Chapter 9

   Cazaril spent the following day in smiling anticipation of the delight Palli’s visit to court would bring to his routine. Betriz and Iselle also spoke in praise of the young march, which gave Cazaril brief pause. Palli would show to his best in this splendid setting.
   And what of it? Palli was a landed man, with money, looks, charm, honorable responsibilities. Suppose he and the Lady Betriz were to hit it off. Was either of them less than what the other deserved? Nevertheless, Cazaril found his mind, unwilled, revolving plans for pleasures with Palli that somehow did not include his ladies.
   But to his disappointment, Palli did not appear at court that evening—nor did the provincar of Yarrin. Cazaril supposed their wearing day of presenting evidence at the Daughter’s house to whatever committee of justice had assembled there had run into complexities, and stretched past dinner. If the case took longer than Palli’s first optimistic estimate, well, it would at least extend his visit to Cardegoss.
   He did not see Palli again until the next morning, when the march appeared abruptly at the open door of Cazaril’s office, which was an antechamber to the succession of rooms occupied by Royesse Iselle and her ladies. Cazaril stared up from his writing desk in surprise. Palli had discarded his court attire, and was dressed for the road in well-worn tall boots, thick tunic, and a short cloak for riding.
   “Palli! Sit down—” Cazaril gestured to a stool.
   Palli pulled it up across from him and lowered himself with a tired grunt. “Only for a moment, old friend. I could not leave without bidding you farewell. I, dy Yarrin, and our troops are commanded to be quit of Cardegoss before noon today, under pain of expulsion from the Daughter’s holy order.” His smile was tight as a stretched hawser.
   “What? What has happened?” Cazaril laid down his quill, and pushed aside the book of Iselle’s increasingly complex household accounts.
   Palli ran a hand through his dark hair and shook his head as if in disbelief. “I’m not sure I can speak of it without bursting. It was all I could do last night not to pull out my sword and run the smirking son of a bitch through his soft guts on the spot. Caz, they threw out dy Yarrin’s case! Confiscated all his evidence, dismissed all his witnesses—uncalled! unheard!—let that lying, thieving worm of a comptroller out of the cellar—”
   “Who has?”
   “Our holy general, Dondo dy Jironal, and his, his, his creatures on the Daughter’s council, his cowed dogs—goddess blind me if I’ve ever before seen such a set of cringing curs—a disgrace to her pure colors!” Palli clenched his fist upon his knees, sputtering. “We all knew the order’s house in Cardegoss has been in disarray for some time. I suppose we should have petitioned the roya to dismiss the old general when he first grew too ill to keep it all in hand, but no one had the heart to kick him so—we all thought a new, younger, vigorous man would turn it all out again and start fresh. But this, this, this is worse than neglect. It’s active malfeasance! Caz, they cleared the comptroller and dismissed dy Yarrin—they scarcely glanced at his letters and ledgers, dear goddess the papers filled two trunks—I swear the decision was made before the meeting was called!”
   Cazaril had not heard Palli stammer with rage like this since the day the news of the sale of Gotorget had been delivered to the starving, battered garrison by the roya’s stout courier, passed through the Roknari lines. He sat back and pulled his beard.
   “I suspect—no, I’m certain in my heart—Lord Dondo was paid off for his judgment. If he is not simply the comptroller’s new master—and two trunks of evidence now being used to feed the fires on the Lady’s altar—Caz, our new holy general is running the Daughter’s Order as his personal milch cow. I was told by an acolyte yesterday—on the stairs, and the man shook as he whispered it to me—he’s placed out six troops of the Daughter’s men to the Heir of Ibra in South Ibra—as plain paid mercenaries. That’s not their mandate, that’s not the goddess’s work—it’s worse than stealing money, it’s stealing blood!”
   A rustle, and an indrawn breath, drew both men’s glances to the inner doorway. Lady Betriz stood there with her hand upon the frame, and the Royesse Iselle peeked over her shoulder. Both ladies’ eyes were round.
   Palli opened and shut his mouth, swallowed, then jumped to his feet and bowed to them. “Royesse. Lady Betriz. Alas that I must take my leave of you. I return to Palliar this morning.”
   “We shall regret the loss of your company, March,” said the royesse faintly.
   Palli wheeled to Cazaril. “Caz—” He gave an apologetic little nod. “I’m sorry I disbelieved you about the Jironals. You weren’t crazed after all. You were right on every point.”
   Cazaril blinked, nonplussed. “I thought you had believed me…”
   “Old dy Yarrin was as canny as you. He suspected this trouble from the first. I’d asked him why he thought we needed to bring so large a troop to enter Cardegoss—he murmured, ‘No boy—it is to leave Cardegoss.’ I didn’t understand his joke. Till now.” Palli vented a bitter laugh.
   “Will you be—will you not be returning here?” asked Betriz in a rather breathy voice. Her hand went to her lips.
   “I swear before the goddess—” Palli touched his hand to forehead, lip, navel, and groin, and then spread it flat over his heart in the fivefold sacred gesture, “I will not return to Cardegoss except it be to Dondo dy Jironal’s funeral. Ladies—” He stood at attention and gave them a bow. “Caz—” He grasped Cazaril’s hands across the table and bent to kiss them; hastily, Cazaril returned the honor. “Farewell.” Palli turned and strode from the room.
   The space he had vacated seemed to collapse around his absence, as if four men had just left. Betriz and Iselle were drawn into it; Betriz tiptoed to the outer door and peered around it, to spy the last of his clomping retreat down the corridor.
   Cazaril picked up his quill and drew the feather end nervously through his fingers. “How much of that did you hear?” he asked the ladies.
   Betriz glanced back at Iselle, and replied, “All of it, I think. His voice was not pitched low.” She returned slowly across the antechamber, her face troubled.
   Cazaril groped for some way to caution these unintended auditors. “It was the business of a closed council of a holy military order. Palli should not have spoken of it outside the Daughter’s house.”
   Iselle said, “But isn’t he a lord dedicat, a member of that council—doesn’t he have as much right—duty!—to speak as any of them?”
   “Yes, but… in the heat of his temper, he has made serious accusations against his own holy general that he has not the… power to prove.”
   Iselle gave him a sharp look. “Do you believe him?”
   “My belief is not the issue.”
   “But—if it’s true—it’s a crime, and worse than a crime. An insulting impiety, and a violation of the trust not only of the roya and the goddess above, but of all who are sworn to obey in their names below.”
   She sees the consequences in both directions! Good! No, wait, no. “We haven’t seen the evidence. Maybe the council was justified in discarding it. We cannot know.”
   “If we can’t see the evidence as March dy Palliar has, can we judge the men and reason backward to it?”
   “No,” said Cazaril firmly. “Even a habitual liar may tell the truth from time to time, or an honest man be tempted to lie by some extraordinary need.”
   Betriz, startled, said, “Do you think your friend was lying?”
   “As he is my friend, no, of course not, but… but he might be mistaken.”
   “This is all too murky,” said Iselle decisively. “I shall pray to the goddess for guidance.”
   Cazaril, remembering the last time she’d done that, said hastily, “You need not reach that high for guidance, Royesse. You inadvertently overheard a confidence. You have a plain duty not to repeat it. In word or deed.”
   “But if it’s true, it matters. It matters greatly, Lord Caz!”

   “Nevertheless, liking and disliking do not constitute proof any more than hearsay does.”
   Iselle frowned thoughtfully. “It’s true I do not like Lord Dondo. He smells odd, and his hands are always hot and sweaty.”
   Betriz added, with a grimace of distaste, “Yes, and he’s always touching one with them. Ugh!”
   The quill snapped in Cazaril’s hand, spraying a small spatter of ink drops on his sleeve. He set the pieces aside. “Oh?” he said, in what he trusted was a neutral tone. “When was this?”
   “Oh, everywhere, at the dances, at dinner, in the halls. I mean, many gentlemen here flirt, some quite agreeably, but Lord Dondo… presses. There are enough fine ladies here at court nearer his own age. I don’t know why he doesn’t go try to charm them.”
   Cazaril almost asked her if thirty-five seemed as ancient to her as forty, but bit it short, and said instead, “He desires influence over Royse Teidez, of course. And therefore desires whatever good grace he can obtain from Teidez’s sister, directly or through her attendants.”
   Betriz’s breath puffed out in relief. “Oh, do you think that’s so? It made me quite ill to think he might really be in love with me. But if he’s only flattering me for his advantage, that’s all right.”
   Cazaril was still laboring to work this through when Iselle said, “He has a very odd idea of my character if he thinks seducing my attendants will gain my good graces! And I do not think he needs any more influence over Teidez, if what I’ve seen so far is a sample. I mean—if it were good influence, shouldn’t we see good results? We ought to see Teidez growing firmer in his studies, clearer in health, opening his mind to a wider world of some kind.”
   Cazaril also bit back the observation that Teidez was certainly getting that last from Lord Dondo, in a way.
   Iselle went on with growing passion, “Shouldn’t Teidez be apprenticing statecraft? At least seeing the Chancellery work, sitting in on councils, listening to envoys? Or if not statecraft, real warcraft? Hunting is fine, but shouldn’t he be learning military drill with men? His spiritual diet seems all candy and no meat. What kind of roya do they mean to train him to be?”
   Possibly, one just like Orico—sodden and sickly—who will not compete with Chancellor dy Jironal for power in Chalion. But what Cazaril said aloud was, “I do not know, Royesse.”
   “How can I know? How can I know anything?” She stepped back and forth across the chamber, her spine tense with frustration, her skirts swishing. “Mama and Grandmama would wish me to watch out for him. Cazaril, can you at least find out if it’s true about selling the Daughter’s men to the Heir of Ibra? That at least can’t be any kind of subtle secret!”
   She was right about that. Cazaril swallowed. “I’ll try, my lady. But—then what?” He made his voice stern, for emphasis. “Dondo dy Jironal is a power you dare not treat with anything but strictest courtesy.”
   Iselle swirled round, and stared intently at him. “No matter how corrupt that power is?”
   “The more corrupt, the less safe.”
   Iselle raised her chin. “So, Castillar, tell me—how safe, in your judgment, is Dondo dy Jironal?”
   He was caught out, his mouth at half cock. So say it—Dondo dy Jironal is the second-most-dangerous man in Chalion, after his brother. Instead, he picked up a new quill from the clay jar and began shaping its tip with the penknife. After a moment or two he got out, “I do not like his sweaty hands either.”
   Iselle snorted. But Cazaril was saved from further cross-examination by a call from Nan dy Vrit, some vital little matter of scarves and straying seed pearls, and the two ladies went back into their chambers.


