The Curse of Chalion

Chapter 11

Cazaril was just exiting his bedchamber on the way to breakfast, some three mornings later, when a breathless page accosted him, grabbing him by the sleeve.

“M’ lord dy Cazaril ! The castle warder begs you ’tend on him at once, in the courtyard!”

“Why? What’s the matter?” Obedient to this urgency, Cazaril swung into motion beside the boy.

“It’s Ser dy Sanda. He was set upon last night by footpads, and robbed and stabbed!”

Cazaril’s stride lengthened. “How badly was he injured? Where does he lie?”

“Not injured, m’lord. Slain!”

Oh, gods, no. Cazaril left the page behind as he clattered down the staircase. He hurried into the Zangre’s front courtyard in time to see a man in the tabard of the constable of Cardegoss, and another man dressed as a farmer, lower a stiff form from the back of a mule and lay it out on the cobbles. The Zangre’s castle warder, frowning, squatted down by the body. A couple of the roya’s guards watched from a few paces back, warily, as if knife wounds might prove contagious.

“What has happened?” demanded Cazaril.

The farmer, in his courtier’s garb taking, pulled off his wool hat in a sort of salute. “I found him by the riverside this morning, sir, when I took my cattle down to drink. The river curves—I often find things hung up upon the shoal. ’Twas a wagon wheel, last week. I always check. Not bodies too often, thank the Mother of Mercy. Not since that poor lady who drowned herself, two years back—” He and the constable’s man exchanged nods of reminiscence. “This one has not a drowned look.”

Dy Sanda’s trousers were still sodden, but his hair was done dripping. His tunic had been removed by his finders—Cazaril saw the brocade folded up over the mule’s withers. The mouths of his wounds had been cleaned of blood by the river water, and showed now as dark puckered slits in his pale skin, in his back, belly, neck. Cazaril counted over a dozen strikes, deep and hard.

The castle warder, sitting on his heels, pointed to a bit of frayed cord knotted around dy Sanda’s belt. “His purse was cut off. In a hurry, they were.”

“But it wasn’t just a robbery,” said Cazaril. “One or two of these blows would have put him on the ground, stopped resistance. They didn’t need to . . . they were making sure of his death.” They or he? No real way to know, but dy Sanda could not have been either easy or safe to bring down. He rather thought they. “I suppose his sword was taken.” Had he ever had time to draw it? Or had the first blow fallen on him by surprise, from a man he walked beside in trust?

“Taken or lost in the river,” said the farmer. “He would not have floated down to me so soon if it had still been dragging him down.”

“Did he have rings or jewelry?” asked the constable’s man.

The castle warder nodded. “Several, and a gold ear loop.” They were all gone now.

“I’ll want a description of them all, my lord,” the constable’s man said, and the warder nodded understanding.

“You know where he was found,” said Cazaril to the constable’s man. “Do you know where he was attacked?”

The man shook his head. “Hard to say. Somewhere in the bottoms, maybe.” The lower end of Cardegoss, both socially and topographically, huddled on both sides of the wall that ran between the two rivers. “There are only half a dozen places someone might pitch a body over the town walls and be sure the stream would take it off. Some are more lonely than others. When did anyone here see him last?”

“I saw him at supper,” said Cazaril. “He said nothing to me about going into town.” There were a couple of places right here in the Zangre where a body might also be pitched into the rivers below. . . . “Has he broken bones?”

“Not as I felt, sir,” said the constable’s man. Indeed, the pale corpse did not show great bruises.

Inquiry of the castle guards disclosed that dy Sanda had left the Zangre, alone and on foot, about the mid-watch last night. Cazaril gave up a budding plan to check every foot of the castle’s great lengths of corridors and niches for new bloodstains. Later in the afternoon the constable’s men found three people who’d said they’d seen the royse’s secretary drinking in a tavern in the bottoms, and depart alone; one swore he’d left staggering drunk. That witness, Cazaril would have liked to have had alone for a time in one of the Zangre’s stony, scream-absorbing cells off the old, old tunnels going down to the rivers. Some better kind of truth might have been pounded out of him there. Cazaril had never seen dy Sanda drink to drunkenness, ever.

It fell to Cazaril to inventory and pack dy Sanda’s meager pile of worldly goods, to be sent off by carter to the man’s surviving older brother somewhere in the provinces of Chalion. While the city constable’s men searched the bottoms, futilely, Cazaril was sure, for the supposed footpads, Cazaril turned out every scrap of paper in dy Sanda’s room. But whatever lying assignation had lured him to the bottoms, he’d either received verbally or taken with him.

Dy Sanda having no relatives near enough to wait upon, the funeral was held the next day. The services were somberly graced by both the royse and royesse and their households, so a few courtiers anxious for their favor likewise attended. The ceremony of departure, held in the Son’s chamber off the main courtyard of the temple, was brief. It was borne in upon Cazaril what a lonely man dy Sanda had been. No friends thronged to the head of his bier to speak long eulogies for each other’s comfort. Only Cazaril spoke a few formal words of regret on behalf of the royesse, managing to get through them without the embarrassment of referring to the paper, upon which he had so hastily composed them that morning, tucked in his sleeve.

