The Curse of Chalion

Chapter 22

Cazaril regretfully gave up use of the Chancellery’s courier remounts when they left Valenda, in favor of secrecy. No merit in handing dy Jironal a signed record of their route and destination. Armed with Palli’s letter of recommendation, they instead arranged exchanges for fresh horses at local town chapters of the Daughter’s Order. At the foot of the mountains on the western frontier, they were obliged to deal with a local horse trader for the sturdy and surefooted mules to carry them over the heights.

The man had clearly been making a fine living for years skinning desperate travelers. Ferda looked over the beasts offered them, and said indignantly, “This one has heaves. And if that one isn’t throwing out a splint, my lord, I’ll eat your hat!” The horse trader and he fell at once into acrimonious argument.

Cazaril, leaning in exhaustion on the corral rail and thinking only of how much he didn’t want to throw a leg over any animal, spavined or not, for the next thousand years, at last straightened and let himself through the gate. He walked out into the herd of milling horses and mules, stirred up by the rough-and-ready capture of their rejected comrades, spread his hands, and closed his eyes. “If it please you, Lady, give us three good mules.”

At a nudge at his side, he opened them again. A curious mule, its brown eyes limpid, stared at him. Two more muscled in, their long ears waggling; the tallest one, dark brown with a creamy nose, rested its chin on his shoulder and breathed out a contented-sounding snort, spraying the environs.

“Thank you, Lady,” muttered Cazaril. And more loudly, “All right. Follow me.” He plodded back through the hoof-pocked muck to the gate. The three mules fell in behind, snuffling with interest.

“We’ll take these three,” he told the horse trader, who, along with Ferda, had fallen silent and was staring openmouthed.

The horse trader found his voice first. “But—but those are my three best animals!”

“Yes. I know.” He let himself back out, leaving the horse trader to hold the gate against the three mules who still tried to follow him, shouldering up heavily against the boards and making anxious mulish noises. “Ferda, come to a price. I’m going to go lie down in that lovely straw stack. Wake me when we’re saddled up . . .”

His mule proved healthy, steady, and bored. There was nothing better, in Cazaril’s view, on these treacherous mountain trails than a bored mule. The fiery steeds Ferda favored for making time over the flats could have climbed no faster on these breath-stealing slopes, besides making a menace of themselves with their nervous sidling on the narrow places. And the mule’s gentle amble didn’t churn his guts. Although if the goddess granted Her saint mules, he didn’t know why She didn’t also give him better weather.

The dy Gura brothers stopped laughing at Cazaril’s hat about halfway up the pass over the Bastard’s Teeth range. He folded the fine fur flaps down over his ears and tied their strings under his chin before the sleet, driven by the tumbling updrafts, started stinging their faces. He squinted into the wind between the laid-back ears of his laboring mule at the track winding up through rocks and ice, and mentally measured out the daylight left to them.

After a time, Ferda reined back beside him. “My lord, should we take shelter from this blizzard?”

“Blizzard?” Cazaril brushed ice spicules from his beard, and blinked. Oh. Palliar’s winters were mild, sodden rather than snowy, and the brothers had never been out of their province before. “If this were a blizzard, you wouldn’t be able to see your mule’s ears from where you sit. This isn’t unsafe. Merely unpleasant.”

Ferda made a face of dismay, but pulled his hood strings tighter and bent into the wind. Indeed, in a few more minutes they broke out of the squall, and visibility returned; the high vale opened out before their eyes. A few fingers of pale sunlight poked down through silvery clouds to dapple the long slopes—falling away downward.

Cazaril pointed, and shouted encouragingly, “Ibra!”

The weather moderated as they started the long descent toward the coast, though the grunting mules shuffled no faster. The rugged border mountains gave way to less daunting hills, humped and brown, with broad valleys winding between. When they left the snow behind Cazaril reluctantly permitted Ferda to trade in their excellent mules for swifter horses. A succession of improving roads and increasingly civilized inns brought them in just two more days to the river course that ran down to Zagosur. They passed through outlying farms, and over bridges across irrigation canals swollen with the winter rains.

They debouched from the river valley to find the city rising up before them: gray walls, a blocky jumble of whitewashed houses with roofs of the distinctive green tile of this region, the fortress at its crown, the famous harbor at its feet. The sea stretched out beyond, steel gray, the endless level horizon of it streaked with aqua light. The salt-and-sea-wrack smell of low tide, wafting inland on a cold breeze, made Cazaril’s head jerk back. Foix inhaled deeply, his eyes alight with fascination as he drank in his first sight of the sea.