* * *

   On cool afternoons when no more exciting hunting party went out, Royesse Iselle vented her restless energy by gathering up her little household and going for rides in the oak woods near Cardegoss. Cazaril, along with Lady Betriz and a couple of wheezing grooms, was cantering in the wake of her dappled mare down a green ride, the crisp air spangled with golden falling leaves, when his ear picked up a thunder of new hooves gaining ground behind them. He glanced over his shoulder, and his stomach lurched; a cavalcade of masked men was pelting down the track. The yelling crew overtook them. He had his sword half-out before he recognized the horses and equipage as belonging to some of the Zangre’s younger courtiers. The men were dressed in an amazing array of rags, bare arms and legs smeared with a dirt suspiciously reminiscent of boot blacking.
   Cazaril drew a long breath, and bent briefly over his saddlebow, willing his heart to slow, as the grinning mob “captured” the royesse and Lady Betriz, and tied their prisoners, including Cazaril, with silk ribands. He wished fervently someone would warn him, at least, about these pranks in advance. The laughing Lord dy Rinal had come, though he apparently did not realize it, to within a fraction of a reflex of receiving a length of razor steel across his throat. His sturdy page, galloping up on Cazaril’s other side, might have died on the backstroke, and Cazaril’s sword sheathed itself in a third man’s belly before, had they been real bandits, they could have combined to take him down. And all before Cazaril’s brain had formulated his first clear thought, or his mouth opened to scream warning. They all laughed heartily at the look of terror they’d surprised on his face, and teased him about drawing steel; he smiled sheepishly, and decided not to explain just what aspect of it all had drained the blood from his face.
   They rode to their “bandit camp,” a large clearing in the forest where a number of servants from the Zangre, also dressed in artistic rags, roasted deer and lesser game on spits over open fires. Bandit ladies, shepherdesses, and some rather stately beggar girls hailed the kidnappers’ return. Iselle squeaked in laughing outrage when the bandit king dy Rinal clipped a lock of her curling hair and held it up for ransom. The masque was not yet finished, for upon this cue a troop of “rescuers” in blue and white, led by Lord Dondo dy Jironal, galloped into the camp. Vigorous mock swordplay ensued, including some alarming and messy moments involving pig’s bladders filled with blood, before all the bandits were slain—some still complaining about the unfairness of it—and the lock of hair rescued by Dondo. A mock divine of the Brother then went about miraculously raising the bandits back to life with a skin of wine, and the entire company settled down upon cloths spread on the ground for some serious feasting and drinking.
   Cazaril found himself sharing a cloth with Iselle, Betriz, and Lord Dondo. He sat cross-legged toward the edge, nibbled venison and bread, and watched and listened as Dondo entertained the royesse with what was, to his ear, heavy-handed wit. Dondo begged Iselle to award him her shorn lock as his prize for her daring rescue, and offered up in return, with a snap of his fingers to his hovering page, a tooled leather case containing two beautiful jeweled tortoiseshell combs.
   “A treasure for a treasure, and all is quits,” Dondo told her, and ostentatiously tucked the curl of hair away in an inner pocket of his vest-cloak, over his heart.
   “It’s a cruel gift, though,” Iselle parried, “to give me combs but leave me no hair to hold with them.” She held a comb up and turned it, glittering and translucent, in the sunlight.
   “But you may grow new hair, Royesse.”
   “But can you grow new treasure?”
   “As easily as you can grow new hair, I assure you.” He leaned on his elbow by her side, and grinned up at her, his head nearly in her lap.
   Iselle’s amused smile faded. “Do you find your new post so profitable, then, Holy General?”
   “Indeed.”
   “You are miscast, then. Perhaps you should have played the bandit king today.”
   Dondo’s smile thinned. “If the world were not so, how could I ever buy enough pearls to please the pretty ladies?”
   Spots of color flared in Iselle’s cheeks, and she lowered her eyes. Dondo’s smile grew satisfied. Cazaril, his tongue clamped between his teeth, reached for a silver flagon of wine, with an eye to accidentally in this emergency spilling it down the back of Iselle’s neck. Alas, the flagon was empty. But to his intense relief, Iselle took a bite of bread and meat next, and chewed instead on it. It was notable, though, that she drew her skirts aside from Lord Dondo when next she shifted position.
   The chill of the autumn evening was rising with the shadows from the low places when the replete company rode slowly back to the Zangre after the bandits’ picnic. Iselle reined in her dappled mare and fell back beside Cazaril for a moment.
   “Castillar. Did you ever discover for me the truth of the rumor of the Daughter’s troops being sold for mercenaries?”
   “One or two other men have said so, but it is not what I would call confirmed news.” It was, in fact, quite thoroughly confirmed, but Cazaril judged it imprudent to say so to Iselle just at this moment.
   She frowned silently, then spurred her horse forward to catch up with Lady Betriz again.


* * *

   That night the sparer-than-usual evening banquet broke up without dancing, and tired courtiers and ladies went off to an early bed or private pleasures. Cazaril found Dondo dy Jironal falling into step beside him in an antechamber.
   “Walk with me a little, Castillar. I think we need to talk.”
   Cazaril shrugged obligingly, and followed Dondo, feigning not to notice the two choice young bravos, a couple of Dondo’s riper friends, who padded along a few paces behind them. They exited the tower block at the narrow end of the fortress, onto an irregular little quadrangle of a courtyard overlooking the confluence of the rivers. At a hand signal from Dondo, his two friends waited by the door, leaning against the stone wall like bored and tired sentries.
   Cazaril calculated the odds. He had reach on Dondo, and despite his subsequent illness, his months pulling the oar on the galleys had left his wiry arms much stronger than they looked. Dondo was doubtless better trained. The bravos were young. A little drunk, but young. At three-to-one, swordplay might not even be required. An unagile secretary, too full of wine after supper, taking a walk on the battlements, could slip and fall in the dark, bouncing off the rock face three hundred feet down to the water below; his broken body might be found next day without a single telltale stab wound in it.
   A few lanterns in wall brackets cast flickering orange light across the paving stones. Dondo gestured invitingly to a carved granite bench against the outer wall. The stone was gritty and chill against Cazaril’s legs as he sat, the night breeze dank on his neck. With a little grunt, Dondo seated himself, too, automatically flipping his vest-cloak aside to free his sword hilt.

  “So, Cazaril,” Dondo began. “I see you are quite close in the confidence of the Royesse Iselle, these days.”
   “The post of her secretary is one of great responsibility. Of her tutor, even more so. I take it quite seriously.”
   “No surprise there—you always took everything too seriously. Too much of a good thing can be a fault in a man, you know.”
   Cazaril shrugged.
   Dondo sat back and crossed his legs at the ankles, as if making himself comfortable for a chat with some intimate. “For example”—he waved a hand toward the tower block now rising before them—“a girl of her age and style should be just starting to warm to men, and yet I find her strangely chill. A mare like that is made for breeding—she has good wide hips, to cradle a man.” He gave his own a little double jerk, for illustration. “One hopes she has escaped that unfortunate taint in the blood, and it’s not an early sign of the sort of, ah, difficulties of mind that overset her poor mother.”
   Cazaril decided not to touch this one. “Mm,” he said.
   “One hopes. And yet, if that is not the case, one is almost led to wonder if some… overserious person has taken to poisoning her mind against me.”
   “This court is full of gossip. And gossipers.”
   “Indeed. And, ah… just how do you speak of me to her, Cazaril?”
   “Carefully.”
   Dondo sat back, and folded his arms. “Good. That’s good.” He paused for a time. “And yet, withal, I think that I should prefer warmly. Warmly would be better.”
   Cazaril moistened his lips. “Iselle is a very clever and sensitive girl. I’m sure she could sense if I were lying. Better to leave it as it is.”
   Dondo snorted. “Ah, here we come to it. I suspected you might still be holding a grudge against me for that evil little game of mad Olus’s.”
   Cazaril made a little negating gesture. “No. It is forgotten, my lord.” The proximity of Dondo, as close as in Olus’s tent, his slightly peculiar scent, brought it back in intense detail, blaring through Cazaril’s memory, the panting despair, the skree, the heavy blow… “It was a long time ago.”
   “Huh. I do like a man with a malleable memory, and yet… I still feel you need more heat. I suppose you’re still a poor man, as ever. Some fellows never catch the tricks of getting on in the world.” Dondo unfolded his arms, and, with some little difficulty, twisted a ring off one of his thick, damp fingers. Its gold was thin, but a large bevel-cut flat green stone gleamed in its setting. He held it out to Cazaril. “Let this warm your heart to me. And your tongue.”
   Cazaril didn’t move. “I have all I need from the royesse, my lord.”
   “Indeed.” Dondo’s black brows knotted; his dark eyes glittered in the lanternlight between his narrowed lids. “Your position does give you considerable opportunity to fill your pockets, I suppose.”
   Cazaril closed his teeth, hiding his tremble of outrage. “If you decline to believe in my probity, my lord, you might at least reflect upon Royesse Iselle’s future, and believe I still possess the wits the gods gave me. Today she has a household. Another day, it may be some royacy, or a princedom.”
   “Indeed, think you so?” Dondo sat back with a strange grin, then laughed aloud. “Ah, poor Cazaril. If a man neglects his bird in the hand for the flock he sees in the tree, he’s very like to end with no bird at all. How clever is that?” He set the ring coyly down on the stone between them.
   Cazaril opened both his hands and held them out palm up in front of his chest in a gesture of release. He returned them firmly to his knees, and said with undeceptive mildness, “Save your treasure, my lord, to buy yourself a man with a lower price. I’m sure you can find one.”
   Dondo scooped his ring back up and frowned fiercely at Cazaril. “You haven’t changed. Still the same sanctimonious prig. You and that fool dy Sanda are much alike. No wonder, I suppose, considering that old woman in Valenda who chose you both.” He rose and stalked indoors, shoving the ring back on his finger. The two men waiting glanced across curiously at Cazaril and turned to follow.
   Cazaril sighed, and wondered if his moment of furious satisfaction had been bought at too high a price. It might have been wiser to take the bribe and leave Lord Dondo calm, happy in the belief that he’d bought another man, one just like himself, easy to understand, certain of control. Feeling very tired, he pushed himself to his feet and went back inside to mount the stairs to his bedchamber.
   He was just putting his key in his lock when dy Sanda passed him in the corridor, yawning. They exchanged cordial-enough murmurs of greeting.
   “Stay a moment, dy Sanda.”
   Dy Sanda glanced back over his shoulder. “Castillar?”
   “Are you careful to keep your door locked these days, and your key about your person?”
   Dy Sanda’s brows rose, and he turned. “I have a trunk with a good, stout lock, that serves for all I have to guard.”
   “That’s not enough. You need to block your whole room.”
   “So that nothing can be stolen? I have little enough that—”
   “No. So that nothing stolen can be placed therein.”
   Dy Sanda’s lips parted; he stood a moment, as this sank in, and raised his eyes to meet Cazaril’s. “Oh,” he said at last. He gave Cazaril a slow nod, almost a bow. “Thank you, Castillar. I hadn’t thought of that.”
   Cazaril returned the nod, and went inside.

