“Better than fifty-seven!” Her fingers walked lightly up the coast of Ibra along the string of maritime cities to the great port of Zagosur, where they stopped, resting upon a certain pin with a carved mother-of-pearl head. “What do you know of Royse Bergon, Cazaril? Is he well-favored? Did you ever see him when you were in Ibra?”
   “Not with my own eyes. They say he’s a handsome boy.”
   Iselle shrugged impatiently. “All royses are always described as handsome, unless they’re absolutely grotesque. Then it’s said they have character.”
   “I believe Bergon to be reasonably athletic, which argues for at least a pleasantly healthy appearance. They say he has been trained at seamanship.” Cazaril saw the glow of youthful enthusiasm starting in her eyes, and felt constrained to add, “But your brother Orico has been at this half war with the roya of Ibra for the past seven years. The Fox has no love for Chalion.”
   Iselle pressed her hands together. “But what better way to end a war than with a marriage treaty?”
   “Chancellor dy Jironal is bound to oppose it. Quite aside from wanting you for his own family connection, he wants Teidez to have no ally, now or in the future, stronger than himself.”
   “By that reasoning, he must oppose any good match I can suggest.” Iselle leaned over the map again, her hand sweeping in a long arc encompassing Chalion and Ibra both—two-thirds of the lands between the seas. “But if I could bring Teidez and Bergon together…” Her palm pressed flat and slowly slid along the north coast across the five Roknari princedoms; pins popped from the paper and scattered. “Yes,” she breathed. Her eyes narrowed, and her jaw tightened. When she again looked up at Cazaril, her eyes were blazing. “I shall put it to my brother Orico at once, before dy Jironal returns. If I can get his word on it, publicly declared, surely even dy Jironal cannot make him take it back?”
   “Think it through first, Royesse. Think of all the issues. One drawback is surely the ghastly father-in-law.” Cazaril’s brow wrinkled. “Though I suppose time will remove him. And if anyone is capable of overcoming his emotions in favor of policy, it’s the old Fox.”
   She turned from the table to pace hastily back and forth across the chamber, heavy skirts swishing. Her dark aura clung about her.
   Royina Sara shared the vilest dregs of Orico’s curse; she must presumably have entered into it upon her marriage to the roya. If Iselle married out of Chalion, would she shed her curse reciprocally, leaving it behind? Was this a way for her to escape the geas? His rising excitement was cut by caution. Or would the Golden General’s old dark destiny follow her across the borders to her new country? He must consult with Umegat, and soon.
   Iselle stopped and stared out the window embrasure where she had sat to endure Dondo’s hideous wooing. Her eyes narrowed. At last she said decisively, “I must try. I cannot, will not, leave my fate to drift downstream to another disastrous falls and make no push to steer it. I will petition my royal brother, and at once.”
   She wheeled for the door and beckoned sharply, like a general urging on his troops. “Betriz, Cazaril, attend upon me!”

Chapter 15

   After some time casting about the Zangre they ran Orico to earth, to Cazaril’s surprise, in Royina Sara’s chambers on the top floor of Ias’s Tower. The roya and royina were seated at a small table by a window, playing at blocks-and-dodges together. The simple game, with its carved board and colored marbles, seemed a pastime for children or convalescents, not for the greatest lord and lady in the land… not that Orico could be mistaken for a well man by any experienced eye. The royal couple’s eerie shadows seemed merely a redundant underscore to their weary sadness. They played not for idleness, Cazaril realized, but for distraction, diversion from the fear and woe that hedged them all around.
   Cazaril was taken aback by Sara’s garb. Instead of the black-and-lavender court mourning that Orico wore, she was dressed all in white, the festival garb of the Bastard’s Day, that intercalary holiday inserted every two years after Mother’s Midsummer to prevent the calendar’s precessing from its proper seasons. The bleached linens were far too light for this weather, and she huddled into a large puffy white wool shawl to combat the chill. She looked dark and thin and sallow in the pale wrappings. Withal, it was an even more edged insult than the colorful gowns and robes she’d hastily donned for Dondo’s funeral. Cazaril wondered if she meant to wear the Bastard’s whites for the whole period of mourning. And if dy Jironal would dare protest.
   Iselle curtseyed to her royal brother and sister-in-law, and stood before Orico with eyes bright, hands clasped before her in an attitude of demure femininity belied by the steel in her spine. Cazaril and Lady Betriz, flanking her, also made their courtesies. Orico, turning from the game table, acknowledged his sister’s greeting. He adjusted his paunch in his lap and eyed her uneasily. On closer view, Cazaril could see where his tailor had added a matched panel of lavender brocade beneath the arms to enlarge his tunic’s girth, and the slight discoloration where the sleeve seams had been picked out and resewn. Royina Sara gathered her shawl and withdrew a little into the window seat.
   With the barest preamble, Iselle launched into her plea for the roya to open formal negotiations with Ibra for the hand of the Royse Bergon. She emphasized the opportunity to make a bid for peace, thus repairing the breach created by Orico’s ill-fated support of the late Heir, for surely neither Chalion nor exhausted Ibra were prepared to continue the conflict now. She pointed out how appropriate a match in age and rank Bergon was for her own years and station, and the advantage to Orico—she diplomatically did not add and then Teidez —in future years to have a relative and ally in Ibra’s court. She painted a vivid word-picture of the harassment from lesser lords of Chalion vying for her hand that Orico might neatly sidestep by this ploy, a bit of eloquence that caused the roya to vent a wistful sigh.
   Nonetheless, Orico began his expected equivocation by seizing on this last point. “But Iselle, your mourning protects you for a time. Not even Martou—I mean, Martou won’t insult the memory of his brother by marrying off Dondo’s bereaved fiancйe over his hot ashes.”
   Iselle snorted at the bereaved. “Dondo’s ashes will chill soon enough, and what then? Orico, you will never again force me to a husband without my assent—my prior assent, obtained beforehand. I won’t let you.”
   “No, no,” Orico agreed hastily, waving his hands. “That… that was a mistake, I see it now. I’m sorry.”
   Now, there’s an understatement…
   “I did not mean to insult you, dear sister, or, or the gods.” Orico glanced around a little vaguely, as though afraid an offended god might pounce upon him out of some astral ambuscade at any moment. “I meant well, for you and for Chalion.”
   Belatedly, it dawned upon Cazaril that while no one at court but himself and Umegat knew just whose prayers had hurried Dondo… well, not out of the world, but out of his life—all knew that the royesse had been praying for rescue. None, Cazaril thought, suspected or accused her of working death magic—of course, neither did they suspect or accuse him—nevertheless, Iselle was here, and Dondo was gone. Every thinking courtier must be unnerved by Dondo’s mysterious death, and some more than a little.
   “No marriage shall be offered to you in future without your prior accordance,” said Orico, with uncharacteristic firmness. “That, I promise you upon my own head and crown.”
   It was a solemn oath; Cazaril’s brows rose. Orico meant it, apparently. Iselle pursed her lips, then accepted this with a slight, wary nod.
   A faint dry breath, puffed through feminine nostrils—Cazaril’s eyes went to Royina Sara. Her face was shadowed by the window embrasure, but her mouth twisted briefly in some small irony at her husband’s words. Cazaril considered what solemn promises Orico had broken to her, and looked away, discomfited.
   “By the same token,” Orico skipped to his next evasion like a man crossing stepping-stones on a steam, “our mourning makes it too soon to offer you to Ibra. The Fox may construe an insult in this haste.”
   Iselle made a gesture of impatience. “But if we wait, Bergon is likely to be snatched up! The royse is now the Heir, he’s of marriageable age, and his father wants safety on his borders. The Fox is bound to barter him for an ally—a daughter of the high march of Yiss, perhaps, or a rich Darthacan noblewoman, and Chalion will have lost its chance!”
   “It’s too soon. Too soon. I don’t disagree that your arguments are good, and may have their day. Indeed, the Fox made diplomatic inquiries for your hand some years ago, I forget for which son, but all was broken off when the troubles in South Ibra erupted. Nothing is fixed. Why, my poor Brajaran mother was betrothed five different times before she was finally wed to Roya Ias. Take patience, calm yourself, and await a more seemly time.”
   “I think now is an excellent time. I want to see you make a decision, announce it, and stand by it—before Chancellor dy Jironal returns.”
   “Ah, um, yes. And that’s another thing. I cannot possibly take a step of this grave nature without consultation with my chief noble and the other lords in council.” Orico nodded to himself.
   “You didn’t consult the other lords the last time. I think you’re most strangely afraid to do anything dy Jironal doesn’t approve. Who is roya in Cardegoss, anyway, Orico dy Chalion or Martou dy Jironal?”
   “I—I—I will think on your words, dear sister.” Orico made craven little waving-away motions with his fat hands.
   Iselle, after a moment spent staring at him with a burning intensity that made him writhe, accepted this with a small, provisional nod. “Yes, do think on my petition, my lord. I’ll ask you again tomorrow.”
   With this promise—or threat—she made courtesy again to Orico and Sara and withdrew, Betriz and Cazaril trailing.
   “Tomorrow and every day thereafter?” Cazaril inquired in an undervoice as she sailed down the corridor in a savage rustling of skirts.
   “Every day till Orico yields,” she replied through set teeth. “Plan on it, Cazaril.”


