Chapter 3

   The sounds of the household stirring—calls from the courtyard, the distant clank of pots—woke Cazaril in the predawn gray. He opened his eyes to a moment of panicked disorientation, but the reassuring embrace of the feather bed drew him down again into drowsy repose. Not a hard bench. Not moving up and down. Not moving at all, oh five gods, that was very heaven. So warm, on his knotted back.
   The Daughter’s Day celebrations would run from dawn till dark. Perhaps he would lie slugabed till the household had departed for the procession, then get up late. Creep around unobtrusively, lie in the sun with the castle cats. When he grew hungry, dredge up old memories from his days as a page—he’d used to know how to charm the cook for an extra tidbit…
   A crisp knock on the door interrupted these pleasant meditations. Cazaril jerked, then relaxed again as Lady Betriz’s voice followed: “My lord dy Cazaril? Are you awake? Castillar?”
   “A moment, my lady,” Cazaril called back. He wallowed to the bed’s edge and tore himself from the loving clutch of the mattress. A woven rush mat on the floor kept the morning cold of the stone from nipping his bare feet. He shook the generous linen of the nightgown down over his legs, shuffled to the door, and opened it a crack. “Yes?”
   She stood in the corridor with a candle shielded by a blown-glass lantern in one hand and a pile of cloth, leather straps, and something that clanked wedged awkwardly under her other arm. She was fully dressed for the day in a blue gown with a white vest-cloak that fell from shoulder to ankle. Her dark hair was braided up on her head with flowers and leaves. Her velvet brown eyes were merry, glinting in the candle’s glow. Cazaril could not help but smile back.
   “Her Grace the Provincara bids you a blessed Daughter’s Day,” she announced, and startled Cazaril into jumping backward by firmly kicking the door open. She rocked her loaded hips through, handed off the candle holder to him with a Here, take this, and dumped her burden on the edge of the bed: piles of blue and white cloth, and a sword with a belt. Cazaril set the candle down on the chest at the foot of the bed. “She sends you these to wear, and if it please you bids you join the household in the ancestors’ hall for the dawn prayers. After which we will break our fast, which, she says, you know well where to find.”
   “Indeed, my lady.”
   “Actually, I asked Papa for the sword. It’s his second-best one. He said it would be an honor to loan it to you.” She turned a highly interested gaze upon him. “Is it true you were in the late war?”
   “Uh… which one?”
   “You’ve been in more than one?” Her eyes widened, then narrowed.
   All of them for the last seventeen years, I think. Well, no. He’d sat out the most recent abortive campaign against Ibra in the dungeons of Brajar, and missed that foolish expedition the roya had sent in support of Darthaca because he’d been busy being inventively tormented by the Roknari general with whom the provincar of Guarida was bargaining so ineptly. Besides those two, he didn’t think there had been a defeat in the last decade he’d missed. “Here and there, over the years,” he answered vaguely. He was suddenly horridly conscious that there was nothing between his nakedness and her maiden eyes but a thin layer of linen. He twitched inward, clutching his arms across his belly, and smiled weakly.
   “Oh,” she said, following his gesture. “Have I embarrassed you? But Papa says soldiers have no modesty, on account of having to live all together in the field.”
   She returned her eyes to his face, which was heating. Cazaril got out, “I was thinking of your modesty, my lady.”
   “That’s all right,” she said cheerfully.
   She didn’t go away.
   He nodded toward the pile of clothes. “I didn’t wish to intrude upon the family during celebration. Are you sure…?”
   She clasped her hands together earnestly and intensified her gaze. “But you must come to the procession, and you must, you must, you must come to the Daughter’s Day quarter-gifting at the temple. The Royesse Iselle is going to play the part of the Lady of Spring this year.” She bounced on her toes in her importunity.
   Cazaril smiled sheepishly. “Very well, if it please you.” How could he resist all this urgent delight? Royesse Iselle must be rising sixteen; he wondered how old Lady Betriz was. Too young for you, old fellow. But surely he might watch her with a purely aesthetic appreciation, and thank the goddesses for her gifts of youth, beauty, and verve howsoever they were scattered. Brightening the world like flowers.
   “And besides,” Lady Betriz cinched it, “the Provincara bids you.”
   Cazaril seized the opportunity to light his candle from hers and, by way of a hint that it was time for her to go away and let him dress, handed the glass-globed flame back to her. The doubled light that made her more lovely doubtless made him less so. She’d just turned to go when he bethought him of his prudent question, unanswered last night.
   “Wait, lady—”
   She turned back with a look of bright inquiry.
   “I didn’t want to trouble the Provincara, or ask in front of the royse or royesse, but what grieves the Royina Ista? I don’t want to say or do something wrong, out of ignorance…”
   The light in her eyes died a little. She shrugged. “She’s… weary. And nervous. Nothing more. We hope she will feel better, with the coming of the sun. She always seems to do better, in the summertime.”
   “How long has she been living here with her mother?”
   “These six years, sir.” She gave him a little half curtsey. “Now I have to go to Royesse Iselle. Don’t be late, Castillar!” Her smile dimpled at him again, and she darted out.
   He could not imagine that young lady being late anywhere. Her energy was appalling. Shaking his head, though the smile she’d left him still lingered on his lips, he turned to examine the new largesse.
   He was certainly moving up to a better grade of castoffs. The tunic was blue silk brocade, the trousers heavy dark blue linen, and the knee-length vest-cloak white wool, all clean, the little mends and stains quite unobtrusive; dy Ferrej’s festival gear outgrown, perhaps, or possibly even something packed away from the late provincar. The loose fit was forgiving of this change in ownership. With the sword hung at his left hip, familiar/unfamiliar weight, Cazaril hurried down out of the keep and across the gray courtyard to the household’s ancestors’ hall.
   The air of the courtyard was chill and damp, the cobbles slippery under his thin boot soles. Overhead, a few stars still lingered. Cazaril eased open the big plank door to the hall and peered inside. Candles, figures; was he late? He slipped within, his eyes adjusting.
   Not late but early. The tiers of little family memori boards at the front of the room had half a dozen old candle stubs burning before them. Two women, huddled into shawls, sat on the front bench watching over a third.
   The Dowager Royina Ista lay before the altar in the attitude of deepest supplication, prone upon the floor, her arms outflung. Her fingers curled and uncurled; the nails were bitten down to the red. A muddle of nightgowns and shawls puddled around her. Her masses of crinkly hair, once gold, now darkened by age to a dull dun, spread out around her head like a fan. For a moment, Cazaril wondered if she had fallen asleep, so still did she lie. But in her pale face, turned sideways with her soft cheek resting directly on the floor, her eyes were open, gray and unblinking, filled with unshed tears.
   It was a face of the most profound grief; Cazaril was put in mind of men’s looks that he had seen, broken in not just body but soul by the dungeon or the horrors of the galleys. Or of his own, seen dimly in a polished steel mirror in the Mother’s house in Ibra, when the acolytes had shaved his nerveless face and encouraged him to look, see, wasn’t that better? Yet he was quite certain the royina had never been within smelling distance of a dungeon in her life, never felt the bite of the lash, never, perhaps, even felt a man’s hand raised against her in anger. What, then? He stood still, lips parted, afraid to speak.
   At a creak and a bustle behind him, he glanced round to see the Dowager Provincara, attended by her cousin, slip inside. She flicked an eyebrow at him in passing; he jerked a little bow. The waiting women attending upon the royina started, and rose, offering ghostly curtseys.
   The Provincara strode up the aisle between the benches and studied her daughter expressionlessly. “Oh, dear. How long has she been here?”
   One of the waiting women half curtseyed again. “She rose in the night, Your Grace. We thought it better to let her come down than to fight her. As you instructed…”
   “Yes, yes.” The Provincara waved away this nervous excuse. “Did she get any sleep at all?”
   “One or two hours, I think, my lady.”