Cazaril stood down from the bier to make way for the blessing of the animals, going to stand with the little crowd of mourners before the altar. Acolytes, dressed each in the colors of their chosen gods, brought in their creatures and stood round the bier at five evenly spaced points. In country temples, the most motley assortment of animals was used for this rite; Cazaril had once seen it carried through—successfully—for the dead daughter of a poor man by a single overworked acolyte with a basket of five kittens with colored ribbons tied round their necks. The Roknari often used fish, though in the number of four, not five; the Quadrene divines marked them with dye and interpreted the will of the gods by the patterns they made swimming about in a tub. Whatever the means used, the omen was the one tiny miracle the gods granted every person, no matter how humble, at their last passing.

The temple of Cardegoss had the resources to command the most beautiful of sacred animals, selected for appropriate color and gender. The Daughter’s acolyte in her blue robes had a fine female crested blue jay, new-hatched last spring. The Mother’s woman in green held on her arm a great green bird, close relative, Cazaril thought, to Umegat’s prize in the roya’s menagerie. The acolyte of the Son in his red-orange robes led a glorious young dog-fox, whose burnished coat seemed to glow like fire in the somber shadows of the echoing, vaulted chamber. The Father’s acolyte, in gray, was led in by a stout, elderly, and immensely dignified gray wolf. Cazaril expected the Bastard’s acolyte in her white robes to bear one of Fonsa’s sacred crows, but instead she cradled a pair of plump, inquisitive-looking white rats in her arms.

The divine prostrated himself for the gods to make their sign, then stood back at dy Sanda’s head. The brightly robed acolytes each in turn urged their creatures forward. At a jerk of the acolyte’s wrist the blue jay fluttered up, but then back down to her shoulder, as did the Mother’s green bird. The dog-fox, released from its copper chain, sniffed, trotted to the bier, whined, hopped up, and curled itself at dy Sanda’s side. It rested its muzzle over the dead man’s heart, and sighed deeply.

The wolf, obviously very experienced in these matters, evinced no interest. The Bastard’s acolyte released her rats upon the paving stones, but they merely ran back up her sleeve, nuzzled her ears, and caught their claws in her hair and had to be gently disengaged.

No surprises today. Unless persons had dedicated themselves especially to another god, the childless soul normally went to the Daughter or the Son, deceased parents to the Mother or the Father. Dy Sanda was a childless man and had ridden as lay dedicat of the Son’s military order himself in his youth. It was the natural order of things that his soul would be taken up by the Son. Although it was not unknown for this moment of a funeral to be the first notice surviving family had that the member they buried had an unexpected child somewhere. The Bastard took up all of His own order—and all those souls disdained by the greater gods. The Bastard was the god of last resort, ultimate, if ambiguous, refuge for those who had made disasters of their lives.

Obedient to the clear choice of Autumn’s elegant fox, the acolyte of the Son stepped forward to close the ceremonies, calling down his god’s special blessing upon dy Sanda’s sundered soul. The mourners filed past the bier and placed small offerings on the Son’s altar for the dead man’s sake.

Cazaril nearly drove his fingernails through his palms, watching Dondo dy Jironal go through the motions of pious grief. Teidez was shocked and quiet, regretting, Cazaril hoped, all the hot complaints he’d heaped on his rigid but loyal secretary-tutor’s head while he lived; his offering was a notable heap of gold.

Iselle and Betriz, too, were quiet, both then and later. They passed little comment upon the buzzing court gossip that surrounded the murder, except for refusing invitations to go into town and finding excuses to check on Cazaril’s continued existence four or five times of an evening.

The court murmured over the mystery. New and more draconian punishments were mooted for such dangerous, lowlife scum as cutpurses and footpads. Cazaril said nothing. There was no mystery in dy Sanda’s death to him, except how to bring home its proof to the Jironals. He turned it over and over in his mind, but the way defeated him. He dared not start the process until he had every step laid clear to the end, or he might as well slit his own throat and be done with it.

Unless, he decided, some luckless footpad or cutpurse was falsely accused. Then he would . . . what? What was his word worth now, after the misfired slander about his flogging scars? Most of the court had been impressed by the testimony of the crow—some had not. Easy enough to tell which was which, by the way some gentlemen drew aside their cloaks from Cazaril, or ladies recoiled from his touch. But no sacrificial peasants were brought forth by the constable’s office, and the revived gaiety of the court closed over the unpleasant incident like a scab over a wound.

Teidez was assigned a new secretary, hand-selected from the roya’s own Chancellery by the senior dy Jironal himself. He was a narrow-faced fellow, altogether the chancellor’s creature, and he made no move to make friends with Cazaril. Dondo dy Jironal publicly undertook to distract the young royse from his sorrow by providing him with the most delectable entertainments. Just how delectable, Cazaril had all too good a view of, watching the drabs and ripe comrades pass in and out of Teidez’s chamber late at night. Once, Teidez stumbled into Cazaril’s room, apparently not able to tell one door from another, and vomited about a quart of red wine at his feet. Cazaril guided him, sick and blind, back to his servants for cleanup.

Cazaril’s most troubled moment, however, was the evening his eye caught a green glint on the hand of Teidez’s guard captain, the man who had ridden with them from Baocia. Who before riding out had sworn to mother and grandmother, formally and on one knee, to guard both young people with his life . . . Cazaril’s hand snaked out to grab the captain’s hand in passing, bringing him up short. He gazed down at the familiar flat-cut stone.

“Nice ring,” he said after a moment.

