The Curse of Chalion

Chapter 29

Palli had sent Ferda galloping ahead while Cazaril lingered by the roadside to speak with Royina Sara. As a result, the Zangre’s castle warder and an array of servants were waiting to greet the party from Taryoon when they rode at last into the castle courtyard. The castle warder bowed to Cazaril as the grooms helped him down from his horse. Cazaril stretched, carefully, and asked in an eager voice, “Are Royina Iselle and Royse Bergon within?”

“No, my lord. They are just this hour gone to the temple, for the ceremonies of investiture for Lord dy Yarrin and Royse Bergon.”

The new royina had, as anticipated, selected dy Yarrin for the new holy general of the Daughter’s Order. The appointment of Bergon to the Son’s generalship was, in Cazaril’s view, a brilliant stroke to recover direct control of that important military arm for the royacy, and remove it as a bone of contention among the high lords of Chalion. It had been Iselle’s own idea, too, when they had discussed the matter before she and Bergon had left Taryoon. Cazaril had pointed out that while she could not in honor fail to reward dy Yarrin’s loyalty with the appointment he’d so ardently desired, dy Yarrin was not a young man; in time, the generalship of the Daughter, too, must revert to the royacy.

“Ah!” cried Palli. “Today, is it? Is the ceremony still going forward, then?”

“I believe so, March.”

“If I hurry, perhaps I can see some of it. Cazaril, may I leave you to the good care of this gentleman? My lord warder, see that he takes his rest. He is not nearly so recovered from his late wounds as he will try to make you believe.”

Palli reined his horse around and gave Cazaril a cheery salute. “I shall return with all the tale for you when it’s done.” Followed by his little company, he trotted back out the gate.

Grooms and servants whisked away horses and baggage. Cazaril refused, in what he hoped was a dignified manner, the support of the castle warder’s proffered arm, at least until they should have reached the stairs. The castle warder called him back as he started toward the main block.

“Your room has been moved by order of the royina to Ias’s Tower,” the castle warder explained, “that you may be near her and the royse.”

“Oh.” That had a pleasing sound to it. Agreeably, Cazaril followed the man up to the third floor, where Royse Bergon and his Ibran courtiers had taken their new residence, although Bergon had evidently chosen another official bedchamber for himself than the one Orico had lately died in. Not, Cazaril was given to understand, that the royse slept there. Iselle had just moved into the old royina’s suite, above. The castle warder showed Cazaril to the room near Bergon’s that was to be his. Someone had moved his trunk and few possessions over from his old chamber, and entirely new clothing for tonight’s banquet was already laid out waiting. Cazaril let the servants bring him wash water, but then shooed them away and lay down obediently to rest.

This lasted about ten minutes. He rose again and prowled up one flight to examine his new office arrangements. A maidservant, recognizing him, curtsied him past. He poked his nose into the chamber Sara had kept for her secretary. As he expected, it was now filled with his records, books, and ledgers from the royesse’s former household, with a great many more added. Unexpectedly, a neat dark-haired fellow, who looked to be about thirty years old, manned his broad desk. He wore the gray robe and carmine shoulder braid of a divine of the Father, and was scratching figures into one of Cazaril’s own account books. Opened correspondence lay fanned out at his left hand, and a larger stack of finished letters rose at his right.

He glanced up at Cazaril in polite but cool inquiry. “May I help you, sir?”

“I—excuse me, I do not believe we have met. Who are you?”

“I am Learned Bonneret, Royina Iselle’s private secretary.”

Cazaril’s mouth opened, and shut. But I’m Royina Iselle’s private secretary! “A temporary appointment, is it?”

Bonneret’s eyebrows went up. “Well, I trust it shall be permanent.”

“How came you by the post?”

“Archdivine Mendenal was kind enough to recommend me to the royina.”

“Lately?”

“Excuse me?”

“You are lately appointed?”

