weak, weariness to the wise… what was it to a dull-eyed bull of a soldier, embarrassed by his accidental largesse?
   Cazaril gazed around the barren landscape. Not much in the way of trees or coverts, except in that distant watercourse over there, the bare branches and brambles lining it charcoal-gray in the hazy light. The only shelter anywhere in sight was an abandoned windmill on the height to his left, its roof fallen in and its vanes broken down and rotting. Still… just in case…
   Cazaril swung off the road and began trudging up the hill. Hillock, compared to the mountain passes he’d traversed a week ago. The climb still stole his wind; almost, he turned back. The gusts up here were stronger, flowing over the ground, riffling the silver-gold tufts of winter’s dry grasses. He nipped out of the raw air into the mill’s shadowed darkness and mounted a dubious and shaking staircase winding partway up the inner wall. He peered out the shutterless window.
   On the road below, a man belabored a brown horse back along the track. No soldier-brother: one of the servants, with his reins in one hand and a stout cudgel in the other. Sent back by his master to secretly shake the accidental coin back out of the hide of the roadside vagabond? He rode up around the curve, then, in a few minutes, back again. He paused at the muddy rill, turned back and forth in his saddle to peer around the empty slopes, shook his head in disgust, and spurred on to join his fellows again.
   Cazaril realized he was laughing. It felt odd, unfamiliar, a shudder through his shoulders that wasn’t cold or shock or gut-wringing fear. And the strange hollow absence of… what? Corrosive envy? Ardent desire? He didn’t want to follow the soldier-brothers, didn’t even want to lead them anymore. Didn’t want to be them. He’d watched their parade as idly as a man watching a dumb-show in the marketplace. Gods. I must be tired. Hungry, too. It was still a quarter-day’s walk to Valenda, where he might find a moneylender who could change his royal for more useful copper vaidas. Tonight, by the blessing of the Lady, he might sleep in an inn and not a cow byre. He could buy a hot meal. He could buy a shave, a bath…
   He turned, his eyes adjusted now to the half shadows in the mill. Then he saw the body splayed out on the rubble-strewn floor.
   He froze in panic, but then breathed again when he saw the body didn’t. No live man could lie unmoving in that strange back-bent position. Cazaril felt no fear of dead men. Whatever had made them dead, now…
   Despite the corpse’s stillness, Cazaril scooped up a loose cobble from the floor before approaching it. A man, plump, middle-aged, judging from the gray in his neatly trimmed beard. The face under the beard was swollen and empurpled. Strangled? There were no marks showing on his throat. His clothing was sober but very fine, yet ill fitting, tight and pulled about. The brown wool gown and black sleeveless vest-cloak edged with silver-embroidered cord might be the garb of a rich merchant or minor lord with austere tastes, or of a scholar with ambition. Not a farmer or artisan, in any case. Nor soldier. The hands, mottled purple-yellow and swollen also, lacked calluses, lacked—Cazaril glanced at his own left hand, where the two missing finger ends testified to the ill-advisedness of arguing with a grappling rope—lacked damage. The man bore no ornaments at all, no chains or rings or seals to match his rich dress. Had some scavenger been here before Cazaril?
   Cazaril gritted his teeth, bending for a closer look, a motion punished by the pulls and aches in his own body. Not ill fitted, and not fat—the body was unnaturally swollen, too, like the face and hands. But anyone that far gone in decay ought to have filled this dreary shelter with his stench, enough to have choked Cazaril when he’d first ducked through the broken door. No scents here but some musky perfume or incense, tallow smoke, and clay-cold sweat.
   Cazaril discarded his first thought, that the poor fellow had been robbed and murdered on the road and dragged up here out of sight, as he looked over the cleared patch of hard-packed dirt floor around the man. Five candle stumps, burned to puddles, blue, red, green, black, white. Little piles of herbs and ash, all kicked about now. A dark and broken pile of feathers that resolved itself in the shadows as a dead crow, its neck twisted. A moment’s further search turned up the dead rat that went with it, its little throat cut. Rat and Crow, sacred to the Bastard, god of all disasters out of season: tornadoes, earthquakes, droughts, floods, miscarriages, and murders… Wanted to compel the gods, did you? The fool had tried to work death magic, by the look of it, and paid death magic’s customary price. Alone?
   Touching nothing, Cazaril levered himself to his feet and took a turn around both the inside and the outside of the sagging mill. No packs, no cloaks or possessions dumped in a corner. A horse or horses had been tied up on the side opposite the road, recently by dampness of their droppings, but they were gone now.
   Cazaril sighed. This was no business of his, but it was impious to leave a man dead and abandoned, to rot without ceremony. The gods alone knew how long it would be till someone else found him. He was clearly a well-to-do man, though—someone would be looking. Not the sort to disappear tracelessly and unmissed like a ragged vagabond. Cazaril set aside the temptation to slide back down to the road and go off pretending he’d never seen the man.
   Cazaril set off down the track leading from the back side of the mill. There ought to be a farmhouse at the end of it, people, something. But he’d not walked more than a few minutes before he met a man leading a donkey, loaded high with brush and wood, climbing up around the curve. The man stopped and eyed him suspiciously.
   “The Lady of Spring give you good morning, sir,” said Cazaril politely. What harm was in it, for Cazaril to Sir a farmer? He’d kissed the scaly feet of lesser men by far, in the abject terrified slavery of the galleys.
   The man, after an appraising look, gave him a half salute and a mumbled, “B’yer’Lady.”
   “Do you live hereabouts?”