* * *

   Wintry yellow light slanted through gray clouds later that afternoon as Cazaril made his way out of the Zangre to the stable block. He pulled his fine embroidered wool coat around him and drew in his neck like a turtle against the damp, cold wind. When he opened his mouth and exhaled, he could make his breath mist in a little cloud before him. He blew a few puffs at the ghosts that, pale almost to invisibility in the sunlight, bobbed perpetually after him. A damp frost rimed the cobbles beneath his feet. He pushed the menagerie’s heavy door aside just enough to nip within and pulled it shut again immediately thereafter. He stood a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darker interior, and sneezed from the sweet dust of the hay.
   The thumbless groom set down a pail, hurried up to him, bowed, and made welcoming noises.
   “I have come to see Umegat,” Cazaril told him. The little old man bowed again and beckoned him onward. He led Cazaril down the aisle. The beautiful animals all lurched to the front of their stalls to snort at him, and the sand foxes jumped up and yipped excitedly as he passed.
   A stone-walled chamber at the far end proved to be a tack room converted to a work and leisure room for the menagerie’s servants. A small fire burned cheerfully in a fieldstone fireplace, taking the chill off. The faint, pleasant scent of woodsmoke combined with that of leather, metal polish, and soaps. The wool-stuffed cushions on the chairs to which the groom gestured him were faded and worn, and the old worktable was stained and scarred. But the room was swept, and the glazed windows, one on either side of the fireplace, had the little round panes set in their leads polished clean. The groom made noises and shuffled out again.
   In a few minutes, Umegat entered, wiping his hands dry on a cloth and straightening his tabard. “Welcome, my lord,” he said softly. Cazaril felt suddenly uncertain of his etiquette, whether to stand as for a superior or sit as for a servant. There was no court Roknari grammatical mode for secretary to saint. He sat up and half bowed from the waist, awkwardly, by way of compromise. “Umegat.”
   Umegat closed the door, assuring privacy. Cazaril leaned forward, clasping his hands upon the tabletop, and spoke with the urgency of patient to physician. “You see the ghosts of the Zangre. Do you ever hear them?”
   “Not normally. Have you?” Umegat pulled out a chair and seated himself at right angles to Cazaril.
   “Not these—” He batted away the most persistent one, which had followed him inside. Umegat pursed his lips and flipped his cloth at it, and it flitted off. “Dondo’s.” Cazaril described last night’s internal uproar. “I thought he was trying to break out. Can he succeed? If the goddess’s grip fails?”
   “I am certain no ghost can overpower a god,” said Umegat.
   “That’s… not quite an answer.” Cazaril brooded. Perhaps Dondo and the demon meant to kill him from sheer exhaustion. “Can you at least suggest a way to shut him up? Putting my head under the pillow was no help at all.”

   “There is a kind of symmetry to it,” observed Umegat slowly. “Outer ghosts that you may see but not hear, inner ghosts that you may hear but not see… if the Bastard has a hand in it, it may have something to do with maintaining balance. In any case, I am sure your preservation was no accident and would not be accidentally withdrawn.”
   Cazaril absorbed this for a moment. Daily duties, eh. Today’s had brought some curious turns. He spoke now as comrade to comrade. “Umegat, listen, I’ve had an idea. We know the curse has followed the House of Chalion’s male line, Fonsa to Ias to Orico. Yet Royina Sara wears nearly as dark a shadow as Orico does, and she is no spawn of Fonsa’s loins. She must have married into the curse, yes?”
   The fine lines of Umegat’s face deepened with his frown. “Sara already bore the shadow when I first came, years ago, but I suppose… yes, it must have been so.”
   “Ista likewise, presumably?”
   “Presumably.”
   “So—could Iselle marry out of the curse? Shed it with her marriage vows, when she leaves her family of birth behind and enters into the family of her husband? Or would the curse follow her to taint them both?”
   Umegat’s brows went up. “I don’t know.”
   “But you don’t know that it’s impossible? I was thinking that it might be a way to salvage… something.”
   Umegat sat back. “Possibly. I don’t know. It was never a ploy to consider, for Orico.”
   “I need to know, Umegat. Royesse Iselle is pushing Orico to open negotiations for her marriage out of Chalion.”
   “Chancellor dy Jironal will surely not allow that.”
   “I would not underestimate her powers of persuasion. She is not another Sara.”
   “Neither was Sara, once. But you are right. Oh, my poor Orico, to be pressed between two such grinding stones.”
   Cazaril bit his lip, and paused a long time before venturing his next query. “Umegat… you’ve been observing this court for many years. Was dy Jironal always so poisonous a peculator, or has the curse slowly been corrupting him, too? Did the curse draw such a man to his position of power, or would any man trying to serve the House of Chalion become so corroded, in time?”
   “You ask very interesting questions, Lord Cazaril.” Umegat’s graying brows drew down in thought. “I wish I had better answers. Martou dy Jironal was always forcible, intelligent, able. We shall leave aside consideration of his younger brother, who made his reputation as a strong arm in the field, not a strong head in the court. When he first took up the post of chancellor I would have judged the elder dy Jironal no more susceptible to the temptations of pride and greed than any other high lord of Chalion with a clan to provide for.”
   Faint enough praise, that. And yet…
   “Yet I think…” Umegat seemed to continue Cazaril’s very thought, his eyes rising to meet his guest’s, “the curse has done him no good either.”
   “So… getting rid of dy Jironal is not the solution to Orico’s woes? Another such man, perhaps worse, would simply rise in his place?”
   Umegat opened his hands. “The curse takes a hundred forms, twisting each good thing that should be Orico’s according to the weaknesses of its nature. A wife grown barren instead of fertile. A chief advisor corrupt instead of loyal. Friends fickle instead of true, food that sickens instead of strengthening, and on and on.”
   A secretary-tutor grown cowardly and foolish instead of brave and wise? Or maybe just fey and mad… If any man who came within the curse’s ambit was vulnerable, was he destined to become Iselle’s plague, as dy Jironal was Orico’s? “And Teidez, and Iselle—must all her choices fall out as ill as Orico’s, or does he bear a special burden, being the roya?”
   “I think the curse has grown worse for Orico over time.” The Roknari’s gray eyes narrowed. “You have asked me a dozen questions, Lord Cazaril. Allow me to ask you one. How came you into the service of Royesse Iselle?”
   Cazaril opened his mouth and sat back, his mind jumping first to the day the Provincara had ambushed him with her offer of employment. But no, before that came… and before that came… He found himself instead telling Umegat of the day a soldier of the Daughter astride a nervy horse had dropped a gold coin in the mud, and how he had arrived in Valenda. Umegat brewed tea at the little fire and pushed a steaming mug in front of Cazaril, who paused only to lubricate his drying throat. Cazaril described how Iselle had discomfited the crooked judge on the Daughter’s Day, and, at length, how they had all come to Cardegoss.
   Umegat pulled on his queue. “Do you think your steps were fated from that far back? Disturbing. But the gods are parsimonious, and take their chances where they can find them.”
   “If the gods are making this path for me, then where is my free will? No, it cannot be!”
   “Ah.” Umegat brightened at this thorny theological point. “I have had another thought on such fates, that denies neither gods nor men. Perhaps, instead of controlling every step, the gods have started a hundred or a thousand Cazarils and Umegats down this road. And only those arrive who choose to.”
   “But am I the first to arrive, or the last?”
   “Well,” said Umegat dryly, “I can promise you you’re not the first.”
   Cazaril grunted understanding. After a little time spent digesting this, he said suddenly, “But if the gods have given you to Orico, and me to Iselle—though I think Someone has made a holy mistake—who is given for the protection of Teidez? Shouldn’t there be three of us? A man of the Brother, surely, though whether tool or saint or fool I know not—or have all the boy’s hundred destined protectors fallen by the roadside, one by one? Maybe the man is just not here yet.” A new thought robbed Cazaril of breath. “Maybe it was supposed to have been dy Sanda.” He leaned forward, burying his face in his hands. “If I stay here talking theology with you much longer, I swear I’ll end up drinking myself blind again, just to make my brain stop spinning round and round inside my skull.”
   “Addiction to drink is actually a fairly common hazard, among divines,” said Umegat.
   “I begin to see why.” Cazaril tilted back his head to catch the last trickle of tea, grown cold in his cup, and set it down. “Umegat… if I must ask of every action not only if it is wise or good, but also if it’s the one I’m supposed to choose, I shall go mad. Madder. I’ll end up curled in a corner not doing anything at all, except maybe mumbling and weeping.”
   Umegat chuckled—cruelly, Cazaril thought—but then shook his head. “You cannot outguess the gods. Hold to virtue—if you can identify it—and trust that the duty set before you is the duty desired of you. And that the talents given to you are the talents you should place in the gods’ service. Believe that the gods ask for nothing back that they have not first lent to you. Not even your life.”
   Cazaril rubbed his face, and inhaled. “Then I shall bend all my efforts to promoting this marriage of Iselle’s, to break the hold of the curse upon her. I must trust my reason, or why else did the goddess choose a reasonable man for Iselle’s guardian?” Though he added under his breath, “At least, I used to be a reasonable man…” He nodded, far more firmly than he felt, and pushed back his chair. “Pray for me, Umegat.”
   “Every hour, my lord.”


* * *

   It was growing dark when Lady Betriz brought a taper into Cazaril’s office and drifted about for a moment lighting his reading candles in their glass vases. He smiled and nodded thanks. She smiled back and blew out her taper, but then paused, not yet returning to the women’s chambers. She stood, Cazaril observed, in the same spot where they had parted the night of Dondo’s death.
   “Things seem to be settling down a little now, thank the gods,” she remarked.
   “Yes. A little.” Cazaril laid down his quill.
   “I begin to believe all will be well.”
   “Yes.” His stomach cramped. No.
   A long pause. He picked up his quill again, and dipped it, although he had nothing more to write.
   “Cazaril, must you believe you are about to die in order to bring yourself to kiss a lady?” she demanded abruptly.
   He ducked his head, flushing, and cleared his throat. “My deepest apologies, Lady Betriz. It won’t happen again.”
   He dared not look up, lest she try anew to break through his fragile barriers. Lest she succeed. Oh, Betriz, do not sacrifice your dignity to my futility!
   Her voice grew stiff. “I’m very sorry to hear that, Castillar.”
   He kept his eyes on his ledger as her footsteps retreated.