The captain pulled his hand back, frowning. “I thought so.”

“I hope you didn’t pay too much for it. I believe the stone is false.”

“It is a true emerald, my lord!”

“If I were you, I’d have it to a gem-cutter, and check. It’s a continuing source of amazement to me, the lies that men will tell these days for their profit.”

The captain covered one hand with the other. “It is a good ring.”

“Compared to what you traded for it, I’d say it is trash.”

The captain’s lips pressed closed. He shrugged away and stalked off.

If this is a siege, thought Cazaril, we’re losing.

The weather turned chill and rainy, the rivers swelling, as the Son’s season ran toward its close. At the musicale after supper one sodden evening, Orico leaned over to his sister, and murmured, “Bring your people to the throne room tomorrow at noon, and attend dy Jironal’s investiture. I’ll have some happy announcements afterward to make to the whole court. And wear your most festive raiment. Oh, and your pearls—Lord Dondo was saying only last night, he never sees you wear his pearls.”

“I do not think they become me,” Iselle replied. She glanced sideways at Cazaril, seated nearby, and then down at her hands tightening in her lap.

“Nonsense, how can pearls not become any maiden?” The roya sat back to applaud the sprightly piece just ending.

Iselle kept her lips closed upon this suggestion until Cazaril had escorted his ladies as far as his office antechamber. He was about to bid them to sleep well, and depart, yawning, to his own bed, when she burst out, “I am not wearing that thief Lord Dondo’s pearls. I would give them back to the Daughter’s Order, but I swear they would be an insult to the goddess. They’re tainted. Cazaril, what can I do with them?”

“The Bastard is not a fussy god. Give them to the divine of his foundling hospital, to sell for the orphans,” he suggested.

Her lips curved. “Wouldn’t that annoy Lord Dondo. And he couldn’t even protest! Good idea. You shall take them to the orphans, with my goodwill. And for tomorrow—I’ll wear my red velvet vest-cloak over my white silk gown, that will certainly be festive, and my garnet set Mama gave me. None can chide me for wearing my mother’s jewels.”

Nan dy Vrit said, “But what do you suppose your brother meant by happy announcements? You don’t think he’s determined upon your betrothal already, do you?”

Iselle went still, blinking, but then said decisively, “No. It can’t be. There must be months of negotiations first—ambassadors, letters, exchanges of presents, treaties for the dowry—and my assent won. My portrait taken. And I will have a portrait of the man, whoever he may turn out to be. A true and honest portrait, by an artist I send myself. If my prince is fat, or squinty, or bald, or has a lip that hangs loose, so be it, but I will not be lied to in paint.”

Betriz made a face at the image this conjured. “I do hope you’ll win a handsome lord, when the time does come.”

Iselle sighed. “It would be nice, but given most of the great lords I’ve seen, not likely. I should settle for healthy, I think, and not plague the gods with impossible prayers. Healthy, and a Quintarian.”

“Very sensible,” Cazaril put in, encouraging this practical frame of mind with an eye to easing his life in the near future.

Betriz said uneasily, “There have been a great many envoys from the Roknari princedoms in and out of court this fall.”

Iselle’s mouth tightened. “Mm.”

“There are not a great many Quintarian choices, amongst the highest lords,” Cazaril conceded.

“The roya of Brajar is a widower again,” Nan dy Vrit put in, pursing her lips in doubt.

Iselle waved this away. “Surely not. He’s fifty-seven years old, has gout, and he already has an heir full-grown and married. Where’s the point of my having a son friendly to his Uncle Orico—or his Uncle Teidez, if it should chance so—if he’s not ruling his land?”

“There’s Brajar’s grandson,” said Cazaril.

“Seven years old! I’d have to wait seven more years—”

Not, Cazaril thought, altogether a bad thing.

“Now is too soon, but that is too long. Anything could happen in seven years. People die, countries go to war . . .”

“It’s true,” said Nan dy Vrit, “your father Roya Ias betrothed you at the age of two to a Roknari prince, but the poor lad took a fever and died soon after, so that never came to anything. Or you would have been taken off to his princedom these two years ago.”

Betriz said, a little teasingly, “The Fox of Ibra’s a widower, too.”

Iselle choked. “He’s over seventy!”

“Not fat, though. And I suppose you wouldn’t have to endure him for very long.”

“Ha. He could live another twenty years just for spite, I think—he’s full enough of it. And his Heir is married, too. I think his second son is the only royse in the lands who’s near to my age, and he’s not the heir.”

“You won’t be offered an Ibran this year, Royesse,” said Cazaril. “The Fox is exceedingly wroth with Orico for his clumsy meddling in the war in South Ibra.”

“Yes, but . . . they say all the Ibran high lords are trained as naval officers,” said Iselle, taking on an introspective look.

“Well, and how useful is that likely to be to Orico?” Nan dy Vrit snorted. “Chalion has not one yard of coastline.”

“To our cost,” Iselle murmured.

Cazaril said regretfully, “When we had Gotorget, and held those passes, we were almost in position to swoop down and take the port of Visping. We’ve lost that leverage now . . . well, anyway. My best guess, Royesse, is that you are destined for a lord of Darthaca. So let’s spend a little more time on those declensions this coming week, eh?”