  “Aye,” the man said. He was middle-aged, well fed, his hooded coat, like Cazaril’s shabbier one, plain but serviceable. He walked as though he owned the land he stood on, though probably not much more.
   “I, ah,” Cazaril pointed back up the track. “I’d stepped off the road a moment, to take shelter in that mill up there”—no need to go into details of what he’d been sheltering from—“and I found a dead man.”
   “Aye,” the man said.
   Cazaril hesitated, wishing he hadn’t dropped his cobble. “You know about him?”
   “Saw his horse tied up there, this morning.”
   “Oh.” He might have gone on down the road after all, with no harm done. “Have you any idea who the poor fellow was?”
   The farmer shrugged, and spat. “He’s not from around here, is all I can say. I had our divine of the Temple up, soon as I realized what sort of bad doings had been going on there last night. She took away all the fellow’s goods that would come loose, to hold till called for. His horse is in my barn. A fair trade, aye, for the wood and oil to speed him out. The divine said he daren’t be left till nightfall.” He gestured to the high-piled load of burnables hitched to the donkey’s back, gave the halter rope a tug, and started up the track again. Cazaril fell into step beside him.
   “Do you have any idea what the fellow was doing?” asked Cazaril.
   “Plain enough what he was doing.” The farmer snorted. “And got what he deserved for it.”
   “Um… or who he was doing it to?”
   “No idea. I’ll leave it to the Temple. I do wish he hadn’t done it on my land. Dropping his bad luck all over… like to haunt the place hereafter. I’ll purge him with fire and burn down that cursed wreck of a mill at the same time, aye. No good to leave it standing, it’s too close to the road. Attracts”—he eyed Cazaril—“trouble.”
   Cazaril paced along for another moment. Finally, he asked, “You plan to burn him with his clothes on?”
   The farmer studied him sideways, summing up the poverty of his garb. “I’m not touching anything of his. I wouldn’t have taken the horse, except it’s no charity to turn the poor beast loose to starve.”
   Cazaril said more hesitantly, “Would you mind if I took the clothes, then?”
   “I’m not the one as you need to ask, aye? Deal with him. If you dare. I won’t stop you.”
   “I’ll… help you lay him out.”
   The farmer blinked. “Now, that would be welcome.”
   Cazaril judged the farmer was secretly more than pleased to leave the corpse handling to him. Perforce, Cazaril had to leave the farmer to pile up the bigger logs for the pyre, built inside the mill, though he offered a few mild suggestions how to place them to gain the best draft and be most sure of taking down what remained of the building. He helped carry in the lighter brush.
   The farmer watched from a safe distance as Cazaril undressed the corpse, tugging the layered garments off over the stiffened limbs. The man was swollen further even than he’d appeared at first, his abdomen puffing out obscenely when Cazaril finally pulled his fine embroidered cotton undershirt from him. It was rather frightening. But it couldn’t be contagion after all, not with this uncanny lack of smell. Cazaril wondered, if the body weren’t burned by nightfall, if it was likely to explode or rupture, and if it did, what would come out of it… or enter into it. He bundled up the clothing, only a little stained, as quickly as he could. The shoes were too small, and he left them. He and the farmer together heaved the corpse onto the pyre.
   When all was readied, Cazaril fell to his knees, shut his eyes, and chanted out the prayer for the dead. Not knowing which god had taken up the man’s soul, though he could make a shrewd guess, he addressed all five of the Holy Family in turn, speaking clearly and plainly. All offerings must be one’s best, even if all one had to offer was words. “Mercy from the Father and the Mother, mercy from the Sister and the Brother, Mercy from the Bastard, five times mercy, High Ones, we beseech you.” Whatever sins the stranger had committed, he had surely paid. Mercy, High Ones. Not justice, please, not justice. We would all be fools to pray for justice.
   When he’d finished, he climbed stiffly back to his feet and looked around. Thoughtfully, he collected the rat and the crow, and added their little corpses to the man’s, at his head and feet.
   It was Cazaril’s day for the gods’ own luck, it seemed. He wondered which kind it would prove to be this time.


* * *

   A column of oily smoke rose from the burning mill as Cazaril started up the road to Valenda once more, the dead man’s clothes tied into a tight bundle on his back. Though they were less filthy than the clothes he wore, he would, he thought, find a laundress and have them thoroughly cleaned before donning them. His copper vaidas were dwindling sadly in his mind’s accounting, but the services of a laundress would be worth them.
   He’d slept last night in a barn, shivering in the straw, his meal a half a loaf of stale bread. The remaining half had been his breakfast. It was nearly three hundred miles from the port city of Zagosur, on Ibra’s mild coast, to the middle of Baocia, centralmost province of Chalion. He hadn’t been able to walk the distance nearly as quickly as he’d calculated. In Zagosur, the Temple Hospital of the Mother’s Mercy was dedicated to the succor of men cast up, in all the various ways they could be cast up, by the sea. The charity purse the acolytes there had given him had run thin, then out altogether, before he’d reached his goal. But only just before. One more day, he’d figured, less than a day. If he could just put one foot in front of the other for one more day, he might reach his refuge and crawl into it.
   When he’d started from Ibra, his head had been full of plans for how to ask the Dowager Provincara for a place, for old times’ sake, in her household. At the foot of her table. Something, anything at all so long as it was not too hard. His ambition had dwindled as he’d slogged east over the mountain passes into the cooler heights of the central plateau. Maybe her castle warder or her horse-master would grant him a place in her stables, or a place in her kitchen, and he need not intrude upon the great lady at all. If he could beg a place as a scullion, he wouldn’t even have to give his real name. He doubted anyone was left in her household by now who’d know him from the charmed days when he’d served the late Provincar dy Baocia as a page.
   The dream of a silent, abashed place by the kitchen fire, nameless, not bellowed at by any creature more alarming than a cook, for any task more dreadful than drawing water or carrying firewood, had drawn him onward into the last of the winter winds. The vision of rest drove him as an obsession, that and the knowledge that every stride put another yard between himself and the nightmare of the sea. He’d bemused himself for hours on the lonely road, revolving suitable new servile names for his new, anonymous self. But now, it seemed, he need not appear before the shocked eyes of her court dressed in poor men’s castoffs after all. Instead, Cazaril begs a peasant for the clothes off a corpse, and is grateful for both their favors. Is. Is. Most humbly grateful. Most humbly.


* * *

   The town of Valenda tumbled down over its low hill like a rich quilt worked in red and gold, red for the tile roofs, gold for the native stone, both glowing in the sun. Cazaril blinked at the dazzle of color in his blurring eyes, the familiar hues of his homeland. The houses of Ibra were all whitewashed, too bright in their hot northern noons, bleached and blinding. This ochre sandstone was the perfect shade for a house, a town, a country—a caress upon the eyes. At the top of the hill, like a golden crown in truth, the Provincara’s castle sprawled, its curtain walls seeming to waver in his vision. He stared at it, daunted, for a little, then slogged onward, his steps somehow going faster than he’d been able to push them all this long journey, despite the shaking, aching weariness of his legs.
   It was past the hour for the markets, so the streets were quiet and serene as he threaded through them to the main square. At the temple gate, he approached an elderly woman who looked unlikely to try to follow and rob him, and asked his way to a moneylender. The moneylender filled his hand with a satisfying weight of copper vaidas in exchange for his tiny royal, and directed him to the laundress and the public bath. He paused on the way only long enough to buy an oil cake from a lone street vendor, and devour it