  The Provincara sighed, and knelt by her daughter. Her voice went gentle, all the tartness drained out; for the first time, Cazaril heard the age in it.
   “Ista, heart. Rise and go back to bed. Others will take over the praying today.”
   The prone woman’s lips moved, twice, before words whispered out. “If the gods hear. If they hear, they do not speak. Their faces are turned from me, Mother.”
   Almost awkwardly, the old woman stroked her hair. “Others will pray today. We’ll light all the candles new, and try again. Let your ladies put you back to bed. Up, now.”
   The royina sniffed, blinked, and, reluctantly, rose. At a jerk of the Provincara’s head, the waiting ladies hurried forward to guide the royina out of the hall, gathering up her dropping shawls behind her. Cazaril searched her face anxiously as she passed, but found no signs of wasting illness, no yellow tinge to her skin or eyes, no emaciation. She scarcely seemed to see Cazaril; no recognition flickered in her eyes for the bearded stranger. Well, there was no reason she should remember him, merely one of dozens of pages in and out of dy Baocia’s household over the years.
   The Provincara’s head turned back as the door closed behind her daughter. Cazaril was close enough to see her quiet sigh.
   He made her a deeper bow. “I thank you for these festival garments, Your Grace. If…” he hesitated. “If there’s anything I can do to ease your burdens, lady, or those of the royina, just ask.”
   She smiled, and took his hand and patted it rather absently, but didn’t answer. She went to open the window shutters on the room’s east side, to let in the peach-colored dawn glow.
   Around the altar, Lady dy Hueltar blew out the candles and gathered up all the stubby ends in a basket brought for that purpose. The Provincara and Cazaril went to help her replace the sad lumps in each holder with a fresh, new beeswax candle. When the dozens of candles were standing up like young soldiers each in front of their respective tablets, the Provincara stepped back and gave a satisfied nod.
   The rest of the household began arriving then, and Cazaril took a seat out of the way on a back bench. Cooks, servants, stableboys, pages, the huntsman and the falconer, the upper housekeeper, the castle warder, all in their best clothes, with as much blue and white as could be managed, filed in and sat. Then Lady Betriz led in Royesse Iselle, fully dressed and a trifle stiff in the elaborate, multilayered and brilliantly embroidered robes of the Lady of Spring, whose part she was selected to play today. They took an attentive seat on a front bench and managed not to giggle together. They were followed by a divine of the Holy Family from the temple in town, his vestments too changed from yesterday’s black-and-gray robes of the Father to the blue-and-white of the Daughter. The divine led the assembly in a short service for the succession of the season and the peace of the dead here represented, and, as the first rays of sun fingered through the east window, ceremonially extinguished the last candle left burning, the last flame anywhere in the household.
   All then adjourned for a cold breakfast set up on trestles in the courtyard. Cold, but not sparing; Cazaril reminded himself that he needn’t try to make up for three years of privation in a day, and that he had some up– and downhill walking coming up soon. Still, he was happily replete when the royesse’s white mule was led in.
   It, too, was decorated with ribbons of blue and fresh early flowers braided into its mane and tail. Its hangings were gloriously elaborated with all the symbols of the Lady of Spring. Iselle in her Temple garments, her hair arranged to ripple down like an amber waterfall over her shoulders from under her crown of leaves and flowers, was loaded carefully into her saddle, and her drapes and panels arranged. This time, she used a mounting block and the assistance of a couple of hefty young pages. The divine took the mule’s blue silk rope to lead her out the gate. The Provincara was hoisted aboard a sedate chestnut mare with showy white socks, also braided with ribbons and flowers, led by her castle warder. Cazaril muffled a belch, and at dy Ferrej’s beckoning hastened to position himself after the mounted ladies, courteously offering his arm to the Lady dy Hueltar. The rest of the household, those who were going, also fell in behind on foot.
   The whole merry mob wound down through the streets of town to the old east gate, where the procession was to formally begin. Some couple of hundred people waited there, including fifty or so mounted horsemen from the Daughter’s guardsmen’s associations drawn from all around the hinterlands of Valenda. Cazaril walked right under the nose of the burly soldier who’d dropped him that mistaken coin in the mud yesterday, but the man gazed back at him without recognition, merely a courteous nod for his silks and his sword. And his trim and his bath, Cazaril supposed. How strangely we are blinded by the surfaces of things. The gods, presumably, saw straight through. He wondered if the gods found this as uncomfortable as he sometimes did, these days.
   He put his odd thoughts aside as the procession formed up. The divine turned Iselle’s lead line over to the elderly gentleman who’d been selected to play the part of the Father of Winter. In the winter procession a young new father would have taken the god’s place, his dark garb neat as a judge’s, and he’d have ridden a fine black horse that the outgoing and ragged Son of Autumn led. Today’s grandfather wore a collection of gray rags that made Cazaril’s late wear look positively like a burgher’s, his beard and hair and bare calves streaked with ashes. He smiled and made some joke up at Iselle; she laughed. The guardsmen formed up behind the pair, and the whole parade began its circuit of the old town walls, or as nearly as it could come to them with the new building all around. Some Temple acolytes followed between the guardsmen and the rest, to lead the singing, and encourage everyone to use the proper words and not the rude versions.
   Any townspeople not in the procession played the audience, and threw, mostly, flowers and herbs. In the van, Cazaril could see the usual few young unmarried women dart in to touch the Daughter’s garments for luck in finding a husband this season, and flurry off again, giggling. After a goodly morning walk—thank heavens for the mild lovely weather, one memorable spring they’d done this in a sleet storm—the whole straggling train snaked round to the east gate once more, and filed through to the temple in the town’s heart.
   The temple stood on the one side of the town square, surrounded by a bit of garden and a low stone wall. It was built in the usual four-lobed pattern, like a four-leafed clover around its central court. Its walls were the golden native stone that so eased Cazaril’s heart, capped with the local red tile. One domed lobe held the altar for the god of each season; the Bastard’s separate round tower directly back of his Mother’s gate held his.
   The Lady dy Hueltar ruthlessly dragged Cazaril to the front as the royesse was unloaded from her mule and led beneath the portico. He found Lady Betriz had taken up station on his other side. She craned her neck to follow Iselle. Beneath Cazaril’s nose the fresh odor from the flowers and foliage twined around her head mingled with the warm scent of her hair, surely spring’s own exhalation. The crowd pressed them onward through the wide-flung doors.
   Inside, with the slanted shadows of morning still dimming the paved main courtyard, the Father of Winter cleaned the last of the ash from the raised hearth of the central holy fire and sprinkled it about his person. The acolytes hurried forward to lay the new tinder and wood, which the divine blessed. The ashy graybeard was then driven from the chamber with hoots, catcalls, little sticks with bells, and missiles of soft wool representing snowballs. It was considered an unlucky year, at least by the god’s avatar, when the crowd could use real snowballs.
   The Lady of Spring in the person of Iselle was then led forward to light the new fire from flint and steel. She knelt on the cushions provided, and bit her lip charmingly in her concentration as she mounded up the dry shavings and sacred herbs. All held their breaths; a dozen superstitions surrounded the matter of how many tries it took the ascending god’s avatar to light the new fire each season.
   Three quick strikes, a shower of sparks, a puff of young breath; the tiny flame caught. Quickly, the divine bent to light the new taper before any unfortunate failure could occur. None did. A murmur of relieved approval rose all round. The little flame was transferred to the holy hearth, and Iselle, looking smug and a trifle relieved, was helped to her feet. Her gray eyes seemed to burn as brightly and cheerfully as the new flame.
   She was then led to the throne of the reigning god, and the real business of the morning began: collecting the quarterly gifts to the temple that would keep it running for the next three months. Each head of a household stepped forward to lay their little purse of coins or other offering in the Lady’s hands, be blessed, and have the amount recorded by the temple’s secretary at the table to Iselle’s right. They were then led off to receive in return their taper with the new fire, to return to their house. The Provincara’s household was the first, by order of rank; the purse that the castle warder laid in Iselle’s hands was heavy with gold. Other men of worth stepped forward. Iselle smiled and received and blessed; the chief divine smiled and transferred and thanked; the secretary smiled and recorded and piled.
   Beside Cazaril, Betriz stiffened with… excitement? She gripped Cazaril’s left arm briefly. “The next one is that vile judge, Vrese,” she hissed in his ear. “Watch!”
   A dour-looking fellow of middle years, richly dressed in dark blue velvets and gold chains, stepped up to the Lady’s throne with his purse in his hand. With a tight smile, he held it out. “The House of Vrese presents its offering to the goddess,” he intoned nasally. “Bless us in the coming season, my lady.”
   Iselle folded her hands in her lap. She raised her chin, looked across at Vrese with an absolutely level, unsmiling stare, and said in a clear, carrying voice, “The Daughter of Spring receives honest hearts’ offerings. She does not accept bribes. Honorable Vrese. Your gold means more to you than anything. You may keep it.”
   Vrese stepped back a half pace; his mouth opened in shock, and hung there. The stunned silence spread out in waves to the back of the crowd, to return in a rising mutter of What? What did she say? I didn’t hear… What? The chief divine’s face drained. The recording secretary looked up with an expression of jolted horror.
   A well-attired man waiting toward the front of the line vented a sharp crack of gleeful laughter; his lips drew back in an expression that had little to do with humor, but much with appreciation of cosmic justice. Beside Cazaril, Lady Betriz bounced on her toes and hissed through her teeth. A trail of choked snickers followed the whispers of explanation trickling back through the mob of townspeople like a small spring freshet.

  The judge switched his glare to the chief divine, and made an odd little abortive jerk of his hand, the bagged offering in it, toward him instead. The divine’s hands opened and clenched again, at his sides. He stared across beseechingly at the enthroned avatar of the goddess. “Lady Iselle,” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth, not quite lowly enough, “you can’t… we can’t… does the goddess speak to you, in this?”
   Iselle returned, not nearly so lowly, “She speaks in my heart. Doesn’t she in yours? And besides, I asked her to sign me approval by giving me the first flame, and she did.” Perfectly composed, she leaned around the frozen judge, smiled brightly at the next townsman in line, and invited, “You, sir?”
   Perforce, the judge stepped aside, especially as the next man in line, grinning, had no hesitation at all in stepping up and shouldering past.
   An acolyte, jerked into motion by a glare from his superior, hurried forward to invite the judge to step out somewhere and discuss this contretemps. His slight reach toward the offering purse was knifed right through by an icy frown tossed at him by the royesse; he clapped his hands behind his back and bowed the fuming judge away. Across the courtyard, the Provincara, seated, pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger, wiped her hand over her mouth, and stared in exasperation at her granddaughter. Iselle merely raised her chin and continued blandly exchanging the goddess’s blessings for the gifts of the quarter-day with a line of suddenly no longer bored nor perfunctory townsmen.
   As she worked her way down through the town’s households, such gifts in kind as chickens, eggs, and a bull-calf were collected outside, their bearers alone entering the sacred precincts to collect their blessing and their new fire. Lady dy Hueltar and Betriz went to join the Provincara on her courtesy bench, and Cazaril took up station behind it with the castle warder, who favored his demure daughter with a suspicious parental frown. Most of the crowd drifted away; the royesse continued cheerfully in her sacred duty down to the last and least, thanking a wood-gatherer, a charcoal burner, and a beggar—who for his gift sang a hymn—in the same even tones as she’d blessed the first men of Valenda.