Chapter 10

   Cazaril sat in his bedchamber with a profligacy of candles and the classic Brajaran verse romance The Legend of the Green Tree, and sighed in contentment. The Zangre’s library had been famous in the days of Fonsa the Wise but neglected ever since—this volume, judging by the dust, hadn’t been pulled off the shelves since the end of Fonsa’s reign. But it was the luxury of enough candles to make reading late at night a pleasure and not a strain, as much as Behar’s versifying, that gave his heart joy. And a little guilt—the charges for good wax candles upon Iselle’s household accounts were going to add up after a time, and look a trifle odd. Behar’s thundering cadences echoing in his head, he moistened his finger and turned a page.
   Behar’s stanzas weren’t the only things around here thundering and echoing. He glanced upward, as rapid thumps and scrapes and the muffled sounds of laughter and calling voices penetrated from the ceiling. Well, enforcing reasonable bedtimes in Iselle’s household was Nan dy Vrit’s job, not his, thank the gods. He returned his eye to the poet’s theologically symbolic visions, and ignored the clatter, till the pig squealed shrilly.
   Even the great Behar could not compete with that mystery. His lips drawing back in a grin, Cazaril set the volume down on his coverlet and swung his still-trousered legs out of bed, fastened his tunic, wriggled his feet into his shoes, and picked up the candle with the glass chimney to light his way up the back stairs.
   He met Dondo dy Jironal coming down. Dondo was dressed in his usual courtier’s attire, blue brocade tunic and linen-woolen trousers, though his white vest-cloak swung from his hand, along with his sword in its scabbard and sword belt. His face was set and flushed. Cazaril’s mouth opened to give some polite greeting, but his words died on his lips at Dondo’s murderous glare. Dondo stormed on past him without a word.
   Cazaril swung into the upstairs corridor to find all its wall sconces lit and an inexplicable array of people gathered. Not only Betriz, Iselle, and Nan dy Vrit, but Lord dy Rinal, one of his friends and another lady, and Ser dy Sanda were all crowded around laughing. They scattered to the walls as Teidez and a page blasted through their midst, in hot pursuit of a scrubbed and beribboned young pig trailing a length of scarf. The page tackled the animal at Cazaril’s feet, and Teidez hooted triumph.
   “In the bag, in the bag!” dy Sanda called.
   He and Lady Betriz came up as Teidez and the page collaborated on inserting the squealing creature into a large canvas sack, where it clearly didn’t want to go. Betriz bent to give the struggling animal a quick scratch behind its flapping ears. “My thanks, Lady Pig! You played your part superbly. But it’s time to go back to your home now.”
   The page hoisted the heavy sack up over his shoulder, saluted the assembled company, and staggered off, grinning.
   “What is going on up here?” demanded Cazaril, torn between laughter and alarm.
   “Oh, it was the greatest jest!” cried Teidez. “You should have seen the look on Lord Dondo’s face!”
   Cazaril just had, and it hadn’t inspired him with mirth. His stomach sank. “What have you done?”
   Iselle tossed her head. “Neither my hints not Lady Betriz’s plain words having served to discourage Lord Dondo’s attentions, or to convince him they were unwelcome, we conspired to make him the assignation of love he desired. Teidez undertook to secure our player from the stable. So, instead of the virgin Lord Dondo was confidently expecting to find waiting when he went tiptoeing up to Betriz’s bed in the dark, he found—Lady Pig!”
   “Oh, you traduce the poor pig, Royesse!” cried Lord dy Rinal. “She may have been a virgin, too, after all!”
   “I’m sure she was, or she would not have squealed so,” the laughing lady on his arm put in.
   “It’s only too bad,” said dy Sanda acidly, “she was not to Lord Dondo’s taste. I confess I’m surprised. From all reports of the man, I’d have thought he’d lie down with anything.” His eyes flicked sideways, to check the effect of these words on the grinning Teidez.
   “And after we’d doused her with my best Darthacan perfume, too,” sighed Betriz hugely. The merriment in her eyes was underscored by a glittering rage and sharp satisfaction.
   “You should have told me,” Cazaril began. Told him what? Of this prank? It was clear enough they knew he would have suppressed it. Of Dondo’s continued pressings? Just how vile had they been? His fingernails bit into his palm. And what could he have done about them, eh? Gone to Orico, or Royina Sara? Futile…
   Lord dy Rinal said, “It will be the best tale of the week in all of Cardegoss—and the best tail, too, if a curly one. Lord Dondo hasn’t played the butt for years, and I do think it was past his turn. I can hear the oinking already. The man won’t sit to a pork dinner for months without hearing it. Royesse, Lady Betriz”—he swept them a bow—“I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
   The two courtiers and the lady took themselves off, presumably to spread the jest to whatever of their friends were still awake.
   Cazaril, suppressing the first several remarks trying to rip from his lips, finally ground out, “Royesse, that was not wise.”
   Iselle frowned back, undaunted. “The man wears the robes of a holy general of the Lady of Spring yet undertakes to rob women of their virginity, sacred to Her, just as he robs… well, so you say we have no proof of what else he robs. We had proof enough of this, by the goddess! At least this may teach him the unwisdom of attempting to steal from my household. The Zangre is supposed to be a royal court, not a barnyard!”
   “Cheer up, Cazaril,” dy Sanda advised him. “The man cannot revenge his outraged vanity upon the royse and royesse, after all.” He glanced around; Teidez had gone off up the corridor to collect the trampled ribbons the pig had shed in its attempted flight. He lowered his voice, and added, “And it was well worth the trouble for Teidez to see his, ah, hero in a less flattering light. When the amorous Lord Dondo stumbled out of Betriz’s bedchamber with the strings of his trousers in his hands, he found all our witnesses lined up waiting. Lady Pig nearly knocked him down, escaping between his legs. He looked an utter fool. It’s the best lesson I’ve been able to bring off all this month we’ve been here. Maybe we can start to regain some lost ground in that direction, eh?”
   “I pray you may be right,” said Cazaril carefully. He did not say aloud his reflection that the royse and the royesse were the only people Dondo could not revenge himself upon.
   Nevertheless, there was no sign of retaliation in the next several days. Lord Dondo took the raillery of dy Rinal and his friends with a thin smile, but a smile nonetheless. Cazaril sat to every meal in the expectation of, at the very least, a certain pig served up roasted with ribbons round its neck to the royesse’s table, but the dish did not appear. Betriz, at first infected by Cazaril’s nerves, was reassured. Cazaril was not. For all his hot temper, Dondo had amply demonstrated just how long he could wait for his opportunities without forgetting his wounds.
   To Cazaril’s relief, the oinking about the castle corridors died down in less than a fortnight as new fкtes and pranks and gossip took its place. Cazaril began to hope Lord Dondo was going to swallow his so publicly administered medicine without spitting. Perhaps his elder brother, with larger horizons in view than the little society inside the Zangre’s walls, had undertaken to suppress any inappropriate response. There was news enough from the outside world to absorb grown men’s attention: sharpening of the civil war in South Ibra, banditry in the provinces, bad weather closing down the high passes unseasonably early.
   In light of these last reports, Cazaril gave an eye to the logistics of transporting the royesse’s household, should the court decide to leave the Zangre early and remove to its traditional winter quarters before the Father’s Day. He was sitting in his office totting up horses and mules when one of Orico’s pages appeared at the antechamber door.
   “My lord dy Cazaril, the roya bids you attend upon him in Ias’s Tower.”
   Cazaril raised his eyebrows, set down his quill, and followed the boy, wondering what service the roya desired of him. Orico’s sudden fancies could be a trifle eccentric. Twice he had ordered Cazaril to accompany him on expeditions to his menagerie, there to perform no offices more complex than what a page or groom might well have done, holding his animals’ chains or fetching brushes or feed. Well, no—the roya had also asked leading questions about his sister Iselle’s doings, in an apparently desultory fashion. Cazaril had seized the opportunity to convey Iselle’s horror of being bartered to the Archipelago, or to any other Roknari prince, and had hoped the roya’s ear was more open than his sleepy demeanor would indicate.
   The page guided him to the long room on the second floor of Ias’s Tower that dy Jironal used for his Chancellery when the court was resident in the Zangre. It was lined with shelves crammed with books, parchments, files, and a row of the seal-locked saddlebags used by the royal couriers. The two liveried guards standing at attention followed them within and took up their posts inside the door. Cazaril felt their eyes follow him.
   Roya Orico was seated with the chancellor behind a large table scattered about with papers. Orico looked weary. Dy Jironal was spare and intense, dressed today in ordinary court garb, but with his chain of office around his neck. A courtier, whom Cazaril recognized as Ser dy Maroc, master of the roya’s armor and wardrobe, stood at one end of the table. One of Orico’s pages, looking very worried, stood at the other.
   Cazaril’s escort announced, “The Castillar dy Cazaril, sire,” and then, after a glance at his fellow page, backed away to make himself invisible by the far wall.
   Cazaril bowed. “Sire, my lord Chancellor?”
   Dy Jironal stroked his steel-streaked beard, glanced at Orico, who shrugged, and said quietly, “Castillar, you will oblige His Majesty, please, by removing your tunic, and turning around.”