   He poured out vaidas on the laundress’s counter and negotiated the loan of a pair of linen drawstring trousers and a tunic, together with a pair of straw sandals in which he might trot down the street through the now-mild afternoon to the baths. In competently red hands she carried off all his vile clothing and his filthy boots. The bath’s barber trimmed his hair and beard while he sat, still, in a real chair, oh wonderful. The bath boy served him tea. And then it was back to the bath courtyard itself, to stand on the flagstones and scrub himself all over with scented soap and wait for the bath boy to sluice him down with a bucket of warm water. In joyous anticipation, Cazaril eyed the huge copper-bottomed wooden tank that was sized for six men, or women every other day, but which by the happy chance of the hour he looked to have all to himself. The brazier underneath kept the water steaming. He could soak there all afternoon, while the laundress boiled his clothing.
   The bath boy climbed the stool and poured the water over his head, while Cazaril turned and sputtered under the stream. He opened his eyes to find the boy staring at him, mouth agape.
   “Were you… were you a deserter?” the boy choked out.
   Oh. His back, the ropy red mess of scars piled one across another so thickly as to leave no untouched skin between, legacy of the last flogging the Roknari galley-masters had given him. Here in the royacy of Chalion, army deserters were among the few criminals punished so savagely by that particular means. “No,” said Cazaril firmly. “I’m not a deserter.” Cast-off, certainly; betrayed, perhaps. But he’d never deserted a post, not even his most disastrous ones.
   The boy snapped his mouth shut, dropped his wooden bucket with a clunk, and scampered out. Cazaril sighed, and made for the tank.
   He’d just lowered his aching body to the chin in the heavenly heat when the bath owner stomped into the tiny tiled courtyard.
   “Out!” the owner roared. “Out of there, you—!”
   Cazaril recoiled in terror as the bath man seized him by the hair and dragged him bodily up out of the water. “What? ” The man shoved his tunic and trousers and sandals at him, all in a wad, and dragged him fiercely by the arm out of the courtyard and into the front of the shop. “Here, wait, what are you doing? I can’t go naked into the street!”
   The bath man wheeled him around, and released him momentarily. “Get dressed, and get out. I run a respectable place here! Not for the likes of you! Go down to the whorehouse. Or better still, drown yourself in the river!”
   Dazed and dripping, Cazaril fumbled the tunic over his head, yanked up the trousers, and tried to cram his feet back into the straw sandals while holding up the pants’ drawstring and being shoved again toward the door. It slammed in his face as he turned, realization dawning upon him. The other crime punished by flogging near to death in the royacy of Chalion was the rape of a virgin or a boy. His face flushed hot. “But it wasn’t—but I didn’t—I was sold to the corsairs of Roknar—”
   He stood trembling. He considered beating on the door, and insisting those within listen to his explanations. Oh, my poor honor. The bath man was the bath boy’s father, Cazaril rather guessed.
   He was laughing. And crying. Teetering on the ragged edge of… something that frightened him more than the outraged bath man. He gulped for breath. He had not the stamina for an argument, and even if he could get them to listen, why should they believe him? He rubbed his eyes with the soft linen of his sleeve. It had that sharp, pleasant scent left only by the track of a good hot iron. It tumbled him back to memories of life in houses, not in ditches. It seemed a thousand years ago.
   Defeated, he turned and shuffled back up the street to the laundress’s green-painted door again. Its bell rang as he pushed timidly back inside.
   “Have you a corner where I might sit, ma’am?” he asked her, when she popped back out at the bell’s summons. “I… finished earlier than…” his voice died in muffled shame.
   She shrugged sturdy shoulders. “Ah, aye. Come back with me. Wait.” She dived below her counter and came up with a small book, the span of Cazaril’s hand and bound in plain undyed leather. “Here’s your book. You’re lucky I checked your pockets, or it would be a mucky mess by now, believe you me.”
   Startled, Cazaril picked it up. It must have lain concealed in the thick cloth of the dead man’s outer cloak; he hadn’t felt it when he’d bundled the garment up so hastily back in the mill. This ought to go to that divine of the Temple, with the rest of the dead man’s possessions. Well, I’m not walking it back there tonight, that’s certain. He would return it as soon as he was able.
   For now, he merely said, “Thank you, ma’am,” to the laundress, and followed her into a central court with a deep well, similar to her neighbor’s of the bathhouse, where a fire kept a cauldron on the boil, and a quartet of young women scrubbed and splashed at the laundry tubs. She gestured him to a bench by the wall and he sat down out of range of the splashes, staring a while in a kind of disembodied bliss at the peaceful, busy scene. Time was he would have scorned to eye a troupe of red-faced peasant girls, saving his glances for the fine ladies. How had he never realized how beautiful laundresses were? Strong and laughing, moving like a dance, and kind, so kind, so kind…
   Finally, his hand moved in reawakened curiosity to look in the book. It might bear the dead man’s name, solving a mystery. He flipped it open to discover its pages covered in a thicket of handwriting, with occasional little scratchy diagrams. Entirely in a cipher.
   He blinked, and bent more closely, his eye beginning to take the cipher apart almost despite his own volition. It was mirror-writing. And with a substitution-of-letters system—those could be tedious to break down. But the chance of a short word, three times repeated on the page, handed him his key. The merchant had chosen the most childish of ciphers, merely shifting each letter one position and not troubling to shuffle his pattern thereafter. Except that… this wasn’t in the Ibran language spoken, in its various dialects, in the royacies of Ibra, Chalion, and Brajar. It was in Darthacan, spoken in the southernmost provinces of Ibra and great Darthaca beyond the mountains. And the man’s handwriting was dreadful, his spelling worse, and his command of Darthacan grammar apparently almost nonexistent. This was going to be harder than Cazaril had thought. He would need paper and pen, a quiet place, time, and a good light, if he was to make head or tail of this mess. Well, it might have been worse. It might have been ciphered in bad Roknari.
   It was almost certainly the man’s notes on his magic experiments, however. That much Cazaril could tell. Enough to convict and hang him, if he hadn’t been dead already. The punishments for practicing—no, for attempting —death magic were ferocious. Punishment for succeeding was generally considered redundant, as there was no case Cazaril knew of a magical assassination that had not cost the life of its caster. Whatever the link was by which the practitioner forced the Bastard to let one of his demons into the world, it always returned with two souls or none.
   That being so, there should have been another corpse made somewhere in Baocia last night…. By its nature, death magic wasn’t very popular. It did not allow substitutions or proxies in its double-edged scything. To kill was to be killed. Knife, sword, poison, cudgel, almost any other means was a better choice if one wanted to survive one’s own murderous effort. But, in delusion or desperation, men still attempted it from time to time. This book must definitely be taken back to that rural divine, for her to pass along to whatever superior of the gods’ Temple ended up investigating the case for the royacy. Cazaril’s brow wrinkled, and he sat up, closing the frustrating volume.
   The warm steam, the rhythm of the women’s work and voices, and Cazaril’s exhaustion tempted him to lie on his side, curled up on the bench with the book pillowed under his cheek. He would just close his eyes for a moment…
   He woke with a start and a crick in his neck, his fingers closing around an unexpected weight of wool… one of the laundresses had thrown a blanket over him. An involuntary sigh of gratitude escaped his throat at this careless grace. He scrambled upright, checking the lay of the light. The courtyard was nearly all in shadow now. He must have slept for most of the afternoon. The sound waking him had been the thump of his cleaned and, to the limit they would take it, polished boots, dropped from the laundress’s hand. She set the pile of Cazaril’s folded clothing, fine and disreputable both, on the bench next to him.
   Remembering the bath boy’s reaction, Cazaril asked timorously, “Have you a room where I might dress, ma’am?” Privately.
   She nodded cordially and led him to a modest bedroom at the back of the house, and left him. Western light poured through the little window. Cazaril sorted his clean laundry, and eyed with aversion the shabby clothes he’d been wearing for weeks. An oval mirror on a stand in the corner, the room’s richest ornament, decided him.
   Tentatively, with another prayer of thanks to the spirit of the departed man whose unexpected heir he had become, he donned clean cotton trews, the fine embroidered shirt, the brown wool robe—warm from the iron, though the seams were still a trifle damp—and finally the black vest-cloak that fell in a rich profusion of cloth and glint of silver to his ankles. The dead man’s clothes were long enough, if loose on Cazaril’s gaunt frame. He sat on the bed and pulled on his boots, their heels lopsided and their soles worn to scarcely more than the thickness of parchment. He had not seen himself in any mirror larger or better than a piece of polished steel for… three years? This one was glass, and tilted to show himself quite half at a time, from head to foot.
   A stranger stared back at him. Five gods, when did my beard go part-gray? He touched its short-trimmed neatness with a trembling hand. At least his newly scissored hair had not begun to retreat from his forehead, much. If Cazaril had to guess himself merchant, lord, or scholar in this dress, he would have to say scholar; one of the more fanatic sort, hollow-eyed and a little crazed. The garments wanted chains of gold or silver, seals, a fine belt with studs or jewels, thick rings with gleaming stones, to proclaim him any rank higher. And yet the flowing lines suited him, he fancied. He stood a little straighter.