Iselle made a face, but sighed assent. Cazaril smiled and bowed himself out. If she was not to espouse a ruling roya, he wouldn’t altogether mind a Darthacan border lord for Iselle, he thought as he made his way down the stairs. At least a lord of one of its warmer northern provinces. Either power or distance would do to protect Iselle from the . . . difficulties, of the court of Chalion. And the sooner, the better.

For her, or for you?

For both of us.

For all that Nan dy Vrit put her hand over her eyes and winced, Cazaril thought Iselle looked very bright and warm in her carmine robes, with her amber curls cascading down her back nearly to her waist. Given the hint, he wore a red brocade tunic that had been the old provincar’s and his white wool vest-cloak. Betriz, too, wore her favorite red; Nan, claiming eyestrain, had chosen a sober black and white. The reds clashed a trifle, but they certainly defied the rain.

They all scurried across the wet cobbles to Ias’s great tower block. The crows from Fonsa’s Tower were all gone to roost—no, not quite. Cazaril ducked as a certain foolish bird missing two feathers from its tail swooped down out of the drizzling mist past him, cawing, Caz, Caz! With an eye to defending his white cloak from birdish deposits, he fended it off. It circled back up to the ruined slates, screeching sadly.

Orico’s red brocade throne room was brilliantly lit with wall sconces against the autumn gray; two or three dozen courtiers and ladies warmed it thoroughly. Orico wore his formal robes, and his crown, but Royina Sara was not at his side today. Teidez was given a seat in a lower chair at Orico’s right hand.

The royesse’s party kissed his hands and took their places, Iselle in a smaller chair to the left of Sara’s empty one, the rest standing. Orico, smiling, began the day’s largesse by awarding Teidez the revenues of four more royal towns for the support of his household, for which his younger half brother thanked him with proper hand-kisses and a brief set-speech. Dondo had not kept the royse up last night, so he was looking much less green and seedy than usual.

Orico then motioned his chancellor to his royal knee. As had been announced, the roya awarded the letters and sword, and received the oath, that made the senior dy Jironal into the provincar of Ildar. Several of Ildar’s minor lords knelt and took oath in turn to dy Jironal. It was less expected when the two turned round at once and transferred the marchship of Jironal, together with its towns and tax revenues, immediately to Lord—now March—Dondo.

Iselle was surprised, but obviously pleased, when her brother next awarded her the revenues of six towns for the support of her household. Not before time, to be sure—her allowance till now had been notably scant for a royesse. She thanked him prettily, while Cazaril’s brain lurched into calculation. Might Iselle afford her own guard company, instead of the loan of men from Baocia she’d shared till now with Teidez? And might Cazaril choose them himself? Could she take a house of her own in town, protected by her own people? Iselle returned to her chair on the dais and arranged her skirts, a certain tension easing from her face that had not been apparent till its absence.

Orico cleared his throat. “I’m pleased to come to the happiest of this day’s rewards, well merited, and, er, much-desired. Iselle, up—” Orico stood, and held out his hand to his half sister; puzzled but smiling, she rose and stood with him before the dais.

“March dy Jironal, come forth,” Orico continued. Lord Dondo, in the full robes of the Daughter’s holy generalship and with a page in dy Jironal livery at his heels, came and stood at Orico’s other hand. The skin on the back of Cazaril’s neck began to creep, as he watched from the side of the room. What is Orico about . . . ?

“My much-beloved and loyal Chancellor and Provincar dy Jironal has begged a boon of blood from my house, and upon meditation, I have concluded it gives my heart joy to comply.” He didn’t look joyful. He looked nervous. “He has asked for the hand of my sister Iselle for his brother, the new march. Freely do I betroth and bestow it.” He turned Dondo’s thick hand palm up, Iselle’s slim one palm down, pressed them together at the height of his chest, and stepped back.

Iselle’s face drained of color and all expression. She stood utterly still, staring across at Dondo as though she could not believe her senses. The blood thudded in Cazaril’s ears, almost roaring, and he could hardly draw his breath. No, no, no . . . !

“As a betrothal gift, my dear Royesse, I have guessed what your heart most desired to complete your trousseau,” Dondo told her, and motioned his page forward.

Iselle, regarding him with that same frozen stare, said, “You guessed I wanted a coastal city with an excellent harbor?”

Dondo, momentarily taken aback, choked out a hearty laugh, and turned from her. The page flipped open the tooled leather box, revealing a delicate pearl-and-silver tiara, and Dondo reached in to hold it up before the eyes of the court. A smattering of applause ran through the crowd from his friends. Cazaril’s hand clenched on his sword hilt. If he drew and lunged . . . he’d be struck down before he made it across the throne room.

As Dondo raised the tiara high to bring down upon Iselle’s head, she recoiled like a shying horse. “Orico . . .”

“This betrothal is my will and desire, dear sister,” said Orico, in edged tones.

Dondo, apparently unwilling to chase her about the room with the tiara, paused, and shot a meaningful glance at the roya.

Iselle swallowed. It was clear her mind was frantically churning over responses. She’d stifled her first scream of outrage, and had not the trick of falling down in a convincing dead faint. She stood trapped and conscious. “Sire. As the provincar of Labran said when the forces of the Golden General poured over his walls . . . this is entirely a surprise.”

A very hesitant titter ran through the courtiers at this witticism.

Her voice lowered, and she murmured through her teeth, “You didn’t tell me. You didn’t ask me.”