Palli’s letter and the dy Gura brothers’ rank secured them shelter at the Daughter’s house off Zagosur’s main Temple plaza. Cazaril sent the boys to buy, beg, or borrow formal dress of their order, while he took himself off to a tailor. The news that the tailor might name his price so long as he produced something swiftly launched a flurry of activity that resulted in Cazaril emerging, little more than an hour later, with a tolerable version of Chalionese court mourning garb under his arm.

After a chilly sponge bath, Cazaril quickly slipped into a heavy lavender-gray brocade tunic, very high-necked, thick dark purple wool trousers, and his cleaned and polished boots. He adjusted the sword belt and sword Ser dy Ferrej had lent him so long ago, rather worn but looking more honorable thereby, and swung the satisfying weight of a black silk-velvet vest-cloak over the whole. One of Iselle’s remaining rings, a square-cut amethyst, just fit over Cazaril’s little finger, its isolated heavy gold suggesting restraint rather than poverty. Between the court mourning and the gray streaks in his beard, he fancied the result was as grave and dignified as could be wished. Serious. He packaged up his precious diplomatic letters and tucked them under his arm, collected his outriders, who had refurbished themselves in neat blue and white, and led the way through the narrow, winding streets up the hill to the Great Fox’s lair.

Cazaril’s appearance and bearing brought him before the Roya of Ibra’s castle warder. Showing his letters and their seals to this official sped him in turn to the roya’s own secretary, who met them standing in a bare whitewashed antechamber, chilly with Zagosur’s perpetual winter damp.

The secretary was spare, middle-aged, and harried. Cazaril favored him with a half bow, equal to equal.

“I am the Castillar dy Cazaril, and I come from Cardegoss on a diplomatic mission of some urgency. I bear letters of introduction to the roya and Royse Bergon dy Ibra from the Royesse Iselle dy Chalion.” He displayed their seals, but folded them back to his chest when the secretary reached for them. “I received these from the royesse’s own hand. She bade me deliver them into the roya’s own hand.”

The secretary’s head tilted judiciously. “I’ll see what I can do for you, my lord, but the roya is very plagued with petitioners, mostly relatives of former rebels attempting to intercede for the roya’s mercy, which is stretched thin at present.” He looked Cazaril up and down. “I think perhaps no one has warned you—the roya has forbid the court to wear mourning for the late Heir of Ibra, as he died in a state of unreconciled rebellion. Only those who wish to cast their defiance in the roya’s teeth are wearing that sad garb, and most of them have the presence of mind to do it in, ah, absence. If you do not intend the insult, I suggest you go change before you beg an audience.”

Cazaril’s brows went up. “Is no one here before me with the news? We rode fast, but I didn’t think we had outdistanced it. I do not wear these bruised colors for the Heir of Ibra, but for the Heir of Chalion. Royse Teidez died barely a week ago, suddenly, of an infection.”

“Oh,” said the secretary, startled. “Oh.” He regained his balance smoothly. “My condolences indeed to the House of Chalion, to lose so bright a hope.” He hesitated. “Letters from the Royesse Iselle, do you say?”

“Aye.” Cazaril added, for good measure, “Roya Orico lies gravely ill, and does not do business, or so it was when we left Cardegoss in haste.”

The secretary’s mouth opened, and closed. He finally said, “Come with me,” and led them to a more comfortable chamber, with a small fire in a corner fireplace. “I’ll go see what I can do.”

Cazaril lowered himself into a cushioned chair near the gentle glow. Foix took a bench, though Ferda prowled about, frowning in an unfocused fashion at the wall hangings.

“Will they see us, sir?” asked Ferda. “To have ridden all this way, only to be kept waiting on the doorstep like some peddler . . .”

“Oh, yes. They’ll see us.” Cazaril smiled slightly, as a breathless servant arrived to offer the travelers wine and the little spiced shortbread cakes, stamped with an Ibran seal, which were a Zagosur specialty.

“Why does this dog have no legs?” Foix inquired, staring a trifle cross-eyed at the indented creature before biting into his cake.

“It is a sea dog. It has paddles in place of paws, and chases fish. They make colonies upon the shore, here and there down the coast toward Darthaca.” Cazaril allowed the servant to pour him but a swallow of wine, partly for sobriety, partly to avoid waste; as he’d anticipated, he’d barely wet his lips before the secretary returned.

The man bowed lower than before. “Come this way, if it please you, my lord, gentlemen.”