   In any case, the roadside vagabond had vanished. In any case… here was not a man to beg a scullion’s place from a castle cook.
   He’d planned to buy a night’s bed in an inn with the last of his vaidas and present himself to the Provincara in the morning. Uneasily, he wondered if gossip from the bath man had gotten round town very far yet. And if he would be denied entry to any safe and respectable house…
   Now, tonight. Go. He would climb to the castle and find out if he might claim refuge or not. I cannot bear another night of not knowing. Before the light failed. Before my heart fails.
   He tucked the notebook back into the inside pocket of the black vest-cloak that had apparently concealed it before. Leaving the vagabond’s clothing in a pile on the bed, he turned and strode from the room.

Chapter 2

   As he climbed the last slope to the main castle gate, Cazaril regretted he’d had no way to provision himself with a sword. The two guards in the green-and-black livery of the provincar of Baocia watched his unarmed approach without alarm, but also without any of the alert interest that might presage respect. Cazaril saluted the one wearing the sergeant’s badge in his hat with only an austere, calculated nod. The servility he’d practiced in his mind was for some back gate, not this one, not if he expected to get any farther. At least, by the courtesy of his laundress, he’d been able to provision himself with the right names.
   “Good evening, Sergeant. I am here to see the castle warder, the Ser dy Ferrej. I am Lupe dy Cazaril.” Leaving the sergeant to guess, preferably wrongly, if he’d been summoned.
   “On what business, sir?” the sergeant asked, polite but unimpressed.
   Cazaril’s shoulders straightened; he didn’t know from what unused lumber room in the back of his soul the voice came, but it came out clipped and commanding nonetheless: “On his business, Sergeant.”
   Automatically, the sergeant saluted. “Yes, sir.” His nod told off his fellow to stay sharp, and he gestured Cazaril to follow him through the open gate. “This way, sir. I’ll ask if the warder will see you.”
   Cazaril’s heart wrung as he stared around the broad cobbled courtyard inside the castle gates. He’d worn out how much shoe leather, scampering across these stones on errands for the high household? The master of the pages had complained of bankruptcy in buskins, till the Provincara, laughing, had inquired if he would truly prefer a lazy page who would wear out the seat of his trousers instead, for if so, she could find a few to plague him with.
   She still ran her household with a keen eye and a firm hand, it appeared. The liveries of the guards were in excellent condition, the cobbles of this yard were swept clean, and the small bare trees in tubs, flanking the major doorways, had flowers forced from bulbs gracing their feet, blooming bright and fair and perfectly timed for the Daughter’s Day celebration tomorrow.
   The guard gestured Cazaril to wait upon a bench against a wall still blessedly warm from the day’s sun, while he went to the side door leading to the office quarters, and spoke to a house servant there who might, or might not, turn out the warder for this stranger. He’d not paced halfway back to his post before his comrade stuck his head around the gate to call, “The royse returns!”
   The sergeant turned his head toward the servants’ quarters to take up the bellow, “The royse returns! Look sharp, there!” and quickened his march.
   Grooms and servants tumbled from various doors around the courtyard as a clatter of hooves and halloing voices sounded from outside the gates. First through the stone arches, with a self-supplied fanfare of unladylike but triumphant whoops, rode a pair of young women on blowing horses belly-splashed with mud.
   “We win, Teidez!” the first called over her shoulder. She was dressed in a riding jacket of blue velvet, with a matching blue wool split skirt. Her hair escaped from under a girl’s lace cap, somewhat askew, in ringlets neither blond nor red but a sort of glowing amber in the shaft of setting sunlight. She had a generous mouth, pale skin, and curiously heavy-lidded eyes, squeezed now with laughter. Her taller companion, a panting brunette in red, grinned and twisted in her saddle as the rest of the cavalcade followed.
   An even younger gentleman, in a short scarlet jacket worked with beasts in silver thread, followed on an even more impressive horse, glossy black with silken tail bannering. He was flanked by two wooden-faced grooms, and followed by a frowning gentleman. He shared his—sister’s? yes, surely—curly hair, a shade redder, and wide mouth, more pouting. “The race was over at the bottom of the hill, Iselle. You cheated.”
   She made an Oh, pooh face at her royal brother. Before the scrambling servant could position the ladies’ mounting bench he was trying to bring to her, she slid from her saddle, bouncing on her booted toes.
   Her dark-haired companion also preceded her groom to the dismount and handed off her reins to him, saying, “Give these poor beasts an extra walk, till they are quite cool, Deni. We have misused them terribly.” Somewhat belying her words, she gave her horse a kiss on the middle of its white blaze, and, as it nudged her with practiced assurance, slipped it some treat from her pocket.
   Last through the gate, a couple of minutes behind, came a red-faced older woman. “Iselle, Betriz, slow down! Mother and Daughter, you girls cannot gallop over half the hinterland of Valenda like a pair of lunatics!”
   “We are slowed down. Indeed, we’re stopped,” the dark-haired girl pointed out logically. “We cannot outrun your tongue, good heart, no matter how we try. It is too fast for the speediest horse in Baocia.”
   The older woman made a moue of exasperation and waited for her groom to position her mounting bench. “Your grandmother bought you that lovely white mule, Royesse, why don’t you ever ride him? It would be so much more suitable.”
   “And so much more sloooow,” the amber-haired girl, laughing, shot back. “And anyway, poor Snowflake is all washed and braided for the procession tomorrow. The grooms would have been heartbroken if I’d taken him out and run him through the mud. They plan to keep him wrapped in sheets all night.”
   Wheezing, the older woman allowed her groom to help her dismount. Afoot again, she shook out her skirted legs and stretched her apparently aching back. The boy departed in a cluster of anxious servants, and the two young women, uncrushed by their waiting woman’s continuing murmur of complaint, raced each other to the door to the main keep. She followed, shaking her head.
   As they approached the door, a stoutish middle-aged man in severe black wool exited, and remarked to them in passing, in a voice without rancor but perfectly firm, “Betriz, if ever you gallop your horse home uphill like that again, I will take him from you. And you can use up your excessive energy running after the royesse on foot.”
   She dropped him a swift curtsey, and a daunted murmur of, “Yes, Papa.”
   The amber-haired girl came instantly to attention. “Please excuse Betriz, Ser dy Ferrej. The fault was mine. Where I led, she had no choice but to follow.”
   His brow twitched, and he gave her a little bow. “Then you might meditate, Royesse, on what honor a captain can claim, who drags his followers into an error when he knows he will himself escape the punishment.”
   The amber-haired girl’s wide lips twisted at this. After a long glance up under her lashes, she, too, dropped him a fraction of a curtsey, before both girls escaped further chastisement by dodging indoors. The man in black heaved a sigh. The waiting woman, laboring after them, cast him a nod of thanks.
   Even without these cues, Cazaril could have identified the man as the castle warder by the clink of keys at his silver-studded belt, and the chain of office around his neck. He rose at once as the man approached him, and essayed a cursedly awkward bow, pulled short by his adhesions. “Ser dy Ferrej? My name is Lupe dy Cazaril. I beg an audience of the Dowager Provincara, if… if it is her pleasure.” His voice faltered under the warder’s frown.
   “I do not know you, sir,” said the warder.
   “By the gods’ grace, the Provincara may remember me. I was once a page, here”—he gestured around rather blindly—“in this household. When the old provincar was alive.” The closest thing to a home he had left, he supposed. Cazaril was unutterably weary of being a stranger everywhere.
   The gray brows rose. “I will inquire if the Provincara will see you.”
   “That’s all I ask.” All he dared ask. He sank back to his bench, and wound his fingers together, as the warder stumped back into the main keep.
   After several miserable minutes of suspense, stared at sidelong by passing servants, Cazaril looked up at the warder’s return. Dy Ferrej eyed him with bemusement.
   “Her Grace the Provincara grants you an interview. Follow me.”
   His body had stiffened, sitting in the gathering chill; Cazaril stumbled a little, and cursed his stumble, as he followed the warder indoors. He scarcely needed a guide. The plan of the place came back to him, tumbling through his memory with every turning. Through this hall, across those blue-and-yellow-patterned tiles, up this stair and that one, through a whitewashed inner chamber, and then the room on the western wall she’d always favored for sitting in this time of day, with the best light for her seamstresses, or for reading. He had to duck his head a little through its low door, as he’d never had to before; it seemed the only change. But not a change in the door.
   “Here is the man as you bade, your grace,” the warder announced Cazaril neutrally, declining to either endorse or deny his claimed identity.
   The Dowager Provincara was seated in a wide wooden chair, made soft for her aging bones with cushions. She wore a sober dark green gown suitable to her high-ranked widowhood, but declined a widow’s cap, choosing instead to have her graying hair braided up around her head in two knots and twined with green ribbons, locked with jeweled clasps. She had a lady companion almost as old as herself seated by her side, a widow also, judging by the garb of a lay dedicat of the Temple that she wore. The companion clutched her needlework and regarded Cazaril with an untrusting frown.