* * *

   The storm in the Provincara’s face didn’t break till the whole family party had returned to the castle for the afternoon feast.
   Cazaril found himself leading her horse, as her castle warder dy Ferrej had taken a firm and prudent grip on the lead line of Iselle’s white mule. Cazaril’s plan to quietly absent himself was thwarted when, helped down off her chestnut mare by her servants, the Provincara demanded shortly, “Castillar, give me your arm.” Her grip around it was tight and trembling. Through thinned lips, she added, “Iselle, Betriz, dy Ferrej, in here.” She jerked her head toward the plank doors of the ancestors’ hall, just off the castle courtyard.
   Iselle had left her festal garments at the temple when the ceremonies had concluded, and was merely a young woman in pretty blue and white once more. No, Cazaril decided, watching her decided chin come up again; merely a royesse once more. Beneath that apprehensive surface glowed an alarming determination. Cazaril held the door as they all filed past, including Lady dy Hueltar. When he’d been a young page, Cazaril thought ruefully, his instinct for danger spilling down from on high would have sped him off at this point. But dy Ferrej stopped and waited for him, and he followed.
   The hall was quiet, empty now, though warmly lit by the ranks of candles on the altar that would be allowed to burn all day today until entirely consumed. The wooden benches were polished to a subdued gleam in the candlelight by many pious—or restive—prior occupants. The Provincara stepped to the front of the room, and turned on the two girls, who drew together under her stern eye.
   “All right. Which of you had that idea?”
   Iselle took a half step forward, and gave a tiny curtsey. “It was mine, Grandmama,” she said in almost, but not quite, as clear a voice as in the temple courtyard. She offered after another moment under that dour gaze, “Though Betriz thought of asking the first flame for confirmation.”
   Dy Ferrej wheeled on his daughter. “You knew this was coming up? And you didn’t tell me?”
   Betriz gave him a curtsey that was an echo of Iselle’s, right down to the unbent backbone. “I had understood I was assigned to be the royesse’s handmaiden, Papa. Not anybody’s spy. If my first loyalty was to be to anyone but Iselle, no one ever told me. Guard her honor with your life, you said.” After a moment she added more cautiously, undercutting this fine speech a trifle, “Besides, I couldn’t know it was going to happen till after she had struck the first flame.”
   Dy Ferrej abandoned the young sophist and made a helpless gesture to the Provincara.
   “You are older, Betriz,” said the Provincara to her. “We thought you’d be a calming influence. Teach Iselle the duties of a pious maiden.” Her lips twisted. “As when Beetim the huntsman couples the young hounds to the older ones. Alas that I did not give your upbringing over to him, instead of to these useless governesses.”
   Betriz blinked, and offered another curtsey. “Yes, my lady.”
   The Provincara eyed her, suspicious of concealed humor. Cazaril bit his lip.
   Iselle took a deep breath. “If tolerating injustice and turning a blind eye to men’s tragic and unnecessary damnations are among the first duties of a pious maiden, then the divines never taught it to me!”
   “No, of course not,” the Provincara snapped. For the first time, her harsh voice softened with a shade of persuasion. “But justice is not your task, heart.”
   “The men whose task it was appear to have neglected it. I am not a milkmaid. If I have a greater privilege in Chalion, surely I have a greater duty to Chalion as well. The divine and the good dedicat have both told me so!” She shot a defying look at the hovering Lady dy Hueltar.
   “I was talking about you attending to your studies, Iselle,” Lady dy Hueltar protested.
   “When the divines talked of your pious duties, Iselle,” dy Ferrej added, “they didn’t mean… they didn’t mean…”
   “They didn’t mean me to take them seriously?” she inquired sweetly.
   Dy Ferrej sputtered. Cazaril sympathized. An innocent with the moral advantage, and as feckless and ignorant of her dangers as the new pup the Provincara had compared her to—Cazaril was profoundly thankful that he had no part in this.
   The Provincara’s nostrils flared. “For now, you may both go to your chambers and stay there. I’d set you both to read scriptures for a penance, but…! I will decide later if you will be permitted to come to the feast. Good Dedicat, follow after and make sure they arrive. Go!” She gestured imperiously. As Cazaril made to follow, her sweeping arm stopped in midair, and she pointed firmly downward. “Castillar, dy Ferrej, attend a moment.” Lady Betriz shot a curious glance over her shoulder as she was ushered out. Iselle marched head high, and didn’t look back.
   “Well,” said dy Ferrej wearily after a moment, “we did hope they would become friends.”
   Her young audience removed, the Provincara permitted herself a rueful smile. “Alas, yes.”
   “How old is the Lady Betriz?” Cazaril asked curiously, staring after the closing door.
   “Nineteen,” answered her father with a sigh.
   Well, her age was not quite so disparate from his as Cazaril had thought, though her experience surely was.
   “I really did think Betriz would be a good influence,” dy Ferrej added. “It seems to have worked the other way around.”
   “Are you accusing my granddaughter of corrupting your daughter?” the Provincara inquired wryly.
   “Say, inspiring, rather,” dy Ferrej said, with a glum shrug. “Terrifying, that. I wonder… I wonder if we should part them?”
   “There would follow much howling.” Wearily, the Provincara seated herself on a bench, gesturing the men to do likewise: “Don’t want a crick in my neck.” Cazaril clasped his hands between his knees and waited her pleasure, whatever it was to be. She must have dragged him along in here for something. She stared thoughtfully at him for a long moment.
   “You have a fresh eye, Cazaril,” she said at last. “Do you have any suggestions?”
   Cazaril’s brows climbed. “I’ve had the training of young soldiers, lady. Never of young maidens. I’m quite out of my depth, here.” He hesitated, then spoke almost despite himself. “It looks to me to be a trifle too late to teach Iselle to be a coward. But you might draw her attention to how little firsthand evidence she jumped from. How could she be so sure the judge was as guilty as rumor would have him? Hearsay, gossip? Even some apparent evidence can lie.” Cazaril thought ruefully of the bath man’s assumptions about the witness of his back. “It won’t help for today’s incident, but it might slow her down in future.” He added in a drier voice, “And you might look to be more careful what gossip you discuss in front of her.”
   Dy Ferrej winced.
   “In front of either one of them,” said the Provincara. “Four ears, one mind—or one conspiracy.” She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes at him. “Cazaril… you speak and write Darthacan, do you not?”
   Cazaril blinked at this sidewise jink in the conversation. “Yes, my lady…?”
   “And Roknari?”
   “My, ah, court Roknari is a little rusty at present. Granted, my vile Roknari is quite fluent.”
   “And geography? You know the geography of Chalion, of Ibra, of the Roknari princedoms?”
   “Five gods, that I do, my lady. What I haven’t ridden over, I’ve walked, what I haven’t walked, I’ve been dragged across. Or through. I’ve had geography ground into my skin. And I’ve rowed round half the Archipelago at least.”
   “And you write, you cipher, you keep books—you’ve done letters, reports, treaties, logistical orders…”
   “My hand may be a trifle shaky at present, but yes, I’ve done all that,” he admitted with belatedly rising wariness. Where was she going with this interrogation?
   “Yes, yes!” She clapped her hands together; Cazaril flinched at the sharp noise. “The gods have surely landed you upon my wrist. Bastard’s demons take me if I haven’t the wit to jess you.”
   Cazaril smiled bewildered inquiry.
   “Cazaril, you said you sought a post. I have one for you.” She sat back triumphantly. “Secretary-tutor to the Royesse Iselle!”
   Cazaril felt his jaw unhinge. He blinked stupidly at her. “What?”
   “Teidez already has his own secretary, who keeps the books of his chambers, writes his letters, such as they are… it’s time Iselle possessed her own warder, at the gate between her women’s world and the greater one she’ll have to deal with. And besides, none of those stupid governesses have ever been able to handle her. She needs a man’s authority, that’s what. You have the rank, you have the experience…” The Provincara… grinned, was all one could call that horrifying gleeful expression. “What do you think, my lord Castillar

Castillar?”
   Cazaril swallowed. “I think… I think if you lent me a razor now, for me to cut my throat with, it would save ever so many steps. Please Your Grace.”
   The Provincara snorted. “Good, Cazaril, good. I do so like a man who doesn’t underestimate his situation.”
   Dy Ferrej, who’d at first looked startled and alarmed, eyed Cazaril with new interest.
   “I’ll wager you could direct her mind to her Darthacan declensions. You’ve been there, after all, which none of these fool women have,” the Provincara went on, gaining enthusiasm. “Roknari, too, though we all pray she’ll never need that. Read Brajaran poetry to her, you used to like that, I remember. Deportment—you’ve served at the roya’s court, the gods know. Come, come, Cazaril, don’t look at me like a lost calf. It would be easy work for you, in your convalescence. Eh, don’t imagine I can’t see how sick you’ve been,” she added at his little negating gesture. “You wouldn’t have to answer but two letters a week at most. Less. And you’ve ridden courier—when you rode out with the girls, I wouldn’t have to listen to a lot of wheezing and whining afterward about saddle galls from those women with thighs like dough. As for keeping the books of her chamber—why, after running a fortress, it should be child’s play for you. What say you, dear Cazaril?”
   The vision was at once enticing and appalling. “Couldn’t you give me a fortress under siege, instead?”
   The humor faded in her face. She leaned forward, and tapped him on the knee; her voice dropped, and she breathed, “She will be, soon enough.” She paused, and studied him. “You asked if there was anything you could do to ease my burdens. For the most part, the answer is no. You can’t make me young, you can’t make… many things better.” Cazaril wondered anew how the strange fragile health of her daughter weighed upon her. “But can’t you give me this one little yes?”
   She begged him. She begged him. That was all wrong. “I am yours to command, of course, lady, of course. It’s just… it’s just that… are you sure?”
   “You are not a stranger here, Cazaril. And I am in the most desperate need of a man I can trust.”
   His heart melted. Or maybe it was his wits. He bowed his head. “Then I am yours.”
   “Iselle’s.”
   Cazaril, his elbows on his knees, glanced up and across at her, at the thoughtfully frowning dy Ferrej, and back at the old woman’s intent face. “I… see.”
   “I believe you do. And that, Cazaril, is why I shall have you for her.”