* * *

   Several days passed, as Iselle continued her campaign upon Orico. Several nights passed, made ghastly for Cazaril by the howls of Dondo’s soul in its private torment. This intestinal visitation did indeed prove to be nightly, a quarter of an hour reprising the terror of that death. Cazaril could not fall to sleep before the midnight interlude, in sick apprehension, nor for long after it, in shaken resonance, and his face grew gray with fatigue. The blurry old phantasms began to seem pleasant pets by comparison. There was no way he could drink enough wine, nightly, to sleep through it, so he set himself to endure.
   Orico endured his sister’s visitations with less fortitude. He took to avoiding her in increasingly bizarre ways, but she broke in upon him anyway, in chamber, kitchen, and once, to Nan dy Vrit’s scandal, his steam bath. The day he rode out to his hunting lodge in the oak woods at dawn, Iselle followed promptly after breakfast. Cazaril was relieved to note that his own spectral retinue fell behind as they rode out of the Zangre, as though bound to their place of death.
   It was clear that the fast gallop was an inexpressible joy to Iselle, as she shook out the knots and strains of her trammeled existence in the castle. A day in the saddle in the crisp early-winter air, going and returning from an otherwise futile interview, brightened her eye and put color in her cheeks. Lady Betriz was no less invigorated. The four Baocian guards told off to ride with them kept up, but only just, laboring along with their horses; Cazaril concealed agony. He passed blood again that evening, which he’d not done for some days, and Dondo’s nightly serenade proved especially shattering because, for the first time, Cazaril’s inward ear could make out words in the cries. They weren’t words that made any sense, but they were distinguishable. Would more follow?
   Dreading another such ride, Cazaril wearily climbed the stairs to Iselle’s chambers late the next morning. He had just eased himself stiffly into his chair at his desk and taken up his account book, when Royina Sara appeared, accompanied by two of her ladies. She wafted past Cazaril in a cloud of white wool. He scrambled to his feet in surprise and bowed deeply; she acknowledged his existence with a faint, faraway nod.
   A flurry of feminine voices in the forbidden chambers beyond announced her visit to her sister-in-law. Both the royina’s ladies-in-waiting and Nan dy Vrit were exiled to the sitting room, where they sat sewing and quietly gossiping. After about half an hour, Royina Sara came out again and crossed through Cazaril’s office antechamber with the same unsmiling abstraction.
   Betriz followed shortly. “The royesse bids you attend upon her in her sitting chamber,” she told Cazaril. Her black eyebrows were crimped tight with worry. Cazaril rose at once and followed her inside.
   Iselle sat in a carved chair, her hands clenched upon its arms, pale and breathing heavily. “Infamous! My brother is infamous, Cazaril!” she told him as he made his bow and pulled a stool up to her knee.
   “My lady?” he inquired, and let himself down as carefully as he could. Last night’s belly cramp still lingered, and stabbed him if he moved too quickly.
   “No marriage without my consent, aye, he spoke that truly enough—but none without dy Jironal’s consent, either! Sara has whispered it to me. After his brother’s death, but before he rode out of Cardegoss to seek the murderer, the chancellor closeted himself with my brother and persuaded him to make a codicil to his will. In the event of Orico’s death, the chancellor is made regent for my brother Teidez—”
   “I believe that arrangement has been known for quite some time, Royesse. There is a regency council set up to advise him, as well. The provincars of Chalion would not let that much power pass to one of their number without a check.”
   “Yes, yes, I knew that, but—”
   “The codicil does not attempt to abolish the council, does it?” asked Cazaril in alarm. “That would set the lords in an uproar.”
   “No, that part is left all as it was. But formerly, I was to be the ward of my grandmother and my uncle the provincar of Baocia. Now, I am to be transferred to dy Jironal’s own wardship. There is no council to check that! And listen, Cazaril! The term of his guardianship is set to be until I marry, and permission for my marriage is left entirely in his hands! He can keep me unwed till I die of old age, if he chooses!”
   Cazaril concealed his unease and held up a soothing hand. “Surely not. He must die of old age long before you. And well before that, when Teidez comes to his man’s estate and the full powers of the royacy, he can free you with a royal decree.”
   “Teidez’s majority is set at twenty-five years, Cazaril!”
   A decade ago, Cazaril would have shared her outrage at this lengthy term. Now it sounded more like a good idea. But not, granted, with dy Jironal in the saddle instead.
   “I would be almost twenty-eight years old!”
   Twelve more years for the curse to work upon her, and within her… no, it was not good by any measure.
   “He could dismiss you from my household instantly!”
   You have another Patroness, who has not chosen to dismiss me yet. “I grant you have cause for concern, Royesse, but don’t borrow trouble before its time. None of this matters while Orico lives.”
   “He is not well, Sara says.”
   “He is not very fit,” Cazaril agreed cautiously. “But he’s not by any means an old man. He’s barely more than forty.”
   By the expression on Iselle’s face, she found that quite aged enough. “He is more… not-well than he appears. Sara says.”
   Cazaril hesitated. “Is she that intimate with him, to know this? I had thought them estranged.”
   “I don’t understand them.” Iselle knuckled her eyes. “Oh, Cazaril, it was true what Dondo told me! I thought, later, that it might have been just a horrid lie to frighten me. Sara was so desperate for a child, she agreed to let dy Jironal try, when Orico… could not, anymore. Martou was not so bad, she said. He was at least courteous. It was only when he could not get her with child either that his brother cajoled him to let him into the venture. Dondo was dreadful, and took pleasure in her humiliation. But Cazaril, Orico knew. He helped persuade Sara to this outrage. I don’t understand, because Orico surely does not hate Teidez so much he’d wish to set dy Jironal’s bastard in his place.”
   “No.” And yes. A son of dy Jironal and Sara would not be a descendant of Fonsa the Fairly-wise. Orico must have reasoned that such a child might grow up to free the royacy of Chalion from the Golden General’s death curse. A desperate measure, but possibly an effective one.
   “Royina Sara,” Iselle added, her mouth crooking, “says if dy Jironal finds Dondo’s murderer, she plans to pay for his funeral, pension his family, and have perpetual prayers sung for him in the temple of Cardegoss.”
   “That’s good to know,” said Cazaril faintly. Although he had no family to pension. He hunched over a little and smiled to hide a grimace of pain. So, not even Sara, who had filled Iselle’s maiden ears with details of shocking intimacy, had told her of the curse. And he was certain now that Sara, too, knew of it. Orico, Sara, dy Jironal, Umegat, probably Ista, possibly even the Provincara, and not one had chosen to burden these children with knowledge of the dark cloud that hung over them. Who was he to betray that implicit conspiracy of silence?
   No one told me, either. Do I thank them now for their consideration? When, then, did Teidez’s and Iselle’s protectors plan to let them know of the geas that wrapped them round? Did Orico expect to tell them on his deathbed, as he’d been told by his father Ias?
   Had Cazaril the right to tell Iselle secrets that her natural guardians chose to conceal?
   Was he prepared to explain to her just how he had found it all out?
   He glanced at Lady Betriz, seated now on another stool and anxiously watching her distressed royal mistress. Even Betriz, who knew quite well that he had attempted death magic, did not know that he had succeeded.
   “I don’t know what to try next,” moaned Iselle. “Orico is useless.”
   Could Iselle escape this curse without ever having to know of it? He took a deep breath, for what he was about to say skirted treason. “You could take steps to arrange your marriage yourself.”
   Betriz stirred and sat up, her eyes widening at him.
   “What, in secret?” said Iselle. “From my royal brother?”
   “Certainly in secret from his chancellor.”
   “Is that legal?”
   Cazaril blew out his breath. “A marriage, contracted and consummated, cannot readily be set aside even by a roya. If a sufficiently large camp of Chalionese were persuaded to support you in it—and a considerable faction of opposition to dy Jironal exists ready-made—setting it aside would be rendered still harder.” And if she were got out of Chalion and placed under the protection of, say, as shrewd a father-in-law as the Fox of Ibra, she might leave curse and faction both behind altogether. Arranging the matter so that she didn’t simply trade being a powerless hostage in one court for being a powerless hostage in another was the hard part. But at least an uncursed hostage, eh?
   “Ah!” Iselle’s eyes lit with approval. “Cazaril, can it be done?”
   “There are practical difficulties,” he admitted. “All of which have practical solutions. The most critical is to discover a man you can trust to be your ambassador. He must have the wit to gain you the strongest possible position in negotiation with Ibra, the suppleness to avoid offending Chalion, nerve to pass in disguise across uneasy borders, strength for travel, loyalty to you and you alone, and courage in your cause that must not break. A mistake in this selection would be fatal.” Possibly literally.
   She pressed her hands together, and frowned. “Can you find me such a man?”
   “I will bend my thoughts to it, and look about me.”
   “Do so, Lord Cazaril,” she breathed. “Do so.”
   Lady Betriz said, in an oddly dry voice, “Surely you need not look far.”
   “It cannot be me.” With a swallow, he converted I could fall dead at your feet at any moment to, “I dare not leave you here without protection.”
   “We shall all think on it,” said Iselle firmly.


* * *

   The Father’s Day festivities passed quietly. Chill rain dampened the celebrations in Cardegoss, and kept many from the Zangre from attending the municipal procession, though Orico went as a royal duty and as a result contracted a head cold. He turned this to account by taking to his bed and avoiding everyone thereby. The Zangre’s denizens, still in black and lavender for Lord Dondo, kept a sober Father’s Feast, with sacred music but no dancing.
   The icy rain continued through the week. Cazaril, one sodden afternoon, was combining practical application with tutorial by teaching Betriz and Iselle how to keep accounts, when a crisp rap on the chamber door overrode a page’s diffident voice announcing, “The March dy Palliar begs to see my lord dy Cazaril.”
   “Palli!” Cazaril turned in his chair, and levered himself to his feet with a hand on the table. Bright delight flooded both his ladies’ faces with sudden energy, driving out the ennui. “i wasn’t expecting you in Cardegoss so soon!”