Ferda gulped down his glassful of dark Ibran wine, and Foix brushed crumbs from his white wool vest-cloak. They hastily followed Cazaril and the secretary, who led them up some stairs and across a little arched stone bridge to a newer part of the fortress. After more turnings, they came to a pair of double doors carved with sea creatures in the Roknari style.

These swung open to emit a well-dressed lord, arm in arm with another courtier, complaining, “But I waited five days for this audience! What is this foolery—!”

“You’ll just have to wait a little longer, my lord,” said the courtier, guiding him off with a firm hand under his elbow.

The secretary bowed Cazaril and the dy Gura brothers inside, and announced their names and ranks.

It was not a throne room, but a less formal receiving chamber, set up for conference, not ceremony. A broad table, roomy enough to spread out maps and documents, occupied one end. The long far wall was pierced with a row of doors with square windowpanes set top to bottom, giving onto a balcony-cum-battlement that in turn overlooked the harbor and shipyard that were the heart of Zagosur’s wealth and power. The silvery sea light, diffuse and pale, illuminated the chamber through the generous glass, making the candle flames in the sconces seem wan.

Half a dozen men were present, but Cazaril’s eye had no trouble picking out the Fox and his son. At seventy-odd, the roya of Ibra was stringy, balding, the russet hair of his younger days reduced to a wispy fringe of white around his pate. But he remained vigorous, not fragile with his years, alert and relaxed in his cushioned chair. The tall youth standing at his side had the straight brown Darthacan hair of his late mother, though tinged with reddish highlights, worn just long enough to cushion a helmet, cut bluntly. He looks healthy, at least. Good . . . His sea-green vest-cloak was set with hundreds of pearls in patterns of curling surf, which made it swing in elegant, weighty ripples when he turned toward these new visitors.

The man standing on the Fox’s other side was proclaimed by his chain of office to be the chancellor of Ibra. A wary and intimidated-looking fellow, he was the—from all reports, overworked—servant of the Fox, not a rival for his power. Another man’s badges marked him as a sea lord, an admiral of Ibra’s fleet.

Cazaril went to one knee before the Fox, not too ungracefully despite his saddle-stiffness and aches, and bowed his head. “My lord, I bring sad news from Ibra of the death of Royse Teidez, and urgent letters from his sister the Royesse Iselle.” He proffered Iselle’s letter of his authority.

The Fox cracked the seal, and scanned rapidly down the simple penned lines. His brows climbed, and he glanced back keenly at Cazaril. “Most interesting. Rise, my lord Ambassador,” he murmured.

Cazaril took a breath, and managed to surge back to his feet without having either to push off the floor with his hand or, worse, catch himself on the roya’s chair. He looked up to find Royse Bergon staring hard at him, his lips parted in a frown. Cazaril blinked, and favored him with a tentative nod and smile. He was quite a well-made young man, withal, even-featured, perhaps handsome when he wasn’t scowling so. No squint, no hanging lip—a little stocky, but fit, not fat. And not forty. Young, clean-shaven, but with a vigor in the shadow on his chin that promised he was grown to virility. Cazaril thought Iselle should be pleased.

Bergon’s stare intensified. “Speak again!” he said.

“Excuse me, my lord?” Cazaril stepped back, startled, as the royse stepped forward and circled him, his eyes searching him up and down, his breath coming faster.

“Take off your shirt!” Bergon demanded suddenly.

“What?”

“Take off your shirt, take off your shirt!”

“My lord—Royse Bergon—” Cazaril was thrown back in memory to the ghastly scene engineered by dy Jironal to slander him to Orico. But there were no sacred crows here in Zagosur to rescue him. He lowered his voice. “I beg you, my lord, do not shame me in this company.”

“Please, sir, a year and more ago, in the fall, were you not rescued from a Roknari galley off the coast of Ibra?”

“Oh. Yes . . . ?”

“Take off your shirt!” The royse was practically dancing, circling around him again; Cazaril felt dizzy. He glanced at the Fox, who looked as baffled as everyone else, but waved his hand curiously, endorsing the royse’s peculiar demand. Confused and frightened, Cazaril complied, popping the frogs of his tunic and slipping it off together with his vest-cloak, and folding the garments over his arm. He set his jaw, trying to stand with dignity, to bear whatever humiliation came next.

“You’re Caz! You’re Caz!” Bergon cried. His frown had changed to a demented grin. Ye gods, the royse was mad, and after all this pelting gallop over plain and mountain, unfit for Iselle after all—

“Why, yes, so my friends call me—” Cazaril’s words were choked off as the royse abruptly flung his arms around him, and nearly lifted him off his feet.