Chapter 4

   So it was Cazaril found himself, the next morning, introduced into the young ladies’ schoolroom by the Provincara herself. This sunny little chamber was on the east side of the keep, on the top floor occupied by Royesse Iselle, Lady Betriz, their waiting woman, and a maid. Royse Teidez had chambers for his similar subhousehold in the new building across the courtyard, rather more generously proportioned, Cazaril suspected, and with better fireplaces. Iselle’s schoolroom was simply furnished with a pair of small tables, chairs, a single bookcase half-empty, and a couple of chests. With the addition of Cazaril, feeling overtall and awkward under the low-beamed ceiling, and the two young women, it was as full as it would hold. The perpetual waiting woman had to take her sewing into the next chamber, though the doors were left propped open between them.
   It seemed Cazaril was to have a class, not just a pupil. A maiden of Iselle’s rank would almost never be left alone, and certainly not with a man, even a prematurely aged and convalescent one of her own household. Cazaril didn’t know how the two ladies felt about this tacit arrangement, but he was secretly relieved. Never had he felt more repulsively male—uncouth, clumsy, and degraded. In all, this cheerful, peaceful feminine atmosphere was about as far from a Roknari galley rower’s bench as it was possible for Cazaril to imagine, and he had to swallow a lump of delirious joy at the contrast as he ducked his head under the lintel and stepped inside.
   The Provincara announced him briskly as Iselle’s new secretary-tutor, “Just as your brother has,” a clearly unexpected gift that Iselle, after a blink of surprise, accepted without the least demur. By her calculating look, the novelty and increased status of being instructed by a man was quite pleasing to her. Lady Betriz, too, Cazaril was heartened to note, looked alert and interested rather than wary or hostile.
   Cazaril trusted he appeared scholarly enough to fool the young ladies, the wool merchant’s neat brown gown secured today by the castle warder’s silver-studded belt without the sword. He’d had the forethought to supply himself with all the books in Darthacan that a fast rummage through the remains of the late provincar’s library could supply, some half dozen random volumes. He dropped them with an impressive thump upon one of the little tables and favored both new pupils with a deliberately sinister smile. If this was to be anything like training young soldiers, young horses, or young hawks, the key was to take the initiative from the first moment, and keep it thereafter. He could be as hollow as a drum, so long as he was as loud.
   The Provincara departed as briskly as she’d arrived. In the interest of pretending he had a plan while devising one, Cazaril started right in by testing the royesse’s command of Darthacan. He had her read a random page from one of the volumes, as it chanced on a topic that Cazaril knew well: mining and sapping fortified lines during sieges. With much help and prompting, Iselle stumbled through three laborious paragraphs. Two or three questions Cazaril put to her in Darthacan challenging her to explicate the contents of what she’d just read left her sputtering and floundering.
   “Your accent is terrible,” he told her frankly. “A Darthacan would find you nearly unintelligible.”
   Her head came up, and she glared at him. “My governess said I was quite good. She said that I had a very melodic intonation.”
   “Yes; you speak like a South Ibran fishwoman hawking her wares. They are very melodic, too. But any Darthacan lordling, and they are all arrogant as wasps about their dreadful tongue, would laugh in your face.” At least, they had in Cazaril’s, once. “Your governess flattered you, Royesse.”
   She frowned across at him. “I take it you do not fancy yourself a flatterer, Castillar?”
   Her tone and terms were a bit more double-leveled than he’d expected. His ironic return bow, from his seat on a chest drawn up to her table’s other side, was pulled shorter and a little less apologetic than he’d intended by the yank of his adhesions. “I trust I am not a complete lout. But if you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I’m sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds. Royesse.”
   Her nostrils flared; her lips thinned. Belatedly, it occurred to Cazaril that perhaps this was the wrong approach. She was a tender young thing, barely more than a girl—perhaps he ought to soften—and if she complained of him to the Provincara, he might lose—
   She turned the page. “Let us,” she said in an icy voice, “go on.”
   Five gods, he’d seen exactly that same look of frustrated fury in the eyes of the young men who’d picked themselves up, spat the dirt from their mouths, and gone on to become his best lieutenants. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so difficult after all. With great effort, he cranked a broad grin downward into a grave frown and nodded august tutorly permission. “Continue.”
   An hour flew by in this pleasant, easy employment. Well, easy for him. When he noticed the royesse rubbing her temples, and lines deepening between her brows that had nothing to do with mere offense, he desisted and took the book back from her.
   Lady Betriz had followed along at Iselle’s side, her lips moving silently. Cazaril had her repeat the exercise. With Iselle’s example before her, she was quicker, but alas she suffered from the same broad South Ibran accent, probably from the same South Ibran prior instructress, as Iselle. Iselle listened intently as they waded through corrections.
   They had all earned their noon dinner by that time, Cazaril felt; but he had one more displeasing task to accomplish, strictly charged to him by the Provincara. He leaned back, as the girls stirred and made to rise, and cleared his throat.
   “That was quite a spectacular gesture you brought off yesterday at the temple, Royesse.”
   Her wide mouth curved up; her curiously thick eyelids narrowed in pleasure. “Thank you, Castillar.”
   He let his own smile grow astringent. “A most showy insult, to put upon a man constrained to stand and not answer back. At least the idlers were vastly amused, judging by their laughter.”
   Her lips constricted into an uneasy purse. “There is much ill done in Chalion that I can do nothing about. It was little enough.”
   “If it was well, it was well-done,” he conceded with a deceptively cordial nod. “Tell me, Royesse, what steps did you take beforehand, to assure yourself of the man’s guilt?”
   Her chin stopped in mid-rise. “Ser dy Ferrej… said it of him. And I know him to be honest.”
   “Ser dy Ferrej said, and I recall his words precisely, for he uses his words so, that he’d heard it said the judge had taken the duelist’s bribe. He did not claim firsthand knowledge of the deed. Did you check with him, after dinner, to find out how he came by his belief?”
   “No… If I’d told anyone what I was planning, they would have forbidden me.”
   “You, ah, told Lady Betriz, though.” Cazaril favored the dark-eyed woman with a nod.
   Stiffening, Betriz replied warily, “It’s why I suggested asking the first flame.”
   Cazaril shrugged. “The first flame, ah. But your hand is young and strong and steady, Lady Iselle. Are you sure that first flame wasn’t all your doing?”
   Her frown deepened. “The townsmen applauded…”
   “Indeed. On average, one-half of all supplicants to come before a judge’s bench must depart angry and disappointed. But not, by that, necessarily wronged.”
   That one hit the target, by the change in her face. The shift from defiant to stricken was not especially pleasurable to watch. “But… but…”
   Cazaril sighed. “I’m not saying you were wrong, Royesse. This time. I’m saying you were running blindfolded. And if it wasn’t headlong into a tree, it was only by the mercy of the gods, and not by any care of yours.”
   “Oh.”
   “You may have slandered an honest man. Or you may have struck a blow for justice. I don’t know. The point is… neither do you.”
   Her oh this time was so repressed as to be unvoiced.
   The horribly practical part of Cazaril’s mind that had eased him through so many scrapes couldn’t help adding, “And right or wrong, what I also saw was that you made an enemy, and left him alive behind you. Great charity. Bad tactics.” Damn, but that was no remark to make to a gentle maiden… with an effort, he kept from clapping his hands over his mouth, a gesture that would do nothing to prop up his pose as a high-minded and earnest corrector.
   Iselle’s brows went up and stayed up, for a moment, this time. So did Lady Betriz’s.
   After an unnervingly long and thoughtful silence, Iselle said quietly, “I thank you for your good counsel, Castillar.”
   He returned her an approving nod. Good. If he’d got through that sticky one all right, he was halfway home with her. And now, thank the gods, on to the Provincara’s generous table…
   Iselle sat back and folded her hands in her lap. “You are to be my secretary, as well as my tutor, Cazaril, yes?”
   Cazaril sank back. “Yes, my lady? You wish some assistance with a letter?” He almost added suggestively, After dinner?
   “Assistance. Yes. But not with a letter. Ser dy Ferrej said you were once a courier, is that right?”
   “I once rode for the provincar of Guarida, my lady. When I was younger.”
   “A courier is a spy.” Her regard had grown disquietingly calculating.
   “Not necessarily, though it was sometimes hard to… convince people otherwise. We were trusted messengers, first and foremost. Not that we weren’t supposed to keep our eyes open and report our observations.”
   “Good enough.” The chin came up. “Then my first task for you, as my secretary, is one of observation. I want you to find out if I made a mistake or not. I can’t very well go down into town, or ask around—I have to stay up on top of this hill in my”—she grimaced—“feather bed. But you—you can do it.” She gazed across at him with an expression of the most disturbing faith.
   His stomach felt suddenly as hollow as a drum, and it had nothing to do with the lack of food. Apparently, he had just put on slightly too good a show. “I… I… immediately?”
   She shifted uncomfortably. “Discreetly. As opportunity presents.”
   Cazaril swallowed. “I’ll try what I can do, my lady.”

* * *

   On his way down the stairs to his own chamber, one floor below, a vision surfaced in Cazaril’s thoughts from his days as a page in this very castle. He’d fancied himself a bit of a swordsman, on account of being a shade better than the half dozen other young highborn louts who’d shared his duties and his training in the provincar’s household. One day a new young page had arrived, a short, surly fellow; the provincar’s swordmaster had invited Cazaril to step up against him at the next training session. Cazaril had developed himself a pretty thrust or two, including a flourish that, with a real blade, would have neatly nipped the ears off most of his comrades. He’d tried his special pass on the new fellow, coming to a happy halt with the dulled edge flat against the newcomer’s head—only to look down and see his opponent’s light practice blade bent nearly double against his gut padding.
   That page had gone on, Cazaril had heard, to become the swordmaster for the roya of Brajar. In time, Cazaril had to own himself an indifferent swordsman—his interests had always been too broad-scattered for him to maintain the necessary obsession. But he’d never forgotten that moment, looking down in surprise at his mock-death.
   It bemused him that his first lesson with the delicate Iselle had churned up that old memory. Odd little flickers of intensity, to burn in such disparate eyes… what had that short page’s name been…?
   Cazaril found that a couple more tunics and trousers had arrived on his bed while he was out, relics of the castle warder’s younger and thinner days, unless he missed his guess. He went to put them away in the chest at the foot of his bed and was reminded of the dead wool merchant’s book, folded inside the black vest-cloak there. He picked it up, thinking to walk it down to the temple this afternoon, but then set it back. Possibly, within its ciphered pages, might lurk some of that moral certainty the royesse sought of him—that he had pricked her to seek of him—some clearer evidence for or against the shamed judge. He would examine it himself, first. Perhaps it would provide some guidance to the secrets of Valenda’s local scene.