“These two weeks past, sir.” Bonneret frowned in faint annoyance. “Ah—you have the advantage of me, I believe?”

Quite the reverse. “The royina . . . didn’t tell me,” said Cazaril. Was he discarded, shunted from his position of trust? Granted, the avalanche of tasks attendant upon Iselle’s ascension to the royacy was hardly going to halt while Cazaril slowly recovered; someone had to attend to them. And, Cazaril noted by the outgoing inscriptions, Bonneret had beautiful handwriting. The divine was frowning more deeply at him. He supplied, “My name is Cazaril.”

Bonneret’s frown evaporated, to be replaced with an even more alarming awed smile; he dropped his quill, spattering ink, and scrambled abruptly to his feet. “My lord dy Cazaril! I am honored!” He bowed low. “What may I do to help you, my lord?” he repeated, in a very different tone.

This eager courtesy daunted Cazaril far more than Bonneret’s former superciliousness. He mumbled some incoherent excuse for his intrusion, pleaded weariness from the road, and fled back downstairs.

He filled a little time inventorying his clothing and too-few books and arranging them in his new chamber. Amazingly, nothing seemed to be missing from his possessions. He wandered to his narrow window, which looked down over the town. He swung his casement wide and craned his neck out, but no sacred crows flew in to visit him. With the curse broken, the menagerie gone, did they still roost in Fonsa’s Tower? He studied the temple domes, and made plans to seek out Umegat at his first opportunity. Then he sat in bewilderment.

He was shaken, and knew it partly for an effect of fatigue. His energy was still fragile, spasmodic. His healing gut wound ached from the morning’s riding, although not as much as when Dondo had used to claw him from the inside. He was gloriously unoccupied, a fact that alone had been enough to keep him ecstatically happy for days. It didn’t seem to be working this afternoon, though. All his urgent push to arrive here made this quiet rest that everybody thought he ought to be having feel rather a letdown.

His mood darkened. Maybe there was no use for him in this new Chalion-Ibra. Iselle would need more learned, smoother men now to help manage her vastly enlarged affairs than a battered and, well, strange ex-soldier with a weakness for poetry. Worse—to be culled from Iselle’s service was to be exiled from Betriz’s daily presence. No one would light his reading candles at dusk, or make him wear warm unfashionable hats, or notice if he fell ill and bring him frightening physicians, or pray for his safety when he was far from home. . . .

He heard the clatter and noise of what he presumed was Iselle and Bergon’s party returning from the ceremonies at the temple, but even at an angle his window did not give a view onto the courtyard. He ought to rush out to greet them. No. I’m resting. That sounded mulish and petulant even to his own inward ear. Don’t be a fool. But a dreary fatigue anchored him in his chair.

Before he could overcome his wash of melancholy, Bergon himself bustled into his chamber, and then it became impossible to stay down-at-the-mouth. The royse was still wearing the brown, orange, and yellow robes of the holy general of the Son’s Order, with its broad sword belt ornamented with the symbols of autumn, all looking a lot better on him than they ever had on old gray dy Jironal. If Bergon was not a joy to the god, there was no pleasing Him at all. Cazaril rose, and Bergon embraced him, inquired after his trip from Taryoon and his healing, barely waited for the answer, tried to tell him in turn of eight things at once, then burst out laughing at himself.

“There will be time for all this shortly. Right now I am on a mission from my wife the royina of Chalion. But tell me first and privately, Lord Caz—do you love the Lady Betriz?”

Cazaril blinked. “I . . . she . . . very fond, Royse.”

“Good. I mean, I was sure of it, but Iselle insisted I ask first. Now, and very important—are you willing to be shaved?”

“I—what?” Cazaril’s hand went to his beard. It was not at all as scraggly as it had started out, it had filled in nicely, he thought, and besides, he kept it neatly trimmed. “Is there some reason you ask me this? Not that it matters greatly, beards grow back, I suppose . . .”

“But you’re not madly attached to it or anything, right?”