   Praying his body would not betray him now with some twitch or stumble, Cazaril levered himself down onto one knee before her chair and bowed his head in respectful greeting. Her clothes were scented with lavender, and a dry old-woman smell. He looked up, searching her face for some sign of recognition. If she did not know him now, then no one he would become in truth, and swiftly.
   She gazed back, and bit her lip in wonder. “Five gods,” she murmured softly. “It really is you. My lord dy Cazaril. I bid you welcome to my house.” She held out her hand for him to kiss.
   He swallowed, almost gasping, and bent his head over it. Once, it had been fine and white, the nails perfect and pearl-rubbed. Now the knuckles stood out, and the thin skin was brown-spotted, though the nails were still as well kept as when she’d been a matron in her prime. She did not, by the smallest jerk, react to the couple of tears he dropped helplessly upon its back, but her lips curved up a little. Her hand drifted from his light grasp to touch his beard and trace one of the gray streaks. “Dear me, Cazaril, have I grown that old?”
   He blinked rapidly up at her. He would not, he would not break down weeping like an overwrought child… “It has been a long time, Your Grace.”
   “Tsk.” Her hand turned, and the dry fingers tapped him on the cheek. “That was your cue to say I haven’t changed a bit. Didn’t I teach you how to lie to a lady better than that? I had no idea I was so remiss.” With perfect composure, she retrieved her hand and nodded to her companion.
   “May I make you known to my cousin, the Lady dy Hueltar. Tessa, may I present my lord the Castillar dy Cazaril.”
   From the corner of his eye Cazaril saw the warder, with a breath of relief, relax his guard, folding his arms and leaning against the doorframe. Still on his knee, Cazaril made a clumsy bow in the dedicat’s direction.
   “You are all kindness, Your Grace, but as I no longer hold Cazaril, nor its keep, nor any of my father’s lands, I do not claim his title either.”
   “Don’t be foolish, Castillar.” Beneath her bantering tone, her voice sharpened. “My dear Provincar is dead these ten years, but I’ll see the Bastard’s demons eat the first man who dares to call me anything less than Provincara. We have what we can hold, dear boy, and never let them see you flinch or falter.”
   Beside her, the dedicat stiffened in disapproval of these blunt words, if not, perhaps, of the sentiment behind them. Cazaril judged it imprudent to point out that the title by right now belonged to the Provincara’s daughter-in-law. Her son the present provincar and his wife likely judged it imprudent, too.
   “You will always be the great lady to me, Your Grace, whom we worshipped from afar,” Cazaril offered.
   “Better,” she approved judiciously. “Much better. I do like a man who can pull his wits about him.” She waved at her warder. “Dy Ferrej, fetch the castillar a chair. One for yourself, too; you loom like a crow there.”
   The warder, apparently accustomed to such addresses, smiled and murmured, “Certainly, Your Grace.” He pulled up a carved chair for Cazaril, with a gratifying murmur of Will my lord be seated?, and retrieved another for himself from the next chamber, placing it a little apart from his lady and her guest.
   Cazaril scrambled up and sank down again in blessed comfort. He ventured tentatively, “Was that the royse and royesse I saw come in from riding as I arrived, Your Grace? I should not have troubled you with my intrusion, had I known you had such visitors.” He would not have dared.
   “Not visiting, Castillar. They are living here with me for now. Valenda is a quiet, clean town, and… my daughter is not entirely well. It suits her to retire here, after the too-hectic court.” A weary look flickered in her eyes.
   Five gods, the Lady Ista was here as well? The Dowager Royina Ista, Cazaril hastily corrected this thought. When he had first come to serve Baocia, as unformed a larva as any boy of like degree, the Provincara’s youngest daughter Ista had seemed already a grown woman, though only a few years older than himself. Fortunately, even at that foolish age, he’d not been so foolish as to confide his hopeless infatuation of her to anyone else. Her high marriage soon after to Roya Ias himself—her first, his second—had seemed her beauty’s proper destiny, despite the royal couple’s disparity of age. Cazaril supposed Ista’s early widowhood might have been expected, though not as early as it had proved.
   The Provincara brushed aside her fatigue with an impatient flash of her fingers, and followed with a, “And what of yourself? The last I heard of you, you were riding courier for the provincar of Guarida.”
   “That was… some years ago, Your Grace.”
   “How did you come here?” She looked him over, her brows drawing down. “Where is your sword?”
   “Oh, that.” His hand vaguely touched his side, where neither belt nor sword hung. “I lost it at… When the March dy Jironal led Roya Orico’s forces up to the north coast for the winter campaign these… three? yes, three years ago, he made me castle warder of the fortress at Gotorget. Then dy Jironal had that unfortunate reversal… we held the keep nine months against the Roknari forces. The usual, you know. I swear there was not a rat left unroasted in Gotorget when the word came through that dy Jironal had made treaty again, and we were ordered to lay down our arms and march out, and turn the fortress over to our foes.” He offered up a brief, unfelt smile; his left hand curled in his lap. “For my consolation, I was informed our fortress cost the Roknari prince an extra three hundred thousand royals, in the treaty tent. Plus considerably more in the field that nine-month, I calculate.” Poor consolation, for the lives we spent. “The Roknari general claimed my father’s sword; he said he was going to hang it in his tent, to remember me by. So that was the last I saw of my blade. After that…” Cazaril’s voice, growing stronger through this reminiscence, faltered. He cleared his throat, and began again. “There was an error, some mix-up. When the list of men to be ransomed arrived, together with the chests of royals, my name had been left off it somehow. The Roknari quartermaster swore there was no mistake, because the amounts counted out evenly with the names, but… there was some mistake. All my officers were rescued… I was put in with the unransomed men, and we were all marched to Visping, to be sold to the Roknari corsair masters as galley slaves.”
   The Provincara drew in her breath. The warder, who had been leaning farther and farther forward in his seat during this recital, burst out, “You protested, surely!”
   “Oh, five gods, yes. I protested all the way to Visping. I was still protesting as they dragged me up the gangplank and chained me to my oar. I kept protesting till we put to sea, and then I… learned not to.” He smiled again. It felt like a clown’s mask. Happily, no one seized on that weak error.
   “I was on one ship or another for… for a long time.” Nineteen months, eight days, he had counted it out later. At the time, he could not have told one day from the next. “And then I had the greatest piece of good fortune, for my corsair ran afoul of a fleet of the roya of Ibra, out on maneuvers. I assure you Ibra’s volunteers rowed better than we did, and they soon ran us down.”
   Two men had been beheaded in their chains by the increasingly desperate Roknari, for deliberately—or accidentally—fouling their oars. One of them had been sitting near Cazaril, his benchmate for months. Some of the spurting blood had got in his mouth; he could still half taste it, when he made the mistake of thinking of it. He could taste it now. When the corsair was taken, the Ibrans had trailed the Roknari, some still half-alive, behind the ship on ropes made of their own guts, till the great fishes had eaten them. Some of the freed galley slaves had helped row, with a will. Cazaril could not. That last flaying had brought him within hours of being cast overboard by the Roknari galley master as broken and useless. He’d sat on the deck, muscles twitching uncontrollably, and wept.
   “The good Ibrans put me ashore in Zagosur, where I fell ill for a few months. You know how it is with men when a long strain is removed of a sudden. They can grow… rather childish.” He smiled apologetically around the room. For him, it had been collapse and fever, till his back half healed; then dysentery; then an ague. And, throughout it all, the bouts of inconsolable weeping. He’d wept when an acolyte offered him dinner. When the sun came out. When the sun went in. When a cat startled him. When he was led to bed. Or at any time, for no cause. “The Temple Hospital of the Mother’s Mercy took me in. When I felt a little better”—when the weeping had tailed mostly off, and the acolytes had decided he was not mad, merely nervous—“they gave me a little money, and I walked here. I was three weeks on the road.”
   The room was dead silent.
   He looked up, to see that the Provincara’s lips had gone tight with anger. Terror wrenched his empty stomach. “It was the only place I could think of!” he excused himself hastily. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
   The warder blew out his breath and sat back, staring at Cazaril. The lady companion’s eyes were wide.
   In a vibrating voice, the Provincara declared, “You are the Castillar dy Cazaril. They should have given you a horse. They should have given you an escort.”
   Cazaril’s hands flapped in frightened denial. “No, no, my lady! It was… it was enough.” Well, almost. He realized, after an unsteady blink, that her anger wasn’t at him. Oh. His throat tightened, and the room blurred. No, not again, not here… He hurried on. “I wished to place myself in your service, lady, if you can find any use for me. I admit I… can’t do much. Just now.”