   “Nor was I.” Palli bowed to the women and favored Cazaril with a twisted grin. He dropped a coin in the page’s hand and jerked his head; the boy bent double, in a gradation that indicated deep approval of the amount of the largesse, and scampered off.
   Palli continued, “I took only two officers and rode hard; my troop from Palliar follows at a pace that will not destroy horses.” He glanced around the chamber and shrugged his broad shoulders. “Goddess forfend! I didn’t think I was speaking prophecy, last time I was here. Gives me a worse chill than this miserable rain.” He cast off a water-spotted woolen cloak, revealing the blue-and-white garb of an officer of the daughter’s order, and ran a rueful hand through the bright drops beading in his dark hair. He clasped hands with Cazaril, and added, “Bastard’s demons, Caz, you look terrible!”
   Cazaril could not, alas, respond to this with a very well put. He instead turned off the remark with a mumble of, “It’s the weather, I suppose. It makes everyone dull and drab.”
   Palli stood back and stared him up and down. “Weather? When last I saw you, your skin was not the color of moldy dough, you didn’t have black rings around your eyes like a striped rock-rat, and, and, you looked pretty fit, not—pale, pinched, and potbellied.” Cazaril straightened up, indignantly sucking in his aching gut, as Palli jerked a thumb at him and added, “Royesse, you should get your secretary to a physician.”
   Iselle stared at Cazaril in sudden doubt, her hand going to her mouth, as if really looking him for the first time in weeks. Which, he supposed, she was; her attentions had been thoroughly absorbed by her own troubles through these late disasters. Betriz looked from one of them to the other, and set her teeth on her lower lip.
   “I don’t need to see a physician,” said Cazaril firmly, loudly, and quickly. Or any other such interrogator, dear gods.
   “So all men say, in terror of the lancet and the purgative.” Palli waved away this stung protest. “The last one of my sergeants who developed saddle boils, I had to march in to the old leech-handler at sword’s point. Don’t listen to him, Royesse. Cazaril”—his face sobered, and he made an apologetic half bow to Iselle—“May I speak to you privately for a moment? I promise I shall not keep him from you long, Royesse. I cannot linger.”
   Gravely, Iselle granted her royal permission. Cazaril, quick to catch the undertone in Palli’s voice, led him not to his office antechamber but all the way down the stairs to his own chamber. The corridor was empty, happily. He closed his heavy door firmly behind them, to thwart human eavesdroppers. The senile spirit smudges kept their confidences.
   Cazaril took the chair, the better to conceal his lack of grace in movement. Palli sat on the edge of the bed, folded his cloak beside him, and clasped his hands loosely between his knees.
   “The daughter’s courier to Palliar must have made excellent time despite the winter muds,” said Cazaril, counting days in his head.
   Palli’s dark brows rose. “You know of that already? I’d thought it a, ah, quite private call to conclave. Though it will become obvious soon enough, as the other lord dedicats arrive in Cardegoss.”
   Cazaril shrugged. “I have my sources.”
   “I don’t doubt it. And so have I mine.” Palli shook his finger at him. “You are the only intelligencer in the Zangre that I would trust, at present. What, under the Gods’ eyes, has been happening here at court? The most lurid and garbled tales are circulating regarding our late Holy General’s sudden demise. And delightful as the picture is, somehow I don’t really think he was carried off bodily by a flight of demons with blazing wings called down by the Royesse Iselle’s prayers.”
   “Ah… not exactly. He just choked to death in the middle of a drinking fest, the night before his wedding.”
   “On his poisonous, lying tongue, one would wish.”
   “Very nearly.”
   Palli sniffed. “The lord dedicats whom Lord Dondo put in a fury—who are not only all the ones he failed to buy outright, but also those who’ve grown ashamed of their purchase since—have taken his taking-off as a sign the wheel has turned. As soon as our quorum arrives in Cardegoss, we mean to steal a march on the chancellor and present our own candidate for Holy General to Orico. Or perhaps a slate of three acceptable men, from which the roya might choose.”
   “That would likely go down better. It’s a delicate balance between…” Cazaril cut off, loyalty and treason. “Too, dy Jironal has his own powers in the temple, as well as in the Zangre. You don’t want this infighting to turn too ugly.”
   “Even dy Jironal would not dare disrupt the temple by setting soldiers of the son upon soldiers of the daughter,” said Palli confidently.
   “Mm,” said Cazaril.
   “At the same time, some of the lord dedicats—naming no names right now—want to go farther, maybe assemble and present evidence of enough of both the Jironals’ bribes, threats, peculations, and malfeasances to Orico that it would force him to dismiss dy Jironal as chancellor. Make the Roya take a stand.”
   Cazaril rubbed his nose, and said warningly, “Forcing Orico to stand would be like trying to build a tower out of custard. I don’t recommend it. Nor will he readily be parted from dy Jironal. The Roya relies on him… more deeply than I can explain. Your evidence would need to be utterly overwhelming.”
   “Yes, which is part of what brings me to you.” Palli leaned forward intently. “Would you be willing to repeat, under oath before the daughter’s conclave, the tale you told me in Valenda about how the Jironals sold you to the galleys?”
   Cazaril hesitated. “I have only my word to offer as proof, Palli, too weak to topple dy Jironal, I assure you.”
   “Not alone, no. But it might be just the coin to tip the scale, the straw to light the fire.”
   Just the straw to stand out from all the others? Did he want to be known as the pivot of this plot? Cazaril’s lips screwed up in dismay.
   “And you’re a man of reputation,” Palli went on persuasively.
   Cazaril jerked. “No good one, surely…!”
   “What, everyone knows of Royesse Iselle’s clever secretary, the man who keeps his own counsel—and hers—the Bastion of Gotorget—utterly indifferent to wealth—”
   “No, I’m not,” Cazaril assured him earnestly. “I just dress badly. I quite like wealth.”
   “And possessing the Royesse’s total confidence. And don’t pretend a courtier’s greed to me—with my own eyes I saw you turn down three rich Roknari bribes to betray Gotorget, the last while you were starving near to death, and I can produce living witnesses to back me.”
   “Well, of course I didn’t—”
   “Your voice would be listened to in council, Caz!”
   Cazaril sighed. “I… I’ll think about it. I have nearer duties. Say that I’ll speak in the sealed session if and only if you think my testimony would be truly needed. Temple internal politics are no business of mine.” A twinge in his gut made him regret that word choice. I fear I am afflicted with the goddess’s own internal politics, just now.
   Palli’s happy nod claimed this as a firmer assent than Cazaril quite wished. He rose, thanked Cazaril, and took his leave.

Chapter 16

   Two afternoons later, Cazaril was sitting unguardedly at his worktable mending his pens when a page of the Zangre entered his antechamber and announced, “Here is Dedicat Rojeras, in obedience to the order of the Royesse Iselle, m’lord.”
   Rojeras was a man of about forty, with sandy red hair receding a little from his forehead, freckles, and keen blue eyes. The man’s trade was recognizable by the green robes of a lay dedicat of Cardegoss’s Temple Hospital of the Mother’s Mercy that swung at his brisk step, and his rank by the master’s braid sewn over his shoulder. Cazaril knew at once that none of his ladies could be the quarry, or the Mother’s Order would have sent a woman physician. He stiffened in alarm, but nodded politely. He rose and turned to convey the message to the inner chambers only to find Lady Betriz and the royesse already at the door, smiling unsurprised greetings to the man.
   Betriz dropped a half curtsey in exchange for the dedicat’s deep bow, and said, “This is the man I told you about, Royesse. The Mother’s senior divine says he has made a special study of wasting diseases, and has apprentices who’ve traveled from all over Chalion to be taught by him!”
   So, Lady Betriz’s excursion to the temple yesterday had included more than prayers and charity offerings. Iselle had less to learn about court conspiracies than Cazaril had thought. She’d certainly smuggled this past him smoothly enough. He was ambushed, and by his own ladies. He smiled tightly, swallowing his fear. The man had none of the luminous signs of second sight about him; what could he tell from Cazaril’s mere body?
   Iselle looked the physician over and nodded satisfaction. “Dedicat Rojeras, please examine my secretary and report back to me.”
   “Royesse, I don’t need to see a physician!” And I most especially don’t need a physician to see me.
   “Then all we shall waste is a trifle of time,” Iselle countered, “which the gods give us each day all the same. Upon pain of my displeasure, I order you to go with him, Cazaril.” There was no mistaking the determination in her voice.
   Damn Palli, for not only putting this into her head, but teaching her how to block his escape. Iselle was too quick a study. Still… the physician would either diagnose a miracle, or he would not. If he did, Cazaril could call for Umegat, and let the saint, with his undoubted high connections to the Temple, deal with it. And if not, what harm was in it?
   Cazaril bowed obedient, if stiffly offended, assent, and led his unwelcome visitor downstairs to his bedchamber. Lady Betriz followed, to see that her royal mistress’s orders were carried out. She offered him a quick apologetic smile, but her eyes were apprehensive as Cazaril closed his door upon her.
   Shut in with Cazaril, the physician made him sit by the window while he felt his pulse and peered into his eyes, ears, and throat. He bade Cazaril make water, which he sniffed and studied in a glass tube held up to the light. He inquired after Cazaril’s bowels, and Cazaril reluctantly admitted to the blood. Then Cazaril was required to undress and lie down, and suffer to have his heart and breathing listened to by the man’s ear pressed to his chest, and be poked and prodded all over his body by the cool, quick fingers. Cazaril had to explain how he came by his flogging scars; Rojeras’s comments upon them were limited to some hair-raising suggestions of how he might rid Cazaril of his remaining adhesions, should Cazaril desire it and gather the nerve. Withal, Cazaril thought he would prefer to wait and fall off another horse, and said so, which only made Rojeras chuckle.
   Rojeras’s smile faded as he returned to a more careful, and deeper, probing of Cazaril’s belly, feeling and leaning this way and that. “Pain here?”
   Cazaril, determined to pass this off, said firmly, “No.”
   “How about when I do this?”
   Cazaril yelped.
   “Ah. Some pain, then.” More poking. More wincing. Rojeras paused for a time, his fingertips just resting on Cazaril’s belly, his gaze abstracted. Then he seemed to shake himself awake. He reminded Cazaril of Umegat.
   Rojeras still smiled as Cazaril dressed himself again, but his eyes were shadowed with thought.
   Cazaril offered encouragingly, “Speak, Dedicat. I am a man of reason, and will not fall to pieces.”
   “Is it so? Good.” Rojeras took a breath and said plainly, “My lord, you have a most palpable tumor.”
   “Is… that it,” said Cazaril, gingerly seating himself again in his chair.
   Rojeras looked up swiftly. “This does not surprise you?”
   Not as much as my last diagnosis did. Cazaril thought longingly of what a relief it would be to learn that his recurring belly cramp was such a natural, normal lethality. Alas, he was quite certain that most people’s tumors didn’t scream obscenities at them in the middle of the night. “I have had reasons to think something was not right. But what does this mean? What do you think will happen?” He kept his voice as neutral as possible.
   “Well…” Rojeras sat on the edge of Cazaril’s vacated bed and laced his fingers together. “There are so many kinds of these growths. Some are diffuse, some knotted or encapsulated, some kill swiftly, some sit there for years and hardly seem to give trouble at all. Yours seems to be encapsulated, which is hopeful. There is one common sort, a kind of cyst that fills with liquid, that one woman I cared for held for over twelve years.”
   “Oh,” said Cazaril, and produced a heartened smile.
   “It grew to over a hundred pounds by the time she died,” the physician went on. Cazaril recoiled, but Rojeras continued blithely, “And there is another, a most interesting one that I have only seen twice in my years of study—a round mass that, when opened, proved to contain knots of flesh with hair and teeth and bones. One was in a woman’s belly, which almost made sense, but another was in a man’s leg. I theorize that they were engendered by an escaped demon, trying to grow to human form. If the demon had succeeded, I posit that it might have chewed its way out and entered the world in fleshly form, which would surely have been an abomination. I have for long wished to find such another one in a patient who was still alive, that I might study it and see if my theory is so.” He eyed Cazaril in speculation.
   With the greatest effort, Cazaril kept himself from jolting up and screaming. He glanced down at his swollen belly in terror, and carefully away. He had thought his affliction spiritual, not physical. It had not occurred to him that it could be both at once. This was an intrusion of the supernatural into the solid that seemed all too plausible, given his case. He choked out, “Do they grow to a hundred pounds, too?”
   “The two I excised were much smaller,” Rojeras assured him.
   Cazaril looked up in sudden hope. “You can cut them out, then?”
   “Oh—only from dead persons,” said the physician apologetically.
   “But, but… might it be done?” If a man were brave enough to lie down and offer himself in cold blood to razor-edged steel… if the abomination could be carved out with the brutal speed of an amputation… Was it possible to physically excise a miracle, if that miracle were in fact made flesh?
   Rojeras shook his head. “On an arm or a leg, maybe. But this… You were a soldier—you’ve surely seen what happens with dirty belly wounds. Even if you chanced to survive the shock and pain of the cutting, the fever would kill you within a few days.” His voice grew more earnest. “I have tried it three times, and only because my patients threatened to kill themselves if I would not try. They all died. I don’t care to kill any more good people that way. Do not tease and torment yourself with such desperate impossibilities. Take what you can of life meantime, and pray.”
   It was praying that got me into this—or this into me… “Do not tell the royesse!”
   “My lord,” said the physician gravely, “I must.”
   “But I must not—not now —she must not dismiss me to my bed! I cannot leave her side!” Cazaril’s voice rose in panic.
   Rojeras’s brows rose. “Your loyalty commends you, Lord Cazaril. Calm yourself! There is no need for you to take to your bed before you feel the need. Indeed, such light duties as may come your way in her service may occupy your mind and help you to compose your soul.”
   Cazaril breathed deeply, and decided not to disabuse Rojeras of his pleasant illusions about service to the House of Chalion. “As long as you make it clear that I am not to be exiled from my post.”
   “As long as you grasp that this is not a license to exert yourself unduly,” Rojeras returned sternly. “You are plainly in need of more rest than you have allowed yourself.”
   Cazaril nodded hasty agreement, trying to look at once biddable and energetic.
   “There is one other important thing,” Rojeras added, stirring as if to take his leave but not yet rising. “I only ask this because, as you say, you are a man of reason, and I think you might understand.”
   “Yes?” said Cazaril warily.
   “Upon your death—long delayed, we must pray—may I have your note of hand saying I might cut out your tumor for my collection?”
   “You collect such horrors?” Cazaril grimaced. “Most men content themselves with paintings, or old swords, or ivory carvings.” Offense struggled with curiosity, and lost. “Um… how do you keep them?”
   “In jars of wine spirits.” Rojeras smiled, a faint embarrassed flush coloring his fair skin. “I know it sounds gruesome, but I keep hoping… if only I learn enough, someday I will understand, someday I will be able to find some way to keep these things from killing people.”
   “Surely they are the gods’ dark gifts, and we cannot in piety resist them?”
   “We resist gangrene, by amputation, sometimes. We resist the infection of the jaw, by drawing out the bad tooth. We resist fevers, by applications of heat and cold, and good care. For every cure, there must have been a first time.” Rojeras fell silent. After a moment he said, “It is clear that the Royesse Iselle holds you in much affection and esteem.”
   Cazaril, not knowing quite how to respond to this, replied, “I have served her since last spring, in Valenda. I had formerly served in her grandmother’s household.”
   “She is not given to hysterics, is she? Highborn women are sometimes…” Rojeras gave a little shrug, in place of saying something rude.
   “No,” Cazaril had to admit. “None of her household are. Quite the reverse.” He added, “But surely you don’t have to tell the ladies, and distress them, so… so soon?”
   “Of course I do,” said the physician, although in a gentled tone. He rose to his feet. “How can the royesse choose good actions without good knowledge?”
   An all too cogent point. Cazaril chewed on it in embarrassment as he followed the dedicat back upstairs.
   Betriz leaned out onto the corridor at the sound of their approaching steps. “Is he going to be all right?” she demanded of Rojeras.
   Rojeras held up a hand. “A moment, my lady.”
   They made their way into the royesse’s sitting chamber, where Iselle waited bolt upright on the carved chair, her hands tight in her lap. She accepted Rojeras’s bow with a nod. Cazaril didn’t want to watch, but he did want to know what was said, and so sank into the chair Betriz anxiously dragged up for him, and to which Iselle pointed. Rojeras remained standing in the presence of the royesse.