“Not madly, no. My hand was shaky for a time after the galleys, and I did not care to carve myself bloody, but I could not afford a barber. Then I just became used to it.”

“Good.” Bergon returned to the doorway, and thrust his head through to the corridor. “All right, come in.”

A barber and a servant holding a can of hot water trooped in at the royse’s command. The barber made Cazaril sit, and whipped his cloth around him. Cazaril found himself soaped up before he could make remark. The servant held the basin beneath his chin as the barber, humming under his breath, went to work with his steel. Cazaril stared down cross-eyed over his nose as blobs of soapy gray and black hair splatted into the tin basin. The barber made unsettling little chirping noises, but at last smiled in satisfaction and grandly gestured the basin away. “There, my lord!” Some work with a hot towel and a cold lavender-scented tincture that stung completed his artistic effort. The royse dropped a coin into the barber’s hand that made him bow low and, murmuring compliments, retreat backwards through the door again.

Feminine giggles sounded from the hallway. A voice, not quite low enough, whispered, “See, Iselle! He does too have a chin. Told you.”

“Yes, you were right. Quite a nice one.”

Iselle stalked in with her back straight, trying to be very royal in her elaborate gown from the investiture, but couldn’t keep her gravity; she looked at Cazaril and burst into laughter. At her shoulder Betriz, almost as finely dressed, was all dimples and bright brown eyes and a complex hairstyle that seemed to involve a lot of black ringlets framing her face, bouncing in a fascinating manner as she moved. Iselle’s hand went to her lips. “Five gods, Cazaril! Once you’re fetched out from behind that gray hedge, you’re not so old after all!”

“Not old at all,” corrected Betriz sturdily.

He had risen at the royesse’s entry, and swept them a courtly bow. His hand, unwilled, went to touch his unaccustomedly naked and cool chin. No one had offered him a mirror by which to examine the cause of all this female hilarity.

“All ready,” reported Bergon mysteriously.

Iselle, smiling, took Betriz’s hand. Bergon grasped Cazaril’s. Iselle struck a pose and announced, in a voice suited to a throne room, “My best-beloved and most loyal lady Betriz dy Ferrej has begged a boon of me, which I grant with all the gladness of my heart. And as you have no father now, Lord Cazaril, Bergon and I shall take his place as your liege lords. She has asked for your hand. As it pleases Us greatly that Our two most beloved servants should also love each other, be you betrothed with Our goodwill.”

Bergon turned up his hand with Cazaril’s in it; Betriz’s descended upon it, capped by Iselle’s. The royse and royina pressed their hands together, and stood back, both grinning.

“But, but, but,” stammered Cazaril. “But this is very wrong, Iselle—Bergon—to sacrifice this maiden to reward my gray hairs is a repugnant thing!” He did not let go of Betriz’s hand.

“We just got rid of your gray hairs,” pointed out Iselle. She looked him over judiciously. “It’s a vast improvement, I have to agree.”

Bergon observed, “And I must say, she doesn’t look very repulsed.”

Betriz’s dimples were as deep as ever Cazaril had seen them, and her merry eyes gleamed up at him through her demurely sweeping lashes.

“But . . . but . . .”

“And anyway,” Iselle continued briskly, “I’m not sacrificing her to you as a reward for your loyalty. I’m bestowing you on her as a reward for her loyalty. So there.”

“Oh. Oh, well, that’s better, then . . .” Cazaril squinted, trying to reorient his spinning mind. “But . . . surely there are greater lords . . . richer . . . younger, handsomer . . . more worthy . . .”

“Yes, well, she didn’t ask for them. She asked for you. No accounting for taste, eh?” said Bergon, eyes alight.

“And I must quibble with at least part of your estimate, Cazaril,” Betriz said breathlessly. “There are no more worthy lords than you in Chalion.” Her grip, in his, tightened.