“Father,” Bergon cried joyously, “this is the man! This is the man!”

“What,” Cazaril began, and then, by some trick of angle and shift of voice, he knew. Cazaril’s own gape turned to grin. The boy has grown! Roll him back a year in time and four inches in height, erase the beard-shadow, shave the head, add a peck of puppy fat and a blistering sunburn . . . “Five gods,” he breathed. “Danni? Danni!”

The royse grabbed his hands and kissed them. “Where did you go? I fell sick for a week after I was brought home, and when I finally set men to look for you, you’d disappeared. I found other men from the ship, but not you, and none knew where you’d gone.”

“I was ill also, in the Mother’s hospital here in Zagosur. Then I, um, walked home to Chalion.”

“Here! Right here all the time! I shall burst. Ah! But I sent men to the hospitals—oh, how did they miss you there? I thought you must have died of your injuries, they were so fearsome.”

“I was sure he must have died,” said the Fox slowly, watching this play with unreadable eyes. “Not to have come to collect the very great debt my House owed to him.”

“I did not know . . . who you were, Royse Bergon.”

The Fox’s gray eyebrows shot up. “Truly?”

“No, Father,” Bergon confirmed eagerly. “I told no one who I was. I used the nickname Mama used to call me by when I was little. It seemed to me more unsafe to claim my rank than to pass anonymously.” He added to Cazaril, “When my late brother’s bravos kidnapped me, they did not tell the Roknari captain who I was. They meant me to die on the galley, I think.”

“The secrecy was foolish, Royse,” chided Cazaril. “The Roknari would surely have set you aside for ransom.”

“Yes, a great ransom, and political concessions wrung from my father, too, no doubt, if I’d allowed myself to be made hostage in my own name.” Bergon’s jaw tightened. “No. I would not hand myself to them to play that game.”

“So,” said the Fox in an odd voice, staring up at Cazaril, “you did not interpose your body to save the royse of Ibra from defilement, but merely to save some random boy.”

“Random slave boy. My lord.” Cazaril’s lips twisted, as he watched the Fox trying to work out just what this made Cazaril, hero or fool.

“I wonder at your wits.”

“I’m sure I was half-witted by then,” Cazaril conceded amiably. “I’d been on the galleys since I was sold as a prisoner of war after the fall of Gotorget.”

The Fox’s eyes narrowed. “Oh. So you’re that Cazaril, eh?”

Cazaril essayed him a small bow, wondering what he had heard of that fruitless campaign, and shook out his tunic. Bergon hastened to help him don it again. Cazaril found himself the object of stunned stares from every man in the room, including Ferda and Foix. His tilted grin barely kept back bubbling laughter, though underneath the laughter seethed a new terror that he could scarcely name. How long have I been walking down this road?

He pulled out the last letter in his packet, and swept a deeper bow to Royse Bergon. “As the document your respected father holds attests, I come as spokesman for a proud and beautiful lady, and I come not just to him, but to you. The Heiress of Chalion begs your hand in marriage.” He handed the sealed missive to the startled Bergon. “In this, I will let the Royesse Iselle speak for herself, which she is most fit to do by virtue of her singular intellect, her natural right, and her holy purpose. After that, I will have much else to tell you, Royse.”

“I’m eager to hear you, Lord Cazaril.” Bergon, after a taut glance around the chamber, took himself off to a window-door, where he popped the letter’s seal and read it at once, his lips softening with wonder.

Amazement, too, touched the Fox’s lips, though it rendered them anything but soft. Cazaril had no doubt he’d put the man’s wits to the gallop. For his own wits he now prayed for wings.

Cazaril and his companions were, of course, invited to dine that night in the roya’s hall. Near sunset, Cazaril and Bergon went walking together along the sea strand below the fortress. It was as close to private speech as he was likely to obtain, Cazaril thought, waving the dy Guras back to trail along through the sand out of earshot. The growl of the surf cloaked the sound of their voices. A few white gulls swooped and cried, as piercing as any crow, or pecked at the smelly sea wrack on the wet sand, and Cazaril was reminded that these scavengers with their cold golden eyes were sacred to the Bastard in Ibra.

Bergon bade his own heavily armed guard walk at a distance, too, though he did not seek to dispense with them. The silent routine of his precautions reminded Cazaril once more that civil war in this country was but lately ended, and Bergon had been both piece and player in that vicious game already. A piece that had played himself, it seemed.