   The Provincara sat back, her chin resting lightly on her hand, and studied him. After a moment, she said, “You used to play the lute very pleasantly, when you were a page.”
   “Uh…” Cazaril’s crooked, callused hands tried to hide themselves in each other for a spasmodic instant. He smiled in renewed apology, and displayed them briefly on his knees. “I think not now, my lady.”
   She leaned forward; her gaze rested for a moment on his half-mangled left. “I see.” She sat back again, pursing her lips. “I remember you read all the books in my husband’s library. The master of the pages was always complaining of you for that. I told him to leave you alone. You aspired to be a poet, as I recall.”
   Cazaril was not sure his right hand could close around a pen, at present. “I believe Chalion was saved from a deal of bad poetry, when I went off to war.”
   She shrugged her shoulders. “Come, come, Castillar, you quite daunt me with your offer of service. I’m not sure poor Valenda has posts enough to occupy you. You’ve been a courtier—a captain—a castle warder—a courier—”
   “I haven’t been a courtier since before Roya Ias died, my lady. As a captain… I helped lose the battle of Dalus.” And rotted for nearly a year in the dungeons of the royacy of Brajar, thereafter. “As a castle warder, well, we lost the siege. As a courier, I was nearly hanged as a spy. Twice.” He brooded. And three times put to the torture in violation of parley. “Now… now, well, I know how to row boats. And five ways of preparing a dish of rats.”
   I could relish a mighty dish of rat right now, in fact.
   He did not know what she read in his face, for all that her sharp old eyes probed him. Perhaps it was exhaustion, but he hoped it was hunger. He was fairly sure it was hunger, for she at last smiled crookedly.
   “Then come to supper with us, Castillar, though I’m afraid my cook cannot offer you rat. They are not in season, in peaceful Valenda. I shall think on your petition.”
   He nodded mute thanks, not trusting his voice to not break.