Orico returned, equally sotto voce, “We’ll talk of it after this.”

After another frozen moment, she accepted this with a small nod. Dondo managed to complete his divestiture of the pearl tiara. He bent and kissed her hand. Wisely, he did not demand the usual return kiss; from the look of astonished loathing on Iselle’s face, there seemed a good chance she might have bitten him.

Orico’s court divine, in the seasonal robes of the Brother, stepped forward and called down a blessing upon the pair from all the gods.

Orico announced, “In three days’ time, we will all meet again here and witness this union sworn and celebrated. Thank you all.”

“Three days! Three days!” said Iselle, her voice breaking for the first time. “Don’t you mean three years, sire?”

“Three days,” said Orico. “Prepare yourself.” He prepared himself to duck out of the throne room, motioning his servants about him. Most of the courtiers departed with the dy Jironals, offering congratulations. A few of the more boldly curious lingered, ears pricking for the conversation between brother and sister.

“What, in three days! There is not even time to send a courier to Baocia, let alone to have any reply from my mother or grandmother—”

“Your mother, as all know, is too ill to stand the strain of a trip to court, and your grandmother must stay in Valenda to attend upon her.”

“But I don’t—” She found herself addressing the broad royal back, as Orico scurried from the throne room.

She plunged after him into the next chamber, Betriz, Nan, and Cazaril following anxiously. “But Orico, I don’t wish to marry Dondo dy Jironal!”

“A lady of your rank does not marry to please herself, but to bring advantage to her house,” he told her sternly, when she brought him to bay only by dint of rushing around in front of him and planting herself in his path.

“Is that indeed so? Then perhaps you can explain to me what advantage it brings to the House of Chalion to throw me—to waste me—upon the younger son of a minor lord? My husband should have brought us a royacy for his dowry!”

“This binds the dy Jironals to me—and to Teidez.”

“Say rather, it binds us to them! The advantage is a trifle one-sided, I think!”

“You said you did not wish to marry a Roknari prince, and I have not given you to one. And it wasn’t for lack of offers—I’ve refused two this season. Think on that, and be grateful, dear sister!”

Cazaril wasn’t sure if Orico was threatening or pleading.

He went on, “You didn’t wish to leave Chalion. Very well, you shall not leave Chalion. You wanted to marry a Quintarian lord—I have given you one, a holy general at that! Besides,” he went on with a petulant shrug, “if I gave you to a power too close to my borders, they might use you as an excuse to claim some of my lands. I do well, with this, for the future peace of Chalion.”

“Lord Dondo is forty years old! He’s a corrupt, impious thief! An embezzler! A libertine! Worse! Orico, you cannot do this to me!” Her voice was rising.

“I’ll not hear you,” said Orico, and actually put his hands over his ears. “Three days. Compose your mind and see to your wardrobe.” He fled her as if she were a burning tower. “I’ll not hear this!”

He meant it. Four times that afternoon she attempted to seek him in his quarters to further her plea, and four times he had his guards repulse her. After that, he rode out of the Zangre altogether, to take up residence in a hunting lodge deep in the oak woods, a move of remarkable cowardice. Cazaril could only hope its roof leaked icy rain on the royal head.

Cazaril slept badly that night. Venturing upstairs in the morning, he found three frayed women who appeared to have not slept at all.

Iselle, heavy-eyed, drew him by the sleeve into her sitting chamber, sat him down on the window seat, and lowered her voice to a fierce whisper.

“Cazaril. Can you get four horses? Or three? Or two, or even one? I’ve thought it through. I spent all night thinking it through. The only answer is to fly.”

He sighed. “I thought it through, too. First, I am watched. When I went to leave the Zangre last night, two of the roya’s guards followed me. To protect me, they said. I might be able to kill or bribe one—I doubt two.”

“We could ride out as if we were hunting,” argued Iselle.

“In the rain?” Cazaril gestured to the steady mizzle still coming down outside the high window, fogging the valley so that one could not even see the river below, turning the bare tree branches to black ink marks in the gray. “And even if they let us ride out, they’d be sure to send an armed escort.”

“If we could get any kind of a head start—”

“And if we could, what then? If—when!—they overtook us on the road, the first thing they would do is pull me from my horse and cut off my head, and leave my body for the foxes and crows. And then they would take you back. And if by some miracle they didn’t catch us, where would we go?”

“A border. Any border.”

“Brajar and South Ibra would send you right back, to please Orico. The five princedoms or the Fox of Ibra would take you hostage. Darthaca . . . presupposes we could make it across half of Chalion and all of South Ibra. I fear not, Royesse.”

“What else can I do?” Her young voice was edged with desperation.

“No one can force a marriage. Both parties must freely assent before the gods. If you have the courage to simply stand there and say No, it cannot go forth. Can you not find it in yourself to do so?”

Her lips tightened. “Of course I could. Then what? Now I think you are the one who has not thought it through. Do you think Lord Dondo would just give up, at that point?”

He shook his head. “It’s not valid if they force it, and everyone knows it. Just hold on to that thought.”

She shook her head in something between grief and exasperation. “You don’t understand.”