 Cold unease knotted the words in his throat. Cazaril closed his lips, gave a single nod, and undid the frogs of his tunic. Tunic and vest-cloak he slipped off together and folded neatly over his arm. Face set, he made a military about-face, and stood still. Behind him, he heard two men stifle gasps, and a young voice mutter, “It was so. I did see.” Oh. That page. Yes.
   Someone cleared his throat; Cazaril waited for the hot flush to die from his cheeks, then wheeled around again. He said steadily, “Was that all, sire?”
   Orico fidgeted, and said, “Castillar, it is whispered… you are accused… an accusation has been made… that you were convicted of the crime of rape in Ibra, and flogged in the stocks.”
   “That is a lie, sire. Who has said it?” He glanced at Ser dy Maroc, who had grown a trifle pale while Cazaril’s back was turned. Dy Maroc was not in either of the Jironal brothers’ direct employ, and he was not, so far as Cazaril knew, one of Dondo’s riper creatures… might he have been bribed? Or was he an honest gull?
   A clear voice rang from the corridor. “I will too see my brother, and at once! I have the right!”
   Orico’s guards surged forward, then hastily back again, as Royesse Iselle, trailed by a very pale Lady Betriz and Ser dy Sanda, burst into the chamber.
   Iselle’s quick glance took in the tableau of men. She raised her chin, and cried, “What is this, Orico? Dy Sanda tells me you have arrested my secretary! Without even warning me!”
   By the peeved ripple of Chancellor dy Jironal’s mouth, this intrusion had not been in his plans. Orico waved his thick hands. “No, no, not arrested. No one has arrested anyone. We are gathered to investigate an accusation.”
   “What accusation?”
   “A very serious one, Royesse, and not for your ears,” said dy Jironal. “You should withdraw.”
   Pointedly ignoring him, she pulled up a chair and plunked down into it, folding her arms. “If it’s a serious accusation against the most trusted servant of my household, it is very much for my ears. Cazaril, what is this about?”
   Cazaril gave her a slight bow. “A slander has apparently been circulated, by persons not yet named, that the scars on my back were punishment for a crime.”
   “Last fall,” dy Maroc put in nervously. “In Ibra.”
   By Betriz’s widening stare and caught breath, she had obtained a good close view of the ropy mess as she’d followed Iselle around Cazaril. Ser dy Sanda’s lips too pursed in a wince.
   “May I put my tunic back on, sire?” Cazaril added stiffly.
   “Yes, yes.” Orico waved a hasty assent.
   “The nature of the crime, Royesse,” dy Jironal put in smoothly, “is such as to cast very serious doubts on whether the man should be a trusted servant of your, or indeed, any lady’s household.”
   “What, rape?” said Iselle scornfully. “Cazaril? That is the most absurd lie I have ever heard.”
   “And yet,” said dy Jironal, “there are the flogging scars.”
   “The gift,” said Cazaril through his teeth, “of a Roknari oar-master, in return for a certain ill-considered defiance. Last fall, and off the coast of Ibra, that much is true.”
   “Plausible, and yet… odd,” said dy Jironal in a judicious tone. “The cruelties of the galleys are legendary, but one would not think a competent oar-master would damage a slave past use.”
   Cazaril half smiled. “I provoked him.”
   “How so, Cazaril?” asked Orico, leaning back and squeezing the fat of his chin with one hand.
   “Wrapped my oar-chain around his throat and did my best to strangle him. I almost succeeded, too. But they pulled me off him a trifle too soon.”
   “Dear gods,” said the roya. “Were you trying to commit suicide?”
   “I… am not quite sure. I’d thought I was past fury, but… I had been given a new benchmate, an Ibran boy, maybe fifteen years old. Kidnapped, he said, and I believed him. You could tell he was of good family, soft, well-spoken, not used to rough places—he blistered dreadfully in the sun, and his hands bled on the oars. Scared, defiant, ashamed… he said his name was Danni, but he never told me his surname. The oar-master made to use him after a manner forbidden to Roknari, and Danni struck out at him. Before I could stop him. It was insanely foolish, but the boy didn’t realize… I thought—well, I wasn’t thinking very clearly, but I thought if I struck harder I could distract the oar-master from retaliating upon him.”
   “By retaliating against you instead?” said Betriz wonderingly.
   Cazaril shrugged. He’d kneed the oar-master hard enough in the groin, before wrapping the chain around his neck, to assure he wouldn’t be amorous again for a week, but a week would have passed soon enough, and then what? “It was a futile gesture. Would have been futile, but for the chance of the Ibran naval flotilla crossing our bows the next morning, and rescuing us all.”
   Dy Sanda said encouragingly, “You have witnesses, then. Quite a large number of them, it sounds like. The boy, the galley slaves, the Ibran sailors… what became of the boy, after?”
   “I don’t know. I lay ill in the Temple Hospital of the Mother’s Mercy in Zagosur for, for a while, and everyone was scattered and gone by the time I, um, left.”
   “A very heroic tale,” said dy Jironal, in a dry tone well calculated to remind his listeners that this was Cazaril’s version. He frowned judiciously and glanced around the assembled company, his gaze lingering for a moment upon dy Sanda, and the outraged Iselle. “Still… I suppose you might ask the royesse to give you a month’s leave to ride to Ibra, and locate some of these, ah, conveniently scattered witnesses. If you can.”
   Leave his ladies unguarded for a month, here? And would he survive the trip? Or be slain and buried in a shallow grave in the woods two hours’ ride out of Cardegoss, leaving the court to construe his guilt from his supposed flight? Betriz pressed her hand to whitened lips, but her glare was wholly for dy Jironal. Here, at least, was one who believed Cazaril’s word and not his back. He stood a little straighter.
   “No,” he said at last. “I am slandered. My sworn word stands against hearsay. Unless you have some better support than castle gossip, I defy the lie. Or—where did you have the tale? Have you traced it to its source? Who accuses me—is it you, dy Maroc?” He frowned at the courtier.
   “Explain it, dy Maroc,” dy Jironal invited, with a careless wave.
   De Maroc took a breath. “I had it from an Ibran silk merchant that I dealt with for the roya’s wardrobe—he recognized the castillar, he said, from the flogging block in Zagosur, and was very shocked to see him here. He said it was an ugly case—that the castillar had ravished the daughter of a man who took him in and gave him shelter, and he remembered it very well, therefore, because it was so vile.”
   Cazaril scratched his beard. “Are you sure he didn’t simply mistake me for another man?”
   Dy Maroc replied stiffly, “No, for he had your name.”
   Cazaril’s eyes narrowed. No mistake here—it was a lie outright, bought and paid for. But whose tongue had been bought? The courtier’s, or the merchant’s?
   “Where is this merchant now?” dy Sanda broke in.
   “Led his pack train back to Ibra, before the snows.”
   Cazaril said, in a mild voice, “Just exactly when did you have this tale?”
   Dy Maroc hesitated, apparently casting back, for his fingers twitched down by his side as if counting. “Three weeks gone, he rode out. It was just before he left that we talked.”
   I know who’s lying now, yes. Cazaril’s lip turned up, without humor. That there was a real silk merchant, who had really ridden out of Cardegoss on that date, he had no doubt. But the Ibran had departed well before Dondo’s emerald bribe, and Dondo would not have troubled to invent this indirect route for getting rid of Cazaril until after he’d failed to purchase him direct. Unfortunately, this was not a line of reasoning Cazaril could adduce in his defense.
   “The silk merchant,” dy Maroc added, “could have had no reason to lie.”
   But you do. I wonder what it is? “You’ve known of this serious charge for over three weeks, yet only now have brought it to your lord’s attention? How very odd of you, dy Maroc.”
   Dy Maroc glowered at him.
   “If the Ibran’s gone,” said Orico querulously, “it’s impossible to find out who is telling the truth.”
   “Then my lord dy Cazaril should surely be given the benefit of the doubt,” said dy Sanda, standing sternly upright. “You may not know him, but the Provincara dy Baocia, who gave him this trust, did; he’d served her late husband some six or seven years, in all.”
   “In his youth,” said dy Jironal. “Men do change, you know. Especially in the brutality of war. If there is any doubt of the man, he should not be trusted in such a critical and, dare I say it”—he glanced pointedly at Betriz—“tempting post.”
   Betriz’s long, incensed inhalation was, perhaps fortunately, cut across by Iselle, who cried, “Oh, rubbish! In the midst of the brutality of war, you yourself gave this man the keys to the fortress of Gotorget, which was the anchor of Chalion’s whole battle line in the north. You clearly trusted him enough then, March! Nor did he betray that trust.”
   Dy Jironal’s jaw tightened, and he smiled thinly. “Why, how militant Chalion is grown, that our very maidens seek to give us better advice upon our strategies.”
   “They could hardly give us worse,” growled Orico under his breath. Only a slight sideways flick of the eyes betrayed that dy Jironal had heard him.
   Dy Sanda said, in a puzzled voice, “Yes, and why wasn’t the castillar ransomed with the rest of his officers when you surrendered Gotorget, dy Jironal?”
   Cazaril clenched his teeth. Shut up, dy Sanda.
   “The Roknari reported he’d died,” replied the chancellor shortly. “They’d hid him for revenge, I’d assumed, when I learned he yet lived. Though if the silk merchant spoke truth, maybe it was for embarrassment. He must have escaped them, and knocked about Ibra for a time, until his, um, unhappy arrest.” He glanced at Cazaril, and away.
   You know you lie. I know you lie. But dy Jironal did not, even now, know for certain if Cazaril knew he lied. It didn’t seem much of an advantage. This was a weak moment for a countercharge. This slander already half cut the ground from under his feet, regardless of the outcome of Orico’s inquiry.
   “Well, I do not understand how his loss was allowed to pass without investigation,” said dy Sanda, staring narrowly at dy Jironal. “He was the fortress’s commander.”
   Iselle put in thoughtfully, “If you assumed revenge, you must have judged he’d cost the Roknari dearly in the field, for them to use him so thereafter.”
   Dy Jironal grimaced, clearly misliking where this line of logic was leading. He sat back and waved away the digression. “We are come to an impasse, then. A man’s word against a man’s word, and nothing to decide it. Sire, I earnestly advise prudence. Let my lord dy Cazaril be given some lesser post or sent back to the Dowager of Baocia.”
   Iselle nearly sputtered. “And let the slander go unchallenged? No! I will not stand for it.”
   Orico rubbed his head, as if it ached, and shot side glances at his chilly chief advisor and his furious half sister. He vented a small groan. “Oh, gods, I hate this sort of thing…” His expression changed, and he sat upright again. “Ah! But of course. There is just the solution… just the just solution, heh, heh…” He beckoned to the page who had summoned Cazaril, and murmured in his ear. Dy Jironal watched, frowning, but apparently could not make out what had been said either. The page scampered out.
   “What is your solution, sire?” asked dy Jironal apprehensively.
   “Not my solution. The gods. We will let the gods decide who is innocent, and who lies.”
   “You’re not thinking of putting this to trial by combat, are you?” asked dy Jironal in a voice of real horror.
   Cazaril could only share that horror—and so did Ser dy Maroc, judging by the way the blood drained from his face.
   Orico blinked. “Well, now, there’s another thought.” He glanced at dy Maroc and at Cazaril. “They appear evenly matched, withal. Dy Maroc is younger, of course, and does very well on the sand of my practice ring, but experience counts for something.”
   Lady Betriz glanced at dy Maroc and frowned in sudden worry. So did Cazaril, for the opposite reason, he suspected. Dy Maroc was indeed a very pretty duello dancer. Against the brutality of the battlefield, he would last, Cazaril calculated, maybe five minutes. Dy Jironal met Cazaril’s eyes directly for almost the first time in this inquiry, and Cazaril knew he was making the identical calculation. Cazaril’s stomach heaved at the thought of being forced to butcher the boy, even if he was a tool and a liar.
   “I do not know if the Ibran lied or not,” put in dy Maroc warily. “I only know what I heard.”
   “Yes, yes.” Orico waved this away. “I think my plan will be better.” He sniffed, rubbed his nose on his sleeve, and waited. A lengthy and unnerving silence fell.
   It was broken when the page returned, announcing, “Umegat, sire.”
   The dapper Roknari groom entered and glanced in faint surprise at the people assembled, but trod directly to his master and made his bow. “How may I serve you, my lord?”
   “Umegat,” said Orico. “I want you to go outside and catch the first sacred crow you see, and bring it back in here. You”—he gestured at the page—“go with him for witness. Hurry, now, quick quick.” Orico clapped his hands in his urgency.
   Without evincing the least surprise or question, Umegat bowed again and padded back out. Cazaril caught dy Maroc giving the chancellor a piteous Now what? look; dy Jironal set his teeth and ignored it.

  “Now,” said Orico, “how shall we arrange this? I know—Cazaril, you go stand in one end of the room. Dy Maroc, you go stand in the other.”
   Dy Jironal’s eyes shifted in uncertain calculation. He gave dy Maroc a slight nod, toward the end of the room with the open window. Cazaril found himself relegated to the dimmer, closed end.
   “You all”—Orico gestured to Iselle and her cohort—“stand to the side, for witness. You and you and you too,” this to the guards and the remaining page. Orico heaved to his feet and went about the table to arrange his human tableau to his close satisfaction. Dy Jironal stayed seated where he was, playing with a quill and scowling.
   In much less time than Cazaril would have expected, Umegat returned, with a cranky-looking crow tucked under his arm and the excited page bouncing around him.
   “Was that the first crow you saw?” Orico asked the boy.
   “Yes, my lord,” the page replied breathlessly. “Well, the whole flock was circling above Fonsa’s Tower, so I suppose we saw six or eight at once. So Umegat just stood in the courtyard with his arm out and his eyes closed, quite still. And this one came down to him and landed right on his sleeve!”
   Cazaril’s eyes strained, trying to see if the muttering bird might, just possibly, be missing two tail feathers.
   “Very good,” said Orico happily. “Now, Umegat, I want you to stand in the exact center of the room, and when I give the signal, release the sacred crow. We’ll see which man he flies to, and then we’ll know! Wait—everyone should say a prayer in their hearts first to the gods for guidance.”
   Iselle composed herself, but Betriz looked up. “But sire. What shall we know? Is the crow to fly to the liar, or the honest man?” She stared hard at Umegat.
   “Oh,” said Orico. “Hm.”
   “And what if it just flies around in circles?” said dy Jironal, an exasperated edge leaking into his voice.
   Then we’ll know the gods are as confused as all of the rest of us, Cazaril did not say out loud.
   Umegat, stroking the bird to calm it, gave a slight bow. “As the truth is sacred to the gods, let the crow fly to the honest man, sire.” He did not glance at Cazaril.
   “Oh, very good. Carry on, then.”
   Umegat, with what Cazaril was beginning to suspect was a fine sense of theater, positioned himself precisely between the two accused men, and held the bird out on his arm, slowly removing his controlling hand. He stood a moment with a look of pious quietude on his face. Cazaril wondered what the gods made of the cacophony of conflicting prayers no doubt arising from this room at this instant. Then Umegat tossed the crow into the air, and let his arms hang down. It squawked and spread its wings, and fanned a tail missing two feathers.
   Dy Maroc held his arms widespread, hopefully, looking as if he wondered if he was allowed to tackle the creature out of the air as it swooped by him. Cazaril, about to cry Caz, Caz to be safe, was suddenly overcome with theological curiosity. He already knew the truth—what else might this test reveal? He stood still and straight, lips parted, and watched in disturbed fascination as the crow ignored the open window and flapped straight to his shoulder.
   “Well,” he said quietly to it, as it dug in its claws and shifted from side to side. “Well.” It tilted its black beak, regarding him with expressionless, beady eyes.
   Iselle and Betriz jumped up and down and whooped, hugging each other and nearly frightening the bird off again. Dy Sanda smiled grimly. Dy Jironal gritted his teeth; dy Maroc looked faintly appalled.
   Orico dusted his plump hands. “Good. That settles that. Now, by the gods, I want my dinner.”