  “My lady,” Rojeras said to Iselle, bowing again as if in apology for his bluntness, “your secretary is afflicted with a tumor in his gut.”
   Iselle stared at him in shock. Betriz’s face drained of all expression. Iselle swallowed, and said, “He’s not… not dying, surely?” She glanced fearfully at Cazaril.
   Rojeras, losing his grip on his stated principles of forthrightness in the face of this, retreated briefly into courtly dissimulation. “Death comes to all men, variously. It is beyond my skills to say how long Lord Cazaril may yet live.” His glance aside caught Cazaril’s hard, pleading stare, and he added faithfully, “There is no reason he may not continue in his secretarial duties as long as he feels well enough. You should not permit him to overtax himself, however. By your leave, I should like to return each week to reexamine him.”
   “Of course,” said Iselle faintly.
   After a few more words on the subject of Cazaril’s diet and duties, Rojeras made a courteous departure.
   Betriz, tears blurring her velvety brown eyes, choked, “I didn’t think it was going to be—had you guessed this when—Cazaril, I don’t want you to die!”
   Cazaril replied ruefully, “Well, I don’t want me to die either, so that makes two of us.”
   “Three,” said Iselle. “Cazaril—what can we do for you?”
   Cazaril, about to reply, nothing, seized this opportunity instead to rap out firmly, “This above all—kindly do not discuss this with every castle gossiper. It is my earnest desire that this stay private information for—for as long as may be.” For one thing, the news that Cazaril was dying might give dy Jironal some fresh ideas about his brother’s death. The chancellor had to return to Cardegoss soon, possibly frustrated enough to start rethinking his missing corpse problem.
   Iselle accepted this with a slow nod, and Cazaril was permitted to return to his antechamber, where he failed to concentrate upon his account books. After the third time Lady Betriz tiptoed out to inquire if he wanted anything, once at the royesse’s instigation and twice on her own, Cazaril counterattacked by declaring it was time for some long-neglected grammar lessons. If they weren’t going to leave him alone, he might as well make use of their company. His two pupils were very subdued, ladylike, and submissive this afternoon. Even though this meek studious virtue was something he’d long wished for, he found himself hoping it wouldn’t last.
   Still, they brushed through the lessons pretty well, even the long drill on court Roknari grammatical modes. His prickly demeanor did not invite consolation. The ladies, bless their steadfast wits, did not attempt to inflict any on him. By the end the two young women were treating him almost normally again, as he plainly desired, though around Betriz’s grave mouth no dimples solaced him.
   Iselle rose to shake out her knots by pacing about the chamber; she stopped to stare out the window at the chill winter mist that filled the ravine below the Zangre’s walls. She rubbed absently at her sleeve, and remarked querulously, “Lavender is not my color. It’s like wearing a bruise. There is too much death in Cardegoss. I wish we’d never come here.”
   Considering it impolitic to agree, Cazaril merely bowed, and withdrew to make himself ready to go down to dinner.


* * *

   The first flakes of winter snow powdered the streets and walls of Cardegoss that week, but melted off in the afternoons. Palli kept Cazaril informed of the arrival of his fellow lord dedicats, filtering in to the capital one by one, and in turn decanted Zangre gossip from his friend. Mutual aid and trust, Cazaril reflected, but also a dual breach of the walls that each of them, in theory, helped to man. Yet if it ever came down to choosing sides between the Temple and the Zangre, Chalion would already have lost.
   Dy Jironal, Royse Teidez in tow, returned as if blown in by the cold southeast wind that also dumped an unwelcome gift of sleet on the town in passing. To Cazaril’s relief, the chancellor was empty-handed, balked of quarry in his quest for justice and revenge. No telling from dy Jironal’s set face if he had despaired of his hunt, or had just been drawn back by spies, riding hard and fast, to tell him of the forces gathering in Cardegoss that were not of his own summoning.
   Teidez dragged back to his quarters in the castle looking tired, sullen, and unhappy. Cazaril was not surprised. Chasing down every death for three provinces around that had occurred during the night of Dondo’s taking-off had surely been gruesome enough even without the vile weather.
   During his bedazzlement by Dondo’s practiced sycophancy, Teidez had neglected his elder sister’s company. When he came to visit Iselle’s chambers that afternoon, he both accepted and returned a sisterly embrace, seeming more eager to talk to her than he had for a long time. Cazaril withdrew discreetly to his antechamber and sat with his account books open, fiddling with his drying quill. Since Orico had for a betrothal gift assigned the rents of six towns to the support of his sister’s household, and not taken them back when funeral had replaced wedding, Cazaril’s accounts and correspondence had grown more complex.
   He listened meditatively through the open door to the rise and fall of the young voices. Teidez detailed his trip to his sister’s eager ears: the muddy roads and floundering horses, the tense and cranky men, indifferent food and chilly quarters. Iselle, in a voice that betrayed more envy than sympathy, pointed out how good a practice it was for his future winter campaigns. The cause of the journey was scarcely touched upon between them, Teidez still baffled and offended by his sister’s rejection of his late hero, and Iselle apparently unwilling to burden him with knowledge of the more grotesque causes of her antipathy.
   Besides being shocked by the sudden and dreadful nature of Lord Dondo’s murder, Teidez must be one of the few who’d known the man who genuinely mourned him. And why not? Dondo had flattered and cajoled and made much of Teidez. He’d showered the boy with gifts and treats, some toxically inappropriate for his age, and how was Teidez to grasp that grown men’s vices were not the same as grown men’s honors?
   The elder dy Jironal must seem a cold and unresponsive companion by comparison. The expedition had apparently left a trail of disruption behind as its inquiries grew rough and ready in dy Jironal’s frustration. Worse, dy Jironal, who needed Teidez desperately, was insufficiently adept at concealing how little he liked him, and had left him to his handlers—secretary-tutor, guards, and servants—treating him as tailpiece rather than lieutenant. But if, as his surly words hinted, Teidez had begun to reciprocate his chief guardian’s dislike, it was surely for all the wrong reasons. And if his new secretary was taking up any of the abandoned load of his noble education, nothing in Teidez’s tale gave hint of it.
   At length, Nan dy Vrit bade the young people prepare for dinner, and drew the visit to a close. Teidez walked slowly out through Cazaril’s antechamber, frowning at his boots. The boy was grown almost as tall as his half brother Orico, his round face hinting that in future he might grow as broad as well, though for now he kept youth’s muscular fitness. Cazaril turned a leaf in his account book at random, dipped his pen again, and glanced up with a tentative smile. “How do you fare, my lord?”
   Teidez shrugged, but then, halfway across the room, wheeled back, and came to Cazaril’s table. His expression was not miffed—or not merely miffed—but tired and troubled as well. He drummed his finger briefly on the wood, and stared down over the pile of books and papers. Cazaril folded his hands and cast him an encouraging look of inquiry.
   Teidez said abruptly, “There’s something wrong in Cardegoss. Isn’t there.”
   There were so many things wrong in Cardegoss, Cazaril scarcely knew how to take Teidez’s words. He said cautiously, “What makes you think that?”
   Teidez made a little gesture, pulled short. “Orico is sickly, and does not rule as he should. He sleeps so much, like an old man, but he’s not that old. And everyone says he’s lost his”—Teidez colored slightly, and his gesture grew vaguer—“you know… cannot act as a man is supposed to, with a woman. Has it never struck you that there is something uncanny about his strange illness?”
   After a slight hesitation, Cazaril temporized, “Your observations are shrewd, Royse.”
   “Lord Dondo’s death was uncanny, too. I think it’s all of a piece!”
   The boy was thinking; good! “You should take your thoughts to…” not dy Jironal, “your brother Orico. He is the most proper authority to address them.” Cazaril tried to imagine Teidez getting a straight answer out of Orico, and sighed. If Iselle could not draw sense from the man, with all her passionate persuasion, what hope had the much less articulate Teidez? Orico would evade answer unless stiffened to it in advance.
   Should Cazaril take this tutelage into his own hands? Not only had he not been given authority to disclose the state secret, he wasn’t even supposed to know it himself. And… the knowledge of the Golden General’s curse needed to come straight to Teidez from the roya, not around him or despite him, lest it take up a suspicious tinge of conspiracy.
   He’d been silent too long. Teidez leaned forward across the table, eyes narrowing, and hissed, “Lord Cazaril, what do you know?”
   I know we dare not leave you in ignorance much longer. Nor Iselle either. “Royse, I shall talk to you of this later. I cannot answer you tonight.”
   Teidez’s lips tightened. He swiped a hand through his dark amber curls in a gesture of impatience. His eyes were uncertain, untrusting, and, Cazaril thought, strangely lonely. “I see,” he said in a bleak tone, and turned on his heel to march out. His low-voiced mutter carried back from the corridor, “I must do it myself…”
   If he meant, talk to Orico, good. Cazaril would go to Orico first, though, yes, and if that proved insufficient, return with Umegat to back him up. He set his pens in their jar, closed his books, took a breath to steel himself against the twinges that stabbed him with sudden movement, and pushed to his feet.