“I’ll never forget the first time I met you,” said Bergon, “when they dropped me down beside you on the galley bench. For a moment you frightened me more than the Roknari did.”

Cazaril grinned. “What, just because I was a scaly, scabbed, burnt scarecrow, hairy and stinking?”

Bergon grinned back. “Something like that,” he admitted sheepishly. “But then you smiled, and said Good evening, young sir, for all the world as if you were inviting me to share a tavern bench and not a rowing bench.”

“Well, you were a novelty, of which we didn’t get many.”

“I thought about it a lot, later. I’m sure I wasn’t thinking too clearly at the time—”

“Naturally not. You arrived well roughed-up.”

“Truly. Kidnapped, frightened—I’d just collected my first real beating—but you helped me. Told me how to go on, what to expect, taught me how to survive. You gave me extra water twice from your own portion—”

“Eh, only when you really needed it. I was already used to the heat, as desiccated as I was like to get. After a time one can tell the difference between mere discomfort and the feverish look of a man skirting collapse. It was very important that you not faint at your oar, you see.”

“You were kind.”

Cazaril shrugged. “Why not? What could it cost me, after all?”

Bergon shook his head. “Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I’d always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at his ease before his own hearth.”

“Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice—if not whether, then how, they may endure.”

“Yes, but . . . I hadn’t known that before I saw it. That was when I began to believe it was possible to survive. And I don’t mean just my body.”

Cazaril smiled wryly. “I was taken for half-cracked by then, you know.”

Bergon shook his head again, and kicked up a little silver sand with his boot as they paced along. The westering sun picked out the foxy copper highlights in his dark Darthacan hair.

Bergon’s late mother had been perceived in Chalion as a virago, a Darthacan interloper suspected of fomenting her husband’s strife with his Heir on her son’s behalf. But Bergon seemed to remember her fondly; as a child he’d been through two sieges with her, cut off from his father’s forces in the intermittent war with his half brother. He was clearly accustomed to strong-minded women with a voice in men’s councils. When he and Cazaril had shared the oar bench he had spoken of his dead mother, although in disguised terms, when he’d been trying to encourage himself. Not of his live father. Bergon’s precocious wit and self-control as demonstrated in the dire days on the galley weren’t, Cazaril reflected, entirely the legacy of the Fox.

Cazaril’s smile broadened. “So let me tell you,” he began, “all about the Royesse Iselle dy Chalion . . .”

Bergon hung on Cazaril’s words as he described Iselle’s winding amber hair and her bright gray eyes, her wide and laughing mouth, her horsemanship and her scholarship. Her undaunted, steady nerve, her rapid assessment of emergencies. Selling Iselle to Bergon seemed approximately as difficult as selling food to starving men, water to the parched, or cloaks to the naked in a blizzard, and he hadn’t even touched yet on the part about her being due to inherit a royacy. The boy seemed half in love already. The Fox would be a greater challenge; the Fox would suspect a catch. Cazaril had no intention of confiding the catch to the Fox. Bergon was another matter. For you, the truth.

“There is a darker urgency to Royesse Iselle’s plea,” Cazaril continued, as they reached the end of the crescent of beach and turned about again. “This is in the deepest confidence, as she prays to have safe confidence in you as her husband. For your ear alone.” He drew in sea air, and all his courage. “It all goes back to the war of Fonsa the Fairly-Wise and the Golden General . . .”

They made two more turns along the stretch of sand, crossing back over their own tracks, before Cazaril’s tale was told. The sun, going down in a red ball, was nearly touching the flat sea horizon, and the breaking waves shimmered in dark and wondrous colors, gnawing their way up the beach as the tide turned. Cazaril was as frank and full with Bergon as he’d been with Ista, keeping nothing back save Ista’s confession, not even his own personal haunting by Dondo. Bergon’s face, made ruddy by the light, was set in profound thought when he finished.

“Lord Cazaril, if this came from any man’s lips but yours, I doubt I would believe it. I’d think him mad.”

“Although madness may be an effect of these events, Royse, it is not the cause. It’s all real. I’ve seen it. I half think I am drowning in it.” An unfortunate turn of phrase, but the sea growling so close at hand was making Cazaril nervous. He wondered if Bergon had noticed Cazaril always turned so as to put the royse between him and the surf.

“You would make me like the hero of some nursemaid’s tale, rescuing the fair lady from enchantment with a kiss.”

Cazaril cleared his throat. “Well, rather more than a kiss, I think. A marriage must be consummated to be legally binding. Theologically binding, likewise, I would assume.”