* * *

   It being still winter, the main meal of the household’s day had been taken at noon, formally, in the great hall. The evening supper was a lighter repast, featuring, by the Provincara’s economy, the leftover breads and meats from noon, but by her pride, the very best of them, supplemented by a generous libation of her excellent wines. In the shimmering heat of the high plains summer, the procedure would be reversed; nuncheon would be light fare, and the main meal taken after nightfall, when Baocians of all degrees took to their cooler courtyards to eat by lantern light.
   They sat down only eight, in an intimate chamber in a new building quite near the kitchens. The Provincara took the center of the table, and placed Cazaril on her honored right. Cazaril was daunted to find the Royesse Iselle on his other side, and the Royse Teidez across from her. He took heart again when the royse chose to while away the wait for all to be seated by flicking bread-balls at his older sister, a maneuver sternly suppressed by his grandmother. A retaliatory gleam in the royesse’s eye was only sidetracked, Cazaril judged, by some timely distraction from her companion Betriz, seated across and a little down from him.
   Lady Betriz smiled across the board at Cazaril in friendly curiosity, revealing an elusive dimple, and seemed about to speak, but then the servant passed among them with a basin for hand-washing. The warm water was scented with verbena. Cazaril’s hands shook as he dipped and wiped them on the fine linen towel, a weakness he concealed as soon as he might by hiding them in his lap. The chair directly across from him remained empty.
   Cazaril nodded to it, and asked the Provincara diffidently, “Will the dowager royina be joining us, Your Grace?”
   Her lips pressed closed. “Ista is not well enough tonight, unfortunately. She… takes most of her meals in her chamber.”
   Cazaril quelled a moment of unease, and resolved to ask someone else, later, exactly what troubled the royse and royesse’s mother. That brief compression suggested something chronic, or lingering, or too painful to be discussed. Her long widowhood had spared Ista the further dangers of childbirth that were the bane of young women, but then there were all those frightening female disorders that overtook matrons… As Roya Ias’s second wife, Ista had been wed in his middle age when his son and heir Orico was already full-grown. In the little time Cazaril had been at the court of Chalion, years ago, he had watched her only from a discreet distance; she’d seemed happy, the light of the roya’s eye when the marriage was new. Ias had doted upon toddler Iselle and upon Teidez, a babe in the nurse’s arms.
   Their happiness had been darkened during the unfortunate tragedy of Lord dy Lutez’s treason, which, most observers agreed, had hastened the aging roya’s death by grief. Cazaril couldn’t help wondering if the illness that had evidently driven Royina Ista from her stepson’s court had any unfortunate political elements. But the new roya Orico had been respectful of his stepmother, and kind to his half siblings, by all reports.
   Cazaril cleared his throat to cover the growling of his stomach and gave attention to the royse’s superior gentleman-tutor, on the far end of the table beyond Lady Betriz. The Provincara, with a regal nod of her head, desired him to lead the prayer to the Holy Family blessing the approaching meal. Cazaril hoped it was approaching rapidly. The mystery of the empty chair was solved when the castle warder Ser dy Ferrej hurried in late, and made brief apologies all round before seating himself.
   “I was caught by the divine of the Order of the Bastard,” he explained as bread, meat, and dried fruit were passed.
   Cazaril, hard-pressed not to fall on his food like a starving dog, made a politely inquiring noise, and took his first bite.
   “The most earnestly long-winded young man,” dy Ferraj expanded.
   “What does he want now?” asked the Provincara. “More donations for the foundling hospital? We sent down a load last week. The castle servants are refusing to give up any more of their old clothes.”
   “Wet nurses,” said dy Ferrej, chewing.
   The Provincara snorted. “Not from my household!”
   “No, but he wanted me to pass the word that the Temple was looking. He was hoping someone might have a female relative who would be moved to pious charity. They had another babe left at the postern last week, and he’s expecting more. It’s the time of year, apparently.”
   The Order of the Bastard, by the logic of its theology, classified unwanted births among the things-out-of-season that were the god’s mandate: including bastards—naturally—and children bereft of parents untimely young. The Temple’s foundling hospitals and orphanages were one of the order’s main concerns. In all, Cazaril thought that a god who was supposed to command a legion of demons ought to have an easier time shaking out donations for his good works.
   Cautiously, Cazaril watered his wine; a crime to treat this vintage so, but on his empty stomach it was sure to go straight to his head. The Provincara nodded approvingly at him, but then entered into an argument with her lady cousin on the same subject, emerging partially triumphant with half a glass of wine undiluted.
   Ser dy Ferrej continued, “The divine had a good story, though; guess who died last night?”
   “Who, Papa?” said Lady Betriz helpfully.
   “Ser dy Naoza, the celebrated duelist.”
   It was not a name Cazaril recognized, but the Provincara sniffed. “About time. Ghastly man. I did not receive him, though I suppose there were fools enough who did. Did he finally underestimate a victim—I mean, opponent?”
   “That’s where the story gets interesting. He was apparently assassinated by death magic.” No bad raconteur, dy Ferrej quaffed wine while the shocked murmur ran around the table. Cazaril froze in mid-chew.
   “Is the Temple going to try to solve the mystery?” asked Royesse Iselle.
   “No mystery to it, though I gather it was rather a tragedy. About a year ago, dy Naoza was jostled in the street by the only son of a provincial wool merchant, with the usual result. Well, dy Naoza claimed it for a duel, of course, but there were those on the scene who said it was bloody murder. Somehow, none of them could be found to testify when the boy’s father tried to take dy Naoza to justice. There was some question about the probity of the judge, too, it was rumored.”
   The Provincara tsked. Cazaril dared to swallow, and say, “Do go on.”
   Encouraged, the castle warder continued, “The merchant was a widower, and the boy not just an only son, but an only child. Just about to be married, too, to turn the knife. Death magic is an ugly business, true, but I can’t help having a spot of sympathy for the poor merchant. Well, rich merchant, I suppose, but in any case, far too old to train up to the degree of swordsmanship required to remove someone like dy Naoza. So he fell back on what he thought was his only recourse. Spent the next year studying the black arts—where he found all his lore is a good puzzle for the Temple, mind you—letting his business go, I was told—and then, last night, took himself off to an abandoned mill about seven miles from Valenda, and tried to call up a demon. And, by the Bastard, succeeded! His body was found there this morning.”
   The Father of Winter was the god of all deaths in good season, and of justice; but in addition to all the other disasters in his gift the Bastard was the god of executioners. And, indeed, god of a whole purseful of other dirty jobs. It seems the merchant went to the right store for his miracle. The notebook in Cazaril’s vest suddenly seemed to weigh ten pounds; but it was only in his imagination that it felt as though it might scorch through the cloth and burst into flame.
   “Well, I don’t have any sympathy for him,” said Royse Teidez. “That was cowardly!”
   “Yes, but what can you expect of a merchant?” observed his tutor, from down the table. “Men of that class are not trained up in the kind of code of honor a true gentleman learns.