He’d have taken that for the wail of youth everywhere, till Dondo himself came that afternoon to the royesse’s chamber to persuade his betrothed to a more seemly compliance. The doors were left open to the royesse’s sitting room, but an armed guard stood at each, keeping back both Cazaril on one side and Nan dy Vrit and Betriz on the other. He did not catch one word in three of the furious undervoiced argument that raged between the thickset courtier and the red-haired maiden. But at the end of it Dondo stalked out with a look of savage satisfaction on his face, and Iselle collapsed on the window seat nearly unable to breathe, so torn was she between terror and fury.

She clutched Betriz and choked out, “He said . . . if I did not make the responses, he would take me anyway. I said, Orico would never let you rape his sister. He said, why not? He let us rape his wife. When Royina Sara would not conceive, and could not conceive, and Orico was too impotent to get a bastard no matter how many ladies and maidens and whores they brought to him, and, and even more disgusting things, the Jironals finally persuaded him to let them in upon her, and try . . . Dondo said, he and his brother tried every night for a year, one at a time or both together, till she threatened to kill herself. He said he would roger me till he’d planted his fruit in my womb, and when I was ripe to bursting, I’d hang on him as husband hard enough.” She blinked blurry eyes at Cazaril, her lips drawn back on clenched teeth. “He said, my belly would grow very big indeed, because I am short. How much courage do I need for that simple No, Cazaril, do you think? And what happens when courage makes no difference at all, at all?”

I thought the only place that courage didn’t matter was on a Roknari slave galley. I was wrong. He whispered abjectly, “I do not know, Royesse.”

Trapped and desperate, she fell to fasting and prayer; Nan and Betriz helped to set up a portable altar to the gods in her chambers and collected all the symbols of the Lady of Spring they could find to decorate it. Cazaril, trailed by his two guards, walked down into Cardegoss and found a flower-seller with forced violets, out of season, and brought them back to put in a glass jar of water on the altar. He felt stupid and helpless, though the royesse dropped a tear on his hand when she thanked him. Taking neither food nor drink, she lay back down on the floor in the attitude of deepest supplication, so like Royina Ista when Cazaril had first caught sight of her in the Provincara’s ancestors’ hall that he was unnerved, and fled the room. He spent hours, walking about the Zangre, trying to think, thinking only of horrors.

Late that evening, the Lady Betriz called him up to the office antechamber that was rapidly becoming a place of hectic nightmare.

“I have the answer!” she told him. “Cazaril, teach me how to kill a man with a knife.”

“What?”

“Dondo’s guards know enough not to let you close to him. But I will be standing beside Iselle on her wedding morning, to be her witness, and make the responses. No one will expect it of me. I’ll hide the knife in my bodice. When Dondo comes close, and bends to kiss her hand, I can strike at him, two, three times before anyone can stop me. But I don’t know just how and where to cut, to be sure. The neck, yes, but what part?” Earnestly, she drew a heavy dirk out from behind her skirts and held it out to him. “Show me. We can practice, till I have it very smooth and fast.”

“Gods, no, Lady Betriz! Give up this mad plan! They would strike you down—they’d hang you, afterward!”

“Provided only I was able to kill Dondo first, I’d go gladly to the gallows. I swore to guard Iselle with my life. Well, so.” Her brown eyes burned in her white face.

“No,” he said firmly, taking the knife and not giving it back. Where had she obtained it, anyway? “This is no work for a woman.”

“I’d say it’s work for whoever has a chance at it. My chance is best. Show me!”

“Look, no. Just . . . wait. I’ll, I’ll try something, find what I can do.”

“Can you kill Dondo? Iselle is in there praying to the Lady to slay either her or Dondo before the wedding, she doesn’t care anymore which. Well, I care which. I think it should be Dondo.”

“I entirely agree. Look, Lady Betriz. Wait, just wait. I’ll see what I can do.”

If the gods will not answer your prayers, Lady Iselle, by the gods I will try to.

He spent hours the following day, the last before the marriage, trying to stalk Lord Dondo through the Zangre like a boar in a forest of stone. He never got within striking distance. In midafternoon, Dondo returned to the Jironals’ great palace in town, and Cazaril could not get past its walls or gates. The second time Dondo’s bravos threw him out, one held him while another struck him enough times in the chest, belly, and groin to make his return to the Zangre a slow weave, supporting himself like a drunk with a hand out to nearby walls. The roya’s guards, whom he had scraped off in a dodge through Cardegoss’s alleys, arrived in time to watch both the beating and the crawl home. They did not interfere with either.

In a burst of inspiration, he bethought himself of the secret passage that had run between the Zangre and the Jironals’ great palace when it had been the property of Lord dy Lutez. Ias and dy Lutez had been reputed to use it daily, for conference, or nightly, for assignations of love, depending on the teller. The tunnel, he discovered, was now about as secret as Cardegoss’s main street, and had guards on both ends, and locked doors. His attempt at bribery won him shoves and curses, and the threat of another beating.

Some assassin I am, he thought bitterly, as he reeled into his bedchamber as dusk descended, and fell groaning into his bed. Head pounding, body aching, he lay still for a time, then at last roused himself enough to light a candle. He ought to go upstairs, and check on his ladies, but he didn’t think he could bear the weeping. Or the reporting of his failure to Betriz, or what she would demand of him after that. If he could not kill Dondo, what right had he to try to thwart her effort?

I would gladly die, if only I could stop this abomination tomorrow . . .

Do you mean that?

He sat stiffly, wondering if that last voice was quite his own. His tongue had moved a little behind his lips, as usual for when he was babbling to himself. Yes.