The royse gave him an indecipherable glance. He didn’t speak for a few more paces. Then he said, “I’ve seen your integrity in action. It . . . widened my world. I’d been raised by my father, who is a prudent, cautious man, always looking for men’s hidden, selfish motivations. No one can cheat him. But I’ve seen him cheat himself. If you understand what I mean.”

“Yes.”

“It was very foolish of you, to attack that vile Roknari galley-man.”

“Yes.”

“And yet, I think, given the same circumstances, you would do it again.”

“Knowing what I know now . . . it would be harder. But I would hope . . . I would pray, Royse, that the gods would still lend me such foolishness in my need.”

“What is this astonishing foolishness, that shines brighter than all my father’s gold? Can you teach me to be such a fool too, Caz?”

“Oh,” breathed Cazaril, “I’m sure of it.”

Cazaril met with the fox in the cool of the following morning. He was escorted again to the high, bright chamber overlooking the sea, but this time for a more private conference, just himself, the roya, and the roya’s secretary. The secretary sat at the end of the table, along with a pile of paper, new quills, and a ready supply of ink. The Fox sat on the long side, fiddling with a game of castles and riders, its pieces exquisitely carved of coral and jade, the board fashioned of polished malachite, onyx, and white marble. Cazaril bowed, and, at the roya’s wave of invitation, seated himself across from him.

“Do you play?” the Fox inquired.

“No, my lord,” said Cazaril regretfully. “Or only very indifferently.”

“Ah. Pity.” The Fox pushed the board a little to one side. “Bergon is very warmed with your description of this paragon of Chalion. You do your job well, Ambassador.”

“That is all my hope.”

The roya touched Iselle’s letter of credential, lying on the glossy wood. “Extraordinary document. You know it binds the royesse to whatever you sign in her name.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Her authority to charge you so is questionable, you know. There is the matter of her age, for one thing.”

“Well, sir, if you do not recognize her right to make her own marriage treaty, I suppose there’s nothing for me to do but mount my horse and ride back to Chalion.”

“No, no, I didn’t say I questioned it!” A slight panic tinged the old roya’s voice.

Cazaril suppressed a smile. “Indeed, sir, to treat with us is public acknowledgment of her authority.”

“Hm. Indeed, indeed. Young people, so trusting. It’s why we old people must guard their interests.” He picked up the other list Cazaril had given him last night. “I’ve studied your suggested clauses for the marriage contract. We have much to discuss.”

“Excuse me, sir. Those are not suggested. Those are required. If you wish to propose additional items, I will hear you.”

The roya arched his brows at him. “Surely not. Just taking one—this matter of inheritance during the minority of their heir, if they are so blessed. One accident with a horse, and the royina of Chalion becomes regent of Ibra! It won’t do. Bergon bears the risks of the battlefield, which his wife will not.”

“Well, which we hope she will not. Or else I am curiously poorly informed of the history of Ibra, my lord. I thought the royse’s mother won two sieges?”

The Fox cleared his throat.

“In any case,” Cazaril continued, “we maintain that the risk is reciprocal, and so must be the clause. Iselle bears the risks of childbirth, which Bergon never will. One breech birth, and he could become regent of Chalion. How many of your wives have outlived you, sir?”

The Fox took a breath, paused, and went on, “And then there’s this naming clause!”

A few minutes of gentle argument determined that Bergon dy Ibra-Chalion was no more euphonious than Bergon dy Chalion-Ibra, and that clause, too, was allowed to stand.

The Fox pursed his lips and frowned thoughtfully. “I understand you are a landless man, Lord Cazaril. How is it that the royesse does not reward you as befits your rank?”

“She rewards me as befits hers. Iselle is not royina of Chalion—yet.”

“Huh. I, on the other hand, am the present roya of Ibra, and have the power to dispense . . . much.”

Cazaril merely smiled.

Encouraged, the Fox spoke of an elegant villa overlooking the sea, and placed a coral castle piece upon the table between them. Fascinated to see where this was going, Cazaril refrained from observing how little he cared for the sight of the sea. The Fox spoke of fine horses, and an estate to graze them upon, and how inappropriate he found Clause Three. Some riders were added. Cazaril made neutral noises. The Fox breathed delicately of the money whereby a man might dress himself as befit an Ibran rank rather higher than castillar, and how Clause Six might profitably be rewritten. A jade castle piece joined the growing set. The secretary made notes. With each wordless murmur from Cazaril, both respect and contempt grew in the Fox’s eyes, though as the pile grew he remarked in a tone of some pain, “You play better than I expected, Castillar.”