* * *

   Iselle, Betriz, and dy Sanda surrounded Cazaril like an honor guard and marched him out of Ias’s Tower to the courtyard.
   “How did you know to come to my rescue?” Cazaril asked them. Surreptitiously, he glanced up; no crows were circling, just now.
   “I had it from a page that you were to be arrested this morning,” said dy Sanda, “and I went at once to the royesse.”
   Cazaril wondered if dy Sanda, like himself, kept a private budget to pay for early news from various observers around the Zangre. And why his own arrangements hadn’t worked a trifle better in this case. “I thank you, for covering my”—he swallowed the word, back —“blind side. I should have been dismissed by now, if you all hadn’t come to stand up for me.”
   “No thanks needed,” said dy Sanda. “I believe you’d have done as much for me.”
   “My brother needed someone to prop him,” said Iselle a trifle bitterly. “Else he bows to whatever force blows most proximately.”
   Cazaril was torn between commending her shrewdness and suppressing her frankness. He glanced at dy Sanda. “How long—do you know—has this story about me been circulating in the court?”
   He shrugged. “Some four or five days, I think.”
   “This was the first we heard of it!” said Betriz indignantly.
   Dy Sanda opened his hands in apology. “Likely it seemed too raw a thing to pour in your maiden ears, my lady.”
   Iselle scowled. Dy Sanda accepted reiterated thanks from Cazaril and took his leave to check on Teidez.
   Betriz, who had grown suddenly quiet, said in a stifled voice, “This was all my fault, wasn’t it? Dondo struck at you to avenge himself for the pig. Oh, Lord Caz, I’m sorry!”
   “No, my lady,” said Cazaril firmly. “There is some old business between Dondo and me that goes back to before… before Gotorget.” Her face lightened, to his relief; nevertheless, he seized the chance to add prudently, “Grant you, the prank with the pig didn’t help, and you should not do anything like that again.”
   Betriz sighed, but then smiled just a little bit. “Well, he did stop pressing himself upon me. So it helped that much.”
   “I can’t deny that’s a benefit, but… Dondo remains a powerful man. I beg you—both—to take care to walk wide around him.”
   Iselle’s eyes flicked toward him. She said quietly, “We’re under siege here, aren’t we. Me, Teidez, all our households.”
   “I trust,” sighed Cazaril, “it is not quite so dire. Just go more carefully from now on, eh?”
   He escorted them back to their chambers in the main block, but did not take up his calculations again. Instead, he strode back down the stairs and out past the stables to the menagerie. He found Umegat in the aviary, persuading the small birds to take dust baths in a basin of ashes as proof against lice. The neat Roknari, his tabard protected by an apron, looked up at him and smiled.
   Cazaril did not smile back. “Umegat,” he began without preamble, “I have to know. Did you pick the crow, or did the crow pick you?”
   “Does it matter to you, my lord?”
   “Yes!”
   “Why?”
   Cazaril’s mouth opened, and shut. He finally began again, almost pleadingly. “It was a trick, yes? You tricked them, by bringing the crow I feed at my window. The gods didn’t really reach into that room, right?”
   Umegat’s brows rose. “The Bastard is the most subtle of the gods, my lord. Merely because something is a trick, is no guarantee you are not god-touched.” He added apologetically, “I’m afraid that’s just the way it works.” He chirped at the bright bird, apparently now done with its flutter in the ashes, coaxed it onto his hand with a seed drawn from his apron pocket, and popped it back into its nearby cage.
   Cazaril followed, arguing, “It was the crow that I fed. Of course it flew to me. You feed it too, eh?”
   “I feed all the sacred crows of Fonsa’s Tower. So do the pages and ladies, the visitors to the Zangre, and the acolytes and divines of all the Temple houses in town. The miracle of those crows is that they’re not all grown too fat to fly.” With a neat twist of his wrist, Umegat secured another bird and tipped it into the ash bath.
   Cazaril stood back from him as ashes puffed, and frowned. “You’re Roknari. Aren’t you of the Quadrene faith?”
   “No, my lord,” said Umegat serenely. “I’ve been a devout Quintarian since my late youth.”
   “Did you convert when you came to Chalion?”
   “No, when I was still in the Archipelago.”
   “How… came it about that you were not hanged for heresy?”
   “I made it to the ship to Brajar before they caught me.” Umegat’s smile crimped.
   Indeed, he still had his thumbs. Cazaril’s brows drew down, as he studied the man’s fine-drawn features. “What was your father, in the Archipelago?”
   “Narrow-minded. Very pious, though, in his foursquare way.”
   “That is not what I meant.”
   “I know, my lord. But he’s been dead these twenty years. It doesn’t matter anymore. I am content with what I am now.”
   Cazaril scratched his beard, as Umegat traded for another bright bird. “How long have you been head groom of this menagerie, then?”
   “From its beginning. About six years. I came with the leopard, and the first birds. We were a gift.”
   “Who from?”
   “Oh, from the archdivine of Cardegoss, and the Order of the Bastard. Upon the occasion of the roya’s birthday, you see. Many fine animals have been added, since then.”
   Cazaril digested that, for a little. “This is a very unusual collection.”
   “Yes, my lord.”
   “How unusual?”
   “Very unusual.”
   “Can you tell me more?”
   “I beg you will not ask me more, my lord.”
   “Why not?”
   “Because I do not wish to lie to you.”
   “Why not?” Everyone else does.
   Umegat drew in his breath and smiled crookedly, watching Cazaril. “Because, my lord, the crow picked me.”
   Cazaril’s return smile grew a trifle strained. He gave Umegat a small bow and withdrew.

Chapter 11

   Cazaril was just exiting his bedchamber on the way to breakfast, some three mornings later, when a breathless page accosted him, grabbing him by the sleeve.
   “M’ lord dy Cazaril! The castle warder begs you ’tend on him at once, in the courtyard!”
   “Why? What’s the matter?” Obedient to this urgency, Cazaril swung into motion beside the boy.
   “It’s Ser dy Sanda. He was set upon last night by footpads, and robbed and stabbed!”
   Cazaril’s stride lengthened. “How badly was he injured? Where does he lie?”
   “Not injured, m’lord. Slain!”
   Oh, gods, no. Cazaril left the page behind as he clattered down the staircase. He hurried into the Zangre’s front courtyard in time to see a man in the tabard of the constable of Cardegoss, and another man dressed as a farmer, lower a stiff form from the back of a mule and lay it out on the cobbles. The Zangre’s castle warder, frowning, squatted down by the body. A couple of the roya’s guards watched from a few paces back, warily, as if knife wounds might prove contagious.
   “What has happened?” demanded Cazaril.
   The farmer, in his courtier’s garb taking, pulled off his wool hat in a sort of salute. “I found him by the riverside this morning, sir, when I took my cattle down to drink. The river curves—I often find things hung up upon the shoal. ’Twas a wagon wheel, last week. I always check. Not bodies too often, thank the Mother of Mercy. Not since that poor lady who drowned herself, two years back—” He and the constable’s man exchanged nods of reminiscence. “This one has not a drowned look.”
   Dy Sanda’s trousers were still sodden, but his hair was done dripping. His tunic had been removed by his finders—Cazaril saw the brocade folded up over the mule’s withers. The mouths of his wounds had been cleaned of blood by the river water, and showed now as dark puckered slits in his pale skin, in his back, belly, neck. Cazaril counted over a dozen strikes, deep and hard.
   The castle warder, sitting on his heels, pointed to a bit of frayed cord knotted around dy Sanda’s belt. “His purse was cut off. In a hurry, they were.”
   “But it wasn’t just a robbery,” said Cazaril. “One or two of these blows would have put him on the ground, stopped resistance. They didn’t need to… they were making sure of his death.” They or he? No real way to know, but dy Sanda could not have been either easy or safe to bring down. He rather thought they. “I suppose his sword was taken.” Had he ever had time to draw it? Or had the first blow fallen on him by surprise, from a man he walked beside in trust?
   “Taken or lost in the river,” said the farmer. “He would not have floated down to me so soon if it had still been dragging him down.”
   “Did he have rings or jewelry?” asked the constable’s man.
   The castle warder nodded. “Several, and a gold ear loop.” They were all gone now.
   “I’ll want a description of them all, my lord,” the constable’s man said, and the warder nodded understanding.
   “You know where he was found,” said Cazaril to the constable’s man. “Do you know where he was attacked?”
   The man shook his head. “Hard to say. Somewhere in the bottoms, maybe.” The lower end of Cardegoss, both socially and topographically, huddled on both sides of the wall that ran between the two rivers. “There are only half a dozen places someone might pitch a body over the town walls and be sure the stream would take it off. Some are more lonely than others. When did anyone here see him last?”
   “I saw him at supper,” said Cazaril. “He said nothing to me about going into town.” There were a couple of places right here in the Zangre where a body might also be pitched into the rivers below… “Has he broken bones?”
   “Not as I felt, sir,” said the constable’s man. Indeed, the pale corpse did not show great bruises.
   Inquiry of the castle guards disclosed that dy Sanda had left the Zangre, alone and on foot, about the mid-watch last night. Cazaril gave up a budding plan to check every foot of the castle’s great lengths of corridors and niches for new bloodstains. Later in the afternoon the constable’s men found three people who’d said they’d seen the royse’s secretary drinking in a tavern in the bottoms, and depart alone; one swore he’d left staggering drunk. That witness, Cazaril would have liked to have had alone for a time in one of the Zangre’s stony, scream-absorbing cells off the old, old tunnels going down to the rivers. Some better kind of truth might have been pounded out of him there. Cazaril had never seen dy Sanda drink to drunkenness, ever.
   It fell to Cazaril to inventory and pack dy Sanda’s meager pile of worldly goods, to be sent off by carter to the man’s surviving older brother somewhere in the provinces of Chalion. While the city constable’s men searched the bottoms, futilely, Cazaril was sure, for the supposed footpads, Cazaril turned out every scrap of paper in dy Sanda’s room. But whatever lying assignation had lured him to the bottoms, he’d either received verbally or taken with him.
   Dy Sanda having no relatives near enough to wait upon, the funeral was held the next day. The services were somberly graced by both the royse and royesse and their households, so a few courtiers anxious for their favor likewise attended. The ceremony of departure, held in the Son’s chamber off the main courtyard of the temple, was brief. It was borne in upon Cazaril what a lonely man dy Sanda had been. No friends thronged to the head of his bier to speak long eulogies for each other’s comfort. Only Cazaril spoke a few formal words of regret on behalf of the royesse, managing to get through them without the embarrassment of referring to the paper, upon which he had so hastily composed them that morning, tucked in his sleeve.
   Cazaril stood down from the bier to make way for the blessing of the animals, going to stand with the little crowd of mourners before the altar. Acolytes, dressed each in the colors of their chosen gods, brought in their creatures and stood round the bier at five evenly spaced points. In country temples, the most motley assortment of animals was used for this rite; Cazaril had once seen it carried through—successfully—for the dead daughter of a poor man by a single overworked acolyte with a basket of five kittens with colored ribbons tied round their necks. The Roknari often used fish, though in the number of four, not five; the Quadrene divines marked them with dye and interpreted the will of the gods by the patterns they made swimming about in a tub. Whatever the means used, the omen was the one tiny miracle the gods granted every person, no matter how humble, at their last passing.
   The temple of Cardegoss had the resources to command the most beautiful of sacred animals, selected for appropriate color and gender. The Daughter’s acolyte in her blue robes had a fine female crested blue jay, new-hatched last spring. The Mother’s woman in green held on her arm a great green bird, close relative, Cazaril thought, to Umegat’s prize in the roya’s menagerie. The acolyte of the Son in his red-orange robes led a glorious young dog-fox, whose burnished coat seemed to glow like fire in the somber shadows of the echoing, vaulted chamber. The Father’s acolyte, in gray, was led in by a stout, elderly, and immensely dignified gray wolf. Cazaril expected the Bastard’s acolyte in her white robes to bear one of Fonsa’s sacred crows, but instead she cradled a pair of plump, inquisitive-looking white rats in her arms.
   The divine prostrated himself for the gods to make their sign, then stood back at dy Sanda’s head. The brightly robed acolytes each in turn urged their creatures forward. At a jerk of the acolyte’s wrist the blue jay fluttered up, but then back down to her shoulder, as did the Mother’s green bird. The dog-fox, released from its copper chain, sniffed, trotted to the bier, whined, hopped up, and curled itself at dy Sanda’s side. It rested its muzzle over the dead man’s heart, and sighed deeply.
   The wolf, obviously very experienced in these matters, evinced no interest. The Bastard’s acolyte released her rats upon the paving stones, but they merely ran back up her sleeve, nuzzled her ears, and caught their claws in her hair and had to be gently disengaged.
   No surprises today. Unless persons had dedicated themselves especially to another god, the childless soul normally went to the Daughter or the Son, deceased parents to the Mother or the Father. Dy Sanda was a childless man and had ridden as lay dedicat of the Son’s military order himself in his youth. It was the natural order of things that his soul would be taken up by the Son. Although it was not unknown for this moment of a funeral to be the first notice surviving family had that the member they buried had an unexpected child somewhere. The Bastard took up all of His own order—and all those souls disdained by the greater gods. The Bastard was the god of last resort, ultimate, if ambiguous, refuge for those who had made disasters of their lives.
   Obedient to the clear choice of Autumn’s elegant fox, the acolyte of the Son stepped forward to close the ceremonies, calling down his god’s special blessing upon dy Sanda’s sundered soul. The mourners filed past the bier and placed small offerings on the Son’s altar for the dead man’s sake.
   Cazaril nearly drove his fingernails through his palms, watching Dondo dy Jironal go through the motions of pious grief. Teidez was shocked and quiet, regretting, Cazaril hoped, all the hot complaints he’d heaped on his rigid but loyal secretary-tutor’s head while he lived; his offering was a notable heap of gold.
   Iselle and Betriz, too, were quiet, both then and later. They passed little comment upon the buzzing court gossip that surrounded the murder, except for refusing invitations to go into town and finding excuses to check on Cazaril’s continued existence four or five times of an evening.
   The court murmured over the mystery. New and more draconian punishments were mooted for such dangerous, lowlife scum as cutpurses and footpads. Cazaril said nothing. There was no mystery in dy Sanda’s death to him, except how to bring home its proof to the Jironals. He turned it over and over in his mind, but the way defeated him. He dared not start the process until he had every step laid clear to the end, or he might as well slit his own throat and be done with it.
   Unless, he decided, some luckless footpad or cutpurse was falsely accused. Then he would… what? What was his word worth now, after the misfired slander about his flogging scars? Most of the court had been impressed by the testimony of the crow—some had not. Easy enough to tell which was which, by the way some gentlemen drew aside their cloaks from Cazaril, or ladies recoiled from his touch. But no sacrificial peasants were brought forth by the constable’s office, and the revived gaiety of the court closed over the unpleasant incident like a scab over a wound.
   Teidez was assigned a new secretary, hand-selected from the roya’s own Chancellery by the senior dy Jironal himself. He was a narrow-faced fellow, altogether the chancellor’s creature, and he made no move to make friends with Cazaril. Dondo dy Jironal publicly undertook to distract the young royse from his sorrow by providing him with the most delectable entertainments. Just how delectable, Cazaril had all too good a view of, watching the drabs and ripe comrades pass in and out of Teidez’s chamber late at night. Once, Teidez stumbled into Cazaril’s room, apparently not able to tell one door from another, and vomited about a quart of red wine at his feet. Cazaril guided him, sick and blind, back to his servants for cleanup.
   Cazaril’s most troubled moment, however, was the evening his eye caught a green glint on the hand of Teidez’s guard captain, the man who had ridden with them from Baocia. Who before riding out had sworn to mother and grandmother, formally and on one knee, to guard both young people with his life… Cazaril’s hand snaked out to grab the captain’s hand in passing, bringing him up short. He gazed down at the familiar flat-cut stone.
   “Nice ring,” he said after a moment.
   The captain pulled his hand back, frowning. “I thought so.”
   “I hope you didn’t pay too much for it. I believe the stone is false.”
   “It is a true emerald, my lord!”
   “If I were you, I’d have it to a gem-cutter, and check. It’s a continuing source of amazement to me, the lies that men will tell these days for their profit.”
   The captain covered one hand with the other. “It is a good ring.”
   “Compared to what you traded for it, I’d say it is trash.”