He lurched around to the end of his bed, fell to his knees, and flipped open the lid of his trunk. He dived down amongst the folded garments, scented with cloves as proof against moths, until he came to a black velvet vest-cloak folded around a brown wool robe. Folded around a ciphered notebook that he had never finished deciphering when the crooked judge had fled Valenda, that it had seemed too late to return to the Temple without embarrassing explanations. Feverishly, he drew it out, and lit more candles. There’s not much time left. About a third of it was left untranslated. Forget all the failed experiments. Go to the last page, eh?

Even in the bad cipher, the wool merchant’s despair came through, in a kind of strange shining simplicity. Eschewing all his previous bizarre elaborations, he had turned at the last not to magic, but to plain prayer. Rat and crow only to carry the plea, candles only to light his way, herbs only to lift his heart with their scents, and compose his mind to purity of will; a will then put aside, laid wholehearted on the god’s altar. Help me. Help me. Help me.

Those were the last words entered in the notebook.

I can do that, thought Cazaril in wonder.

And if he failed . . . there would still be Betriz and her knife.

I will not fail. I’ve failed practically everything else in my life. I will not fail death.

He slipped the book under his pillow, locked his door behind him, and went to find a page.

The sleepy boy he selected was waiting in the corridor upon the pleasure of the lords and ladies at their dinner in Orico’s banqueting hall, where Iselle’s nonappearance was doubtless the subject of much gossip, not even kept to a whisper since none of the principals were present. Dondo roistered privately in his palace with his hangers-on; Orico still cowered out in the woods.

He fished a gold royal from his purse and held it up, smiling through the O of his thumb and finger. “Hey, boy. Would you like to earn a royal?”

The Zangre pages had learned to be wary; a royal was enough to buy some truly intimate services from those who sold such. And enough to be a caution, to those who didn’t care to play those games. “Doing what, my lord?”

“Catch me a rat.”

“A rat, my lord? Why?”

Ah. Why. Why, so that I can work the crime of death magic upon the second most powerful lord in Chalion, of course! No.

Cazaril leaned his shoulders against the wall, and smiled down confidingly. “When I was in the fortress of Gotorget, during the siege three years ago—did you know I was its commander? until my brave general sold it out from under us, that is—we learned to eat rats. Tasty little things, if you could catch enough of them. I really miss the flavor of a good, candle-roasted rat haunch. Catch me a really big, fat one, and there will be another to match this.” Cazaril dropped the coin in the page’s hand, and licked his lips, wondering how crazed he looked right now. The page was edging farther from him. “You know where my chamber is?”

“Yes, m’lord?”

“Bring it there. In a bag. Quick as you can. I’m hungry.” Cazaril lurched off, laughing. Really laughing, not feigning it. A weird, wild exhilaration filled his heart.

It lasted until he reached his bedchamber again and sat to plan the rest of his ploy, his dark prayer, his suicide. It was night; the crow would not fly to his window at night, even for the piece of bread he’d snatched from the banqueting hall before returning to the main block. He turned the bread roll over in his hands. The crows roosted in Fonsa’s Tower. If they wouldn’t fly to him, he could crawl to them, over the roof slates. Sliding in the dark? And then back to his chamber, with a squawking bundle under his arm?

No. Let the bundle be the bagged rat. If he did the deed there, in the shadow of the broken roof upon whatever scorched and shaking platform still stood inside, he’d only have to make the trip one way. And . . . death magic had worked there once before, eh? Spectacularly, for Iselle’s grandfather. Would Fonsa’s spirit lend his aid to his granddaughter’s unholy soldier? His tower was a fraught place, sacred to the Bastard and his pets, especially at night, midnight in the cold rain. Cazaril’s body need never be found, nor buried. The crows could feast upon his remains, fair trade for the depredation he planned upon their poor comrade. Animals were innocent, even the grisly crows; that innocence surely made them all a little sacred.

The dubious page arrived much quicker than Cazaril had thought he might, with a wriggling bag. Cazaril checked its contents—the snapping, hissing rat must have weighed a pound and a half—and paid up. The page pocketed his coin and walked off, staring over his shoulder. Cazaril fastened the mouth of the bag tight and locked it in his chest to prevent the condemned prisoner’s escape.

He put off his courtier’s garb and put on the robe and vest-cloak the wool merchant had died in, just for luck. Boots, shoes, barefoot? Which would be more secure, upon the slippery stones and slates? Barefoot, he decided. But he slipped on his shoes for one last, practical expedition.

“Betriz?” he whispered loudly through the door of his office antechamber. “Lady Betriz? I know it’s late—can you come out to me?”

She was still fully dressed for the day, still pale and exhausted. She let him grip her hands, and leaned her forehead briefly against his chest. The warm scent of her hair took him back for a dizzy instant to his second day in Valenda, standing by her in the Temple crowd. The only thing unchanged from that happy hour was her loyalty.

“How does the Royesse?” Cazaril asked her.

She looked up, in the dim candlelight. “She prays unceasingly to the Daughter. She has not eaten or drunk since yesterday. I don’t know where the gods are, nor why they have abandoned us.”

“I couldn’t kill Dondo today. I couldn’t get near him.”

“I’d guessed as much. Or we would have heard something.”