At last the Fox sat back and waved at his little pile of offering symbols. “How does it suit you, Cazaril? What do you think this girl can give you that I cannot better, eh?”

Cazaril’s smile broadened to a cheerful grin. “Why, sir. I believe she will give me an estate in Chalion that will suit me perfectly. One pace wide and two paces long, to be mine in perpetuity.” Gently, so as not to imply an insult either given or taken, he stretched out his hand and pushed the pieces back toward the Fox. “I should probably explain, I bear a tumor in my gut, that I expect to kill me shortly. These prizes are for living men, I think. Not dying ones.”

The Fox’s lips moved; astonishment and dismay flickered in his face, and the faintest flash of unaccustomed shame, quickly suppressed. A brief bark of laughter escaped him. “Five gods! The girl has wit and ruthlessness enough to teach me my trade! No wonder she gave you such powers. By the Bastard’s balls, she’s sent me an unbribeable ambassador!”

Three thoughts marched across Cazaril’s mind: first, that Iselle had no such crafty plan, second, that were it to be pointed out to her, she would say Hm! and file the notion away against some future need, and third, that the Fox did not need to know about the first.

The Fox sobered, staring more closely at Cazaril. “I am sorry for your affliction, Castillar. It is no laughing matter. Bergon’s mother died of a tumor in her breast, taken untimely young—just thirty-six, she was. All the grief she married in me could not daunt her, but at the end . . . ah, well.”

“I’m thirty-six,” Cazaril couldn’t help observing rather sadly.

The Fox blinked. “You don’t look well, then.”

“No,” Cazaril agreed. He picked up the list of clauses. “Now, sir, about this marriage contract . . .”

In the end, Cazaril gave away nothing on his list, and obtained agreement to it all. The Fox, rueful and reeling, offered some intelligent additions to the contingency clauses to which Cazaril happily agreed. The Fox whined a little, for form’s sake, and made frequent reference to the submission due a husband from a wife—also not a prominent feature of recent Ibran history, Cazaril diplomatically did not point out—and to the unnatural strong-mindedness of women who rode too much.

“Take heart, sir,” Cazaril consoled him. “It is not your destiny today to win a royacy for your son. It is to win an empire for your grandson.”

The Fox brightened. Even his secretary smiled.

Finally, the Fox offered him the castles and riders set, for a personal memento.

“For myself, I think I shall decline,” said Cazaril, eyeing the elegant pieces regretfully. A better thought struck him. “But if you care to have them packaged up, I should be pleased to carry them back to Chalion as your personal betrothal gift to your future daughter-in-law.”

The Fox laughed and shook his head. “Would that I had a courtier who offered me so much loyalty for so little reward. Do you truly want nothing for yourself, Cazaril?”

“I want time.”

The Fox snorted regretfully. “Don’t we all. For that, you must apply to the gods, not the roya of Ibra.”

Cazaril let this one pass, though his lips twitched. “I’d at least like to live to see Iselle safely wed. This is a gift you can indeed give me, sir, by hastening these matters along.” He added, “And it is truly urgent that Bergon become royse-consort of Chalion before Martou dy Jironal can become regent of Chalion.”

Even the Fox was forced to nod judiciously at this.

That night after the Roya’s customary banquet, and after he’d shaken off Bergon who, if he could not stuff him with the honors Cazaril steadfastly declined, seemed to want to stuff him at least with food, Cazaril stopped in at the temple. Its high round halls were quiet and somber at this hour, nearly empty of worshippers, though the wall lights as well as the central fire burned steadily, and a couple of acolytes kept night watch. He returned their cordial good evenings, and walked through the tile-decorated archway into the Daughter’s court.

Beautiful prayer rugs were woven by the maidens and ladies of Ibra, who donated them to the temples as a pious act, saving the knees and bodies of petitioners from the marble chill of the floors. Cazaril thought that if the custom were imported to Chalion along with Bergon, it could well improve the rate of winter worship there. Mats of all sizes, colors, and designs were ranged around the Lady’s altar. Cazaril chose a broad thick one, dense with wool and slightly blurry representations of spring flowers, and laid himself down upon it. Prayer, not drunken sleep, he reminded himself, was his purpose here . . .