* * *

   After dinner, Cazaril lay down for a marvelous little nap. He was just coming to luxuriant wakefulness again when Ser dy Ferrej knocked on his door, and delivered to him the books and records of the royesse’s chambers. Betriz followed shortly with a box of letters for him to put in order. Cazaril spent the remainder of the afternoon starting to organize the randomly piled lot, and familiarize himself with the matters therein.
   The financial records were fairly simple—the purchase of this or that trivial toy or bit of trumpery jewelry; lists of presents given and received; a somewhat more meticulous listing of jewels of genuine value, inheritances, or gifts. Clothing. Iselle’s riding horse, the mule Snowflake, and their assorted trappings. Items such as linens or furniture were subsumed, presumably, in the Provincara’s accounts, but would in future be Cazaril’s charge. A lady of rank was normally sent off to marriage with cartloads—Cazaril hoped not boatloads—of fine goods, and Iselle was surely due to begin the years of accumulation against that future journey. Should he list himself as Item One in that bridal inventory?
   He pictured the entry: Sec’t’y-tutor, One ea. Gift from Grandmama. Aged thirty-five. Badly damaged in shipping. Value…?
   The bridal procession was a one-way journey, normally, although Iselle’s mother the dowager royina had returned… broken, Cazaril tried not to think. The Lady Ista puzzled and disturbed him. It was said that madness ran in some noble families. Not Cazaril’s—his family had run to financial fecklessness and unlucky political alliances instead, just as devastating in the long run. Was Iselle at risk…? Surely not.
   Iselle’s correspondence was scant but interesting. Some early, kindly little letters from her grandmother, from before the widowed royina had moved her family back home from court, full of advice on the general order of be good, obey your mother, say your prayers, help take care of your little brother. One or two notes from uncles or aunts, the Provincara’s other children—Iselle had no other relatives on her father the late Roya Ias’s side, Ias having been the only surviving child of his own ill-fated father. A regular series of birthday and holy day letters from her much older half brother, the present roya, Orico.
   Those were in the roya’s own hand, Cazaril noted with approval, or at least, he trusted the roya did not employ any secretary with such a crabbed and difficult fist. They were for the most part stiff little missives, the effort of a man full-grown attempting to be kindly to a child, except when they broke into descriptions of Orico’s beloved menagerie. Then they became spontaneous and flowing for the space of a paragraph or two, in enthusiasm and, perhaps, trust that here at least was an interest the two half siblings might share on the same level.
   This pleasant task was interrupted in turn late in the afternoon with the word, brought by a page, that Cazaril’s presence was now required to ride out with the royesse and Lady Betriz. He hastily donned the borrowed sword and found the horses saddled and waiting in the courtyard. Cazaril hadn’t had a leg across a horse for nearly three years; the page eyed him with surprise and disfavor when Cazaril asked for a mounting block, to ease himself gingerly aboard. They gave him a nice mild-mannered beast, the same bay gelding he’d seen the royesse’s waiting woman riding that first afternoon. As they formed up, the waiting woman leaned from a window in the keep and waved them out with a piece of linen and evident goodwill. But the ride proved much milder and more placid than he’d anticipated, a mere jaunt down to the river and back. Since he declared at the outset of the excursion that all conversation by the party must be conducted in Darthacan, it was also largely silent, adding to the general restfulness.
   And then supper, and then to his chamber, where he pottered about trying on his new old clothing, and folding it away, and attempting the first few pages of deciphering the poor dead fool of a wool merchant’s book. But Cazaril’s eyes grew heavy over this task, and he slept like a block till morning.


* * *

   As it had begun, so it went on. In the morning, lessons with the two lovely young ladies in Darthacan or Roknari or geography or arithmetic or geometry. For geography, he filched away the good maps from Teidez’s tutor and entertained the royesse with suitably edited accounts of some of his more exotic past journeys around Chalion, Ibra, Brajar, great Darthaca, or the five perpetually quarreling Roknari princedoms along the north coast.
   His more recent slave’s-eye views of the Roknar Archipelago, he edited much more severely. Iselle’s and Betriz’s open boredom with court Roknari, he discovered, was susceptible to exactly the same cure as he’d used on the couple of young pages from the provincar of Guarida’s household he’d once been detailed to teach the language. He traded the ladies one word of rude Roknari (albeit not the most rude) for every twenty of court Roknari they demonstrated themselves to have memorized. Not that they would ever get to use that vocabulary, but it might be well for them to be able to recognize things said in their hearing. And they giggled charmingly.
   Cazaril approached his first assigned duty, quietly investigating the probity of the provincial justiciar, with trepidation. Oblique inquiries of the Provincara and dy Ferrej filled in background without supplying certainty, as neither had crossed the man in his professional capacity, merely in unexceptionable social contacts. A few excursions down into town to try to find anyone who’d known Cazaril seventeen years ago and would speak to him frankly proved a little disheartening. The only man who recognized him with certainty at sight was an elderly baker who’d maintained a long and lucrative career selling sweets to all the castle’s parade of pages, but he was an amiable fellow not inclined to lawsuits.
   Cazaril started working through the wool merchant’s notebook leaf by leaf, as quickly as his other duties permitted him. Some truly disgusting early experiments in calling down the Bastard’s demons had been entirely ineffective, Cazaril was relieved to observe. The dead duelist’s name never appeared but with some excoriating adjectives attached, or sometimes just the adjectives alone; the live judge’s name did not turn up explicitly. But before Cazaril had the tangle even half-unraveled, the question was taken out of his inexpert hands.
   An Officer of Inquiry from the Provincar of Baocia’s court arrived, from the busy town of Taryoon, to which the Dowager’s son had moved his capital upon inheriting his father’s gift. It had taken, Cazaril counted off in his head later, just about as many days as one could expect for a letter from the Provincara to her son to be written, dispatched, and read, for orders to be passed down to Baocia’s Chancellery of Justice, and for the Inquirer to ready himself and his staff for travel. Privilege indeed. Cazaril was unsure of the Provincara’s allegiance to the processes of law, but he wagered the business of leaving loose enemies untidily about had plucked some, ah, housewifely nerve of hers.
   The next day the judge Vrese was discovered to have ridden off in the night with two servants and some hastily packed bags and chests, leaving a disrupted household and a fireplace full of ashes from burned papers.
   Cazaril tried to discourage Iselle from taking this as proof either, but that was a bit of a stretch even for his slow judgment. The alternative—that Iselle had been touched by the goddess that day—disturbed him to contemplate. The gods, the learned theologians of the Holy Family assured men, worked in ways subtle, secret, and above all, parsimonious: through the world, not in it. Even for the bright, exceptional miracles of healing—or dark miracles of disaster or death—men’s free will must open a channel for good or evil to enter waking life. Cazaril had met, in his time, some two or three persons who he suspected might be truly god-touched, and a few more who’d plainly thought they were. They had not any of them been comfortable to be around. Cazaril trusted devoutly that the Daughter of Spring had gone away satisfied with her avatar’s action. Or just gone away…
   Iselle had little contact with her brother’s household across the courtyard, except to meet at meals, or when they made up a party for a ride out into the countryside. Cazaril gathered the two children had been closer, before the onset of puberty had begun to drive them into the separate worlds of men and women.
   The royse’s stern secretary-tutor, Ser dy Sanda, seemed unnecessarily unnerved by Cazaril’s empty rank of castillar. He laid claim to a higher place at table or in procession above the mere ladies’ tutor with an insincerely apologetic smile that served—every meal—to draw more attention than it purported to soothe. Cazaril considered trying to explain to the man just how much he didn’t care, but doubted he’d get through, so contented himself with merely smiling back, a response which confused dy Sanda terribly as he kept trying to place it as some sort of subtle tactic. When dy Sanda showed up in Iselle’s schoolroom one day to demand his maps be returned, he seemed to expect Cazaril to defend them as though they were secret state papers. Cazaril produced them promptly, with gentle thanks. Dy Sanda was forced to depart with his huff barely half-vented.
   Lady Betriz’s teeth were set. “That fellow! He acts like, like…”
   “Like one of the castle cats,” Iselle supplied, “when a strange cat comes around. What have you done to make him hiss at you so, Cazaril?”
   “I promise you, I haven’t pissed outside his window,” Cazaril offered earnestly, a remark that made Betriz choke on a giggle—ah, that was better—and look around guiltily to be sure the waiting woman was too far off to hear. Had that been too crude? He was sure he didn’t quite have the hang of young ladies yet, but they had not complained of him, despite the Darthacan. “I suppose he imagines I would prefer his job. He can’t have thought it through.”
   Or perhaps he had, Cazaril realized abruptly. When Teidez had been born, his heirship to his new-wed half brother Orico had been much less apparent. But as year had followed year, and Orico’s royina still failed to conceive a child, interest—possibly unhealthy interest—in Teidez must surely have begun to grow in the court of Chalion. Perhaps that was why Ista had left the capital, taking her children out of that fervid atmosphere to this quiet, clean country town. A wise move, withal.
   “Oh, no, Cazaril,” said Iselle. “Stay up here with us. It’s much nicer.”
   “Indeed, yes,” he assured her.
   “It’s not just. You’ve twice Ser dy Sanda’s wits, and ten times his travels! Why do you endure him so, so…” Betriz seemed at a loss for words. “Quietly,” she finally finished. She stared away for a moment, as if afraid he would construe she’d swallowed a term less flattering.
   Cazaril smiled crookedly at his unexpected partisan. “Do you think it would make him happier if I presented myself as a target for his foolishness?”