“I have one more thing to try. If it doesn’t work . . . I’ll return in the morning, and we’ll see what we can do with your knife. But I just wanted you to know . . . if I don’t come back in the morning, I’m all right. And not to worry about me, or look for me.”

“You’re not abandoning us?” Her hands spasmed around his.

“No, never.”

She blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“That’s all right. Take care of Iselle. Don’t trust the Chancellor dy Jironal, ever.”

“I don’t need you to tell me that.”

“There’s more. My friend Palli, the March dy Palliar, knows the true story of how I was betrayed after Gotorget. How I came to be enemies with Dondo . . . won’t matter, but Iselle should know, his elder brother deliberately struck me from the list of men to be ransomed, to betray me to the galleys and my death. There’s no doubt. I saw the list, in his own hand, which I knew well from his military orders.”

She hissed through clenched teeth. “Can nothing be done?”

“I doubt it. If it could be proved, some half the lords of Chalion would likely refuse to ride under his banner thereafter. Maybe it would be enough to topple him. Or not. It’s a quarrel Iselle can store up in her quiver; someday she may be able to fire it.” He stared down at her face, turned up to his, ivory and coral and deep, deep ebony eyes, huge in the dim light. Awkwardly, he bent and kissed her.

Her breath stopped, then she laughed in startlement and put her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. Your beard scratches.”

“I . . . forgive me. Palli would make you a most honorable husband, if you’re inclined to him. He’s very true. As true as you. Tell him I said so.”

“Cazaril, what are you—”

Nan dy Vrit called from the Royesse’s chambers, “Betriz? Come here, please?”

He must part with everything now, even regret. He kissed her hands, and fled.

The night scramble over the roof of the Zangre, from main block to Fonsa’s Tower, was every bit as stomach-churning as Cazaril had anticipated. It was still raining. The moon shone fitfully behind the clouds, but its gloomy radiance didn’t help much. The footing was either gritty or breath-catchingly slippery under his naked soles, and numbingly cold. The worst part was the final little jump across about six feet to the top of the round tower. Fortunately, the leap was angled down and not up, and he didn’t end a simple suicide, wasted, spattered on the cobbles far below.

Bag jerking in his hand, breath whistling past his cold lips, he half squatted, trembling, after the jump, leaning into a bank of roof slates slick with rain beneath his hands. He pictured one working loose, shattering on the stones below, drawing the guards’ attention upward. . . . Slowly, he worked his way around until the dark gap of the open roof yawned beside him. He sat on the edge, and felt with his feet. He could touch no solid surface. He waited for a little moonlight; was that a floor, down there? Or a bit of rail? A crow muttered, in the dark.

He spent the next ten minutes, teetering, hands shaking, trying to light the candle stub from his pocket, by feel, with flint and tinder in his lap. He burned himself, but won a little flame at last.

It was a rail, and a bit of crude flooring. Someone had built up heavy timbering inside the tower after the fire, to work on some reinforcement of the stones so they didn’t fall down on people’s heads, presumably. Cazaril held his breath and dropped to a solid, if small and splintery, platform. He wedged his candle stub in a gap between two boards and lit another from it, got out his bread and Betriz’s razor-edged dirk, and stared around. Catch a crow. Right. It had sounded so simple, back in his bedchamber. He couldn’t even see the crows in these flickering shadows.

A flap by his head, as a crow landed on the railing, nearly stopped his heart. Shivering, he held out a bit of bread. It snatched the fragment from his hand and flew off again. Cazaril cursed, then drew some deep breaths and organized himself. Bread. Knife. Candles. Wriggling cloth bag. Man on his knees. Serenity in his heart? Hardly.

Help me. Help me. Help me.

The crow, or its twin brother, returned. “Caz, Caz!” it cried, not very loudly. But the sound echoed down the tower and back up, weirdly resonant.

“Right,” huffed Cazaril. “Right.”

He wrestled the rat from its bag, laid the knife against its throat, and whispered, “Run to your lord with my prayer.” Sharp and quick, he let its lifeblood out; the warm dark liquid ran over his hand. He laid the little corpse down at his knee.

He held out his arm to his crow; it hopped aboard, and bent to lap the rat blood from his hand. Its black tongue, darting out, startled him so much that he flinched, and nearly lost the bird again. He folded its body under his arm, and kissed it on the head. “Forgive me. My need is great. Maybe the Bastard will feed you the bread of the gods, and you can ride on His shoulder, when you reach Him. Fly to your lord with my prayer.” A quick twist broke the crow’s neck. It fluttered briefly, quivering, then went still in his hands. He laid it down in front of his other knee.

“Lord Bastard, god of justice when justice fails, of balance, of all things out of season, of my need. For dy Sanda. For Iselle. For all who love her—Lady Betriz, Royina Ista, the old Provincara. For the mess on my back. For truth against lies. Receive my prayer.” He had no idea if those were the right words, or if there were any right words. His breath was coming short; maybe he was crying. Surely he was crying. He found himself bending over the dead animals. A terrible pain was starting in his belly, cramping, burning in his gut. Oh. He hadn’t known this was going to hurt . . .

Anyway, it’s a better death than from a flight of Brajaran crossbow bolts in my ass on the galley, for no reason.

Politely, he remembered to say, “For your blessings, too, we thank you, god of the unseason,” just like in his bedside prayers as a boy.

Help me, help me, help me.

Oh.

The candle flames guttered and died. The dark world darkened further, and went out.