   The captain’s lips pressed closed. He shrugged away and stalked off.
   If this is a siege, thought Cazaril, we’re losing.


* * *

   The weather turned chill and rainy, the rivers swelling, as the Son’s season ran toward its close. At the musicale after supper one sodden evening, Orico leaned over to his sister, and murmured, “Bring your people to the throne room tomorrow at noon, and attend dy Jironal’s investiture. I’ll have some happy announcements afterward to make to the whole court. And wear your most festive raiment. Oh, and your pearls—Lord Dondo was saying only last night, he never sees you wear his pearls.”
   “I do not think they become me,” Iselle replied. She glanced sideways at Cazaril, seated nearby, and then down at her hands tightening in her lap.
   “Nonsense, how can pearls not become any maiden?” The roya sat back to applaud the sprightly piece just ending.
   Iselle kept her lips closed upon this suggestion until Cazaril had escorted his ladies as far as his office antechamber. He was about to bid them to sleep well, and depart, yawning, to his own bed, when she burst out, “I am not wearing that thief Lord Dondo’s pearls. I would give them back to the Daughter’s Order, but I swear they would be an insult to the goddess. They’re tainted. Cazaril, what can I do with them?”
   “The Bastard is not a fussy god. Give them to the divine of his foundling hospital, to sell for the orphans,” he suggested.
   Her lips curved. “Wouldn’t that annoy Lord Dondo. And he couldn’t even protest! Good idea. You shall take them to the orphans, with my goodwill. And for tomorrow—I’ll wear my red velvet vest-cloak over my white silk gown, that will certainly be festive, and my garnet set Mama gave me. None can chide me for wearing my mother’s jewels.”
   Nan dy Vrit said, “But what do you suppose your brother meant by happy announcements? You don’t think he’s determined upon your betrothal already, do you?”
   Iselle went still, blinking, but then said decisively, “No. It can’t be. There must be months of negotiations first—ambassadors, letters, exchanges of presents, treaties for the dowry—and my assent won. My portrait taken. And I will have a portrait of the man, whoever he may turn out to be. A true and honest portrait, by an artist I send myself. If my prince is fat, or squinty, or bald, or has a lip that hangs loose, so be it, but I will not be lied to in paint.”
   Betriz made a face at the image this conjured. “I do hope you’ll win a handsome lord, when the time does come.”
   Iselle sighed. “It would be nice, but given most of the great lords I’ve seen, not likely. I should settle for healthy, I think, and not plague the gods with impossible prayers. Healthy, and a Quintarian.”
   “Very sensible,” Cazaril put in, encouraging this practical frame of mind with an eye to easing his life in the near future.
   Betriz said uneasily, “There have been a great many envoys from the Roknari princedoms in and out of court this fall.”
   Iselle’s mouth tightened. “Mm.”
   “There are not a great many Quintarian choices, amongst the highest lords,” Cazaril conceded.
   “The roya of Brajar is a widower again,” Nan dy Vrit put in, pursing her lips in doubt.
   Iselle waved this away. “Surely not. He’s fifty-seven years old, has gout, and he already has an heir full-grown and married. Where’s the point of my having a son friendly to his Uncle Orico—or his Uncle Teidez, if it should chance so—if he’s not ruling his land?”
   “There’s Brajar’s grandson,” said Cazaril.
   “Seven years old! I’d have to wait seven more years—”
   Not, Cazaril thought, altogether a bad thing.
   “Now is too soon, but that is too long. Anything could happen in seven years. People die, countries go to war…”
   “It’s true,” said Nan dy Vrit, “your father Roya Ias betrothed you at the age of two to a Roknari prince, but the poor lad took a fever and died soon after, so that never came to anything. Or you would have been taken off to his princedom these two years ago.”
   Betriz said, a little teasingly, “The Fox of Ibra’s a widower, too.”
   Iselle choked. “He’s over seventy!”
   “Not fat, though. And I suppose you wouldn’t have to endure him for very long.”
   “Ha. He could live another twenty years just for spite, I think—he’s full enough of it. And his Heir is married, too. I think his second son is the only royse in the lands who’s near to my age, and he’s not the heir.”
   “You won’t be offered an Ibran this year, Royesse,” said Cazaril. “The Fox is exceedingly wroth with Orico for his clumsy meddling in the war in South Ibra.”
   “Yes, but… they say all the Ibran high lords are trained as naval officers,” said Iselle, taking on an introspective look.
   “Well, and how useful is that likely to be to Orico?” Nan dy Vrit snorted. “Chalion has not one yard of coastline.”
   “To our cost,” Iselle murmured.
   Cazaril said regretfully, “When we had Gotorget, and held those passes, we were almost in position to swoop down and take the port of Visping. We’ve lost that leverage now… well, anyway. My best guess, Royesse, is that you are destined for a lord of Darthaca. So let’s spend a little more time on those declensions this coming week, eh?”
   Iselle made a face, but sighed assent. Cazaril smiled and bowed himself out. If she was not to espouse a ruling roya, he wouldn’t altogether mind a Darthacan border lord for Iselle, he thought as he made his way down the stairs. At least a lord of one of its warmer northern provinces. Either power or distance would do to protect Iselle from the… difficulties, of the court of Chalion. And the sooner, the better.
   For her, or for you?
   For both of us.