“Wait,” said Cazaril, feeling he was sliding down a slope of snow, tractionless. Soft, warm snow. “I have no lands, no money. How can I support a wife?”

“I plan to make the chancellorship a salaried position,” said Iselle.

“As the Fox has done in Ibra? Very wise, Royina, to have your principal servants’ principal loyalties be to the royacy, and not divided between crown and clan as dy Jironal’s was. Who shall you appoint to replace him? I have a few ideas—”

“Cazaril!” Her fond exasperation made familiar cadence with his name. “Of course it’s you, who did you think I should appoint? Surely that went without saying! The duty must be yours.”

Cazaril sat down heavily in his late barber chair, still not releasing his clutch on Betriz’s hand. “Right now?” he said faintly.

Her chin came up. “No, no, of course not! Tonight we feast. Tomorrow will do.”

“If you’re feeling up to it by then,” Bergon put in hastily.

“It’s a vast task.” Wish for bread, and be handed a banquet . . . between those who sought to overprotect him and those who sacrificed his comfort mercilessly to their aims without a second thought, Cazaril decided he rather preferred the latter. Chancellor dy Cazaril. My lord Chancellor. His lips moved, as he shaped the syllables, and crooked up.

“We shall do these announcements all over again publicly tonight after dinner,” said Iselle, “so dress yourself suitably, Cazaril. Bergon and I shall present the chain of office to you then, before the court. Betriz, attend upon me”—her lips curved—“in a little while.” She tucked her hand through Bergon’s arm and drew the royse out after her. The door swung shut.

Cazaril snaked his arm around Betriz’s waist and pulled her, ruthlessly and not at all shyly, down upon his lap. She squeaked in surprise.

“Lips, eh?” he murmured, and fastened his to hers.

Pausing for breath some time later, she pulled her head back and happily rubbed her chin, then his. “And now your kisses do not make me itch!”

It was late the following morning before Cazaril was at last able to seek out Umegat at the Bastard’s house. A respectful acolyte ushered him to a pair of rooms on the third floor; the tongueless groom, Daris, answered the knock and bowed Cazaril inside. Cazaril was not surprised to find him wearing the garb of a lay dedicat of the order, tidy and white. Daris rubbed his chin and gestured at Cazaril’s bare face, uttering some smiling remark that Cazaril was just as glad he could not make out. The thumbless man beckoned him through the chamber, furnished up as a sitting room, and out to a little wooden balcony, festooned with twining vines and rose geraniums in pots, overlooking the Temple Square.

Umegat, also dressed in clean white, sat at a tiny table in the cool shade, and Cazaril was thrilled to see paper and quill and ink before him. Daris hastily brought a chair, that Cazaril might sit before Umegat could try to rise. Daris mouthed an inviting hum; Umegat interpreted an offer of hospitality, and Cazaril agreed to tea, which Daris bustled away to fetch.

“What’s this?” Cazaril waved eagerly at the papers. “Have you your writing back?”

Umegat grimaced. “So far, I seem to be back to age five. Would that some of the rest of me was so rejuvenated.” He tilted the page to show a labored exercise of crudely drawn letters. “I keep putting them back in my mind, and they keep falling out again. My hand has lost its cleverness for the quill—and yet I can still play the lute nearly as badly as ever! The physician insists that I am improving, and I suppose it is so, for I could not do so little as this a month ago. The words scuttle about on the page like crabs, but every so often I catch one.” He glanced up, and shrugged away his struggles. “But you! Great doings in Taryoon, were they not? Mendenal says you had a sword stuck through you.”

“Punctured front to back,” admitted Cazaril. “But it carved out Lord Dondo and the demon, which made it altogether worth the pain. The Lady spared me from the killing fever, after.”

Umegat glanced after Daris. “Then you got off lightly.”

“Miraculously so.”

Umegat leaned a little forward across the table and gazed closely into his face. “Hm. Hm. You’ve been keeping high company, I see.”

“Have you your second sight back?” asked Cazaril, startled.