* * *

   An interview with Orico was easier resolved upon than accomplished. Taking him as still an ambassador for Iselle’s Ibran proposal, the roya ducked away from Cazaril on sight, and set the master of his chamber to offer up a dozen excuses for his indisposition. The matter was made more difficult by the need for this conversation to take place in private, just between the two of them, and uninterrupted. Cazaril was walking down the corridor from the banqueting hall after supper, head down and considering how best to corner his royal quarry, when a thump on his shoulder half spun him around.
   He looked up, and an apology for his clumsy abstraction died on his lips. The man he’d run into was Ser dy Joal, one of Dondo’s now-unemployed bravos—and what were all those ripe souls doing for pocket money these days? Had they been inherited by Dondo’s brother?—flanked by one of his comrades, half-grinning, and Ser dy Maroc, who frowned uneasily. The man who’d run into him, Cazaril corrected himself. The candlelight from the mirrored wall sconces made bright sparks in the younger man’s alert eyes.
   “Clumsy oaf!” roared dy Joal, sounding just a trifle rehearsed. “How dare you crowd me from the door?”
   “I beg your pardon, Ser dy Joal,” said Cazaril. “My mind was elsewhere.” He made a half bow, and began to go around.
   Dy Joal dodged sideways, blocking him, and swung back his vest-cloak to reveal the hilt of his sword. “I say you crowded me. Do you give me the lie, as well?”
   This is an ambush. Ah. Cazaril stopped, his mouth tightening. Wearily, he said, “What do you want, dy Joal?”
   “Bear witness!” Dy Joal motioned to his comrade and dy Maroc. “He crowded me.”
   His comrade obediently replied, “Aye, I saw,” though dy Maroc looked much less certain.
   “I seek a touch with you for this, Lord Cazaril!” said dy Joal.

  “I see that you do,” said Cazaril dryly. But was this drunken stupidity, or the world’s simplest form of assassination? A duel to first blood, approved practice and outlet for high spirits among young courtly hotheads, followed by The sword slipped, upon my honor! He ran upon it! and whatever number of paid witnesses one could afford to confirm it.
   “I say I will have three drops of your blood, to clear this slight.” It was the customary challenge.
   “I say you should go dip your head in a bucket of water until you sober up, boy. I do not duel. Eh?” Cazaril lifted his arms briefly, hands out, flipping his own vest-cloak open to show he’d borne no sword in to dinner. “Let me pass.”
   “Urrac, lend the coward your sword! We have our two witnesses. We’ll have this outside, now.” Dy Joal jerked his head toward the doors at the corridor’s end that led out into the main courtyard.
   The comrade unbuckled his sword, grinned, and tossed it to Cazaril. Cazaril lifted an eyebrow, but not his hand, and let the sheathed weapon clatter, uncaught, to his feet. He kicked it back to its owner. “I do not duel.”
   “Shall I call you coward direct?” demanded Joal. His lips were parted, and his breath already rushing in his elation, anticipating battle. Cazaril saw out of the corner of his eye a couple of other men, attracted by the raised voices, advance curiously down the corridor toward this knot of altercation.
   “Call me anything you please, depending on how much of a fool you want to sound. Your mouthings are naught to me,” sighed Cazaril. He did his best to project languid boredom, but his blood was pulsing faster in his ears. Fear? No. Fury…
   “You have a lord’s name. Have you no lord’s honor?”
   One corner of Cazaril’s mouth turned up, not at all humorously. “The confusion of mind you dub honor is a disease, for which the Roknari galley-masters have the cure.”
   “So much for your honor, then. You shall not refuse me three drops for mine!”
   “That’s right.” Cazaril’s voice went oddly calm; his heart, which had sped, slowed. His lips drew back in a strange grin. “That’s right,” he breathed again.
   Cazaril held up his left hand, palm out, and with his right jerked out his belt knife, last used for cutting bread at supper. Dy Joal’s hand spasmed on his sword hilt, and he half drew.
   “Not within the roya’s hall!” cried dy Maroc anxiously. “You know you must take it outside, dy Joal! By the Brother, he has no sword, you cannot!”
   Dy Joal hesitated; Cazaril, instead of advancing toward him, shook back his left sleeve—and drew his knife blade shallowly across his own wrist. Cazaril felt no pain, none. Blood welled, gleaming dark carmine in the candlelight, though not spurting dangerously. A kind of haze clouded his vision, blocking out everyone but himself and the now uncertainly grinning young fool who’d hustled him for a touch. I’ll give you touch. He spun his knife back into its belt sheath. Dy Joal, not yet wary enough, let his sword slide back and lifted his hand from it. Smiling, Cazaril held up his hands, one arm bleeding, the other bare. Then he lunged.
   He caught up the shocked dy Joal and bore him backward to the wall, where he landed with a thump that reverberated down the corridor, one arm trapped behind him. Cazaril’s right hand pressed under dy Joal’s chin, lifting him from his feet and pinning him to the wall by his neck. Cazaril’s right knee ground into dy Joal’s groin. He kept up the pressure, to deny dy Joal his trapped arm; the other clawed at him, and he pinned it, too, to the wall. Dy Joal’s wrist twisted in the slippery blood of his grip, but could not break free. The purpling young man did not, of course, cry out, though his eyes rolled whitely, and a grunting gargle broke from his lips. His heels hammered the wall. The bravos knew Cazaril’s crooked hands had held a pen; they’d forgotten he’d held an oar. Dy Joal wasn’t going anywhere now.
   Cazaril snarled in his ear, low-voiced but audible to all, “I don’t duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange. If I decide you die, you will die when I choose, where I choose, by what means I choose, and you will never see the blow coming.” He released dy Joal’s now-enfeebled arm and brought his left wrist up, and pressed the bloody cut to his terrified victim’s half-open, trembling mouth. “You want three drops of my blood, for your honor? You shall drink them.” Blood and spittle spurted around dy Joal’s chattering teeth, but the bravo didn’t even dare try to bite, now. “Drink, damn you!” Cazaril pressed harder, smearing blood all over dy Joal’s face, fascinated with the vividness of it, red streaks on livid skin, the catch of rough beard stubble against his wrist, the bright blur of the candlelight reflected in the welling tears spilling from the staring eyes. He stared into them, watching them cloud.
   “Cazaril, for the gods’ sake let him breathe.” Dy Maroc’s distressed cry broke through Cazaril’s red fog.
   Cazaril reduced the pressure of his grip, and dy Joal inhaled, shuddering. Keeping his knee in place, Cazaril drew back his bloodied left hand in a fist, and placed, very precisely, a hard blow to the bravo’s stomach that shook the air again; dy Joal’s knees jerked up with it. Only then did Cazaril step back and release the man.
   Dy Joal fell to the floor and bent over himself, gasping and choking, weeping, not even trying to get up. After a moment, he vomited.
   Cazaril stepped across the mess of food and wine and bile toward Urrac, who lurched backward until stopped by the far wall. Cazaril leaned into his face and repeated softly, “I don’t duel. But if you seek to die like a bludgeoned steer, cross me again.”
   He turned on his heel; dy Maroc’s face, drained white, wavered past his vision, hissing, “Cazaril, have you gone mad?”
   “Try me.” Cazaril grinned fiercely at him. Dy Maroc fell back. Cazaril strode down the corridor past a blur of men, blood drops still spattering off his fingers as he swung his arms, and out into the chill shock of the night. The closing door cut off a rising babble of voices.
   He almost ran across the icy cobbles of the courtyard toward the main block and refuge, both his steps and his breath growing faster and less even as something—sanity, delayed terror?—seeped back into his mind. His belly cramped violently as he mounted the stone stairs. His fingers shook so badly as he fumbled out his key to let himself into his bedchamber that he dropped it twice and had to use both hands, braced against the door, to finally guide it into the lock. He locked the door again behind him, and fell, wheezing and groaning, across his bed. His attendant ghosts had fled into hiding during the confrontation, their desertion unnoticed by him at the time. He rolled onto his side, and curled around his aching stomach. Now, at last, his cut wrist began to throb. So did his head.
   He’d seen men go berserk a few times, in the madness of battle. He’d just never imagined what it must feel like from the inside, before. No one had mentioned the floating exhilaration, intoxicating as wine or sex. An unusual, but natural, result of nerves, mortality, and fright, jammed together in too small a space, too short a time. Not unnatural. Not… the thing in his belly reaching out to twist and taunt and trick him into death, and its own release…
   Oh.
   You know what you did to Dondo. Now you know what Dondo is doing to you.