* * *

   For all that Nan dy Vrit put her hand over her eyes and winced, Cazaril thought Iselle looked very bright and warm in her carmine robes, with her amber curls cascading down her back nearly to her waist. Given the hint, he wore a red brocade tunic that had been the old provincar’s and his white wool vest-cloak. Betriz, too, wore her favorite red; Nan, claiming eyestrain, had chosen a sober black and white. The reds clashed a trifle, but they certainly defied the rain.
   They all scurried across the wet cobbles to Ias’s great tower block. The crows from Fonsa’s Tower were all gone to roost—no, not quite. Cazaril ducked as a certain foolish bird missing two feathers from its tail swooped down out of the drizzling mist past him, cawing, Caz, Caz! With an eye to defending his white cloak from birdish deposits, he fended it off. It circled back up to the ruined slates, screeching sadly.
   Orico’s red brocade throne room was brilliantly lit with wall sconces against the autumn gray; two or three dozen courtiers and ladies warmed it thoroughly. Orico wore his formal robes, and his crown, but Royina Sara was not at his side today. Teidez was given a seat in a lower chair at Orico’s right hand.
   The royesse’s party kissed his hands and took their places, Iselle in a smaller chair to the left of Sara’s empty one, the rest standing. Orico, smiling, began the day’s largesse by awarding Teidez the revenues of four more royal towns for the support of his household, for which his younger half brother thanked him with proper hand-kisses and a brief set-speech. Dondo had not kept the royse up last night, so he was looking much less green and seedy than usual.
   Orico then motioned his chancellor to his royal knee. As had been announced, the roya awarded the letters and sword, and received the oath, that made the senior dy Jironal into the provincar of Ildar. Several of Ildar’s minor lords knelt and took oath in turn to dy Jironal. It was less expected when the two turned round at once and transferred the marchship of Jironal, together with its towns and tax revenues, immediately to Lord—now March—Dondo.
   Iselle was surprised, but obviously pleased, when her brother next awarded her the revenues of six towns for the support of her household. Not before time, to be sure—her allowance till now had been notably scant for a royesse. She thanked him prettily, while Cazaril’s brain lurched into calculation. Might Iselle afford her own guard company, instead of the loan of men from Baocia she’d shared till now with Teidez? And might Cazaril choose them himself? Could she take a house of her own in town, protected by her own people? Iselle returned to her chair on the dais and arranged her skirts, a certain tension easing from her face that had not been apparent till its absence.
   Orico cleared his throat. “I’m pleased to come to the happiest of this day’s rewards, well merited, and, er, much-desired. Iselle, up—” Orico stood, and held out his hand to his half sister; puzzled but smiling, she rose and stood with him before the dais.
   “March dy Jironal, come forth,” Orico continued. Lord Dondo, in the full robes of the Daughter’s holy generalship and with a page in dy Jironal livery at his heels, came and stood at Orico’s other hand. The skin on the back of Cazaril’s neck began to creep, as he watched from the side of the room. What is Orico about…?
   “My much-beloved and loyal Chancellor and Provincar dy Jironal has begged a boon of blood from my house, and upon meditation, I have concluded it gives my heart joy to comply.” He didn’t look joyful. He looked nervous. “He has asked for the hand of my sister Iselle for his brother, the new march. Freely do I betroth and bestow it.” He turned Dondo’s thick hand palm up, Iselle’s slim one palm down, pressed them together at the height of his chest, and stepped back.
   Iselle’s face drained of color and all expression. She stood utterly still, staring across at Dondo as though she could not believe her senses. The blood thudded in Cazaril’s ears, almost roaring, and he could hardly draw his breath. No, no, no…!
   “As a betrothal gift, my dear Royesse, I have guessed what your heart most desired to complete your trousseau,” Dondo told her, and motioned his page forward.
   Iselle, regarding him with that same frozen stare, said, “You guessed I wanted a coastal city with an excellent harbor?”
   Dondo, momentarily taken aback, choked out a hearty laugh, and turned from her. The page flipped open the tooled leather box, revealing a delicate pearl-and-silver tiara, and Dondo reached in to hold it up before the eyes of the court. A smattering of applause ran through the crowd from his friends. Cazaril’s hand clenched on his sword hilt. If he drew and lunged… he’d be struck down before he made it across the throne room.
   As Dondo raised the tiara high to bring down upon Iselle’s head, she recoiled like a shying horse. “Orico… ”
   “This betrothal is my will and desire, dear sister,” said Orico, in edged tones.
   Dondo, apparently unwilling to chase her about the room with the tiara, paused, and shot a meaningful glance at the roya.
   Iselle swallowed. It was clear her mind was frantically churning over responses. She’d stifled her first scream of outrage, and had not the trick of falling down in a convincing dead faint. She stood trapped and conscious. “Sire. As the provincar of Labran said when the forces of the Golden General poured over his walls… this is entirely a surprise.”
   A very hesitant titter ran through the courtiers at this witticism.
   Her voice lowered, and she murmured through her teeth, “You didn’t tell me. You didn’t ask me.”
   Orico returned, equally sotto voce, “We’ll talk of it after this.”

   After another frozen moment, she accepted this with a small nod. Dondo managed to complete his divestiture of the pearl tiara. He bent and kissed her hand. Wisely, he did not demand the usual return kiss; from the look of astonished loathing on Iselle’s face, there seemed a good chance she might have bitten him.
   Orico’s court divine, in the seasonal robes of the Brother, stepped forward and called down a blessing upon the pair from all the gods.
   Orico announced, “In three days’ time, we will all meet again here and witness this union sworn and celebrated. Thank you all.”
   “Three days! Three days! ” said Iselle, her voice breaking for the first time. “Don’t you mean three years, sire? ”
   “Three days,” said Orico. “Prepare yourself.” He prepared himself to duck out of the throne room, motioning his servants about him. Most of the courtiers departed with the dy Jironals, offering congratulations. A few of the more boldly curious lingered, ears pricking for the conversation between brother and sister.
   “What, in three days! There is not even time to send a courier to Baocia, let alone to have any reply from my mother or grandmother—”
   “Your mother, as all know, is too ill to stand the strain of a trip to court, and your grandmother must stay in Valenda to attend upon her.”
   “But I don’t—” She found herself addressing the broad royal back, as Orico scurried from the throne room.
   She plunged after him into the next chamber, Betriz, Nan, and Cazaril following anxiously. “But Orico, I don’t wish to marry Dondo dy Jironal!”
   “A lady of your rank does not marry to please herself, but to bring advantage to her house,” he told her sternly, when she brought him to bay only by dint of rushing around in front of him and planting herself in his path.
   “Is that indeed so? Then perhaps you can explain to me what advantage it brings to the House of Chalion to throw me—to waste me—upon the younger son of a minor lord? My husband should have brought us a royacy for his dowry!”
   “This binds the dy Jironals to me—and to Teidez.”
   “Say rather, it binds us to them! The advantage is a trifle one-sided, I think!”
   “You said you did not wish to marry a Roknari prince, and I have not given you to one. And it wasn’t for lack of offers—I’ve refused two this season. Think on that, and be grateful, dear sister!”
   Cazaril wasn’t sure if Orico was threatening or pleading.
   He went on, “You didn’t wish to leave Chalion. Very well, you shall not leave Chalion. You wanted to marry a Quintarian lord—I have given you one, a holy general at that! Besides,” he went on with a petulant shrug, “if I gave you to a power too close to my borders, they might use you as an excuse to claim some of my lands. I do well, with this, for the future peace of Chalion.”
   “Lord Dondo is forty years old! He’s a corrupt, impious thief! An embezzler! A libertine! Worse! Orico, you cannot do this to me!” Her voice was rising.
   “I’ll not hear you,” said Orico, and actually put his hands over his ears. “Three days. Compose your mind and see to your wardrobe.” He fled her as if she were a burning tower. “I’ll not hear this!”
   He meant it. Four times that afternoon she attempted to seek him in his quarters to further her plea, and four times he had his guards repulse her. After that, he rode out of the Zangre altogether, to take up residence in a hunting lodge deep in the oak woods, a move of remarkable cowardice. Cazaril could only hope its roof leaked icy rain on the royal head.
   Cazaril slept badly that night. Venturing upstairs in the morning, he found three frayed women who appeared to have not slept at all.
   Iselle, heavy-eyed, drew him by the sleeve into her sitting chamber, sat him down on the window seat, and lowered her voice to a fierce whisper.
   “Cazaril. Can you get four horses? Or three? Or two, or even one? I’ve thought it through. I spent all night thinking it through. The only answer is to fly.”
   He sighed. “I thought it through, too. First, I am watched. When I went to leave the Zangre last night, two of the roya’s guards followed me. To protect me, they said. I might be able to kill or bribe one—I doubt two.”
   “We could ride out as if we were hunting,” argued Iselle.
   “In the rain?” Cazaril gestured to the steady mizzle still coming down outside the high window, fogging the valley so that one could not even see the river below, turning the bare tree branches to black ink marks in the gray. “And even if they let us ride out, they’d be sure to send an armed escort.”
   “If we could get any kind of a head start—”
   “And if we could, what then? If—when!—they overtook us on the road, the first thing they would do is pull me from my horse and cut off my head, and leave my body for the foxes and crows. And then they would take you back. And if by some miracle they didn’t catch us, where would we go?”
   “A border. Any border.”
   “Brajar and South Ibra would send you right back, to please Orico. The five princedoms or the Fox of Ibra would take you hostage. Darthaca… presupposes we could make it across half of Chalion and all of South Ibra. I fear not, Royesse.”
   “What else can I do?” Her young voice was edged with desperation.
   “No one can force a marriage. Both parties must freely assent before the gods. If you have the courage to simply stand there and say No, it cannot go forth. Can you not find it in yourself to do so?”
   Her lips tightened. “Of course I could. Then what? Now I think you are the one who has not thought it through. Do you think Lord Dondo would just give up, at that point?”
   He shook his head. “It’s not valid if they force it, and everyone knows it. Just hold on to that thought.”
   She shook her head in something between grief and exasperation. “You don’t understand.”
   He’d have taken that for the wail of youth everywhere, till Dondo himself came that afternoon to the royesse’s chamber to persuade his betrothed to a more seemly compliance. The doors were left open to the royesse’s sitting room, but an armed guard stood at each, keeping back both Cazaril on one side and Nan dy Vrit and Betriz on the other. He did not catch one word in three of the furious undervoiced argument that raged between the thickset courtier and the red-haired maiden. But at the end of it Dondo stalked out with a look of savage satisfaction on his face, and Iselle collapsed on the window seat nearly unable to breathe, so torn was she between terror and fury.
   She clutched Betriz and choked out, “He said… if I did not make the responses, he would take me anyway. I said, Orico would never let you rape his sister. He said, why not? He let us rape his wife. When Royina Sara would not conceive, and could not conceive, and Orico was too impotent to get a bastard no matter how many ladies and maidens and whores they brought to him, and, and even more disgusting things, the Jironals finally persuaded him to let them in upon her, and try… Dondo said, he and his brother tried every night for a year, one at a time or both together, till she threatened to kill herself. He said he would roger me till he’d planted his fruit in my womb, and when I was ripe to bursting, I’d hang on him as husband hard enough.” She blinked blurry eyes at Cazaril, her lips drawn back on clenched teeth. “He said, my belly would grow very big indeed, because I am short. How much courage do I need for that simple No, Cazaril, do you think? And what happens when courage makes no difference at all, at all?”
   I thought the only place that courage didn’t matter was on a Roknari slave galley. I was wrong. He whispered abjectly, “I do not know, Royesse.”
   Trapped and desperate, she fell to fasting and prayer; Nan and Betriz helped to set up a portable altar to the gods in her chambers and collected all the symbols of the Lady of Spring they could find to decorate it. Cazaril, trailed by his two guards, walked down into Cardegoss and found a flower-seller with forced violets, out of season, and brought them back to put in a glass jar of water on the altar. He felt stupid and helpless, though the royesse dropped a tear on his hand when she thanked him. Taking neither food nor drink, she lay back down on the floor in the attitude of deepest supplication, so like Royina Ista when Cazaril had first caught sight of her in the Provincara’s ancestors’ hall that he was unnerved, and fled the room. He spent hours, walking about the Zangre, trying to think, thinking only of horrors.
   Late that evening, the Lady Betriz called him up to the office antechamber that was rapidly becoming a place of hectic nightmare.
   “I have the answer!” she told him. “Cazaril, teach me how to kill a man with a knife.”
   “What?”
   “Dondo’s guards know enough not to let you close to him. But I will be standing beside Iselle on her wedding morning, to be her witness, and make the responses. No one will expect it of me. I’ll hide the knife in my bodice. When Dondo comes close, and bends to kiss her hand, I can strike at him, two, three times before anyone can stop me. But I don’t know just how and where to cut, to be sure. The neck, yes, but what part?” Earnestly, she drew a heavy dirk out from behind her skirts and held it out to him. “Show me. We can practice, till I have it very smooth and fast.”
   “Gods, no, Lady Betriz! Give up this mad plan! They would strike you down—they’d hang you, afterward!”
   “Provided only I was able to kill Dondo first, I’d go gladly to the gallows. I swore to guard Iselle with my life. Well, so.” Her brown eyes burned in her white face.
   “No,” he said firmly, taking the knife and not giving it back. Where had she obtained it, anyway? “This is no work for a woman.”
   “I’d say it’s work for whoever has a chance at it. My chance is best. Show me!”
   “Look, no. Just… wait. I’ll, I’ll try something, find what I can do.”
   “Can you kill Dondo? Iselle is in there praying to the Lady to slay either her or Dondo before the wedding, she doesn’t care anymore which. Well, I care which. I think it should be Dondo.”
   “I entirely agree. Look, Lady Betriz. Wait, just wait. I’ll see what I can do.”
   If the gods will not answer your prayers, Lady Iselle, by the gods I will try to.
   He spent hours the following day, the last before the marriage, trying to stalk Lord Dondo through the Zangre like a boar in a forest of stone. He never got within striking distance. In midafternoon, Dondo returned to the Jironals’ great palace in town, and Cazaril could not get past its walls or gates. The second time Dondo’s bravos threw him out, one held him while another struck him enough times in the chest, belly, and groin to make his return to the Zangre a slow weave, supporting himself like a drunk with a hand out to nearby walls. The roya’s guards, whom he had scraped off in a dodge through Cardegoss’s alleys, arrived in time to watch both the beating and the crawl home. They did not interfere with either.
   In a burst of inspiration, he bethought himself of the secret passage that had run between the Zangre and the Jironals’ great palace when it had been the property of Lord dy Lutez. Ias and dy Lutez had been reputed to use it daily, for conference, or nightly, for assignations of love, depending on the teller. The tunnel, he discovered, was now about as secret as Cardegoss’s main street, and had guards on both ends, and locked doors. His attempt at bribery won him shoves and curses, and the threat of another beating.
   Some assassin I am, he thought bitterly, as he reeled into his bedchamber as dusk descended, and fell groaning into his bed. Head pounding, body aching, he lay still for a time, then at last roused himself enough to light a candle. He ought to go upstairs, and check on his ladies, but he didn’t think he could bear the weeping. Or the reporting of his failure to Betriz, or what she would demand of him after that. If he could not kill Dondo, what right had he to try to thwart her effort?
   I would gladly die, if only I could stop this abomination tomorrow…
   Do you mean that?
   He sat stiffly, wondering if that last voice was quite his own. His tongue had moved a little behind his lips, as usual for when he was babbling to himself. Yes.
   He lurched around to the end of his bed, fell to his knees, and flipped open the lid of his trunk. He dived down amongst the folded garments, scented with cloves as proof against moths, until he came to a black velvet vest-cloak folded around a brown wool robe. Folded around a ciphered notebook that he had never finished deciphering when the crooked judge had fled Valenda, that it had seemed too late to return to the Temple without embarrassing explanations. Feverishly, he drew it out, and lit more candles. There’s not much time left. About a third of it was left untranslated. Forget all the failed experiments. Go to the last page, eh?
   Even in the bad cipher, the wool merchant’s despair came through, in a kind of strange shining simplicity. Eschewing all his previous bizarre elaborations, he had turned at the last not to magic, but to plain prayer. Rat and crow only to carry the plea, candles only to light his way, herbs only to lift his heart with their scents, and compose his mind to purity of will; a will then put aside, laid wholehearted on the god’s altar. Help me. Help me. Help me.
   Those were the last words entered in the notebook.
   I can do that, thought Cazaril in wonder.
   And if he failed… there would still be Betriz and her knife.
   I will not fail. I’ve failed practically everything else in my life. I will not fail death.
   He slipped the book under his pillow, locked his door behind him, and went to find a page.
   The sleepy boy he selected was waiting in the corridor upon the pleasure of the lords and ladies at their dinner in Orico’s banqueting hall, where Iselle’s nonappearance was doubtless the subject of much gossip, not even kept to a whisper since none of the principals were present. Dondo roistered privately in his palace with his hangers-on; Orico still cowered out in the woods.