“No. It’s just a look a man gets, that one learns to recognize.”

Indeed. Umegat had it, too. It seemed that if a man was god-touched, and yet not pushed altogether off-balance, it left him mysteriously centered thereafter. “You have seen your god, too.” It was not a question.

“Once or twice,” Umegat admitted.

“How long does it take to recover?”

“I’m not sure yet.” Umegat rubbed his lips thoughtfully, studying Cazaril. “Tell me—if you can—what you saw . . . ?”

It was not just the learned theologian talking shop; Cazaril saw the flash of fathomless god-hunger in the Roknari’s gray eyes. Do I look like that, when I speak of Her? No wonder men look at me strangely.

Cazaril told the tale, starting from his precipitate departure from Cardegoss riding to the royesse’s ordering. Tea arrived, was consumed, and the cups refilled before he came to the end of it. Daris hunkered in the doorway, listening; Cazaril supposed he need not ask after the ex-groom’s discretion. When he tried to describe his gathering-in by the Lady, he became tongue-tangled. Umegat hung on his halting words, lips parted.

“Poetry—poetry might do it,” said Cazaril. “I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.”

“Hm,” said Umegat. “I tried to recapture the god with music, for a time, after my first . . . experience. I had not the gift, alas.”

Cazaril nodded. He asked diffidently, “Is there anything you—either of you—need, that I can command? Iselle has yesterday made me chancellor of Chalion, so I suppose I can command, well, rather a lot.”

Umegat’s brows flicked up; he favored Cazaril with a little congratulatory bow, from his seat. “That was well done of the young royina.”

Cazaril grimaced. “I keep thinking about dead men’s boots, actually.”

Umegat’s smile glimmered. “I understand. As for us, the Temple cares for its ex-saints reasonably well, and supplies us all that we can presently use. I like these rooms, this city, this spring air, my company. I hope the god will yet grant me an interesting task or two, before I’m done. Although, by preference, not with animals. Or royalty.”

Cazaril made a motion of sympathy. “I suppose you knew poor Orico as well as almost anyone, except perhaps Sara.”

“I saw him nearly every day for six years. He spoke to me most frankly, toward the end. I hope I was a consolation to him.”

Cazaril hesitated. “For what it’s worth, I came to the conclusion that he was something of a hero.”

Umegat nodded briefly. “So did I. In a frustrating sort of way. He was a sacrifice, surely.” He sighed. “Well, it is a particular sin to permit grief for what is gone to poison the praise for what blessings remain to us.”

The tongueless man rose from his silent spot to take away the tea things.

“Thank you, Daris,” said Umegat, and patted the hand that touched him briefly on the shoulder; Daris gathered up the cups and plates and padded off.

Cazaril stared curiously after him. “Have you known him long?”

“About twenty years.”

“Then he was not just your assistant in the menagerie . . .” Cazaril lowered his voice. “Was he martyred back then?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Oh.”

Umegat smiled. “Don’t look so glum, Lord Cazaril. We get better. That was yesterday. This is today. I shall ask his permission to tell you the tale of it sometime.”

“I should be honored with his confidence.”

“All is well, and if it’s not, then at least each day brings us closer to our god.”

“I had noticed that. I had a little trouble tracking time, the first few days after . . . after I saw the Lady. Time, and scale, both altered out of reckoning.”

A light knock sounded upon the chamber door. Daris emerged from the other room and went to admit a white-smocked young dedicat who held a book in her hand.

“Ah.” Umegat brightened. “It is my reader. Make your bow to the Lord Chancellor, Dedicat.” He added in explanation, “They send a delinquent dedicat to read to me for an hour a day, as a light punishment for small infractions of the house rules. Have you decided what rule you mean to break tomorrow, girl?”

The dedicat grinned sheepishly. “I’m thinking, Learned Umegat.”

“Well if you run out of ideas, I will harken back to my youth and see if I can’t remember a few more.”