On the way to Ibra, he’d seized the chance at every rural rudimentary Daughter’s house, while Ferda saw to the horses, to pray: for Orico’s preservation, for Iselle’s and Betriz’s safety, for Ista’s solace. Above all, intimidated by the Fox’s reputation, he’d begged for the success of his mission. That prayer, it seemed, had been answered in advance. How far in advance? His outflung hands traced over the threads of his rug, passed loop by loop through some patient woman’s hands. Or maybe she hadn’t been patient. Maybe she’d been tired, or irritated, or distracted, or hungry, or angry. Maybe she had been dying. But her hands had kept moving, all the same.

How long have I been walking down this road?

Once, he would have traced his allegiance to the Lady’s affairs to a coin dropped in the Baocian winter mud by a clumsy soldier. Now he was by no means so sure, and by no means sure he liked the new answer.

The nightmare of the galleys came before the coin in the mud. Had all his pain and fear and agony there been manipulated by the gods to their ends? Was he nothing but a puppet on a string? Or was that, a mule on a rope, balky and stubborn, to be whipped along? He scarcely knew whether he felt wonder or rage. He considered Umegat’s insistence that gods could not seize a man’s will, but only wait for it to be offered. When had he signed up for that?

Oh.

Then.

One starving, cold, desperate night at Gotorget, he’d walked his commander’s rounds upon the battlements. On the highest tower, he’d dismissed the famished, fainting boy on guard to go below for a time and get what refreshment he could, and stood the watch himself. He’d stared out at the enemy’s campfires, glowing mockingly in the ruined village, in the valley, on the ridges all around, speaking of abundant warmth, and cooking food, and confidence, and all the things his company lacked within the walls. And thought of how he’d schemed, and temporized, and exhorted his men to faithfulness, plugged holes fought sorties scraped for unclean food bloodied his sword at the scaling ladders and above all, prayed. Till he’d come to the end of prayers.

In his youth at Cazaril, he’d followed the common path of most highborn young men, and become a lay dedicat of the Brother’s Order, with its military promises and aspirations. He’d sent up his prayers, when he’d bothered to pray at all, by rote to the god assigned to him by his sex, his age, and his rank. On the tower in the dark, it seemed to him that following that unquestioned path had brought him, step by step, into this impossible snare, abandoned by his own side and his god both.

He’d worn his Brother’s medal inside his shirt since the ceremony of his dedication at age thirteen, just before he’d left Cazaril to be apprenticed as a page in the old provincar’s household. That night on the tower, tears of fatigue and despair—and yes, rage—running down his face, he’d torn it off and flung it over the battlement, denying the god who’d denied him. The spinning slip of gold had disappeared into the darkness without a sound. And he’d flung himself prone on the stones, as he lay now, and sworn that any other god could pick him up who willed, or none, so long as the men who had trusted him were let out of this trap. As for himself, he was done. Done.

Nothing, of course, happened.

Well, eventually it started to rain.

In time, he’d picked himself back up off the pavement, ashamed of his tantrum, grateful that none of his men had witnessed the performance. The next watch came on, and he’d gone down in silence. Where nothing more happened for some weeks, till the arrival of that well-fed courier with the news that it had all been in vain, and all their blood and sacrifice was to be sold for gold to go into dy Jironal’s coffers.

And his men were marched to safety.

And his feet alone went down another road . . .

What was it that Ista had said? The gods’ most savage curses come to us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.

So, in choosing to share one’s will with the gods, was it enough to choose once, like signing up to a military company with an oath? Or did one have to choose and choose and choose again, every day? Or was it both? Could he step off this road anytime, get on a horse, and ride to, say, Darthaca, to a new name, a new life? Just like Umegat’s postulated hundred other Cazarils, who’d not even shown up for duty. Abandoning, of course, all who’d trusted him, Iselle and Ista and the Provincara, Palli and Betriz . . .

But not, alas, Dondo.

He squirmed a little on the mat, uncomfortably aware of the pressure in his belly, trying to convince himself it was just the Fox’s banquet, and not his tumor creeping to hideous new growth. Racing to some grotesque completion, waiting only for the Lady’s hand to falter. Maybe the gods had learned from Ista’s mistake, from dy Lutez’s failure of nerve, as well? Maybe they were making sure their mule couldn’t desert in the middle like dy Lutez this time . . . ?

Except into death. That door was always ajar. What waited him on the other side? The Bastard’s hell? Ghostly dissolution? Peace?

Bah.

On the other side of the Temple plaza, in the Daughter’s house, what waited him was a nice soft bed. That his brain had reached this feverish spin was a good sign he ought to go get in it. This wasn’t prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods.

Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.