Chapter 17

   It was by chance, late the following morning, that Cazaril spied Orico ambling out the Zangre gates toward the menagerie with only a page at his heels. Cazaril tucked the letters he’d been carrying to the Chancellery office into the inner pocket of his vest-cloak, turned from the door of Ias’s Tower, and followed. The roya’s master of the chamber had earlier refused to disturb his lord’s after-breakfast nap; clearly, Orico had finally roused himself and now sought comfort and solace among his animals. Cazaril wondered if the roya had awoken with as bad a headache as he had.
   As he strode across the cobbles, Cazaril marshaled his arguments. If the roya feared action, Cazaril would point out that inaction was equally likely to be bent to ill by the curse’s malign influence. If the roya insisted that the children were too young, he would note that they should not then have been ordered to Cardegoss in the first place. But now that they were here, if Orico could not protect them then he had an obligation to both Chalion and the children to tell them of their danger. Cazaril would call on Umegat to confirm that the roya could not, did not, in fact, hold the curse all to himself. Do not send them blindfolded into battle he would plead, and hope Palli’s cry would strike Orico as much to the heart as it had him. And if it didn’t…
   If he took this into his own hands, should he first tell Teidez, as Heir of Chalion, and appeal for his aid in protecting his sister? Or Iselle, and enlist her help in managing the more difficult Teidez? The second choice would better allow him to hide his complicity behind the royesse’s skirts, but only if the secret of his guilt survived her shrewd cross-examination.
   A scraping of hooves broke into his self-absorption. He looked up just in time to dodge from the path of the cavalcade starting out from the stables. Royse Teidez, mounted on his fine black horse, led a party of his Baocian guards, their captain and two men. The royse’s black-and-lavender mourning garb made his round face appear drawn and pale in the winter sunlight. Dondo’s green stone glinted on the guard captain’s hand, raised to return Cazaril’s polite salute.
   “Where away, Royse?” Cazaril called. “Do you hunt?” The party was armed for it, with spears and crossbows, swords and cudgels.
   Teidez drew up his fretting horse and stared briefly down at Cazaril. “No, just a gallop along the river. The Zangre is… stuffy, this morning.”
   Indeed. And if they just happened to flush a deer or two, well, they were prepared to accept the gods’ largesse. But not really hunting while in mourning, no. “I understand,” said Cazaril, and suppressed a smile. “It will be good for the horses.” Teidez lifted his reins again. Cazaril stepped back, but then added suddenly, “I would speak to you later, Royse, on the matter that concerned you yesterday.”
   Teidez gave him a vague wave, and a frown—not exactly assent, but it would do. Cazaril bowed farewell as they clattered out of the stable yard.
   And remained bent over, as the worst cramp yet kicked him in the belly with the power of a horse’s hind hooves. His breathing stopped. Waves of pain seemed to surge through his whole body from this central source, even to burning spasms in the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. A hideous vision shook him of Rojeras’s postulated demon-monster preparing to bloodily claw its way out of him into the light. One creature, or two? With no bodies to keep their spirits apart, bottled under the pressure of the Lady’s miracle, might Dondo and the demon have begun to blend together into one dreadful being? It was true that he’d distinguished only one voice, not a duet, baying at him from his belly in the night. His knees sank helplessly to the cold cobbles. He drew in a shuddering breath. The world seemed to churn around his head in short, dizzy jerks.
   After a few minutes, a shadow trailing a powerful aroma of horses loomed at his shoulder. A gruff voice muttered in his ear, “M’lord? You all right?”
   Cazaril blinked up to see one of the stable grooms, a middle-aged fellow with bad teeth, bending over him. “Not… really,” he managed to reply.
   “Ought you go indoors, sir?”
   “Yes… I suppose…”
   The groom helped him to his feet with a hand under his elbow, and steadied him back through the gates to the main block. At the bottom of the stairs Cazaril gasped, “Wait. Not yet,” and sat heavily upon the steps.
   After an awkward minute the groom asked, “Should I get someone for you, m’lord? I should return to my duties.”
   “It’s… just a spasm. It will pass off in a few minutes. I’m all right now. Go on.” The pain was dwindling, leaving him feeling flushed and strange.
   The groom frowned uncertainly, staring down at Cazaril, but then ducked his head and departed.
   Slowly, as he sat quietly on the stair, he began to regain his breath and balance, and was able to straighten his back again. The world stopped pulsing. Even the couple of ghost-blotches that had crept out of the walls to cluster at his feet grew quiescent. Cazaril eyed them in the shadows of the stairwell, considering what a cold and lonely damnation was their slow erosion, loss of all that had made them individual men and women. What must it be like, to feel one’s very spirit slowly rot away around one, as flesh rotted from dead limbs? Did the ghosts sense their own diminishment, or did that self-perception, too, mercifully, wear away in time? The Bastard’s legendary hell, with all its supposed torments, seemed a sort of heaven by comparison.
   “Ah! Cazaril!” A surprised voice made him look up. Palli stood with one booted foot on the first step, flanked by two young men also wearing the blue and white of the Daughter’s Order beneath gray wool riding cloaks. “I was just coming to find you.” Palli’s dark brows drew down. “What are you doing sitting on the stairs?”
   “Just resting a moment.” Cazaril produced a quick, concealing smile, and levered himself up, though he kept a hand on the wall, as if casually, for balance. “What’s afoot?”
   “I hoped you would have time to take a stroll down to the temple with me. And talk to some men about that”—Palli made a circling gesture with his finger—“little matter of Gotorget.”
   “Already?”
   “Dy Yarrin came in last night. We are now a sufficient assembly to make binding decisions. And with dy Jironal also arrived back in town, it’s as well we chart our course without further delay.”
   Indeed. Cazaril would search out Orico immediately upon his return, then. He glanced at the two companions and back at Palli, as if seeking introduction, but with the hidden question in his glance, Are these safe ears?
   “Ah,” said Palli cheerfully. “Permit me to make known to you my cousins, Ferda and Foix dy Gura. They rode with me from Palliar. Ferda is lieutenant to my master of horse, and his younger brother Foix—well, we keep him for the heavy lifting. Make your bow to the castillar, boys.”
   The shorter, stouter of the two grinned sheepishly, and they both managed reasonably graceful courtesies. They bore a faint family resemblance to Palli in the strong lines of jaw and the bright brown eyes. Ferda was of middle height and wiry, an obvious rider, his legs already a little bowed, while his brother was broad and muscular. They seemed a pleasant enough pair of country lordlings, healthy, cheerful, and unscarred. And appallingly young. But Palli’s faint emphasis on the word cousins answered Cazaril’s silent question.
   The two brothers fell in behind as Cazaril and Palli walked out the gates and down into Cardegoss. Young they might be, but their eyes were alert, looking all around, and they casually kept their sword hilts free of entanglement with cloak and vest-cloak. Cazaril was glad to know Palli did not go about the streets of Cardegoss unattended even in this bright gray winter noon. Cazaril tensed as they passed under the dressed-stone walls of Jironal Palace, but no armed bravos issued from its ironbound doors to molest them. They arrived in the Temple Square having encountered no one more daunting than a trio of maidservants. They smiled at the men in the colors of the Daughter’s Order and giggled among themselves after passing, which slightly alarmed the dy Gura brothers, or at least made them stride out more stiffly.
   The great compound of the Daughter’s house made a wall along one whole side of the temple’s five-sided square. The main gate was devoted to the women and girls who were the house’s more usual dedicats, acolytes, and divines. The men of its holy military order had their own separate entrance, building, and stable for couriers’ horses. The hallways of the military headquarters were chilly despite a sufficiency of lit sconces and the abundance of beautiful tapestries and hangings, woven and embroidered by pious ladies all over Chalion, blanketing its walls. Cazaril started toward the main hall, but Palli drew him down another corridor and up a staircase.
   “You do not meet in the Hall of the Lord Dedicats?” Cazaril inquired, looking over his shoulder.
   Palli shook his head. “Too cold, too large, and too empty. We felt excessively exposed there. For these sealed debates and depositions, we’ve taken a chamber where we can feel a majority, and not freeze our feet.”
   Palli left the dy Gura brothers in the corridor to contemplate a brightly colored quilted rendering of the legend of the virgin and the water jar, featuring an especially voluptuous virgin and goddess. He ushered Cazaril past a pair of Daughter’s guardsmen, who looked closely at their faces and returned Palli’s salute, and through a set of double doors carved with interlaced vines. The chamber beyond held a long trestle table and two dozen men, crowded but warm—and above all, Cazaril noted, private. In addition to the good wax candles, a window of colored glass depicting the Lady’s favorite spring flowers fought the winter gloom.
   Palli’s fellow lord dedicats sat at attention, young men and graybeards, in blue-and-white garb bright and expensive or faded and shabby, but all alike in the grim seriousness of their faces. The provincar of Yarrin, ranking lord of Chalion present, held down the head of the table beneath the window. Cazaril wondered how many here were spies, or at least careless mouths. The group seemed already too large and diverse for successful conspiracy, despite their outward precautions to seal their conclave. Lady, guide them to wisdom.
   Palli bowed, and said, “My lords, here is the Castillar dy Cazaril, who was my commander at the siege of Gotorget, to testify before you.”
   Palli took an empty seat halfway around the table and left Cazaril standing at its foot. Another lord dedicat had him swear an oath of truth in the goddess’s name. Cazaril had no trouble repeating with sincerity and fervor the part about, May Her hands hold me, and not release me.