   “Clearly, yes!”
   “Well, then. Your question answers itself.”
   She opened her mouth, and closed it. Iselle nearly choked on a short laugh.
   Cazaril’s sympathy for dy Sanda increased, however, one morning when he turned up, his face so drained of blood as to be almost green, with the alarming news that his royal charge had vanished away, not to be found in house or kitchen, kennel or stable. Cazaril buckled on his sword and readied himself to ride out with the searchers, his mind already quartering the countryside and the town, weighing the options of injuries, bandits, the river… taverns? Was Teidez old enough yet to attempt a whore? Reason enough to scrape off his clinging attendants.
   Before Cazaril was moved to point out the range of possibilities to dy Sanda, whose mind was utterly fixated on bandits, Teidez himself rode in to the courtyard, muddy and damp, a crossbow slung over his shoulder, a boy groom following behind, and a dead fox hung over his saddlebow. Teidez stared at the half-assembled cavalcade with surly horror.
   Cazaril abandoned his attempt to climb on his horse without pulling something that hurt, lowered himself to a seat on his mounting block with the bay gelding’s reins in his hand, and watched in fascination as four grown men began to belabor the boy and the obvious.
   Where have you been? scarcely needed asked, Why did you do that? likewise, Why didn’t you tell anyone? grew more apparent by the minute. Teidez endured it with his teeth closed, for the most part.
   When dy Sanda paused for breath, Teidez thrust his limp and ruddy prey at Beetim the huntsman. “Here. Skin this for me. I want the pelt.”
   “Pelt’s no good at this season, young lord,” said Beetim severely. “The hair’s all thin, and falls out.” He shook his finger at the vixen’s dark dugs, heavy with milk. “And it’s bad luck to take a mother animal in the Daughter’s season. I’ll have to burn its whiskers, or its ghost’ll be back, stirring up my dogs all night long. And where are the cubs, eh? You should’ve slain them as well, while you were at it, it’s right cruel to leave them to starve. Or have you two gone and hidden them somewhere, eh?” His glower took in the shrinking boy groom.
   Teidez threw his crossbow to the cobbles, and snarled in exasperation, “We looked for the den. We couldn’t find it.”
   “Yes, and you—!” dy Sanda turned on the unlucky groom. “You know you should have come to me—!” He abused the groom in much blunter terms than he’d dared to vent upon the royse, ending with the command, “Beetim, go beat the boy for his stupidity and insolence!”
   “With a will, m’lord,” said Beetim grimly, and stalked away toward the stables, the fox’s scruff in one hand and the cowering groom’s in the other.
   The two senior grooms led the horses back to their stalls. Cazaril gave up his mount gladly and considered his breakfast—now, it appeared, not to be indefinitely delayed. Dy Sanda, anger succeeding his terror, confiscated the crossbow and drove the sullen Teidez indoors. Teidez’s voice floated back in a last counterargument before the door banged closed upon the pair, “But I’m so bored…!”
   Cazaril puffed a laugh. Five gods, but what a horrible age that was to be for any boy. All full of impulses and energy, plagued with incomprehensible arbitrary adults with stupid ideas that did not involve skipping morning prayers to go fox hunting on a fair spring morning—he glanced up at the sky overhead, brightening to a washed cerulean as the dawn mists burned away. The quietude of the Provincara’s household, balm to Cazaril’s soul, was doubtless acid to poor constricted Teidez.
   Any word of advice from the newly employed Cazaril was not likely to be well received by dy Sanda, as matters stood between them at present. But it seemed to Cazaril that if dy Sanda was looking to guard his future influence over the royse when he came to a man’s estate with its full power and privilege of a high lord—at the very least—of Chalion, he was going about it exactly backward. Teidez was more likely to shed him at the first opportunity.
   Still, dy Sanda was a conscientious man, Cazaril had to grant. A viler man of like ambition might well be pandering to Teidez’s appetites instead of attempting to control them, winning not loyalty but addiction. Cazaril had met a noble scion or two so corrupted by his attendants… but not in dy Baocia’s household. While the Provincara was in charge, Teidez was unlikely to encounter such parasites. On that comforting reflection, Cazaril pushed off the block and climbed to his feet.

Chapter 5

   The Royesse Iselle’s sixteenth birthday fell at the midpoint of spring, some six weeks after Cazaril had come to Valenda. The birthday present sent down this year from the capital at Cardegoss by her brother Orico was a fine dappled gray mare, an inspiration either well calculated or very lucky, for Iselle flew into transports over the shimmering beast. Cazaril had to concede it was a royal gift. And he was able to avoid the problem of his damaged handwriting a little longer, as it was no trouble at all to persuade Iselle to make her thank-you in her own hand, to send with the royal courier’s return.
   But Cazaril found himself subjected in the days following to the most minute and careful, not to say embarrassing, inquiries from Iselle and Betriz after his health. Little gifts of the best fruit or viands were sent down the table to tempt his appetite; he was encouraged to go early to bed, and drink a little wine, but not too much; both ladies persuaded him out to frequent short walks in the garden. It wasn’t till dy Ferrej let fall a casual joke to the Provincara in his hearing that Cazaril caught on that Iselle and her handmaiden had been constrained to temper their gallops out of consideration for the new secretary’s supposedly frail health. Cazaril’s wits overtook his indignation just barely in time to confirm this canard with a straight face and a convincingly stiff gait. Their feminine attentions, however blatantly self-interested, were too lovely to scorn. And… it wasn’t that much of an act.
   Both the improving weather and, truth to tell, his improving condition baited him into relenting. After all, soon enough the summer heat would be upon them, and slow life down again. After watching both girls stick to their horses over logs and down the twisting trails by the river, flashing along in ripples of gold and green from the half shade of the new leaves overhead, his concern for their safety eased. It was his horse, shying sideways after startling a doe out of a thicket, that dumped him violently into a mess of rocks and tree roots, knocking his wind out and popping an adhesion in his back. He lay wheezing, the woods blurred with tears of pain, till two frightened female faces wavered into his view against the lace of leaves and sky.
   It took the pair of them and the help of a fallen tree to get him loaded back up on his recaptured horse. The return trip up the hill to the castle was as demure and ladylike, not to mention guilty, a walk as ever the governesses could have wished. The world had stopped twisting around his head in odd little jerks by the time they rode through the arched gate, but the torn adhesion was a burning agony marked by a lump the size of an egg beneath his tunic. It would likely darken to black and take weeks to subside. Arriving safe at last in the courtyard, he had no attention for anything but the mounting block, the groom, and again getting off the damned horse alive. Secure on the ground he stood for a moment, head bent against the saddlebow, grimacing with pain.
   “Caz!”
   The familiar voice smote his ears out of nowhere. His head came up; he blinked around. Striding toward him, his arms held out, was a tall, athletic man with dark hair, dressed in an elegant red brocade tunic and high riding boots. “Five gods,” whispered Cazaril, and then, “Palli?”
   “Caz, Caz! I kiss your hands! I kiss your feet!” The tall man seized him, nearly knocking him over, made the first half of his greeting literal, but traded the second for an embrace instead. “Caz, man! I’d thought you were dead!”
   “No, no… Palli…” His pain three-fourths forgotten, he grabbed the dark-haired man’s hands in turn, and turned to Iselle and Betriz, who’d abandoned their horses to the grooms and drifted up in open curiosity. “Royesse Iselle, Lady Betriz, permit me to introduce the Ser dy Palliar—he was my good right arm at Gotorget—five gods, Palli, what are you doing here?”
   “I could ask you the same, with more reason!” Palli replied, and made his bow to the ladies, who eyed him with increasing approval. The two years and more since Gotorget had done much to improve his already-pleasant looks, not that they hadn’t all looked like depraved scarecrows at the end of the siege. “Royesse, my lady, an honor—but it’s the March dy Palliar now, Caz.”
   “Oh,” said Cazaril, and gave him an immediate, apologetic nod. “My condolences. Is it a recent loss?”
   Palli returned an understanding duck of his chin. “Almost two years gone, now. The old man had suffered an apoplectic stroke while we were still closed up in Gotorget, but he hung on till just after I made it home, thanks be to the Father of Winter. He knew me, I was able to see him at the last, tell him of the campaign—he offered up a blessing for you, you know, on his last day, though we both thought we were praying for the lost dead. Caz, man, where did you go?”
   “I… wasn’t ransomed.”
   “Not ransomed? How, not ransomed? How could you not be ransomed?”
   “It was an error. My name was left off the list.”
   “Dy Jironal said the Roknari reported you died of a sudden fever.”
   Cazaril’s smile grew tight. “No. I was sold to the galleys.”
   Palli’s head jerked back. “Some error! No, wait, that makes no sense—”
   Cazaril’s grimace, and his hand pressed palm down before his chest, stopped Palli’s protest on his lips, though it didn’t quench the startled look in his eyes. Palli always could take a hint, if you clouted him with it hard enough. The twist of his mouth said, Very well, but I will have this out of you later—! By the time he turned to Ser dy Ferrej, coming up to observe this reunion with an interested expression, his cheerful smile was back in place.
   “My lord dy Palliar is taking wine with the Provincara in the garden,” the castle warder explained. “Do join us, Cazaril.”
   “Thank you.”
   Palli took his arm, and they turned to follow dy Ferrej out of the courtyard and half-around the keep, to the little plot where the Provincara’s gardener grew flowers. In good weather she made it her favorite bower for sitting outdoors. Three strides, and Cazaril was trailing; Palli shortened his step abruptly at Cazaril’s stumble, and eyed him sidelong. The Provincara waited their return with a patient smile, enthroned under an arching trellis of climbing roses not yet in bloom. She waved them to the chairs the servants had brought out. Cazaril lowered himself onto a cushion with a wince and an awkward grunt.
   “Bastard’s demons,” said Palli under his breath, “did the Roknari cripple you?”
   “Only half. Lady Iselle—oof!—seems bent on completing the task.” Gingerly, he eased himself back. “And that fool horse.”
   The Provincara frowned at the two young ladies, who had tagged along uninvited. “Iselle, were you galloping?” she inquired dangerously.
   Cazaril waved a diverting hand. “It was all the fault of my noble steed, my lady—attacked, it thought, by a horse-eating deer. It went sidewise, I didn’t. Thank you.” He accepted a glass of wine from the servant with deep appreciation and sipped quickly, trying not to let it slosh. The unpleasant shaky feeling in his gut was passing off, now.
   Iselle cast him a grateful glance, which her grandmother did not miss. The Provincara sniffed faint disbelief. By way of punishment, she said, “Iselle, Betriz, go and change out of those riding clothes and into something suitable for supper. We may be country folk here; we need not be savages.” They dragged off, with a couple of backward glances at the fascinating visitor.
   “But how came you here, Palli?” Cazaril asked, when the double distraction had passed around the corner of the keep. Palli, too, stared after them, and seemed to have to shake himself back awake. Close your mouth, man, Cazaril thought in amusement. I have to.
   “Oh! I’m riding up to Cardegoss, to dance attendance at court. M’father always used to break his journeys here, being thick with the old Provincar—when we passed near Valenda, I made to presume, and sent a messenger. And m’lady”—he nodded to the Provincara—“was kind enough to bid me bide.”
   “I’d have cuffed you if you’d failed to make your duty to me,” said the Provincara amiably, with admirable illogic. “I’d not seen your father nor you for far too many years. I was sorry to hear of his passing.”
   Palli nodded. He continued to Cazaril, “We plan to rest the horses overnight and go on tomorrow at a leisurely pace—the weather’s too fine to be in a rush. There are pilgrims on the roads to every shrine and temple—and those who prey on ’em, alas—there were bandits reported in the hill passes, but we didn’t find ’em.”
   “You looked?” said Cazaril, bemused. Not finding bandits had been all his desire, on the road.
   “Hey! I am the lord dedicat of the Daughter’s Order at Palliar now, I’ll have you know—in my father’s shoes. I have duties.”
   “You ride with the soldier-brothers?”
   “More like with the baggage train. It’s all keeping the books, and collecting rents, and chasing the damned equipment, and logistics. The joys of command—well, you know. You taught them to me. One part glory to ten parts shoveling manure.”
   Cazaril grinned. “That good a ratio? You’re blessed.”
   Palli grinned back and accepted cheese and cakes from the servant. “I lodged my troop down in town. But you, Caz! As soon as I said, Gotorget, they asked me if we’d met—you could have knocked me over with a straw when m’lady said you’d turned up here, having walked—walked!—from Ibra, and looking like something the cat hawked up.”
   The Provincara gave a small, unrepentant shrug at Cazaril’s faintly reproachful glance her way.
   “I’ve been telling them war stories for the past half hour,” Palli went on. “How’s your hand?”
   Cazaril curled it in his lap. “Much recovered.” He hastened to change the subject. “What’s forward at court, for you?”
   “Well, I’d not had the chance to make formal oath to Orico since m’father died, and also, I’m to represent the Daughter’s Order of Palliar at the investiture.”
   “Investiture?” said Cazaril blankly.
   “Ah, has Orico finally given out the generalship of the Daughter’s Order?” asked dy Ferrej. “Since the old general died, I hear every high family in Chalion has been badgering him for the gift.”
   “I should imagine,” said the Provincara. “Lucrative and powerful enough, even if it is smaller than the Son’s.”
   “Oh, aye,” said Palli. “It’s not been announced yet, but it’s known—it’s to be Dondo dy Jironal, the younger brother of the Chancellor.”
   Cazaril stiffened, and sipped wine to hide his dismay.
   After a rather long pause, the Provincara said, “What an odd choice. One usually expects the general of a holy military order to be more… personally austere.”
   “But, but,” said dy Ferrej, “Chancellor Martou dy Jironal holds the generalship of the Order of the Son! Two, in one family? It’s a dangerous concentration of power.”
   The Provincara murmured, “Martou is also to become the Provincar dy Jironal, if rumor is true. As soon as old dy Ildar stops lingering.”
   “I hadn’t heard that,” said Palli, sounding startled.
   “Yes,” said the Provincara dryly. “The Ildar family is not too happy. I believe they’d been counting on the provincarship for one of the nephews.”
   Palli shrugged. “The brothers Jironal certainly ride high in Chalion, by Orico’s favor. I suppose if I were clever, I would find some way of grabbing on to their cloak-hems, and riding along.”