The dedicat tipped the book toward Cazaril. “I thought I would be sent to read dull theology to the divine, but instead he wanted this book of tales.”

Cazaril glanced over the volume, an Ibran import judging by the printer’s mark, with interest.

“It’s a fine conceit, “ said Umegat. “The author follows a group of travelers to a pilgrimage shrine, and has each one tell his or her tale in turn. Very, ah, holy.”

“Actually, my lord,” the dedicat whispered, “some of them are very lewd.”

“I see I must dust off Ordol’s sermon on the lessons of the flesh. I have promised the dedicat time off from the Bastard’s penances for her blushes. I fear she believes me.” Umegat smiled.

“I, ah . . . should be very pleased to borrow that book, when you’re finished with it,” Cazaril said hopefully.

“I’ll have it sent up to you, my lord.”

Cazaril made his farewells. He recrossed the five-sided Temple Square and headed uphill, but turned aside before the Zangre came in sight and made his way to Provincar dy Baocia’s town palace. The blocky old stone building resembled Jironal Palace, though much smaller, with no windows on its lower floor, and its next floor’s casements protected by wrought-iron grilles. It had been reopened not only for its lord and lady but also the old Provincara and Lady Ista, who had arrived from Valenda. Full to bursting, its former sullen empty silence was turned to bustle. Cazaril stated his rank and business to a bowing porter, and was whisked inside without question or delay.

The porter led him to a high sunny chamber at the back of the house. Here he found Dowager Royina Ista sitting out on a little iron-railed balcony overlooking the small herb garden and stable mews. She dismissed her attendant woman and gestured Cazaril to the vacated chair, almost knee to knee with her. Ista’s dun hair was neatly braided today, wreathing her head; both her face and her dress seemed somehow crisper, more clearly defined than Cazaril had ever seen them before.

“This is a pleasant place,” Cazaril observed, easing himself down in the chair.

“Yes, I like this room. It is the one I had when I was a girl, when my father brought us up to the capital with him, which was not often. Best of all, I cannot see the Zangre from it.” She gazed down into the domestic square of garden, embroidered with green, protected and contained.

“You came to the banquet there last night.” He had only been able to exchange a few formal words with her in that company, Ista merely congratulating him on his chancellorship and his betrothal, and departing early “You looked very well, too, I must say. I could see Iselle was gratified.”

She inclined her head. “I eat there to please her. I do not care to sleep there.”

“I suppose the ghosts are still about. I cannot see them now, to my great relief.”

“Nor I, with sight or second sight, but I feel them as a chill in the walls. Or perhaps it’s just the memory of them that chills me.” She rubbed her arms as if to warm them. “I abhor the Zangre.”

“I understand the poor ghosts much better now than when they first terrified me,” said Cazaril diffidently. “I thought their exile and erosion was a rejection by the gods, at first, a damnation, but now I know it for a mercy. When the souls are taken up, they remember themselves . . . the minds possess their lives all whole, all at once, as the gods do, with nearly the terrible clarity that matter remembers itself. For some . . . for some that heaven would be as unbearable as any hell, and so the gods release them to forgetfulness.”

“Forgetfulness. That smudged oblivion seems a very heaven to me now. I pray to be such a ghost, I think.”

I fear it is a mercy you shall be denied. Cazaril cleared his throat. “You know the curse is lifted off of Iselle and Bergon, and all, and banished out of Chalion?”

“Yes. Iselle has told me of it, to the limit of her understanding, but I knew it when it happened. My ladies were dressing me to go down to the Daughter’s Day morning prayers. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear or feel, but it was as though a fog had lifted from my mind. I did not realize how closely it had cloaked me round, like a clammy mist on the skin of my soul, till it was lifted. I was sorry then, for I thought it meant you had died.”

“Died indeed, but the Lady put me back into the world. Well, into my body. My friend Palli would have it that She put me back in upside down.” His smile flickered.