  Dy Yarrin led the questioning. He was shrewd and clearly well primed by Palli, for he had the whole tale of the aftermath of Gotorget out of Cazaril in a very few minutes. Cazaril added no coloring details. For some here, he didn’t need to; he could mark by the tightening of their lips how much of what was unspoken they understood. Inevitably, someone wanted to know how he had first come to such enmity with Lord Dondo, and he was reluctantly compelled to repeat the story of his near beheading in Prince Olus’s tent. It was normally considered bad manners to denigrate the dead, on the theory that they could not defend themselves. In Dondo’s case, Cazaril wasn’t so sure. But he kept that account, too, as brief and bald as possible. Despite his succinctness, by the time he was done he was leaning on his hands on the table, feeling dangerously light-headed.
   A brief debate followed on the problem of obtaining corroborating evidence, which Cazaril had thought insurmountable; dy Yarrin, it seemed, did not find it so. But then, Cazaril had never thought to try to obtain testimony from surviving Roknari, or via sister chapters of the Daughter’s Order across the borders in the princedoms.
   “But my lords,” Cazaril said diffidently into one of the few brief pauses in the flow of suggestion and objection, “even if my words were proved a dozen times over, mine is no great matter by which to bring down a great man. Not like the treason of Lord dy Lutez.”
   “That was never well proved, even at the time,” murmured dy Yarrin in a dry tone.
   Palli put in, “What is a great matter? I think the gods do not calculate greatness as men do. I for one find a casual destruction of a man’s life even more repugnant than a determined one.”
   Cazaril leaned more heavily on the table, in the interests of not collapsing in an illustrative way at this dramatic moment. Palli had insisted his voice would be listened to in council; very well, let it be a voice of caution. “Choosing your own holy general is surely within your mandate, lords. Orico may well even accede to your selection, if you make it easy for him. Challenging the chancellor of Chalion and holy general of your brother order is reaching beyond, and it is my considered opinion that Orico will never be persuaded to support it. I recommend against it.”
   “It is all or nothing,” broke in one man, and “Never again will we endure another Dondo,” began another.
   Dy Yarrin held up his hand, stemming the tide of hot comment. “I thank you, Lord Cazaril, for both your testimony and your opinion.” His choice of words invited his fellows to note which was which. “We must continue this debate in private conclave.”
   It was a dismissal. Palli pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. They collected the dy Guras from the corridor; Cazaril was a little surprised when Palli’s escort did not stop at the house’s gates. “Should you not return to your council?” he asked, as they turned into the street.
   “Dy Yarrin will tell me of it, when I get back. I mean to see you safe to the Zangre’s gates. I’ve not forgotten your tale of poor Ser dy Sanda.”
   Cazaril glanced over his shoulder at the two young officers pacing behind as they crossed over to the temple plaza. Oh. The armed escort was for him. He decided not to complain, asking Palli instead, “Who looks like your prime candidate for holy general, then, to present to Orico? Dy Yarrin?”
   “He would be my choice,” said Palli.
   “He does seem a force in your council. Has he a little self-interest, there?”
   “Perhaps. But he means to hand the provincarship of Yarrin down to his eldest son, and devote his whole attention to the order, if he is chosen.”
   “Ah. Would that Martou dy Jironal had done likewise for the Son’s Order.”
   “Aye. So many posts, how is he serving any of them rightly?”
   They climbed uphill, threading their way through the stone-paved town, stepping carefully across central gutters well rinsed by the recent cold rains. Narrow streets of shops gave way to wider squares of fine houses. Cazaril considered dy Jironal, as his palace loomed once more on their route. If the curse worked by distorting and betraying virtues, what good thing had it corrupted in Martou dy Jironal? Love of family, perhaps, turning it into mistrust of all that was not family? His excessive reliance on his brother Dondo was surely turning to weakness and downfall. Maybe. “Well… I hope that level heads prevail.”
   Palli grimaced. “Court life is turning you into a diplomat, Caz.”
   Cazaril returned a bleak smile. “I can’t even begin to tell you what court life is turning me—ah!” He ducked as one of Fonsa’s crows popped over a nearby housetop and came hurtling down at his head, screaming hoarsely. The bird almost tumbled out of the air at his feet, and hopped across the pavement, cawing and flapping. It was followed by two more. One landed on Cazaril’s outflung arm and clung there, shrieking and whistling, its claws digging in. A few black feathers spiraled wildly in the air. “Blast these birds!” He’d thought they had lost interest in him, and here they were back, in all their embarrassing enthusiasm.
   Palli, who had jumped back laughing, glanced up over the roof tiles and said, “Five gods, something has stirred them up! The whole flock is in the air above the Zangre. Look at them circle about!”
   Ferda dy Gura shielded his eyes and stared where Palli pointed at the distant whirl of dark shapes, like black leaves in a cyclone, dipping and swooping. His brother Foix pressed his hands to his ears as the crows continued to shriek around their feet, and shouted over the din, “Noisy, too!”
   These birds were not entranced, Cazaril realized; they were hysterical. His heart turned cold in his chest. “There’s something very wrong. Come on!”
   He was not in the best shape for running uphill. He had his hand pressed hard to the violent stitch in his side as they approached the stable block at the Zangre’s outskirts. His courier birds flapped above his head in escort. By that time, men’s shouts could be heard beneath the crows’ continued screaming, and Palli and his cousins needed no urging to keep pace with him.
   A groom in the royal tabard of the menagerie was staggering in circles before its open doors, screaming and crying, blood running down his face. Two of Teidez’s green-and-black-clad Baocian guards stood before the doors with swords drawn, holding off three Zangre guards who hovered apprehensively before them, also with blades out, seeming not to dare to strike. The crows lacked no such courage. They stooped awkwardly at the Baocians, trying to claw with their talons and stab with their beaks. The Baocians cursed and beat them off. Two bundles of black feathers lay on the cobbles already, one still, one twitching.
   Cazaril strode up to the menagerie doors, roaring, “What in the Bastard’s name is going on here? How dare you slay the sacred crows?”
   One of the Baocians pointed his sword toward him. “Stay back, Lord Cazaril! You may not pass! We have strict orders from the royse!”
   Lips drawn back in fury, Cazaril knocked the sword aside with his cloaked arm, lunged forward, and wrenched it from the guardsman’s grasp. “Give me that, you fool!” He flung it to the stones in the general direction of the Zangre guards, and Palli, who had drawn in a panic when the unarmed Cazaril had waded into the fray. The sword clanged and spun across the cobbles, till Foix stopped it with a booted foot stamped down upon it, and held it with a challenging weight and stare.
   Cazaril turned on the second Baocian, whose blade drooped abruptly. Recoiling from Cazaril’s step, the guardsman cried hastily, “Castillar, we do this to preserve the life of Roya Orico!”
   “Do what? Is Orico in there? What are you about? ”
   A feline snarl, rising to a yowl, from inside whirled Cazaril around, and he left the daunted Baocian to the Zangre guards, now encouraged to advance. He strode into the shadowed aisle of the menagerie.
   The old tongueless groom was on his knees on the tiles, bent over, making choked weeping sounds. His thumbless hands were pressed to his face, and a little blood ran between his fingers; he looked up at the sound of Cazaril’s step, his quavering wet mouth ravaged with woe. As he ran past the bears’ stalls, Cazaril glimpsed two inert black heaps studded with crossbow bolts, fur wet and matted with blood. The vellas’ stall door was open, and they lay on their sides in the bright straw, eyes open and fixed, throats slashed.
   At the far end of the aisle, Royse Teidez was rising to his feet from the limp body of the spotted cat. He pushed himself up with his bloodied sword, and leaned upon it, panting, his face wild and exultant. His shadow roiled around him like thunderclouds at midnight. He looked up at Cazaril and grinned fiercely. “Ha!” he cried.
   The Baocian guard captain, a twisted little bird still in his hand, plunged out of the aviary into Cazaril’s path. Bundles of colored feathers, dead and dying birds of all sizes, littered the aviary floor, some still fluttering helplessly. “Hold, Castillar—” he began. His words were whipped away as Cazaril grasped him by the tunic and spun him around, throwing him to the floor into the path of Palli, who was following on his heels muttering in astonished dismay, “Bastard weeps. Bastard weeps…” That had been Palli’s battle-mumble at Gotorget, when his sword had risen and fallen endlessly on men coming up over the ladders, and he’d had no breath for cries.
   “Hold him,” Cazaril snarled over his shoulder, and strode on toward Teidez.
   Teidez threw back his head and met Cazaril’s eyes square-on. “You can’t stop me—I’ve done it! I have saved the roya!”
   “What—what—what—” Cazaril was so frightened and furious, his lips and mind could scarcely form coherent words. “Fool boy! What destructive madness is this, this…?” His hands opened, shaking, and jerked about.
   Teidez leaned toward him, his teeth glinting in his drawn-back lips. “I’ve broken the curse, the black magic that has been making Orico sick. It was coming from these evil animals. They were a secret gift from the Roknari, meant to slowly poison him. And we’ve slain the Roknari spy—I think…” Teidez glanced somewhat doubtfully over his shoulder.
   Only then did Cazaril notice the last body on the floor at the far end of the aisle. Umegat lay on his side in a heap, as unmoving as the birds or the vellas. The carcasses of the sand foxes lay tumbled nearby. Cazaril had not seen him at first, because his clear white glow was extinguished. Dead? Cazaril moaned, lurched toward him, and fell to his knees. The left side of Umegat’s head was lacerated, the gray-bronze braid disheveled and soaked with gore. His skin was as gray as an old rag. But his scalp was still sluggishly bleeding, therefore…
   “Does he still breathe?” asked Teidez, advancing to peer over Cazaril’s shoulder. “The captain hit him with his sword pommel, when he would not give way…”
   “Fool, fool, fool boy!”
   “No fool I! He was behind it all.” Teidez nodded toward Umegat. “A Roknari wizard, sent to drain and kill Orico.”
   Cazaril ground his teeth. “Umegat is a Temple divine. Sent by the Bastard’s Order to care for the sacred animals, who were given by the god to preserve Orico. And if you have not slain him, it is the only good luck here.” Umegat’s breath came shallow and odd, his hands were cold as a corpse’s, but he did breathe.
   “No…” Teidez shook his head. “No, you’re wrong, that can’t be…” For the first time, the heroic elation wobbled in his face.
   Cazaril uncoiled and rose to his feet, and Teidez stepped back a trifle. Cazaril turned to find Palli, blessedly, at his back, and Ferda at Palli’s shoulder, staring around at it all in horrified amazement. Palli, at least, Cazaril could trust to know field aid.
   “Palli,” he rasped out, “take over here. See to the wounded grooms, this one especially. His skull may be broken.” He pointed down to Umegat’s darkened body. “Ferda.”
   “My lord?”