   Cazaril frowned into his wine and groped for a way to divert the topic. “What other news do you hear?”
   “Well, these two weeks gone, the Heir of Ibra has raised his banner in South Ibra—again—against the old fox, his father. Everyone had thought last summer’s treaty would hold, but it seems they had some secret falling-out, last autumn, and the roya repudiated it. Again.”
   “The Heir,” said the Provincara, “presumes. Ibra does have another son, after all.”
   “Orico supported the Heir the last time,” observed Palli.
   “To Chalion’s cost,” murmured Cazaril.
   “It seemed to me Orico was taking the long view. In the end,” said Palli, “surely the Heir must win. One way or another.”
   “It will be a joyless victory for the old man if his son loses,” said dy Ferrej in a tone of slow consideration. “No, I wager they’ll spend more men’s lives, and then make it up again between them over the bodies.”
   “A sad business,” said the Provincara, tightening her lips. “No good can come of it. Eh, dy Palliar. Tell me some good news. Tell me Orico’s royina is with child.”
   Palli shook his head ruefully. “Not as I’ve heard, lady.”
   “Well, then, let us go to our supper and talk no more politics. It makes my old head ache.”
   His muscles had seized up while he was sitting, despite the wine; Cazaril almost fell over, trying to rise from his chair. Palli caught him by the elbow and steadied him, and frowned deeply. Cazaril gave him a tiny shake of his head and went off to wash and change. And examine his bruises in private.


* * *

   Supper was a cheerful meal, attended by most of the household. Dy Palliar, no slouch at table when it came to either food or talk, held the attention of everyone, from the Lord Teidez and Lady Iselle down to the youngest page, with his tales. Despite the wine he kept his head in the high company, and told only the merry stories, with himself more as butt than hero. The account of how he’d followed Cazaril on a night sortie against the Roknari sappers, and so discouraged them for a month thereafter, drew wide-eyed stares upon Cazaril as well as himself. They clearly had a hard time picturing the royesse’s timid, soft-spoken secretary grinning in the dirt and the soot, scrambling through the burning rubble with a dirk in his hand. Cazaril realized he disliked the stares. He wanted to be… invisible, here. Twice Palli tried to toss the conversational ball to him, to take a turn at the entertaining, and twice he fielded it back to Palli or to dy Ferrej. After the second attempt fell flat, Palli desisted from trying to draw him out.
   The meal ran very late, but at last came the hour Cazaril had been both longing for and dreading, when all parted for the night, and Palli knocked on his chamber door. Cazaril bade him enter, pushed the trunk to the wall, tossed a cushion upon it for his guest, and settled himself upon his bed; both he and it creaked audibly. Palli sat and stared across at him in the dim double candlelight, and began with a directness that revealed the trend of his mind all too clearly.
   “Error, Caz? Have you thought about that?”
   Cazaril sighed. “I had nineteen months to think of it, Palli. I rubbed every possibility as thin as an old coin in my brain. I thought of it till I was sick to death of the thinking, and called it done. It’s done.”
   This time, Palli brushed the hint firmly aside. “Do you think it was the Roknari taking revenge upon you, by hiding you from us and saying you died?”
   “That’s one.” Except that I saw the list.
   “Or did someone leave you off the list on purpose?” Palli persisted.
   The list was in Martou dy Jironal’s own hand. “That was my final conclusion.”
   Palli’s breath blew out. “Vile! A vile betrayal, after what we suffered—dammit, Caz! When I get up to court, I am going to tell March dy Jironal of this. He’s the most powerful lord in Chalion, the gods know. Together, I wager we can get to the bottom of—”
   “No!” Cazaril lurched upright from his cushions, terrified. “Don’t, Palli! Don’t even tell dy Jironal I exist! Don’t discuss it, don’t mention me—if the world thinks I’m dead, so much the better. If I’d realized that was so, I would have stayed in Ibra. Just… drop it.”
   Palli stared. “But… Valenda is hardly the end of the world. Of course people will learn you’re alive.”
   “It’s a quiet, peaceful place. I’m not bothering anyone here.”
   Other men were as brave, some were stronger; it was Palli’s wits that had made him Cazaril’s favorite lieutenant at Gotorget. It only needed the one thread to start him unraveling… his eyes narrowed, glinting in the soft candlelight. “Dy Jironal? Himself? Five gods, what did you ever do to him?”
   Cazaril shifted uncomfortably. “I think it was not personal. I think it was just a little… favor, for someone. A little, easy favor.”
   “Then two men must know the truth. Gods, Caz, which two?”
   Palli would go nosing in—Cazaril must either tell him nothing—too late already—or else enough to stop him. Nothing halfway, Palli’s brain would keep plucking at the puzzle—it was doing so even now.
   “Who would hate you so? You were always the most agreeable man—you were downright famous for refusing duels, and leaving the bullroarers to look like the fools they were—for making peace, for wheedling out the most amazing treaty terms, for avoiding faction—Bastard’s hell, you didn’t even make bets on games! Little, easy favor! What could possibly drive such an implacable cruel hatred of you?”
   Cazaril rubbed his brow, which was beginning to ache, and not from tonight’s wine. “Fear. I think.”
   Palli’s lips screwed up in astonishment.
   “And if it becomes known you know, they’ll fear you too. It’s not something I wish to see fall on you, Palli. I want you to steer clear.”
   “If it’s that degree of fear, the fact that we’ve even talked together will make me suspect. Their fear, plus my ignorance—gods, Caz! Don’t send me blindfolded into battle!”
   “I want never to send any man into battle again!” The fierceness in his own voice took even Cazaril by surprise. Palli’s eyes widened. But the solution, the way to use Palli’s own ravenous curiosity against him, came to Cazaril in that moment. “If I tell you what I know, and how I know it, will you give me your word—your word!—to drop it? Don’t pursue it, don’t mention it, don’t mention me—no dark hints, no dancing about the issue—”
   “What, as you are doing now?” said Palli dryly.
   Cazaril grunted, half in amusement, half in pain. “Just so.”
   Palli sat back against the wall, and rubbed his lips. “Merchant,” he said amiably. “To make me buy a pig in a bag, without ever seeing the animal.”
   “Oink,” murmured Cazaril.
   “I only want to buy the squeal, y’know—damn, all right. I never knew you to lead us over wet ground unknowing, nor into ambush. I’ll trust your judgment—to the exact extent you trust my discretion. My word on that.”
   A neat counterthrust. Cazaril could not but admire it. He sighed. “Very well.” He sat silent for a moment after this—welcome—dual surrender, marshaling his thoughts. Where to begin? Well, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t gone over it, and over it, and over it in his mind. A most polished tale, for all it had never crossed his lips before.
   “It’s quickly enough told. I first met Dondo dy Jironal to speak to four, no, it’s five now, five years ago. I was in Guarida’s train in that little border war against the mad Roknari prince Olus—you know, the fellow who made a habit of burying his enemies up to the waist in excrement and burning them alive?—the one who was murdered about a year later by his own bodyguards?”
   “Oh, yes. I’d heard of him. Ended head down in the excrement, they say.”
   “There are several versions. But he was still in control at that time. Lord dy Guarida had cornered Olus’s army—well, rabble—up in the hills at the edge of his princedom. Lord Dondo and I were sent as the envoys, under the flag of parley, to deliver an ultimatum to Olus and arrange the terms and ransoms. Things went… badly, in the conference, and Olus decided he only required one messenger to return his defiance to the assembled lords of Chalion. So he stood us up, Dondo and me, in his tent surrounded by four of his monster guards with swords and gave us a choice. Whichever of us would cut off the other’s head would be permitted to ride with it back to our lines. If we both refused, we both would die, and he’d return both our heads by catapult.”
   Palli opened his mouth, but the only comment he managed was, “Ah.”
   Cazaril took a breath. “I was given the first chance. I refused the sword. Olus whispered to me, in this weird oily voice, ‘You cannot win this game, Lord Cazaril.’ I said, ‘I know, m’hendi. But I can make you lose it.’ He was quiet for a little, but then he just laughed. Then he turned round and gave the chance to Dondo, who was green as a corpse by then…”
   Palli stirred, but didn’t interrupt; he signaled Cazaril mutely to go on.
   “One of the guards knocked me to my knees and stretched my head, by the hair, over a footstool. Dondo—took his cut.”
   “On the guard’s arm?” said Palli eagerly.
   Cazaril hesitated. “No,” he said at last. “But Olus, at the last moment, thrust his sword between us, and Dondo’s sword came down on its flat, and slid—” Cazaril could still hear the sharp scraping skree of metal on metal, in his memory’s ear. “I ended up with a bruise across the back of my neck that was black for a month. Two of the other guards wrestled the sword back from Dondo. And then we were both mounted up on our horses and sent back to dy Guarida’s camp. As my hands were being tied to my saddle, Olus came up to me again, and whispered, ‘Now we shall see who loses.’
   “It was a very silent ride back. Until we were in sight of camp. And Dondo turned and looked at me for the first time, and said, ‘If you ever tell this tale, I will kill you.’ And I said, ‘Don’t worry, Lord Dondo. I only tell amusing tales at table.’ I should have just sworn silence. I know better now, and yet… maybe even that would not have been enough.”
   “He owes you his life!”
   Cazaril shook his head, and looked away. “I’ve seen his soul stripped naked. I doubt he can ever forgive me for that. Well, I didn’t speak of it, of course, and he let it lie. I thought that was the end of it. But then came Gotorget, and then came… well. What came after Gotorget. And now I am doubly damned. If Dondo ever learns, if he ever realizes that I know exactly how I came to be sold to the galleys, what do you think my life will be worth then? But if I say nothing, do nothing, nothing to remind him… perhaps he has forgotten, by now. I just want to be left alone, in this quiet place. He surely has more pressing enemies these days.” He turned his face back to Palli, and said tensely, “Don’t you ever mention me to either of the Jironals. Ever. You never heard this story. You scarcely know me. If you ever loved me, Palli, leave it be.”
   Palli’s lips were pressed together; his oath would hold him, Cazaril thought. But he made a little unhappy gesture nonetheless. “As you will, but, but… damn. Damn.” He stared for long across the dim chamber at Cazaril, as if searching for who-knew-what in his face. “It’s not just that dreadful excuse for a beard. You are much changed.”
   “Am I? Well, so.”
   “How…” Palli looked away, looked back. “How bad was it? Really? In the galleys.”
   Cazaril shrugged. “I was fortunate in my misfortunes. I survived. Some did not.”
   “One hears all sorts of horrific stories, how the slaves are terrorized, or… misused…”
   Cazaril scratched his slandered beard. It was too filling in, a bit, he fancied. “The stories are not so much untrue as twisted, exaggerated—exceptional events mistaken as daily bread. The best captains treated us as a good farmer treats his animals, with a sort of impersonal kindness. Food, water—heh—exercise—enough cleanliness to keep us free of disease and in good condition. Beating a man senseless makes him unfit to pull his oar, you know. Anyway, that sort of physical… discipline was only required in port. Once at sea, the sea supplied all.”