   “But it’s so sad,” protested Iselle. “I mean, about the son about to be wed.”
   Teidez snorted. “Girls. All you can think about is getting married. But which is the greater loss to the royacy? Some moneygrubbing wool-man, or a swordsman? Any duelist that skilled must be a good soldier for the roya!”
   “Not in my experience,” Cazaril said dryly.
   “What do you mean?” Teidez promptly challenged him.
   Abashed, Cazaril mumbled, “Excuse me. I spoke out of turn.”
   “What’s the difference?” Teidez pressed.
   The Provincara tapped a finger on the tablecloth and shot him an indecipherable look. “Do expand, Castillar.”
   Cazaril shrugged, and offered a slight, apologetic bow in the boy’s direction. “The difference, Royse, is that a skilled soldier kills your enemies, but a skilled duelist kills your allies. I leave you to guess which a wise commander prefers to have in his camp.”
   “Oh,” said Teidez. He fell silent, looking thoughtful.
   There was, apparently, no rush to return the merchant’s notebook to the proper authorities, and also no difficulty. Cazaril might search out the divine at the Temple of the Holy Family here in Valenda tomorrow at his leisure, and turn it over to be passed along. It would have to be decoded; some men found that sort of puzzle difficult or tedious, but Cazaril had always found it restful. He wondered if he ought, as a courtesy, to offer to decipher it. He touched his soft wool robe, and was glad he’d prayed for the man at his hurried burning.
   Betriz, her dark brows crimping, asked, “Who was the judge, Papa?”
   Dy Ferrej hesitated a moment, then shrugged. “The Honorable Vrese.”
   “Ah,” said the Provincara. “Him.” Her nose twitched, as though she’d sniffed a bad smell.
   “Did the duelist threaten him, then?” asked Royesse Iselle. “Shouldn’t he—couldn’t he have called for help, or had dy Naoza arrested?”
   “I doubt that even dy Naoza was foolish enough to threaten a justiciar of the province,” said dy Ferrej. “Though it was probable he intimidated the witnesses. Vrese was, hm, likely handled by more peaceful means.” He popped a fragment of bread into his mouth and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, miming a man warming a coin.
   “If the judge had done his job honestly and bravely, the merchant would never have been driven to use death magic,” said Iselle slowly. “Two men are dead and damned, where it might have only been one… and even if he’d been executed, dy Naoza might have had time to clean his soul before facing the gods. If this is known, why is the man still a judge? Grandmama, can’t you do something about it?”
   The Provincara pressed her lips together. “The appointment of provincial justiciars is not within my gift, dear one. Nor their removal. Or their department would be rather more orderly run, I assure you.” She took a sip of her wine and added to her granddaughter’s frowning look, “I have great privilege in Baocia, child. I do not have great powers.”
   Iselle glanced at Teidez, and at Cazaril, before echoing her brother’s question, in a voice gone serious: “What’s the difference?”
   “One is the right to rule—and the duty to protect! T’ other is the right to receive protection,” replied the Provincara. “There is alas more difference between a provincar and a provincara than just the one letter.”
   Teidez smirked. “Oh, like the difference between a royse and a royesse?”
   Iselle turned on him and raised her brows. “Oh? And how do you propose to remove the corrupt judge—privileged boy?”
   “That’s enough, you two,” said the Provincara sternly, in a voice that was pure grandmother. Cazaril hid a smile. Within these walls, she ruled, right enough, by an older code than Chalion’s. Hers was a sufficient little state.
   The conversation turned to less lurid matters as the servants brought cakes, cheese, and a wine from Brajar. Cazaril had, surreptitiously he hoped, stuffed himself. If he didn’t stop soon, he would make himself sick. But the golden dessert wine almost sent him into tears at the table; that one, he drank unwatered, though he managed to limit himself to one glass.
   At the end of the meal prayers were offered again, and Royse Teidez was dragged off by his tutor for studies. Iselle and Betriz were sent to do needlework. They departed at a gallop, followed at a more sedate pace by dy Ferrej.
   “Will they actually sit still for needlework?” Cazaril asked the Provincara, watching the departing flurry of skirts.
   “They gossip and giggle till I can’t bear it, but yes, they’re very handy,” said the Provincara, the disapproving purse of her lips belied by the warmth of her eyes.
   “Your granddaughter is a delightful young lady.”
   “To a man of a certain age, Cazaril, all young ladies start to look delightful. It’s the first symptom of senility.”
   “True, my lady.” His lips twitched up.
   “She’s worn out two governesses and looks to be bent on destroying a third, by the way the woman complains of her. And yet…” the Provincara’s tart voice grew slower, “she needs to be strong. Someday, inevitably, she will be sent far from me. And I will no longer be able to help her… protect her…”
   An attractive, fresh young royesse was a pawn, not a player, in the politics of Chalion. Her bride-price would come high, but a politically and financially favorable marriage might not necessarily prove a good one in more intimate senses. The Dowager Provincara had been fortunate in her personal life, but in her long years had doubtless had opportunity to observe the whole range of marital fates awaiting highborn women. Would Iselle be sent to far Darthaca? Married off to some cousin in the too-close-related royacy of Brajar? Gods forbid she should be bartered away to the Roknari to seal some temporary peace, exiled to the Archipelago.
   She studied him sidelong, in the light from the lavish branches of candles she had always favored. “How old are you now, Castillar? I thought you were about thirteen when your father sent you to serve my dear Provincar.”
   “About that, yes, Your Grace. I’m thirty-five.”
   “Ha. You should shave off that nasty mess growing out of your face, then. It makes you look fifteen years older than you are.”
   Cazaril considered some quip about a turn in the Roknari galleys being very aging to a man, but he wasn’t quite up to it. Instead he said, “I hope I did not annoy the royse with my maunderings, my lady.”
   “I believe you actually made young Teidez stop and think. A rare event. I wish his tutor could manage it more often.” She drummed her thin fingers briefly on the cloth and drained the last of her tiny glass of wine. She set it down, and added, “I don’t know what flea-ridden inn you’ve put up at down in town, Castillar, but I’ll dispatch a page for your things. You’ll lodge here tonight.”
   “Thank you, Your Grace. I accept with gratitude.” And alacrity. Thank the gods, oh, five times five, he was gathered in, at least temporarily. He hesitated, embarrassed. “But, ah… it won’t be necessary to trouble your page.”
   She raised a brow at him. “That’s what they exist for. As you may recall.”
   “Yes, but”—he smiled briefly, and gestured down himself—“these are my things.”
   At her pained look, he added weakly, “I had less, when I fell off the Ibran galley in Zagosur.” He’d been dressed in a breechclout of surpassing filthiness, and scabs. The acolytes had burned the rag at their first opportunity.
   “Then my page,” said the Provincara in a precise voice, still regarding him levelly, “will escort you to your chamber. My lord Castillar.”
   She added, as she made to rise, and her cousin-companion hastened to assist her, “We’ll speak again tomorrow.”


* * *

   The chamber was one in the old keep reserved for honored guests, more on account of having been slept in by several historical royas than for its absolute comfort; Cazaril had served its guests himself a hundred times. The bed had three mattresses, straw, feather, and down, and was dressed in the softest washed linen and a coverlet worked by ladies of the household. Before the page had left him, two maids arrived, bearing wash water, drinking water, towels, soap, a tooth-stick, and an embroidered nightgown, cap, and slippers. Cazaril had been planning to sleep in the dead man’s shirt.
   It was abruptly all too much. Cazaril sat down on the edge of the bed with the nightgown in his hands and burst into wracking sobs. Gulping, he gestured the unnerved-looking servitors to leave him.
   “What’s the matter with him?” he heard the maid’s voice, as their footsteps trailed off down the corridor, and the tears trailed down the inside of his nose.
   The page answered disgustedly, “A madman, I suppose.”
   After a short pause, the maid’s voice floated back faintly, “Well, he’ll fit right in here, then, won’t he…”