  He fished a gold royal from his purse and held it up, smiling through the O of his thumb and finger. “Hey, boy. Would you like to earn a royal?”
   The Zangre pages had learned to be wary; a royal was enough to buy some truly intimate services from those who sold such. And enough to be a caution, to those who didn’t care to play those games. “Doing what, my lord?”
   “Catch me a rat.”
   “A rat, my lord? Why?”
   Ah. Why. Why, so that I can work the crime of death magic upon the second most powerful lord in Chalion, of course! No.
   Cazaril leaned his shoulders against the wall, and smiled down confidingly. “When I was in the fortress of Gotorget, during the siege three years ago—did you know I was its commander? until my brave general sold it out from under us, that is—we learned to eat rats. Tasty little things, if you could catch enough of them. I really miss the flavor of a good, candle-roasted rat haunch. Catch me a really big, fat one, and there will be another to match this.” Cazaril dropped the coin in the page’s hand, and licked his lips, wondering how crazed he looked right now. The page was edging farther from him. “You know where my chamber is?”
   “Yes, m’lord?”
   “Bring it there. In a bag. Quick as you can. I’m hungry.” Cazaril lurched off, laughing. Really laughing, not feigning it. A weird, wild exhilaration filled his heart.
   It lasted until he reached his bedchamber again and sat to plan the rest of his ploy, his dark prayer, his suicide. It was night; the crow would not fly to his window at night, even for the piece of bread he’d snatched from the banqueting hall before returning to the main block. He turned the bread roll over in his hands. The crows roosted in Fonsa’s Tower. If they wouldn’t fly to him, he could crawl to them, over the roof slates. Sliding in the dark? And then back to his chamber, with a squawking bundle under his arm?
   No. Let the bundle be the bagged rat. If he did the deed there, in the shadow of the broken roof upon whatever scorched and shaking platform still stood inside, he’d only have to make the trip one way. And… death magic had worked there once before, eh? Spectacularly, for Iselle’s grandfather. Would Fonsa’s spirit lend his aid to his granddaughter’s unholy soldier? His tower was a fraught place, sacred to the Bastard and his pets, especially at night, midnight in the cold rain. Cazaril’s body need never be found, nor buried. The crows could feast upon his remains, fair trade for the depredation he planned upon their poor comrade. Animals were innocent, even the grisly crows; that innocence surely made them all a little sacred.
   The dubious page arrived much quicker than Cazaril had thought he might, with a wriggling bag. Cazaril checked its contents—the snapping, hissing rat must have weighed a pound and a half—and paid up. The page pocketed his coin and walked off, staring over his shoulder. Cazaril fastened the mouth of the bag tight and locked it in his chest to prevent the condemned prisoner’s escape.
   He put off his courtier’s garb and put on the robe and vest-cloak the wool merchant had died in, just for luck. Boots, shoes, barefoot? Which would be more secure, upon the slippery stones and slates? Barefoot, he decided. But he slipped on his shoes for one last, practical expedition.
   “Betriz?” he whispered loudly through the door of his office antechamber. “Lady Betriz? I know it’s late—can you come out to me?”
   She was still fully dressed for the day, still pale and exhausted. She let him grip her hands, and leaned her forehead briefly against his chest. The warm scent of her hair took him back for a dizzy instant to his second day in Valenda, standing by her in the Temple crowd. The only thing unchanged from that happy hour was her loyalty.
   “How does the Royesse?” Cazaril asked her.
   She looked up, in the dim candlelight. “She prays unceasingly to the Daughter. She has not eaten or drunk since yesterday. I don’t know where the gods are, nor why they have abandoned us.”
   “I couldn’t kill Dondo today. I couldn’t get near him.”
   “I’d guessed as much. Or we would have heard something.”
   “I have one more thing to try. If it doesn’t work… I’ll return in the morning, and we’ll see what we can do with your knife. But I just wanted you to know… if I don’t come back in the morning, I’m all right. And not to worry about me, or look for me.”
   “You’re not abandoning us?” Her hands spasmed around his.
   “No, never.”
   She blinked. “I don’t understand.”
   “That’s all right. Take care of Iselle. Don’t trust the Chancellor dy Jironal, ever.”
   “I don’t need you to tell me that.”
   “There’s more. My friend Palli, the March dy Palliar, knows the true story of how I was betrayed after Gotorget. How I came to be enemies with Dondo… won’t matter, but Iselle should know, his elder brother deliberately struck me from the list of men to be ransomed, to betray me to the galleys and my death. There’s no doubt. I saw the list, in his own hand, which I knew well from his military orders.”
   She hissed through clenched teeth. “Can nothing be done?”
   “I doubt it. If it could be proved, some half the lords of Chalion would likely refuse to ride under his banner thereafter. Maybe it would be enough to topple him. Or not. It’s a quarrel Iselle can store up in her quiver; someday she may be able to fire it.” He stared down at her face, turned up to his, ivory and coral and deep, deep ebony eyes, huge in the dim light. Awkwardly, he bent and kissed her.
   Her breath stopped, then she laughed in startlement and put her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. Your beard scratches.”
   “I… forgive me. Palli would make you a most honorable husband, if you’re inclined to him. He’s very true. As true as you. Tell him I said so.”
   “Cazaril, what are you—”
   Nan dy Vrit called from the Royesse’s chambers, “Betriz? Come here, please?”
   He must part with everything now, even regret. He kissed her hands, and fled.


* * *

   The night scramble over the roof of the Zangre, from main block to Fonsa’s Tower, was every bit as stomach-churning as Cazaril had anticipated. It was still raining. The moon shone fitfully behind the clouds, but its gloomy radiance didn’t help much. The footing was either gritty or breath-catchingly slippery under his naked soles, and numbingly cold. The worst part was the final little jump across about six feet to the top of the round tower. Fortunately, the leap was angled down and not up, and he didn’t end a simple suicide, wasted, spattered on the cobbles far below.
   Bag jerking in his hand, breath whistling past his cold lips, he half squatted, trembling, after the jump, leaning into a bank of roof slates slick with rain beneath his hands. He pictured one working loose, shattering on the stones below, drawing the guards’ attention upward… Slowly, he worked his way around until the dark gap of the open roof yawned beside him. He sat on the edge, and felt with his feet. He could touch no solid surface. He waited for a little moonlight; was that a floor, down there? Or a bit of rail? A crow muttered, in the dark.
   He spent the next ten minutes, teetering, hands shaking, trying to light the candle stub from his pocket, by feel, with flint and tinder in his lap. He burned himself, but won a little flame at last.
   It was a rail, and a bit of crude flooring. Someone had built up heavy timbering inside the tower after the fire, to work on some reinforcement of the stones so they didn’t fall down on people’s heads, presumably. Cazaril held his breath and dropped to a solid, if small and splintery, platform. He wedged his candle stub in a gap between two boards and lit another from it, got out his bread and Betriz’s razor-edged dirk, and stared around. Catch a crow. Right. It had sounded so simple, back in his bedchamber. He couldn’t even see the crows in these flickering shadows.
   A flap by his head, as a crow landed on the railing, nearly stopped his heart. Shivering, he held out a bit of bread. It snatched the fragment from his hand and flew off again. Cazaril cursed, then drew some deep breaths and organized himself. Bread. Knife. Candles. Wriggling cloth bag. Man on his knees. Serenity in his heart? Hardly.
   Help me. Help me. Help me.
   The crow, or its twin brother, returned. “Caz, Caz!” it cried, not very loudly. But the sound echoed down the tower and back up, weirdly resonant.
   “Right,” huffed Cazaril. “Right.”
   He wrestled the rat from its bag, laid the knife against its throat, and whispered, “Run to your lord with my prayer.” Sharp and quick, he let its lifeblood out; the warm dark liquid ran over his hand. He laid the little corpse down at his knee.
   He held out his arm to his crow; it hopped aboard, and bent to lap the rat blood from his hand. Its black tongue, darting out, startled him so much that he flinched, and nearly lost the bird again. He folded its body under his arm, and kissed it on the head. “Forgive me. My need is great. Maybe the Bastard will feed you the bread of the gods, and you can ride on His shoulder, when you reach Him. Fly to your lord with my prayer.” A quick twist broke the crow’s neck. It fluttered briefly, quivering, then went still in his hands. He laid it down in front of his other knee.
   “Lord Bastard, god of justice when justice fails, of balance, of all things out of season, of my need. For dy Sanda. For Iselle. For all who love her—Lady Betriz, Royina Ista, the old Provincara. For the mess on my back. For truth against lies. Receive my prayer.” He had no idea if those were the right words, or if there were any right words. His breath was coming short; maybe he was crying. Surely he was crying. He found himself bending over the dead animals. A terrible pain was starting in his belly, cramping, burning in his gut. Oh. He hadn’t known this was going to hurt…
   Anyway, it’s a better death than from a flight of Brajaran crossbow bolts in my ass on the galley, for no reason.
   Politely, he remembered to say, “For your blessings, too, we thank you, god of the unseason,” just like in his bedside prayers as a boy.
   Help me, help me, help me.
   Oh.
   The candle flames guttered and died. The dark world darkened further, and went out.