   “I don’t understand.”
   Cazaril’s brows flicked up. “Why break a man’s skin, or his head, when you can break his heart simply by putting him overboard, in the water with his legs dangling down like worms for the great fishes? The Roknari only had to wait a very little to have us swim after and beg and plead and weep for our slavery again.”
   “You were always a strong swimmer. Surely that helped you bear it better than most?” Palli’s voice was hopeful.
   “The opposite, I’m afraid. The men who sank like stones went mercifully quickly. Think about it, Palli. I did.” He still did, sitting up bolt upright in the dark in this bed from some nightmare of the water, closing over his head. Or worse… not. Once, the wind had come up unexpectedly while the oar-master had been playing this little game with a certain recalcitrant Ibran, and the captain, anxious for port before the storm, had refused to circle back. The Ibran’s fading screams had echoed over the water as the ship drew away, growing fainter and fainter… The captain had docked the oar-master the cost of the slave’s replacement, as punishment for his misjudgment, which had made him surly for weeks.
   After a moment Palli said, “Oh.”
   Oh indeed. “Grant you, my pride—and my mouth—did win me one beating when I first went aboard, but I still fancied myself a lord of Chalion then. I was broken of that… later.”
   “But… you weren’t… they didn’t make you an object of… I mean, use you after a degrading… um.”
   The light was too dim to tell if Palli reddened, but it finally dawned on Cazaril that he was trying to inquire in this worried and tongue-tumbled fashion if Cazaril had been raped. Cazaril’s lips twisted in sympathy. “You are confusing the Roknari fleets with those of Darthaca, I think. I’m afraid those legends represent wishful thinking on someone’s part. The Roknari heresy of the four gods makes a crime of the sort of odd loves the Bastard rules, here. The Roknari theologians say the Bastard is a demon, like his father, and not a god, after his holy mother, and so call us all devil worshippers—which is a deep offense to the Lady of Summer, I think, as well as to the poor Bastard himself, for did he ask to be born? They torture and hang men caught in sodomy, and the better Roknari shipmasters do not tolerate it aboard in either men or slaves.”
   “Ah.” Palli settled in relief. But then, being Palli, thought to ask, “And the worse Roknari shipmasters?”
   “Their discretion could become deadly. It didn’t happen to me—I fancy I was too bony—but a few of the young men, the softer boys… We slaves knew they were our sacrifice, and we tried to be kind to them when they were returned to the benches. Some cried. Some learned to use the mischance for favors… few of us begrudged them the extra rations or trivial treats so dearly bought. It was a dangerous game, for the Roknari inclined to them in secret were like to turn on them at any moment, and slay them as if they could so slay their own sin.”
   “You make my hair stand on end. I thought I knew my way around the world, but… eh. But at least you were spared the worst.”
   “I don’t know what is the worst,” said Cazaril thoughtfully. “I was once used after a vile humor for the space of one hellish afternoon that made what happened to some of the boys look like a friendly gesture, but no Roknari risked hanging for it.” Cazaril realized he’d never told anyone of the incident, not the kind acolytes of the temple hospital, not, certainly, anyone in the Provincara’s household. He’d had no one he could talk to, till now. He continued almost eagerly. “My corsair made the mistake of tackling a lumbering Brajaran merchanter, and spotted its escorting galleys too late. As we were being chased off, I failed at my oar, fainted in the heat. To make some use of me despite all, the oar-master hauled me out of my chains, stripped me, and hung me over the stern rail with my hands tied to my ankles, to mock our pursuers. I couldn’t tell if the crossbow bolts that thumped into the rail or the stern around me were good or bad aim on the Brajaran archers’ parts, nor by what god’s mercy I didn’t end my life with a few in my ass. Maybe they thought I was Roknari. Maybe they were trying to end my misery.” For the sake of Palli’s widening eyes, Cazaril skipped certain of the more grotesque details. “You know, we lived with fear for months on end at Gotorget, till we were used to it, a sort of nagging ache in the gut that we learned to ignore, but that never quite went away.”
   Palli nodded.
   “But I found out that… this is odd. I don’t quite know how to say it.” He’d never had a chance to try to put it into words, out where he could see it, till now. “I found there is a place beyond fear. When the body and the mind just can’t sustain it anymore. The world, time… reorder themselves. My heartbeat slowed down, I stopped sweating and salivating… it was almost like some holy trance. When the Roknari hung me up, I’d been weeping in fear and shame, in agony for the disgust of it all. When the Brajarans finally veered off, and the oar-master took me down, all blistered from the sun… I was laughing. The Roknari thought I had gone mad, and so withal did my poor benchmates, but I didn’t think so. The whole world was all… new.
   “Of course, the whole world was only a few dozen paces long, and made of wood, and rocked on the water… all time was the turning of a glass. I planned my life by the hour as closely as one plans a year, and no further than an hour. All men were kind and beautiful, each in his way, Roknari and slave alike, lordly or vile blood, and I was a friend to all, and smiled. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I did take care never to faint at my oar again, though.”
   His voice slowed, thoughtfully. “So whenever fear comes back into my heart, I am more pleased than anything, for I take it as a sign that I am not mad after all. Or maybe, at least, getting better. Fear is my friend.” He looked up, with a quick, apologetic smile.
   Palli was sitting plastered back against the wall, his legs tense, his dark eyes round as saucers, smiling fixedly. Cazaril laughed out loud.
   “Five gods, Palli, forgive me. I did not mean to make you a donkey for my confidences, to carry them safely away.” Or perhaps he had, for Palli would be going away tomorrow, after all. “They make a motley menagerie to burden you with. I’m sorry.”
   Palli waved away his apology as if batting a stinging fly. His lips moved; he swallowed, and managed, “Are you sure it wasn’t just sunstroke?”
   Cazaril chuckled. “Oh, I had the sunstroke, too, of course. But if it doesn’t kill you, sunstroke passes off in a day or two. This lasted… months.” Until the last incident with that terrified defiant Ibran boy, and Cazaril’s resultant final flogging. “We slaves—”
   “Stop that!” cried Palli, running his hands through his hair.
   “Stop what?” asked Cazaril in puzzlement.
   “Stop saying that. We slaves. You are a lord of Chalion!”
   Cazaril’s smile twisted. He said gently, “We lords, at our oars, then? We sweating, pissing, swearing, grunting gentlemen? I think not, Palli. On the galleys we were not lords or men. We were men or animals, and which proved which had no relation I ever saw to birth or blood. The greatest soul I ever met there had been a tanner, and I would kiss his feet right now with joy to learn he yet lived. We slaves, we lords, we fools, we men and women, we mortals, we toys of the gods—all the same thing, Palli. They are all the same to me now.”
   After a long, indrawn breath, Palli changed the subject abruptly to the little matters of managing his escort from the Daughter’s military order. Cazaril found himself comparing useful tricks for treating leather rot and thrush infections in horses’ hooves. Soon thereafter Palli retired—or fled—for the night. An orderly retreat, but Cazaril recognized its nature all the same.
   Cazaril lay down with his pains and his memories. Despite the feast and the wine, sleep was a long time coming. Fear might be his friend, if that wasn’t just bluff and bluster for Palli’s sake, but it was clear the dy Jironal brothers were not. The Roknari reported you’d died of a fever was a lie outright, and, cleverly, quite uncheckable by now. Well, he was surely sheltered here in quiet Valenda.
   He hoped he’d cautioned Palli sufficiently to walk warily at the court in Cardegoss and not put a foot in a pile of old manure unawares. Cazaril rolled over in the darkness and sent up a whispered prayer to the Lady of Spring for Palli’s safety. And to all the gods and the Bastard, too, for the deliverance of all upon the sea tonight.