Ista looked away. “The curse’s lifting made my pain more clear, and yet more distant. It felt very strange.”

He cleared his throat. “You were right, Lady Ista, about the prophecy. The three deaths. I was wrong with my marriage scheme, wrong and determined to be so, because I was afraid. Your way seemed too hard. And yet it came right despite myself, in the end, by the Lady’s grace.”

She nodded. “I would have done it myself, if I could have. My sacrifice was evidently not deemed acceptable.” Bitterness tinged her voice.

“It was not a matter of—that’s not the reason,” protested Cazaril. “Well, it is but it isn’t. It has to do with the shape of your soul, not its worthiness. You have to make a cup of yourself, to receive that pouring out. You are a sword. You were always a sword. Like your mother and your daughter, too—steel spines run in the women of your family. I realize now why I never saw saints, before. The world does not crash upon their wills like waves upon a rock, or part around them like the wake of a ship. Instead they are supple, and swim through the world as silently as fishes.”

Her brows rose at him, though whether in agreement, disagreement, or some polite irony he was not sure.

“Where will you go now?” he asked her. “Now that you are better, that is.”

She shrugged. “My mother grows frail. I suppose we shall reverse chairs, and I shall attend upon her in the castle of Valenda as she attended upon me. I should prefer to go somewhere that I have never been before. Not Valenda, not Cardegoss. Someplace with no memories.”

He could not argue with this. He thought on Umegat, not exactly her spiritual superior, but so experienced in loss and woe as to have recovery down to nearly a routine. Ista had yet another twenty years to find her way to a balance like that. At about the age Ista was now, retrieving the broken body of his friend from whatever episode of horrors had shattered him, perhaps Umegat had railed and wailed as heart-rendingly as she had, or cursed the gods as coldly as her frozen silences. “I shall have to have you meet my friend Umegat,” he told Ista. “He was the saint given to preserve Orico. Ex-saint, now, as you and I are, too. I think . . . I think you and he could have some interesting conversations.”

She opened her hand, warily, neither encouraging this idea nor denying its possibility. Cazaril resolved to pursue their introduction, later.

Attempting to turn her thoughts to happier matters, he asked after Iselle’s coronation, which Ista and the proud and eager Provincara had arrived in Cardegoss just in time to attend. He’d so far asked some four or five people to describe it to him, but he hadn’t grown tired of the accounts yet. She grew animated for a little, her delight in her daughter’s victory softening her face and illuminating her eyes. The fate of Teidez lay between them untouched, as if by mutual assent. This was not the day to press those tender wounds, lest they break and bleed anew; some later, stronger hour would be time enough to speak of the lost boy.

At length, he bowed his head and made to bid her good day. Ista, suddenly urgent, leaned forward to touch him, for the first time, upon his hand.

“Bless me, Cazaril, before you go.”

He was taken aback. “Lady, I am no more saint now than you are, and surely not a god, to call down blessings at my will.” And yet . . . he wasn’t a royesse, either, but he had borne the proxy for one to Ibra, and made binding contract in her name. Lady of Spring, if ever I served You, redeem Your debt to me now. He licked his lips. “But I will try.”

He leaned forward, and placed his hand on Ista’s white brow. He did not know where the words came from, but they rose to his lips nonetheless.

“This is a true prophecy, as true as yours ever were. When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sundered, but shall be the prize of the gods’ gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy.”

He sat back and shut his mouth abruptly, as a surge of terror ran through him. Is it well, is it ill, am I a fool?

Ista’s eyes filled with tears that did not fall. Her hand, cupped upward upon her knee, grew still. She ducked her head in clumsy acceptance, as awkwardly as a child taking its first step. In a shaken voice she said, “You do that very well, Cazaril, for a man who claims to be an amateur.”

He swallowed, nodded back, smiled, took his leave, and fled into the street. As he turned up the hill, his stride lengthened despite the slope. His ladies would be waiting.